For a biography of Abe Stark and his life and times, click here. For a history of the sign, the batters who actually hit it, and insight into why it remains iconic decades after Ebbets Field was razed, click here. This companion article sheds light on the history of signs in other ballparks, before and after Stark erected his sign at Ebbets Field, that offered prizes to players, fans, and local charities.

The Ebbets Field scoreboard, shown here during the 1949 World Series, displayed Abe Stark’s “hit sign, win suit” sign from 1931 to 1957. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

Abe Stark’s “Hit Sign/Win Suit” sign at Ebbets Field may be the most famous sign in baseball history, but it was not the first or the last to offer a prize to batters who hit the ball at or over a ballpark advertisement. Businesses have long advertised in both minor-league and major-league stadiums. Most of them have been local companies but some national firms have used their association with baseball to promote their products. Ads for beer, whiskey, clothing, cigarettes, shaving products, and chewing tobacco were among the most popular of these early 20th-century ballpark billboards.1 In addition to offering prizes at ballparks, tailors and clothing stores often offered free suits to help raise money for favorite charities or to reward top-rate students or athletes at local schools.

By the 1960s, few older major-league ballparks still had ads on field-level outfield fences. In newly built stadiums, companies erected signs behind the outfield seats. By the 1990s, a handful of new ballparks revitalized the field-level signs to accommodate the growing popularity of “retro” stadiums like Camden Yards in Baltimore.

In a column for the Washington (DC) Herald, Washington Senators coach (and former star) Nick Altrock recalled pitching for the Eastern League’s Toronto Royals in 1901.2 “The players had great fun on that team trying for straw hats and suits of clothes that were given away by a couple of firms in way of ads, saying that any one hitting this sign will get a straw hat, and if you made two hits you would get a suit of clothes. Well, I think every man on the team, except myself, got a straw hat, or more. That offer stood until the first day of September, when all bets were off.”3  

In 1909, W.T. Blackwell, the firm that owned the Bull Durham tobacco company, began putting signs in the outfields of at least 200 major and minor league clubs with an offer of $50 to any player who “Hit the Bull” sign, as well as a free supply of chewing tobacco, popular among era ballplayers.4 The tobacco company calculated that by mid-August in the 1911 season, these signs had been hit 138 times. By the end of the season, the number had risen to 238, and the company had disbursed $11,900. Cramped National League Park (later known as the Baker Bowl) in Philadelphia was the most the most popular ballpark among ballplayers because the location of its Bulls sign was the easiest to hit.5 Bull Durham placed a prominent ad on the right field fence inside the foul line when the Dodgers played their first game  at Ebbets Field in 1913.6 But getting the Bull Durham prize was complicated because the official scorer had to send the company an affidavit attesting to their having seen the ball strike the sign.7 Some Bull Durham signs survived into the 1950s.

As early as 1909, a clothing store in Wheeling, West Virginia, home of the minor-league Wheeling Stogies, offered a free suit to a batter who hit its sign. According to a news story, Dayton Veterans catcher Joe Briger (spelled “Brigger” in the story) earned a free suit of clothes after hitting a sign in a game against the Stogies, but he was illiterate and didn’t realize what he’d won until his teammates informed him.8

A cartoon published in the San Francisco Bulletin in May 1910 depicted a “Free Suit for a Home Run” sign on the outfield fence and a batter watching his hit clear the fence exclaiming, “Gee! I’m a lucky guy.” The accompanying story noted that a “Portland tailor” promised a $50 suit to the first player to hit a home run that season. According to the article, the winner was Buddy Ryan, an outfielder for the Portland Beavers of the Pacific Coast League.9

In 1914, a clothing store in Jackson, Michigan promised a free suit to a player for the local minor-league team (the Jackson Chiefs) who hit a home run on opening day. First baseman Don Brown won the prize.10 In 1923, League Park, home of the Raleigh (N.C.) Capitals, a team in the Class C Piedmont League, had an outfield sign promising a free suit to any player who hit it.11 Beginning around 1926, a sign at the minor league Chattanooga Lookouts’ ballpark, sponsored by the local Palmer Clothing company, also offered a free suit.12 Three decades later, another Chattanooga clothier was making the same offer.13 In 1929, a clothing store in Rochester, Minnesota, offered a free suit to any player (in the local semipro league) who hit a home run.14

In the 1920s, Weiner’s clothing store in Reading, Pennsylvania, offered a free suit to any Reading player who hit a home run over the store’s sign. It also offered a free suit to “any player who slams out three home runs within seven consecutive days either when playing at home or away from home.” The free suit promotion was still in place in the 1930s. In 1935, George Weiner placed an ad in the local paper, saying “Go to it boys. You sock the homers and I’ll furnish the suits.” 15

In the 1920s, an amateur team in Toronto called the Oslers were part of a league that played its games in Hampden Park. An Osler player named Hank Sinclair hit two line drives to center field off a sign that advertised a local clothing company. The firm thought it would be good publicity to present Sinclair with a suit and a topcoat at a ceremony at home plate. But the Amateur Athletic Union vetoed the idea, prohibiting Sinclair from collecting his prize because it would jeopardize his and his team’s amateur status. Despite this ruling, “Sinclair took his clothes home via the back alleys,” according to an interview he gave to the Toronto Star in 1965.16

Professional teams in the same city had no such prohibitions. In 1926 the Toronto Maple Leafs of the International League moved to a new Maple Leaf Stadium. Toronto’s largest clothing store chain, Tip Top Tailors, promised a free suit to any player who hit its sign on the outfield wall.17 Elston Howard, who played for the Yankees’ minor-league Toronto team in 1954 and was later a star catcher for the Yankees, hit the sign multiple times and joked that it “kept my father and me in suits for years.”18 The sign remained in place until the ballpark was torn down in 1968. In 1921, clothier Roth Eaton was offering two free suits to players who hit his store’s sign at Maple Leaf Stadium. He continued the promotion at least through 1937.19 By 1940, Eaton was working for Clayton’s Men’s Shop and offered a free suit to the first player to hit a homer at Maple Leafs Stadium.20

In 1934, the National League adopted new baseball manufacturing specifications (already in use by the American League) that favored hitters.21 An item in Arch Ward’s Chicago Tribune column noted that the “livelier ball has prompted a prominent Washington clothing firm to cancel its offer of a free suit to any player hitting a home run.”22

Just beyond Crosley Field’s left-field wall was a red brick commercial building that housed the Superior Towel and Linen Service. The building was informally known as “The Laundry.” Home runs often bounced off the building’s façade or landed on its roof. (Courtesy of the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame and Museum)

From 1940 through 1960, Siebler clothing store in Cincinnati offered a free suit of clothes to any player who hit the ball off the company’s sign on the Superior Towel and Linen Service building (referred to as “the Laundry”) behind left field at Crosley Field. A 350-foot drive to straightaway left field could reach the laundry building. The Siebler sign (“Hit this sign and get a Siebler suit free”) was easier to hit than the Stark sign at Ebbets Field. Siebler claimed he gave away 176 suits – about eight a year – during those 20 years. The city demolished the laundry building for additional parking lots in 1960.23

In 1947, the Haggar Clothing company in Dallas began giving away a free pair of pants to each player for the minor-league Lubbock Hubbers who hit a home run.24 In the 1950s there was a similar sign at Gran Stadium in Havana from a local clothing store that offered $100 suits to players who hit a home run over the sign.25 In 1957, Nat Scholnick, who owned a Detroit clothing store, “offered a free suit to the Tiger pitcher and batter with the best records each month.”26

When The Ballpark in Arlington opened in 1994, the Texas Rangers erected a sign, “Hit It Here and Win a Free Suit,” on top of the right field roof, at least 500 feet from home plate. There was no sponsor, however, so it wasn’t clear who would provide the suits. In the end, it didn’t matter. By 1999, no batter had hit the sign, and the Rangers took it down.27

Professional baseball returned to Brooklyn in 2001 in the form of the Brooklyn Cyclones, a minor-league affiliate of the New York Mets. The team put a “Hit Sign, Win a Suit” sign on the left field fence of its new stadium, KeySpan Park in Coney Island. Louis Bisaquino, owner of Garage Clothing in Brooklyn, offered to provide the suits. “We may be Yankee fans, but I was born and grew up in Coney Island, so I knew I had to do this,” he explained.28 The sign was removed when the stadium underwent renovations in 2010, following a change in naming rights from KeySpan Park to MCU Park. Subsequently, the ballpark was renamed Maimonides Park in 2021.

Other professional teams have erected similar signs tied to a variety of promotions. In 1946, Danny Gardella – one of the major-leaguers who “jumped” to the Mexican League for higher salaries – banged the only home run ever hit through the mouth of the smiling man on a center field billboard in Delta Park in Mexico City sponsored by Chiclets. Gardella claimed that the company never paid him the $500 promised to players who achieved that feat.29

In 1964, Tosh Kaneshiro, owner of the Columbia Inn restaurant in Honolulu, erected a banner above the right field screen at Honolulu Stadium with a large hole in the middle and the name of the eatery. A player for the Islanders, the city’s minor league team, who hit a ball through the hole would get $1,000. Until 1976, when the stadium was torn down, only one player did so – Walt “No Neck” Williams in 1968. An Islander who hit a home run that did not hit the Columbia Inn sign, however, was invited for a free steak dinner.30

The sign at Athletic Park in Durham, North Carolina, home of the Durham Bulls, had been taken down long before the movie “Bull Durham” was filmed there in 1987. For the movie, the filmmakers installed a new sign, and the team left it up after the film was complete. When the team moved to a newer ballpark at the American Tobacco Campus in 1995, they erected a new sign with a painting of a snorting bull, promising, “Hit Bull, Win Steak. Hit Grass, Win Salad.” Only Bulls players got to cash in on the prize at the Angus Barn, a steakhouse in Raleigh, as part of an arrangement with the tobacco company. “Players who hit the bull part of the sign get a $100 gift card to buy any steak or meal on the menu.”31

In the 1970s, a local Twin Cities bank offered $10,000 to a player who hit a sign at the top of the scoreboard at Metropolitan Stadium.32 Beginning in 2023 at the Twins’ Target Field, Treasure Island Resort & Casino donated $2,500 to the Minnesota Twins Community Fund whenever a player hit a home run hit into the Treasure Island Home Run Deck, which extends from the left field foul pole to deep left-center field.33

In 1988, the New York Mets briefly installed a sign at the top of the scoreboard at Shea Stadium, sponsored by the Pergament home improvement company that read “Hit This Sign And We’ll Paint Your House.” The sign rotated in that spot with two other advertisers.34

In 1993, the Baltimore Orioles erected a “Hit It Here” sign in right-center field in its Camden Yards ballpark. The next year, the Maryland State Lottery, which sponsored the sign, declared that it would give a randomly picked fan $10,000 (increased by $1,000 per game for every game there was no winner) if a player hit the sign. By 1995, no batter had done it, so the giveaway was discontinued.35

In 2008, Toyota erected a sign beyond the right center field fence at the Great American Ball Park, home of the Cincinnati Reds. It says: “Red Hits Sign. Fan Wins Tundra.” If a Reds player hits the Toyota sign, fans get to enter a lottery (at local Toyota dealers) and win a Toyota Tundra truck. The sign is 430 feet from home plate. As of 2024, no Reds player had ever hit the sign, although Paul Goldschmidt, then with the St. Louis Cardinals, did so in September 2021.36

When Oracle Park first opened in 2000, the San Francisco Giants offered a $1 million prize to a randomly selected fan if any player hit a giant baseball glove (behind the left-center field wall) on the fly. No player managed to do it in a game. The promotion was quietly discontinued after a few years, although the glove remains as a landmark. “Nobody ever got close,” Giants executive vice president Larry Baer said. “There wasn’t any point continuing it.”37

When the Braves’ Turner Field opened in 1997, Coca-Cola, headquartered in Atlanta, offered $1 million to a fan who caught a home run in the Sky Field pavilion 80 feet above the left field bleachers and below a huge Coca Cola sign, 435 feet from home plate.38 In fact, what was offered was not $1 million in cash but a 20-year annuity worth $50,000 a year.39 But Coca-Cola didn’t have to worry about fans cashing in. “It’s not humanly possible,” said noted slugger Mark McGwire. “No way.”40

Similarly, a sign erected in 1988 at Fenway Park that offered a free pair of Thom McAn shoes to Red Sox players who “Hit One Up Here” stirred resentment because it was so far behind the right field bleachers. “Impossible,” said Red Sox outfielder Mike Greenwell. “No one could hit a ball that far.” He added: “Six hundred feet to win a pair of shoes. If you hit a ball that far, you should get an entire shoe company.”41

If a player hit the “Hit It Here” sign above the left field bleachers at Petco Park, home of the San Diego Padres, fans would be rewarded with season tickets. There is no known instance of any players hitting that sign.

Busch Stadium in St. Louis has a variation on this theme. In 1998, when Mark McGwire was breaking home run records, the team created a section of the left field stands called Big Mac Land in big neon letters, sponsored by McDonald’s. If a Cardinals player hit a home run into the area, everyone with a ticket to that section got a free Big Mac from local McDonald’s restaurants. McGwire wasn’t fond of the promotion and said he didn’t like to eat hamburgers.42 Many batters have hit the sign, which was still there during the 2025 season.

In the 1990s, GAP, the giant clothing company headquartered in San Francisco, erected signs with the firm’s simple logo on the outfield walls in Candlestick Park in areas known as hitting gaps. But there was no prize for a batter hitting the sign.43

Funko Field in Everett, Washington, named after a local toy manufacturing company, offers an interesting twist. It is home of the Everett AquaSox, a minor league affiliate of the Seattle Mariners that plays in the Northwest League. The ballpark, which is owned by the local school board, is also home to the Everett Community College and Everett High School teams. (When it was built in 1947 it was called Memorial Stadium). After Bob Bavasi bought the team (then called the Everett Giants) in 1984, he requested that the ballpark add a “Hit the Sign, Win a Suit” sign on the scoreboard.  His father, Buzzie Bavasi, was a long-time top executive with the Brooklyn Dodgers. The sign was meant as a homage to the old Dodgers. It was not intended to provide any free suits.44

Amid This Long History, What Makes the Stark Sign So Iconic?

Why do we still remember “Hit Sign, Win Suit” seven decades after Ebbets Field was abandoned? Several factors are involved.

First, Stark was a real person whom fans could identify with. Unlike “Lifebuoy” or “Bull Durham” or even a Brooklyn bank, Stark’s store was a locally owned business, not a faceless corporation. In comparison, the Cincinnati sign was sponsored by a global corporation. Great American Ball Park is named after a huge insurance company that paid $75 million to Reds’ owner Robert Castellini (who, since 2022, has been worth $400 million) for naming rights.

Second, Stark’s name was his calling card. Even before he erected the sign at Ebbets Field, Stark was a well-known local figure in Brooklyn who was active in civic affairs. As his store prospered, Stark expanded his philanthropic endeavors. His clothing store became a gathering place for people down on their luck whom Stark would try to help. Stark was a celebrity, a benefactor, a neighbor, and active in dozens of Brooklyn organizations. He was involved in three intersecting worlds – business, politics, and philanthropy. His name recognition in each of these sectors brought attention to the Ebbets Field sign.

Third, the Stark sign adorned the Ebbets Field outfield wall for at least 25 years, much longer than other signs located in major- and minor-league ballparks. Brooklyn went through many physical and demographic changes over the years, and the Dodgers’ on-field record was highly uneven over the years, but the Stark sign was always there, a symbol of stability.

Fourth, during those 25 years – which ended a decade before the players’ union became a major force – major-league players earned more than the average worker, but their salaries were not in the stratosphere as they are today.45 In 1950, for example, the average big-leaguer earned about $13,228 ($179,000 in 2025 dollars) compared with the average annual salary of an American worker at $2,876 ($39,000). Many players lived in the same neighborhoods as their fans, and some Dodgers even took the subway to Ebbets Field. Few lasted in the majors for more than a handful of years, so their post-baseball lives were often precarious. Fans could identify with players and recognize that for most of them, a free suit of clothes was a big deal. In 1951, for example, Dodgers third baseman Billy Cox earned $11,500. By 1955, playing for the Orioles but past his prime, he retired due to injuries. He returned to his hometown, Newport, Pennsylvania, where he tended bar.

Fifth, in a borough often disparaged in the media and Hollywood films, and compared unfavorably with Manhattan, the Dodgers – and Stark’s sign – provided Brooklynites with a sense of community pride. Stark, who was raised and lived in Brooklyn, and who made his living as a Brooklyn businessman, with a store that never changed locations, was one of their own. Ebbets Field was the smallest of the three New York City major-league ballparks in use from the mid-1920s through its descent into twilight in 1958, but neither Yankee Stadium nor the Polo Grounds had a marker as well-known and quirky as Stark’s sign.46

Sixth, “Hit Sign/Win Suit” was a clever slogan. Few players actually hit the sign, but that possibility was always there, making every fly ball to right field a candidate for a prize, if not quite immortality.

Seventh, in Stark’s era, New York was the nation’s largest city and its media capital. Things that happened in New York mattered to the rest of the country. For example, Fiorello La Guardia was not only New York’s mayor from 1934 to 1946 but also a national figure. Likewise, Stark, and the novelty of his sign, were fodder for news stories, and even cartoons, that circulated around the country.

Many other signs preceded and followed Stark’s. Most of them have already been or will soon be forgotten. But Abe Stark’s “Hit Sign, Win Suit” will be part of baseball history and American culture forever.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to the following people for their help in identifying ballparks with signs that offered suits and other prizes: Bob Brady, Robert Elias, Steven Gietschier, Larry Hayes, Lucas Hobbs, Stephen Katz, David McDonald, Bob McGee, Edward Morton, and Brian Wood.

This article was reviewed by Rory Costello and Bill Lamb and fact-checked by Larry DeFillipo.

Notes

1 Roberta Newman, Here’s the Pitch: The Amazing, True, New, and Improved Story of Baseball and Advertising (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Pess, 2019, 3-4.

2 An outstanding pitcher during his playing days, Altrock became a coach for the Senators from 1912 to 1953. In that role, he often engaged in comic routines from the coach’s box and performed routines at baseball fields around the country as well as on vaudeville stages, often with Al Schact, another former player who was known as the “Clown Prince of Baseball.” “Coach or Clown?” Buffalo Times, April 11, 1920: 53.

3 Nick Altrock, “Nick Altrock’s Baseball Career, as told by George L. Moreland,” Washington (DC) Herald, February 28, 1920: 10.

4 Newman, Here’s the Pitch, 5; “Research into the Impact of Tobacco Advertising,” Stanford University, n.d. https://tobacco.stanford.edu/ad_tags/athlete/; “Soft for Max Carey,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 23, 1918: 22; “Max Carey to Get $50 For Hitting Bull,” Brooklyn Citizen, July 23, 1918: Sports-1; “Canton Regains Position at Top; Houser Makes a Freak Record,” Mansfield (Ohio) News, August 26, 1910: 8; “Sally Bulls Not Hit,” Atlanta Constitution, August 13, 1911: 3; “Dave Callahan Will Get Fifty Dollars for Hitting the ‘Bull,’” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, September 1, 1917: 7; “Ben Spencer’s Target,” Hanover (Pennsylvania) Evening Sun, August 22, 1935: 8;  “Had Good Lead, But Went to Bed,” Fall River (Massachusetts) Evening News, June 2, 1909: 3, and “Newsy Gossip of All the Sports,” Altoona (Pennsylvania) Tribune, June 7, 1909: 2.

5 “Sally Bulls Not Hit,” above; “Phillies’ Home is Most Popular Among Player, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 12, 1911: 8.

6 Bob McGee, The Greatest Ballpark Ever: Ebbets Field and the Story of the Brooklyn Dodgers (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press:, 2005), 111.

7 Al Demaree, “Shoot Bull Now: Used to Hit It,” Brooklyn Daily Times, March 10, 1927: 3A.

8 “Joe Brigger’s Lack of Education Almost Made Him Lose a Free Suit of Clothes,” Dayton Herald, April 19, 1910: 10.

9 Scoop, “Baseball Sidelights,” San Francisco Bulletin, May 21, 1910: 6. Ryan’s club affiliation went unmentioned.

10 “‘Brownie’ in His New Home Run Suit,” Jackson (Michigan) Citizen Press, May 1, 1914: 13.

11 “Capitals Break Jinx; Win Their Second Straight Game, 5 to 2,” Raleigh (North Carolina) News & Observer, May 23, 1923: 10.

12 “Bigelow’s Two Hits Won Many Prizes,” Chattanooga News, April 14, 1926: 28; “Locals Divide Double-Header with Dobbmen,” Chattanooga Times, June 6, 1927: 8; “Outfielder Vick Will Get Second Palmer Free Suit,” Chattanooga Times, July 11, 1929: 9.

13 Wirt Gammon, “Roseboro Hits Grandslam Homer as Lookouts Win,” Chattanooga Times, June 3, 1958: 13.

14 “More Suits Offered,” Rochester (Minnesota) Post-Bulletin, June 6, 1929: 9; “Out After Suits,” Rochester Post-Bulletin; July 6, 1929: 9; “Wins Third Suit,” Rochester Post-Bulletin, September 2, 1929: 7.

15George Weiner, who owned the clothing store, regularly ran ads in the local paper to both advertise his shop and remind the public about his offer to players. These included “From Training Camp – Leesburg, Florida,” Reading (Pennsylvania) Times, March 18, 1925: 10, “To Mr. Shaughnessy and His Reading Club!” Reading Times, April 13, 1926: 11; and “Good Luck ‘Brooks,’” Reading Times, May 1, 1935: 16. See also, Doc Silva, “Sox Ruin Miners Flag Hopes,” Reading Times, September 10, 1934: 10. The sign at Reading’s Lauer Park apparently limited free suits to Reading players, but the qualifications were somewhat ambiguous, as reported in a 1935 article noting that despite hitting a home run over the clothing store sign, “it’s a question if [Hazleton outfielder] Eddie [Wilson) is eligible for the free frock.” “Wilson May Get Suit,” Hazelton (Pennsylvania) Standard-Sentinel, May 28, 1935: 14.

16 Red Burnett, “30,000 Watched Sandlot Ball in the Days of 3-Cent Cones,” Toronto Star, May 15, 1965: 35.

17 A report of one 1947 game noted that “Goody Rosen bagged a suit-winning double, a single, and two walks.” Gordon Walker, “Leafs Fall Upon Bears; Chill ‘Em Like Weather!” Toronto Star, May 10, 1947: 13. Toronto’s other major paper had the same story. Allan Nickleson, “Leafs Smother Bears as Brown Holds ‘Em,” Toronto Globe and Mail, May 10, 1947. A 1948 story reported that a Jersey City player, pitcher Jack Kraus, hit a double off the sign and won a suit of clothes. Gordon Campbell, “Everyone Won but Sawyer at Stadium Variety Show,” Toronto Star, June 22, 1948: 13. A 1951 story about a game in Toronto between the Maple Leafs and the Springfield (Massachusetts) Cubs reported that “Ted Sepkowski [a Cubs player] visited a Toronto tailor today and came away with a new suit of clothes. But there’s a story in back of it. In one of the last games here in 1950, Ted hit a tailoring sign in right field. The blow called for an automatic suit of clothes. Ted filled out the necessary papers, but he never got the suit. So he checked when he arrived here. Everything was in order. There had been a slip somewhere. And Ted got the suit.” The same story noted that another Cubs player, Jack Wallaesa, won a Bulova watch after hitting a sign sponsored by a Toronto jewelry store. “Cub Chatter,” Springfield (Massachusetts) Union, May 23, 1951: 28. A report of a Toronto-Ottawa game in 1952 noted that Bill “Jennings won a suit by hitting the Tip Top Tailors’ sign with a double in the fourth.” Al Nickleson, “Markell Turns Back As, 4-1,” Toronto Globe & Mail, July 8, 1952.

18 Dave Anderson, “Toronto’s Baseball Story and Its New, Wonderful Tale,” New York Times, October 19, 1992: C8.

19 “Spring Season Officially Opens Tomorrow When ‘His Umps’ Says: Play Ball!” Toronto Star, May 3, 1921: 19; Charlie Good, “Epochal Pitching by Mr. Collins of Leafs,” Toronto Daily Staff, August 30, 1928; Charles Good, “Sports Parade,” Toronto Star, May 7, 1930: 12; “Shanty Hogan Joins Leafs,” Toronto Daily Clarion, July 3, 1937: 6.

20 “Sam Jones Hat No-Hit Contest,” Toronto Globe & Mail, May 4, 1940; Charles Good, “Sports Parade,” Toronto Star, April 24, 1940: 15.

21 “Big Leagues Agree on Livelier Ball; Sphere Used in the American Last Year Is Accepted in Toto by the National,” New York Times, January 6, 1934: 21.

22 Arch Ward, “Talking It Over,” Chicago Tribune, May 12, 1934: 22.

23 Greg Rhodes, “Crosley Field: The Laundry,” in Gregory Wolfe, ed., Cincinnati’s Crosley Field, SABR https://sabr.org/journal/article/crosley-field-the-laundry/; “Redlegs’ HR Power May Drive Tailor to the Cleaners,” Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) Evening News, April 18, 1955: 20; Steve Hoffman, “Louis Siebler Dies at 77,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 21, 18984: D2.

24 Joe Kelly, “Between the Lines,” Lubbock (Texas) Avalanche-Journal, August 1, 1948: 1, 11. 

25 Roberto González Echevarría, “The Boys of Winter” NINE, Vol. 32, No. 2, Spring 2024,  27. According to Echevarría: “The haberdashery Sastreria El Sol had a sign in left field at Gran Stadium in Havana announcing that any player who hit one over it would be rewarded with a tailored suit.” See also, Roberto González Echevarría, The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball  (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 61.

26 “Tagging the Tigers,” Detroit Free Press, July 21, 1957: C-3.

27 Mel Antonen, “Rangers’ Stadium Opens to ‘Breathtaking’ Reviews,” USA Today, April 12, 1994: 3C; T.R. Sullivan, ‘No More Suits,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, April 4, 1999: 12C; Simon Gonzalez, “Schieffer Takes Some of  Game’s Purity With Him,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, May 2, 1999: 2C; Jaime Aron, “All-Star Park Offers Peek at League’s Best,” Bowling Green (Kentucky)  News, July 9, 1995: 6-B.

28 Gersh Kuntzman, “‘Hit’ Sign Suits B’klyn Stadium,” New York Post, June 25, 2001. https://nypost.com/2001/06/25/hit-sign-suits-bklyn-stadium/

29 G. Richard McKelvey, Mexican Raiders in the Major Leagues (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2006), 93; Robert Elias, Dangerous Danny Gardella (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2025), 113-114.

30 Ferd Borsch, “Cub Homers Nip Hawaii,” Honolulu Advertiser, June 25, 1969: B-1;  Beverly Creamer, “‘Tosh’ Kaneshiro, 1921-1981: A good man…a great sport,” Honolulu Advertiser, July 23, 1981: 1; Ferd Borsch, “‘Toshi’ Was Indeed a Man for All Seasons,” Honolulu Sunday Star-Bulletin and Advertiser, July 26, 1981: B-3; Bob Sigall, “Son Shares Stories of Columbia Inn Legend,” Honolulu Star-Advertiser, August 4, 2023: B4.

31 Ana Young, “No Bull: Six questions about Durham’s famous sign,” 9th Street Journal, July 7, 2022. https://9thstreetjournal.org/2022/07/07/no-bull-six-questions-about-durhams-famous-sign/

32 Pat Thompson, “Powell, Orioles Clip Twins 11-1,” Austin (Minnesota) Daily Herald, July 27, 1970: 31. Another story the following year reported that the reward was $20,000. “Jackson Wants to Forget Long HRs,” Duluth (Minnesota) Herald, April 15, 1971: 23.

33 “Twins and Treasure Island Resort & Casino Announce New Fan- and Community-Focused Partnership Elements,” Https://Www.Ticasino.Com/Media/Media-Releases/04-06-2023

34 Rita Ciolli and Peter Gianatti, “Sights and Sounds Lack Local Flavor,” (Hempstead, New York) Newsday, August 3, 1988: 131; Steve Jacobson, “Hopes Are Alive at Shea,” Newsday, April 13, 1988: 135; Jack Lang, “It’s the Sign of the Times,” New York Daily News, June 5, 1988: 72.

35 David Hughes, “O’s Notes,” Wilmington (Delaware)  News Journal, May 8, 1994: D4; Charles Cohen, “Manchester Man, 83, Wins $10,000 in ‘Hit It Here,’” (Westminster, Maryland) Carroll County Times, October 5, 1994: 1; John Steadman, “Yes, Oriole Park is a Classic … Disappointment, That Is,” Baltimore Evening Sun, June 24, 1992; “Mr. Baseball,” Baltimore Sun, June 29, 1995: 7C.

36 Bobby Nightengale, “Cincinnati Reds still tied for second wild-card spot despite first-game loss,” Cincinnati Enquirer, September 1, 2021 https://www.cincinnati.com/story/sports/mlb/reds/2021/09/01/cincinnati-reds-lose-cardinals-doubleheader-wade-miley-struggles/5680443001/ Although no Reds player ever hit the sign, when Jesse Winker missed by only inches in 2018, the Reds gave a Tundra away to a lucky fan. See “Reds fan wins Toyota Tundra after close Jesse Winker home run,” Cincinnati Enquirer, June 11, 2018.

37 Andrew Baggarly, “Derby sluggers target glove,” Spokane (Washington) Spokesman-Review, July 9, 2007: C1; “Judge Goes Deep for 3rd Straight Game as Yanks Sink Giants,” Modesto (California) Bee, June 3, 2024: 1B.

38 “McGwire Mania Hits Coke,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 31, 1998: D1; “Coca-Cola Sky Field-Home of the $1 Million Home Run,” Atlanta Daily World, May 8, 1997. 

39 Judd Zulgad, “A Second Chance,” Minneapolis Tribune, July 31, 1998: C2.

40 Rick Hummel, “La Russa Says Experience Is McGwire Ally,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 7, 1997: D1.

41 Leigh Montville, “If the Shoe’s Hit….,” Boston Globe, August 24, 1988: 47.

42 “MacLanding Point,” Columbia (Missouri) Daily Tribune, March 27, 1998: 1B; Rick Hummel, “Cards Give Vianney 800 Tickets to See Alum Politte,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 31, 1998: C4; “No Relation,” Missoula (Montana) Missoulian, April 12, 1998: C3.

43 “Morning Briefing,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 31, 1993: 2C.

44 Interview with Mike MacColloch, the AquaSox’s director of corporate sales and marketing, May 21, 2025. According to MacColloch, Bob Bavasi purchased the team, then as a San Francisco Giants affiliate located in Walla Walla, Washington, in 1983 and moved it to Everett for the 1984 season. He had the signed erected several years later. In 1995, under a different owner, it became a Seattle Mariners affiliate, but the sign remained. MacColloch estimated that two or three batters hit the scoreboard (not necessarily the sign), which is about 330 feet from home plate, every game. No suits are given away. “It was meant as a monument to honor the legacy of Buzzy Bavasi and the Brooklyn Dodgers,” MacColloch explained. Interestingly, they used a different wording from the Stark sign: It says, “Hit the Sign, Win a Suit,” not “Hit Sign, Win Suit.” Ben Walker, “Nutty Parks? You Can’t Beat Bushes,” (Nashville) Tennessean, July 11, 1993; 7-C; Kirby Arnold, “From preps to pros, area has evolved,” Everett (Washington) Herald, January 1, 2000: 5C; Larry Henry, “New Scoreboard Stirs Old Memories,” Everett Herald, June 11, 1987: 1C.; and “NWL Team to Move to Everett,” Salem (Oregon) Journal, December 16, 1983: 11

45In early 2025, the median weekly wage for full-time U.S. workers was $1,194, which translates to an annual income of $62,088. “Usual Weekly Earnings of Wage and Salary Workers First Quarter 2025,” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, April 16, 2025. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf . The median salary for Major League Baseball players in 2025 was $1.35 million. The average salary was $5.1 million, but this is skewed by extremely high salaries among the most well-paid players. “MLB’s average salary tops $5 million for first time,” NBC Sports, April 2, 2025.
https://www.nbcsports.com/mlb/news/mlbs-average-salary-tops-5-million-for-first-time

46 Some fans might consider the monuments for Miller Huggins, Babe Ruth, and Lou Gehrig placed in deep center field of old Yankee Stadium as quirky and well-known.

Johnny Moore, Jim Gilliam, Gino Cimoli are three of the players known to have hit Abe Stark’s “hit sign, win suit” sign at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. And yes, they did win a suit from Stark’s clothing store. (Trading Card Database)

An advertisement that adorned the right field fence in Ebbets Field, home of the Brooklyn Dodgers – “Hit Sign. Win Suit. Abe Stark. 1514 Pitkin Ave. Brooklyn’s Leading Clothier” – is likely the most famous sign in baseball history. Dodger fans and players alike rejoiced when a batter managed the rare feat of hitting the sign on a line drive and winning a new suit.

Although the Dodgers left Brooklyn after the 1957 season, the Stark sign, located at the bottom of the scoreboard, is often referred to in books and memoirs about Brooklyn and the Dodgers with a sense of nostalgia or heartbreak.1 Stark, who opened his clothing store in 1914, was well-known as a generous philanthropist and civic activist whose store attracted not only customers but also Brooklynites who were down on their luck and needed a job or charity. But the Ebbets Field sign made Stark an even more famous public figure and helped catapult his political career as president of the New York City Council (1954-1961) and borough president of Brooklyn (1962-1970).

In 1938, a cartoon in The New Yorker by George Price depicted a sign on an outfield fence with the message, “Hit This Sign and Abe Feldman will give you a suit absolutely free.” Backing up the outfielder reaching for a ball was an elderly man in a suit and bowler hat – clearly Abe Feldman – with a baseball glove on each hand, guarding the fence to keep the ball from hitting the sign. 2 The sign was satirized by a syndicated Bugs Bunny cartoon in 1956. 3 It is in the background of Norman Rockwell’s famous 1948 painting, “The Three Umpires,” which was on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on April 23, 1949. In his book The Great American Novel (1973), Philip Roth created a character, Abe Ellis, based on Stark. 4

But the sign that lives in so many memories was apparently not Stark’s first advertisement at Ebbets Field. According to Bob McGee, author of a definitive history of the beloved Brooklyn ballpark, in the 1920s Stark rented space on its right field wall to advertise his clothing store. It was located where the Bull Durham tobacco company had rented space since the day the ballpark opened in 1913. That sign covered the whole right field wall, top to bottom, and was about 150 feet  wide, from the foul line to right center.5 Overton Tremper, an outfielder for the team (then called the Brooklyn Robins) in 1927 and 1928, told McGee (in a letter) about a Stark sign along the right field foul line.6 The right-field foul line was only about 300 feet from home plate, so the sign was relatively easy to hit.7

Besides Tremper, McGee’s primary source for the existence of this earlier sign is Murray Rubin, whose father worked at Stark’s clothing store from 1919 until it closed in 1959. He told McGee: “Many balls hit the original Stark sign. My father told me that on some evenings, he altered more suits for players than for paying customers.”

Verifying the existence of that sign has been challenging. There are no photographs of, or news stories about, a Stark sign in that location in the extensive Newspapers.com database that includes many New York newspapers, including several in Brooklyn, or the New York Times archives. Several collectors of old Brooklyn photographs could not find any photos of an earlier Stark sign.

Whether or not Stark had a large sign along the right-field foul line, his famous advertisement below the scoreboard was not the only sign he sponsored at Ebbets Field. At some point in the late 1920s or early 1930s, Stark shared a sign on the outfield wall with another Brooklyn clothier, Mac Oster. A photo in the Brooklyn Times Union from June 11, 1932 – of a fight on  the field between Dodgers and Cubs players – clearly reveals an outfield sign with both Stark and Oster’s names along with the store’s Pitkin Avenue address.8 Several photos of Manhattan College football games (played at Ebbets Field from 1923 to 1931), reveal the same Stark/Oster sign.9 As late as October 28, 1935, Brooklyn Times Union columnist Bill McCullough wrote, “Stark and Mac Oster, Brooklyn clothiers, owe Johnny Moore of the Phils, a suit … Johnny hit their sign at Ebbets Field the last day of the season.”10 The sign is near the center field exit gate. McGee suggests that the sign dates from 1931 or after, when the center field stands were completed.11  

The Ebbets Field scoreboard, shown here during the 1949 World Series, displayed Abe Stark’s “hit sign, win suit” sign from 1931 to 1957. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

The Iconic Sign – and Who Hit It

In 1931, the Dodgers expanded Ebbets Field to add more seats, going from 25,000 to 32,000. The expansion changed the configuration of the outfield fences, including the placement of a new scoreboard. Stark approached Harry M. Stevens, who had the  contract at Ebbets Field with the Dodgers to sell peanuts, hot dogs, and other concessions, and apparently was also responsible for finding businesses to rent advertising spaces in the stadium. Stark recalled that “[Stevens] said nobody had ever asked for it. He didn’t think it was a good spot, but I did. I bought it. I knew it would be a tough spot to hit.”12

The area Stark rented was below the scoreboard. It was smaller (three feet by 30 feet) than his earlier sign(s). It included the words “Hit Sign, Win Suit. Abe Stark. 1514 Pitkin Ave., Brooklyn’s Leading Clothier.” The Dodgers initially charged him $275 a year for the sign. By 1957, the team’s final season at Ebbets Field, Stark paid $2,500 to rent that space.

The sign was visible to the fans seated in every part of the ballpark. But situated  at  ground level, it was hard for batters to hit. A batter had to slug a hard line drive to hit the sign. The distance to the scoreboard was 344 feet to the left side and 328 on the right.13

It isn’t clear who made the rule that a hitter had to hit the sign on the fly. Bill Roeder, a veteran reporter for the New York World Telegram, recalled that one Pirates player hit the sign on a bounce. Roeder called Stark and suggested that the hit should be worth at least a pair of pants or a jacket. Stark said, “Tell him to come to the store tomorrow. I’ll give him a pair of slacks.”14

Between 1931 and 1957 the Dodgers played 2,101 regular season games at Ebbets Field. Hitters for the Dodgers and their opposing teams had 143,991 at-bats in those games.15 The number of hitters, and which hitters hit the sign, are matters of dispute.

To answer those questions, this analysis utilized the Newspapers.com database (which includes hundreds of newspapers from across the U.S. and Canada, including the Brooklyn Eagle and   New York Daily News, and several smaller New York papers, as well as the archives of the New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, and New York Post.  Separately and in combination, we used a variety of combinations of search words and phrases, such as “Abe Stark,” “Stark,” “sign,” “suit” “free suit,” “Ebbets Field,” and others to find news stories reporting on Dodger games at Ebbets Field. Retrosheet was used to account for specific players identified in books and news stories to verify if they played games in Ebbets Field and had an outfield hit.

Some newspaper reporters, columnists, and others claimed that no batter ever hit the sign. Longtime Detroit sports columnist Joe Falls wrote, “Nobody ever won so much as a vest…Nobody ever hit the sign. Nobody came close.”16 Columnist Jerry Green wrote that Stark “never gave a free suit to a ballplayer.”17 Brooklyn native Larry King, who became a well-known newspaper columnist and TV interviewer, wrote that “no player ever hit” the sign.18

Some sources are vague about the number but claim that, as one source suggested, it was “one of baseball’s rarest feats.”19 A columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News wrote that “a visiting player didn’t have a prayer of hitting sign, winning suit.”20 Murray Rubin, whose father worked at Stark’s store, told author Bob McGee that after Stark moved the sign to below the scoreboard, “my dad rarely saw any players.”21

Other sources claim that it was a more frequent occurrence. In 1942 the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported: “Each season between 6 and 15 suits are gifted. Last year was the first time that the sign was not hit – ironically enough, during the season the Dodgers won the pennant.”22 In 1945, Stark said he gave away five suits a year,23 a number he repeated in 194924 and 1953 interviews.25 Stark may have thought he gave away lots of suits, but even five suits a year is likely an exaggeration.

In 1949, Stark claimed that Mel Ott was the first one to do it – and did it twice.26 In 1966, he told a reporter that Ott did it “twice in one game.”27 This allegedly irked Stark, since Ott was the star slugger on the rival New York Giants. In 1954, Oscar Goldman, who managed Stark’s store, repeated his boss’s claim about Ott.28 A 1956 story about Stark claimed, “Former Giant player Mel Ott won the first two suits the first season.”29 Echoing Stark and Goldman, McGee, in his history of Ebbets Field, wrote that Ott “was the first to oblige, winning the first two suits during the 1931 season.”30 One baseball blogger wrote: “Stark only had to award one free suit to an opposing player: Mel Ott of the Giants.”31 Despite these repeated references to Ott, there is no evidence in daily news reports that Ott ever hit the sign.

Goldman also claimed that Cubs slugger Hack Wilson “did it two, three times and we had to make up a suit special for him. We had nothing to fit a little guy like him with shoulders like an ox. Gil Hodges we had to do special, too.”32 But, here again, there is no corroborating evidence that either Wilson or Hodges hit the sign. It is unlikely that newspapers would have uniformly ignored Ott, Wilson, or Hodges banging a hit off Stark’s sign.

In Green Cathedrals, Philip Lowry wrote: “Woody English of the Dodgers was the only batter to ever hit it, on June 6, 1937.”33 For The Greatest Ballpark Ever, McGee interviewed English, who claimed to have hit the sign three times. He may have done so, but there’s no evidence of it in the daily news reports. English did hit the sign twice, however. Both the Associated Press and the New York Times reported that English hit a double against the Reds’ Johnny Vander Meer in June 1937.34 Neither mentioned if English’s double came off the Stark sign, but the Brooklyn Citizen wrote that English “hit the suit sign below the scoreboard in right field in the third inning, thereby winning a suit of clothes.”35 A few weeks later, the Times reported that English “bounced a two-bagger off the low sign on the score board to win a suit of clothes” against the Phillies on August 19.36

But English wasn’t the first. Based on news reports, Phillies outfielder Johnny Moore was the first, and he did so on September 29, 1935. The New York Daily News mentioned that Moore hit the scoreboard but didn’t mention the Stark sign. The reporter simply wrote, “In the seventh Johnny Moore rapped the second Philly hit with a looper against the scoreboard.” It wasn’t until almost a month later that columnist Bill McCullough reported that Moore had hit the sign. 37

Joe Stripp, a Dodger infielder, was the second player verified as having hit the sign.  On May 13, 1936, the New York Herald Tribune noted that Stripp “gets a suit of clothes for hitting an advertiser’s sign in the first inning. He ought to give the vest to Pepper Martin, the right-fielder having tumbled in a vain attempt to knock  the drive down.”38

English was next. Then Dodger outfielder Gibby Brack hit the sign in 1937.39 The following season, Johnny Hudson, a Dodger infielder, hit the sign twice in one homestand – against the Pirates on July 29, 1938, and against the Reds a week later on August 6, 1938, according to news reports. Stark once claimed that Hudson “hit it three times in one year”40 and McGee asserted that Hudson hit the sign three times.41 But there’s no corroborating evidence that he hit the sign a third time.42

News stories verify that between 1940 and 1952, Herman Franks,43 Red Schoendienst,44 Erv Palica,45 and Hank Thompson46 earned suits. On August 16, 1953, the Herald Tribune reported that “Hal Rice won a suit of clothes with his double to right center in the third when the ball bounced off the Abe Stark advertisement which says ‘Hit Sign, Win Suit.’”47 A week later, a Pittsburgh Press columnist confirmed Rice’s achievement.48 Two weeks later, the Williamsburg News reported that “Abe Stark will have one suit less in his Pitkin Avenue store now that Hal Rice, of the Pittsburgh Pirates, banged a hit off his famous ‘Hit Sign-Get [win]  Suit’ sign at Ebbets Field. Hal expects to collect the next time his team is in town.”49 Retrosheet confirms that Rice hit a double in a game on Saturday, August 15.

On June 19, 1954, the Herald Tribune noted that Dodger infielder “Jim Gilliam won himself a suit by doubling past Hank Sauer to hit the Abe Stark sign under the scoreboard in right field.”50 The same day, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported that “Jim Gilliam’s double was worth a suit, though, even if it did bounce off Hank Sauer’s glove.”51 The game highlights, as reported in the Daily News, include  “Gilliam’s leadoff double hit free-suit sign in right. Tough year for Abe Stark. To get even, he may have to get his city council to slap a new tax on two base hits.”52 In fact, only one other player, the Cincinnati Reds’ Wally Post, hit the sign in 1954.53

In May of that year, Bill Roeder’s syndicated story claimed that Dodgers slugger Duke Snider hit the Stark sign, but he wasn’t specific about when it occurred. According to Roeder, Cubs outfielder Hank Sauer misjudged the ball, allowing it to strike the sign. So, “an ordinary out became a $150 tropical worsted.”54 A column that week by the Daily News’ Dick Young joked: “Next time [the] Cubs come to Ebbets Field, don’t be surprised to see Abe Stark out at the park early, teaching Hank Sauer how to protect that sign. Hank should have caught [the] drive that won Snider a free suit.”55 But a month later on June 19, the Eagle reported that Snider hit a ball that struck  the Stark sign on a bounce, and therefore “doesn’t count, not even a pair of slacks.”56 The claims about Snider are after-the-fact and vague  regarding  the date and game  of his purported feat.

In his 1993 autobiography, former Dodger pitcher Rex Barney wrote, “Nobody ever hit it, except once that I know. I think it was Erv Dusak of the Cardinals who hit a line drive that headed straight for it. The Dodgers had a big lead at the time, so Carl Furillo pretended he had slipped and the ball hit the sign, and the fans went crazy. Players on both teams were laughing and cheering. I remember Furillo patting that sign at the start of every inning.”57 In an interview that same year, however, Barney had a different memory. He told a reporter that the only player to hit the Stark sign was the Philadelphia Phillies’ Ron Northey, and only because Furillo slipped going after the ball.58

There’s no evidence from news stories that either Dusak or Northey ever hit the sign. To the contrary, in 1947 Eagle sports columnist Tommy Holmes reported that Dusak, then playing for the Pirates, had robbed the Dodgers’ Pete Reiser of an extra-base hit as well as a free suit of clothes.59

Furillo claimed that “Once Elmer Valo misjudged a line drive I hit to right-center and the ball sailed over his head and off the sign. I remember that when I went to collect the suit, they wanted to give me one of the cheap suits. I looked around and took one of the good ones.”60 During his 20-year major-league career, Valo played only nine games with an opposing team at Ebbets Field – all as a right fielder with the Phillies in 1956. In five of those games, Furillo was hitless, according to Retrosheet. He hit two home runs but  no doubles or triples. He singled to right field on July 1 and August 11. Could one of these have been the hit that, in Furillo’s memory, Valo misjudged? There’s no mention of Furillo hitting the Stark sign, or even hitting the scoreboard, in any newspaper reports of those games. 61

On September 15, 1956, Daily News columnist Dick Young wrote that “Cubs claim Walt Moryn has suit coming for hitting Abe Stark’s sign during July 28 game. Stark was in Europe at the time, but he should deputize someone to watch out for such important matters.” Young’s column appeared seven weeks after that game. According to Retrosheet, Moryn had two singles to right field in that game against the Dodgers, but the news stories about that game did not mention whether the balls hit the sign or even the scoreboard.62

In a 1987 interview, Chuck Tanner, who played for the Milwaukee Braves and Chicago Cubs between 1955 and 1958, claimed that he hit a line drive “right in the ‘Abe Stark.’” 63 After hitting the sign, Tanner claims he took the subway to Stark’s store. He recalled that “Furillo or somebody else” had warned him: ‘When you go in there, don’t take the first one. Tell ‘em you want the good ones.’ And I did that. They took me in the back and I got a good suit, about a $100 suit.”64 Tanner’s memory may be accurate, but there’s no news story verifying that he ever hit the Stark sign.

In 1987, former Dodgers general manager Buzzie Bavasi told a columnist  that Dick Williams, who played for the Dodgers between 1951 and 1956, hit the Stark sign in a game against the Braves.65 No evidence exists to substantiate this assertion.

News stories and books mention 24 batters who allegedly hit the sign. Only 15 of these hitters (who hit the sign a total of 17 times) can be confirmed through the daily stories about games that mention the batter and the fact that he hit the Stark sign.

Verified Players Who Hit the Abe Stark Sign at Ebbets Field

The other nine batters may have hit the sign, but these cannot be confirmed from daily sports pages. Columnists, fans, and Stark himself mention them, but often through the haze of memory or hand-me-down myths, without specifying the date or even the year.

Players Who May Have Hit the Sign but Aren’t Verified

Sportswriters occasionally recounted how outfielders robbed hitters of a free suit by their adept fielding. They also wrote about how misjudgments by outfielders led to fly balls that hit the Stark sign. For example, a 1939 New York Times story reported that Dodger outfielder Art Parks “robbed [Frank] Demaree of a hit and a suit of clothes with a leaping one-hand catch of Frank’s drive. The ball was headed directly for the suit sign at the base of the scoreboard when Art snared it.”90 A Daily News story from 1952 reported that Giants infielder “Hank Thompson gets a free suit for hitting clothing sign at the base of [the] scoreboard in [the] ninth. And he should give the extra pair of trousers to Furillo for not catching it.”91 In a 1957 game against the Giants, the Dodgers’ Gino Cimoli belted a hit against the Stark sign. Newsday columnist Stan Isaacs wrote: “Bobby Thomson, who played the ball badly, commented, ‘I deserve the pants.’”92

Besides its difficult location, another reason the sign was hard to hit was that Dixie Walker and Furillo patrolled right field with skill. Walker played for the Dodgers from 1939 until 1947, and Furillo was a Dodger from 1946 until the Dodgers’ final 1957 season in Brooklyn. Walker was the starting right fielder beginning in 1941 and Furillo took his place starting in 1948. Oscar Goldman, who managed Stark’s store, recalled that Walker once made a spectacular catch that kept a ball from hitting the sign. A writer suggested that Walker rated at least a pair of slacks. “We even threw in a sports jacket,” said Goldman.93

A 1947 Daily News story reported: “In addition to being robbed of [a] homer, [Bill] Nicholson was beat out of suit of clothes when Walker made [a] sensational one-handed grab of Bill’s liner to deep right in [the] eighth. If Dixie hadn’t nailed it, [the] ball would have banged against [the] Abe Stark sign at [the] bottom of [the] scoreboard and Nick would have won himself a suit. Abe should at least give Dixie [a] pair of slacks for [the] save.”94

Furillo said: “I don’t recall a ball ever hitting the sign when I was in right field. I asked the man for a pair of pants or something for guarding the sign, but he never gave me anything. Dixie Walker, I think, wangled a few pair of slacks for his work out there.”95

In 1989, columnist Bill Conlin wrote that “Carl Furillo played that historic rightfield wall…with the zeal of a medieval knight who had sworn an oath to die for his king. He was Abe Stark’s Sir Galahad.” Conlin quoted, a longtime top Dodgers executive, Buzzie Bavasi, who claimed that “in 12 years Abe never gave a suit  away, not as long as Carl was playing right.”96

Like many other claims regarding Stark’s sign, Bavasi’s statement is inaccurate, but it reflects how the haze of memory can distort reality, even if the reality itself cannot be totally confirmed with interviews, archives, and other historical documents.

Acknowledgments

This article was reviewed by Rory Costello and Bill Lamb and fact checked by Larry DeFillipo.

Notes

1 For their book about Ebbets Field, John Zinn and Paul Zinn interviewed Sam Bernstein, who recalled attending Dodgers games with his father, who said “The smartest man was that Abe Stark, because of that sign, ‘Hit Sign, Win Suit.” It was under the scoreboard, and it was hard to hit.” His father also recalled: “I never shopped there because he was too expensive.” John G. Zinn and Paul G. Zinn, editors, Ebbets Field: Essays and Memories of Brooklyn’s Historic Ballpark, 1913-1960 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 2013), 180. For his book Bums, Peter Golenbock interviewed a Dodgers fan named Bobby McCarthy, who had similar memories of going to Ebbets Field with his father. McCarthy also recalled the Stark sign, pointing out that the sign was difficult to hit and made even harder because “the right fielder was stationed right in front of it.” Peter Golenbock, Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 2000), 8.

2 Price was a frequent cartoon contributor to The New Yorker. See Lee Lorenz, “George Price,” New Yorker, January 30, 1995. Some claim that the cartoon includes elements of anti-Semitism by depicting a Jewish businessperson as stingy and conniving, both well-worn stereotypes about Jews.

3 This cartoon was syndicated in many newspapers around the country on August 14, 1956, including many far from Brooklyn, such as the Great Falls (Montana) Leader: 6.

4 Frank Ardolino, “’Hit Sign, Win Suit’: Abraham, Isaac, and the Schwabs Living over the Scoreboard in Roth’s ‘The Great American Novel,’’’ Studies in American Jewish Literature, Vol. 8, No. 2, Fall 1989, 219-223.

5 John Zinn, “Of Sacks and Suits,” A Manly Pastime – a Baseball History Blog, February 13, 2015. https://amanlypastime.blogspot.com/2015/02/of-sacks-and-suits.html; Bob McGee, The Greatest Ballpark Ever: Ebbets Field and the Story of the Brooklyn Dodgers (New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 2005), 112.

6 McGee, The Greatest Ballpark Ever, 112. Thanks to Bob McGee for sending me a copy of Tremper’s letter.

7 McGee, The Greatest Ballpark Ever, 63 and 113.

8 “Dodgers and Cubs Rushing to the Aid of Their Fighting Brethren,” Brooklyn Times Union, June 11, 1932: 2A.

9 Amy Surak, director of the archives at Manhattan University (formerly Manhattan College), provided the photos of the Manhattan [College] football team playing at Ebbets Field. The archives describe these photos as from the “1920s-1930s.”

10 “Dodgers Win, Then Tie: Mungo Fans 15 Phils,” New York Daily News, September 30, 1935: 46; “Mungo Whiffs 15 as Dodgers Win lst, 2-0; Tie in 2d,” New York Daily News, September 30, 1935: 46; Bill McCullough, “Between Innings,” Brooklyn Times Union, October 28, 1935: 2A. Mac Oster may have been Stark’s partner in the clothing store for a period of time, but his specific relationship with Stark and the years that both names adorned the sign are not clear.

11 Email from Bob McGee, July 22, 2025.

12 Stan Isaacs, “Remember Abe’s ‘Suit’ Sign at Ebbets Field?” Newsday, September 23, 1966: __.

13 Philip Lowry, Green Cathedrals: The Ultimate Celebration of Major League and Negro League Ballparks (New York: Walker & Company, 2006), 38.

14 Isaacs, “Remember Abe’s ‘Suit’ Sign,” above; Dick Young, “Navratilova Wedding Planned; Nolan Looks Maryland Bound,” Lima (Ohio) News, December 27, 1981: 3. During the 1955 Yankees-Dodgers World Series, a wire service story noted that Yankee catcher “Yogi Berra missed winning a suit by about five feet when his line single in the fourth inning hit the scoreboard above a haberdasher’s advertisement.” See “Martin Not Too Convincing; Stanky Warns Pee Wee,” Louisville Courier-Journal, October 3, 1955: 4. The caption of an Associated Press photo from a 1950 game, syndicated in many newspapers around the country, read: “If close ones count, Dodgers’ center fielder Duke Snider may be sporting a new suit in the near future.” The photo showed Phillies right fielder Bill Nicholson chasing “the Duke’s double off the Ebbets Field scoreboard in the seventh inning.” The caption implies that Snider’s hit struck the sign on a bounce rather than a direct hit – otherwise, he’d had definitely been entitled to a free suit. “One Way of Acquiring a Wardrobe,” Hartford Courant, July 11, 1950: 20.

15 Thanks to Kevin Johnson for providing this data, which he calculated from Seamheads.com databases.

16 Joe Falls, “Kingdome Could Use Abe Stark’s Old Sign,” Detroit Free Press, July 15, 1978: 1C.  Eleven years earlier, Falls wrote that he’d never seen anyone hit the sign. Joe Falls, “Domed Stadium Shuts Out Fun,” Detroit Free Press, January 31, 1967: 10.

17 Jerry Green, “It’s Difficult to Forget ‘Dem Bums,’” Newsday, May 17, 1984: __.

18 Larry King, “Dear Old Ebbets Field Stirs Fond Memories,” Miami Herald, April 10, 1968: 11-F.

19 Charlton’s Baseball Chronology https://thebaseballchronologyhome.wordpress.com/2018/11/02/1930-1939/; Elliot Rosenberg, “Big Town Replay,” New York Daily News, March 11, 2003: 55.

20 Stan Hochman, “This Can’t Compare,” Philadelphia Daily News, October 13, 1989: 136.

21 McGee, The Greatest Ballpark Ever, 112.

22 Clifford Evans, “Ears to the Ground,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 21, 1942: 11.

23 “Today’s Profile,” Brooklyn Eagle, June 8, 1945: 6; Zinn, “Of Sacks and Suits,” above; John Scullin Jr., “Abe Start Keeps His People in Mind,” Staten Island Advance, January 21, 1968: 13.

24 Mary Braggiotti, “Harmony Under the Stars in the Dodgers Lair: Close-up of Abe Stark,” New York Post, June 6, 1949: 33.

25 “Stark a Brooklyn Clothier and Civic Groups Leader,” New York Herald Tribune, November 4, 1953.

26 Braggiotti, “Harmony Under the Stars in the Dodgers Lair,” above.

27 Isaacs, “Remember Abe’s’ Suit’ Sign,” above.

28 “Sports of the Times,” Philadelphia Daily Times, Monday, May 31, 1954.

29 “Happy Birthday Abe Stark,” Greenpoint (Brooklyn) Home News, September 27, 1956: 4.

30 McGee, The Greatest Ballpark Ever, 112.

31 “Uncle Mike’s Musings,” October 8, 2016. https://unclemikesmusings.blogspot.com/2016/10/october-8-1956-60-years-since-perfect.html

32 “Sports of the Times,” above.

33 Lowry, Green Cathedrals, 40.

34 Roscoe McGowen, “Reds Overwhelm Dodgers 9 to 2,” New York Times, June 7, 1937: 21.

35 Lee Scott, “Dodgers’ Pitching Situation Hopeless with Mungo and Butcher Not Available,” Brooklyn Citizen, June 7, 1937: 6: __.

36 Roscoe McGowen, “Mungo Fails Against Phils 7-5, After Hoyt Pitches 3-0 Triumph,” New York Times, August 20, 1937: 11.

37 “Dodgers Win, Then Tie: Mungo Whiffs 15,” above. Bill McCullough, “Between Innings,” Brooklyn Times Union, October 28, 1935: 14. Mac Oster was Stark’s partner in the clothing store for some period of time. At some point, Oster’s name even appeared on the sign, but his specific relationship with Stark and the years that both names adorned the sign are not clear.

38 Arthur E. Patterson, “Brooklyn Pummels Dizzy Dean as Brandt Stills St. Louis Bats,” New York Herald Tribune, May 13, 1936: __.

39 According to the Brooklyn Citizen, “Gilly Brack won himself a suit when he hit the sign in right field in the first inning.” Lee Scott, “Roy Henshaw Regains Confidence After His Seven-Hit Victory Over Red,” Brooklyn Citizen, June 8, 1937: 6.

40 Isaacs, “Remember Abe’s ‘Suit’ Sign,” above.

41 McGee, The Greatest Ballpark Ever, 126.

42 “Hudson was mentioned in a 1938 Eagle story that highlighted Stark’s philanthropy as well as his sign. It reported: “Abe Stark, the Brownsville clothier playing host to a party of crippled children at yesterday’s game, saw Johnny Hudson hit his sign under the scoreboard with the double that tied the score in the sixth…And that won a suit of clothes for Jawn.” See “Encore for Bam, Ducky,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 30, 1938: 10.

43 Roscoe McGowen, “Wyatt Is Pounded as Reds Win, 5 to 2,” New York Times, May 16, 1940: 30; Lee Scott, “Sudden Collapse of Brooklyn ‘Big Three’ Bitter Blow to Pilot Durocher,” Brooklyn Citizen, May 16, 1940: 6.

44 ‘Sizzling Cards Clip Bums,” Louisville Courier-Journal, September 18, 1948: 2-6; “Did You Know?” New Brunswick (New Jersey) Home News Tribune, February 2, 2003: B5.

45 Bill Lauder Jr., “Dodgers Beat Phils, 7-3, on Palica’s Hurling, Batting,” New York Herald Tribune, July 10, 1950: 17; Lester Rodney, “Dodgers Turn on Phils, 7-3,” (New York) Daily Worker, July 10, 1950: 12.

46 Dana Mozley, “Hodges Now Rated Best .250 Hitter in Baseball,” New York Daily News, September 1, 1952: 38.

47 Bob Cooke, “Brooklyn Drubs Bucs for 7th in Row, 14-6,” New York Herald Tribune, August 16, 1953.

48 Les Biederman, “The Scoreboard,” Pittsburgh Press, August 22, 1953: 6.

49 Barney Ains, “Brooklyn’s Sports Parade,” Williamsburg (Brooklyn) News, September 4, 1953: 5.

50 Harold Rosenthal, “Hodges Blasts Pair, Drives 4 Runs Over,” New York Herald Tribune, June 19, 1954: __.

51 “Hodges Keeps Hitting in Runs for Dodgers,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 19, 1954: 8.

52 Dick Young, “Diamond Dust,” New York Daily News, June 19, 1954: 260.

53 “With Two Pants?” New York Daily News, June 23, 1954: 76.

54 “Here’s Stark Fact: Double Suited Snider,” Miami News, May 25, 1954: 12A; “Sports of the Times,” above.

55 Dick Young, “The Sports of Kings and Queens,” New York Daily News, May 27, 1954: 108. Snider confirmed that story in interviews with Young and with Dave Anderson 26 years later. Dick Young, “’Dook” Recalls Good Times,” (Cocoa) Florida Today, January 10, 1980: C1; Dave Anderson, “The Duke and Ebbets Field,” New York Times, January 10, 1980: __.

56 “Hodges Keeps Hitting,” above.

57 Rex Barney, with Norman Macht, Rex Barney’s Thank Youuuu for 50 Years in Baseball from Brooklyn to Baltimore (Centreville, Maryland: Tidewater Publishers, 1993), 39; Jay Kay, Baseball Fever Blog, April 23, 2007 https://www.baseball-fever.com/forum/the-teams-of-yesteryear/brooklyn-dodgers/24748-hit-sign-win-suit

58 Mel Antonen, “Behind the Seams,” USA Today, July 13, 1993: 11C.

59 Tommy Holmes, “Bucs Can Trade in Behrman for Rickey’s $50,000,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 3, 1947: 13.

60 Isaacs, “Remember Abe’s ‘Suit’ Sign,” above; Kay, Baseball Fever Blog, above.

61 Furillo provides a good illustration of the difficulty of identifying players who hit the Stark sign. A wire service story of the fifth game of the 1955 World Series between the Yankees and Dodgers, published in newspapers around the country, mentions in passing that “Dodger outfielder Carl Furillo won a suit when he hit the sign.” But no news story of that game, nor Retrosheet’s inning-by-inning account of all three games played at Ebbets Field, suggests that Furillo hit a line drive off the Stark sign. In the eighth inning of that game, Furillo “singled to second,” according to Retrosheet. He hit a double in the third game, but, according to both Retrosheet and a newspaper report, it was hit deep to left field, not in the vicinity of the sign under the scoreboard. In the same game, Furillo hit a liner to right center, but Mickey Mantle made a one-handed catch to get him out. “Martin Not Too Convincing,” above; “The Play by Play,” Binghamton (New York) Press, September 30, 1955: 1__; Howard Sigmund, “Podres Quells Yankee Bats for 8-3 Win,” Buffalo Evening News, September 30, 1955: 1.

62 Dick Young, “Diamond Dust,” New York Daily News, September 15, 1956: 28.

63 Stan Isaacs, “Harris ‘Lost’ a Single and Gino Won a Suit,” Newsday, August 9, 1957: 17C.

64 Jim Donaghy, “Spirit at Ebbets Field Stored in Old Dodgers’ Memories,” St. Joseph (Missouri) Gazette, September 24, 1987: 28. Newsday’s Dodger beat reporter mentioned Tanner’s hit in 1957. See Isaacs, “Harris ‘Lost’ a Single,” above.

65 Larry Henry, “New Scoreboard Stirs Old Memories,” (Everett, Washington) Daily Herald, June 11, 1987: 10.

66 “Dodgers Win, Then Tie: Mungo Whiffs 15,” above; McCullough, “Between Innings,” above.

67 Patterson, “Brooklyn Pummels Dizzy Dean,” above; “Diamond Dust,” New York Daily News, May 13, 1936: 60; Bill McCullough, “Dodgers’ Captain Is Too Erratic in Role of Infielder,” Brooklyn Times Union, May 14, 1936: 1A.

68 Scott, “Dodgers’ Pitching Situation Hopeless,” above; Lee Scott, “Diminutive Southpaw Chalks Up Second Win; English Against Delivers,” Brooklyn Citizen, June 8, 1937: 6, _________; McGowen, “Mungo Fails Against Phils 7-5,” above; Rosenberg, “Big Town Replay,” above.

69 According to the Brooklyn Citizen, “Gibby Brack won himself a suit when he hit the sign in right field in the first inning.” See “Diminutive Southpaw Chalks Up Second Win,” above.

70 “Encore for Bam, Ducky,” above; Roscoe McGowen, “Traffic Jams Bring 7-6 Dodger Defeat,” New York Times, July 30, 1938: 6; Tommy Holmes, “Craft Homers with Bags Full in First Inning,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 7, 1938: 2D.

71 McGowen, “Wyatt Is Pounded,” above; Scott, “Sudden Collapse of Brooklyn ‘Big Three,’” above.

72 ‘Sizzling Cards Clip Bums,” above.

73 Lauder, “Dodgers Beat Phils, 7-3,” above; Rodney, “Dodgers Turn on Phils, 7-3,” above.

74  Mozley, “Hodges Now Rated Best .250 Hitter,” above.

75  Biederman, “The Scoreboard,” above; Ains, “Brooklyn’s Sports Parade,” above.

76  Rosenthal, “Hodges Blasts Pair,” above; Young “Diamond Dust,” above.

77 “With Two Pants?” above. (The photo caption says “Furillo plays the ball off the right field wall where it says, ‘Hit Sign Win Suit’ on Wally Post’s double in 3d. Good way to be baseball’s best dressed.”

78 Jack Hernon, “Law Tames Dodgers with Seven-Hitter, 3-2,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 2, 1955: 10; Lester J. Biederman, “Law Beats Dodgers (By Inches),” Pittsburgh Press, July 2, 1955: 6.; “Did You Know?” above.

79 Dick Young, “Bucs Shell Bums’ Hurlers, 10-1, 11-3,” New York Daily News, April 30, 1956: C24.

80 Dick Young, “Shades of JC! Jints Drop Dodgers 5 Behind, 12-3,” New York Daily News, August 9, 1957: 39; Bob Milburn, “Sport-O-Scope,” San Angelo (Texas) Evening Standard, August 13, 1957: 2B; Isaacs, “Harris ‘Lost’ a Single,” above.

81 “Here’s Stark Fact,” above; McGee, The Greatest Ballpark Ever, 112; “Uncle Mike’s Musings,” October 8, 2016. https://unclemikesmusings.blogspot.com/2016/10/october-8-1956-60-years-since-perfect.html; “Happy Birthday Abe Stark,” above; Isaacs, “Remember Abe’s ‘Suit’ Sign,” above.

82 “Hack Wilson Hit It, Too,” (Chester, Pennsylvania) Delaware County Daily Times, May 24, 1954: 16.

83 Barney, Rex Barney’s Thank Youuuu, 38.

84 “Hack Wilson Hit It, Too,” above; “Here’s Stark Fact,” above.

85 “Here’s Stark Fact,” above; Dave Anderson, “Uncle Sam Beckons Dick Williams,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 20, 1954: 18.

86 Kay, Baseball Fever Blog.

87 Young, “Diamond Dust,” September 15, 1956, above.

88 Isaacs, “Harris ‘Lost’ a Single,” above.

89 Henry, “New Scoreboard Stirs Old Memories,” above.

90 Roscoe McGowen, “Dodgers Triumph Behind Casey, 5-1,” New York Times, August 18, 1939: 12.

91 Mozley, “Hodges Now Rated Best .250 Hitter in Baseball,” above.

92 Isaacs, “Harris ‘Lost’ a Single,” above.

93 “Sports of the Times,” above.

94 Dick Young, “Flock, Better Mudders, Oozes Past Cubs, 5-2,” New York Daily News, May 2, 1947: 17.

95 Kay, Baseball Fever Blog.

96 Bill Conlin, “Burying Another Boy of Summer,” Philadelphia Daily News, January 27, 1989: 103.

George Shuba of the Montreal Royals greets teammate Jackie Robinson at home plate on April 18, 1946. (Courtesy of Greg Gulas, Carrie Anderson, Mike Shuba)

Tears welled in Jackie Robinson’s eyes as he was hoisted onto the shoulders of adoring fans, their chants reverberating off the walls of Delorimier Stadium. It was a moment of triumph, a culmination of resilience and talent, as Robinson, the legendary second baseman for the Montreal Royals, basked in the glory of victory in the 1946 Junior World Series.

Despite a challenging start to the series, Robinson had proven his mettle, both on and off the field. His performance spoke volumes, silencing doubters and winning over hearts. Even manager Clay Hopper, a Mississippi native who initially harbored reservations about Robinson joining the Royals, extended his admiration, recognizing Robinson not only as a remarkable ballplayer but also as a gentleman.1

The scene was electric, with faithful Royals fans refusing to depart the ballpark, their fervor reaching a crescendo as they clamored for a glimpse of their hero. Robinson, overwhelmed by the outpouring of support, found himself surrounded by a sea of admirers, their affection palpable as they lifted him high into the air, chanting praises in French and English alike.2

Reflecting on the momentous occasion, Robinson recounted the overwhelming swell of emotion and the indomitable spirit of the crowd. His departure from the ballpark was akin to a hero’s journey, with fans trailing him to the very end, all the way to the train station, their unwavering support a testament to the profound impact he had made.3

As Robinson bade farewell to Montreal, his legacy reverberated throughout the city, leaving an enduring imprint on its history. Yet, as the years passed and the Royals’ fortunes dwindled, the echoes of that triumphant era began to fade, marking the end of an era for professional baseball in Montreal.

***

As the excitement surrounding Jackie Robinson’s single season in Montreal waned, the legacy of the Montreal Royals continued to resonate within the city. Their role in breaking baseball’s color barrier endured as a defining moment in the sport’s history long after the team’s departure in 1960. When Robinson donned their uniform in the spring of 1946, he became the first African American to play in a major professional White league for decades, marking a watershed moment not only for the Royals but for baseball as a whole.

Yet, Robinson was not the sole luminary to grace the Montreal Royals roster. Future legends like Don Drysdale, Roy Campanella, Duke Snider, and Roberto Clemente all passed through Montreal on their path to stardom, leaving an indelible mark on the team’s storied legacy.

Although the Royals have long since departed, their memories linger in the hearts of many Montrealers, serving as a testament to the lasting impact of their contributions to the sport.

Baseball’s roots in Montreal trace back to the mid-nineteenth century, when enthusiasts began forming clubs and organizing games. However, in the 1860s, the city banned baseball in its parks, fearful an errant ball could put those who were not playing at risk. That gave rise to around 40 baseball clubs in Montreal between 1867 and 1887. Men gathered at athletic clubs around the city to play, yet only a handful of these early teams endured beyond a few years. Despite the transient nature of those early clubs, their existence laid the groundwork for Montreal’s enduring passion for the sport.4

During the summer of 1890, Montreal emerged as a possible relocation destination for the International League’s struggling Buffalo Bisons franchise. In June 1890, Charles D. White, the owner of the Bisons, embarked on a 400-mile journey to Montreal to explore potential sites. He settled on the Shamrock Lacrosse Grounds at the intersection of Saint-Catherine Street and Atwater Avenue. This location, familiar to hockey fans, was situated across the street from what would later be the site of the Montreal Forum, which opened in 1924.5

The club lasted only nine games, losing five of its their six games in June. They drew a crowd of 2,000 fans to their first game in Montreal, against Toronto, which they lost 11-10, and after that attendance was sparse. Montrealers’ seeming lack of interest in professional baseball prompted the International League to move the club to Grand Rapids, Michigan. Montreal quickly got another chance when the International League’s bankrupt Hamilton, Ontario, franchise was transferred to Montreal. This club did not fare much better than its predecessor, winning only three of its nine games and drawing a paltry number of spectators to the Shamrock Grounds. The International League folded in July 1890, once again leaving Montreal without professional baseball. Many Montrealers longed for a new pro team to call their own, not a failing franchise from elsewhere hoping to turn things around up north.6

They got their wish a few years later. American railway worker Joe Page teamed with Canada’s first major-league baseball star, James Edward “Tip” O’Neill, to bring professional baseball back to Montreal in the mid-1890s using the nickname Royals. O’Neill eventually left the club, leaving Page to take charge on his own. Undeterred, Page partnered with New England sports promoter William H. Rowe, orchestrating a series of highly successful exhibition games throughout the summer of 1896 that led to a turnaround in the club’s fortunes. Buoyed by their success, Page and Rowe set their sights on extending their tour beyond Quebec and New York State, venturing into Ontario and the Eastern United States in 1897.7

In June of 1897, an opportunity arose for Montreal to reenter the Eastern League fold. The faltering Wilkes-Barre franchise emerged as a prime candidate for relocation, and Montreal was once again mentioned as a possible destination. Rowe swiftly suspended the touring Montreal team’s season and dedicated himself to securing the necessary funds to bid for the Wilkes-Barre franchise. He rallied support from affluent investors to bolster the endeavor. However, Rowe’s plans took an unexpected turn when another opportunity for relocation presented itself. After a devastating fire that destroyed the ballpark in Rochester, New York, the club found itself in need of a new home to finish out the season. Rowe tirelessly lobbied Eastern League President Pat Powers, who harbored doubts about reinstating a team in Montreal. Powers also believed the city was too far from the league’s other franchises, making it an impractical choice. Nonetheless, Rowe’s persistence paid off and on July 16, 1897, the Rochester Jingoes franchise moved north to Montreal. During that period, Atwater Park, bordering the wealthy enclave of the city of Westmount, stood out as the only park equipped with a grandstand large enough to accommodate a big crowd. Atwater Park hosted the club’s Saturday games. Due to sports restrictions on Sundays in the city of Westmount, Sunday games took place at either the Shamrock Grounds or the National Club Grounds. Attendance at these Sunday games often surpassed that of the Saturday matches.8

The team finished in seventh place, often playing before sparse crowds. No one knew what to call the team, with monikers like the Snowbirds, Canuck Juniors, the Frenchmen, and the Eskimos bandied about. Another nickname emerged, one that would later become synonymous with baseball in the city: the Royals. The Montreal Gazette first referred to the club by this nickname. In 1897 Canada and the other British Commonwealth nations were celebrating the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria to mark the monarch’s 60th anniversary on the throne. A newspaper in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, suggested the nickname to mark the milestone. “The Wilkes-Barre Record baptized us,” wrote the Gazette on July 28, 1897. “In the future, we will call ourselves the Royals. It seems very appropriate in this jubilee year.” Most people, however, simply called them the Montreals or the Montreal Baseball Club. Bolstered by Cameron’s investment in the ballpark, the club returned to the Eastern League the following season, stunning many by clinching the pennant that year.9

It was the last time the Montreal club would taste such success, as it faced struggles in the seasons that followed.

In 1902, American League President Ban Johnson had his sights set on a team to begin play in New York City the following season. He jettisoned the Baltimore Orioles in favour of the New York Highlanders (later known as the Yankees). Baltimore, suddenly with nowhere to play in 1903, sought refuge in the Eastern League. Two franchises, both struggling, were candidates to be dropped to make room for the Orioles: Rochester and Montreal. Eastern League owners had long grumbled about the expensive overnight trips to Montreal, so it came as no shock when league President Powers announced that the city would lose its franchise. What no doubt stung Montrealers was word that popular player-manager Handsome Charlie Dooley had secretly invested in the Orioles.10

Montreal’s absence from the Eastern League was short-lived. P.H. Hurley, the owner of the Worcester, Massachusetts, team, relocated his struggling franchise to Montreal midway through the 1903 season. A year later, Hurley sold the team to John Kreitner, a Buffalo entrepreneur. After the 1905 season, Kreitner sold the team to a New York group led by Frank Farrell, a part-owner of the American League’s New York Highlanders. Despite the team changing ownership multiple times during this period, one aspect that began to solidify was the team’s nickname. Montrealers largely embraced the name Royals, or Les Royaux in French. They were less enthusiastic about Farrell running the team out of New York. So in January 1908, Farrell dispatched George Stallings to Montreal to find a local buyer for the club. Stallings brokered a $10,000 (Canadian) deal with three Montreal business owners to buy the Royals: minority owners E.R. Carrington, who managed the Thiel Detective Service; Montreal Brewing Company executive Hubert Cushing; and majority owner Sam Lichtenhein, a local sports promoter who owned the Montreal Wanderers hockey team and would become the baseball club’s president.11

The trio would run the club for nearly a decade. Over that period, they undertook two stadium rebuilds and underwent five manager changes. Relations within the ownership group were occasionally strained. At one point, Carrington and Cushing, unhappy with manager Eddie McCafferty’s performance, pushed Lichtenhein to fire him. Lichtenhein refused and offered instead to sell his share in the team to them for $50,000 (Canadian). They declined.12

Despite many players joining the battle overseas, Eastern League owners decided to continue playing throughout the First World War. Lichtenhein reluctantly agreed to field a team again in 1918, stating, “We don’t believe in operating the league under existing conditions for the benefit of a couple of clubs who will make money.” He never got the chance. The league opted to replace its franchises in Montreal, Providence, and Richmond with new clubs in Birmingham, Syracuse, and Jersey City. Professional baseball was one again no more in Montreal. It would remain that way for the next decade.13

DeLorimier Park, circa 1933 (Musée McCord Museum)

George Stallings wanted to bring a team back to Montreal. But this time he didn’t want to be the middleman; he wanted to be an owner. So in 1927 Stallings returned to Montreal looking for local investors who could sit on the board of the newly formed Montreal Exhibition Company Ltd., including well-connected Montreal lawyer and politician Louis Athanase David, financier Hartland MacDougall, and local investment dealer Ernest J. Savard of the brokerage firm Savard and Hart. (In 1935 Savard was part of an investor group that purchased the Montreal Canadiens). Stallings brought in his associates, Carlos Ferrar and Walter E. Hapgood, to run the club’s day-to-day operations. They paid the owners of the International League’s struggling Jersey City Skeeters franchise $225,000 to move the team to Montreal and rename them the Royals for the 1928 season. (It is unclear if they paid in Canadian or American dollars.) All that was missing was a ballpark. The new owners ruled out a return to Atwater Park, feeling the venue was too small. They purchased property in the city’s east end at the corner of Delorimier and Ontario Streets and began construction in the dead of winter on a new ballpark. Various reports have estimated the cost of the project to be anywhere between $700,000 and $1.5 million (Canadian), although it was likely closer to the lower end of that scale, as the city assessed the combined land and building value to be $703,550 in 1928.14

Stallings took on the role of the Royals’ manager, guiding them to a victorious start in their first game of the season and keeping them in contention for the pennant through June. That first season was also a box-office success. The club made $40,000 from season-ticket sales in 1928. The club also earned substantial sums from concessions and selling advertising space on the fences and scoreboard. Amid the team’s early success under Stallings, tragedy struck when a heart attack during a road trip in Toronto prevented his return to managerial duties. Stallings died a year later at the age of 61.15

The stock market crash of 1929 took its toll on the new Montreal franchise over the next few years. The club’s lacklustre play didn’t help matters. Fan support began to dwindle, and ownership realized they needed to improve the on-field product if they wanted to fill the stands. To help in that regard, the Royals hired Frank J. “Shag” Shaughnessy as the club’s general manager. Born in Illinois, Shaughnessy had a successful playing career in both baseball and football before transitioning to coaching and management. He arrived in Montreal in 1912 to lead McGill University’s football team, a position he held for 17 seasons. During the football offseason, Shaughnessy remained involved in baseball by managing semipro teams. He also scouted for the Detroit Tigers, and he was in the crowd when Montreal opened its new ballpark in 1928. Shaughnessy took a brief break from sports in 1928, working as a stockbroker in Montreal. However, by 1932 the Depression had impacted his business. This turn of events led him back to baseball. Still, the Royals faced significant challenges, including owing $51,000 in back taxes to the city and the mortgage company that owned the stadium. Compounding their troubles, the property value of the ballpark had dropped by $78,550 since 1928.That drop, coupled with the back taxes and a looming mortgage foreclosure, had the company on shaky financial ground. With the situation looking increasingly dire, Savard – the club’s majority owner after David departed – brought in a new investor with a now-famous last name: Jean-Charles Emile Trudeau, father of future Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau and grandfather of current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.16

Jean-Charles Emile Trudeau, known as Charlie to his friends, was a wealthy Montreal business owner who made his fortune during the Great Depression by selling a chain of service stations to Champlain Oil Products Ltd. After some convincing, he invested $25,000 into the team, apparently writing “In Protest” on the back of the check, and insisted the club be well-managed. While he may have been reluctant to invest in the club, preferring to watch sports rather than invest in them, he was later a frequent presence at the ballpark. Oscar Roettger, who played for the New York Yankees, Brooklyn Robins and Philadelphia Athletics, recalled seeing young Pierre Trudeau accompany his father to the games. The elder Trudeau also brought other investors to the club, including Lt.-Col. Roméo J. Gauvreau, who, like Trudeau, had made his money in the oil business. Savard agreed to step down as club president so Hector Racine, a mutual acquaintance of Trudeau and Gauvreau who knew little about the sport, could take his place. A prominent figure in Montreal’s garment trade, Racine served on the Board of Trade’s council and led the Canadian Wholesale Dry Goods Association. Savard soon left the club altogether to become president and part-owner of the Montreal Canadiens hockey team. In 1933 the new ownership decided to install lights at Delorimier Downs (as the ballpark was also called) so the team could play at night, as many other International League teams had already done. Night baseball was a hit in Montreal, as fans flocked to Delorimier Downs to watch baseball under the lights.17

Tragedy once again befell the Royals when Trudeau, their majority owner, caught pneumonia and died while accompanying the team at spring training in Orlando in 1935. Gauvreau assumed most of Trudeau’s duties with the club.18

On the field, fans flocked to see the Royals, with more than 300,000 attending the team’s home games during the 1935 season. But off the field, the team’s financial troubles deepened as the value of its assets rapidly depreciated while its tax debt sharply increased. The Montreal Exhibition Company, which by March 1936 owed $75,133 in back taxes, was placed in liquidation. Amid the financial instability, Shaughnessy abruptly resigned as general manager in early August 1936. Shortly after, he became president of the International League. The Royals finished the season in sixth place under new manager Harry Smythe. Meanwhile, the city – which briefly considered owning and operating the ballpark – instead sold it to a local entrepreneur, Joseph Raoul Lefebvre, for $50,000 in 1936. However, the club continued to find itself in dire straits. In a bid to salvage the team, Racine and Pittsburgh Pirates President and Chief Executive William Benswanger struck a deal in 1937. This agreement injected much-needed funds into Montreal and promised to bring exciting young players to the team. Additionally, Racine replaced Smythe as manager with Rabbit Maranville. The deal with Pittsburgh didn’t prove as beneficial as expected. The Pirates sent only a handful of players to Montreal and refused to provide any pitchers, a critical position of need for the Royals. Still, lacking any better options, they renewed their deal with Pittsburgh for 1938. However, Racine swiftly ended ties with the Pirates and pursued a new affiliation with the Brooklyn Dodgers, led by their general manager, Larry MacPhail. In December 1938 the clubs signed a one-year working agreement with an option to renew at the end of the contract. As part of the agreement, according to the Associated Press, the Royals would “have first choice on players the Dodgers decide to release to a league of AA classification.”19

Heading into the 1940 season, Racine wanted more than a working relationship with the Dodgers. He and MacPhail negotiated a deal for Brooklyn to buy the Royals in February 1940 on condition that the Dodgers agree to split the $30,000 cost to upgrade Delorimier Downs equally three ways with the ballpark owners and concession owners. Newspaper reports at the time noted that the Montreal investors kept a controlling interest in the team, with Roméo Gauvreau, Lucien Beauregard (a partner in a local law firm), and the estate of Jean-Charles Emile Trudeau “retaining a majority of shares in the club. All other shareholders have been bought out by Brooklyn.” The Dodgers made the Royals their top farm team. Racine stayed in his role, running the club’s day-to-day operations, but MacPhail and the Dodgers now owned and controlled most of the players. In 1945 the Dodgers assumed full ownership of the ballpark.20

Montreal went on to enjoy a successful 1941 campaign, winning the Governor’s Cup as league champions but losing the Junior World Series to the Columbus Red Birds. The following year brought significant changes to the Dodgers organization with the departure of MacPhail and his replacement by Branch Rickey, the mastermind behind the renowned farm system of the St. Louis Cardinals.21

During the tumultuous years of 1942 to 1945, the Royals struggled to replicate the relative success of the 1941 season. Despite the challenges of World War II, baseball remained a beacon of hope, even as many players left their teams for military service. Nevertheless, Montrealers continued to support the team. In 1945, although they once again won the Governor’s Cup, they fell short of reaching the Junior World Series. Their success drew significant crowds, with 397,517 fans attending during the regular season – the highest in the International League and nearly twice as much as in the previous year – along with an additional 60,000 who came out for playoff games. However, the most memorable moment of the 1945 season came on October 23, 1945, when Royals President Hector Racine announced the signing of Jackie Robinson to play for Montreal in 1946.22

***

The press contingent at Delorimier Downs sprang from their seats, racing to the nearest telephones to relay the groundbreaking news: The Royals had signed an African American player. At that time, such an acquisition was unprecedented. Within the National League ownership circles, an unwritten agreement prevailed: No Black players would be signed. (This period of history is covered extensively in SABR’s Jackie Robinson 75: Baseball’s Re-Integration project.)

Branch Rickey offered Robinson a monthly salary of $600 to play for the Royals, half in Canadian dollars, half in American, along with a signing bonus of $3,500 USD.23

Robinson swiftly showcased his extraordinary skills, securing the International League batting title in 1946 with an impressive .349 average. Not only did he lead the league in walks and runs scored, but he also stole 40 bases. Despite missing nearly 30 games due to leg injuries, Robinson still managed to produce 65 RBIs, further highlighting his exceptional talent and resilience. Robinson’s strong play earned him a spot on the 1946 International League all-star team.24

Robinson’s crowning achievement came as he led Montreal to victory in the 1946 Junior World Series. Montreal was still basking in the afterglow of that memorable season 20 years later, even after the Royals franchise had ceased to exist. The city paid tribute to Robinson by celebrating Jackie Robinson Day on September 10, 1966. Robinson returned to the city, which established a scholarship in his name for the benefit of Black students in Montreal. “The fund will be built up from public donations, and will be administered through a Montreal trust company,” the Canadian Press reported. “J. Louis Levesque, a Montreal financier and horseman, has been named chairman of the fund committee.”25

***

The Royals were never able to recapture the magic of that 1946 season. While Montreal continued to excel on the field, clinching two more Junior World Series titles, in 1948 and 1953, the passionate fanbase that had once rallied behind the team began to noticeably dwindle in size. Season attendance plummeted from close to half a million (typically closer to 600,000 including playoff games) to fewer than 300,000 during their Junior World Series-winning season in 1953. Numerous theories abounded to explain this downturn. Maybe the fans were taking the team’s success for granted, or maybe the product on the field wasn’t as much fun to watch any more with Robinson gone. Some attributed the decline in attendance to the increased availability of major-league broadcasts, or simply the growing variety of entertainment options on television. Whatever the reason, Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley, who was trying to raise cash to replace Ebbets Field, started exploring options to sell the team. This coincided with a push to bring a major-league team to Montreal, perhaps by relocating the troubled St. Louis Browns. In 1953 the Montreal City Council looked into buying the Royals’ name, territorial rights, and Delorimier Stadium from the Dodgers. However, the plan was abandoned due to the steep asking price of $2.35 million (C).26

Meanwhile, the Royals were hemorrhaging money. Racine conceded that the team lost over $50,000 during the 1954 season, marking its poorest performance in his tenure with the club. He hastened to add that the team wasn’t in dire straits, as the Dodgers profited from other events at Delorimier Stadium and concession sales. However, concerns were growing among the Dodgers management in New York regarding the situation in Montreal.

***

The Royals faced another tragedy in 1956 with the passing of club President Hector Racine. This led to significant upheaval in Montreal’s front office. Lucien Beauregard and Roméo Gauvreau maintained their executive roles, while Rene Lemyre was made the general manager after the departure of Guy Moreau. Additionally, former Montreal Canadiens captain Emile Bouchard joined the club’s board of directors and succeeded Racine as president. Bouchard’s business interests included a downtown Montreal restaurant called Chez Butch Bouchard. The new-look front office wasted no time in making moves that would have a lasting impact on the franchise. In 1956, the Dodgers sold Delorimier Stadium to a real estate company, Sherburn Investment, Corporation under a deal that saw the Royals lease the park until the end of the 1960 season. The beginning of the end for the Montreal Royals arrived in the fall of 1957 with the announcement of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ relocation to Los Angeles for the 1958 season. How could they remain the Dodgers’ top farm team when they were separated by nearly 2,500 miles? While the Royals’ front office outwardly reassured Montrealers of business as usual, Bouchard was quietly assembling a group of local investors in a bid to acquire the franchise. O’Malley rejected their proposal, which aimed to bring the Royals back under local ownership while retaining their status as the Dodgers’ primary farm team.27

The Royals’ attendance hit rock bottom in 1956, ranking last in the league, and saw only slight improvement the following season. Even a run to the 1958 Junior World Series failed to reignite fan interest, with a meager 5,800 fans showing up for the 1959 home opener.28

It got worse the following season. The 1960 home opener drew 8,725 fans, a far cry from the large turnouts the team enjoyed during its heyday. Part of the problem stemmed from the team’s lack of star power, as the Dodgers opted to send their top prospects to another one of their farm clubs in much closer Spokane, Washington. Not surprisingly, with no stars and a losing record, fan interest in Montreal hit an all-time low. The team tried gimmicks and contests in a bid to bring fans back to the ballpark, to little avail.29

The team’s general manager, Fernand Dubois, made efforts to rally the local business community to consider building a new ballpark, but he struggled to garner substantial interest. By then the team was on life support, evident when only 1,016 fans turned out for its final home game on September 7, 1960. A few weeks later, the Dodgers made it official: They were severing ties with the Royals and putting the club up for sale. Joe Remer, secretary of the Sherburn Investment Corporation, which owned Delorimier Stadium, told the Canadian Press that O’Malley told him “[T]he Dodgers have been losing money steadily in Montreal for the last three or four seasons and will not be back in 1961.” With no prospective buyers emerging, the International League assumed control of the franchise. A group of local investors, headed by event promoter Loren Cassina, made an unsuccessful bid for the team. Frank Shaughnessy and Tommy Richardson, his successor as International League president, made a last-minute effort to keep the franchise in Montreal through a community-ownership scheme. Shaughnessy even managed to talk the Dodgers into agreeing to a deal that would see them sell their remaining assets in the Royals franchise. This included everything from the ballpark lights, bats, balls, and uniforms to concession and office equipment, all for $90,000 – a figure he claimed was $35,000 less than what the Cassina group had offered the Dodgers for those assets. The sticking point, however, was the ballpark. Sherburn Investment Corporation and the league remained far apart on the value of Delorimier Stadium. In the end, a deal to keep the franchise in Montreal never materialized, and the International League moved it to Syracuse. Delorimier Stadium was demolished in 1969 to make way for Ecole Polywalénte Pierre Dupuis, effectively removing the last physical reminder of the team from the landscape of Montreal.30

Montreal’s baseball drought proved short-lived. While the sting of losing the Royals lingered, the city didn’t have to wait long for a new chapter. In 1969 the Montreal Expos joined the National League as part of a four-team major-league expansion. Ironically, Walter O’Malley, the man vilified in Montreal for severing the Royals’ ties to the Dodgers, chaired the National League’s expansion committee. In a twist of fate, the man who took baseball away from Montreal played a key role in bringing it back.31

Notes

1 Marc J. Steiner, “Jackie Robinson: History Made at the 1946 Junior World Series,” in Jackie Robinson: Perspectives on 42, Bill Nowlin and Glen Sparks, eds. (Phoenix, Arizona: SABR, 2021), accessed online February 7, 2024.

2 Jonah Keri, Up, Up, and Away: The Kid, the Hawk, Rock, Vlad, Pedro, le Grand Orange, Youppi!, the Crazy Business of Baseball, and the Ill-fated but Unforgettable Montreal Expos (Toronto: Random House Canada, 2014), 4-5.

3 Keri, 4-5.

4 William Brown, Baseball’s Fabulous Montreal Royals: The Minor League Team that Made Major League History (Montreal: Robert Davies Publishing, 1996), 7.

5 Brown, 9.

6 Brown, 9.

7 Brown, 10.

8 Brown, 11; Robert Harry Pearson, Montreal’s Delorimier Downs Baseball Stadium as Business and Centre of Mass Culture, 1928-1960 (master’s thesis, Queen’s University at Kingston, 1999), 21-22.

9 Brown, 11; Marcel Dugas, Jackie Robinson, Un Été à Montréal (A Summer in Montreal) (Montreal: Éditions Hurtubise, 2019), 9.

10 Brown, 12-14.

11 Brown, 14-20.

12 Brown, 21-24.

13 Brown, 23-24

14 Brown, 27-28; Pearson, 60.

15 Pearson, 63; Brown, 28-29.

16 Brown, 33-35; Pearson, 64; Charlie Bevis, “Frank ‘Shag’ Shaughnessy,” SABR Baseball Biography Project, accessed April 21, 2024.

17 Brown, 35-36; “Memories in the Lobby of Mantle and Trudeau,” Globe and Mail (Toronto), December 8, 1979; Dugas, 23.

18 Brown, 40.

19 Brown, 46-55; Pearson, 65-66; Associated Press, “Montreal and Brooklyn Sign Working Agreement,” Globe and Mail, December 23, 1938.

20 Brown, 60-61; Pearson, 23; Canadian Press. “Deal Closed by Dodgers,” Globe and Mail, February 21, 1940.

21 Brown, 73-76.

22 Brown, 85-86.

23  Brown, 93; Dugas, 44.

24 Brown, 105.

25 Canadian Press, “Montreal Will Hold Jackie Robinson Day,” Globe and Mail, September 8, 1966.

26 Brown, 145-147; Pearson, 76.

27 Brown, 161-164; Tom Hawthorn, “Emile ‘Butch’ Bouchard, star NHL defenseman, dies at 92,” Washington Post, April 12, 2012. https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/emile-butch-bouchard-star-nhl-defenseman-dies-at-92/2012/04/17/gIQAKNx2OT_story.html, accessed April 21, 2024.

28 Brown, 169-171.

29 Brown, 174-175.

30 Brown, 177; Canadian Press, “Dodgers Give Up Montreal Royals,” Globe and Mail, September 14, 1960; Al Nickleson, “IL Rejects Canadian Bid for Montreal Franchise,” Globe and Mail, November 28, 1960; Al Nickleson, “IBL Will Reclaim Royals Franchise from Los Angeles,” Globe and Mail, November 30, 1960; Canadian Press, “Dodgers to Help Montreal Royals Stay in League,” Globe and Mail, December 16, 1960; Pearson, 24.

31 Canadian Press, “Key Dates in Montreal Expo History,” Globe and Mail, September 29, 2004. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/key-dates-in-montreal-expo-history/article1004791/, accessed April 21, 2024.

On April 4, 1933, the morning sun shone across the streets of downtown Fairbury, Nebraska. It was Election Day with a new mayor to be announced, and the local Ministerial Association was haughtily (and successfully) lobbying city authorities to ban Sunday showings in local movie theaters. Insurance man Homer Yeakle had his daughter, Gwen, and stepdaughter, Wilma, in tow. Both were about 19 years old and itching to spend their Tuesday doing some shopping. Their first stop was the First National Bank: Homer needed to reload his wallet for his daughters’ spending spree.

Just then, a large, black 1932 Buick careened to a halt at the curb, and four men hustled out. As Homer and the girls ambled toward the bank, the fast-stepping foursome were suddenly striding beside them. One of the men, carrying a briefcase, courteously held the door for the Yeakles. Then they were shoved abruptly and roughly inside, and the four men burst in behind them. A cry reverberated off the stone walls of the lobby.

“This is a holdup!”

Pistols and submachine guns were pulled, and a few warning shots fired. The lobby full of customers let out a collective gasp. A bank employee jerked back in shock and swallowed his chaw.1

The Barker-Karpis Gang, running neck-and-neck with Bonnie and Clyde in the bank-robbing pennant race, had come to pay a call on Fairbury.

Employees and customers were immediately ordered to lie face-down on the floor. One fellow who was slow in responding was cracked from behind with a gun butt. The cashier in charge was commanded at gunpoint to open the vault. Henchman Earl Christman was pacing around twitchily, waving his machine gun back and forth and saying over and over, “Shouldn’t I let them have it?” The figures on the floor held their breath.

As soon as the vault was opened, a cash drawer was emptied of $25,650. A nearby packet of $22,000 was overlooked in the excitement. Frank Nash was the leader of this heist, a cool customer and well-versed in the business of bank robbery. He shouted, “Where’s the bonds? Hurry up and get those bonds!” This was the big payoff, $125,000 in bonds that were hastily thrust into a dirty flour sack along with the cash. They’d gotten what they came for, and the gunmen headed for the exit.

Scant moments had passed since the gangsters had burst into the bank lobby, but word was quickly spreading and an anxious phone call from a nearby merchant had been picked up in the Jefferson County Courthouse, right across the street.

The responder was Deputy Sheriff Bill “Davy” Davidson. Then aged 48, Davidson was a former insurance man, billiard-hall manager, traveling candy salesman – and, 20-some years earlier, a major-league outfielder. Quite fortuitously, he had picked this very day to discuss with Glenn Johnson, a Des Moines gun salesman, the need for upgraded firearms for the Sheriff’s Office. Johnson had been showing off a few new models. The two experienced shooters picked up a pair of rifles and hurried to the street.

The second they stepped outside and squinted into the sun, they found themselves in a gunfight with the Barker-Karpis Gang. Two gangsters standing watch outside the bank opened fire, as well as a third waiting inside the Buick. As another hustled out of the bank into the firestorm, he wrapped his arm around a terrified bystander; dragging her along as a shield, he rushed to the car and forced her in with him, shooting the entire way. There was a shriek as Homer Yeakle’s stepdaughter was roughly yanked from the lobby floor; she too was hauled out as the human shield for another gang member. Two other men, employees of the bank, were shoved out as shields for the final gunmen; one was made to stand at the car’s front and the other, Keith Sexton, at the car’s rear, where he stared vulnerably into the rifles of Davidson and Johnson, who dared not fire at the getaway car lest they hit him.

As gunshots popped, Johnson took a bullet in the shoulder and rolled to safety under a parked car. Davidson took a hit in the ankle and sheltered behind another auto, quickly tying a handkerchief around the wound. He then took a stance with his rifle, carefully re-aimed at a figure wielding a submachine gun, and nailed him before he could reach the getaway car. As the gangster twisted to the ground, his finger clutched the trigger, and the machine gun fired in a sweeping, circular motion, first perforating the unfortunate hostage Sexton five times. The rest of his shots fanned out in all directions before he hit the pavement and was hastily dragged by his mates into the car.

Glass exploded all around the nearby businesses. “Plate glass windows and the nerves of store employees and customers in the vicinity of the bank were well shot up,” reported the Fairbury News. In the Spear-Buswell Drug Store, the front window was blasted out, and several shots tore up a basket of Gillen & Bonny candy bars and the plate-glass mirror behind the soda fountain. At the Fairbury Electric Shoe Shop, an employee collapsed to the floor when a bullet struck a dust mop next to her, toppling an aluminum kettle to the floor.2 County Attorney Art Denney sought shelter behind a tree, “which he declared felt entirely too small to avoid being hit by the bullets. Knowing Art, and having seen the size of the tree, Fairburians agree with him regarding its value as a shield.”3

With the whole Barker-Karpis Gang and two hostages on board, the Buick roared off, one of the gangsters casting giant tacks in its wake to derail any pursuers. Two miles out of town, they pulled over where an eighth man had been waiting. Several members of the gang jumped into the second car, and they burned rubber for Kansas City. The two hostages, released and unscathed and flushed with excitement, watched them disappear into the distant dust; they flagged down a ride back to town, where they recounted their thrilling adventure, enough to last a lifetime.

It had all happened so fast (and this was long before the advent of surveillance cameras) that it was years before the robbers were even identified:4

• Alvin “Creepy” Karpis – the leader of the Barker-Karpis Gang and the only “Public Enemy Number One” who was ever taken alive. He served sentences at Alcatraz and McNeil Island Penitentiaries (where he met Charles Manson and coached him in playing guitar).
• Fred Barker – died with his mother, Kate “Ma” Barker, in a 1935 FBI Chicago raid.
• Arthur “Doc” Barker – imprisoned in Alcatraz and shot in an escape attempt.
• Frank Nash – the country’s most feared bank robber, killed just two months later by Pretty Boy Floyd in the legendary Kansas City Union Station Massacre, June 17, 1933.
• Volney Davis – imprisoned in Alcatraz for the kidnapping of banker Edward Bremer.
• Edward Green – fatally shot by federal agents in Minneapolis, April 11, 1934.
• Jess Doyle – the second getaway driver, spent a decade in the Nebraska State Penitentiary.
• Earl Christman – felled by the bullet from Davy Davidson’s rifle, he succumbed at the home of a Kansas City mobster and was buried in a shallow grave behind the house.

Amazingly, with all the gunplay on April 4, Christman was the only fatality. The unfortunate hostage Keith Sexton recovered fully in short order. So did the gun dealer Johnson, who called it a profitable day when the town immediately upgraded the sheriff’s arsenal.

Davy Davidson’s recovery was especially glowing. All his years in baseball had never seen anything like this kind of excitement or this kind of reward. When the weekly Fairbury Journal came out a few days later, he emerged as a paragon of gallantry, a man among men. As every soul in town related their own version of the thrilling robbery of the First National Bank, Davidson was the indisputable hero of every tale. However, any thoughts he had about the eventful Tuesday appear to have been kept to himself. When he later appeared in local papers, after his ankle had healed, it was back to business as usual, keeping the peace in Fairbury. True to the tradition of classic Western heroes, he let his actions do his talking.

Acknowledgments

This story was reviewed by Rory Costello and Len Levin, and fact-checked by Tim Herlich.

Photo credits: Alvin Karpis, courtesy of FBI.gov. Bill Davidson, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 5, 1911.

Sources

A wealth of detail about this thrilling Fairbury morning can be found in the pages of the Fairbury News, April 6, 1933; the Beatrice (Nebraska) Daily Sun, April 4, 1933: 1-2; and a retrospective article, “The Day the Barker Gang Hit Fairbury,” Sunday Omaha World-Herald Magazine of the Midlands, March 30, 1969: 6-8.

This narrative has been constructed without any details fictionalized.

Notes

1 Per “The Day the Barker Gang Hit Fairbury”: “Bank employee F.P. Conrad was so frightened he swallowed his chewing tobacco.”

2 Electric shoe shops were a new thing, merchants who had electric machinery for repairing shoes.

3 “More About the First National Bank Robbery,” Fairbury (Nebraska) News and Gazette, April 6, 1933: 2.

4 “Robbery Most Exciting Event in History of First National Bank,” Fairbury Journal, October 8, 1953: 20. A report sent to officials at the First National Bank by the FBI detailed the participants and their later fates. Little was known about the gang that pulled off the 1933 heist until this article appeared.

On Saturday, March 25, 1905, a small yet curious article appeared in the Salt Lake Telegram that announced a baseball game to be played the following day between the Salt Lake Browns and the Ogden Chocolates at Walker’s Field in Salt Lake City.1 This would be the first formally organized game of baseball between two Black teams in Utah since 1897, when the Fort Douglas Browns played Bruce Johnson’s picked nine, the Black Rubes. It also was the beginning of what became known as the Assembly Club baseball team of Ogden, the city’s first all-Black ballclub.2

The history of Black baseball in Utah began in earnest with the Fort Douglas Browns. A talented and well-respected team, the 1897 Browns were drawn from the African American 24th Infantry Army Regiment stationed at the fort situated a few miles east of Salt Lake City. This squad laid a foundation for Black ballclubs to come.3 Evidence of this came in a 1908 newspaper editorial by Hal Hayden, manager of the Salt Lake Occidentals, a prominent Black baseball team between 1906 and 1911 that arose from the Assembly Club squad. Hayden dubbed the Fort Douglas team the “best team in the history of Salt Lake Baseball.”4

In conjunction with the Browns in 1897, Bruce Johnson, a well-known political figure and businessman in the Utah African American community at the turn of the twentieth century, put together the Black Rubes baseball team specifically to challenge Fort Douglas.5 With the Browns leading the way, 1897 was a banner year for Black baseball in Utah. A third club, the Salt Lake Monarchs, briefly fielded a team captained by Charles Catlin6; and a fourth club, the Fort Duchesne 9th Cavalry, also put together a lineup that faced the Fort Douglas Browns.7

Few Black teams were in Utah between 1897 and 1905. One noteworthy nine was the Keith O’Brien Browns of 1903, who were backed by the local retailer of the same name.8 The Salt Lake Americus Club, an African American social organization similar to the Assembly Social Club in Ogden, took over sponsorship of the KOB team in 1904.9 Those early teams were structured loosely and played intermittently.

Then, in 1905, the Salt Lake Browns and the Ogden Chocolates played a game against each other. More significantly, they united soon after to become the Ogden Assembly Club baseball team for one noteworthy season. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, they were the “strongest amateur aggregation in the State.”10

The Assembly Club Social Organization

The Ogden Assembly Club, established in 1902, was an African American association incorporated to “promote social intercourse among its members and associates.” It included African Americans who primarily lived in and around Ogden.11 The social club, which organized the 1905 baseball team, catered to the large population of porters and waiters who made their way to the Junction City via the railroad. Ogden was a popular resting spot for many Blacks from across the nation who worked the railroad because of the city’s geographic location; clubs, such as the Assembly Club, that accommodated them; and amenities, such as “a dismantled Pullman car in the middle of the [Union Station] freight yard where porters could lodge.”12

The Assembly Club formed from the ashes of a previous social club, known as the Eureka Club, founded two years prior, in 1900. It boasted a membership of 44 “people of color.”13 Census numbers in 1900 show 43 Blacks lived in Ogden. Over the next decade, that figure more than quadrupled, with 204 enumerated in 1910. The Eureka Club, and then the Assembly Club, was housed at 149 25th Street.

Lower 25th Street, located near the railroad hub and Union Station, was the heart of the segregated Black and immigrant population in Ogden. As 25th Street historian Val Holley noted: “One of the railroads’ most enduring legacies in Ogden is the coalescence of an African American community in the blocks near the Union Station.”14 The two-story club building, which was visible as one departed the train at Union Station, featured a saloon, clubrooms, cold and hot baths, a café, and a barbershop.

Many notable Utah African Americans were involved with the club. Most of them, along with the players they sponsored in 1905, were born in the South during the Civil War or Reconstruction era. They spent their formative years during the early Jim Crow period and made their way to Ogden via train at the turn of the twentieth century.15

Owing to excessive restrictions by the city, clampdowns by the police, gambling arrests, liquor license violations, and the passing of Prohibition in Utah in 1917, the Assembly Club closed in 1918. Those associated with the club then ventured on to California, Idaho, or Washington, while others moved eastward to Chicago, Denver, or Kansas City, Missouri.

The Assembly Club Baseball Team’s Origins

The Assembly Club was interested in athletics largely as a business opportunity but also for entertainment and a sense of pride, and it became involved in organized sports in 1904 when it hosted boxer Rufe Turner from Stockton, California.16 Turner lodged at the Assembly Club building, and the club provided him with a place to train on the second floor before his fight against Boston’s Barney Mullin. Turner handily defeated Mullin, and this was the first of many quality fights the Assembly Club hosted over the years. Boxing was popular in Ogden in the early 1900s, and Black baseball and boxing often crossed paths.

By 1905, baseball in Ogden and Utah had never been so popular.17 That season, the Ogden Lobsters joined the Pacific National League (PNL), a professional minor league that rivaled the Pacific Coast League between 1903–1905.18 Ogden had fielded baseball teams since 1870, and although they were almost exclusively all-white squads, Black players occasionally took part. For example, in 1890, future boxing great Robert “Bobby” Dobbs caught for the semipro Ogden club.

It was under these auspices, and after the Salt Lake Browns and Ogden Chocolates game in March 1905, that the Ogden Assembly Club baseball team officially formed. George Dover—the Assembly Club’s social club proprietor, baseball team manager, and occasional first baseman—took his pick of players from the Browns and the Chocolates.

The Assembly Club Baseball Team’s 1905 Season

The 1905 season was the only complete year Assembly played ball. After the March 25 game between the Browns and Chocolates, the newly combined Assembly team played the Ogden Advertising Club April 9 in an exhibition game. The Ads were composed of some of Ogden’s best white semipro and amateur talent. These players used this game, in part, to showcase their skills for potential slots on the Ogden Lobsters minor-league team.

The well-attended game at Ogden’s Glenwood Park was evenly divided between Black and white fans. Assembly lost 15–13, not exactly a Deadball Era score. Despite the close score, Assembly still was a largely inexperienced group of players. The Ogden Standard quipped that Assembly appeared to be “bamfuzzled” at times during the game by the Ads and joked about one of their players who inexplicably slid into first base:

“[He] Evidently forgot that there is no need of touching the batter on his way to first and shutting his eyes and aiming straight for a craggy point in the distant Wasatch, he launched forth through the air while the grandstand laughed themselves hoarse.”19

Only a brief mention was in the newspaper about Assembly’s April 16 game against the Cleveland Commission amateur team from Salt Lake City; however, Hays Gann, Assembly’s ace, had a solid outing. This was followed by a game on April 23 against the renowned Lobsters, the team’s first exhibition game of the year. In its reporting of the game, the Salt Lake Tribune stated that the Lobsters won 8–3 and that their pitcher, Hastings, “made monkeys out of all who faced him.”20

Newspaper coverage tended to be inconsistent overall, but they did a good job covering Assembly and regularly praised their play while keeping interest in the team high (albeit with racist overtones, as the “monkeys” remark could well be interpreted). No other Utah Black sports entity before Assembly received as much press, with dozens of articles written about the team during its 1905 season.

On April 30, Assembly played its first of several games against the Vincent-Notts Shoe Company team from Salt Lake City at Glenwood Park. Vincent-Notts was the top team in the amateur Salt Lake City-based Commercial League, but Assembly easily won 12–2 in front of a large crowd. The Denver & Rio Grande Railroad even ran special rates for Salt Lake City fans to attend the game in Ogden.21 After the train arrived in Ogden, a trolley car took fans directly to Glenwood Park.

For the only Saturday game of the year, on May 6, Assembly went to Morgan City to play the local amateur team, dubbed the Heiners. Assembly effortlessly won as “the locals were badly outclassed.”22 The Heiners were made up of nine brothers coached by their father, Daniel Heiner, a prominent merchant, property owner, politician, and ecclesiastical leader in Morgan City.23 Assembly had difficulty returning to Ogden from Morgan City for the Sunday game against the Ogden Advertisers, however. Thus, Assembly was unprepared and lost to the Ads again, by a score of 12–7. Amid defeat, Assembly flashed some outstanding play:

“The most spectacular play of the game that set the grandstand to howling with enthusiasm was a pretty catch by Robinson, the colored shortstop. Leavitt hit a hot liner straight out, close to second bag; it looked like a safe hit, but Robinson with a bound reached out until it appeared as though he were going to fall and when he righted himself the horsehide was snugly tucked in his big mitt.”24

The Daily Utah State Journal also pointed out that “this particular colored boy is one of the best short stops that ever wore an amateur uniform on the Ogden diamond, he covers the ground in good shape and is as sure as most of them in like position.”

On Sunday, May 14, Assembly hosted the Salt Lake City-based Oregon Short Line (OSL) Railroaders at Glenwood Park. Assembly played this and most of its games for money, because the team was as much as anything a business endeavor of the Assembly Club. The Friday edition of the Ogden Morning Examiner noted that both teams were so confident about winning that they posted an additional side bet of $50 to the sports editor of the newspaper.25 In what the Salt Lake Herald dubbed a “swatfest” and the Tribune criticized as a game that featured “as many errors as dogs have fleas,” OSL scored big and took the haul as the Railroaders defeated Assembly, 15–12.26

After a midweek practice game against the Lobsters, Assembly played twice more against OSL. The first game took place on Monday, May 29, at Walker’s Field in Salt Lake City. Gann and Assembly lost 14–4. Then, on Sunday, June 4, at Glenwood Park, Assembly won behind pitcher Lawrence, with a final of 15–2. Denver boxer Charles “Kid” Bell made a guest appearance for Assembly while in town for a boxing match.27 Both games were played amid hefty side bets and featured a sideshow of vaudevillian or burlesque “shadow ball” performances by Assembly players to entertain spectators and lure fans to future games.28 The Salt Lake Telegram described the game’s performance:

“It would have done Minstrel George Thatcher good to have heard the way the dark-skinned players coached their brunette brethren on how to play the national game. They yah, yah, yah’d and sang and danced from jig to ragtime. They sang snatches of ‘coon’ songs and gave an impromptu darktown vaudeville show along with their ball playing.”29

Assembly then took a couple weeks off. Opponents were in their regular seasons, and games against new teams were difficult to schedule. Assembly next played at Glenwood Park on June 18 against Vincent-Notts and was defeated 13–2, with the “shoe boys” by all accounts being in championship form.30

After an easy win against the Salt Lake City Dubei Tailors in a rare Friday game on July 9 at the new Salt Lake City Salt Palace Park, Assembly had a rematch with Vincent-Notts, on July 23. Gann, Assembly’s go-to pitcher, sent word to the Salt Lake Tribune just before the game that:

“He is personally prepared to wipe the ground with the Vincent-Notts club at Calder’s Park this afternoon and make the shoe peddlers look like seventeen cases of misfits. There will be a barbeque and the shoe fellers can have what is left of the ox to make oxfords for the rest of the summer.”31

The barbecue was sponsored and hosted by the African Methodist Episcopal and Calvary Baptist African American churches in Salt Lake City. Alas, Assembly did not have much to celebrate: Vincent-Notts continued its winning streak in a pitcher’s duel, with the shoe company’s Romney defeating Gann by a more Deadball Era score of 2–1.32

As the season carried on, Assembly played fewer games, playing only two in August. One, against the Rocky Mountain Bell company team, was a 9–8 loss.33 The other, against the Salt Lake City Blue Points, went without a reported a score.34 Assembly’s final game came on Labor Day, September 9, against the Dubei Tailors. Again, the score was unreported. The season-ending Tailors game was one of several features during a free day of entertainment at Salt Palace Park, with the Assembly team now an attraction.35

After a rough start, Assembly eventually found its way during the 1905 season, roughly splitting wins and losses while dividing play between its home field in Ogden and different parks around Salt Lake City.

The team earned the respect of newspapers and fans in northern Utah. There were no issues with fighting, unfair play, and other problems, as some worried. Although teams and leagues were segregated, numerous clubs, at varying levels and in different leagues throughout the state, were willing to play Assembly for money and experience against a quality team.36 A final breakdown of Assembly’s 1905 season:

The Ballplayers

Assembly provided many athletes with the opportunity to play baseball, so there was a great deal of interest. The team fielded more than three dozen different players over the course of the 1905 season. It featured men from Ogden, Salt Lake City, and surrounding areas, as well as some who passed through Ogden while working for the railroad as word of the opportunity to play ball in the Beehive State certainly passed through the trains. The following players made appearances:

The stars of the Assembly team (and later with the Salt Lake Occidentals) included:

• Claude Burns, a versatile athlete who played across the outfield and was known as a strong hitter. Burns led the Utah State League in hitting in 1908 for the Occidentals and later played for the Portland Hubbard Giants in 1914.
• Joe Burns, Assembly’s (and the Occidentals) catcher and assistant manager. Joe Burns also was a boxing promoter who worked with several fighters, including Jack Johnson.
• Hays Gann, the Assembly and Occidentals ace pitcher. Gann appeared in more than half of Assembly’s games and had played for the KOB-Americus Club team in Salt Lake City in 1904.
• Joe Robinson, Assembly’s stellar shortstop and later Utah League All-Star second baseman with the Occidentals. Robinson made his way to Ogden from Spokane, Washington, where he had been a boxer.

The Ball Field

Assembly had several ingredients that ensured the team’s success. It had high-caliber players and was able to schedule a full season of games, largely thanks to the diligence of the charismatic business manager, George Dover.37 More important, Assembly was able to secure Glenwood Park, Ogden’s finest field. Assembly played multiple games there against Ogden rivals the Lobsters and Advertisers and was able to use the facility to play home games against Salt Lake City teams.

The Glenwood Park (now known as Lorin Farr Park) baseball field was located across the street from the main park entrance near 16th and 17th Streets and Madison Avenue and Canyon Road. Jack Greenwell, a prominent white semipro player in Ogden during the turn of the twentieth century, noted during an interview on baseball history in Ogden:

“The field was across the road, north, from Glenwood. Altman’s Greenhouse [located at 770 Canyon Road] was right next to the diamond and every time we broke a pane of glass the team had to pay 25 cents and Mr. Altman gave the ball back so everyone was satisfied.”38

Operated by a private entity in 1905, the field eventually became a public park in the 1910s. Although located on the outskirts of town, the streetcar route that ran from downtown Ogden and connected to the major rail lines throughout the city made the park accessible. Glenwood Park was a major destination point along the transit route.

Early Twentieth Century Black Baseball in the Western United States

Assembly had a collection of talented players largely brought together by the railroad, a number of quality opponents in northern Utah, a well-organized entity that supported it, a respectable fan base, and good fields to play on. Thus, the club had one of the most productive Black baseball seasons in the western United States in 1905. Although few professional Negro teams existed at the time in the United States, many amateur, independent, and barnstorm teams akin to Assembly played ball. Western teams outside Utah formed in the era (1902–1908) include:

Indeed, Black baseball in the western United States was alive and well in the early 1900s. The teams’ affiliations ranged from military forts to mining and railroad interests, as well as other working-class urban and rural communities. As such, these teams were a reflective slice of US society and culture. Assembly, a prime and successful example, played a vital role within that mix, just as the team’s successors, the Occidentals, would over the next several years.

Conclusion

Although it was not a professional club, Assembly was a local byproduct of the larger phenomenon of Black baseball growth during the early 1900s. The time was right for a serious Black team in Utah. Assembly was that team and the beginning of something bigger.

Assembly did not disband in 1906; it reformed as the Salt Lake City Occidentals. The majority of the new Occidentals team consisted of former Assembly players. Just as Gann and Burns did much of the battery work for Assembly in 1905,39 they did the same for the Occidentals in 1906.40 Joe Burns was assistant manager for Assembly and then with the Occidentals.

Both teams played many of the same opponents, with the Occidentals’ first game of the 1906 season coming against old Assembly rival Vincent-Notts. The Occidentals made regular visits to Glenwood Park.41 When previous Assembly players later joined the Occidentals, newspapers made it a point to recognize that player as being formerly of Assembly fame.42

Just as with the Assembly Social Club in Ogden, Black social clubs connected with Joe Burns in Salt Lake City sponsored the Occidentals.43 It made sense that as the team evolved they moved to Salt Lake City, which was the epicenter of the still-limited Black population in Utah at the time.44 Not to mention, there were more teams to play against and fields to play on in the capital city.

The Assembly Club had ties to the Americus social club in Salt Lake City, which was affiliated closely with the Occidentals.45 Americus was connected to Bruce Johnson,46 who organized and managed the 1897 Black Rubes team who had played against the Fort Douglas Browns. The 1905 Assembly baseball team, along with its 1906-1911 Salt Lake City Occidentals successors, also laid a foundation for later teams, such as:

• The 1920s–1930s Salt Lake Tigers, who changed their name to the Occidentals in the late 1930s to honor the earlier team;
• The 1940s–1950s Salt Lake Monarchs, who also later changed their name to the Occidentals;
• The late-1940s Sahara Village Giants, from Hill Air Force Base, featuring all-star outfielder Algie Bell, who often played the Salt Lake Monarchs/Occidentals; and
• Teams off the Wasatch Front, such as the 1943 Sunnyside Monarchs, who played in the integrated Carbon Coal League and were led by second baseman and pitcher Andy Pearson.

All of these teams formed a legacy of Black baseball in Utah and the West that deserves a closer look.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to Dr. Chris Merritt and Sylvia Newman for early reviews of this paper, and a big thanks to Ron Auther of the Shadow Ball Express Blog, who helped to provide insight on African American baseball in the US West.

This biography was reviewed by Rory Costello and Will Christensen and fact-checked by William H. Johnson.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited below, the author drew upon:

Lanctot, Neil. Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.

Lomax, Michael E. Black Baseball Entrepreneurs, 1902-1831: The Negro National and Eastern Colored Leagues. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2014.

Moore, Louis. I Fight for a Living: Boxing and the Battle for Black Manhood, 1880 – 1915. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2017.

Newman, Roberta J. and Joel Nathan Rosen. Black Baseball, Black Business: Race Enterprise and the Fate of the Segregated Dollar. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2014.

Papanikolas, Helen Z. (ed.) The Peoples of Utah. Salt Lake City, UT: Utah State Historical Society, 1976.

Ribowsky, Mark. A Complete History of the Negro Leagues, 1884 to 1955. New York City: NY: Kensington Publishing Corporation, 1998.

Riess, Steven A. Touching Base: Professional Baseball and American Culture in the Progressive Era, Revised Edition. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1999.

Notes

1 “Colored Gentlemen Cross Bats on Sunday,” Salt Lake Telegram, March 25, 1905: 7.

2 “Colored Baseball Club,” Salt Lake Tribune, April 7, 1897: 1.

3 Ron Auther, “The Fort Douglas Browns – History of the Men of the 24th Infantry Regiment,” The Shadow Ball Express, August 7, 2017. https://shadowballexpress.wordpress.com/2017/08/04/the-fort-douglas-browns-history-of-the-men-of-the-24th-infantry-regiment-part-1/

4 “Occidental Manager Replies to a Fan on Negro Baseball,” Salt Lake Telegram, April 25, 1908: 9 and 12.

5 “Utah News,” Davis County Clipper, April 16, 1897: 2.

6 “Colored Nines Play,” Salt Lake Tribune, May 30, 1897: 7.

7 “Close Ball Game,” Salt Lake Tribune, May 6, 1897: 2.

8 “Black Ball Players Lost,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 25, 1903: 8.

9 “Keith O’Brien Victory,” Salt Lake Herald, June 25, 1904: 7.

10 “Ogden’s Colored Ball Team,” Salt Lake Tribune, May 6, 1905: 2.

11 “Assembly Club,” Articles of Incorporation, Utah State Archives Collection, January 30, 1902.

12 Larry Tye, Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class (New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company, 2004), 56.

13 “Colored Club Incorporates,” Salt Lake Tribune, September 27, 1900: 7.

14 Val Holley, 25th Street Confidential: Drama, Decadence, and Dissipation (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 2013), 10.

15 Individuals involved in running the club included: William Carter, George Dover, Clarence Ernest, Lawrence Fair, William Housbon, Samuel Pool, Frank Turner, and Charles Woods.

16 “Local Prize Fight a Frost,” Ogden Morning Examiner, August 24, 1904: 8.

17 “Baseball Draws Record Crowds,” Salt Lake Herald, December 31, 1905: 35.

18 “Baseball Sunday,” Ogden Morning Examiner, April 27, 1905: 8. Also, “Pacific National League.”

www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Pacific_National_League

19 “Advertisers Win First Game,” Ogden Standard, April 10, 1905: 7.

20 “Trying Out His Men,” Salt Lake Tribune, April 23, 1905: 13.

21 “Vincent-Notts to Play Ball in Ogden,” Salt Lake Telegram, April 28, 1905: 9.

22 “Colored Gents Beat Heiners,” Salt Lake Tribune, May 7, 1905: 29.

23 “Ogden Brevities,” Ogden Morning Examiner, June 9, 1904: 5.

24 “Amateur Game,” Daily Utah State Journal, May 8, 1905: 6.

25 “Game to be Played Sunday is for Side Bet,” Ogden Morning Examiner, May 13, 1905: 6. According to an inflation calculator, $50 in 1905 equaled $1,500 in 2022.

26 Salt Lake Herald, May 15, 1905: 7.

27 “Colored Boxer Here,” Daily Utah State Journal, June 6, 1905: 6. “Gardner Training,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 7, 1905: 7.

28 Lawrence D. Hogan, Shades of Glory: The Negro Leagues and the Story of African American Baseball (Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2006), 371.

29 “Oregon Short Line Defeats Colored Team,” Salt Lake Telegram, May 31, 1905: 8.

30 “Vincent-Notts Still in Championship Form,” Salt Lake Telegram, June 19, 1905: 8.

31 “Game at Calder’s Park,” Salt Lake Tribune, July 21, 1905: 8.

32 “Colored Folks’ Outing,” Salt Lake Herald, July 22, 1905: 3.

33 “Hello Boys Victors,” Salt Lake Telegram, August 14, 1905: 7.

34 “Assembly Club vs. Blue Points,” Salt Lake Herald, August 20, 1905: 5.

35 “Entertainment for Salt Palace Patrons,” Salt Lake Telegram, September 1, 1905: 10.

36 This opened the door to eventually allowing the Salt Lake City Occidentals to join the Utah State League in 1908 and winning it in 1909. It also is worth noting that some teams were unwilling to play, despite repeated efforts of Assembly’s management to make financial offers.

37 “Ogden Boys Win from Assembly,” Morning Examiner, May 8, 1905: 8.

38 Maurice L. Howe, “Jack Greenwell, Personal Pioneer History: Interview,” Federal Writers Project, Utah State Historical Society Collections, July 12, 1939: 3.

39 “With the Sports,” Daily Utah State Journal, May 6, 1905: 6.

40 “Colored Men Win,” Salt Lake Herald, August 4, 1906: 8.

41 “Baseball at Ogden,” Salt Lake Herald, July 1, 1907: 7.

42 “Occidentals Return,” Salt Lake Telegram, May 10, 1909: 7.

43 Salt Lake City’s Richelieu Club and the Americus Club.

44 According to 1900 Census numbers, 336 Blacks resided in Salt Lake County compared with 51 in Weber County.

45 Ryan Whirty, “The Salt Lake Occidentals, Conclusion,” The Negro Leagues Up Close, December 17, 2015, https://homeplatedontmove.wordpress.com/2015/12/20/the-salt-lake-occidentals-the-conclusion/

46 Jeffrey Nichols, “The Boss of White Slaves: R. Bruce Johnson and African American Political Power in Utah at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.” Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 744, Number 4, 2006. https://issuu.com/utah10/docs/uhq_volume74_2006_number4/s/10191716

From early July 1889 until the removal of the franchise to the West Coast following the 1957 season, the New York Giants played baseball – often exciting and sometimes championship-caliber – at the northern Manhattan ballpark known as the Polo Grounds. Inexorably over the decades, Giants players, managers, club owners, front office personnel, sportswriters, and team rooters came and went. Even the Polo Grounds itself changed identity several times.

Through the years, however, one thing remained constant: the Giants’ dependence upon the family from whom it leased the real property on which its ballparks sat – the Coogans, or more particularly, the Gardiner-Lynch-Coogan family.

This article profiles the clan’s two most prominent members: James J. Coogan, the furniture dealer-turned-Manhattan politico who managed the family’s vast real estate holdings, and his heiress wife, the former Harriet Gardiner Lynch, a business-savvy but private woman who, after her husband’s death in 1915, assumed oversight of the family property portfolio and dealt with the Giants for the ensuing 30 years.

The Coogans were something of an odd couple, separated by considerable differences in age, affluence, and societal station. Throughout his life, James Jay Coogan was evasive about the year and place of his birth. But in all probability, he was born on January 16, 1845, in County Carlow, Ireland. James was the oldest of the six children1 known to have been born to Patrick Peter Coogan (1821-1905) and his wife Alice (née McGinty, 1825-1898).

About 1852, the Irish Catholic Coogans emigrated to America, settling in New York City.2 Once on their feet, Patrick Coogan and his brother James established a furniture-making business in lower Manhattan. Although he would obtain a law degree from New York University, our male subject was intended for the family business and trained in upholstery. Over time, he and younger brothers Edward and Thomas assumed control of the operation, soon headquartered in the Bowery and styled Coogan Brothers Furniture.

Catering to the Irish and German immigrants who had moved into the area and willing to do business via installment payments from its generally cash-strapped clientele, the business thrived, eventually opening outlets elsewhere in Manhattan.3 By the early 1880s, the Coogan brothers were prosperous city businessmen. But in the end, James J. Coogan made his fortune in a more time-tested way: he married money.

The circumstances under which Coogan met his future bride are lost to history. But on the face of it, the two appeared peculiarly matched. Unlike recent arrival Coogan, Harriet Gardiner Lynch was a member of one of America’s oldest and most distinguished families, a direct descendant of Lion Gardiner, the English merchant-adventurer granted privileges and property in the colonies by King Charles I in the 1630s. By the time of Harriet’s birth more than two centuries later, the Gardiner family had grown large and wealthy, with extensive property holdings in New York, southern New England, and elsewhere.4 But of interest, Harriet’s father was a man not unlike James Coogan. Like him, William L. Lynch was an Irish Catholic who had come to America as a youth and prospered in New York City, first as a grocer, thereafter as a tea merchant and importer. How this immigrant of humble origin became acquainted with WASP gentry like the Gardiners is another unknown. By the mid-1840s, however, Lynch had married teenage Sarah Gardiner and started the family that would eventually include eight children, all of whom were raised in their father’s Catholic faith.

Harriet was the youngest of the brood, born in Manhattan around 1861. Like her older sisters, she was dispatched to Long Island to be educated, finishing her schooling at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Manhasset. By the time Harriet returned home, her father had become a wealthy man in his own right,5 having acquired title to some of the city’s choicest real estate (including property in far-north Manhattan that would later become home to the Polo Grounds).

As noted, how Harriet became a sweetheart of James Coogan, a man some 16 years her senior, is unknown. Whatever the circumstances, their subsequent betrothal was approved by Harriet’s parents.6 The two were married in 1883 at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, with no less a Church personage than the Very Reverend Michael Corrigan, the Archbishop of New York, officiating the ceremony.7 In 1885, son Jay (James Jay, Jr.), the first of the couple’s five children, was born.8 More important for our purposes, the by-then widowed Sarah Gardiner Lynch had entrusted oversight of income-producing family properties to new son-in-law James Coogan. The job was no sinecure: the holdings were considerable, and customarily leased by the family, rarely sold off. This attachment to property soon brought Coogan into ever-increasing contact with government officials seeking access or title to Gardiner-Lynch real estate (via condemnation or other legal proceedings, if necessary) in order to accommodate ever-growing city expansion/improvement plans.9

As Coogan fenced with city bureaucrats, New York Giants founder/owner John B. Day was having his own property problems with officialdom. Since September 1880, Day had leased a meadowland located just north of Central Park in Manhattan from sportsman-socialite James Gordon Bennett, Jr., the owner-editor of the New York Herald. Sometime earlier, Bennett had allowed the Westchester Polo Club to enclose a portion of the property so that admission could be charged for its matches. Occasional weekend polo with its small flock of blue-blooded patrons was no cause for alarm by the residents of the tony neighborhood.

But soon the polo club was gone elsewhere, replaced by summer-long baseball and the noisy, often uncouth crowds that games brought to the area.10 This was an entirely different, and most unwelcome, development. In March 1888, friendly forces on the City Council finally succeeded in pushing through adoption of a new traffic design plan that remedied the neighborhood’s problem with the Polo Grounds – by running a city street through the outfield. Rearguard legal action by Day stalled demolition of the ballpark long enough for the Giants to finish the 1888 season with a World Series victory over the American Association St. Louis Browns. Nevertheless, the club boss fully realized that the Polo Grounds was doomed, and that he needed to relocate the Giants for the 1889 campaign.

Late that winter, Joseph Gordon, a junior partner in the Giants operation and a Manhattan real estate maven,11 brought a possible new ballpark site to Day’s attention. The property was far-north Manhattan acreage reclaimed via diversion of the Harlem River and owned by the Gardiner-Lynch family.12 Interest in the property soon brought Day into negotiation with James J. Coogan, the family’s estate agent.

By early 1889, it is entirely possible that the two men were already acquainted. Both Day and Coogan were successful downtown Manhattan businessmen, and on the periphery of New York City politics, as well. Although not particularly active, Day, a well-heeled cigar manufacturer originally from Connecticut, was a member of Tammany Hall, the corrupt political machine that controlled Democratic Party affairs in Manhattan. Day had joined Tammany a decade earlier, shortly after he had moved to the city to open a new manufacturing plant on the Lower East Side.

While Coogan was still a principal of Coogan Brothers Furniture, marriage into a wealthy family had afforded him the financial wherewithal to indulge a passion to hold elective office. Because of his frequent business contact with the working classes, Coogan fancied himself a man of the people, and, as such, sought the mayoral nomination of the fringe Socialist Labor Party in 1886. Despite offering to spend $200,000 of his own (meaning his mother-in-law’s) money self-financing his campaign, Coogan’s proposed candidacy was roundly rejected by party convention delegates.13 Two years later, he reentered the political fray with a little more success, garnering the mayoral candidate slot on the United Labor Party ticket. The expenditure of the promised $200,000 in family money did his campaign little good. Coogan was trounced, finishing a distant fourth behind young Tammany Democrat Hugh Grant.14

Although far removed from bustling midtown Manhattan, the proposed ballpark site that Day and Coogan dickered over was flat, dry, and already used for pickup baseball games tolerated by the property owners. On one side, the site was bounded by a towering escarpment (later dubbed Coogan’s Bluff); on the other, the Harlem River.15 More important, the property was immediately adjacent to a recently constructed north Manhattan railway stop. Given all this, Day thought the spot suitable for a new Giants home and sought a long-term lease for the grounds. But uncharacteristically, the family wanted to unload the property, and it was for sale only. Negotiations soon foundered, prompting Day to place a remarkable notice in the New York Times. It read: “I want to find a party to purchase from the present owners, who will not lease, the plot of ground bounded by 8th and 9th Aves., 155th to 157th Sts., which I will lease for five to ten years, at a rental of $6,000 per year. JOHN B. DAY, President New York Base Ball Club, 121 Maiden Lane.”16

To no great surprise, a property-purchasing angel did not materialize, leaving Day without a ball field as the 1889 season opened. In desperation, the Giants played their first two home games at decrepit Oakdale Park in Jersey City. Day then removed the club to the St. George Grounds on Staten Island, the erstwhile home of the AA New York Mets, by then defunct. But wet weather and the inconvenient locale of the ballpark decimated attendance at Giants games. Quickly, it became clear to Day that playing outside Manhattan was a losing proposition. By now, fortuitously, the Gardiner-Lynch family had relaxed its position on the rental of the north Manhattan site, and negotiations between Day and Coogan resumed. On June 22, 1889, the parties reached agreement on a two-year lease of the grounds.17 But in an economy that he would soon have cause to regret, Day leased only as much land as he needed for his new ballpark, declining the opportunity to rent the tract in its entirety.

Working at a furious pace, the small army of workmen that Day loosed on the property erected a usable, if still unfinished, ballpark in a breathless three weeks.18 Christened the New Polo Grounds, the Giants inaugurated their new home field on July 8, 1889, with a 7-5 win over the Pittsburgh Alleghenys. An estimated crowd of 10,000 paid their way through the turnstiles, while another 5,000 freeloaders watched game action from atop Coogan’s Bluff, the Eighth Avenue Viaduct, the Harlem Speedway, and other elevated vantage points. The win augured a New York surge in National League standings that saw the club nip the Boston Beaneaters at the wire for the pennant. The Giants then successfully defended their World Series crown with a postseason triumph over the AA Brooklyn Bridegrooms. Although he was not known to be a baseball enthusiast, James J. Coogan was impressed by the throngs paying their way into the new ballpark that summer. Consequently, even before the season was done, Coogan made Day a $200,000 offer for the purchase of the Giants.19 But in another decision that he would soon have reason to second-guess, Day turned Coogan down.

The arrival of the Players League and the havoc which it caused the baseball establishment during the 1890 season is beyond the scope of this essay. Suffice it to say that James J. Coogan contributed to the stress endured by the ownership of the NL New York Giants. Even though he already had a tenant on site, Coogan had no inhibition about leasing the remainder of the property to Players League investors headed by young Wall Street financier Edward B. Talcott.20 Within months, Brotherhood Park, home of the PL New York Giants, was sitting directly adjacent to the National League Giants ballpark, their dimensions separated only by a 10-foot-wide passageway and the stadium walls. While Brotherhood Park was going up, Coogan attempted to pressure Day into surrendering his lease to the New Polo Grounds but was quickly and emphatically rebuffed. Day’s ball club was not going anywhere.21 In fact, only two months after Coogan had tried to force the NL Giants out of its ballpark, Sporting Life reported that: “The New York League club has found a way to vault the obdurate landlord Coogan’s stony heart and has secured a five-year lease of the New Polo Grounds. The terms were not divulged, but it is safe betting that Coogan didn’t get the worst of the bargain by a very, very long shot.”22

In the aftermath of the financial bloodbath suffered by both their clubs and with the Players League headed for oblivion, NL Giants boss Day and PL Giants leader Talcott agreed to merge their franchises. The consolidated nine would play the 1891 season as a National League team. Brotherhood Park, renamed the Polo Grounds, would be used as the club’s home base, while the other ballpark at the site would become Manhattan Field and serve as a site for non-baseball events. But some weeks after the season’s close, Coogan was back on scene to complicate matters. In November 1891, he was approached by representatives of the American Association seeking to place a club in New York. To that end, they wanted to lease “the land adjoining the Polo Grounds for a new ballpark.” When asked about the AA overture, Coogan stated, “I told them that I would lease the land and that is all I am prepared to say.”23 The ensuing demise of the American Association, however, rendered the matter moot. And within a few seasons, control of the New York Giants passed to a club owner whom Coogan was loath to cross: Andrew Freedman.

Although his election efforts had thus far been fiascos, Coogan’s thirst for public office had not slaked. And it finally occurred to him that the easiest way to achieve his political ambitions was to work his way into the good graces of Richard Croker, the all-powerful and avaricious chief of Tammany Hall – a matter facilitated by Coogan’s access to the Gardiner-Lynch family fortune. Given that Freedman was a political protégé, business associate, and close friend of Croker, Coogan took pains not to antagonize the often prickly club owner. From here on, the Giants’ lease to the Polo Grounds/Manhattan Field property was renewed in a timely manner, with minimum fuss.24

Before Coogan could much advance his political prospects, they were threatened by calamity in his business affairs. While increasingly serving the interests of the Gardiner-Lynch family, Coogan remained a principal in Coogan Brothers Furniture. But a disastrous warehouse fire and a depressed economy (the Panic of 1893) had sent the business into a tailspin. When the brothers could not pay their bills, creditors filed suit.25 By January 1894, James’s finances were in such distress that he was obliged to seek bankruptcy protection. In a humiliating petition filed with the court, Coogan averred that he was penniless; that he was entirely dependent for support upon his mother-in-law (with whom he, his wife and children lived); and that he could not satisfy the numerous judgments lodged against him.26

The failure of Coogan Brothers Furniture subsequently produced an even unhappier event. Edward Coogan initiated a civil suit alleging that his brother James and mother-in-law Sarah Lynch27 had engaged in conspiracy, fraud, and other improprieties related to the winding-up of the furniture business.28 In time, the suit was settled out of court. During pre-settlement courthouse proceedings, however, it was revealed that Sarah Lynch had been quietly transferring her assets to daughter Harriet Coogan. By now, sad to relate, seven of Sarah’s eight children were deceased, leaving Harriet her sole surviving immediate heir. Dissipation of a person’s estate by distribution of assets prior to the testator’s death was an effective way to avoid inheritance taxes, and a standard practice of the rich. It was also perfectly legal. By the time the intra-family squabble was resolved, Harriet Coogan had assumed virtually all the wealth of the Gardiner-Lynch family.29 Given his presumed access to his wife’s money, this lent credence to an August 1899 report that Coogan had recently offered “his friend Andrew Freedman” $100,000 for the Giants franchise.30 If such an offer was, in fact, made, nothing ever came of it.

As Harriet came early into her inheritance, the political fortunes of James J. Coogan were also in ascendance. Having finally ingratiated himself with Boss Croker, Coogan was the Tammany-designated replacement Manhattan Borough president when incumbent Augustus W. Peters unexpectedly died in office in late December 1898.31 The post was largely a ceremonial one, with few official duties to be performed. Coogan got himself into trouble anyway, voting in Southampton, Long Island (not Manhattan) in the November 1900 local elections. This put Coogan’s place of residence (and thus his continued eligibility for the Manhattan borough president post) in question, and an official inquiry into the issue was briefly conducted.32 But as long as Tammany held power, Coogan, by then a major contributor to Democratic Party campaign coffers, was in little jeopardy.33 Rather, it took the reform tide of November 1901’s New York City municipal elections to sweep him and other Croker vassals from office. That election ended the political career of James J. Coogan; he more or less retired from working, as well. In the coming years, his much younger wife would handle most of the family’s business affairs, including its relationship with the New York Giants.

As the new century unfolded, Harriet Coogan, rather than her husband, was customarily recorded as the party of interest in family real estate transactions.34 This included the 1903 foreclosure sale purchase of Whitehall, a Newport, Rhode Island, mansion designed by the famed architect Stanford White.35 Newport had become the summer playground of the country’s Gilded Age millionaires, and ultimately became the site of an epic feud between Harriet Coogan and the resort’s society matrons.36 At first, the newly arrived Coogans seemed reasonably well-received. Harriet was a frequent presence at art shows, horserace meets, and other social gatherings, while her children (by then young adults) quickly became popular with Newport’s junior set.37 But Coogan-hosted galas proved second-tier social events, attended by only the lesser local gentry. Their invitations were routinely declined by the Vanderbilts, Belmonts, Whitneys, and other members of Newport’s aristocracy. The crème de la crème also avoided socializing with the Coogans at public events.

When the situation was autopsied decades later, the snobbish attitude toward the Coogans was attributed to the elite’s disdain of social climbers.38 But that assessment is strained, if not absurd. The Vanderbilt-Belmont crowd were parvenus, their fortunes of commercial origin and recently made.39 In sharp contrast, Harriet Coogan was a Gardiner, descended from a landed family that traced its wealth back to the reign of 17th century Stuart kings.40 More likely, it was her husband James who was found objectionable: Irish, low-born, and a Tammany Hall political hack. And although never mentioned in newsprint, there was also doubtless more than a whiff of society disdain of the Coogans’ Catholicism. Whatever its basis, upper crust Newport’s antipathy for the Coogans reached its apogee in 1910.

The event which brought matters to a head was a large dinner party hosted by the Coogans at Whitehall early that summer.41 Over 400 guests were anticipated, including the Newport aristocracy who, unexpectedly, had accepted invitations to attend. To ensure the evening’s success, Harriet pulled out all the stops: musicians, lavish catering, extra wait staff, Whitehall exquisitely decked out. Even 40 tuxedo-clad young men were recruited to fill up any empty chairs and to dance with the ladies. Then James and Harriet Coogan waited – until midnight – for the guests who never came. Reportedly acting at the direction of society grand dames bent on humiliation of the Coogans, not one of the 400 invitees showed up.42 James Coogan, his hide toughened by a life in trade and politics, brushed off the affront. But his wife was not having it.

Whatever satisfaction Newport society derived from the pointed insult, it would soon rue the day that it offended the proud and fierce Mrs. James J. Coogan. Within days, Harriet had collected her family, servants, and staff, and whisked them out of Whitehall, leaving the mansion’s furnishings, expensive family wardrobe, art collection, and other valuables behind. She did not even lock the mansion doors, allegedly telling an alarmed personal secretary that the place “can rot to its roots.”43 Predictably, the unprotected Coogan residence was quickly looted. Thereafter, it became a flophouse for vagabonds drawn to the comfort of free shelter among the Newport elite. At the same time, the untended mansion grounds defaced its posh surroundings. A March 1911 Whitehall fire likely started by a drunken squatter then further damaged the premises.44 All the while, Harriet ignored entreaties to have Whitehall repaired, leaving a decaying, rat-infested eyesore right in the middle of the Newport aristocracy’s ritziest neighborhood. And because Harriet ensured that Whitehall property taxes and other municipal assessments were always promptly paid, there was little that her erstwhile neighbors could do about it. For decades thereafter, the abandoned and ever-worsening ruin served as a vivid reminder of the miscalculation that Newport snobs had made in the summer of 1910.45

Perhaps ironically, it was another fire – this time at the Polo Grounds – that returned the Coogan name to the sports pages. In April 1911, an early morning blaze inflicted extensive damage upon the ballpark grandstand and bleacher sections. By that time, the majority owner of the New York Giants was John T. Brush, who had assumed the Polo Grounds/Manhattan Field lease when he acquired the club from Andrew Freedman in 1902. But before he invested the $100,000+ likely needed to repair the fire damage, Brush required the long-term security of a lease extension.46 Fortunately, his real property landlords were happy to oblige, and that May, Brush and Harriet Coogan executed a new 21-year lease on the Polo Grounds.47 The rent was $50,000 per year.48 Simultaneously, James Coogan announced that a $6 million amusement venue/amphitheater would be constructed on the vacated site of Manhattan Field.49 Nothing ever came of the project. Nor did New York Highlanders/Yankees owner Frank Farrell take Coogan up on the offer to relocate his club to the former Manhattan Field grounds.50

By 1915, James J. Coogan, ageing and suffering the effects of heart disease, had largely withdrawn from public life. In March, however, he reportedly tried to interest new Yankees owners Jacob Ruppert and Til Huston, whose American League club had been Polo Grounds sub-tenants of the Giants since 1912, in a proposal to build a new ballpark on the old Manhattan Field site. Coogan assured them that he could get Giants club president Harry Hempstead (son-in-law of the now-deceased John T. Brush and co-trustee of his estate) to go along with the proposition.51 Like the earlier amusement venue/amphitheater plan, the Coogan scheme came to naught. Seven months later, James Jay Coogan was dead, having passed away at the family residential suite at the Netherland Hotel in Manhattan on October 24, 1915.52 He was 70. Following a Solemn Requiem Mass concelebrated by Cardinal Terrence Farley at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and attended by dignitaries from the New York political and business worlds, the deceased was laid to rest in Calvary Cemetery, Woodside, Queens.

Upon her husband’s death, 54-year-old Harriet Coogan withdrew from society life. With her Ivy League-educated sons out of the house, she and unmarried daughter Jessie moved to smaller quarters in the midtown Biltmore Hotel. From then on, Harriet continued management of Gardiner-Lynch-Coogan real estate interests from offices in a family-owned Manhattan commercial building. On May 1, 1932, she and Charles A. Stoneham, the latest owner of the New York Giants, entered into a new 30-year lease.53 For the first 15 years, the annual rent would remain $50,000. After March 1947, it rose to $53,000/year. While the Giants continued as owners of the Polo Grounds ballpark, the lease contained a clause forfeiting – without compensation – ballpark ownership to the Coogan family upon a default in rent payment.54 The lease also prohibited the Giants from demolishing the venerable – but increasingly antiquated – Polo Grounds without the express consent of the Coogans.55

Meanwhile back in Newport, decades of Whitehall neglect finally provoked a public outcry. But even unflattering news articles syndicated nationwide left Harriet Coogan unmoved. She treated attempted press intrusion into her privacy with the same silent contempt visited upon the Newport swells. For its part, the press portrayed Harriet as an eccentric recluse, holed up with a spinster daughter in a tiny hotel suite that she only left late at night to go to her midtown office. Reportedly, Biltmore Hotel staff had not seen her in years, leaving a once-a-day meal outside her suite door. Still, the elderly Mrs. Coogan was described as invariably cordial when speaking to hotel staffers on the telephone or through a closed door. And she was a very generous tipper.56 Finally in 1946, eldest son Jay Coogan – his mother’s Newport enemies now long dead and with a court order looming – agreed to the razing of Whitehall.57

Old and infirm, Harriet Gardiner Lynch Coogan died in her bed at the Biltmore Hotel on December 18, 1947, surrounded by her four children. She was 86. Like her long-deceased husband, she was interred at Calvary Cemetery following a Funeral Mass celebrated at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The Coogan family connection to baseball, however, was not laid to rest with her. For the next two decades, Jay Coogan would oversee family interest in the Polo Grounds. Pursuant to the 30-year lease terms negotiated by his mother in 1932, the Giants continued to pay the $53,000 annual rent on the ballpark – even after the club left for San Francisco at the close of the 1957 season. Thereafter and without a pause in Polo Grounds rent checks, the now middle-aged Coogan children began receiving a monthly stipend from the New York Mets, as the expansion club was obliged to use the by then ancient and poorly maintained ballpark during the 1962-1963 seasons.58 At that point, the City of New York moved to condemn the Polo Grounds pursuant to the exercise of its eminent domain power. A bitterly fought courtroom battle between the city and the Coogans ensued. In the end, the City prevailed, but was obliged to pay the Coogan family $2,614,175, the court-assessed value of the real property on which the Polo Grounds had been built.59

By the time New York’s highest court settled the matter, the Polo Grounds was long gone, having been demolished in April 1964. And today, like the vanished North Manhattan ballpark, Polo Grounds real estate landlords James and Harriet Coogan are but a dim memory.

Acknowledgments

This joint profile was originally published in Base Ball: New Research on the Early Game, No. 12 (McFarland, 2021). This version was reviewed by Rory Costello and Norman Macht and fact-checked by Jeff Findley.

Sources

Sources for the information contained herein are cited in the endnotes.

Notes

1 James’s siblings were Mary Anne (born 1856), Edward (1858), Thomas (1864), Margaret (1866), and Ella (1868).

2 When he stood for election to New York City political office, Coogan maintained that he was a native-born New Yorker. But the sworn passport application that he completed in June 1878 told a different story. Therein, Coogan averred that he had been born in Ireland, had been brought to this country at age seven, and was a naturalized US citizen.

3 See “Messrs. Coogan Brothers,” New York Times, June 7, 1885: 4.

4 Perhaps the best-known of the family properties is Gardiner’s Island, a private preserve located in the far-east part of Long Island Sound, and still owned by Gardiner family descendents.

5 Independent of his wife’s family wealth, William Lynch had amassed his own fortune, leaving an estate valued in the millions at the time of his death in 1884, as subsequently revealed in “Gives Millions to Daughter: Mrs. Lynch Transfers Her Estate to Mrs. Coogan to Avoid Inheritance Tax,” New York Evening World, April 30, 1900: 9.

6 According to nationally-syndicated gossip columnist Cholly Knickerbocker (Maury H.B. Paul) in “Mayfair’s Rich Recluse Owns Newport ‘Blot’; Scorns Wall Street,” Detroit Times, October 9, 1941: 77.

7 A year later, the Lynch-Coogan family alliance was further cemented by the marriage of Edward Coogan to Harriet’s sister Evelynn, with the nuptial rites again being performed at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. See “Married,” New York Times, June 22, 1884: 9.

8 The other Coogan children were Sarah Jessie (born 1886), W. Gordon (1888), and Gardiner (1892). Another child, born sometime after 1900 and name unknown, did not survive infancy.

9 See e.g., “Elevated Road Extension,” New York Times, May 10, 1887: 2, and “Objecting to a Viaduct,” New York Times, November 19, 1887: 8.

10 The original baseball tenants of the Polo Grounds were Day’s first team, the then-independent Metropolitan of New York club. The Mets were admitted to the major league American Association in 1883, while a second Day club, the New York Gothams (later Giants) entered the National League the same season. Both clubs played their home games at the Polo Grounds – occasionally simultaneously, as Day had constructed separate diamonds with grandstands in different corners of the ballpark. At the end of the 1885 season, however, the Mets were sold to amusement entrepreneur Eratus Wiman and relocated to Staten Island. Two seasons later, the Mets were disbanded.

11 Legally speaking, the New York Giants were owned and operated by the Metropolitan Exhibition Company, a closely-held corporation controlled by majority stockholder Day. The MEC’s three minority stockholders included Gordon, a Tammany Hall friend of Day and the figurehead president of the New York Mets. Although primarily a coal broker, the Manhattan-born Gordon had expansive knowledge of the island’s real estate and would later be appointed deputy commissioner of city buildings. Thereafter in 1903, New York Highlanders president Gordon was the one who uncovered the remote rocky mesa in Washington Heights on which Hilltop Park would be built.

12 Sources conflict regarding how the Gardiner-Lynch family obtained the real property that later became the site of the Polo Grounds. The long-prevailing view has been that the property had once been part of a large farm owned for generations by the Gardiner family and was passed down to Harriet Coogan by her maternal grandmother and mother. See e.g., “Great Estate Given Away,” Boston Herald, April 30, 1898: 8. Other sources contend that the Polo Grounds was constructed on 14 acres of Harlem River-reclaimed land purchased for $21,500 by William Lynch at an April 30, 1858 foreclosure sale. See e.g., Joshua Prager, The Echoing Green (New York: Pantheon Books, 2006), 58. The narrative herein favors the latter view.

13 Per “The Candidacy of Coogan,” New York Times, September 23, 1886: 4, and “Mr. Coogan’s Ambition,” New York Times, September 3, 1886: 5.

14 See “Another Candidate for New York Mayor,” Chicago Tribune, October 8, 1888: 3; “A Campaign of Bread and Sugar,” Chicago Tribune, October 15, 1888: 2; and “Mr. Coogan Accepts,” New York Times, October 16, 1888: 5.

15 To the chagrin of present and future club owners, the elevation afforded excellent and free viewing of game action below. In time, thousands of freeloaders would take in NY Giants games from atop what was originally called Deadhead Hill. The appellation “Coogan’s Bluff” was coined by an unidentified New York Times reporter covering the 1893 Princeton-Yale football game. See “The Orange Above the Blue,” New York Times, December 1, 1893: 1.

16 New York Times, April 8, 1889: 8. An accompanying article explained that “the property referred to is a portion of the Lynch estate controlled by James J. Coogan,” and that a long-term lease could not be acquired because “the estate desires to sell this and the adjoining property.” Thus, Day was hoping for the intervention of “some capitalist … [to] purchase the two blocks of land … and give the [Giants] management a five or ten year lease.”

17 As reported in the New York Times, New York Tribune, and elsewhere, June 22, 1889.

18 Readers should understand that the New Polo Grounds and ballparks subsequently constructed on the adjacent plat were built and paid for by the owners of the New York Giants, and that these ballparks were the exclusive property of the club owners. The real property which lay beneath the ballparks, however, was owned by the Gardiner-Lynch family and had to be leased by Giants owners. When completed over the 1889-1890 winter, the New Polo Grounds was a handsome, if oddly pear-shaped, two-tiered enclosure with a seating capacity of about 14,000 for baseball, and far more for college football, track meets, harness racing, and other attractions that would later use the grounds.

19 See “An Offer for the Giants,” New York Times, September 6, 1889: 3. At the time, it was estimated that operation of the New York Giants (and Mets) had generated a $750,000 profit for the four-member Metropolitan Exhibition Company during its seven-season existence. That figure, however, seems implausible and may be a Times mis-print.

20 See “Leased for the Brotherhood,” Washington Post, September 29, 1889: 1. The lease was for 10 years, at $24,000 per annum.

21 See “Day in Hard Luck Again,” Chicago Tribune, February 4, 1890: 6, and “Mr. Day’s Voice Still for War,” Chicago Tribune, February 5, 1890: 6. Both Tribune articles stated that Coogan was “financially interested” in the New York Players League franchise, but no evidence of any such Coogan interest was discovered by the writer. As with other Coogan matters, his motives for pressuring Day are unknown.

22 Sporting Life, April 5, 1890.

23 See “To Start a New Park,” Washington Post, November 8, 1891: 6.

24 After the National League and Players League New York Giants franchises consolidated in September 1890, Manhattan Field was sublet to the Manhattan Athletic Club. Freedman’s interest in the Giants stemmed from his subsequent court appointment as receiver for the financially failing MAC. When Freedman gained control of the Giants franchise in January 1895, he assumed the leases for both the Polo Grounds and adjoining Manhattan Field. The dual ballpark leases cost Freedman between $20,000 to $25,000 per year. At the March 1900 National League owners meeting, his fellow magnates agreed to reimburse Freedman the annual cost of the Manhattan Field rental as part of their efforts to appease the Giants boss in the aftermath of the Ducky Holmes affair.

25 See e.g., “Business Troubles,” New York Times, January 12, 1894: 11, memorializing a $12,586.36 judgment entered against James J. Coogan and Edward V. Coogan for unpaid business advertising.

26 See “Coogan Is Bankrupt,” New York Times, January 1, 1894: 2. Coogan’s financial distress did not affect the Gardiner-Lynch family fortune, as Sarah Gardiner Lynch had always segregated her family’s business interests from those of her son-in-law.

27 As the mother of Edward’s late wife Evelynn, Sarah Lynch was also Edward Coogan’s mother-in-law.

28 See “J.J. Coogan’s Brother Sues Him,” New York Sun, December 1, 1898: 29; “He Charges Conspiracy,” New York Times, December 1, 1898: 3.

29 See e.g., “Great Estate Given Away,” Boston Herald, April 30, 1900: 8; “Escapes Inheritance Tax,” New Haven (Connecticut) Register, April 30, 1900: 5; “Millions for Mrs. Coogan,” New York Times, April 30, 1900: 11. At the time, the value of the property titled over to Harriet was placed in the $15 million-to-$25 million range. In consideration for the transfer of the family wealth, Harriet supposedly gave her mother $2.

30 “Change Not Likely,” Sporting Life, August 19, 1899: 6.

31 See “New Borough President,” New York Times, January 6, 1899: 12. The position of borough president was a newly-created office, devised after Brooklyn, Queens, the east Bronx, and Staten Island were incorporated into New York City in 1898.

32 See “President Coogan’s Eligibility,” Washington Post, December 18, 1900: 8.

33 The previous May, a $100,000 contribution to the campaign chest of likely Democratic Party presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan had briefly fueled rumor that Coogan was angling for the VP spot on the ticket. See “Coogan’s Alleged Gift,” New York Times, May 27, 1900: 2, and “$100,000 for Bryan,” Washington Post, May 27, 1900.

34 See e.g., “The Real Estate Market,” New York Sun, April 10, 1903: 13; “Million Dollars’ Worth of Flats,” New York Evening World, May 16, 1903: 4; “Mrs. H.G. Coogan’s Venture,” New York Times, May 17, 1903: 20.

35 As reported in the Pawtucket (Rhode Island) Times, June 29, 1903, New York Times and New York Tribune, June 30, 1903, and elsewhere.

36 Previously, the Coogans had summered at Narragansett, another Rhode Island resort. But a new family vacation home was sought after Harriet was accosted by thugs and robbed of jewelry in Narragansett Pier.

37 See e.g., “The News of Newport,” New York Times, November 22, 1903: 9; “Mrs. Grosvenor Has Most Blues,” Boston Herald, September 6, 1905: 5; “Social Notes from Newport,” New York Tribune, September 7, 1907: 7; “Snapshots of Social Leaders,” Washington Post, September 8, 1909: 7.

38 See e.g., “This Is No Coogan’s Bluff, Says Mrs. Coogan to Newport,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 6, 1932: 33; Charles Goddard, “Last of Mrs. Coogan’s Long Vengeance,” syndicated in the Detroit Times, June 9, 1946: 71; The (Portland) Oregonian, June 9, 1946: 55; and elsewhere.

39 Even a century later, the Gardiner family patriarch would dismiss the Newport elite and their ilk as “nouveaux riches.” See Robert F. Worth, “Robert D. L. Gardiner, 93, Lord of His Own Island, Dies,” New York Times, August 24, 2004: B7. For more on the pretensions and prejudice of the Newport elite, see Anne DeCourcy, The Husband-Hunters: American Heiresses Who Married into the British Aristocracy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017), 105-118.

40 Harriet Coogan was also independently wealthy, polished, a stylish dresser, and exceptionally good-looking. But the extent, if any, to which dowdy Newport high society matrons were personally jealous can only be speculated upon.

41 Years later, the event was described as a coming-out party for Jessie Coogan. By then, however, Harriet’s 24-year-old daughter was well past the debutante stage and had been out in society since at least 1906. See “Buds to Make Their Bow,” Kansas City Star, October 3, 1906: 9.

42 As per the articles cited in endnotes 5 and 37, above. See also, Inez Cooper, “Mrs. Coogan’s (of Coogan’s Bluff) Strange Revenge,” San Francisco Examiner, October 12, 1941: 85.

43 Same as above. See also, “Milestones,” Time, December 29, 1947, and “Necrology,” The Sporting News, December 31, 1947: 23.

44 See “Newport Home Burns,” New York Times, March 11, 1911: 9.

45 See again the newspaper articles cited in endnotes 38 and 42.

46 By April 1911, Brush had suffered from the wasting disease locomotor ataxia for years and was concerned about the financial security of second wife Elsie and teenage daughter Natalie after his passing.

47 As reported in “Two New York Parks,” Sporting Life, May 13, 1911: 1. See also, “Brush Says Polo Grounds Will Stay,” Springfield (Massachusetts) News, May 5, 1911: 6; “Long Lease on Polo Grounds Signed,” (Boise) Idaho Statesman, May 14, 1911: 9.

48 As revealed after the will of the late John T. Brush was admitted to probate. See “Giants Money Making Club,” Springfield News, January 1, 1915: 17; and “NY Giants Paid $470,000 Profits in Three Years,” Colorado Springs (Colorado) Gazette, January 1, 1915: 7.

49 See “Plan $6,000,000 Park at Coogan’s Bluff,” New York Times, May 6, 1911: 7; “Ninety Acres for Big Park,” Duluth (Minnesota) News-Tribune, May 7, 1911: 2; “Will Seat 50,000 Fans,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 10, 1911: 10.

50 See again, “Two New York Parks,” Sporting Life, May 13, 1911: 1. See also, “Rival Friends,” Sporting Life, April 13, 1912: 5. Manhattan Field had been demolished in 1903. Instead of taking up Coogan’s offer, Farrell persevered with a boondoggle ballpark construction project in the Knightsbridge section of the Bronx that drained his finances and eventually precipitated the sale of the franchise to Jacob Rupert and T.L. Huston in January 1915.

51 See Joseph Vila, “The Ground Question in New York,” Sporting Life, March 3, 1915: 1. Brush son-in-law Hempstead had assumed leadership of the Giants franchise shortly after Brush’s death in November 1912.

52 “James J. Coogan Dead,” New York Times, October 25, 1915: 25. The cause of death was given as heart disease.

53 For contract purposes, the lessee was the National Exhibition Company, the NY Giants corporate alter ego.

54 Reputedly, Harriet Coogan did not trust the mail and appeared at the NY Giants mid-town office each month to collect the Polo Grounds rent check in person, per Michael Pollak, “The Man Behind the Bluff,” New York Times, April 25, 2004: CY2.

55 The terms of the Polo Grounds lease became public during litigation instituted by Harriet Coogan’s heirs after New York City condemned the ballpark in the early 1960s. A comprehensive overview of the litigation is provided by John Hogrogian in “The Polo Grounds Case: Parts I and II,” The Coffin Corner, Vol. 11, No. 6, and Vol. 12, No. 1 (1989).

56 As recounted in extensive and sometimes dubious detail in the circa 1932-1946 newspaper articles and features cited previously. Much of this reportage was dismissed as contrived or hyperbole by her sons when Harriet Coogan died in December 1947. “Mother was not a recluse,” maintained son Gardiner. “She withdrew because of her age and infirmity. She was a gracious person who handled everything with perfect amicability,” per “Mrs. Coogan Dies; Large Landholder,” New York Times, December 19, 1947: 26.

57 Per the Newport (Rhode Island) Mercury and Weekly News, December 26, 1947: 7. The Whitehall grounds, however, remained Coogan family property and stayed unimproved until sold in 1953.

58 See again, Hogrogian, The Coffin Corner, above.

59 See Matter of City of New York v. Coogan, 20 N.Y.2d 618, 233 N.E.2d 113 (Court of Appeals, 1967). See also, “Sarah Coogan, Member of Polo Grounds Family,” the obituary for S. Jessie Coogan, age 94, published in the New York Times, March 7, 1979: A22. The San Francisco Giants were awarded $1,724,714 for improvements made to the Polo Grounds over the years of its tenure there.

The Internet has disseminated the Cherokee story even more widely. Yet it is likely a fabrication. The evidence shows that Julia Scott Wheat – mother of Zack and two other pro ballplayers, including big-leaguer Mack Wheat – was Caucasian.

SABR member Joe Niese, in his biography Zack Wheat: The Life of the Brooklyn Dodgers Hall of Famer (2020) treats Wheat’s presumed indigenous heritage in a nuanced discussion that examines the evidence on both sides and expresses reasonable doubt.2 It’s a welcome departure from the simple acceptance of the past. However, Niese does not state a specific view. Rather, he’s noted that the subject remains open to debate.3

Wheat himself was typically reticent on this topic. As Niese observes, he was “coy and at times playful regarding his lineage.”4 However, Wheat did deny it in his own words in September 1916. In the interview – which called him unusually talkative that day – Wheat pleaded, “And say, will you please say for me that I am not an Indian? They have been calling me a Cherokee so long that I almost believe it myself. My nationality is American of Scotch-Irish descent. They started calling me ‘The Indian’ for a nickname when I played with Shreveport and Mobile before I came to Brooklyn in 1909. It has got so that a lot of people really believe that I am an Indian.”5

Zack’s wife, Daisy Forsman Wheat, also apparently said that accounts of Wheat’s Native heritage weren’t accurate.6 Further attestation that Julia and her sons were non-Native comes from one of their descendants. Zack’s great-grandson, Zachary Alan Wheat, has long been involved in efforts to document the family’s genealogy. He has declared, “As far as the myth that he [Zack Wheat] was half Cherokee, that is all that it is and a story that has been told for many years. There is no truth to that whatsoever.”7

At least one other parallel exists among major-leaguers: Elon Hogsett, whose nickname – “Chief” – fueled the belief that he was part Indian. The press and fans just ran with it. Yet Hogsett actually had precious little Native American blood: one-thirty-second Cherokee, as he stated in a June 1982 interview. Still, the swarthy Kansan looked the part, and the well-worn moniker “just kind of stuck.”8 So it was with Zack Wheat, who also had a dark complexion, and whose athleticism was often attributed to Indians’ supposed innate abilities.

Looking back at early contemporary accounts, Niese mentions a report from 1908, Wheat’s second professional season, which referred to him by the nickname “Cherokee.”9 In June 1910, Wheat’s first full year in the majors, a Brooklyn Eagle article noted, “His mother was from the Cherokee tribe.”10 Another report, from later that month, was a mere snippet alleging that Wheat himself had said he was of Cherokee descent (rather than Potawatomi, as might have been supposed from his home, which was then in Kansas).11 Toward the end of the same month, a piece in the Boston Globe even referred to him as full Cherokee.12

Roughly two years later, a story about Wheat on the front page of Sporting Life mentioned – again without any support – that his mother was a full-blooded Cherokee.13 Subsequent stories simply took the assertion at face value and parroted it, replete with racist phrases and imagery.14 The most lurid was a January 1917 feature in Baseball Magazine.15

Niese observed that by the 1920s, “Wheat’s Native heritage…had disappeared as a reference point for sportswriters.”16 As late as 1943, though, Harry Grayson (who wrote a syndicated column for the Newspaper Enterprise Association) repeated the “half Cherokee” theme in a retrospective.17

According to Alan Wheat, the story of his forebear’s Cherokee heritage was more widely fostered by a Brooklyn publicity effort.18 When asked in 2019 if there was any clear evidence in support of this, he noted that he possessed an extensive archive of about 60 file boxes of newspaper articles and other things. He made an effort to work through those, but getting proof positive from such a volume of material proved fruitless.19

However, Alan did go through the scrapbook started by his great-grandmother, Daisy, and completed by his great-aunt, Mary Helen Wheat. The articles he did find regarding the family genealogy focused on the Wheat side, but he also found some articles in which Julia Scott Wheat was interviewed. In those, nothing was ever mentioned about her being Native American.20 The negative evidence is significant.

Whereas Elon Hogsett delighted in storytelling and offered at least two versions of how the belief arose that he was an Indian, Wheat wasn’t known as a raconteur. Aside from the 1916 denial, which didn’t get traction, he didn’t appear to stop the articles that called him Cherokee (at least not wholeheartedly). It would have been a blessing had he been part of Lawrence Ritter’s landmark book of oral history, The Glory of Their Times. It’s also unfortunate that SABR’s Oral History Committee has no interviews with Wheat in its archives. Yet even if such talks had taken place, whether the topic would have been addressed can only be conjectured. The Sporting News did run lengthy features with extensive quotes from Wheat and his wife in 1941 and 1959. Neither one had a single word about his ancestry.21

Yet one must also look at the official records, which weigh heavily against the Cherokee story.

Evidence is absent from the tribal angle. Julia Scott is not visible in the 1880 Cherokee census, and nobody named Wheat is listed in the 1907 Dawes Rolls, a U.S. government compilation of people accepted as members of “The Five Civilized Tribes.” However, this is subject to caveats.22

Convincing proof lies in the U.S. census records for 1870 and 1880. Julia Scott and her parents, John J.H. Scott and Matilda Jane (née Carson), are listed as “W” for White. Matilda’s uncle was the famous American frontiersman Kit Carson – who actually did have two Native American wives. However, genealogical research shows nothing to indicate any such heritage for John or Matilda.

Conclusive as that appears, further supporting evidence exists. The 1886 Missouri marriage certificate of Julia Scott and Basil C. Wheat does not contain anything beyond their names – but the Kansas state census of 1905 and U.S. census of 1910 do. The 1905 record shows Basil (who died in 1907), Julia, Zack, Mack, and Basil Jr. The 1910 record shows the widow living in Kansas City, Kansas with her sons, mother, and brother. In the column headed “Color or Race,” the notation for all again is “W” – not “I” or “In” for Indian, according to the codes used.23

Neither is there any indication of mixed parentage. Indeed, another government publication related to the 1910 census – expressly devoted to Indian population – specified that “all persons of mixed white and Indian blood who have any appreciable amount of Indian blood are counted as Indians, even though the proportion of white blood may exceed that of Indian blood.”24

It’s conceivable that the Wheats (and the Scotts before them) may have concealed the truth from census enumerators. Yet if that were the case, it raises the question of why – just a couple of months after the 1910 census was taken – Zack was supposed to have talked openly of this subject.

Furthermore, the 1920 and 1930 U.S. censuses also show Julia Wheat as White. Zack Wheat himself is listed again as White in the 1930 and 1940 U.S. census. The latter, as seen in previous years, had a system of classification with specific instructions for people of mixed race.25

Why should we care about Zack Wheat’s genealogy? Why should we care about ethnicity in general? First, Native American identity remains topical today. Moreover, it’s always prudent to re-examine the received wisdom on any issue.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Alan Wheat and Joe Niese for their input, as well as Paul Proia and Eric Costello for additional research.

This article was reviewed by Gregory Wolf and Jan Finkel and fact-checked by Paul Proia.

Sources

Census records from Ancestry.com and Familysearch.org. The author also used Findagrave.com.

The Sporting Life Collection – LA84 Digital Library: https://digital.la84.org/digital/collection/p17103coll17

Notes

1 Vincent M. Mallozzi. “The American Indians of America’s Pastime,” New York Times, June 8, 2008. “Indian players featured in exhibit,” Miami Herald, August 17, 2008: 6D.

2 Joe Niese, Zack Wheat: The Life of the Brooklyn Dodgers Hall of Famer, Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co. (2020): 5-6.

3 Joe Niese, e-mail to Rory Costello, April 21, 2021.

4 Niese, Zack Wheat, 6.

5 “Wheat Wants to Go Back to Farm,” Ithaca (New York) Journal, September 25, 1916: 7.

6 Niese, Zack Wheat, 6. The underlying source for this statement is not presently available.

7 Alan Wheat, “Re: Oscar & Zack Wheat,” Genealogy.com, October 19, 2004 (https://www.genealogy.com/forum/surnames/topics/wheat/1614/). Reiterated in person in a telephone interview with Rory Costello, October 7, 2019.

8 Richard Bak, Cobb Would Have Caught It: The Golden Age of Baseball in Detroit (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991).

9 Niese, Zack Wheat, 6. “Pirate News,” Shreveport Times, August 16, 1908: 7.

10 Brooklyn Eagle, June 3, 1910: 23.

11 “National League Notes,” Sporting Life, June 18, 1910: 9.

12 “Wagner Gets Back His Eye,” Boston Globe, June 27, 1910: 6.

13 “Zack D. Wheat,” Sporting Life, April 13, 1912: 1.

14 “Indian Is Slowly Passing From Game,” Chicago Eagle, August 21, 1915: 2. Various other newspapers across the country ran the feature on different days.

15 “Zach Wheat: Graceful Outfielder: What a Heritage of Indian Blood Has Done for Zach Wheat,” Baseball Magazine, January 1917: 48-51, 104.

16 Niese, Zack Wheat, 6.

17 Harry Grayson, “Black Lightning Zack Wheat Was Brooklyn’s Most Popular Player,” Courier-News (Blytheville Arkansas, June 29, 1943: 6. Again, various other newspapers across the country ran the feature on different days.

18 Alan Wheat, telephone interview with Rory Costello, October 7, 2019.

19 Alan Wheat, e-mail to Rory Costello, October 23. 2019.

20 Alan Wheat, e-mail to Rory Costello, October 23. 2019.

21 Harold W. Lanigan, “Zack Wheat, Now Running Sports Resort in Ozarks, Recalls His 18 Thrill-Filled Years of Fun as Dodger,” The Sporting News, November 30, 1941: 4. C.C. Johnson Spink, “Wheat Near Tears Over Shrine Election,” The Sporting News, February 11, 1959: 3, 6.

22 The presently available data for the 1880 Cherokee census are patchy. The Dawes Commission’s effort covered only people who lived with their tribe in Indian Territory and who chose to apply.

23 The 1905 Kansas record shows the key directly on the page. The 1910 codes are explained in “1910 Census Instructions to Enumerators,” U.S. Census Bureau (https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/technical-documentation/questionnaires/1910/1910-instructions.html).

24 “1910 Census: Indian Population in the United States and Alaska,” U.S. Census Bureau (https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1910/indian-population/indian-population-p2.pdf)

25 With regard to Indians, it said, “A person of mixed white and Indian blood should be returned as an Indian, if enrolled on an Indian agency or reservation roll, or if not so enrolled, if the proportion of Indian blood is one-fourth or more, or if the person is regarded as an Indian in the community where he lives.” (Author’s emphasis added.) See Sixteenth Decennial Census of the United States, U.S.. Census Bureau: 43. (https://www.census.gov/history/pdf/1940instructions.pdf).

Six years after Jackie Robinson’s historic debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers, only a few Black athletes toiled in the minor leagues of the segregated South, enduring innumerable indignities.3 Two leagues had no African American players: the Class AA Southern Association and the Cotton States League, a Class C circuit with four teams in Mississippi, three in Arkansas, and one in Lousiana.4 Barred from the CSL, Tugerson fought back in a court of law, even though doing so may have adversely affected his chances of reaching the major leagues.

On February 6, 1953, Tugerson signed a contract for $250 per month with the Hot Springs Bathers, a member of the Cotton States League since 1938.5 His younger brother Leander agreed to a similar deal. Both had previously pitched for the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro American League and decided to sign with Hot Springs on the advice of Brooklyn catcher Roy Campanella. The Bathers formally introduced their new players on March 28, the day after their contracts had been approved by George Trautman, president the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues.6

Within days of the annoucement, the events giving rise to Jim Tugerson’s lawsuit began to unfold. On April 1, Mississippi Attorney General J.P. Coleman told the press that integrated athletic competition would violate the “public policy” of his state.7 Five days later, the Cotton States League, acting through its president and directors, terminated the Hot Springs franchise “as a matter of survival.”8 At a closed door meeting on April 14, the league readmitted the Bathers and approved the club’s new majority owner9 on the condition that the Tugersons be removed from the roster.10 The Bathers acquiesced and optioned the two players to Class D Knoxville on April 20, the day before the CSL season began.11 A month later, however, the club desperately needed pitchers and recalled Jim Tugerson.12 His stay in Hot Springs was brief. The Bathers returned the big right-hander to Knoxville after league president Al Haraway ordered that the first game he was to pitch be forfeited for using an ineligble player.13

Before leaving Hot Springs, Tugerson sought legal advice about the possibility of a federal civil rights suit against Haraway and the Cotton States League, claiming that the president had denied him the right to play in the league on the basis of race.14 “It is strictly one man, Haraway,” Tugerson told a Knoxville sports writer a few days later. “He just won’t let me play because I am a Negro.”15 Previously, the Bathers owners had charged Haraway with engineering the club’s ouster from the league: “We can’t see where President Haraway, because of his personal feelings, can ramrod us out of the league on the segregation question.”16

The 67-year-old Haraway, a cotton planter, owned Catron Plantation in the rich bottom land of the Mississippi River about 35 miles southwest of his home in Helena, Arkansas. He was also president and general manager of the Helena Terminal and Warehouse Company, which then handled much of the area’s barge traffic on the Mississippi, and was among the founders of a Helena bank. Before his election as president of the Cotton States League in November 1948, Haraway served five years as president of the Helena Seaporters, a CSL member in 1936-1941 and 1947-1949.17

Tugerson retained James W. Chesnutt, probably on the recommendation of one of the Bathers owners.18 A partner in a Hot Springs law firm that had been established in 1875, Chesnutt studied history and political science at Princeton before earning his law degree at the University of Arkansas. His firm’s clients included a railroad, several major insurance companies, and the state’s principal utility, the Arkansas Power & Light Company.19 One might ask why Tugerson did not seek out a Black attorney. At the time there were fewer than ten African American lawyers practicing in Arkansas; most were based in the state’s larger cities and unwilling to travel.20 The NAACP, which was well known for challenging racial discrimination in the public sector, was not then interested in pursuing matters of private discrimination.21

Chesnutt no doubt advised Tugerson that because of adverse precedent, his federal civil rights claims would not succeed at the trial court level and that an appeal to the Supreme Court would be necessary for him to prevail.22 Litigants and their counsel are free to “argue for the modification of existing law or preserve positions for presentation to the Supreme Court,”23 and Tugerson was determined to proceed even though the lawsuit might harm his chances of reaching the major leagues. Pursuing the case “was something that he had to do,” he told his Knoxville teammates, because “it might make it easier for those [Black players] who followed.”24

The suit that Chesnutt filed on Tugerson’s behalf was assigned to Judge John E. Miller, one of three federal district judges in Arkansas and the only one who served full-time in the state’s Western District. Born in southeastern Missouri in 1888, Miller moved to Arkansas in 1912 after receiving his law degree from the University of Kentucky. Early in his career, he served as a city attorney and state prosecutor. In 1930, after several years in private law practice, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from the state’s second congressional district. In 1937, a few months after beginning his fourth term, Miller won a special election to the U.S. Senate, filling a vacancy created by the death of Senator Joe T. Robinson. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him to the bench in 1941.25

Tugerson’s complaint named 14 defendants: Al Haraway, individually and as CSL president; the league itself, an unincorporated association; all eight member clubs; and four officials from the Mississippi teams in Greenville, Natchez, and Meridian.26 The complaint alleged that the defendants, “based solely on the fact that [Tugerson] is a member of the Negro race,” had conspired to “prevent [him] from following his lawful occupation as a baseball player,” to prevent him from “carrying out his contractual obligations,” and to “deprive [him] of equal protection of the laws.”27 This conduct, which was based on “the custom of segregation” alleged to prevail in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, was said to violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and five federal civil rights statutes.28 An amended complaint filed the following month alleged that the defendants’ actions constituted interference with Tugerson’s contractual rights, a tort under the common law of Arkansas.29

With respect to damages, the complaint alleged that Tugerson had been deprived of the “better competition available in the Cotton States League” and the “opportunities of advancement in his career as a professional baseball player” had he remained in the Class C league for the season. Further, the complaint asserted that he had been “subjected to personal and public humiliation” and had been “deprived of the right to follow his lawful occupation in the place of his choice and to carry out his contractual obligations.” On the basis of these allegations, the complaint sought actual damages of $15,000 and punitive damages in the amount of $35,000.30 In addition, the complaint asked the court to enjoin the defendants from “interfering with [Tugerson’s] contractual rights” and from “preventing [him] from playing baseball in the Cotton States League.”31

The defendants, represented by capable and well-known Arkansas lawyers,32 moved to dismiss the complaint. Their principal attack was that it failed to state a claim on which relief could be granted.33 That is, they asserted that even if the facts alleged in the complaint were true, the law did not afford Tugerson any relief. However, the defendants also raised procedural issues unrelated to the merits.

Venue was most obvious of these procedural issues, because the applicable statutes made it impossible to sue defendants from different states in one case if the plaintiff asserted claims under federal law.34 Of the 14 defendants, venue was clearly proper only as to the four who resided in Arkansas: CSL president Haraway; Curtis Kinard, sole proprietor of the El Dorado club; and the Hot Springs and Pine Bluff clubs, both Arkansas corporations.35 Venue potentially existed as to the clubs from Mississippi and Louisiana, which as corporations “resided” in Hot Springs Division of the Western District of Arkansas if they were doing business there,36 but the court likely lacked personal jurisdiction over them.37

As a practical matter, however, these matters were of little importance because venue was proper as to Haraway, over whom the court had personal jurisdiction because he was domiciled in Arkansas.38 Tugerson clearly viewed Haraway as the primary wrongdoer in the case and sued him as an individual as well as in his capacity as the league’s president. A judgment for damages would presumably be paid out of Haraway’s own pocket unless it was covered by insurance, and an injunction against him would likely assure Tugerson’s eligibility to play in the CSL.39

On September 11, 1953, four days after Tugerson, with 29 wins, led the Knoxville Smokies to the championship of the Mountain States League,40 Judge Miller issued a 23-page opinion and an accompanying order. He dismissed Tugerson’s federal civil rights claims but, with respect to some defendants, kept alive the portion of the case based on Arkansas law for interference with contractual rights.41 However, the judge dismissed the state law claim against the Bathers, as the club had the right under its contract with Tugerson to option the pitcher to Knoxville.42 In addition, he dismissed this claim for improper venue with respect to the CSL and the four officials from Mississippi clubs.43

In considering the defendants’ motions to dismiss Tugerson’s civil rights claims for failing to state a claim on which relief could be granted, Judge Miller was required to treat as true all facts alleged in the complaint.44 After setting forth those facts in some detail, he first focused on the Fourteenth Amendment and the statute under which a claim for its violation is brought, Section 1983 of Title 42 of the U.S. Code. As it stood in 1953, Section 1983 provided that any person “who, under color of any statute, regulation, custom or usage, of any State or Territory subjects … any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured.”

“Repeatedly the courts have held that the Fourteenth Amendment protects the individual against state action,” Judge Miller wrote, “but affords no protection against wrongs done by [private] individuals.”45 To come within the purview of the Amendment and Section 1983, “a person must show that his rights were violated by someone acting under ‘color’ or ‘pretense’ of law.”46 Assuming that there was a “custom of segregation” in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana that “amounted to a law,” he continued, “said law could be enforced only by duly qualified officers and officials of the States.” Because the defendants had “no authority from the States to do any of the acts complained of by plaintiff, the action they took … was not under color of law and plaintiff has no cause of action against them.”47

With respect to the contention that the defendants had prevented Tugerson from “following his lawful occupation as a baseball player” and “carrying out his contractual obligations,” Judge Miller relied on the Supreme Court’s 1906 decision in Hodges v. United States.48 The question in that case, he wrote, was whether an African-American citizen has “a right secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States to work at any particular occupation or calling … free from injury, oppression, or interference on the part of individual citizens, when the motive for such injury, oppression, or interference arises solely from the fact that such laborer is a colored person of African descent.” The Supreme Court “answered that question in the negative,” he went on, by ruling that “the Thirteenth Amendment merely covered slavery and involuntary servitude and was not broad enough to protect work or contract rights” such as those Tugerson claimed.49

As for the conspiracy claims, the Supreme Court had two years earlier construed the principal civil rights conspiracy statute, 28 U.S. Code § 1985(3), as requiring state action and therefore not reaching conspiracies of private citizens. Judge Miller quoted at some length from that case, Collins v. Hardyman,50 as well as from a federal appellate court decision applying it.51 He did not consider the other conspiracy statute, 28 U.S. Code § 1986. Because liability under that statute is dependent upon a valid claim under Section 1985, however, it would not have afforded a basis for relief.52

At this point, there was little left of the case. While the claim under Arkansas law survived, questions remained as to all but two of the remaining defendants, Haraway and the Pine Bluff club. Judge Miller postponed consideration of whether the Mississippi and Louisiana clubs were subject to personal jurisdiction under an Arkansas statute applicable to out-of-state corporations doing business in the state and, if so, whether venue was proper as to them.53 Another issue was whether service of process on the El Dorado club, which had been ineffective, would be made.54

These matters were never addressed. On December 1, the Hot Springs Bathers, who held Tugerson’s rights, sold his contract to the Dallas Eagles of the Class AA Texas League.55 With the CSL behind him and the likelihood of success on appeal uncertain, Tugerson directed his lawyer to drop what was left of the case and to forego appellate review of Judge Miller’s ruling on the civil rights claims. On December 8, James Chesnutt filed a motion to voluntarily dismiss the case with prejudice, meaning that it could not be refiled. Later that day Judge Miller signed a final order of dismissal.56 In the nation’s capital, the U.S. Supreme Court was hearing oral arguments in Brown v. Board of Education.57

The landmark Brown decision was issued the following May,58 and thereafter civil rights law underwent significant changes. In 1968, the Supreme Court overruled Hodges v. United States, rejected its constricted reading of the Thirteenth Amendment, and validated a statute banning private discrimination in the sale or rental of property.59 Seven years later, the Supreme Court approved lower court cases that extended the 1968 decision to a companion statute, on which had Jim Tugerson relied, prohibiting discrimination in the making and enforcement of contracts.60 By the time these cases were decided, however, Congress had enacted a sweeping new statute — the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — which, among other things, prohibited racial discrimination by private employers.61

As these developments make plain, Jim Tugerson’s lawsuit was ahead of its time. Whether it harmed his chances of advancing to the major leagues is a matter of speculation. His age surely worked against him — he turned 30 soon after signing with the Bathers — as did the informal quota system in the 1950s that kept the number of Black major leaguers to a bare minimum.62 With these two strikes against him, the lawsuit may have been the third. It is not difficult to imagine major-league general managers, all of whom were White, looking askance at a black pitcher who had the audacity to sue a league, its president, and its member clubs.

Acknowledgments

This article was reviewed by Bill Lamb and Rory Costello and fact-checked by Jeff Findley.

Sources

All sources are shown in the notes.

Photo credits:

Jim Tugerson: Hot Springs (AR) Sentinel Record, March 31, 1953

Al Haraway: Friend, J.P., Cotton States League Golden Anniversary, 1902-1951 (Helena, AR: National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, 1951)

Judge John E. Miller: University of Arkansas Libraries, Special Collections

Notes

1 “$50,000 Suit is Filed Against CSL by Negro Pitcher,” Hot Springs Sentinel-Record, July 14, 1953: 1.

2 James C. Tugerson v. Al Haraway, et al., Civ. No. 558, U.S. District Court, Western District of Arkansas, Hot Springs Division (July 13, 1953) (hereafter cited as Tugerson v. Haraway). Records from civil cases in this court between 1940 and 1975 are housed at the National Archives facility in Fort Worth, Texas.

3 See generally Bruce Adelson, Brushing Back Jim Crow: The Integration of Minor-League Baseball in the American South (University of Virginia Press, 1999).

4 The Mississippi teams were the Greenville Buckshots, Jackson Senators, Meridian Millers, and Natchez Indians. Arkansas was represented by the El Dorado Oilers, Hot Springs Bathers, and Pine Bluff Judges. The lone Louisiana club was the Monroe Sports.

5 A copy of the contract is attached as an exhibit to the plaintiff’s complaint in Tugerson v. Haraway.

6 “Bathers Set CSL Precedent by Signing 2 Negro Hurlers,” Hot Springs Sentinel-Record, March 29, 1953: 11; “Bathers’ Two Negro Hurlers Seek Chance to Prove Theselves as Players,” Hot Springs Sentinel-Record, March 31, 1953: 8.

7 “Mississippi Official Says Public Policy Would Cause Ban of Bathers’ 2 Negroes,” Hot Springs Sentinel-Record, April 2, 1953: 18; “Negroes Can’t Play Baseball in CSL,” Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger, April 2, 1953: 1; “Negro Players Barred,” New York Times, April 2, 1953: 36. No statutes prohibited integrated sports, but the state constitution mandated segregated schools and made interracial marriage unlawful. Mississippi Constitution of 1890, Art. 8, § 207; Art. 14, § 263. Coleman, who was elected governor in 1955, did not issue a formal opinion on the question.

8 “Bathers Ousted from CSL Over Negro Player Issue,” Hot Springs Sentinel-Record, April 7, 1953: 1; Wayne Thompson, “Hot Springs Loses Membership in CSL; Vicksburg Possibility,” Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger, April 7, 1953: sec. 2, 1; “League Throws Out Club with 2 Negro Pitchers,” New York Times, April 7, 1953: 36. The Bathers appealed this action, taken at an April 6 meeting in Greenville, Mississippi, to George Trautman of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues. On April 15, Trautman ruled that the Hot Springs franchise had been wrongfully terminated because the league had not followed the procedures set out in its constitution. But even if it had done so, he said, termination of the franchise would have been improper because employment decisions are for individual clubs to make and “the employment of Negro players has never been, nor is now prohbitied by any provision” of the National Association Agreement or other minor-league rules. “Minor League Czar Says Bathers Can Use Negro Players,” Hot Springs Sentinel-Record, April 16, 1953: 1; “Trautman Says Hot Springs Forfeiture Not Valid,” Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger, April 16, 1953: sec. 2, 2; “Ouster of Hot Springs Invalid, Says Trautman,” Miami Herald, April 16, 1953: 2B.

9 Approval of the ownership change was required by the league constitution. The club had been owned by A.G. “Gabe” Crawford, a Hot Springs druggist, and Tom Stough, a former college player who owned a cold storage plant, with Crawford holding the majority interest. Lewis Goltz, a local jeweler, purchased Crawford’s stock a few days before announcement of the Tugerson signings. H.M. Britt, the owner of a Hot Springs hotel, and his brother Garrett had previously acquired Stough’s shares. “Goltz Replaces Crawford As Co-owner of Bathers,” Hot Springs Sentinel-Record (March 22, 1953): 14; Don Duren, Bathers Baseball: A History of Minor League Baseball at the Arkansas Spa (Maitland, Fla.: Xulon Press, 2011), 291, 315. In June, Goltz transferred his stock in the club to the Britt brothers. “Britt Named Bathers’ President; No Decision Made on Two Negroes,” Hot Springs Sentinel-Record (June 11, 1953): 9.

10 The terms of the agreement readmitting the Bathers remained secret until the following month. After the April 14 meeting in Greenville, league president Al Haraway said only that the CSL would open the season “with its present eight members” on April 21, as scheduled. “Bathers to Remain in CSL; No Other Comment Comes from League Meeting,” Hot Springs Sentinel-Record, April 15, 1953: 13; “CSL To Open With 8 Clubs, Says Haraway,” Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger, April 15, 1953: sec. 2, 1; “Hot Springs Reinstated,” New York Times, April 15, 1953: 42.

11 “Bathers Option Negro Players to Knoxville,” Hot Springs Sentinel-Record, April 21, 1953: 7; “Hot Springs Team Trades Negro Players,” Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger, April 21, 1953: 1; “2 Negro Stars Optioned,” New York Times, April 21, 1953: 34.

12 “Negro Pitcher Recalled by Bathers; Will Hurl Tonight,” Hot Springs Sentinel-Record, May 20, 1953: 11; “Hot Springs Recalls Tugerson; May Hurl Against Sens,” Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger, May 20, 1953: sec. 2, 1. Leander Tugerson continued to pitch for the Smokies until suffering an arm injury that ended his season and his career in Organized Baseball. “L. Tugerson Out for Season,” The Sporting News, June 17, 1953: 36; Adelson, Brushing Back Jim Crow, 117.

13 “Bathers Ordered to Forfeit Game Because of Negro,” Hot Springs Sentinel-Record, May 21, 1953: 1; “Ump Forfeits Game To Jackson After Negro Put In Lineup,” Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger, May 21, 1953: sec. 1, 1; “CSL Controversy Cools Off As Spas Ship Player,” Monroe (La.) News-Star, May 22, 1953: 13; Emmett Maum, “Forfeit Over Use of Negro Revives Hot Springs Row,” The Sporting News, May 27, 1953: 13. Haraway claimed that the Bathers’ use of Tugerson would violate the April 14 agreement by which the club was readmitted to the league. See note 10. The Bathers challenged the forfeit, and on June 5 George Trautman set it aside and ordered that the game be rescheduled. He declared that the agreement conditioning the Bathers’ readmittance on dropping the Tugersons was not valid for the same reasons he set out in his April 15 ruling: each club is free to sign any player of its choice, regardless of race or color. Haraway appealed the decision to the National Association’s executive committee, which upheld Trautman. But the delaying tactic ensured the game would not be rescheduled and prevented the Bathers from bringing back Tugerson. “CSL ‘Pact’ Ruled Illegal; Bathers May Recall Negro,” Hot Springs Sentinel-Record, June 7, 1953: 12; “Game Forfeited Over Negro Pitcher Ordered Replayed,” The Sporting News, June 10, 1953: 11; “Cotton States Head Appeals Reversal of Forfeit Ruling,” The Sporting News, June 17, 1953: 35; “Tugerson Returns To Knoxville Today; Bathers Give Up Efforts To Play Him,” Hot Springs Sentinel-Record, July 17, 1953: 14; “Trautman Upheld in CS Ruling,” Shreveport Times, August 12, 1953: 12.

14 “Negro May File Suit Against Baseball Loop,” Hot Springs Sentinel-Record, May 22, 1953: 15; “Negro Hurler Sent Back to Knoxville; Plan[s] Suit,” Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger, May 22, 1953: sec. 2, 2; “Baseball Forfeit May Land in Court,” Detroit Free Press, May 22, 1953: 26.

15 Harold Harris, “Sports Static,” Knoxville Journal, May 31, 1953: B4.

16 “Bathers Ousted from CSL Over Negro Player Issue,” Hot Springs Sentinel-Record, April 7, 1953: 1 (joint statement of Lewis Goltz, Garrett Britt, and H.M. Britt).

17 John L. Ferguson, Arkansas Lives (Hopkinsville, Ky.: Historical Record Association, 1965), 213; J.P Friend, The Cotton States League, 1902-1951 (Blytheville, Ark.: Cotton States League, 1951), 8; “Haraway Named Head of Cotton States Loop,” Camden (Ark.) News, November 22, 1948: 6; “Al Haraway Dies Last Night In Helena Hospital,” Helena (Ark.) World, December 11, 1962: 1.

18 Henry Britt, son of Bathers minority owner H.M. Britt, practiced law in Hot Springs and was certainly well acquainted with Chesnutt.

19 “Retired Judge, Civic Leader Dies at 72 in Hot Springs,” Arkansas Gazette, January 1, 1989: 4B; Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory, Vol. 1 (Summit, N.J.: Martindale-Hubbell, Inc., 1953), 90.

20 Judith Kilpatrick, There When We Needed Him: Wiley Branton, Civil Rights Warrior (Fayetteville, Ark.: University of Arkansas Press, 2007), 54.

21 Constance Baker Motley, Equal Justice Under Law: An Autobiography (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998), 131-32.

22 The Supreme Court had long held that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits discrimination by state actors, not by private persons or businesses — e.g., Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883). Furthermore, the statute under which an equal protection claim would be asserted, 42 U.S. Code § 1983, excluded purely private conduct, as it imposed liability on persons who acted “under color of” state law in violating another’s federally protected rights. In addition, the Supreme Court had held that the power of Congress to enforce the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery and has no state action requirement, was limited to conduct that actually enslaved a person. Hodges v. United States, 203 U.S. 1 (1906). In that case, a group of White men had terrorized several black sawmill workers, forcing them to leave their jobs. The men were convicted under a under a federal criminal statute for preventing the workers from exercising their rights under 42 U.S. Code § 1981 “to make and enforce contracts” on the same basis as Whites — in this instance, to contract for their employment. The Supreme Court reversed the convictions, stating that “no mere personal assault … operates to reduce the individual to a condition of slavery.” 203 U.S. at 18.

23 Nisenbaum v. Milwaukee County, 333 F.3d 804, 809 (7th Cir. 2003). A good example is Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 392 U.S. 409 (1968), in which a married couple claimed that the defendant, a real estate developer, had refused to sell them a house because the husband was black. They alleged a violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1982, which gave all citizens the same rights as Whites “to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property.” The district court dismissed their complaint, and the court of appeals affirmed. The Supreme Court reversed the lower courts, overruled its previous decision in Hodges v. United States, 203 U.S. 1 (1906), and held that the plaintiffs were entitled to proceed under Section 1982.

24 R.S. Allen, Schoolboy: Jim Tugerson, Ace of the ‘53 Smokies (West Conshohocken, Penn.: Infinity Publishing, 2008), 74.

25 Andrew R. Dodge and Betty K. Koed (eds.), Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774-2005 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2005), 1586; “John E. Miller, Former U.S. Senator, Longtime Judge, Dies,” Arkansas Gazette, February 1, 1981: 14A. As prosecuting attorney, Miller played a role in a sordid chapter in Arkansas history. In the fall of 1919, upwards of 200 African Americans and five White men were killed in mob violence near the small town of Elaine in Phillips County, which borders the Mississippi River. The grand jury in Helena, the county seat, indicted more than 100 African American men with crimes ranging from nightriding to murder. Many had their charges dismissed, but 65 pled guilty after 12 men were convicted of murder by all-White juries and sentenced to death. The trials lasted less than an hour, the court-appointed defense lawyers, all of whom were White, did little on behalf of their clients, and jurors deliberated for minutes. All twelve were ultimately freed following appeals to the Arkansas Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court. See Ware v. State, 146 Ark. 321, 225 S.W. 626 (1920); Ware v. State, 159 Ark. 540, 252 S.W. 934 (1923); Moore v. Dempsey, 261 U.S. 86 (1923); Richard C. Cortner, A Mob Intent on Death: The NAACP and the Arkansas Riot Cases (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1988); Grif Stockley, Blood in Their Eyes: The Elaine Race Massacres of 1919 (Fayetteville, Ark.: University of Arkansas Press, 2001).

26 Complaint, Tugerson v. Haraway, 1-3. When it later appeared that the El Dorado club was operated as a sole proprietorship, Chesnutt amended the complaint to add Curtis Kinard, the owner of that team, as an individual defendant. Amended Complaint, Tugerson v. Haraway (August 27, 1953), 1. The other seven clubs were organized as corporations.

27 Complaint, Tugerson v. Haraway, 7.

28 Complaint, Tugerson v. Haraway, 7-8. The statutes were codified as 42 U.S. Code §§ 1981, 1982, 1983, 1985 & 1986 (1952) and are since unchanged, with the exception of relatively minor revisions in Section 1983. The inclusion of Section 1982 in the complaint was undoubtedly an oversight, as it provides for equal rights in the sale and purchase of property and had no application in Tugerson’s case.

Because the complaint stated claims for relief based on federal law and alleged damages of $50,000, the court had subject matter jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S. Code § 1331 (1952). Jurisdiction of the subject matter is the authority of a court to decide a particular type of case. The federal courts have limited subject matter jurisdiction, defined by Article III of the U.S. Constitution and implemented by federal statutes. Section 1331 conferred jursidiction in civil cases in which “the matter in controversy exceeds the sum or value of $3,000, exclusive of interests and costs, and arises under the Constitution, laws or treaties of the United States.” (Congress eliminated the amount-in-controversy requirement in 1980.) A separate statute granted jurisdiction, irrespective of the amount in controversy, over claims for deprivation of rights “secured by the Constitution … or by any Act of Congress providing for equal rights.” 28 U.S. Code § 1343(3) (1952). Paragraphs (1) and (2) of this statute provided for jurisdiction over an action to recover damages from conspiracies to deprive a person of his or her civil rights. These provisions remain in effect and now appear in 28 U.S. Code § 1343(a)(1)-(3).

29 Amended Complaint, Tugerson v. Haraway (August 27, 1953), 1. The Arkansas Supreme Court had long court had long allowed recovery of damages for wrongful interference with contractual relationships. E.g., Hogue v. Sparks, 146 Ark. 174, 225 S.W. 291 (1920); Mahoney v. Roberts, 86 Ark. 130, 110 S.W. 225 (1908). The court also recognized civil liability for conspiracy. E.g., Stewart v. Hedrick, 205 Ark. 1063, 172 S.W.2d 416 (1943). Although Tugerson’s suit had been brought in federal court, Judge Miller was obligated to follow these decisions to resolve the portion of the case based on state law. Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64 (1938).

The state law claim fell within the court’s subject matter jurisdiction under 28 U.S. Code § 1332(a) (1952), which provided that district courts had jursidction “of all civil actions wherein the matter in controversy exceeds the sum or value of $3,000, exclusive of interests and costs, and is between … citizens of different states.” (The amount is now $75,000.) Tugerson was a citizen of Florida, no defendant was a citizen of that state, and the complaint alleged damages well in excess of $3,000.

30 Complaint, Tugerson v. Haraway, 8.

31 Complaint, Tugerson v. Haraway, 9.

32 The Jackson Senators, for example, retained James M. McHaney of Little Rock, a Columbia Law School graduate who, as a prosecutor at Nuremberg, sent Nazi doctors to the gallows for conducting medical experiments on concentration camp inmates. Robert M. Thomas, Jr., “James M. McHaney Dies at 76; Prosecuted Nazis at Nuremberg,” New York Times, April 26, 1995: 25. The Cotton States League and Al Haraway were represented by J. Graham Burke of Helena, a graduate of Vanderbilt Law School who specialized in commercial law and the legal issues concerning flood control along the Mississippi River. “J. Graham Burke, Helena, Dies at 70,” Arkansas Gazette, July 24, 1962: 9B. Jay W. Dickey of Pine Bluff, the lawyer for that city’s team, represented major insurance companies and had recently completed a 10-year term on the University of Arkansas Board of Trustees during which the law and medical schools had accepted their first black students. “Funerals/Deaths: Jay W. Dickey Sr., 81, Senior Law Partner in PB,” Arkansas Democrat, June 11, 1988: 4B; Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory, Vol. 1 (Summit, N.J.: Martindale-Hubbell, Inc., 1953), 112.

33 Rule 12(b)(6), Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

34 Venue is the geographical area where a suit may be brought. Unlike jurisdiction, which goes to the power and authority of the court, venue requirements reflect a legislative determination that a particular location is convenient for the litigants. In 1953, a suit asserting claims under federal law could be brought only in the federal district where all the defendants resided. 28 U.S. Code § 1391(b) (1952). If multiple defendants resided in different districts of the same state, or in different divisions of the same district, the suit could be brought in any division in which any defendant resided. 28 U.S. Code §§ 1392(a), 1393(b) (1952). For venue purposes, a corporation was deemed to reside in any judicial district in which it was incorporated, licensed to do business, or doing business. 28 U.S. Code § 1391(c) (1952).

35 Tugerson’s suit was brought in the Hot Springs Division of the Western District of Arkansas. The Hot Springs club, an Arkansas corporation, was a resident of that district and division. Some courts held that a company incorporated in a given state could be sued in any federal judicial district and division in the state, given that a state certificate of incorporation recognizes the corporation’s right to conduct business throughout the state. Other courts, however, took the position that a domestic corporation could be sued only in the division where it maintained its principal office, unless it also did business in another division. Under either approach, venue as to the Bathers lay in the Hot Springs Division. Venue was proper as to the Pine Bluff club under the first approach but not necessarily under the second, which turned on the court’s application of the “doing business” test, discussed in note 36. Regardless, the Pine Bluff club could be sued in the Hot Springs Division because the Bathers resided there. 28 U.S. Code § 1393(b) (1952). That was also the case with respect to Curtis Kinard, sole proprietor of the El Dorado Oilers, and CSL president Al Haraway. Kinard lived in El Dorado, which is in the Western District but not in the Hot Springs division. Haraway lived in Helena, Arkansas, which is located in the Eastern District.

Venue was improper with respect the officials from the Mississippi clubs and to the Cotton States League. The club officials named as defendants were Robert O. May of Greenville, Tom Glennon and John Junkin of Natchez, and C.B. Rawlings of Meridian. The plaintiff’s complaint acknowledged that the men resided in those cities. Complaint, Tugerson v. Haraway, 3. The CSL was an unincorporated association with its headquarters in Greenville. Complaint, 1. Judge Miller had previously ruled, consistent with decisions by other courts, that an unincorporated association resided for venue purposes where its principal office was located. McNutt v. United Gas, Coke & Chemical Workers of America, 108 F. Supp. 871 (W.D. Ark. 1952). Years later, the Supreme Court held otherwise, ruling that an unincorporated association resides in any judicial district where it is doing business. Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad Co. v. Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, 387 U.S. 556 (1967).

36 The four Mississippi clubs and the team from Louisiana were corporations organized under the laws of those states. None had obtained a license to transact business in Arkansas. Accordingly, they would be deemed to “reside” in the Hot Springs Division of the Western District of Arkansas only if they were “doing business” there. 28 U.S. Code § 1391(c) (1952). There was no precise formula for determining the amount of corporate activity required to constitute doing business. Relevant factors included the nature and scope of the corporation’s business operations, the extent of its activities in the district, and the continuity of those activities. However, a single transaction or casual activity in the district, such as an isolated sale or limited advertising, was not sufficient. The five out-of-state teams seem to have conducted more than casual activities within the Hot Springs Division. During the course of the 1953 season, not including the playoffs, each of them played nine games in Hot Springs: three two-game series and one three-game series. “1953 Official Cotton States League Schedule,” Greenville (Miss.) Delta Democrat-Times, March 8, 1953: 7. The players, managers, and any other personnel spent at least one night in a local hotel on each trip and presumably patronized restaurants and other businesses. The visiting teams may have shared in the gate receipts, although this is not certain. Later cases involving sports teams held in similar circumstances that teams in professional leagues were “doing business” in a district when they made scheduled trips there on a regular basis. E.g., American Football League v. National Football League, 27 F.R.D. 264 (D. Md. 1961).

37 Personal jurisdiction is the power of the court to ascertain and enforce personal obligations, e.g., to decide that breach of a contract resulted in economic loss or that negligent operation of an automobile caused injury. To decide these matters and issue an enforceable judgment, the court must have jurisdiction of the person who is to be declared liable. The states have enacted statutes designed to subject out-of-state corporations the personal jurisdiction to their courts under certain circumstances, and these statutes typically apply in federal court proceedings. A 1947 Arkansas statute, since repealed, asserted personal jurisdiction over foreign corporations that “do any business or perform any character of work” in the state with respect to claims that arose from that business or work. Ark. Stat. § 27-340 (1947). Even if that statute applied to the defendants, the court was required to consider whether the exercise of jurisdiction over them would be consistent with the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court had held that a defendant must have “minimum contacts” with the state where the plaintiff brought suit and, except in unusual circumstances, that the plaintiff’s claim for relief must have arisen from those contacts. International Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310 (1945); Perkins v. Benguet Consolidated Mining Corp., 342 U.S. 437 (1952).

The problem for Tugerson was the same under both the state and constitutional requirements: his claims did not appear to arise from the clubs’ activities in Arkansas. Each played 27 regular-season games in Arkansas in 1953, nine games against each of the three Arkansas teams. Tugerson’s claims, however, stemmed not from those contests but from action taken by the league directors at meetings in Greenville, Mississippi, on April 6 and 14. One might argue that the forfeited game in Arkansas on May 20 occurred at the direction of CSL president Haraway, an Arkansas resident, but his action was based on action taken at the April 14 meeting. See notes 8, 10, and 13.

38 Milliken v. Meyer, 311 U.S. 457 (1940).

39 A month after the suit was filed, the National Association’s executive committee upheld George Trautman’s ruling that set aside Haraway’s forfeit of the game that Tugerson was to pitch. See note 13. This decision appeared to settle the authority of individual clubs, as a baseball matter, to employ players of their choosing, regardless of race. Of course, it lacked the force of a court order such as the injunction that Tugerson sought.

40 “Knoxville Takes MSL Playoffs Over Twins,” Knoxville News-Sentinel, September 8, 1953: 15.

41 Opinion, Tugerson v. Haraway (September 11, 1953): 19. See also “Federal Judge Drops Civil Rights Portion of Negro Hurler’s Suit,” Hot Springs Sentinel-Record, September 12, 1953: 8; “District Judge Rules CS Action Not a Violation,” Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger, September 12, 1953: 9; Maurice Moore, “Court Dismisses Negro Player’s Civil Rights Suit,” The Sporting News, September 23, 1953: 11. Tugerson’s initial reaction was to appeal. “I’m convinced I have a good case,” he said, “and I have authorized my lawyer to appeal Judge Miller’s decision. I believe I am right.” Tugerson loses first round will appeal,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 19, 1953: 16.

42 Opinion, Tugerson v. Haraway, 20.

43 Opinion, Tugerson v. Haraway, 20, 22.

44 Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath, 341 U.S. 123 (1950); Harris v. Capehart-Farnsworth Corp., 207 F.2d 512 (8th Cir. 1953).

45 Opinion, Tugerson v. Haraway, 14 (emphasis original).

46 Opinion, Tugerson v. Haraway, 16.

47 Opinion, Tugerson v. Haraway, 17.

48 203 U.S. 1 (1906).

49 Opinion, Tugerson v. Haraway, 18.

50 341 U.S. 651 (1951). The Supreme Court overruled Hardyman in Griffin v. Breckenridge, 403 U.S. 88 (1971).

51 Opinion, Tugerson v. Haraway, 15, quoting Hardyman, 341 U.S. at 661, and Downie v. Powers, 193 F.2d 760, 760 (10th Cir. 1951).

52 Robeson v. Fanelli, 94 F. Supp. 62 (S.D.N.Y. 1950). Numerous later cases so hold. E.g., Dowsey v. Wilkins, 467 F.2d 1022 (5th Cir. 1972); Mollnow v. Carlton, 716 F.2d 626 (9th Cir. 1983).

53 Opinion, Tugerson v. Haraway, 21-22. Venue is discussed in notes 34-36, personal jurisdiction in note 37.

54 Opinion, Tugerson v. Haraway, 22. Service of process — i.e., a summons and copy of the plaintiff’s complaint — is the mechanism by which notice of the suit is given to the defendant. Without proper service, the court does not acquire personal jurisdiction over the defendant. The El Dorado club was mistakenly sued as a corporation, and service was made, ineffectively, on its business manager. Curtis Kinard, the club’s sole proprietor, was named as a defendant in an amended complaint, see note 26, but he had not been served. As Judge Miller pointed out, the dismissal of all claims against the Hot Springs club meant that “there is no properly served defendant residing in the Hot Springs Division, or the Western District of Arkansas, unless the Court should hold that some or all of the corporate defendants are doing business therein and consequently are residents thereof for venue purposes.” Opinion, Tugerson v. Haraway, 23. With respect to the venue issues, see notes 34-36.

55 “Dallas Club Buys Big Jim Tugerson,” Knoxville Journal,” December 2, 1953: 9. The deal was announced two days after former St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Paul Dean purchased the Bathers. “Paul Dean Buys Hot Springs Club,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 30, 1953: 5D.

56 Order, Tugerson v. Haraway (December 8, 1953); “Tugerson Drops Suit Against CSL,” Arkansas Democrat, December 8, 1953: 24; “Tugerson Drops Civil Rights Suit Against Cotton States,” Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger, December 9, 1953: sec. 2, 4.

57 Luther A. Huston, “Administration Urges High Court to Outlaw Segregation in Schools,” New York Times, December 9, 1953: 1.

58 Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).

59 Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 392 U.S. 409 (1968) (upholding 42 U.S.C. § 1982).

60 Johnson v. Railway Express Agency, Inc., 421 U.S. 454 (1975) (upholding 42 U.S.C. § 1981). Sections 1981 and 1982 were both derived from the Civil Rights Act of 1866, Act of April 9, 1866, ch. 31, § 1, 14 Stat. 27.

61 The Civil Rights Act of 1964, Pub. L. 88-352, 78 Stat. 241. Title VII of the Act, codified at 42 U.S. Code § 2000e et seq., addresses discrimination in employment.

62 Steve Treder, “The Persistent Color Line: Specific Instances of Racial Preference in Major League Evaluation Decisions after 1947,” Nine: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, vol. 10, no. 1 (Fall 2001): 1-30.

Malone pitched five years for the Red Sox in the 1970s, earning his nickname as a relief specialist.5 He bought Cheers during a sober moment6 in either 1975 or 1976 from Gus O’Malley.7 Malone employed his former coach, Ernie Pantusso, as a bartender; Pantusso had coached him in Double-A ball with Pawtucket and in the majors.8

In 1986, Malone admitted, “I drank myself out of baseball and out of a marriage.”9 The following year, he added that “a whirlwind romance” led to the marriage, which “turned out to be a disaster.”10 During his baseball days, the press did not treat him well because of the drinking.11

Malone carried a talisman inspiring him to refrain from drinking, no matter how great the temptation — a beer bottle cap from the last alcohol he ever drank. But in an act of generosity, he gave it to struggling Red Sox hurler Rick Walker as a good luck charm in 1982; Walker got three saves and two wins in two weeks before losing the lucky item in Kansas City. Now without it, Malone thought he was jinxed because of a series of unfortunate events, including the inability to perform his “bar slide” — sending a mug of beer at a 90-degree angle to a waiting patron. When he and his future on-again, off-again girlfriend — and Cheers waitress — Diane Chambers were alone, he poured a bottle; on the verge of drinking, he did the slide successfully and kept the bottle cap as a new lucky charm.12

The Malone family’s life in America began with the great-grandfather who came from County Cork to Boston and refused to change his name in the face of bigotry and “No Irish Need Apply” signs.13

Even though he reached the major leagues, Malone always felt inferior to his brother, Derek, an international lawyer with his own plane, a fantastic singing voice, and the ability to tap dance; “trick pool shots” were also in his repertoire.14 Derek also spoke four languages; when the Malone brothers were younger, they shared a bunk bed and were closer.15 Malone admitted that it “seems like my whole life I’ve been trying to get out from under his shadow.”16

Malone’s relationship with his parents was also complicated. In the 1980s, there was a three-year period where he didn’t speak with them.17 And yet his father had a workshop in the house, which caused Malone “to love the smell of sawdust.”18

Because he was recruited to Class A in his senior year, Malone never finished high school. So in 1985, he went to night class with Pantusso, who also needed credits to get his diploma. Initially, Malone reverted to his “Don Juan” approach to life and slept with the teacher. When he broke up with her to earn a grade on his own, he studied with Pantusso and got a D in his geography class, sufficient to get the diploma. Pantusso got an A.19

Malone called his early baseball career the “best time of my life.” When the righthander was 19, he and his best friend Buck, a teammate in the minors, hitchhiked on Route 66. Buck got in the Hall of Fame but hadn’t talked to Sam since then, for no apparent reason.20 Malone estimated that he flew 200,000 miles when he played baseball.21

There were moments of greatness in Malone’s career, including striking out Norm Cash, Al Kaline, and Bill Freehan with the tying run on second in a game against the Tigers.22 But Malone said that his greatest day on the mound came during a doubleheader against the Orioles in 1972, when he saved both games in the ninth inning on seven pitches. A few years before his death in 1985, Pantusso said “the most exciting thing I ever saw” involving Malone was not his performance in the outings against Baltimore, but an Opening Day game in New York when he gave up a grand slam to Bobby Murcer.23

But there’s a conflict — Malone later said that his first major-league save came on August 5, 1973 in Baltimore during a doubleheader on a “sweltering day.”24

Still, Malone’s prowess earned the respect of an obnoxious Yankees fan named Eddie, who was prone to gloating at Cheers after the Bronx Bombers beat the Red Sox. Eddie allowed that Malone had a “darn good hard slider.”25 A colleague of Cheers patron and psychiatrist Frasier Crane remarked that Malone faced Reggie Jackson and “made him look like a fool” by striking him out; Malone acknowledged the tribute but also noted that Jackson smacked a line drive next time up and knocked him off the mound.26

On July 14, 1975, Malone delivered a formidable performance when he pitched three innings against the Orioles. But it was a low point for his public image because excessive drinking caused him to mistake the Orioles mascot for a huge mutant bird; he threw a fastball that gave the mascot a concussion.27

Cheers regular Norm Peterson said in 1982 that Malone “used to be one of the best pitchers in baseball.”28 But in 1990, he had a different take. When longtime Cheers waitress Carla Tortelli LeBec mentions that the Red Sox often called on Malone and his “slider of death” in pressure situations, Peterson responded that Malone usually gave up a three-run homer. The Red Sox teammates nicknamed the pitch.29

Indeed, Malone’s mound performance was uneven. In 1989, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Crowe visited Cheers and recognized the ex-pitcher. “Nobody gives up towering home runs like Sam Malone. I wish our missiles flew as high and as far.”

A few years after he retired, Malone attempted a new career as advertising pitch man in the early 1980s. His agent was a forward, sophisticated woman about 15 years his senior who specialized in male athletes, preferably younger ones. Not surprisingly, Malone had an affair with her. She got him a commercial for Field’s Light Beer with former Boston teammate Luis Tiant. Even though she procured an offer for Malone to do a national commercial with The Osmonds, he broke up with her because he didn’t like her continued expectation of sex; he was used to being the pursuer in his affairs and flings. Ironically, she dropped him as a client because, in her view, a past intimate relationship with a client could be harmful to conducting business.30

Around this time, former roommate and battery mate Tom Kenderson revealed, to Malone’s surprise, that he was gay in an autobiography titled Catcher’s Mask.31

Malone’s ultra-competitive spirit overtook his penchant for women during a charity softball game in either 1984 or 1985 against Playboy bunnies — one of them crowded the plate, so the ex-major leaguer brushed her back. With 17 strikeouts and a 7-0 score, Malone felt the urge to get back into baseball until Cheers waitress and Malone’s on again, off again paramour Diane Chambers opined that Malone’s fear of losing drove him to drink and drinking ended his career. Malone revealed to her that his parents were tough on him; when he pitched a two-hitter in high school, his father harped on the two hits.32

Malone got a comeuppance of sorts in 1986, when he donated one of his old Red Sox jerseys (#16) for a charity public television auction. After he found out that Chambers bid $100, he asked her to take back the bid. When nobody bid on it the second time around, he imitated a woman on the phone and offered $200, only to call again and retract the offer. Somebody — not a baseball fan — then offered $300, bought the jersey, and returned it to Malone because the jersey’s continued resurfacing at the auction annoyed him.33

In 1987, Sam got the chance to be a substitute sports anchor for baseball pal Dave Richards.34 Using a clichéd newscaster voice, his bland commentaries addressed being nicer at Fenway Park, artificial turf vs. natural grass, and rap music to reach younger viewers.

After 15 years, Malone reconnected with umpire Doug Aducci in 1990. “One of the best damn umpires in the American League,” described Malone. They reminisced about the last time Malone played in front of him — a Yankees-Red Sox game in 1975. In the ninth inning, Aducci awarded a walk to Thurman Munson; Chris Chambliss came up next and hit a home run. Malone said that Aducci had called the ball-four pitch to Munson a strike on Roy White; by force of habit, they started arguing and Aducci ejected Malone from the bar. Then the former umpire admitted it may have been a strike and implied that his divorce distracted him.35

Malone’s former rival Dutch Kincaid, a Yankees slugger, came to Cheers in 1991 to ask the hurler for a favor — pitch to him on Dutch Kincaid Day at Yankee Stadium. But it was a setup; Kincaid’s talent manager wanted Malone to serve up a home run ball during a ceremonial at bat. At first, Malone ignored the request because he wanted retribution for the past; he acceded when a kid claiming to be Kincaid’s grandson asked him. It was, however, a ruse — the talent manager sent the kid to pretend he’s the grandson. Kincaid knew what happened and returned to Cheers asking for Malone’s best. So, they went in the street where Kincaid smacked Malone’s pitches at least 226 times.36

In 1992, Malone tried a comeback with the Red Sox farm team in New Britain, Connecticut. After a good outing he revealed to Carla, “I don’t think I like baseball anymore.” While his younger teammates reveled in the victory and wanted to celebrate, Malone realized that baseball’s post-game shenanigans no longer held appeal.37

Malone’s success with women would have put Casanova to shame, especially during his playing days; he referred to himself as the “Cy Young of skirt chasers,”38 once dated Miss Tennessee,39 and claimed to have slept with more than 1,000 women.40

His sexual track record was the basis of idolatry by the Cheers barflies — primarily know-it-all postman Cliff Clavin and beer-guzzling accountant Peterson. In 1984, one dalliance turned nearly fatal when the woman’s husband threatened Malone with a gun. Malone said he didn’t know she was married because he doesn’t date married women; after persuading the cuckolded husband to give him the gun, Malone shot himself in the backside.41 His sexual prowess went global by 1990 — a Frenchman said that airline stewardesses talk about him.42

Malone asserted that his first sexual experience was in the sixth grade with a school crossing guard.43 Perhaps that led to a subconscious attitude of not discriminating against older women — in addition to his commercial agent, Malone slept with one of Cheers manager Rebecca Howe’s former college professors, apparently in her late 60s. “When the lights go out, everybody’s the same age and nobody’s lonely,”44 said the ex-ballplayer. From 1971 to at least 1991, Malone met a woman named Lauren — seemingly about 20 years older — each year on Valentine’s Day. This arrangement presumably excluded the time he dated Diane.45

But age caught up to Malone in the late 1980s, when he dated Erin, a gorgeous, younger blonde who was active in tennis, biking, running, skiing. Even though he was a former pro athlete, she didn’t think that he was on her physical level. Exhausted from the pace of her lifestyle, Malone planned to end the relationship, then decided otherwise when Erin promised him a bubble bath and lying in bed. But Malone collapsed from tiredness on the stairs that lead from Cheers to Beacon Street.46

Malone’s most impactful relationship was with Chambers. When they broke up in 1984, Malone relapsed into drinking and started dating waitress replacements; there were eight of them in six months. Chambers was not unscathed either. She returned from a sanitarium after having a nervous breakdown;47 Malone started going to AA.48

In 1986, Malone began dating Janet Eldridge, a city councilwoman running for reelection; it had the promise of a substantive relationship — the combination of a rising politician and sports celebrity gave Boston a new power couple.49 Plus, it opened up new connections for Malone: he bonded with Senator Gary Hart — a 1984 candidate for the Democratic nomination for president — in a game of Trivial Pursuit because his knowledge of sports gave them an edge. Late one night at Cheers, Eldridge asked Malone to fire Chambers; his previous one-year relationship with the intellectual, sometimes snobby waitress made the aspiring politician insecure. Malone’s relationship with Chambers had been his longest to that point in his life. Chambers overheard them and quit.50

When Chambers disrupted a press conference and asked whether marriage was in the future after the six-week relationship for the councilwoman and the ex-jock, a reporter followed up the question, which irritated Malone. It devolved into a farce with mocking facial gestures and Chambers squirting Malone with a water pistol.

Seeing that a spark remained between Malone and Chambers, Eldridge broke up with Malone and told him that he needed to grow up and make a commitment, something lacking in their own relationship. Realizing that he was pushing 40 and still alone, Malone called up Chambers and asked her to marry him.51

His attraction to the intellectually curious Chambers — she often read serious literature during her breaks at the bar — led to the altar in 1987, but he stopped the wedding because she had a chance to publish her novel. They agreed to six months apart so she could finish writing it; Chambers never got it published and did not return to Malone’s life until years later.

In 1989, Malone dated a psychiatrist who said, “You’re an aging Lothario who uses sex to cover up massive insecurity, a fear of true intimacy, fear of a relationship, and quite frankly not only a fear of dying but a fear of living, too.”52 In 1993, an argument with Howe exposed a harsh truth to Sam — he’s a cliché who’s the subject of women’s ridicule behind his back. Although Howe took back her words — presumably to soothe his feelings and not from sincerity — the ex-jock confronted his sex addiction and attended at least one group therapy session.53

Soon after this realization, the Malone-Chambers dynamic reemerged. Upon receiving his telegram congratulating her for winning the 1993 Cable Ace Award — Best Writing in a Movie or Miniseries for The Heart Held Hostage — Chambers called her old flame and returned to Boston. While they each pretended to be happily married with children, their respective charades were exposed. Immediately, they rekindled their romance and headed toward marriage again, then realized that they’re ultimately not right for each other.54

In 1995, Malone left his fiancée, Sheila — whom he met during a sexual-addiction group meeting — at the altar after a six-month relationship. Apparently, Malone felt overwhelming guilt for having sex with another woman twice on the day they got engaged. But Sheila had also been unfaithful — she slept with two Cheers regulars.55

Malone’s initial ownership of Cheers lasted from the O’Malley deal in the mid-1970s to 1987 — After the aborted wedding to Chambers, Malone sold Cheers to the Lillian Corporation, which then made the bartenders and waitresses dress in striped shirts, green vests, name tags, and bowties. Malone’s venture to sail around the world failed — the boat sank in the Caribbean. To help him get a bartending job at Cheers, his friends conspired to win a bet with bartender Wayne, who had claimed he could make any drink. If Wayne couldn’t fill a drink order, he would leave Cheers and Malone would get his job. When several patrons ordered a Screaming Viking — a fictional drink — Wayne left in frustration.

Admitting that Cheers is “closest thing I have to a real home,” Malone got hired as a relief bartender. But Howe’s boss thought it would be effective to have him full time because his celebrity would be, as Malone argued, a lure for customers.56 Malone’s athletic background prompted the corporation to make him Eastern Regional Sales Manager. The promotion filled Malone with pride — he called his father whom he hadn’t talked to in three years and then remarked to Howe, “For the first time ever, he told me how proud he was of me.” She then revealed the truth — the promotion was in name only; Malone got the job because they needed him to pitch on the company softball team in the league playoffs. Malone left the hollow position for his bartending job.57

In October 1989, Malone got a bank loan to buy a bar on the waterfront and call it Sam’s Place. Howe’s boyfriend and business magnate Robin Colcord convinced Malone it was a bad investment, persuaded him to pursue his real dream of owning Cheers again, and offered to help get Malone out of the deal. But it was an act of avarice, not altruism — Colcord owned adjacent real estate and bought the waterfront site with the goal of redeveloping the area with a high-rise apartment building and commercial real estate. It was an idea that Malone had mentioned — and perhaps unwittingly planted — during their conversation.58

Later that year, Malone had a meeting with corporate executives about buying back Cheers. To raise money, he agreed to sail Colcord’s boat in the Cape Cod Regatta — first prize was $10,000. When he, Peterson, and LeBec discovered a bomb on the boat intended for Colcord, they sailed to an inlet and the bomb exploded. Colcord wanted Sam to sign release forms absolving him of any liability for injuries and offered $50,000 plus $10,000 in stock options. Though Malone needed the money for the bar, his integrity won out. Human life and dignity prevailed over the money.”59

Malone did not harbor a grudge, though — he accepted Colcord’s invitation to a Carl Yastrzemski testimonial dinner with Howe also attending. Colcord offered a $1,000 fee for a tutorial on baseball so he could talk with a modicum of understanding about the game with the Hall of Famer. But when Colcord and Howe got aroused in the limo on the way to the testimonial, they dumped Malone out on the road.60

In 1990, Malone’s fortunes turned on goodness. Colcord proposed to Howe right before she was ready to inform the company brass that he got inside information from her computer without her knowledge. Colcord’s hostile takeover plans came to naught, though. When company executive Jim Montgomery told Malone that he planned to call the authorities because of Howe’s suspicious computer activity, Malone revealed that Colcord was the culprit.61 Colcord got indicted and went to prison; he and Howe never married but continued a relationship. As a gesture of gratitude, the board of directors offered the bar to Malone for $1; he could only scrounge up 85 cents from the patrons. Montgomery accepted the reduced payment.”62

Malone and Howe tried to have a baby together, without marriage.63 Their efforts were unsuccessful. In September, 1992, she burned part of the bar and Melville’s by throwing cigarette in trash before leaving for the night. Malone had a $25,000 insurance deductible and the banks wouldn’t give him a loan. His backup strategy included cashing in his baseball pension, maximizing his credit cards, moving to a cheaper apartment, and selling his prized Corvette.

Furious, Malone kicked Howe out of Cheers. She returned with an envelope that represented her checking account, savings account, and other money that she raised. Realizing that Howe gave him a break five years before when he had no money and no job, Malone hired her back. Malone’s neighbor Kirby bought the Corvette,64 a red 1964 model.65

Later that year, Kirby died from a heart attack; Sam met his widow, Susan, and began spending time with her in hopes of getting the car back at a good price. Instead, she gave him the keys. But when the car got four dings in a week, guilt overwhelmed him — he offered a down payment of the fair market value. When he came to her kindergarten class and tried to apologize, Susan made him sit in the class doghouse, where liars go to learn a lesson. But she forgave him and exchanged the car for the down payment.66

During a retrospective conversation at Cheers the night he and Chambers went their separate ways in 1993, Malone had an epiphany. After Clavin, LeBec, Crane, and Woody Boyd (Pantusso’s successor as bartender) had left, only Peterson remained. Before departing, he told Sam, “You can never be unfaithful to your one true love. You always come back to her.” At first, Malone didn’t know who that was. Then, alone in the dark, he realized that it was Cheers, and proclaimed himself to be “the luckiest son of a bitch on Earth.”67

Author’s note

This SABR “biography” is based on the author’s screening of all 270 episodes of Cheers on Netflix and treats the baseball information in the dialogue as factual. No attempt has been made to fact-check statistics or information about players and games. Cheers aired on NBC from 1982-1993; the Malone character made a guest appearance on Frasier in 1995.

This story is limited to the information in those episodes. There’s no indication whether the show referred to fictional participation by Malone in the 1975 American League playoffs and World Series. Any attempt at including Pantusso’s baseball career and more information about Malone would have gone beyond the goal of capturing sufficient information for this account. In addition, there is no information regarding cast interviews or television critics because that would have interfered with the goal of treating the fictional Malone as a real player.

Acknowledgments

This article was reviewed by Rory Costello and Joe DeSantis.

Notes

1 St. Elsewhere, “Cheers,” MTM Television, NBC, March 27, 1985.

2 Cheers, “Bad Neighbor Sam,” Paramount Television, NBC, November 15, 1990.

3 Cheers, “The Stork Brings a Crane,” Paramount Television, NBC, November 2, 1989.

4 Cheers, “Diane’s Nightmare,” Paramount Television, NBC, October 31, 1985.

5 Cheers, “Relief Bartender,” Paramount Television, NBC, March 27, 1986.

6 Cheers, “Give Me a Ring Sometime,” Paramount Television, NBC, September 30, 1982.

7 Cheers, “The Last Picture Show,” Paramount Television, NBC, February 25, 1993.

8 Cheers, “Give Me a Ring Sometime,” Paramount Television, NBC, September 30, 1982.

9 Cheers, “Young Dr. Weinstein,” Paramount Television, NBC, November 13, 1986.

10 Cheers, “The Godfather: Part III,” Paramount Television, NBC, March 19, 1987.

11 Cheers, “Bar Bet,” Paramount Television, NBC, February 14, 1985.

12 Cheers, “Endless Slumper,” Paramount Television, NBC, December 2, 1982.

13 Cheers, “Unplanned Parenthood,” Paramount Television, NBC, October 24, 1991.

14 Cheers, “Showdown: Part 1,” Paramount Television, NBC, March 24, 1983.

15 Cheers, “The Art of the Steal,” Paramount Television, NBC, November 30, 1989.

16 Cheers, “Paint Your Office,” Paramount Television, NBC, November 5, 1987.

17 Cheers, “The Sam in the Grey Flannel Suit,” Paramount Television, NBC, March 3, 1988.

18 Cheers, “A House Is Not a Home,” Paramount Television, NBC, April 30, 1987.

19 Cheers, “Teacher’s Pet,” Paramount Television, NBC, January 31, 1985.

20 Cheers, “Get Your Kicks on Route 666,” Paramount Television, NBC, September 26, 1991.

21 Cheers, “Airport V,” Paramount Television, NBC, February 25, 1988.

22 Cheers, “Give Me a Ring Sometime,” Paramount Television, NBC, September 30, 1982.

23 Cheers, “Sam at Eleven,” Paramount Television, NBC, October 21, 1982.

24 Cheers, “Simon Says,” Paramount Television, NBC, March 5, 1987.

25 Cheers, “The Tortelli Tort,” Paramount Television, NBC, October 14, 1982.

26 Cheers, “The Visiting Lecher,” Paramount Television, NBC, May 4, 1989.

27 Cheers, “Norm’s Big Audit,” Paramount Television, NBC, January 14, 1993.

28 Cheers, “Give Me a Ring Sometime,” Paramount Television, NBC, September 30, 1982.

29 Cheers, “Indoor Fun with Sammy and Robby,” Paramount Television, NBC, February 22, 1990.

30 Cheers, “Now Pitching, Sam Malone,” Paramount Television, NBC, January 6, 1983.

31 Cheers, “The Boys in the Bar,” Paramount Television, NBC, January 27, 1983.

32 Cheers, “King of the Hill,” Paramount Television, NBC, January 24, 1985.

33 Cheers, “Take My Shirt…Please,” Paramount Television, NBC, January 9, 1986.

34 Cheers, “I on Sports,” Paramount Television, NBC, October 1, 1987.

35 Cheers, “Breaking in Is Hard To Do,” Paramount Television, NBC, November 1, 1990.

36 Cheers, “Pitch It Again, Sam,” Paramount Television, NBC, March 28, 1991.

37 Cheers, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” Paramount Television, NBC, March 26, 1992.

38 Cheers, “Executive Sweet,” Paramount Television, NBC, November 10, 1988.

39 Cheers, “How To Marry a Mailman,” Paramount Television, NBC, October 19, 1989.

40 Cheers, “The Improbable Dream: Part 1,” Paramount Television, NBC, September 21, 1989.

41 Cheers, “Sam Turns the Other Cheek,” Paramount Television, NBC, November 1, 1984.

42 Cheers, “Woody Interruptus,” Paramount Television, NBC, December 13, 1990.

43 Cheers, “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before,” Paramount Television, NBC, February 11, 1988.

44 Cheers, “Sammy and the Professor,” Paramount Television, NBC, January 4, 1990.

45 Cheers, “Sam Time Next Year,” Paramount Television, NBC, February 14, 1991.

46 Cheers, “Don’t Paint Your Chickens,” Paramount Television, NBC, February 23, 1989.

47 Cheers, “Rebound: Part 1,” Paramount Television, NBC, September 27, 1984.

48 Cheers, “Rebound: Part 2,” Paramount Television, NBC, October 4, 1984.

49 Cheers, “Strange Bedfellows: Part 1,” Paramount Television, NBC, May 1, 1986.

50 Cheers, “Strange Bedfellows: Part 2,” Paramount Television, NBC, May 8, 1986.

51 Cheers, “Strange Bedfellows: Part 3,” Paramount Television, NBC, May 15, 1986.

52 Cheers, “What’s Up, Doc?,” Paramount Television, NBC, March 30, 1989.

53 Cheers, “The Guy Can’t Help It,” Paramount Television, NBC, May 13, 1993.

54 Cheers, “One for the Road,” Paramount Television, NBC, May 20, 1993.

55 Frasier, “The One Where Sam Shows Up,” Paramount Television, NBC, February 21, 1995.

56 Cheers, “Home Is the Sailor,” Paramount Television, NBC, September 24, 1987.

57 Cheers, “The Sam in the Grey Flannel Suit,” Paramount Television, NBC, March 3, 1988.

58 Cheers, “A Bar Is Born,” Paramount Television, NBC, October 12, 1989.

59 Cheers, “Sam Ahoy,” Paramount Television, NBC, December 14, 1989.

60 Cheers, “Finally!: Part 1,” Paramount Television, NBC, January 25, 1990.

61 Cheers, “Cry Hard,” Paramount Television, NBC, April 26, 1990.

62 Cheers, “Cry Harder,” Paramount Television, NBC, May 3, 1990.

63 Cheers, “Baby Balk,” Paramount Television, NBC, September 19, 1991.

64 Cheers, “Little Match Girl,” Paramount Television, NBC, September 24, 1992.

65 Cheers, “Rebecca’s Lover…Not,” Paramount Television, NBC, April 23, 1992.

66 Cheers, “Love Me, Love My Car,” Paramount Television, NBC, December 17, 1992.

67 Cheers, “One for the Road,” Paramount Television, NBC, May 20, 1993.

Not convinced? Consider BoSox closer Jonathan Papelbon in his shades and kilt, dancing to the Murphys’ tunes on a flatbed during the 2007 championship parade. Need further proof? The Red Sox have yet to lose a playoff/World Series game at which the Dropkicks have performed. The Dropkick Murphys and founder Ken Casey have earned their places in baseball lore.

Ken Casey of the Dropkick Murphys performs during the Streaming Outta Fenway performance with no live audience on May 27, 2020, at Fenway Park in Boston. (Photo by Maddie Malhotra/Boston Red Sox)

Ken Casey and the Start of the Dropkick Murphys

Kenneth William Casey Jr. was born on December 31, 1969, to Eileen Kelly and Ken Casey Sr. He was an only child, and his father died when Ken Jr. was quite young. Fortunately, his grandfather, John Kelly, took the youngster under his wing and guided him through life. Kelly was a teamster who taught his grandson the history and struggles of the Irish working man. One of the most valuable lessons was that “Gratitude is an action.”1

Casey absorbed his grandfather’s lessons and is described as kind, sentimental, and generous to a fault.2 A prime example of Ken’s selflessness showed in 2009, when he created the Claddagh Fund, whose mission is to raise awareness of and money for the most underfunded non-profit organizations that support the vulnerable populations in the Boston area. Casey and the Dropkicks have staged numerous events on such groups’ behalf. Their most recent effort came in March 2020, as the band streamed a concert during which the Claddagh Fund raised over $60,000 for Boston’s Resiliency Fund to help provide services in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak.3

The Dropkick Murphys were born out of a dare in 1995 in Quincy, Massachusetts. The trio of founding members included Casey, vocalist Mike McColgan, and guitarist Rick Barton. The band had numerous drummers in the early going before settling on Matt Kelly in 1997. Kelly has been with the group ever since. Kelly joined Casey and Barton as co-writers of the band’s first original song, “Barroom Hero.”

The unusual name of the band came from a former professional wrestler named John Murphy, who had earned the nickname “Dropkick.” Murphy opened a sanitarium in Acton, Massachusetts, and spent 30 years (1941-71) trying to sober up inebriates at his “primitive detox center.” Casey recalled that he would hear old-timers talking about having been at Dropkick Murphy’s and thought it was a brilliant name for the group.4

The band grew into a quintet. Lead singer Al Barr replaced McColgan in 1998 and has teamed with Casey as frontmen ever since. In 2000 the group expanded into a septet (various members have come and gone over the years). Their most recent performance at Fenway Park on May 29, 2020, featured an eight-man lineup:

• Al Barr (co-lead vocals)
• Tim Brennan (guitars, accordion, mellotron, whistles, vocals)
• Ken Casey (co-lead vocals)
• Jeff DaRosa (banjo, bouzouki, mandolin, harmonica, acoustic guitars, vocals)
• Matt Kelly (drums, percussion, vocals)
• James Lynch (guitar, vocals)
• Kevin Rheault (touring bassist)
• Lee Forshner (touring bagpipe player)

The Royal Rooters and “Tessie”

“Crank” was the most widely used term for a baseball fan around 1900. Pioneer player/manager turned Boston sportswriter, Tim Murnane, preferred the terms “loyal rooter” and “royal rooter.” The main difference between the two: a royal rooter was more vocal and would follow his team on the road.5 In 1897 pennant fever gripped Boston and a throng dubbed the “Royal Rooters” gained prominence thanks to leaders like Arthur “Hi Hi” Dixwell.6 Trips to support the Beaneaters7 on the road were organized for the vocal supporters. According to a Boston Globe report, the final series against second-place Baltimore had such a following that the team was followed to the ballpark by three barges, each 30 feet long, loaded with Boston fans. They exhorted their team to a 19-10 victory.8

In October Boston met Baltimore for the Temple Cup. The Orioles triumphed four games to one, but the Sporting Life singled out the rooters for praise. “They were out in force for the first game” in Baltimore and occupied chairs at their own expense in front of the Boston bench. When the series concluded, the rooters staged a banquet organized by Congressman John F. “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald (grandfather of John F. Kennedy). They made sure to give the press ample access to the affair, which insured positive coverage for years to come.9

The Rooters returned to prominence in 1903, when the Boston Americans ran away with the AL pennant and faced Honus Wagner and the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first World Series. In the best-of-nine series, Boston fell behind three games to one when Pirates’ ace Deacon Phillippe defeated Cy Young, Tom Hughes, and Bill Dinneen.

The first three games had been in Boston (the Americans won just one). The Rooters, behind the leadership of Charles J. Lavis and Michael J. “Nuf Ced” McGreevy, organized a special train to Pittsburgh at a cost of $20 a ticket. More than 100 fans made the journey.10

Elsewhere in the city of Boston, the Colonial Theatre was hosting the final week of performances of the musical comedy “The Silver Slipper.” Among the songs in the production was one called “Tessie, You Are the Only, Only, Only.” The song became immensely popular and was hailed as a “novelty in theme and melody” in advertisements for the sheet music, which sold for 20 cents.11

The Rooters hired a band to accompany them to Exposition Park in Pittsburgh and play during the games. In Game 5 a rendition of “Tessie” echoed through the stands, possibly led by rooter Charley Waldron.12 The Boston fans changed the lyrics, however. Instead of “Tessie, you make me feel so badly” out came:

Honus, why do you hit so badly,
Why don’t you turn around
Honus at bat you look so sadly,
Hey, why don’t you get out of town.13

Similar lyrics cascaded down upon Pirates’ hurler Brickyard Kennedy as he and his teammates unraveled in the sixth inning. Three hits, a walk, and three errors (two by Wagner) gave Boston a 6-0 lead. Boston never trailed in any of the remaining contests while capturing the crown in eight games. Pittsburgh third baseman Tommy Leach confessed the song “sort of got on our nerves after a while. And before we knew what happened, we’d lost the World Series.”14

“Tessie” was the rallying cry for Boston fans as they won four more World Series in the next 15 years. The leading rooter during those years was McGreevy, who operated the 3rd Base saloon near the Huntington Avenue Grounds, home of the Sox. That saloon has been described as the first sports bar in America. The Series in 1918 ended with Arlington, Massachusetts native Dave Shean scooping a grounder and tossing to Gloucester’s Stuffy McInnis for the final out. “Tessie” echoed through the ballpark as 15,000 happy fans danced their way to the exits.15

The song made occasional appearances after 1918. The most notable came when “Tessie” returned to Braves Field in 1930 for the Boston Post Old Timers Day. Band leader Jimmie Coughlin played “Tessie” for McGreevy, Cy Young, Candy LaChance, Jimmy Collins, and others, who were escorted into the stadium in hansom carriages. Honus Wagner was there, too, and was again taunted by the song.16

(Video: YouTube / Epitaph Records)

2004 and the Rebirth of “Tessie”

In 2004 the Red Sox found themselves in a battle with the New York Yankees for the AL East title (or a wild card spot). Red Sox vice president Charles Steinberg conceived the notion of reviving “Tessie.” Knowing the local Dropkick Murphys had a penchant for reworking songs, Steinberg approached Casey about a rebirth for the old tune.

Casey was skeptical when he first heard “Tessie.” He said, “It was the worst thing I had ever heard…It really didn’t make any sense why…fans would have chosen it.”17 But ‘royal rooters’ will stop at nothing to support their team. With the help of Boston Herald writer Jeff Horrigan, Casey and the band went to work.18 The new version invoked the spirit of the Royal Rooters and McGreevy complete with bagpipes and Tin Pan piano.

On Saturday, July 24, the Red Sox were hosting the Yankees, who held a 9½-game lead on second-place Boston. The Dropkicks were scheduled to play “Tessie” before the start of the game. “It’s a crapshoot,” said Casey. “Sure, this’ll probably end up like every other year, but we’re trying to turn this thing around.”19

The Dropkicks performed “Tessie” before the game, which featured Bronson Arroyo on the hill for the Red Sox versus Tanyon Sturtze for the Yankees. In the third inning the Yankees had a three-run lead when Alex Rodriguez came to the plate. Arroyo unleashed a fastball that sailed, hitting Rodriguez on the elbow. Few rivalries in sports can match what Boston and New York have going. As the Yankee star walked towards first base, he repeatedly cursed at Arroyo in true baseball fashion, the expletive plainly visible for even a novice lip reader to discern. When A-Rod gave the finger wag to bring it on, Sox catcher Jason Varitek jumped him, and the melee was on.20

Order was eventually restored, and the inning ended without further hostilities. Rodriguez and Varitek were both ejected for their roles. Sturtze had been bloodied during the fracas but took the mound in the bottom of the third. He surrendered two runs to make the score 3-2. The Red Sox took the lead in the fourth but gave it back in the sixth and trailed entering the bottom of the ninth. It did not appear that the unveiling of “Tessie” was going to be successful: the Yankees were up 10-8 with the lead entrusted to their typically airtight closer and future Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera. Rivera already had 35 saves and had experienced just one bad outing to that point of the season.

Nomar Garciaparra opened the frame with a double. Kevin Millar drove him home with a single. Third baseman Bill Mueller sent the crowd home happy with a two-run blast to deep right and the win, 11-10. The magic of “Tessie” had been rekindled. Casey was heard to say, “This song will change everything.”21 In the aftermath of the bench-clearing brawl, eight players were disciplined by AL President Bob Watson, but Arroyo was not among them.22

The Red Sox never caught New York in the East, but they captured the wild card. Boston faced the Anaheim Angels in the Division Series. Led by the strong hitting of Damon (.467), David Ortiz (.545), and Manny Ramirez (.385), the Sox swept the Angels and moved on to play New York.

The Yankees had been on the verge of sweeping the ALCS, but Boston clawed its way back into the series — it came down to Game 7 in the Bronx. On the way to the game, Casey and some friends stopped by St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. They lit candles and donated while praying for Damon (who was 3-for-29 in the series) to start hitting again.23 Damon came out of his slump with three hits, including a grand slam and a two-run homer, as the Sox earned a berth in the World Series.

In a World Series that almost seemed anticlimactic, Boston swept the St. Louis Cardinals. The Sox pitching staff posted a 2.50 ERA while Ramirez and Mueller each batted over .400 to lead the offense. The curse had been broken and the reworked “Tessie” found a home in Boston baseball lore.

“I’m Shipping Up to Boston” and Jonathan Papelbon

In 2007 the Red Sox returned to postseason play when they captured the AL East title with a 96-66 record. They swept the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in the first round and faced the Central champion Cleveland Indians in the AL Championship Series. The Sox took Game 1 but dropped the next three to face elimination. They rallied to win the next two and set up the finale in Fenway Park on October 21.

The Dropkick Murphys took the field before the game, accompanied by a bevy of Irish step dancers. The boys played “I’m Shipping Up to Boston” and then did the National Anthem. Daisuke Matsuzaka and Hideki Okajima kept the Sox in the game (3-2 lead into the bottom of the seventh) until the beleaguered Cleveland bullpen collapsed. The Sox scored two in the seventh, then six in the eighth. Closer Papelbon entered the game in the eighth inning to the strains of his chosen intro song — by the Dropkicks — “I’m Shipping Up to Boston.” He pitched two scoreless innings for the save.

As they had in 2004, the Red Sox swept the National League competition (the Colorado Rockies) in the World Series. Papelbon was the hero with saves in the last three games. In the victory parade, Papelbon — wearing blue jeans with a kilt over them — rode on the same flatbed as the Dropkicks and did a jig for the screaming, appreciative crowd.24 Casey pointed out that after the October 21 victory, the Dropkicks were 9-0 playing for the Sox, Patriots, and Bruins.25

The Last Decade

The Red Sox returned to the World Series in 2013. They were at home for Game 6 against the St. Louis Cardinals, holding on to a three-to-two edge. The Dropkicks performed the anthem, then sat back to watch improbable heroes Stephen Drew, with a home run, and Shane Victorino, who drove in four runs, guide the Sox to the title, 6-1. The Red Sox were still undefeated when the Dropkicks played.

The magical results of the Dropkicks performing for the Red Sox suffered a blow in the home opener of 2014. Pre-game ceremonies honored survivors of the Patriots’ Day attack as well as the champion Red Sox. Then the band sang the National Anthem, backed by the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, before finishing with a quick rendition of “I’m Shipping Up to Boston.”26

In the ballgame that day, the Sox and Brewers went into the final frame tied 2-2. Sox reliever Edward Mujica, who had pitched for the Cardinals in the 2013 season, took the mound in the ninth and surrendered four hits leading to four runs and a 6-2 loss.

The band was scheduled to perform before Game 6 of the 2018 World Series. The Red Sox left them in the bullpen when they clinched the series in Los Angeles behind David Price’s Game 5 pitching.

“Jimmy Collins’ Wake”

In 2013 the band produced another song with a historical baseball theme. Using lyrics written by the curator of the Boston Sports Museum, Richard Johnson, the song “Jimmy Collins’ Wake” was born. Collins was the third baseman and manager of the 1903 team that was buoyed by the Royal Rooters and their singing of “Tessie.” Legend had it that when Collins died in 1943, his surviving teammates and some adoring fans held a one-of-a-kind-wake.

After many rounds of drinks, supposedly Collins was propped up in his casket and the silver trophy he had been given in 1904 by the fans was placed in his hands. The song pays tribute not only to Collins but also to other Boston heroes of ’03, such as Big Bill Dineen, Buck Freeman, and Chick Stahl. There is even mention of Wagner, who was left in tears by the results of the 1903 World Series.27

Last revised: August 25, 2020

Members of the Dropkick Murphys pose in front of the Green Monster during the Streaming Outta Fenway performance with no live audience on May 27, 2020, at Fenway Park in Boston. (Photo by Maddie Malhotra/Boston Red Sox)

Acknowledgments

The author is indebted to Dropkick Murphys publicist Kristine Ashton-Magnuson. She helped with details of this story and provided a wealth of pictures from the May 29, 2020 concert for use with the article, which was reviewed by Rory Costello and Norman Macht and fact-checked by Mark Sternman.

Sources

Statistics and game stories are courtesy of Baseball-Reference and Retrosheet. For a more detailed story on “Tessie” and the other songs that fill Fenway on game day, see the book by Chuck Burgess and Bill Nowlin entitled Love That Dirty Water. It’s an excellent tale of the Standells, “Sweet Caroline”, and “Tessie”.

Notes

1 Kathy McGee Burns, “A Chat With Dropkick Murphys’ Ken Casey,” irishphildelphia.com, August 21, 2012. Last accessed April 3, 2020http://irishphiladelphia.com/2012/08/a-chat-with-dropkick-murphys-ken-casey/

2 Kathy McGee Burns, “A Chat with Dropkick Murphy’s Ken Casey,”

3 Information on March 2020 event courtesy of Kristine Ashton-Magnuson, band publicist. It should also be noted that the Claddagh Fund has expanded and opened a chapter in Philadelphia.

4 Matt Juul, “20 Things You Don’t Know About the Dropkick Murphys,” https://www.bostonmagazine.com/arts-entertainment/2016/03/16/dropkick-murphys-20th-anniversary/Last accessed April 3, 2020. The band has a song- “Sunshine Highway” that pays tribute to the sanitarium.

5 Peter J. Nash, Boston’s Royal Rooters (Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing,2005), 7.

6 “Received Congratulations, Boston Globe, September 28, 1897: 5.

7 The Boston Globe often called the team the beaneaters without the capital B. Other newspapers around the 12-team league used it with the capital B and sometimes it appeared as Bean-eaters.

8 ““Nick” Didn’t Extend Himself,” Boston Globe, September 28, 1897: 5.

9 Jacob C. Morse, “Hub Happenings, The Rooters,” Sporting Life, October 16, 1897: 2.

10 “For the Royal Rooters,” Boston Globe, October 1, 1903: 8.

11 “Kay-W-Kay,” York (Pennsylvania) Dispatch, October 3, 1903: 8.

12 “ “Tessie” a Winner,” Boston Globe, October 12, 1903: 1.

13 Lawrence J. Ritter, The Glory of Their Times (New York: Macmillan Company, 1966), 27.

14 Ritter.

15 “Champions Once More,” Fall River (Massachusetts) Globe, September 12, 1918: 6.

16 Chuck Burgess and Bill Nowlin, Love That Dirty Water (Burlington, Massachusetts: Rounder Books, 2007), 149-157.

17 “Dropkick Murphys Having a Ball,” Boston Globe, August 20, 2004: 51.

18 Casey gave the history behind the song in their May 29, 2020 concert from Fenway Park. It can viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzkMA_1NbfY

19 Carol Beggy & Mark Shanahan, “’Tessie’ to the Sox Rescue?” Boston Globe, July 24, 2004: 22.

20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGuF-Wy_QUc shows the entire incident.

21 May 29, 2020 Fenway concert.

22 Transactions, Boston Globe, July 30, 2004: 81.

23 Carol Beggy & Mark Shanahan, “Stars sing Sox’ praises; rocker lights their fire,” Boston Globe, October 22, 2004: 78.

24 “Papelbon Dance: He Plays it to the Kilt,” Boston Globe, October 31, 2007: 42.

25 “Another Winning Performance” Boston Globe, October 23, 2007: 19.

26 Michael Whitmer, “Emotional Flashbacks, Good and Bad,” Boston Globe, April 5, 2014: C7.

27 www.songfacts.com/facts/dropkick-murphys/jimmy-collins-wake Last accessed April 1, 2020.