Duke Farrell as depicted with the Chicago White Stockings on an Old Judge baseball card, circa 1888–90. (Trading Card Database)

 

Welcome to nineteenth-century baseball research, where it is not uncommon for the newspapers to have conflicting box score data, and for the box score data to be in conflict with the written article covering the game, or the scoring data included with the box score to be in conflict with the data in the box score itself. This makes researching nineteenth century baseball challenging, but also very rewarding once all the pieces are put together in an accurate manner.

The Baltimore Orioles and the Washington Senators played quite an interesting, record-setting game on Ladies Day, May 11, 1897, in Washington. The record books indicate that catcher Charles A. “Duke” Farrell established a record for throwing out the most base-stealers in a single game: eight. For example:

• 1898 Reach Guide under Some Playing Features: Catcher Farrell, of the Washingtons, threw out eight of the Baltimores at second base on May 11th.1
• 1924 Little Red Book under Catchers’ Fielding Records, National League: Most runners thrown out in attempts to steal base, game 8— C.A. Farrell, Wash. (vs Balto.)…May 11, 1897 2
• 1928 Little Red Book under Catchers’ Fielding Records: Most runners thrown out in attempts to steal base, game—8 Charles A. Farrell, Washington NL, vs Baltimore, May 11, 1897 3
• 1963 One for the Book under Catchers’ Fielding Records: Most Men Caught Stealing, Game, Nine Innings N. L.—8—Charles A. Farrell, Washington, May 11, 1897 4
• 1982 Edition of The Book of Baseball Records under Base Runners Caught Stealing: Most Base Runners Caught Stealing, Game 8 Charles A. Farrell, NL: Wash. May 11, 1897 5

While the published box scores support that Farrell had eight assists in the May 11 game, what is not supported is how the assists were acquired. The record books state that all eight of Farrell’s assists were the result of throwing out baserunners attempting to steal. The 1898 Reach Guide goes so far as to claim that all eight were thrown out at second base. But I was familiar with this game from previous research and upon seeing the record books I questioned, “Was it eight?” I reviewed my game file: Two newspapers stated that Farrell threw out only six baserunners, not eight. The discrepancy spurred me to dig deeper into the facts of the game.

I started with the game account in the Baltimore American (the primary source for the 1897 Baltimore Orioles box scores I generated for previous research). The American reported, “One of the features of the game was the daring base running of the Baltimores. It was daring, but unsuccessful, because of Charlie Farrell, who is supposed to have a lame throwing wing. Every attempt to get to second—and there were six attempts—resulted fatally to the Baltimore sprinters.”6

The Washington Post account was similar: “The features of the games [sic] were the pitching of Brother Joe Corbett and the backstopping of Duke Farrell. Farrell built a record for himself that probably will stand as one of the remarkable events of the major League season. He is credited with eight assists, six of which were on throws that nailed the Orioles in their attempts at stealing bases. Stenzel, the Orioles’ winged-foot champion, got gay on two occasions and was thrown out by Farrel [sic]. McGraw, Keeler, Kelly [sic] and O’Brien were also caught in the act of kleptomania by the Duke’s emotional and shifty wing.”7

However, the following list of the players that Farrell threw out makes three things clear:

a) Only six, not eight, baserunners were thrown out in an attempt to steal.

b) Not all of the six were thrown out at second base.

c) John McGraw was not one of them.

Runners Caught on May 11, 1897

1. Jake Stenzel, second base, first inning
2. Joe Kelley, second base, third inning
3. Jake Stenzel, second base, fourth inning
4. Heinie Reitz, second base, fourth inning
5. Willie Keeler, caught off base after safely reaching third, fifth inning
6. Tom O’Brien, second base, eighth inning

The Baltimore Sun chalked up some of the outs on the basepaths as follows:

Four different times men on first base started to steal, expecting the batter to hit with the runner, and were caught, simply because the batters stood like wooden men and made no effort to hit the ball. This occurred three times in the third and fourth innings alone. In the third Kelley was caught because Doyle did not hit the ball, although it was called a strike. In the next inning Stenzel, who had singled, was caught because Reitz gave him no help, and Reitz was treated the same way by Clarke. Clarke was excusable, however, as the ball was over his head. O’Brien was caught in the eighth in the same way by Stenzel’s not hitting.8

The Keeler play at third base, however, was reported by the Washington Post thus:

Duke Farrell’s arm came into play in the fifth. McGraw lined one too tall for O’Brien, the ball tipping Johnnie’s mitt. Mugsy [McGraw] was forced on Keeler’s roller to DeMontreville. Jennings hit to short left field, and Selbach made a strong bid for Hughey’s liner, but it fell at Sel’s feet, Keeler reaching third. Jennings started for second on a steal, and the Duke made a feint to throw to O’Brien, but shifted and caught Keeler off third.9

The Baltimore Sun described Keeler’s resulting outburst: “Hurst called Keeler out on third base once, and so surprised and angry did that usually quiet player become that he ran at Hurst like a cyclone.”10 Technically the Keeler out at third was a pick off, not a caught stealing, thus only five of the six Farrell throw-outs were to catch a player in the act of trying to steal a base.

According to the game box score (see Figure 1) Duke Farrell had one put out, eight assists, and zero errors. Baltimore’s Joe Kelley was caught in a rundown between third and home in the first inning. Kelley was tagged out by DeMontreville, but presumably Farrell assisted on the play which would account for the seventh assist. The second inning saw Joe Corbett sacrifice and presumably Farrell assisted on the out for the eighth assist. The second inning also featured a put out at home plate when Boileryard Clarke was called out. Presumably the put out was by Farrell.

Interestingly, the Baltimore Orioles’ players did manage to steal some bases despite Farrell’s efforts, the number of which varies depending on which newspaper you read. The Washington Post lists three stolen bases (by Keeler, Jennings, and Corbett). The Baltimore American listed only Corbett as having stolen a base while the Baltimore Sun credited the Orioles with five stolen bases: two by Keeler and one each for Jennings, Stenzel, and Corbett. Given that the game was played in Washington, it isn’t surprising that The Washington Post provided the most thorough overall account of the game. Their total of three stolen bases was likely the most accurate:

1. Willie Keeler stole second base, second inning
2. Hughie Jennings stole second base, fifth inning
3. Joe Corbett stole second base, eighth inning

In addition to the eight Farrell assists, the game featured two other noteworthy incidents, both involving Jack Doyle, the Baltimore first baseman.

The first was reported by the Washington Post:

Keeler, the infant phenom., went to Baltimore last night, plus an addition to his lip and minus one molar. His troubles came off in the second, when Ed. Cartwright shoved a fly into short right field that the omnipresent Queensberry gentleman, Jack Doyle, bucked up for. While Jack was rearing Keeler advanced on a canter, and ran into Jack’s elbow, which landed on his wind. Jack’s head collided with one of Keeler’s molars, a dental mishap that deprived him of an ivory. But Keeler pocketed the molar and betook himself to his reservation, whereat the crowd warmed to him and gave him a glad-hand serenade.11

The Baltimore American’s version of the collision:

Before his expulsion Jack came very near putting Willie Keeler out of the game for a long time to come. Doyle is an ambitious player, who takes every chance that offers to win a game. A short fly went up to right field, and Doyle and Keeler both went for it. The ball was in Keeler’s territory, but Jack, without warning, pursued the ball, and the result was a violent collision with Keeler. Keeler was momentarily stunned by the shock, and for a few minutes lay motionless upon the grass. It was at first thought that he was seriously injured, for both players were running at full speed when they came together.

The players gathered around him and he was deluged with water, and finally recovered and resumed his place in the field.12

The Baltimore Sun printed the following:

Keeler came near being badly hurt in the second inning by a collision with Doyle. Doyle ran out into right field after Cartwright’s fly, which was Keeler’s ball, and the collision knocked Keeler down and out for a few minutes. He recovered and continued to play.13

The second incident involved Doyle being ejected from the game. As the Washington Post colorfully reported:

Physician McJames, however, diagnosed a speech that Jack Doyle made at the home plate, and pronounced Jack’s English as suffering from a compound fracture. Jack’s sprained English was passed at Umpire Hurst because Tim called a strike on Jack, who had $25 worth of conversation with Tim, and was finally ordered to beat an exit from the grounds. O’Brien, the Orioles’ substitute outfielder, replaced Jack at first.

After his exit Doyle returned and fanned baseball with a cluster of railbirds perched on the Freedmen’s Hospital fence in deep left field.14

From the Baltimore American:

There was enough scrapping by the players and kicking against the umpire to please the most exacting lover of excitement. Jack Doyle figured in animated debate with Tim Hurst, and the result was that Jack was not only banished from the game, but he was ordered out of the grounds, with a heavy fine chalked up against him.

Tim Hurst could not have inflicted severer punishment upon Doyle than by putting him out of the game.15

And the Baltimore Sun:

In the third inning Doyle was put out of the game and out of the grounds because of his objection to a strike being called on him. Up to that time Hurst had been doing fairly well, and the strike called on Doyle was certainly not a flagrant error, if an error at all, but from that time forward Hurst gave everything against the visitors.

He “roasted” Corbett on balls and strikes until the usually placid Clarke, after protesting mildly time and again, finally got so exasperated that he came near being expelled from the game.16

A further point of note involved the Baltimore players being hit by pitched balls, as the Baltimore American stated, “Several of the Baltimore players were hit by pitched balls but in every instance the blow was intentional. The crafty Orioles picked out Mercer’s slow balls and placed their bodies near enough to the plate to come in contact with the horsehide and be rewarded by a free pass to first.”17 Although the Orioles did their best to be credited with many HBP, only two were actually awarded, McGraw and Jennings, both in the seventh inning which led to a bases-loaded situation but no runs. The Washington Post added, “Then Mercer jolted McGraw over the kidneys with an inshoot, Mugsy reaching third on Keeler’s single to center. Jennings was hit by Mercer and was forced on Kelly’s [sic] grounder to DeMontreville, O’Brien covering the base with neatness and dispatch.”18

The newspaper box scores don’t agree on the number of hits (H) or at bats (AB), either. The Baltimore American lists eight hits for the Orioles, while the Washington Post lists 10 and the Baltimore Sun 12. The discrepancy undoubtedly has to do with which errors were deemed to have occurred. The individual ABs in the Baltimore American box score didn’t make sense from a plate appearance point of view. John McGraw, who played third base and batted first for the Baltimore Orioles, was listed as having four AB, one base on balls (BB) and one hit by pitch (HBP): six plate appearances. Four batting order positions after McGraw was the combination of Jack Doyle and Tom O’Brien (O’Brien replaced Doyle in the third). Doyle had one AB, O’Brien had three, totaling four—but O’Brien also had a BB which meant a total of five plate appearances. No problem there except for the fact the preceding batting order position—Joe Kelley, who batted fourth—only had four plate appearances.

To further muddy the waters, the seventh and eighth batters—Heinie Reitz and Boileryard Clarke respectively—only had four plate appearances each, but Joe Corbett, batting ninth, had five: four AB plus one sacrifice hit. How can a later batting order position have more plate appearances than an earlier position? It’s impossible.

The Washington Post box score (see Figure 1 on page 106), on the other hand, made much more sense: The BB, HBP, and the SH add up properly relative to the ABs. All 42 plate appearances—five for the first six positions in the batting order, four for the latter three—can be validated by summing the AB (34), BB (5), SH (1) and HBP (2).

Another conundrum was served up by the Baltimore American. They stated that Washington’s DeMontreville and Selbach had sacrificed, DeMontreville in the first inning and Selbach in the sixth. None of the box scores listed either of them with a sacrifice hit, including the Baltimore American itself. This non-listing makes sense from a plate appearances point of view given that each player was credited with four AB, zero BB, and zero HBP. The American likely labeled the DeMontreville and Selbach efforts improperly.

Any time a researcher finds him or herself in a situation where research identifies an error in the historical record, the first reaction is that “I must have made a mistake” and/or “I must have missed something.”19 Review of what we know about the game on May 11, 1897, though, it’s clear that the record books are wrong. Duke Farrell did in fact have eight assists in the game against the Baltimore Orioles—but only five of the assists, not eight, were catching runners stealing second base. Since the stated references do not categorically detail his involvement, the remaining three assists must be presumed to involve the pick-off at third, the rundown between third and home, and the put out of a batter who sacrificed. This researcher is aware of at least two other nineteenth century catchers who threw out five at second base in a single game: 1) Charlie Bennett on July 22, 1881 and 2) Tom Daly on July 5, 1887. I will leave the readers with this final note about Duke Farrell and his skill at throwing to second base: “Charley Farrell is working a very clever trick this season. In practice before the game the Duke makes a bad mess of getting the ball down to second, but after the game starts the fast base runner discovers that Farrell is throwing true to the mark.”20

BRIAN MARSHALL is an Electrical Engineering Technologist living in Barrie, Ontario, Canada, and a longtime researcher in various fields including entomology, power electronic engineering, NFL, Canadian Football and MLB. Brian has written many articles, winning awards for two of them, and two books in his 60 years with two baseball books on the way — one on the 1927 New York Yankees and the other on the 1897 Baltimore Orioles. Brian has been a SABR member since 2013 and is a longtime member of the PFRA. Growing up Brian played many sports including football, rugby, hockey, baseball along with participating in power lifting and arm wrestling events, and aspired to be a professional football player but when that didn’t materialize he focused on Rugby Union and played off and on for 17 seasons in the “front row.”

 

(Click image to enlarge.)

 

Notes

1. A.J. Reach. Reach’s Official Base Ball Guide for 1898. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: A.J. Reach Co., 1898. Reprinted in 1990 by Horton Publishing Company.

2. John B. Foster, Editor (Compiled by Charles D. White). Spalding’s Official Base Ball Record, part of the Spalding “Red Cover” Series of Athletic Handbooks, No. 59R. New York, NY: American Sports Publishing Company, 1924.

3. John B. Foster, Editor (Compiled by Charles D. White). The Little Red Book: Spalding’s Official Base Ball Record, part of the Spalding’s Athletic Library, No. 59B. New York, NY: American Sports Publishing Company, 1928.

4. Leonard Gettelson, Preparer. One for the Book for 1963: Complete All-Time Major League Records. St. Louis, MO: Charles C. Spink & Son (The Sporting News), 1963.

5. Seymour Siwoff, Editor. The Book of Baseball Records. New York, New York: Seymour Siwoff , 1982.

6. “A BATTLE OF PITCHERS: In Which Joe Corbett is Ahead of Mercer,” Baltimore American, Wednesday, May 12, 1897, page unknown.

7. “MERCER THEIR CINCH: Has Never Pitched a Winning Game Against the Orioles,” Washington Post, Wednesday, May 12, 1897, 8.

8. “HARD TIME WITH HURST!: Corbett Saves the Game,” Baltimore Sun, Wednesday Morning, May 12, 1897, 6.

9. Washington Post, op. cit.

10. Baltimore Sun, op. cit.

11. Washington Post, op. cit.

12. Baltimore American, op. cit.

13. Baltimore Sun, op. cit.

14. Washington Post, op. cit.

15. Baltimore American, op. cit.

16. Baltimore Sun, op. cit.

17. Baltimore American, op. cit.

18. Washington Post, op. cit.

19. This is true not only in baseball research and records. I recall having those exact thoughts at the time I discovered that Jim Brown, the famous running back for the NFL Cleveland Browns, had actually gained over 1000 yards rushing—1016 to be exact—in the 1962 season rather than the 996 yards he was credited with. See Brian Marshall. “Rushing to Judgment: Recovering Jim Brown’s Lost Yardage from 1962.” The Coffin Corner, Volume 35, Number 3, May/June 2013, 9–12.

20. “Baseball Notes,” Baltimore Sun, Friday Morning, May 21, 1897, 6.

 

Baseball Hall of Famer George Wright’s record for changing clubs as a young player (1865–68) was exceptional even for this pre-reserve-clause period: six baseball teams (one of them twice, and omitting his cricket clubs) in four cities in four seasons, all before he was of an age to cast his first vote. He moved again for 1869, famously, to the Cincinnati club.

In George’s early years the family meal ticket was cricket. His father, English emigrant Sam Wright, was a cricket professional for the St. George Club of New York, as was older brother Harry Wright. Harry had also been a baseball player since 1858, when he joined the Knickerbocker Club.

George, born in Harlem on January 28, 1847, played with St. George’s first eleven as a substitute as early as July of 1862. He was an all-rounder—batting and bowling—from the start. In August 1862 he was top scorer for the firsts in a match with East New York, while teammate and fellow baseballist James Creighton took most of the wickets as bowler.1 George was in the eleven again in October, in a match where brother Harry acted as scorer and father Sam as umpire. (As professionals for St. George, they normally did not play interclub matches.) This was the match against the Willow Club of Brooklyn during which Creighton suffered the hernia he would fatally rupture playing baseball a few days later. The New York Clipper, in its issue of October 25, 1862, listed 15-year-old George among the professionals to receive the proceeds from a benefit match (the first type of match for which admission was charged), indicating that he assisted Sam and Harry in some way. The club continued to classify him as a member of the second, or reserve, eleven, presumably because of his age, for which it was criticized following one of his efforts as a substitute with the first eleven: “George Wright, also, considering he is rated a second eleven player by his club, is entitled to credit for his 9 (runs). A second eleven, all of his strength, would whip the first easily…”2 Answering an inquiry in its issue of August 22, 1863, from a reader in the Boston area, the Clipper commented: “George Wright is a son of the veteran cricketer Sam Wright… George is now one of the best players here, and bids fair soon to be the best.”

In September 1864, Wright played against two Philadelphia cricket clubs, the Philadelphia and Young America, and it was perhaps this exposure which earned him an offer in the spring of 1865 to become a full-fledged professional for the Philadelphia club. This may have involved instructing college boys of about his age—the Philadelphia was equated the following season to the Graduate Eleven of the University of Pennsylvania.3 He was still listed as a member of the Gotham as late as March 1865, but in June starred for a combined Philadelphia eleven against a visiting New York team.4 Besides any increase in compensation, the St. George Club’s problems that spring may have influenced his decision to transfer: the club lost its Hoboken grounds at the beginning of April and were in danger of losing its players to other teams.5 As cricket clubs did not forbid dual memberships (the National Association of Base Ball Players, or NABBP, did), he continued as a member of the St. George Club, playing with them as his schedule permitted. In 1865 he played with a New York club in the US vs. Canada grand match in Toronto.6 His family background was strong, and there was a war on, but even so, at cricket Wright qualifies as a phenom.

Immersed from his earliest memories in a sport that already recognized professionals, George Wright was the most prime of candidates to join the growing ranks of compensated baseball players as soon as his talent justified it. Arranged employment and waived club dues had been considered acceptable evasions of the National Association of Base Ball Players rule forbidding compensation since its adoption in 1859. At a time when few boys completed high school or dreamed of attending a university, this type of “professional” status for players of his age—he didn’t turn 21 until 1868—was not unheard of. At age 19 in 1860, for example, pitcher James Creighton of the Excelsior of Brooklyn was undoubtedly compensated.

To this point (1865) baseball played a distinct second fiddle to cricket for Wright. The 18-year-old’s senior baseball experience, following an earlier experience for the Gotham’s junior club, consisted of ten interclub matches with his brother Harry’s team, the Gotham of New York. The first had been in 1863, in which he played left field and was praised for “doing great execution among the high balls batted in that direction…”7 The next nine matches followed in 1864, when his batting was only average for the club—2R3 hands lost and 2R2 runs per game.8 They won three, lost six, and tied one. His fielding was ahead of his batting at this stage: he played all nine games at catcher, the most demanding position in those days of bare-hand, frequent-base-stealing baseball, when a pitcher might make 300 pitches per game. Previously, he took part in senior exhibitions pitting 18 cricketers against nine baseballists in baseball matches, some of them benefits staged by the St. George Cricket Club for his father and brother. At the first such, in September 1861, the 14-year-old, playing for the 18s at “second catcher” (close to the spectators), he had an unexpected opportunity to further his practical education: “Ladies’ crinolines made an excellent third catcher for stray balls, and little Georgy Wright must have done some damage to the aforesaid garments of some of the fair dames, by running amuck with his head into them in search of the ball to save a run.”9

Despite Wright’s move to Philadelphia for 1865, baseball did not drop off his agenda. Joining the Olympic Club, he began playing catcher for them in July, appeared in five games, and was also recruited while in New York at the end of July to substitute for the Keystone Club of Philadelphia during its visit to Greater New York. In total he found time for six interclub baseball matches in 1865, averaging 2R2 hands lost and 2R2 outs per game. He also was recruited to umpire two games in Philadelphia. Finally, the New York Herald on August 9 reported that George had played a match for his old club, the Gotham, up the Hudson at Newburgh, New York, under the name Cohen, presumably as a substitute for Leonard Cohen, a Gotham regular, on August 1. This is not corroborated by another source.

In March 1866, Harry Wright accepted an offer to captain the Cincinnati Cricket Club. He packed up his family and left for Ohio forthwith, and was quickly replaced as cricket professional for the St. George club by George. George also returned to the Gotham Base Ball Club. He played in five games, averaging 1R4 hands lost and 4R1 runs per game, which led the team. By this time he was considered an elite baseballist. Henry Chadwick, listing the best players by position in the Clipper on July 21, named him as catcher.

Wright is listed in the 1866 Gotham box scores as “George”—an unexplained deviation. Pseudonyms in 1860s box scores are far from unknown, and are usually ascribed to players who were illegally “revolving” with other clubs or who didn’t want their employers to know that they were playing hooky from the office. However, there is no indication that he continued to belong to the Olympic Club of Philadelphia after he rejoined the Gotham, and as he was compensated in some form, the second possibility does not seem to apply. Certainly no one was deceived. In the lone Gotham box score which is accompanied by a statistical summary, he is listed as “Wright” in the summary, and the Gotham’s 1866 player statistics in the 1867 Beadle’s Dime Base Ball Player also list him correctly.

The Gotham in 1866 played interclub matches only infrequently, and only one of their seven games was with first-tier opposition. That, and George’s developing skills in baseball, may account for his decision in July to resign from the club and enroll as a member of the first-tier Union Club of Morrisania, a then-independent town in the modern South Bronx. Waiting out the required 30-day membership period (which eliminates the possibility that he played for the Gotham under a pseudonym because he anticipated transferring), he debuted with the Union in September, and played their final nine games as they contended for the club championship of 1866. There he played for the first time at shortstop, his future specialty. The Union apparently preferred to keep Dave Birdsall, who would also be George’s teammate in the 1870s at Boston, at catcher. The change may also have been at George’s insistence—he remarked in later years that he moved to the infield after taking a foul tip in the throat. The club won eight of the nine, and finished with an overall record of 25–3. The Atlantic of Brooklyn, the champions of 1865, finished 16–3, but avoided defeat in a best-of-three series against any of its rivals, and so retained its unofficial championship. It did not schedule the Union, which was its prerogative. Wright averaged 1R3 hands lost and 4R6 runs per game, second on his team.

The New York Clipper noted in its cricket report of September 1, 1866, that “baseball has supplanted cricket in the affections of the lovers of out door pastimes in this country…” With baseball and cricket moving in opposite directions, Wright’s decision to leave the Gotham Club marked the reversal of their places in his plans: he staked his professional career for the foreseeable future on baseball. He never lost his affection for his first sport, however. He was a prominent amateur cricketer in the Boston area for many years after his retirement from baseball, competing well into his fifties.

Wright’s pocketbook likely dictated his next move. He resigned at some point from the Union Club. On November 12, before the Union had closed its season, he was in Philadelphia to play in a series of benefit games with some members of his 1865 club, the Olympic. The Philadelphia Sunday Mercury reported on November 18 that “we are glad to hear there is some prospect of [Wright] being again attached to clubs hereabouts.” In April 1867, apparently having spent the winter considering his options, he enrolled in the National Base Ball Club of Washington, DC. Though the “champions of the South” by virtue of triumphs in 1866 over teams in the District and in Baltimore, the National Club was second-tier by Greater New York standards, like the Gotham, but had ambitions of moving up. It had begun bringing in experienced players from Greater New York in 1866, and was looking for more.

Club president Col. Frank Jones was an official in the Treasury Department, and a resettled Brooklynite who had been a member of the Excelsior Club of Brooklyn before the war. As the new hands such as Wright were hired, they were listed as clerks in Treasury Department offices. For the 1867 season, eight of the top eleven players on the National were so designated.10 The National also offered a chance for George to visit brother Harry. It had announced in March that it would tour five “western” states in 1867, including two games in Cincinnati. Was Col. Jones expecting to replay the Excelsior’s success of 1860, when its tour of western New York had propelled it to immediate championship contention? Certainly one object of the tour was to let the newly-constructed team (the Excelsior were in a similar position in 1860) jell into a nine with the talent and cohesion to succeed in championship competition in September and October.

Wright upheld his end of the bargain. He led the team offensively, averaging 2R6 hands lost and 6R8 runs per game. His runs per game was the highest among players for first-tier clubs, and the National posted the highest per-game scoring average.11 The National posted a 25–5 record against NABBP-member clubs. A notorious sixth loss occurred on the western tour at the hands of the Forest City Club of Rockford, Illinois, in Chicago, and was generally attributed to the rigors of the tour schedule. The expected dividend of the tour in the form of first-tier contender status in the East, however, did not materialize, as the team afterward lost five of seven matches with Greater New York opponents. Postseason post-mortems pointed to a lack of discipline in the club, inconsistent fielding, the lack of a first-class pitcher, and the practice of moving players from position to position during a game. Wright’s experience is illustrative: despite his sterling reputation as a catcher and first-tier experience at shortstop, available box scores and game accounts from various sources (the box scores of the time listed only the position in which the player began the game) show him appearing in 12 games at second base, nine as pitcher, seven at catcher, six at third base, four at shortstop, and two in center field.

The captain (or field manager), Georgetown University law student George Fox, apparently took the blame for the post-tour failures. He resigned as captain in September and was replaced by Wright, who was even younger and had no experience as a baseball captain, but may have been thought the player most capable of exercising leadership with an undisciplined crew. It didn’t seem to take. A nadir of sorts was reached on October 21 when the team blew an eight-run lead in the ninth against the Union Club of Lansingburgh, New York. Covering the club’s loss to the Excelsior of Brooklyn, by then a second-tier club, in his issue of the Ball Player’s Chronicle on October 31, Henry Chadwick described the club’s condition during its late-October road trip to Greater New York: “George Wright is nominally the captain, but as each player of the nine, and two or three in particular, seem to consider themselves as fully competent to act in the position, the result is a lack of discipline, totally destructive of good generalship, be the nominal captain ever so capable of directing the nine.” As Wright was prone to the oft-criticized practice of moving players from position to position during the game (he played himself at four different spots in one of the losses), “ever so capable” probably doesn’t describe his abilities as a captain at this point in his career.12

Though the club offered Wright the captaincy for 1868 with a seat on the committee that selected the first nine, he apparently had had enough of clerking in the Treasury Department, and re-signed with the Union of Morrisania. The Unions had ascended to the unofficial championship of 1867 by winning a two-out-of-three game series from the Atlantic of Brooklyn, and then finishing the season without themselves losing a two-of-three game series to another club. They also had had to beat back an appeal by the Atlantic to the NABBP, on the grounds that the Union had used an ineligible player. Nevertheless, the Union’s record had declined from 25–3 in 1866 to 21–8 in 1867, and George was welcomed back, “at his own request.”13 This apparently occurred shortly after the end of the season in November; the New York Sunday Mercury was predicting his return to the Union by December 29.

 

George Wright’s plaque in Cooperstown lacks the space to detail the most peripatetic period of his career.

 

At the beginning of March, Wright opened in New York, along with Harry, what the Sunday Mercury on March 1 called the “Wright Brothers Base Ball-Depot,” selling gear for several outdoor sports. This was his first foray into the occupation that would become his life’s work. George also returned to cricket, playing for Philadelphia in an interclub match in that city in May, for St. George on June 24 in Philadelphia, and in a series of matches against a visiting English eleven in September and October. His return improved the Union Club, which posted a record of 39–6. Unfortunately, two of the losses were to the Atlantic of Brooklyn, which deprived the club of its champion standing, which the Mutual Club of New York then won after defeating the Atlantic. Wright’s record in 43 games of 2R5 hands lost and 4R23 runs per game, was good for fourth overall among players on NABBP teams.14 An additional statistic, the number of times reaching base on hits, appears for the first time in some box scores: for 32 games, Wright accumulated 225, an average of over seven per game. Though the Union returned him primarily to shortstop (39 games), he inexplicably played second base in both of the losses to the Atlantic. He got another look at the “west” in August, as the Union went on a 20-game tour (including Cincinnati) that ranged as far as St. Louis. Answering an inquiry in the New York Clipper on September 26, Chadwick named Wright as the best “general player” in baseball.

The chronology of Wright’s next move, joining Harry on the all-salaried Cincinnati Base Ball Club for 1869, cannot be completely determined from the primary sources available. To an inquiry from Cincinnati printed on September 12, 1868, about the possibility that George would join the Red Stockings, the Clipper responded, “Not that we know of.” Since he played out the Union schedule, which ended on November 8, this presumably was not an accomplished fact. The NABBP then decided at its convention in December to recognize professional players and clubs. Cincinnati had decided, perhaps even before the NABBP’s action had to field an all-salaried team in 1869, which may have influenced his choice.

Definite reports of his transfer are lacking until February, so it seems unlikely that Wright had signed a contract before that point. The NABBP convention also voted to increase the period in which transferring players could not play for their new club from thirty to sixty days, effectively reducing the offseason signing period and making in-season transfers less likely. With the beginning of open professionalism, clubs were sorting themselves into all-professional, semi-professional, and amateur status. As of early January, 15 clubs, including the Union of Morrisania, were considered professional.15 The Union, however, after team meetings later that month, decided to abandon professional play and field an amateur nine. This decision likely was made after Wright (and other Union players) had decided to move on, rather than the other way around. The New York Sunday Mercury item on February 7 announcing the club’s decision listed the players transferring or retiring, Wright among them. Cincinnati, the Athletic Club of Philadelphia, and the Mutual were all reported to be interested in his services, and he was listed on an Atlantic of Brooklyn team that was headed for New Orleans in March.16

The speculation ended later in February: in its issue of February 28 the Sunday Mercury described Wright as on the “official list” of players who had signed with Cincinnati. The Red Stockings thus became the next club to try to achieve championship status by enrolling Wright, the acknowledged best general player in the game, following the unsuccessful attempts of the Nationals in 1867 and the Union in 1868.

George Wright’s peregrinations in his youthful years in baseball seem to have their causes in the permissive environment for player movement at the time, in his family background, and the fact that he was in an early stage in his career. The Sunday Mercury’s editorial on January 17, 1869, about “revolvers” prompted by the end of the decade (1859-1868) when compensation of players was contrary to NABBP rules, reflects the contemporary attitude in the baseball community to player movement:

REVOLVERS TO BE REPUDIATED. We are glad to learn that the principal clubs throughout the country this season intend repudiating the class of revolving professionals entirely, the majority of the organizations engaging the services of players, having become disgusted with the conduct of several players whom they had treated liberally in the hope of having them permanently in their clubs, but who finally either left them in the lurch at an important period of the season, or who forgot their indebtedness for favors received when tempted by the offer of better pecuniary receipts. We know of instances of players from Northern cities engaged by Western clubs, who after having been the recipient of pecuniary favors as well as cordial greetings and kindly welcome., have gone off to other clubs without so much as a by your leave. It is time such frauds as these were prevented. Now that professional ball-playing is a business, and that players can engage in it honestly and openly and above board, it becomes not only the honorable manly course to pursue, but also the best policy, to be strictly honest in all engagements with clubs…The revolving system would soon have its deathblow given it if clubs would refuse to allow a player to enter their nine who could not show a fair record—as regards honest dealing we mean—from the club he left. But as long as men are accepted, regardless of how they have acted with the clubs they have left, just so long may we expect to see revolvers flourish. Players may have good reason for leaving a club in the middle of a season; but when they do, the club taking them in should be thoroughly convinced of the fact. Now that the sixty-day law is in force, we shall expect to see less revolving; but the best way to put a stop to the odious system is for clubs to have an understanding among themselves not to employ players who cannot bring with them a clean record from their last place. For instance, suppose Joe Start, Geo. Flanly, Al Reach, Harry Wright, John Goldie, or half a dozen other well-known professional ball-players should desire to leave the clubs they belong to, there is not one of them who cannot point to his faithful services to the club he has been a member of as an honorable record sufficient to give him an engagement in any organization he may wish to join.

Earlier, contemplating player movement from the Atlantic Club before the 1866 season, the Sunday Mercury found a silver lining:

The changes which occur in the organization of the first-nines of our leading clubs each season, though they sometimes lead to unfriendly feelings and give rise to reports of unfair dealing, are nevertheless more beneficial than injurious to the game, inasmuch as a monopoly of success, year after year, tends greatly to lessen the public interest in the principal contests which take place…The excitement incident to a close match between two rival clubs is greatly promoted by the changes which occur in the formation of club-nines each year.17

George Wright was not included in the Sunday Mercury’s list of paragons considered above any suspicion of dishonest dealing, but had the same sterling reputation. Henry Chadwick, denying in the Ball Player’s Chronicle of May 21, 1868, an accusation of favoritism toward the Wrights, doubled down on their character:

We have been free in our praise of these two players for sundry reasons, among which, apart from their skillful play, may be named the following: We never knew either to be guilty of a dishonorable action; we have never known of either hanging idly about taverns and gambling houses; we have never heard from the mouths of either of them any blasphemy or profanity, or seen either give way to ill-temper or “ugliness”…we are glad to be able to hold them up as examples to professional players.

By contrast, two examples of unacceptable behavior occurred in early 1869 involving Wright’s intended team, the Red Stockings. The team in 1868 had employed an easterner, John Hatfield, a star catcher- outfielder. Hatfield over the winter took “pecuniary favors” from the Mutual Club of New York, but then attempted to rejoin the Red Stockings, and was listed as a Red Stocking in most preseason commentaries. He ended up with the Mutual: possibly the upright Harry sent him packing. Also so listed was a young Philadelphian, John Radcliff, an infielder-outfielder, who also ended up back east after similar reports.18

Abuses notwithstanding, never in professional baseball’s subsequent history would the “free agent” market seem so favorable for players. Honorably done, a mobile player could offer his services freely to the numerous professional and semi-professional clubs nationwide, and have no fears for his reputation or his employability. It was only required that he play for one club at a time and be a club member for 30 days before playing, limitations adopted in 1857 after a notorious instance of revolving in 1856. Although the waiting period between appearances for his old and new clubs was increased to 60 days for 1869 to discourage mid-season player movement, the assumption was still that a player should have the right to change employers on the same basis as anyone else. In a “labor market” with little or no restriction on player movement and dominated by independent clubs which hired professionals in competition with each other, Wright was almost inevitably going to make career moves among different employers. When this utopian labor market ended after the 1879 season with the secret adoption of the reserve clause, he became one of its first victims. Not wishing to return to Providence after the 1879 season, he was unable to obtain his release and chose to prematurely interrupt his playing career.

A player of George Wright’s unattached circumstances, reputation, and ability thus had in the period from 1865 to 1868 almost no limitations in his freedom of movement, and obviously Wright believed it was in his best interest to use it. That attitude ran in the family. The youthful George Wright operated against a backdrop of membership in a family of professional sportsmen who responded when opportunity knocked. Father Sam, though he settled down with the same New York cricket club for many years, had emigrated from England to better his career. Harry Wright preceded George in successfully combining cricket and baseball, and himself moved as a baseballist from the Knickerbocker Club to the more competitive Gotham Club amateurs to professional Cincinnati, even though by that point he had a family to uproot. Their relationships, and particularly Harry’s role in George’s career decisions, are however primarily a matter for conjecture. Perhaps it is significant that none of the primary sources even hint at a role for Harry in George’s movements, other than, finally, as a team captain interested in his services.

Wright’s moves are typical for an advancing young professional. He moved from junior to senior play, first in cricket and then in baseball, in association with his father and brother. He then decided as an 18-year-old that his best option was a promotion to cricket club professional, even if it meant splitting his time between New York and Philadelphia. Harry’s move to Cincinnati created an opening for George in New York in 1866, and in the same year the progress of his baseball skills allowed him to move first from junior play to a second-tier gentleman’s club playing a limited schedule and then to a first-tier championship contender, presumably with increases in compensation. In the absence of any other likely reason, his move to Washington in 1867 seems to have been financial. That club seeming in the grip of indiscipline and mismanagement, he returned to Greater New York City in 1868, with the financial resources in hand to invest in the Wright Brothers Base Ball Depot. As the present era of open professionalism dawned in 1869, however, the sun was setting on George’s period of hopscotching. He was at the baseball pinnacle as a player, and at the top of its new wage scale. He also had had his first experience as a sports entrepreneur, which would make him one of the most prosperous and respected of the pioneer baseballist. That and his longevity (he lived until August 1937) ensured his election to the Hall of Fame.

ROBERT THOLKES of Minneapolis is a veteran contributor to SABR publications and to the journal “Base Ball,” concentrating on the game’s amateur era. Bob’s past activities include several years as an officer of the Halsey Hall Chapter (Minnesota), biographical research on major leaguers with Minnesota connections, and service as newsletter editor for SABR’s Origins of Baseball Committee.

 

Notes

1. New York Tribune, August 29, 1862, 8.

2. New York Clipper, September 12, 1863, 170.

3. Philadelphia North American, May 4, 1866, 1.

4. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 27, 1865, 2.

5. Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times, April 8, 1865.

6. New York Herald, August 25, 1865, 5.

7. New York Sunday Mercury, September 13, 1863.

8. The only widely-kept statistics for individual player performance until the late 1860s was total number of outs made and total runs scored, divided by games played. “2R2” indicates two runs per game with a remainder of 2.

9. New York Sunday Mercury, September 22, 1861.

10. Washington Evening Star, August 5, 1867, 1.

11. Beadle’s Dime Base Ball Player, 1868, 66, 97.

12. New York Clipper, November 2, 1867, 235.

13. The Ball Player’s Chronicle, January 23, 1868.

14. Beadle’s Dime Base Ball Player, 1869, 61.

15. New York Sunday Mercury, January 10, 1869.

16. New York Sunday Mercury, February 7, 1869.

17. New York Sunday Mercury, May 6, 1866.

18. New York Sunday Mercury, February 28, 1869.

The Sport of Trapshooting

Trapshooting has been part of America’s sports scene since the late nineteenth century. In it, people shoot at targets—typically with a 12-gauge shotgun—launched into the air by a machine in a direction away from the shooter. The targets are saucer-shaped pieces of baked clay, from which the name clay target is taken. The sport was designed originally to allow bird hunters to practice their skills by shooting at clay targets instead of live pigeons; hence, another oft-used name for the target is clay pigeon. The machine moves continuously to change the angle at which a target is sprung from the trap, providing more realism in simulating bird hunting. Competition among participants involves shooting from a fixed position at a pre-determined number of targets over one or more rounds. Whichever competitor “breaks” the greatest number of targets is the winner.3

Trapshooting achieved considerable popularity throughout America by the early twentieth century. In 1915, there were over 4,000 trapshooting clubs in the nation with more than a half million members.4 Still, trapshooting struggled against an image of being a “rich man’s game” intended for the well-to-do. Only the wealthy, it was widely believed, could pay for trapshooting club memberships, a high-quality shotgun, copious amounts of ammunition and targets, and the fees attendant to match competitions.5

Baseball and Trapshooting: A Synergistic Relationship?

Executives from the business side of trapshooting (e.g., arms and ammunition manufacturers, gun club owners, etc.) sought to entice more Americans to spend time and money at the traps by promoting the theme that the sport was a fitting pastime for the common man. Baseball became an integral part of this campaign. Every American—not just affluent ones—should embrace trapshooting, it was claimed, because of the similarities to the National Game, a supposition demonstrated by the many professional ballplayers who were trapshooters. It was a simple proposition: If you enjoyed baseball, you would enjoy trapshooting.

Articles on trapshooting in the early twentieth century often trumpeted the large number of major leaguers who favored shooting during the offseason. A number of eventual Hall of Famers were identified as avid trapshooters, including Christy Mathewson, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Chief Bender, Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, Eddie Collins, Roger Bresnahan, and Frank Baker.6 The author of one article asserted that “virtually every player of prominence” also was a trapshooting enthusiast, and he noted more broadly:

A recent canvass of every player of note showed that forty-nine out of every fifty owned shotguns—some of the players being the owners of more than one gun while several had equipments of five guns, and one boasted of seven guns. Further, all claimed that shooting was their favorite sport.7

Several reasons were offered to explain the affinity ballplayers had for trapshooting. The most prominent was that the sport kept abilities needed on the diamond sharp during the offseason.8 One writer professed, “For shooting and baseball are two of America’s “best bets” in the sports world. Both require a steady nerve, good eye, even temperament, concentration, and A-1 brand of sportsmanship. Indeed, they have many things in common.”9

A sports columnist echoed this refrain in a 1915 article that noted once the baseball season had ended, players instinctively headed for the traps:

Trapshooting has taken such a strong hold upon the players in the past two years that they have now resolved themselves into a series of exchanges of the bat, ball and glove for the gun and shell. They have found from experience that trapshooting is the only recreation for their Fall and Winter period of idleness that will not send them into next season’s campaign overtrained.10

The particular advantage hours spent on a firing line at a trapshooting club had for pitchers was emphasized in one article: “The clay bird game is a sport that, more than any other, keeps eyes keen, steels the nerves and cultivates instant and accurate judgment of speed, distance, the effect of wind, etc.; things that are invaluable to a pitcher.”11

The campaign to attract baseball fans to the traps went beyond highlighting that numerous major leaguers enjoyed the sport. Proponents of trapshooting wanted people participating in the sport, not simply watching it as they did baseball games. Trapshooting had not developed into a spectator sport, and industry officials realized the unlikelihood of convincing people to pay an admission fee to attend matches between trapshooters who, regardless of their skill, were not sports celebrities. While there was ample evidence people would pay to watch famous baseball players participate in shooting matches—as they did to see these same players at the ballpark—the real money was in persuading people to become trapshooters themselves.

Consequently, the allure of the sport was reinforced using the premise that while fans could not compete against ballplayers on the diamond, they could challenge and perhaps even best them in trapshooting competitions. Dangling this prospect served an unmistakable purpose. People were encouraged to see themselves as capable of competing as equals against well-known ballplayers in trapshooting matches. Achieving the talent to contend at this level would, of course, require a significant amount of time and money spent practicing at the traps. But the glory and bragging rights associated with winning such contests were portrayed as powerful inducements to try, including by one author who stressed, “The ‘fan’ is not able to compete with Matty in the pitcher’s box, nor with Cobb at bat and on the bases, but that same fan will gather many crumbs of comfort for himself when he can entice these famous athletes to the traps and show them how to hit the flying targets.”12

The campaign featured other links between baseball and trapshooting with the intent of portraying their shared attraction for ordinary people. Both sports were “truly American” in origin, and “the inherent liking of Americans for baseball and firearms cannot be denied.” In addition, both allowed Americans—living in an increasingly industrialized and urbanized society—to nostalgically relive the country’s pastoral and bucolic past. Baseball and trapshooting took place in the “Great Outdoors,” permitting participants and even those just watching the competition to bask in sunshine, breathe fresh air, enjoy simple pleasures, and escape the stifling oppressiveness and regimentation of the office, the factory, and—for children—the classroom.13

While the many ballplayers shooting at the traps lent credence to the claim that it was a popular sport among major leaguers during the offseason, match competition specifically was cited as the clearest evidence ballplayers—especially stars—believed trapshooting benefited their skills on the diamond. And of all of those who excelled at the ballpark and at the traps, it was Chief Bender who—by combining his baseball talents with his shooting skills—substantiated most convincingly the claim that because both sports are complementary, success in one contributed to success in the other.

Chief Bender the Ballplayer

A sizable body of literature exists on Chief Bender’s career in professional baseball; therefore, his record as a major leaguer is only summarized here.14 Bender pitched for manager Connie Mack and the Philadelphia Athletics 1903–14. He was a key member of the A’s “First Dynasty,” which won four American League pennants and three World Series championships, 1910–14.15 Mack considered Bender his “greatest one-game pitcher,” and was quoted as saying, “If everything depended on one game, I just used Albert, the greatest money-pitcher of all time.”16

Bender signed with the Baltimore Terrapins of the Federal League for the 1915 season, and he ended his active major league career by pitching for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1916–17.17 By the time he hung up his spikes, Bender had won 212 games, posted a .625 winning percentage, and pitched a no-hitter. He was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1953—the first Native American accorded that honor. Although informed of his selection, Bender did not live to see his induction into the Hall. The ceremony took place on August 9, 1954, almost three months after his death on May 22, 1954.18

Chief Bender’s Views on Trapshooting

In an interview that appeared in the April 1915 issue of Baseball Magazine, Chief Bender explained his partiality for trapshooting:

I have been shooting clay targets for about thirteen years and with every visit to a trapshooting club the hold of the sport on me grows…It would be pretty hard to give the biggest reason why trapshooting appeals. There are so many reasons and almost any combination of these reasons would hold a man in the game once he had experienced the fascination of shattering a clay saucer that was getting away from him at a rate that made a bird’s flight look lazy…Perhaps you have already suspected it, but to make sure that there be no mistake about it, let me tell you in plain English: I am a gun bug.19

In a short article that appeared under his name that same year, Bender echoed the notions of trapshooting’s popularity among ballplayers, and how it enabled them to keep their baseball skills sharp during the offseason:

Like 95 percent of the baseball players and fans, I find my chief recreation away from the diamond in the gun…I believe the one sport is the complement of the other. It seems to me that all of the baseball fraternity realizes that the one sport or hobby that is necessary to them in the offseason of baseball is shooting…The practice at the traps not only provides a certain amount of physical exercise, but it also trains the eye and mind, develops self-control, and brings the player into close communication with the best type of sportsmen in the world.20

Bender’s relationship with trapshooting, however, was more multifaceted than simply using it as part of his training regimen during the offseason. He was aware of the considerable financial rewards winning match competitions could yield, and that realization as much as any other influenced his affinity for the sport and beckoned him frequently to the traps.

Trapshooting as a Money Sport

Trapshooting was covered extensively in newspapers and sports periodicals during the first decades of the twentieth century when Chief Bender was active in the sport. Sporting Life, for example, included a section, “The World of Shooting,” and a column, “Those Shooters We Know,” which reported in each issue on the results of matches including those in which Bender competed.21 It is from this coverage that we can gain an understanding of the extent of his participation in shooting contests, monetary prizes at stake, and the success Bender enjoyed on the firing line.

Trapshooting competition typically took place in one of four formats:

• An individual match in which shooters competed one-on-one. Both wagered identical sums that became the purse.22 They fired at a specified number of clay saucers, and whoever broke the most targets was the winner. The amount wagered by a shooter in an individual competition was seldom less than $50.
• Tournament play, consisted of multiple shooters—usually between 10 and 20—each paying an entrance fee to participate in the competition. Total fees paid, which typically varied between five and twenty dollars for each entrant, became the purse. The winner again was determined by who broke the greatest number of clay birds, although tournaments didn’t always use the winner-take-all format. Instead, the purse was divided between the first- and second-place finishers.
• A variation of tournament play featuring the “miss-and-out” match. Participants would each shoot at 10 clay birds per round. The first time a shooter missed a target, he was eliminated from the contest. The competition continued until only one shooter was left standing.
• Team contests involving multiple shooters—typically three to five in number—competing together against an equal number of shooters on another team. Each team’s collective total of clay pigeons struck determined the champion, and members of the victorious team divided the winnings equally.

Exact contest purses are in many cases not specified in reporting on trapshooting matches. There are instead references to “big money,” “big purse,” and “neat sum of money.” Enough references to specific amounts exist, however, to gain a good understanding of the amounts at stake.

 

Chief Bender and other ballplayers in a circa 1915 photo taken at the Beideman Gun Club—Bender’s home range—in Camden, New Jersey. From left: Chief Bender, Fred Plum—National Amateur Trapshooting Champion—Grover Cleveland Alexander (Phillies), and Joe Bush (Athletics). (Author’s Collection)

 

Purses varied significantly among competitions. For example, in a March 3, 1909, match, Bender and his opponent, S. White, each put up $100 to shoot at 50 targets. Bender broke all of them while White could manage to hit only 43.23 In another match held “in a driving rain” on February 23, 1909, Bender and Nathan Benner engaged in a 50-target contest. Bender cracked 44 clay birds against Benner’s 43 and took home $375.24 Not all purses were so rich. In other individual contests in which Bender participated, the amount bet by each shooter was $50.25

Winnings in the tournament format were determined by the number of participants and the entrance fee.26 For example, Bender participated in a 1909 competition in which 12 participants each paid ten dollars to shoot. Bender won “first money” by cracking 24 of 25 clay birds.27 In a match the previous year in which 15 participants paid $5 each to shoot at 10 targets, Bender came out on top by downing all 10 birds.28

The totality of reporting on Bender’s prowess as a trapshooter reveals he won, or at least finished “in the money,” considerably more often than he did not. But Bender was not always victorious.29 A match in 1915 paired him against Lt. George Marker of the Pennsylvania Railroad police for the handsome sum of $500. In an unusual twist, the contest was not held at a gun club, but at the Charleroi Baseball Park in Charleroi, Pennsylvania. Presumably, this was done to accommodate more spectators who were charged an admission fee to watch the event. Given the amount of money at stake, the number of clay bird targets was set at a modest 25 for each shooter. Marker prevailed by a score of 20 to 16.30

Gambling at Trapshooting Matches

An assessment of trapshooting as a money sport and its relationship with baseball is incomplete without a discussion of gambling. Like other major sports, trapshooting drew gamblers to contests who were there primarily to place bets, not to marvel at the brilliance of outstanding shooters. Depending on the competition format, wagers could be placed in a number of ways: the individual or team that would be victorious; the number of targets a shooter or team would break; the difference in scores between shooters in individual matches or teams in tournament contests; the order in which shooters on a team would finish; and so forth.

Reporting on matches occasionally contains oblique references to gambling since it was illegal—but mostly tolerated—in many places contests were held. Admitting that gambling attracted some people to the traps was contrary to the campaign promoting the sport as a pastoral “truly American” pastime rooted in the “Great Outdoors.”31

Matches that featured baseball stars unquestionably encouraged gambling by attracting larger crowds, but from a business standpoint, the presence of gamblers was an unintended consequence, not a goal. The trapshooting industry wanted people to become trapshooters, not bet on trapshooters, but there is no doubt that the opportunity to gamble on the outcomes of trapshooting contests was a key motivation for many people to attend matches. It wasn’t all about seeing a famous ballplayer in person.

 

Bender, wearing his A’s uniform in a circa 1910 photo, believed trapshooting helped keep his baseball skills sharp during the offseason. (Author’s Collection)

 

The typical euphemism used to acknowledge gambling at trapshooting events was money “changing hands” among spectators. On rare occasions, however, actual amounts wagered on contests were mentioned in reporting, and that information indicates monies gambled could be huge. For example, in a 1908 two-person match that did not include Bender, “over $6,000 in side bets changed hands.”32 By comparison, the average American worker’s annual salary that year was $700.33

Gambling was not limited to spectators. Shooters often bet on themselves to augment their winnings in matches. This included Chief Bender.

Trapshooting as a Source of Income for Bender: Ballplayer versus Trapshooter

Comparing Chief Bender’s income from baseball versus shooting is hindered by a lack of data on his earnings in both sports. Bender’s salary as a ballplayer is unknown for most years and can only be estimated.34 It is documented he received $5,000 and $4,000 while playing for the Philadelphia A’s in 1911 and 1914, respectively, and reaped his biggest salary of $8,500 while a member of the Federal League’s Baltimore Terrapins in 1915.35 These were among his highest earnings, and in other years he received considerably less.36

In the same vein, Bender’s trapshooting winnings are in most cases described vaguely with phrases like “a big purse” and “first money.” While specific prize amounts are noted frequently enough in reporting to indicate trapshooting was a financially lucrative sport for those who were successful at it, information on most matches does not include actual purse amounts.

Even with these empirical limitations, some general comparisons can be made between Bender’s incomes from baseball and trapshooting in individual years. For example, following a mediocre performance in 1908 (8–9 record in 17 games started) on an underperforming Athletics’ team that finished in sixth place, an irate Connie Mack sent Bender a contract for 1909 that, according to Mack, “will call for a salary so small that he will no doubt scoff at it.”37,38 Although the exact amount is unknown, given other A’s players’ salaries for that year, Mack probably offered Bender around $1,800.39

The minimal contract tendered to him in 1909 illustrates the significant role trapshooting could play as a second source of income for Bender.40 He knew all too well his pay as a baseball player could go down as easily—perhaps more easily—as it could go up. Mack predicted that when Bender saw the “salary clause in the contract which I will tender him, he will feel like giving up pitching.”41 Bender earned over $1,200 in winning or “sharing in the money” in a mere eight trapshooting competitions that year. This is a base figure because he won additional matches in which prize amounts are not specified in reporting.42 It is highly likely Bender earned more—likely substantially more—in the traps than on the diamond in 1909.

Paid Appearances

Potential earnings from trapshooting were not limited to competing in matches. It is almost certain—albeit unreported, since deals were privately negotiated—that Bender was often paid by gun clubs to appear in contests so large crowds would attend.43 Many spectators were drawn to a match more by his celebrity status than the contest itself. For example, nearly 400 people showed up at the Belmont Gun Club in Narberth, Pennsylvania, to watch Bender shoot against other competitors in a “miss-and-out” tournament in 1909. The event was described as “the biggest shoot ever held by the gun club,” and the large turnout was clearly attributable to Bender’s presence.44 That same year, Bender was the “chief attraction” and “continually cheered by a large crowd that had assembled to see the Indian shoot” in a match held in Morrisville, New Jersey.45 Gun club owners eagerly hoped those who came to see Bender might be intrigued enough with the sport to take up trapshooting themselves.

Betting on Himself

A 1909 article in the Washington Post stated that Bender bet on himself to win trapshooting matches.46 Given the prevalence of gambling surrounding the sport, it is not surprising he engaged in the practice. Wagers probably were made with other shooters and attendees. No data exist on how often he gambled on himself at contests or the financial gains he secured by doing so, but it is virtually certain he came out ahead, given his talent as an exceptional marksman and how frequently he was victorious in shooting contests.

Endorsements

Chief Bender’s domination among ballplayers as a marksman afforded another opportunity for earnings—endorsing products. From the nineteenth century through today, baseball players—especially stars—have endorsed products for a fee. Bender was no different, and some of the merchandise he backed was associated with trapshooting. These included appearing in a Du Pont Gun Powder Company advertisement extolling the “irresistible fascination” of the traps, and another for the company promoting the superior performance of Du Pont’s “Hand Trap,” used to hurl clay pigeons into the air.47 In addition, Bender touted the quality of U.M.C. Arrow shotgun shells, and publicized the Parker shotgun, which he “uses in all his contests.”48

Bender also parlayed his celebrity status as a ballplayer and trapshooter into employment during the offseason as a salesman/consultant for sporting goods and other merchandise in Philadelphia-area department stores. Early in his career, he was employed in that capacity by Wanamaker’s Department Store, and after his baseball career by Gimbels Department Store.49

While Bender wrote about the intrinsic joy of trapshooting and its beneficial effects on his baseball abilities, the multiple ways the sport augmented his income motivated his drive for excellence and participation in shooting competitions. It also was not lost on Bender that trapshooting could be a profitable source of income for him long after his days as a major league ballplayer had ended.

The Vaudeville Pause

Chief Bender was actively involved on the shooting circuit when not on the baseball diamond throughout his major league career save one year—1911. An article in Sporting Life reported:

Chief Bender, the wonderful Indian pitcher of the World’s Champions Athletics will not be able to indulge in any shooting this Fall and Winter, as he is booked clear through the offseason in vaudeville. Chief is one of the best live bird shots in the country and an extremely good target shot. He had planned to shoot some big matches this season, but the theatrical engagements prevent.50

The vaudeville sketch was called “Learning the Game,” and it featured Bender along with fellow Athletics’ pitchers Cy Morgan and Jack Coombs.51 Cornball humor dominated the act, which took place in a garden supposedly outside Shibe Park. In Bender’s big scene, he would be dressed in an A’s uniform to play the role of a “bashful Chippewa” by the name of “Strong Heart.” Upon leaving the ballpark, Strong Heart encounters a young lady who knows almost nothing about baseball. She strikes up a conversation: “I hear you pitched a great game against the Giants today.” Bender’s reply: “Oh, yes, but Larry Doyle hit me twice.” Believing he had been physically assaulted, the horrified woman asks, “Why?”52

Another scene in which all three pitchers appeared had them showing the audience how they held a baseball to throw their signature pitches. Morgan demonstrated throwing “the spitter,” Coombs followed with his celebrated curve, and Bender finished up by displaying how he performed his knuckle delivery. A stage hand did the catching.53

But in vaudeville, as elsewhere in is life, Bender suffered indignities rooted in the prejudice and discrimination that permeated American society in the early twentieth century.54 When the act was playing in Atlantic City, Bender, Coombs and Morgan were in the lobby at Young’s Hotel waiting to cross the boardwalk to perform at the Steel Pier. A “southerner” who was staying at the hotel saw Bender and demanded of manager Jimmy Walsh to know if he was a guest. Walsh acknowledged he was and inquired, “What’s the matter?” The man observed Bender was “a person of color” and declared, “I won’t stop at a place like this!” Walsh replied, “Why that man’s an Indian. He’s Chief Bender of the World Champion Athletics. The best is none too good for him.” Astonished, the man adjourned to the bar, but whether he stayed or departed for another hotel is not known.55

 

 

Encounter with Annie Oakley

While the Philadelphia Athletics were conducting spring training in New Orleans in 1908, several players—Chief Bender, Jack Coombs, Doc Powers, Eddie Plank, and Simon Nicholls—spent one morning at the shooting range where Bender and Coombs cracked over 90 percent of their targets. That afternoon during an exhibition game between the A’s and the New Orleans Pelicans, famous sharpshooter Annie Oakley appeared and took in the game. Unfamiliar with baseball, she was tutored by Coombs on its finer points. One of the questions she asked was why Athletics’ players on base didn’t try to score when a foul ball was hit over the grandstand, believing they could do so while the ball was retrieved and brought back into the ballpark.56

Although Bender and Oakley met on this day—their only recorded meeting—they did not engage in a shooting contest. It would have been a memorable moment for the sports of trapshooting and baseball to have had them compete against each other.

Ballplayers’ Trapshooting Trip

The highpoint of the baseball-trapshooting relationship during Bender’s era came following the 1915 season when the Du Pont Gun Powder Company decided to sponsor a three-week tour by a squad of baseball stars to compete against the best shots at gun clubs in the East and Midwest. The purpose of the trip—and Du Pont’s goal in sponsoring it—was to attract more people to become trapshooters:

The participants in this tour will be a group of prominent major league baseball stars, men of wide repute in the field, but also skilled as trapshooters. They plan to travel from the Atlantic half way across the continent, shooting in the leading trapshooting centers against the prominent local clubs in the belief that the natural attraction that these stars of the diamond would exert, will bring the sport prominently to the notice of a great army of sportsmen who could easily be brought into the field of the clay target pastime … The trapshooting of such a squad will not only draw the regular shooters, but thousands of baseball fans, who know and admire these players and who may by this means be converts to the sport.57

The ballplayers selected initially for the tour were Chief Bender, Eddie Plank, Harry Davis, and Christy Mathewson. Plank, however, had a son born on October 18 and decided to remain with his family. James “Doc” Crandall replaced him.58 The players’ team was augmented by a “guest” local shooter at each stop.59

A match consisted of 1000 targets. Each five-person team shot at 500 clay birds—100 per man. Whichever team collectively broke the most targets won.60 But in some of the contests, players on opposing teams were also paired individually to expand the levels of competition. For example, when the ballplayers shot against the West End Gun Club in Richmond, Virginia, Chief Bender was paired against E. H. Storr of the club. Bender “walked away with his scalp,” breaking 96 targets to Storr’s 95.61

The tour schedule was rigorous—matches in 18 cities in 20 days. Table 1 shows the November dates, gun clubs, locations and results for the players’ team.62, 63

Among the baseball players, Bender was called “the star of the group.”64 During the tour, each player shot at 1800 clay birds—100 targets per player at each of 18 stops. Bender claimed top spot by breaking 1658 of them. Crandall downed 1287, while Mathewson followed closely behind at 1285.65 Davis finished last with 1232.66

Although the players lost far more often than they won, the tour was an enormous success from the perspectives of sponsor Du Pont and the gun clubs that hosted the matches. Reports from throughout the trip highlighted the extraordinary number of people who came to witness the competition, many of whom had never before set foot on a trapshooting range. Examples include:

• The visiting squad of baseball players drew a great gathering of spectators to the West End Gun Club on November 8, the crowd being the largest that has ever attended a shooting event in this city. (Richmond match)67
• The interest manifested by the baseball shooters is very satisfactory. Large delegations from Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and the down-State shooters of Missouri were present. The baseball fans were also much in evidence, playing their favorites off the boards. (Kansas City match)68
• A gallery of more than 400, including many women and baseball fans, was on hand early… The presence of the ballplayers attracted a large number of marksmen from New Hampshire and Maine. (Boston match)69

A Sporting Life article written after the tour emphasized its success, and concluded the endeavor had achieved its intended purpose:

One of the most successful trapshooting promotion trips undertaken in recent years came to a close on Saturday, November 27, in Boston, when the team of touring major league baseball players competed against the Paleface Gun Club combination…Along the entire route the shooters were greeted not only by trapshooters, but also by thousands of baseball fans who were interested in the players, but who had never seen a trapshooting event. Needless to say, many of these have now been inoculated with the trapshooting germ, which will make them lovers of the sport for life, and the Du Pont Powder Company, the sponsors of the trip, deserve unlimited credit for the benefit of the sport.70

How much the players were compensated for their involvement in the trip—in addition to expenses—is not revealed in reporting on the event. They themselves expressed delight at how well they were treated—for example, a large banquet was held in their honor at every stop—and there was speculation a second trip would be planned for 1916.71

Trapshooting in Bender’s Life

As his baseball career wound down, Bender continued to be active in trapshooting circles. During the winter of 1916–17, he engaged in several matches with other Philadelphia-based baseball players. In a contest staged at the Whitemarsh Country Club, Bender bested fellow pitcher Joe Bush in a 50-bird shoot, 50 to 46. In another match of 500 clay targets a side, Bender teamed with Phillies’ catcher Billy Killefer against the team of Bush and Grover Cleveland Alexander. On this occasion, in reporting that gratuitously highlighted Bender’s heritage, “Bush’s team beat the Indian’s team 420 to 403.”72

Late in life, Bender evinced some regret that he had not focused more on developing a second career in business while he was performing in the major leagues.73 In an interview with J.G. Taylor Spink months before he died, Bender observed:

Practically all I did was hunt and fish, but in those days it was not impressed on our minds that we should prepare ourselves for the future. Today all the fellows are interested in learning or lining up some business for the time when they can no longer play.74

And in a departure from his perspective of 40 years earlier that trapshooting was the finest sport for ballplayers to pursue when not on the diamond, he advised, “One thing that always helped me though, and I think it would help every pitcher without taking too much time, is bowling. You’d be surprised how it keeps the legs in shape, and the arm and shoulder muscles loose.”75

Bender’s lamentation about not planning ahead more fastidiously for his financial future probably was prompted by the serious money issues he experienced later in life. When “Chief Bender Night” was held at Shibe Park in 1952, he was given a check for over $6,000 because Bender needed money more than expensive gifts like a car or vacation trip to some exotic location.76

While Bender’s pecuniary problems adversely affected his later years, they in no way diminish his remarkable accomplishments on the mound and at the traps earlier in life.77 He was the finest marksman among active major league players of his day, a fact acknowledged by The American Shooter magazine when it named him “King of the Ballplayers at the Traps” in 1916.78,79 The extraordinary recognition he received in being inducted into a Trapshooting Hall of Fame as well as the National Baseball Hall of Fame is further proof of the breadth and impressiveness of his achievements.80

Success in both sports enabled Chief Bender to transcend being a talented ballplayer and an expert shooter. Together, they made him a true sportsman, which Bender probably would have regarded as the greatest honor of all he could have been accorded.

ROBERT D. WARRINGTON is a native Philadelphian who writes about the city’s baseball history.

 

Notes

1. “Ball Players Hit ’Em With a Gun,” The American Shooter, January 1, 1916. The article notes ballplayers also enjoyed hunting as an offseason recreational activity.

2. Trapshooting and trapshooter can be spelled as one or two words. In this article, both are spelled as single words. In the early twentieth century, baseball and ballplayer were spelled as two words, as they were in several quotations used from that period in this article. For the sake of consistency, both are spelled as one word, including when they appear in those quotations.

3. Trapshooting has evolved dramatically since the days of Chief Bender. In addition to trapshooting, there are now different disciplines of clay target shooting, including skeet shooting and sporting clays, and even further variations within each of those categories. The targets themselves are made of other materials in addition to clay. To learn more about the history and evolution of trapshooting as a sport in the United States and around the world, see, “Trap Shooting,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Trap_shooting. For more details about the rules and technical specifications of trapshooting, see, http://www.craigcolvin.com/photogrsaphy/ index.php/what-is-trapshooting.

4. Pennsylvania led all states with almost 400 clubs. Men dominated the sport, not surprisingly, but women also were counted among the ranks of trapshooters. Wilmington, Delaware, had the largest women’s club—the Nemours—and the largest men’s club—the Du Pont—based on membership. Women preferred shooting at targets hurled into the air by hand rather than by a mechanical arm on a machine—the former requiring less skill of the two techniques. Samuel Wesley Long, “What is the National Sport,” Baseball Magazine, June 1915.

5. The longstanding campaign to expunge the perception of trapshooting being largely confined to the affluent is acknowledged in “The Shooting Game,” www.clearleaderinc.com/site/shooting-game.html. That trapshooting began and remains a sport reserved for the rich who can afford it is asserted in, www.trapshooting.com/threads/shooting.

6. American Shooter, January 1, 1916.

7. Long, Baseball Magazine, June 1915. Other than citing “a recent canvass,” Long provides no information about how the survey was done, by whom, which ballplayers participated, and how the questions asked were phrased. Long acknowledged that not every ballplayer who owned a shotgun was a trapshooter, but using a somewhat torturous line of reasoning, argued that all owners “are interested in trapshooting from a very personal standpoint because of familiarity with the shotgun, the principal accessory of the sport.” Even if most major league ballplayers possessed firearms at that point in time, the accuracy of the claim that “forty-nine out of every fifty players owned shotguns” is impossible to verify empirically.

8. The veracity of this claim is open to question. While some Hall of Fame ballplayers were avid trapshooters, others were not. Moreover, some ballplayers who also were ardent trapshooters do not reside in the National Baseball Hall of Fame, including Harry Davis, Otis Crandall, Jack Coombs, George Stallings, Nap Rucker and Jake Daubert. That offseason shooting was advantageous to performance on the diamond is an argument built through assertion, not empirical evidence and logical argumentation. While it is not unreasonable to believe trapshooting afforded some benefits to players who engaged it in during the offseason, and certainly was preferable to staring out the window and waiting for spring—to quote Rogers Hornsby—the same could be said of other sports like tennis and bowling. It will never be known if those who became Hall of Famers would have performed less capably on the diamond had they not been fervent shooters in the offseason. American Shooter, January 1, 1916.

9. Ibid.

10. Thomas D. Richter, “Baseball Players as Shooters,” Sporting Life, November 6, 1915.

11. Samuel Wesley Long, ““Chief” Bender Goes Back to Organized Baseball,” Baseball Magazine, April 1916.

12. American Shooter, January 1, 1916. Another article with a similar theme noted that comparatively few men play baseball at the major league level while thousands of spectators watch. As a sport, trapshooting is much more egalitarian because it permits a far greater number of people to compete in matches—including against major leaguers—instead of being relegated to the passive role of observer, as in baseball. Long, Baseball Magazine, June 1915.

13. Long, Baseball Magazine, June, 1915. While enchanting, these assertions are dubious and cannot be accepted at face value. Fans attending games at ballparks located in major cities breathed the same air as the rest of the people who lived there. Ballpark air wasn’t less polluted. This fact is highlighted by the Reading Railroad tracks that ran across the street from the Phillies’ National League Park. Billowing smoke and embers from passing locomotives would come down on patrons in the stands—hardly the fresh air of the “Great Outdoors.” Rich Westcott, Philadelphia’s Old Ballparks (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), 29. As far as baseball being “truly American” in origin, the Mills Commission report that baseball was a purely indigenous American sport invented by Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839 has long been discredited. Baseball is in part derived from the English games of rounders and cricket. G. Edward White, Creating the National Pastime (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 122–25.

14. Tom Swift, Chief Bender’s Burden: The Silent Struggle of a Baseball Star (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008). William C. Kashatus, Money Pitcher: Chief Bender and the Tragedy of Indian Assimilation (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006).

15. David M. Jordan, The Athletics of Philadelphia: Connie Mack’s White Elephants, 1901–1954 (Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 1999), 30, 42–62.

16. Associated Press Biographical Service, “Biographical Sketch of Charles Bender” (May 15, 1942), Bender file, National Baseball Hall of Fame Museum and Library, Cooperstown, New York. Mack always referred to Bender and addressed him personally using his middle name, “Albert.”

17. Chief Bender pitched a single inning in a game in 1925 while working as a coach for the Chicago White Sox. The team was managed by his friend and former A’s teammate Eddie Collins, and Bender’s appearance on the mound was primarily a stunt. The Sox were playing the Boston Red Sox that day, the team Bender had beaten to gain his first major league victory in 1903. Tom Swift, “Chief Bender,” Baseball Biography Project, http://bioproj.sabr.org.

18. After retiring as a major leaguer, Bender spent many years pitching, managing, and coaching in the minor leagues. His last job was as a pitching coach with the Philadelphia Athletics. http://www.thebaseballpage.com/ player/bendech01/bio.

19. “What a Famous Pitcher Thinks of Trap Shooting,” Baseball Magazine, April 1915.

20. Chief Bender, “Ball Players as Shooters” (March 6, 1915), Bender file, National Baseball Hall of Fame Museum and Library, Cooperstown, New York.

21. Bender’s home trapshooting facility was the Beideman Gun Club in Camden, New Jersey. He trained there, put on shooting exhibitions and participated in matches sponsored by the club. “Baseball Players Thrive as Trap Shots,” Sporting Life, April 7, 1917. In a display of his shooting prowess at Beideman, Bender once went through 100 targets without a miss and broke 38 more in a row before a saucer finally got by him. A reporter who watched the demonstration called it “one of the most remarkable exhibitions of trapshooting ever seen in this section of the country.” “Bender Breaks 138 Straight,” Sporting Life, February 13, 1915.

22. Sometimes, gun clubs would put up the purse to attract sports celebrities to the range in hope of drawing a big crowd to watch them shoot. If spectators were charged an admission fee, the purse could be “sweetened” by adding to it a percentage of gate receipts. In either case, persuading people to attend a match so they might become trapshooters themselves was the ultimate goal of the club owners.

23. Thomas S. Dando, “Those We Know,” Sporting Life, May 22, 1909. Two months earlier, White had challenged Bender to a contest for the same stakes, that time shooting at live pigeons instead of clay birds. Bender obliged and shooting “in his best form,” according to a report describing the event, walked away with another $100 of White’s money. Thomas S. Dando, “Those We Know,” Sporting Life, March 13, 1909.

24. Thomas S. Dando, “Those We Know,” Sporting Life, February 20, 1909. Dando reported the results of the contest in his column that appeared in the February 27, 1909, issue of Sporting Life. In this case, Bender also received a portion of the “gate receipts” for winning, but the amount is not specified.

25. In a 1909 match at the Rod and Gun Club in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, Bender cracked 19 of 20 birds “and walked off with $50 of the money.” Sporting Life, February 13, 1909. Bender won the same sum defeating A.A. Felix in a live bird shoot at the Point Breeze Gun Club in Philadelphia in 1907. Sporting Life, January 4, 1908.

26. Occasionally, a gun club would offer a special prize to the winner of a match in addition to the purse. In a 1908 tournament competition held at the Penrose Gun Club in Philadelphia, Bender won a shotgun in addition to first-place money. “The Live Bird Shooters of Philadelphia Enjoy the Holiday,” Sporting Life, January 2, 1909.

27. “Bender’s Honors,” Sporting Life, January 9, 1909. The article does not specify the amount Bender won, but based on the division of winnings in other tournaments held during the same period, he likely received two-thirds of the purse, with the second-place finisher taking home one-third.

28. “Bender a Winner,” Sporting Life, December 19, 1908.

29. In early 1915, Bender engaged in a 100-bird match with Carroll W. Rasin, president of the Baltimore Federal League Baseball Club, with whom Bender had signed to play that season. Rasin won by the razor-thin margin of 89 to 88. One can only wonder if Bender let him win as a courtesy to his new boss. “The World of Shooting,” Sporting Life, February 13, 1915.

30. “Those Shooters We Know,” Sporting Life, October 16, 1915. The match was announced in an article in Sporting Life, October 2, 1915. Why both men, especially Bender, shot so poorly is not explained. It may have had something to do with the unusual setting for the contest—a baseball park—and/or the weather.

31. Gambling in trapshooting also raised the prospect of matches being fixed by those willing to bribe participants to bet on a “sure thing.” The extent to which, if at all, fixed trapshooting contests were a problem in the sport is beyond the scope of this paper, but none of the research completed by this author uncovered any allegations or evidence that competitions were anything other than honest.

32. “Roughton Outshoots Benner,” Sporting Life, February 29, 1908.

33. Meryl Baer, “The History of American Income,” eHow, http://www.ehow.com/info_7769323_history-american-income.htm (accessed September 14, 2016). To make a further comparison, major league baseball’s highest paid player in 1908, Cleveland’s Nap Lajoie, earned $8,500. See Michael Haupert, “MLB’s annual salary leaders, 1874–2012,” at SABR.org, http://sabr.org/research/mlbs-annual-salary-leaders-1874-2012 (accessed September 14, 2016).

34. For the 16 years Bender pitched in the major leagues—including his one-game stint in 1925 with the White Sox—his salary is reported for five years (1903, 1911, 1914, 1915 and 1925), and is “undetermined” for the other 11 years. http://www.baseball-almanac.com/players/ player.php?p=bendech0.

35. Ibid.

36. Kashatus, Money Pitcher, 111, 125–26.

37. Jordan, Athletics of Philadelphia, 40–41.

38. Thomas D. Richter, “Philly Jogged,” Sporting Life, February 27, 1909. Bender grudgingly accepted Mack’s parsimonious offer. Kashatus, Money Pitcher, 111.

39. If accurate, this would have been only $600 more than Bender received when he first signed with the Athletics in 1903. http://www.baseballalmanac.com/players/player.php?p=bendech0.

40. Mack probably had an ambivalent attitude toward Bender and trapshooting. He understood Bender’s affinity for the sport, recognized his ascendant talent as a shooter, and appreciated how competing augmented his yearly income. Indeed, in 1908, Mack gave Bender a week’s vacation during the season to attend the Pennsylvania State Championship Shoot in Bradford, Pennsylvania. At the same time, Mack would not permit any outside activity, regardless of its profitability, to interfere with a player’s commitment to the Athletics and maintaining peak performance on the diamond. Mack’s willingness to let Bender attend the state championship competition is described in, “Those We Know,” Sporting Life, May 30, 1908.

41. Richter, Sporting Life, February 27, 1909.

42. Sporting Life, various issues in 1909.

43. A gun club’s desire to downplay compensation for Bender, or any ballplayer, to compete in a match or shoot in an exhibition is certainly understandable. A club wanted to promote the belief the player was there because of his intrinsic devotion to the sport—a passion spectators also could experience by becoming involved in trapshooting. Acknowledging a player was paid to appear was inconsistent with that image.

44. Bender came in second place but still “shared in the money.” “Chief Bender Fell Down on Ninth Bird at Belmont,” Sporting Life, February 6, 1909.

45. “Kills 19 Straight, Pitcher Bender is Chief Attraction at Morrisville Shoot,” Sporting Life, January 23, 1909.

46. A reference to the June 6, 1909, edition of the Washington Post edition noting Bender wagered on himself in trapshooting contests is contained in Swift, Bender’s Burden, 303.

47. The Du Pont advertisement on the attraction of trapshooting as a sport appears in Sporting Life, April 10, 1915. The Du Pont advertisement publicizing the company’s “Hand Trap” is found in Sporting Life, May 22, 1915.

48. The reference to using U.M.C. Arrow shotgun shells is contained in an article describing a trapshooting match Bender won. Sporting Life, May 22, 1909. That Bender used a Parker shotgun for shooting competitively is featured in an article describing his abilities as a marksman. “Those We Know,” Sporting Life, February 25, 1908.

49. Bender’s employment with Wanamaker’s is mentioned in Kashatus, Money Pitcher, 140, and his job with Gimbels in Swift, Bender’s Burden, 278.

50. Thomas D. Richter, “In Re Shooters,” Sporting Life, November 11, 1911.

51. The selection of Athletics’ players to appear in the show was no doubt influenced by the fact the club had won back-to-back World Series championships in 1910–11.

52. A reporter who described the act noted, “The dressing room made him (Bender) appear lighter (in skin tone) than he really is.” “Stars Every Way,” Sporting Life, November 18, 1911. The choice of the Giants in the sketch dialogue is odd since the A’s did not play that club during the regular season. It probably was a reference to the just-completed 1911 World Series in which the Athletics defeated the Giants.

53. Ibid. The real star of the show among the ballplayers was Cy Morgan who had experience in vaudeville and, according to this article, “was a big hit with his song numbers.”

54. In addition to describing his baseball career, the biographies of Bender by Kashatus and Swift cited earlier assess the injustices he experienced as a part-Chippewa American Indian occupying the high-profile position of major league pitcher in a racially intolerant society. Bender is habitually identified as an “Indian” pitcher in Sporting Life reporting on his trapshooting exploits, although the race of other baseball players is never mentioned, presumably because they were all white. Bender made it clear he wanted to be presented to the public as a pitcher, not as an Indian. Newspapermen chose to ignore this request. Swift, Bender’s Burden, 4.

55. According to the article in which this anecdote appears, the southerner did not actually call Bender a “person of color,” but “used entirely different words” that Sporting Life chose not to repeat in print. It is not for this author to speculate what bigoted term was uttered. “This Was Different,” Sporting Life, November 25, 1911.

56. Thomas A. Marshall, “Marksmen in Dixie Land Heartily Welcome Experts at Various Points—Shoot with Ball Players—Incidents of Tour,” Sporting Life, March 28, 1908.

57. Thomas D. Richter, “Ball Players Follow Shooting Circuit,” Sporting Life, October 16, 1915. Bender, Plank, and Crandall played in the Federal League during the 1915 season. Mathewson was with the New York Giants, while Davis was a coach with the Athletics, although he did appear in five games with the team that year. www.baseball-reference.com/players.

58. “Stars Added to Ball Players’ Trap Shooting Trip,” Sporting Life, October 23, 1915.

59. Why a local shooter was added to the players’ team at each stop instead of using five players throughout the tour was not explained. It is possible that doing so heightened the level of competition since the local shooting team would not only be competing against famous ballplayers but also one of their own.

60. “Players Ready for Shooting Trip,” Sporting Life, November 6, 1915.

61. “Ball Players’ Shoot Tour a Success,” Sporting Life, November 20, 1915. The metaphor of Bender taking Storr’s scalp is a derogatory reference to Bender’s Indian heritage. Another example of a disparaging reference to Bender’s Indian heritage is an article that reported Bender was “on the warpath against clay pigeons.” “Trap Gossip,” Baseball Magazine, December, 1916.

62. All of the information on the tour is taken from the following issues of Sporting Life: October 16, 23, 30, 1915; November 6, 20, 27, 1915; and, December 4, 1915.

63. For reasons that are not clear, Sporting Life did not print the results of the matches held in Toledo on November 22 and Syracuse on November 24. The January 1, 1916, issue of American Shooter lists the scores of each player at every stop on the tour, including those in Toledo and Syracuse, indicating the matches were held.

64. Richter, Sporting Life, November 6, 1915. There were added bonuses for being the best shot. In Chicago at the Lincoln Park Gun Club, for example, Bender received a gold medal for marksmanship in striking 95 of the targets. Sporting Life, December 4, 1915.

65. Following the tour, Mathewson was quoted as saying, “Chief Bender is one of the best trap shots I ever saw.” “Mathewson on Shooting,” Sporting Life, December 18, 1915.

66. American Shooter, January 1, 1916. As noted in footnote 53, this article contains a table showing the number of clay pigeons broken by the four players individually in each of the 18 matches. Mathewson did not participate in the contest in St. Louis, Missouri. His total was calculated by averaging his score over the other 17 matches and adding that figure to his total number of birds hit.

67. Sporting Life, November 20, 1915.

68. Sporting Life, November 27, 1915.

69. Sporting Life, December 4, 1915. Note the emphasis in the reporting on the ballplayers’ presence being more influential in attracting a large crowd than the match, itself.

70. Ibid.

71. Sporting Life, November 27, 1915.

72. Sporting Life, April 7, 1917.

73. The Bender file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame includes a 1915 newspaper advertisement for the Chief Bender Sporting Goods Company located at 1306 Arch Street in Philadelphia. According to the advertisement, “The Chief knows what’s what in baseball and baseball toggery! Everything you get here you can bank on will be O.K. Suits, bats, balls, gloves, shoes, accessories! Best of quality throughout. Prices are right. Glad to give suggestions. Come in and talk it over.” Bender file. National Baseball Hall of Fame Museum and Library, Cooperstown, New York. Bender’s store is referenced in Kashatus, Money Pitcher, 140.

74. J.G. Taylor Spink, “Looping the Loop,” Sporting News, December 30, 1953. There were occasional references to Bender going into business following his baseball career and his continued participation in trapshooting competitions. An early 1917 Sporting Life article noted, “However, there is a possibility Bender will retire from baseball and go into business this season in which event he will shoot in the Pennsylvania State Tournament next May and will be one of the favorites for the individual championship.” Bender played for the Phillies that year, his final regular season as a major leaguer. “News Notes of Trapshooting,” Sporting Life, January 6, 1917.

75. Spink, The Sporting News, December 30, 1953.

76. Swift, Bender’s Burden, 278.

77. A noteworthy shooting episode that did not occur at the traps involved Bender downing a vulture in 1907 while the team conducted spring training in Texas. The bird had been hovering over the A’s practice field when Bender brought him down with a rifle, explaining his action by sayng the club wasn’t so moribund to attract such a creature. The local sheriff heard of the incident and traveled to the Athletics training camp to arrest Bender. It was illegal to shoot vultures, according to the sheriff. It took all of Connie Mack’s diplomacy and persuasive charm to convince the sheriff to let Bender go, assuring him had the pitcher been aware of the prohibition he never would have shot the vulture. Spink, Sporting News, December 30, 1953.

78. Other baseball players attained remarkable success as trapshooters, a noteworthy example of which is Lester German, who pitched for the Baltimore Orioles, New York Giants and Washington Senators from 1890–97. Following his career in baseball, German, an expert trapshooter, toured with the Parker Gun Company and DuPont Company participating in exhibition matches. In 1915, for example, he set a world trapshooting record by breaking 499 out of 500 clay pigeons in a shoot in Atlantic City, New Jersey. While Bender was the better pitcher of the two—German tallied a dismal 34–63 record as a major league pitcher—unlike Bender, German did get to perform in shooting matches with Annie Oakley. www.trapshoot.org/People-Stories/baseball-and-trapshooting.html.

79. American Shooter, January 1, 1916.

80. In the Bibliographical Essay section of his book, Chief Bender’s Burden, Tom Swift notes on page 297 an article dated November 25, 1917, and found in Temple University’s Urban Archives states that Chief Bender and another individual had been recently inducted into the Trapshooting Hall of Fame. The National Trapshooting Hall of Fame website (www.traphof.org) does not list Bender as an inductee, but that Hall of Fame was not established until 1968. It is likely, therefore, that the Hall of Fame into which Bender was inducted was sponsored by a local or state trapshooting organization.

Meyerhoff’s plan stemmed from his experiments with league spring training in Cuba in 1947 and postseason exhibition tours in Cuba, Central America, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico in 1948 and 1949.2 Although Meyerhoff’s groundwork suggested that a winter league of girls’ international baseball could be viable, its success was undermined by potentially dishonest Latin American promoters and financially constrained team directors who lacked his vision.3

A second incarnation of an International Girls Baseball League did come to fruition, though, and with the help of co-author and former AAGPBL player, Helen “Nordie” Nordquist, we have been able to construct an account of this hitherto obscure subject.

The second set of administrators to establish a women’s winter professional baseball league in Florida came from the Chicago-based National Girls Baseball League (NGBL), a parallel league to the All-American. They organized and operated the “International Girls Baseball League” (IGBL) in Florida during the winter of 1952–53.

---

• Related link: Read all SABR BioProject biographies of AAGBPL players here

---

The amateur/semipro teams of the Chicago area were a key source of talent for the AAGBPL, as the area attracted the nation’s best softball players and touring teams from other cities during the 1930s and 1940s.4 Philip Wrigley created the All-American Girls Softball League (AAGSBL) in 1943 to keep baseball alive with female players, while many male big leaguers were serving in World War II. The AAGSBL title only lasted half a season because league administrators wanted to differentiate that, except for underhand pitching, ball size, and field dimensions, the league utilized baseball rather than softball rules. Subsequent league title changes included All-American Girls Base Ball League (1943, 1946–50), All-American Girls Professional Ball League (1944–45), and American Girls Baseball League (1951–54). The players’ adoption of “All American Girls Professional Baseball League” when they incorporated as a players’ association in 1987 is how the league is known today and how it is referred to in this article. That league did not play in Chicago except during 1948. Its teams were primarily located in smaller cities around Chicago.5 It was natural that Wrigley’s scouts would recruit the best talent in Chicago, who were playing softball in the Metropolitan League. Thus, in order to retain and compete for player talent, some of the administrators of the Metropolitan League decided to convert their amateur softball teams into the professional “National Girls Baseball League” in 1944. As a result, women’s professional ball then had its own “American” and “National” Leagues. The NGBL began with five teams in 1944, which was increased to six teams in 1945, and that number remained stable for several years.6 For most of its history the All-American League consisted of at least six teams, with a high of ten teams in 1948 and a low of four teams in 1943.

The founders of the NGBL included Charlie Bidwill, owner of the Chicago Cardinals football team, Emery Parichy, owner of a suburban home improvement business, and prominent politician Ed Kolski. The NGBL continued as a fast pitch softball league while the AAGPBL, except for pitching, ball size, and field dimensions, always played by baseball rules. Throughout the league’s history, its field dimensions, ball size, and pitching style were constantly changed to approximate those of the men’s game because league administrators believed baseball was a better spectator sport than softball.7

From 1944–54 players jumped back and forth between the All-American and National Leagues. Players switched leagues for things like a better salary, playing closer to home and a job—some AAGPBLers didn’t like or got tired of the extended travel—or being more comfortable with one game (usually softball) than the other. Some players in the AAGPBL, especially pitchers and infielders, couldn’t adapt to overhand pitching or throwing the longer field distances that league administration continually adopted, but they were still outstanding softball players. Connie Wisniewski, for instance, first became an AAGPBL outfielder when the increased pitching distance and overhand delivery reduced her pitching effectiveness. In 1950 she switched to the NGBL, where her underhand softball pitching prowess was in demand, but returned to the AAGPBL in 1951 because she enjoyed the social atmosphere there more.8

After two years of conflict over players, administrators in the two leagues reached a non-raiding agreement in 1946, and competition between them lessened, which brings us to the winter of 1952–53.9

As noted previously, Meyerhoff had envisioned establishing an International Girls Baseball League in 1948, and Frank Darling of the NGBL wanted to start a winter league in Florida in 1950. These ideas did not come to fruition, but in the fall/winter of 1952, some NGBL administrators, headed by Darling, organized and operated a winter girls’ baseball league in Florida. Frank Darling, owner of the NGBL’s Chicago Music Maids, was the president and driving force for the IGBL, and league secretary Harry D. Wilson also hailed from the NGBL. Darling must have collaborated with AAGPBL administrators on recruiting some of their players because a December 21, 1952, Rockford (Illinois) Morning Star article announced that six Peaches were playing in the IGBL.10 Another aspect bespeaking collaboration between the NGBL and AAGPBL was that the IGBL adopted the AAGPBL’s skirt-style uniform rather than the NGBL’s baseball pants or shorts-style uniforms. No information was available to suggest whether IGBL administrators consulted with those from the AAGPBL regarding the league’s title or whether they eventually intended to include competition with Cuban, Venezuelan, or Puerto Rican women’s teams. However, the league’s title suggests this may have been a possibility.

Examples of Darling’s letter to prospective IGBL players.

	W	L
Ft. Lauderdale Rockettes	9	4
Hollywood Queens	9	4
Miami Maids	6	8
Miami Beach Belles	4	12

More game stats for analyzing league action would have been desirable, however the success of the Queens was no surprise. Their core was from the Chicago Queens, the dominant team in the NGBL. The other teams looked fairly evenly matched on paper. For hitting, only home runs were mentioned in the articles. Three players had at least two—the NGBL’s Alice Kolski (one grand slam), and Freda Savona (two in one game), and the AAGPBL’s Betty Foss. For pitching, the best performance was Ginny Busick’s 6–1 record. Lottie Jackson was 4–2, while Sunny Berger and Ann Kmezich went 3–2.17 The pitching style was underhand, so the pitchers were primarily from the NGBL, although some played in the AAGPBL 1943–47, when the league utilized underhand pitching. One notable disappointment was Joanne Winter, a star in both leagues, who started out 0–5.

The only promotions to stimulate attendance were Ladies’ Nights, an exhibition game or two with local men’s teams, and a clash between a team of IGBL All-Stars and the Fort Lauderdale Rockettes.18 Only two articles included photographs. One was a game action shot of Marie Mansfield attempting to tag Alice Brunke at third base on December 3, 1952, and the other was a December 9 still of Margaret (Sunny) Berger about to deliver an underhand pitch. Some feature articles on individual players and more game action shots might have helped stimulate attendance. In addition, efforts to promote attendance among local business or factory workers might also have bolstered sagging fan turnout. Coverage by other local newspapers in IGBL cities was not available for this article, but it seems reasonable to believe that the Miami Herald’s coverage was representative of the rest.

Of the International Girls Baseball League’s premature folding, NGBL star Freda Savona said, “I just can’t understand it, …The sport has been so successful around Chicago. Why, for two seasons our league outdrew the White Sox in attendance.”19 Of 28 games scheduled between December 30 and January 4, the teams played about half, but this wasn’t only due to the weather. Ad hoc adjustments to the original schedule wiped out five games between these dates. One has to wonder at the market research and lack of publicity by management because Miami was a much smaller market than Chicago. In addition to the usual sports activities (basketball, high school games, etc.), there were football bowl games, and Hialeah and jai-alai featured the allure of gambling. If the league had survived into February/March, it would have also had to compete against major league baseball’s spring training. In addition, there was a good men’s minor league operating in the area. Since the IGBL was an experiment, a 60 to 80 game schedule would have been more sensible.

As the January 12, 1953, Miami Herald article noted, the IGBL consisted of the cream of both women’s Midwestern circuits.20 Unfortunately, the demise of the IGBL was an early indicator that women’s professional softball and baseball were on the way out. The AAGPBL lasted through the 1954 season, dropping from six teams in 1953 to five in 1954. The NGBL dropped two teams in 1953 and another in 1954 after which it also came to an end.21, 22

Subsequently, there was no women’s professional baseball to speak of. Amateur women’s softball underwent a revival as a college sport with the passage of Title IX and enjoyed a stint as an Olympic sport from 1996 through 2008. There was an attempt to establish an International Women’s Professional Softball Association (1976–79), but it wasn’t until 1997 that the current women’s National Professional Fastpitch (NPL) league was first established as Women’s Professional Fastpitch (WPF).23

As former IGBL participant Helen “Nordie” Nordquist affirms, the life of the International Girls Baseball League was brief, but despite bad weather and less than the best publicity and promotion, it afforded AAGPBL and NGBL players the opportunity to enjoy joining together to play a game they loved during the winter of 1952–53. 

BILL McMAHON is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Akron. Born in Chicago in 1937, he is a lifelong Cubs fan. He has been a SABR member for about 30 years, active in the Jack Graney Chapter, and he has contributed several articles to SABR publications. He chairs the Farm Club subcommittee of the Minor Leagues Committee. Other SABR activities include Retrosheet and the Nineteenth Century Research Committee. Bill’s interest in womens’ baseball stems from watching the games of the Bluebirds of the National Girls Baseball League in Bidwill Stadium in the late 1940s. He is currently working on a book on that league.

HELEN E. “NORDIE” NORDQUIST was born to Swedish immigrants in Boston, Massachusetts, March 23, 1932, and she lived in nearby Malden most of her life. As a result she’s a life long Red Sox Fan. Nordie grew up playing baseball and tag football with the neighborhood boys and was the first girl in her junior high school to earn a school letter for sports. In high school, she co-captained the softball team as a junior and senior. Nordie signed as an outfielder for the Kenosha Comets of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) in 1951 and played for the AAGPBL’s Rockford Peaches (1952–53), and South Bend Blue Sox (1954). After the AAGPBL folded, Nordie played amateur softball in the New England states and took up bowling. She worked as a switchboard operator, an accountant, and retired as a toll collector on Interstate 95 for the State of New Hampshire.

MERRIE A. FIDLER authored “The Origins and History of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League,” published by McFarland in 2006 and joined SABR about that time. She is a native northern Californian who taught P.E. and coached volleyball, basketball, and softball before retiring in 2003. She roots for the Boston Red Sox who signed her brother Bob to a minor league contract in the 1950s. She also roots for the Cubs because Philip Wrigley created the All-American Girls Baseball League, and the Giants, of course, have been her primary team since they moved to San Francisco.

 

Miami Beach Belles, L to R: Wilma Briggs, Ruby Heafner, Inez Gray, Marie Mansfield, Joanne Winter, Jaynne Bittner, Erma Bergman, Jacquelyn Kelley, Ruth Mason, Helen Nordquist, Dolores Moore, Donna Banning, Marilyn Burns, Genevieve Burns.

 

Hollywood (FL) Queens, L to R: Irene Applegren, Louise Fischi, ?, Ruth Richard, Dorothy Hane, Freda Savona, Ginny Busick, Margaret Berger, ?, ?, Alice Kolski, ?, Mary Rudd.

 

Ft. Lauderdale Rockettes, L to R: June Borowy, Georgia Terkowski, Caroline Stoecker, Dorothy Whalen, Virginia Ventura, Mary Wisham, Lottie Jackson, Joanne Beckman, Donna Johns, Yolanda Davino, Lonnie Stark.

 

Miami Maids, L to R: Joan Knebl, Julie Gutz, Joyce Ricketts, Josephine Kabick, Ann Pallo, Jean Weaver, Ann Kmezich, Betty Foss, Mary Pembo, Edythe Perlick, Alice Brunke, Stephanie Vaughn.

 

Of the more than 300 individuals enshrined in Cooperstown, perhaps the most enigmatic is George Davis. Despite an outstanding 20-season playing career—and twice being manager of the renowned New York Giants—Davis was rarely the subject of close press scrutiny. To this day, significant aspects of his life away from the diamond remain unknown. But what is known about Davis—both good and bad—has prompted nineteenth century baseball scholar David Nemec to describe Davis as “a man of enormous character contradictions.”1

An incident that Nemec places in the Davis minus column might be called the Flora Campbell affair. On July 16, 1893, former amateur ballplayer Harrison Campbell publicly accused Davis of running off with his wife, Flora, and infant son. The accusation was a one-day local news story that Davis dismissed out-of-hand, while the national press and baseball fandom paid little heed to it. Eight years later, Campbell named Davis as co-respondent in a divorce action against Flora, citing the alleged 1893 runaway as grounds for his suit. This time, the matter drew considerable press and public attention. A furious Davis, by now ostensibly married to another woman, vigorously denied the accusation, threatening to wring Campbell’s neck if given the chance. In court, however, the proceedings were uncontested, resulting in Campbell gaining his divorce decree.

In an effort to determine whether the allegations made against Davis ring true or not, this article will examine the Flora Campbell affair, analyzing the rather fragmentary direct evidence, the circumstances surrounding both the 1893 incident and the 1901 divorce suit, and relevant aspects of the Davis persona. Integrated into this discussion will be an account of Davis’s complicated domestic situation during the 1890s. In the end, the object of this exercise will be to shed some new light on “the enormous character contradictions” of George Davis, one of turn-of-the-century baseball’s finest players.

The Flora Campbell Affair, Part I

In 1893, 22-year-old George Davis was the everyday third baseman for the New York Giants, having come to Gotham from Cleveland in a preseason trade for fading Giants icon Buck Ewing. Once in New York, the switch-hitting Davis was an immediate success. By July he was in the midst of the breakout season that would set him on the path to Cooperstown.

On Saturday, July 15, the Giants were in Cleveland, playing the final game of a three-game set against the Spiders, Davis’s old team. George was in the lineup that day and went 1-for-5 in a 7–3 Giants win. Later that date or the following morning, the club boarded the train for the return trip to New York. The Flora Campbell affair began with a brief news article buried in the back pages of the Sunday, July 16, edition of the Cleveland Plain Dealer captioned: “Harry Campbell of Erie Street Has Reason to Believe That His Wife Has Fled with a Ball Player.” The article stated that Campbell “reported to police last evening that his wife—a dashing brunette—had fled with George Davis, formerly of the Cleveland baseball club, now with the New York club. Seven years ago, Campbell was a pitcher for the Plattsville, New York club. He married Miss Florence Murray, forsook the diamond, and came to Cleveland to work as a stage carpenter. Davis at the time was a boy in Plattsville and a mascot of the club.”2

According to Campbell, “Davis knew my wife in Plattsville and they were good friends. During the visit of the [New York] club to this city, he called on her several times. At six o’clock (last) evening, I came home for my supper. My wife was very affectionate. She threw her arms around my neck, kissing me fondly and asking me what time I would be home. I replied about 11:30. I returned home at that hour and found my house stripped, my wife and baby gone, and many articles of value missing.”3 The Plain Dealer concluded the article with the discouraging observation that “the police seemed indifferent and failed to offer any assistance to the deserted man.”4

Unhappily for Harry Campbell, indifference to his plight was not confined to Cleveland’s finest. No one else was much concerned, either. As far as has been discovered, no other Cleveland newspaper re-published the Plain Dealer report, the growing prominence of former Spiders star George Davis notwithstanding. Nor was the story picked up by newspapers in New York or elsewhere. The only place the story was carried was in the July 22 issue of The Sporting News, by which time the incident had already been largely forgotten. Meanwhile, George Davis assumed his third base station for a Monday, July 17, game against Boston at the Polo Grounds and went 1-for-4 at the plate in a 4–1 New York win.

On July 19, the Plain Dealer updated its Campbell-Davis story, informing readers that Giants player- manager John Montgomery Ward had telegraphed the following: “No truth whatever in story that George Davis has eloped,” adding, curiously, that “he isn’t that kind of third baseman.”5 Davis himself had also been heard from, wiring the Plain Dealer: “Saw account in your paper. Please deny it absolutely. No truth in it.”6 By this time, the Plain Dealer may have begun to have misgivings about the Campbell allegations. Its July 19 story revealed that efforts to corroborate events had been stymied by the disappearance of the purported victim. “Campbell cannot now be found. A search for him yesterday proved futile.”7 With that, the newspaper abandoned the matter. It would not be heard of again for another eight years.

Before and After the Event

The evidence is sketchy but US Census reports suggest that Harrison Campbell was born in Illinois in April 1865. His wife, Florence, was five years younger and Canadian, born in Quebec Province in June 1870. Around 1880, she and her parents emigrated to Massachusetts. In 1886, Harrison Campbell, age 21, and Florence “Flora” Murray, age 16, were married. That same year, Flora gave birth to the couple’s first child, a son named Earl. A second boy, Harry (J. Harrison), arrived the following year. Both the Campbell children were born in Iowa, but the loss of the 1890 US Census stymies determination of whether there was also an “infant son” in the family at the time of the alleged elopement. All that can be said is Earl and Harry were the only Campbell children listed in later census reports. Another unknown is the post-Iowa whereabouts of the Campbells, until Harrison and Flora surfaced in Cleveland in 1893.

A similar shroud engulfs the early life of George Davis. Little is known except that he was born in September 1870 in Cohoes, New York, a mill town on the Hudson River wedged between Albany and Troy, and that George was the fifth of the seven Davis children surviving infancy.8 He began his known baseball career in 1886 playing for an amateur team in Troy sponsored by a local tavern owner/politico named John Durkin.9 Engagements with the Cohoes YMCA nine and other area clubs followed. In 1889, Davis was promoted to a fast Albany semipro club managed by former major leaguer Tom York. The following year, he was among the many elevated to major league ranks by the advent of the Players League, becoming the regular center fielder for the National League Cleveland Spiders.10 An offensive-defensive standout from the very beginning, Davis was an exceptionally promising and mature talent despite his being only 19 years old. Two more seasons in a Cleveland uniform then established Davis as a potential star.

Among Davis’s admirers was the newly-installed player-manager of the New York Giants, John Montgomery Ward. Shortly after assuming the helm, Ward dispatched aging Giants stalwart Buck Ewing (a longtime Ward rival) to Cleveland in exchange for George Davis. Having moved to third base in 1892, Davis became a fulltime infielder once in New York. With him and Ward anchoring the Giants inner defense, the club rose in NL standings, its crowning achievement being a postseason Temple Cup triumph over Baltimore in 1894. Following Ward’s retirement immediately thereafter, Davis, now 24, assumed the post of New York player-manager in 1895, albeit only briefly (33 games) and without much success. Remaining with the Giants after having been relieved of club command, Davis developed into baseball’s best two-way shortstop, batting .332 and fielding brilliantly during a nine-season run in New York.

Although Davis’s playing skills were widely respected, both the New York sports press and Giants fans viewed him coolly. To a certain extent, this was attributable to Davis’s amenability to doing the bidding of Giants club owner Andrew Freedman, probably the most hated figure in turn-of-the-century baseball.11 Midway through the 1900 season, Davis had been reinstalled by Freedman as Giants manager amidst public recriminations by deposed predecessor Buck Ewing that cast Davis in an unflattering light. But Davis’s persona also did him no favors. On the field, he was a clean, scientific player in a raucous baseball age who, apart from his superb play, did little to draw attention to himself.12 Consequently, reportage on Davis was usually confined to his game performance, occasionally supplemented with commentary about his up-and-down relationship with the club boss.

Off the field, Davis was colorless—a private, reserved man whom sportswriters rarely published anecdotes about or sought out for rainy-day column filler. Given that he played at the center of the baseball universe (New York, and later Chicago), perhaps the most remarkable thing about George Davis was the scarcity of press notice and fan attention accorded him during his lengthy career. Even truly heroic conduct—Davis pulled a floundering swimmer from dangerous Atlantic Ocean surf on an off-day during the 1894 season, and led the impromptu rescue that saved several women and children from a Manhattan tenement blaze in 1900—failed to generate much publicity about Davis (who did not seek it, anyway).

During the years that Davis was playing great baseball for a succession of bad New York Giants ball clubs, the Campbells remained cloaked in the anonymity of private life. In the late 1890s, however, Harrison Campbell reemerged in Akron, Ohio. There, he became active in the local Disciples of Christ congregation, eventually affecting the title of the Reverend Campbell. But by the time of the 1900 US Census, he was not listed as an Akron clergyman. Rather, Campbell was identified as a 35-year-old farmer residing in Munson, Oho, about 30 miles east of Cleveland. Interestingly, the other members of the Campbell household were recorded as his teenage son, Earl, his married sister, Cora Olmstead, his widowed mother, Susan Lafferty—and his wife, Florence Campbell, age 30.

 

George Davis as depicted in his days with the Chicago Americans (White Sox) on an early twentieth century baseball card. (Trading Card Database)

 

The Flora Campbell Affair, Part II

On the morning of March 14, 1901, the page one/top-of-the-fold headline of the New York Morning Telegram blared: “Manager George Davis Was Co-Respondent: Captain of the New York Team, Although Married, Ran Away with Wife of Harrison Campbell of Cleveland, Who Is Granted Decree.” The accompanying article related that Davis “received word from Cleveland yesterday that he has been named as co-respondent in a divorce suit that came up in the Court of Common Pleas Tuesday morning. The plaintiff is Harrison Campbell, who declared that his wife Flora had run away with the Giants leader.”13 Without mentioning that the alleged runaway had taken place eight years earlier, the Morning Telegraph continued: “Davis is married, and his wife was a constant attendant at the games played at the Polo Grounds last season.”14 The wife referred to here was Jane Holden, a native Philadelphian with whom Davis was cohabiting in upper Manhattan. “While playing with the Cleveland club,” the article concluded, “[Davis] became acquainted with Mrs. Campbell who admired the popular player. The friendship resulted in elopement of which yesterday’s divorce was the culmination.”15

Unlike 1893, this time Campbell’s allegations garnered newsprint, with various national newspapers as well as the baseball weeklies devoting space to them.16 Davis angrily denied the charges, responding in some detail. “The story from Cleveland, which alleged that I eloped with Harrison Campbell’s wife, is an outright lie from beginning to end. It is only an old story rehashed. If I had that man Campbell here I’d wring his neck. He first told this story seven years ago. It went through the newspapers and was completely thrashed out. It was a fake, and I proved this fellow not only false, but an ingrate.”17

Warming to his subject, Davis went on: “Why, I practically kept this Campbell out of the poorhouse, practically, for two years, and I never saw his wife more than half a dozen times, and then only when he sent her to me for money. His wife was a Worcester woman. [Campbell] played ball on the team at Plattsburgh, New York, once.18 She lived there at the time he married her and they moved to Cleveland. I was playing ball on the Cleveland team. This was in 1893. He got money from me on the score of his baseball connection.”19 Regarding Flora Campbell, Davis had merely played financial benefactor in her time of need. “One day [Flora] came to me. She said [Campbell] had abused her, and she asked me for money to get home to her folks at Worcester. I let her have the money, and Campbell started this little story then.”20 Finally, Davis revealed what apparently most galled him about the Campbell allegations—their likely effect on Jane. Said George: “I did not even know my wife at the time, and she has never heard this old story on which Campbell seeks to get a divorce seven years after I married.”21

By the time that Davis mounted his defense, the court of public opinion was the only forum available to him, as the Campbell v. Campbell divorce case had already been decided. Indeed, Davis apparently had not even been placed on notice of its existence until after judgment had been rendered.22 By all appearances from the limited reportage of the actual proceedings, the suit was uncontested by Flora, who probably did not even make a court appearance, much less challenge the assertions in her husband’s petition. If that was so, the proceedings before Judge Thomas Dissette would have been perfunctory and the divorce decree sought by Harrison Campbell granted almost as a matter of course.

The entry of that decree came not a moment too soon for Harry Campbell, otherwise engaged in the private courtship of Helen Usher, the teenage daughter of a Munson councilman. No sooner had the ink dried on Judge Dissette’s divorce decree than Campbell was applying for a license to marry Helen. In fact, Harry and Helen planned to be wed the very same afternoon that the divorce was granted.23 But such plans were thwarted by disapproving local officials. As somewhat gleefully reported by the Cleveland Leader, “Rev. Harry Campbell, formerly a Disciple minister of Akron, but who for the past year has been engaged in agricultural pursuits in Chardon, met with a bitter disappointment in his matrimonial intentions last evening.”24,25 Unsuccessful in obtaining a marriage license, the couple then attempted to elope only to be confronted at the door of the Usher home by the father of the would-be bride “who promptly put a stop to the proceedings.”26 At last published report, Helen was still at home while “the Reverend Mr. Campbell … [set off to] answer the call from a church in New York.”27

The Aftermath

As it turned out, Harry Campbell remained in the area, and by 1903 he was in his grave at Chardon Municipal Cemetery, dead at age 38.28 By that time, George Davis had joined the player exodus to the new American League, jumped the seemingly ironclad two-year contract that he had signed with the Chicago White Sox, returned to the New York Giants pursuant to even more lucrative contract terms, and become a major obstacle to cessation of interleague hostilities until ordered back into White Sox livery by a federal court. His domestic situation was similarly complicated.

During his bachelor days, Davis became enmeshed in another salacious scandal involving members of the opposite sex. In June 1897, the New York Journal revealed that Davis was threatened with breach of promise suits by two Manhattan boarding house residents, each of whom was under the impression that she was engaged to marry him. Other newspapers then picked up the story.29 And lest baseball fans nationwide miss news of the affair, New York Giants beat writer William F.H. Koelsch featured it in his weekly Sporting Life column, complete with embarrassing details of Davis’s correspondence with “Peaches” (young Helen Kerrison) and “Kittens” (a comely widow named Hurd).30 For the next several days, Baltimore Orioles fans serenaded Davis with cries of “Peaches” and “Kittens” whenever he came to the plate, but with little effect. Davis played with his customary proficiency and the Giants won.31 When asked to explain the situation, Davis calmly deflected press inquiries about his personal life, and the “Peaches” and “Kittens” scandal disappeared from newsprint within days—as the Flora Campbell affair would four years later.

Within a year of the fleeting “Peaches” and “Kittens” embarrassment, Davis had settled down with 25-year-old Jane Holden of Philadelphia. The two shared a Manhattan apartment, and informed 1900 US Census takers that they had married in 1898. Except they hadn’t. Indeed, they couldn’t have married—for Jane already had a husband. Rather, George Davis and Jane Holden were married on December 5, 1904, somewhere in Delaware (presumably after death, annulment, or divorce had removed the impediment to Jane’s remarriage).32 For the next 25-plus years, the couple led a quiet, almost anonymous, existence, first in New York and then St. Louis, until George’s mind began to fail in the early 1930s. Then, the Davises moved to Philadelphia to live with Jane’s older sister. Committed to Philadelphia State Hospital in 1934, George Davis remained a resident there until he died in October 1940, age 70. The immediate cause of death was paresis, the slow-moving endgame for untreated syphilis cases.33

A Question of Character

To integrate the Flora Campbell affair into an assessment of George Davis’s character, it is first necessary to determine what actually happened during this three-person drama. The task here is complicated by the fact that the accounts of two of the parties (Harrison Campbell and George Davis) are largely unworthy of belief, while the third (Flora Campbell) was never heard from.34 The problems with the Harrison Campbell account are not confined to dubious or false details like George Davis being a boyhood mascot for a team in Plattsville, a seemingly non-existent “infant son” in his elopement scenario, or Campbell’s apparent disappearance shortly after he had made his public charge against Davis and Flora. Campbell’s allegations do not square with the known whereabouts of George Davis during the crucial July 15–17, 1893, time frame—July 15: Davis played in a game in Cleveland; July 16: train ride back to New York; July 17: Davis played in game at the Polo Grounds—and the complete absence of any change in Davis’s normal routine during that period. But perhaps most telling is the 1900 US Census which puts Campbell and wife Flora under the same roof in Munson, Ohio, years after her supposed runaway.

Davis’s story is little better. The assertion that he repeatedly gave money to Harrison Campbell and “kept him out of the poorhouse, practically” merely because Campbell had once played for a baseball club in Plattsburgh, New York, is a weak one. The same goes for Davis financing an abused Flora’s return to her parents in Worcester. What does ring true is that both Harrison and Flora Campbell got money out of a young George Davis, else Davis would not have admitted same. The question, of course, is why did Davis give money to the Campbells?

At the April 2016 Frederick Ivor-Campbell 19th Century Base Ball Conference in Cooperstown, the issue was raised before a gathering of some 55 turn-of-the-century baseball enthusiasts, most of whom were fully familiar with George Davis’s sterling major league career. But few had ever heard of the Flora Campbell affair. After the facts of the matter had been presented, the attendees were asked to cast a vote on the following question: In July 1893, did George Davis and Flora Campbell leave Cleveland together for an adulterous or immoral purpose? The sharply-divided outcome—42 percent yes, 58 percent no—demonstrated that reasonable minds can disagree about events involving Davis and Flora.

In the discussion that followed, there was little division regarding one underlying component of the relationship. The assumption that Davis and Flora were having sex was treated as a given. Attendees were also near universal in their disdain of Harrison Campbell, deemed a cad, at best. Indeed, several attendees voiced the suspicion that Campbell was pimping out Flora, and not just to George Davis. Davis himself also came in for his share of censure, with the Flora Campbell affair categorized by some as nothing more than another instance of suspected—if unsubstantiated and non-specific—”deviant” sexual behavior on the part of Davis. In keeping with the spirit of the discussion, this writer then offered this thesis on the matter—unencumbered by any concrete proof but one fairly suggested by the circumstances: the affair could have been a successful-for-a-time but clumsily-concluded badger game.35 Davis, then young, single, financially comfortable, and likely horny could have been susceptible to such a scheme by the Campbells. Regrettably, the badger game construct does not explain why the scheme imploded in July 1893. Nor does it explain why Harrison Campbell resurrected the elopement story when seeking to divorce the wife that he evidently continued living with for years after the event. All that can be said is that, with the tale left unchallenged in court by either Flora Campbell or George Davis, it provided a cognizable basis for the divorce decree so urgently sought by Campbell in March 1901.

More important, what insight—if any—does the Flora Campbell affair afford us into the elusive character of George Davis? That Davis was sexually active during his twenties is hardly remarkable, although he did exhibit something of a knack for involving himself in publicly embarrassing liaisons. What is noteworthy is the short shelf-life of such incidents. Like his misadventure with “Peaches” and “Kittens,” the Flora Campbell affair had no appreciable effect on Davis’s standing with his club or the sporting public. The matter was little more than a one-day news story, and quickly forgotten. Perhaps what the affair and other indiscretions reveal most about Davis is his almost preternatural immunity to attracting public interest. Even a sex scandal or two could not keep the press or fans focused on him. For twenty big league seasons, George Davis was a greatness-taken-for-granted ballplayer whose personal life the baseball world rarely paid attention to. And that was apparently fine with Davis.

By all accounts, Davis was an intelligent, well-spoken, discreetly ambitious man who spent most of a long baseball career playing superbly in the media capitals of New York and Chicago. For Davis to have avoided press and public attention as constantly as he did bespeaks a temperament and personality of exceptionally bland proportions. Even sexcapades failed to spice up Davis in the press and public mind. In the end, the conclusion most likely to be drawn from such circumstance is this: George Davis was a private, colorless character who led an eventful, Cooperstown-bound life in spite of himself. 

BILL LAMB is a retired state/county prosecutor. The life of George Davis has been a research interest of his for more than 30 years. This article is adapted from a presentation made during the Frederick Ivor-Campbell 19th Century Base Ball Conference at Cooperstown in April 2016.

 

Notes

1. Nemec, David, Major League Baseball Profiles, 1871–1900: Volume 2 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011), 22.

2. Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 16, 1893.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. “Denies the Story,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 19, 1893.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. Almost everything known about the non-baseball events of George Davis’s life has been uncovered by Walt Lipka, the former Cohoes town historian. A detailed chronology of Davis family events compiled by Lipka is contained in the George Davis file at the Hall of Fame library in Cooperstown, but even this document sheds little light on George’s youth.

9. No evidence placing Davis with a baseball team in Plattsville, New York, a vanished railroad whistle stop in Schoharie County not that far from Cooperstown, has been found by the writer. Plattsville and Cohoes were approximately 50 miles apart.

10. During its one year of existence (1890), the Players League swelled the ranks of major league players by roughly one-third.

11. Years later, it was reported that fellow players had privately nicknamed Davis “Andy” for his maintaining a relationship with the disdained Andrew Freedman. See the Des Moines Register and Leader, April 24, 1910.

12. In 20 major league seasons, Davis was ejected from a mere nine games as a player. The umpires tossed him four other times as a manager.

13. New York Morning Telegraph, March 14, 1901.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

16. See e.g., the Albany Times-Union, Cincinnati Post, and Cleveland Leader, March 13, 1901, and Sporting Life and The Sporting News, March 23, 1901.

17. The Sporting News, March 23, 1901.

18. Plattsburgh is located near the upstate New York border with Canada, and is approximately 200 miles north of Plattsville.

19. The Sporting News, March 23, 1901.

20. Ibid. See also, Sporting Life, March 23, 1901.

21. The Sporting News, March 23, 1901. The final comment attributed to Davis may have been garbled in the translation to newsprint, as George and Jane did not begin to hold themselves out as married until 1898. Given that, it would make more factual sense if the phrase read “several [not seven] years after I married” in the Sporting News article.

22. Although divorce case procedure varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, the co-respondent in an adultery-based divorce suit usually has no legal right to intervene in the proceedings. The right to appear and argue in court is reserved to the parties (husband and wife) affected by the suit’s outcome.

23. As reported in the Cleveland Leader, March 15, 1901, and the Denver Post, March 17, 1901.

24. Chardon was a farming town in eastern Ohio that shared a post office address with nearby Munson.

25. “The Wedding Did Not Take Place,” Cleveland Leader, March 15, 1901.

26. Ibid.

27. Ibid.

28. At the time of his demise, Campbell was going by the title of the Reverend H. Lester Campbell. His mother, Susan Lafferty, lived to be almost 100 and was buried next to her son when she died in 1938. Their grave markers in Chardon Municipal Cemetery are viewable on the Find-A-Grave website.

29. See e.g., the Philadelphia Inquirer, June 22, 1897, Washington (DC) Evening Star, June 25, 1897, and Cincinnati Post, June 28, 1897.

30. See “Davis a Deceiver? The New York Shortstop Engages in Dual Courtship,” Sporting Life, June 26, 1897.

31. As per the Philadelphia Inquirer and St. Albans (Vermont) Messenger, June 22, 1897.

32. Personal information noted in Delaware marriage records viewable on-line makes the identity of the couple unmistakable. For more, see Bill Lamb, “Mr. and Mrs. George Davis: Living in Sin and Beyond,” The Inside Game, Vol. XIII, No. 3 (September 2013), 13–16.

33. There is, inarguably, something ignominious about dying from a venereal disease. But before sulfa drugs and penicillin became available, syphilis was a difficult-to-cure malady and men both high (Lord Randolph Churchill, Winston’s father) and low (Al Capone) were brought down by it. Given its often-long gestation period, Davis’s contraction of syphilis may have dated to as far back as his late-playing days. It is doubtful, however, that he got it from wife Jane who showed no signs of the disease prior to her death from a heart attack in 1948.

34. Although not conclusive regarding identity, US Census reports indicate that a likely Flora Campbell survived both her ex-husband and George Davis. In 1940, this 70-year-old Flora was living as a “widow” in a Cleveland rooming house. After that, she drops from view, her ultimate fate unknown to the writer.

35. In its classic form, a badger game is a scheme in which a woman places a man in a compromising position. The mark is thereafter extorted for money when her male accomplice, pretending to be an outraged husband, enters and threatens violence, scandal, or embarrassment.