Found in a Trunk

Twenty years ago, an ordinary 93-year-old childless widow named Edna Crotty died in Waterford, a small upstate New York village. Somewhat later, the usual estate sale was held to dispose of all her belongings from the house and barn-mostly the normal furni­ture, decorative figurines, appliances, tools, books, maybe a few antique items.

A small, very dusty, grit­ covered trunk was hauled out of the barn and opened, probably for the first time in a half century. Attendees (antique dealers, collectors, bargain hunters, plain curious folk) watched as the man in charge pulled out one item after another. An old pair of heavy woolen baseball pants, some undershirts, a small peaked cap, some old postcards, a belt, a couple woolen baseball shirts with names of cities across the fronts, a tiny baseball glove, 22 old letters, frayed newspapers, base­ ball shoes, towels. One lady eventually observed, “Somebody in this family must have liked baseball.”

Soon the trunk was empty. All the items were sold but to five or six different purchasers including both antique dealers and collectors. The contents went in different local geographic directions—some here, some there.

Eventually most of the contents were consolidated in one location. After a brief perusal of the letters and newspaper clippings, it was apparent that the “some­ body” was a Walter Hammersley. But who was Walter Hammersley and how did all these cloth, leather, and paper items get into the trunk? And how were these items related to the lately deceased Edna Crotty?

Some of the letters ultimately answered the second question, since there were letters from a wife Edna to a husband Walter and vice versa. Edna lived in the Waterford area and Walter played in the Greensboro, North Carolina, area. The letters were dated either 1909 or 1910, so examination of the old Reach and Spalding Baseball Guides proved very helpful. A tiny “Hammersley, Greensboro” line appeared a couple times in the batting, fielding, and pitching statistics of the Carolina Association, a Class D league situated in the western regions of North and South Carolina.

Old National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (minor leagues) contract records located in the Baseball Hall of Fame Library in Cooperstown as well as occasional mentions in The Sporting Life and The Sporting News led to “leads” and more bits of use­ful information about Hammersley’s baseball career. The old tattered newspapers from the trunk con­firmed much of what the baseball guides and official contracts indicated and added one surprising develop­ment.

Meanwhile, research in the Waterford area led to a small Waterford Historical Museum and some crucial facts. The museum had a town history written by a Colonel Sidney E. Hammersley, which was dedicated to his three daughters. One daughter, then Frances Hammersley Child, was Walter’s niece and still living. She readily solved many of the puzzling gaps in the story.

Walter was born in England, was one of eleven chil­dren, “was a vivid redhead,” married Edna Shufelt, was “after baseball” a lock operator on the state barge canal in Waterford, and died young in October 1921 at age 37 of pulmonary tuberculosis. Edna had married a William Crotty sometime after Walter’s death, which explained the different name at the estate sale. Mrs. Child identified the single gravestone in the local cemetery where Walter, Edna, and William’s names appear next to each other. The obituary in the nearby Troy Record verified much of the above and said Hammersley ”had considerable of a baseball career.”

Yes, Hammersley had “considerable of a baseball career.” After learning the pitching craft in local ama­teur and semiprofessional outings, he made the ultimate step into professional baseball in the spring of 1908. At age 24, he went south for a tryout with the Norfolk, Virginia, team. They released him, but he soon hooked up with Greensboro, which had the Class D team in the Carolina Association. It was a six-team league composed of Charlotte (population 34,014) and five smaller towns. Greensboro’s population totaled 15,895.

Hammersley had a fabulous 1908 season as he helped pitch the Greensboro Patriots to the league title with a 22-8 win-loss record. He led the league in both wins and innings pitched. The Patriots clinched the pennant with victories in an exciting season-end­ing series against second-place Greenville, South Carolina, whose featured player was none other than the legendary 19-year-old Shoeless Joe Jackson.

“Shoeless Joe” from Pickens County, South Carolina, acclaimed by many to be the greatest natural hitter of all time, led the league with a .346 batting average. Nevertheless, one newspaper clipping from the “trunk” documents that Hammersley held Jackson hitless in five plate appearances in a brilliant mid-season game described in the local press as “the best contest ever seen on the local diamond.” Greensboro won that contest, a 12-inning 1-0 complete game, five-hit masterpiece by Hammersley before 800 fans in one hour and 55 min­utes.

In another clipping, he won both games of a dou­bleheader 2-1 and 4-1. It was an “iron man” feat, as both were complete games. Hammersley, who had a spitball in his repertoire, pitched more than 200 innings that year. Of course, it was the “dead ball” era, which was to his advantage. Extra-base hits were few, batting averages and game scores were low. There was, however, no doubt that Walter was a hero in the then­ small Carolina town.

The first and only 1909 “trunk letter” was written by Walter in Greensboro to Edna in upstate New York on April 9, 1909. Written to“My dearest little Girl,” he is about to leave on a ten-day spring training road trip to three Virginia towns—Danville, Lynchburg, and Roanoke. Despite a remarkable passing comment, “I beat Boston [National League Pilgrims] here today 7-0. That is good for a kid don’t you think so,” he is more concerned with Edna’s absence. “I want you to write me and tell me in your next letter all about your leaving. The board will cost us the same as last year.” Two more times, he repeats his wish and ends, ”Be sure to come down and do what I say. With love, kisses from your own boy. XXXXX.”

Hammersley was back on the mound at wooden Cone Athletic Park in Greensboro when the official 1909 season started, and the Patriots (now called “the Champs”) again won the Carolina Association pen­nant, edging Anderson, South Carolina, by three games. His win-loss record, however, declined to 14- 15, although he again pitched over 200 innings. He lost a 16-inning 1-0 complete game in Greenville. Then there was a 12-inning scoreless tie game with Winston-Salem. Again he completed both games of a double-header, winning the opener 3-1 before drop­ping the nightcap to Anderson.

With a roster of only 12-13 players (and no Sunday games), these teams usually had three-man pitching rotations. Even the local paper commented, “Hammersley meant well, but 10 innings straight is too much for any pitcher.” (There was also one 1909 canceled July postcard from Kalamazoo, Michigan, in the trunk from an outfielder and 1908 teammate Cogswell to Walter. The message read, ”Hello Kid, I am leading the League in hitting and fielding. How are you and the Bunch?” Cogswell’s claim has been verified.)

The Greensboro Patriots had a disappointing season in 1910 under a new manager. It was also a bad year for Walter Hammersley, if judged by his won-lost record. The team finished the season in last place, in part because it had a team batting average of .208 and also fielded poorly. The batting and fielding did not help Hammersley, who left Greensboro at the end of July with a 4-12 record. It was during this season that most of the revealing “trunk letters” and newspaper clippings from Walter and Edna Hammersley give a little insight to the obscure pitcher on the obscure Class D team. 

Two high points of any minor leaguer would be to pitch against major league teams. Walter had done that in 1908 and repeated the same task in early April during two exhibition games against the New York National League Giants and the New York American League Highlanders. (Both were second-place finish­ers in 1910.) Hammersley pitched three innings against the mostly Giant regulars, allowing two runs as his team lost 9-2. The Highlanders won 11-3 with Hammersley allowing eight runs in four innings. Four errors did not help his cause. If nothing else, excite­ment and two capacity crowds benefited the Patriots’ financial situation.

Two days later, Walter wrote, ”My dear Edna,” from Roanoke. He was pitching the next day and comment­ed, “There is lots of money up on the game.” Then ”Most of our team was drunk tonight. This is a wet town and they all took advantage of it and got piped up. Pug Hicks (a shortstop) and Eldridge (a pitcher) near had a fight.” Unlike Roanoke, he wrote, “Greensboro is all locked up on Sundays. You cant bye a cocola on sunday nor any candy. Just amagine me going all day Sunday with out a drink or a little candy. They even locked a man up for putting up bills advertising a show because it had girls dressed in short clothes. The town has gone to the bad.”

Three days later in Danville, still on the exhibition trip, he got mad when told no mail had been forward­ed from Greensboro. “for I knew you had wrote me one letter at least. Then Bentley came in from some pool room with two one from you and one from Mother.” Later, he reports, “This has been a very hot day and all the dirt seemed to stick to me,” which led to an hour in the hotel bathtub. Before ending he said, ”I got so lonesome on Sunday afternoons, I don’t know what to do or where to look. I near go crazy. Well it wont be very long before you will be here to cheer me up.”

A week later, he wrote that he was “getting along fine,” but “tomorrow is Sunday and it will be another lonesome day. I wont hear any music and see you or any of my folks, but will cheer up for I see you soon.” He also recorded, “There was a nigger game here this afternoon and they played five innings and got in a fight and quit and went home. The A and M team and the Orangeburg team from South Carolina.” (The daily Greensboro newspaper verified this Negro college game and event between visiting Claflin College and local North Caroline Agricultural and Mechanic College.) To add to his woes, ”Mr. Collins don’t let us in to his show anymore. He has a sign up, ‘no free list here,’ so we are strung up then.”

Next day, he wrote, ”My dear little Neddie” that he had pitched five innings on a very cold (“almost too cold to play ball”) day. ”My arm is quite sore and weak and it gets tired when I write.” But he “got a hit with two men on base and scored them both. Then I scored.” “Some doctor took me in and fixed me up (with Turkish bath).” He ends, ”I wish I had you here to go to bed with me to night and you can imagine how I feel while I am writing this to you.” “Be sure and be good and I’ll be the same. I send you lots of love and lots of kisses. I am, as ever, your own boy. XXXXXX.”

Walter is really angry a week later when Edna has still not left upstate New York. ”I think you had better stay in one place and quit your running around so you can get my mail and do as I say. And I wrote and told you I would be gone away after April 30, and asked you as nice as any one could ask you to be here before I went away. Well, suit yourself. Come when you please.” He signs off, ”I am still your true Walt.”

The season opened on April 28. A second champi­onship flag was raised after “a parade in auto mobiles and the minister threw the.first ball over the plate.” He pitched the opening game and lost 6-3. “Well, that won’t be the only game I will lose. I wish it was, but I’ll lose more than that.” However, most of the letter still discusses Edna’s absence without the anger that appeared in the previous letter. This letter ends with, “goodbye, with lots of love, I am ever your boy. XX. I hurt my finger and can’t write goodbye. Come soon. XXXXX.”

He is pleased the following night, having received a card from Edna. The team lost to Winston-Salem and already had many injuries. ”I have a boil on my arm, my right one at that.” He expects her to arrive by May 14. “And if you are not here, I don’t know what I’ll do. I might come after you.” He closes with two thoughts, “They are just ordering me a new suit, so they must intend to keep me. Well, goodbye my little wife and hope you have not talked to any men, even though, I have women.”

Edna finally arrived in Greensboro, and Walter’s only problems are now baseball-oriented. Naturally, the teams play “on the road” half the time, so Walter and Edna still write each other. His very tired team arrived in Spartanburg, South Carolina, at 12:40 p.m., woke to an intermittent rain, but “not enough for to stop us playing.” Later, he stumbled during pre-game practice in the outfield and “hit my left shoulder and it hurt very bad.” The Patriots then lost a 2-1 extra inning game on a ”bad” umpire decision at the plate. One player says, “Those Northern umpires always give the southern managers the worst end of the deal.” Greensboro manager C. Beusse was a Southerner. It was not the best of days for Walter.

Edna got another pessimistic letter the following day. The Patriots lost 4-3. Walter’s left shoulder is still troublesome. “I tell you, it is just as bad as my right one was. But I am going to try and pitch tomorrow’s game.” He then confides to Edna, “I can’t see where we have any chance of winning with the club we have here now. All they think of is to go out and get the game over with.” Two days later from Greenville, “Your poor old boy lost his fourth game.” (He pitched a four-hitter. His win-loss record dropped to 1-4.) He had to end the letter quickly as the train was about to leave for Anderson.

There were three letters from Edna to Walter in the trunk. Walter received the first letter when he arrived in Anderson. It opened “Dearest Walter,” and ended ”So, will close with lots of love from your own kid. XXXXXX.” Edna was “awfully sorry to hear that you lost again,” and then told what she had done that day. “We all set up last night until 12 o’clock, but didn’t see anything of the comet.” Edna, Mrs. Morris, and Miss Beasley “went to prayer meeting. Mrs. Morris treated us to a drink and I took Pepsi-Cola and they each took Coca-Cola and the clerk spilt some on my white skirt.” Walter received the second letter the following day.

Edna told how “eight of us went to the graduating exercises last night up to the Opera house. The music was good, but I got awfully tired listening to the long address.” Edna seemed to have lots of friends in both New York and North Carolina. Other letters to Edna from friends in upstate New York and to Walter from his mother were newsy while featuring comments about farm animals, Methodist church attendance, constant hard work, and family illness. Naive Edna also had one question, which concerned all baseball players. “The paper said that Smith saved himself from getting the pink slip, maybe you know what that means.” The third letter contained a short three-lined Christian prayer to be copied and mailed to a friend over nine days. Failing to do so would lead to misfortune. Instructions ended with “do not break chain.” The letter is unsigned, but clearly in Edna’s handwriting.

The Patriots made six errors a week later as Hammersley lost a ragged 4-2 home game to Greenville, whose outstanding player was catcher Ivy Wingo, a Georgian bound to spend 17 years in the National League. A local paper used the adjective “miserable” to describe the fielding. Hammersley scribbled in pencil on that sports page “can’t win with this bunch behind me.” In his final “trunk letter” from Spartanburg, he told Edna they had a rare 5-0 win that day while praising specific teammates who had made crucial defensive plays. “Does that sound like a pitcher?” He continued, “I am going to pitch tomor­row’s game and hope they make five runs for me and I know I’ll win my game.” Getting personal, he told Edna, “I saw a nice pair of Dorothy red slippers here,” but “I lost your size,” and ended, “Well, be a good girl and I’ll be good.”

The trunk did contain a five-inch ster­ling silver hat pin with an attractive three-quarter­ inch baseball on one end, no doubt, a gift to Edna at one time. Money issues are seldom mentioned in the letters, although Class D player salaries were very low in 1910. Few of these players could afford to bring their wives to a distant city, yet neither Edna nor Walter appear to have come from great wealth.

The final “trunk letter” was mailed to ”My dear Edna” from Greenville. Walter told of damp beds in the hotel, how a teammate”got some fellow to take us out on a fine ride in an auto,” an unusual victory before 198 fans, and how the local authorities “are not going to allow them to show the pictures of Jeffries and Johnson fight.” (Jeffries of course was the “great white hope” brought out of retirement to fight champion Negro Jack Johnson, who defended his heavyweight title with a 15th-round KO.) The team must leave town at 8 p.m. for Charlotte. Evidently, he and Edna had a spat. He wrote, “Well Edna, let us try and get along together without fighting. There is nothing in rangling with each other.” He ended, “I am as ever your boy. XX.”

Something happened shortly after this letter. Hammersley left last-place Greensboro and returned north. It appeared that his season was completed. But it was not. Newspapers and clippings in the trunk cover some August and September 1910 dates. The common factor in all these paper items is a pitcher for Utica, New York, in the higher-classification New York State League named “Harding.” In reality, “Hammersley” and “Harding” were the same person. Eventually, in 1913, the ruse was discovered in anoth­er league, an unaffiliated league at that, when he again assumed the “Harding” moniker. (Official minor league baseball records have him “reserved” by Greensboro on October 21, 1910 [for the next season], but then “released” on March 14, 1911.) Anyway, illegal “Harding” pitched a shutout in his first game at Utica, then hurried back to Troy for his father’s funeral (which may have been the reason he left Greensboro), and finished the season with four more losses, although three were well-pitched games against Binghamton, Syracuse, and Wilkes-Barre.

The Waterford righthander spent the 1911 summer pitching semi-pro games in the Troy-Albany area. Based on his 1911 showing, Hammersley spent all of 1912 in the New York State League. He started with Albany, lost all four decisions (including a 1-0 defeat), was released but quickly signed with Troy. He won at least six games including two shutouts for the Trojans, but lost at least ten games. He was a hard-luck twirler, losing many 1-0, 2-1, 3-0 games. He even had an 11- inning 1-1 no-decision game. The local press often referred to him as the “Waterford curver,” the “Waterford spitballer,” “the Waterford boy,” although he was now 29. Nevertheless, he also hurled two com­plete exhibition games against the Chicago Cubs, whose main attraction was local hero Johnny Evers. Hammersley was pounded in an 11-3 loss at Green Island but won 5-2 in Albany.

Hammersley opened the 1913 season with Troy win­ning at least one 2-1 game before joining Pittsfield, Massachusetts, of the Class B Eastern Association, where he won six of 14 decisions. He seemed to have the misfortune to play for second-division teams after the initial two Greensboro years. Near season’s end, he, as “Harding” again, was winning games for Bellows Falls, Vermont, in the unaffiliated Twin States League. The ruse was discovered by the Greenfield team. The local paper reported, “Harding is Hammersley, who recently traveled with the Pittsfield Eastern Association team.”

Two 1913 Bellows Falls team photo postcards show­ing him as a member were in the trunk, as was one postcard of the Keene, New Hampshire baseball field. The Keene postcard was mailed to Edna. Its message read, ”Hello Neddie. I am all right. I am playing out­field and pitching for the rest of the season. Will write soon. Will be home next Sunday for good. Hammy”

Hammersley’s professional career was almost over. During the winter he tried to hook up with Binghamton, but received a pleasant typewriter rejec­tion from J.C. Calhoun, the Binghamton manager. It was the last correspondence in the trunk. He did start the 1914 season with York, Pennsylvania in the Class B Tri-state League, where he won at least two games before the team folded and moved to Lancaster. He ended with Northampton, New Hampshire, back in the unaffiliated Tri-State League as “Hammersley” this time, where he won at least seven games, all veri­fied in the final newspaper clippings in the trunk. Two of the wins were in another iron-man doubleheader effort, 7-2 and 9-0. Perhaps illustrative of human nature, Hammersley saved accounts of only his well­ pitched games—victories or tough losses. Seven years later, he was dead.

The letters give a brief glimpse of a serious full-time ballplayer’s life during a losing season as well as that of the player’s wife. These mostly 1910 letters were often negative in scope, partly reflecting a 4-12 win-loss record on a last-place team. (Letters written in 1908 would probably differ, since they would have reflected a 22-8 record on a pennant winner.) There was daily effort in 1910, but less opportunity for the exuberance that only a hit, a catch, a pitch, a win can bring.

His was a competitive, sometimes injury-prone experi­ence with players coming and going based on per­formance. There was often sweltering heat, boredom, constant travel, and frequent loneliness with few “to lean on.” These letters sure contrast with those in ”You Know Me Al” written by Ring Lardner in 1914.

(Hammersley appears in many of the “trunk photo­graphs” usually as a team member but also in a couple photos wearing a formal bowler hat as well as a swim­ming suit. He seems to be a bit smaller in height and heft than most of his teammates. And yes, like most of those teammates, he can be seen on black-and-white 1909 Contentea and red-bordered 1910 Old Mill ciga­rette baseball cards.)

FRANK KEETZ joined SABR in 1980, the same year that the Hammersly trunk was discovered. It took him twenty-two years to research and complete this, his seventh SABR article.