The Semi-Pro Team That Beat the Champs

With all the excitement that comes with recalling the great year of baseball that the Cubs and White Sox gave Chicago fans in 1906, almost everyone remains unaware of the great baseball events that were occurring elsewhere around Chicago that season.

The year of 1906 was perhaps the greatest and most spectacular of all seasons in what has become known as “the other side of Chicago baseball.” Of course, this was the great semi-professional baseball which was played in and around Chicago every week by teams which featured amongst their ranks numerous past, current and future professional players, in addition to many players of pro-level skills who chose not to endure the hardships of minor league life.

With the advent of the twentieth century the birth of the American League seemed to provide an impetus to the continued growth in popularity of semi-pro baseball in Chicago. This popularity brought with it demands by the paying customers for top-level, winning baseball by their favorites, with the direct result that the bidding for top players and the importing of professional men became a serious business.

On this eightieth anniversary of that great baseball year of 1906 let me tell you a little about the events of that semi-pro season which ended with a shock that remains one of the greatest stories in Chicago baseball history.

Coming into the season of 1906 the clubs were cat egorized into two groups: the Park teams, which included the West Ends (1905 City Champions), Lawndales, Gunthers, Normals, Rogers Park, Artesians, River Forest and the Logan Squares; and the Traveling teams whose major clubs were the Marquettes, White Rocks, Leland Giants, Athletics (1905 Traveling Champions), Spaldings, Union Giants,Joliet Standards, Mutuals, Arians, Woodstock Olivers, Kankakee Browns and South Chicago.

The season of 1906 opened on Easter Sunday, April 15, amidst great fanfare. The West Ends, and their “ace” pitcher Gus Munch, opened at their home park, located at Cicero and Madison Avenues, against the Athletics with a 2-0 win. Before the contest the club conducted a short ceremony to raise their 1905 championship flag and Manager John Lyman was presented with a large bat similar to the one received by Connie Mack and John McGraw during the preceding year’s World Series. An almost equal amount of excitement attended the opener of the Logan Squares at their new stadium which was located at Diversey and Milwaukee Avenues. The Squares had been taken over by the popular Jimmy Callahan who was a veteran of ten major league seasons, nine of which had been spent with the Cubs and White Sox. Supported by the three hits of third baseman Con Sandberg and the fine catching of Jake Thiery, Callahan scattered four hits in his semi-pro pitching debut as he defeated Kenosha by a score of 11-4.

A May 20th game featured the Philadelphia Giants defeating the Leland Giants 9-1 as a young pitcher named Rube Foster held the home team to three hits in front of a large crowd at Auburn Park. Foster had helped his cause with a bases-full double as part of a six-run third inning.

In another interesting contest, former minor league pitcher and long-time semi-pro star, Harry Leitman, threw a one-hitter for the Artesians against a touring team called the Cherokee Indians, whose lineup included players with authentic Indian names like Williams, Riley, Garden and Porter. A near riot ensued as the Logan Squares scored ten runs in the first inning off the Marquettes’ Oscar Knolls. Becoming upset at what he felt were bad calls, Knolls began to “sulk” and was not trying his best and the near-violence came when his own teammates tried to attack him, and only the quick intervention by his catcher, former minor leaguer Tommy Asmussen, saved his neck. The Squares went on to a 22-10 win as Mr. Knolls departed the grounds quickly after the first inning.

While the “Big Three” clubs, Logan Squares, West Ends, Gunthers, continued to win the majority of their games against the Traveling teams during the first half of June, the newspapers were clamoring for the start of the ”big games” between the Park teams, who were considered the only serious contenders for the City Championship.

Still, it came as something of a disappointment on July 29th when the newspapers announced in headlines that there “Will Be No Local Diamond Champs.” What had finally occurred is that Callahan had signed his Logan Squares to play a series of games with Billy Niesen’s Gunthers and the other top clubs had also quickly signed agreements for games. All of which made it clear that it would be impossible to have any type of round-robin schedule amongst the top Park teams over the weekends left available. A proposal that the Logan Squares, Gunthers and West Ends just have a playoff to settle the title met with considerable opposition and was dropped.

Soon after, the newspapers began to print the semi-pro league standings, and the race quickly developed into a fight between the Logan Squares and the Gunthers. The two entered the final weekend tied for first. Following a Saturday, October 13, loss by the Gunthers, the Logans captured the city championship on Sunday with a 7-2 victory over the Athletics, behind the six-hit pitching of Callahan.

But baseball in Chicago for 1906 was not yet over. The weekend of October 20-21 the Cubs and the White Sox each took on the Gunthers and the Logan Squares in a “cross-over” series with all the games to be played at the semi-pro parks.

The Cubs were touring with a lineup composed of Joe Tinker, Johnny Kling, Frank Schulte, Mordecai Brown, Carl Lundgren, Doc Gessler, Artie Hofman and Pat Moran, along with the Braves regular third baseman Dave Brain and Brooklyn’s Jack McCarthy, the same McCarthy who played with Logans early in the season. The White Sox were barnstorming with Eddie Hahn, Bill O’Neill, George Rohe, Jiggs Donahue, Frank Roth, Billy Sullivan, Lee Tannehill, Gus Dundon, Frank Owen and Nick Altrock, seven of these players being regulars for the “Hitless Wonders” during the season.

On Saturday, the Cubs, who barnstormed under the name “Giant Killers,” sent Lundgren to the mound against the Gunthers. In the first inning the Cubs quickly scored off Earl Rugar as Gessler walked, Hofman tripled and Schulte’s infield out scored the runner from third. Brain then reached on an error and Joe Tinker followed with a single to right which allowed Brain to score the third run of the inning. The Cubs scored again in the fourth when Brain doubled and Tinker singled him home on a play where the runner “cut” third base by several feet on his way to the plate, unseen by the umpire.

In the sixth inning Jack Campion of the Gunthers hit a long triple to the deepest section of the park but was thrown out trying· for home by the great relay throws of the big leaguers. The next hitter, George Stellman, then homered for the only run for the Gunthers as the Cubs took a 4-1 victory.

But, as had happened so often during the summer, the Logan Squares again grabbed the headlines as Callahan took the mound against Altrock and the White Sox. In the second inning Roth reached on an error, was sacrificed to second by Sullivan and scored the first run on Sandberg’s error. In the fourth the Sox filled the bases but Altrock bounced into an inning-ending double play and so it was still 1-0, White Sox, as the Logans came to bat in the sixth.

Bobbie Lynch led off with a fly ball which Eddie Hahn “muffed” in right field, followed by Larson and Callahan’s singles to fill the bases. With Harrison at the plate the first run scored on Sullivan’s passed ball and then the next hitter, Charley Reading, sent a long fly to center to score Larson from third with the lead run. Later in the game Harrison made a spectacular catch in deep center of Donahue’s fly ball and Lynch made several fine plays at shortstop to help Callahan finish off his three-hit 2-1 victory for the Logan Squares, in what the Inter-Ocean called “the best game ever seen on a local semi-pro diamond.” The fans were assured the game was “no fluke” and that the American League champs had “worked in deadly earnest.” After this the Logans’ fans could imagine nothing greater happening to their favorites.

On Sunday, the White Sox visited the Gunthers and exacted some revenge with a 4-0 victory on the combined five-hit pitching of Owen and Altrock. The White Sox tour, which had started a few days before with a 10-0 trouncing of the Joliet Standards, would then continue on during the following days with games at Aurora (a 10-0 win) and Edgarton, Wisconsin (a 13-2 win).

Almost unnoticed this day was the West Ends getting a split of their two game series with the Milwaukee team of the American Association, and the Leland Giants winning the “colored championship of the city” over the Union Giants.

Also this fateful Sunday, the Logan Squares, with “Long” Tom Hughes on the mound, were hosting the Cubs and their ace hurler Mordecai Brown. The largest crowd to ever see a semi-pro game mobbed the park with men sitting on top of the outfield fence from one bleacher to the other, while fans also stood ten deep in back of the outfielders. The game was a pitchers’ duel as Hughes fanned seven of the first nine Cubs to bat and only yielded five hits for the day, while Brown faced only twenty-eight men in the first nine innings.

Several times the Cubs advanced runners to second and third with but one out only to be turned back by the “masterly game” pitched by Hughes. The Logans also played great defense as Harrison made two fine catches in center while Lynch played another sparkling game at shortstop.

Into the Logans’ half of the tenth inning it was still 0-0 and Nick Larson led off by reaching on a walk. Then Callahan hit a smash to third which Brain knocked down but his wild throw to first put Squares runners on second and third with none out. Harrison, the next batter was hit by a pitch to fill the bases and with Charley Reading at the plate, Brown’s first pitch went wild to allow Larson to trot home with the winning tally for the Logan Squares.