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Federal League Park in Indianapolis, looking in from the right-field fence. (Indianapolis News, January 27, 1917) Specifically constructed in 1914 to serve as the home field for the Indianapolis Hoosiers, Federal League Park was a state-of-the-art steel and concrete stadium with a seating capacity in excess of 20,000. Only three years later, the handsome […]
Barely more than one square mile in size and with about 15,000 residents, Harrison, New Jersey, was an improbable site for the construction of a new major-league ballpark in early 1915. But timing, circumstance, and geography were all the impetus needed for the erection of spacious Harrison Park. In its maiden year, the new ballpark […]
On July 17, 1904, future Hall of Famer Clark Griffith pitched the homestanding New York Highlanders to a 3-1 victory over the Detroit Tigers in a contest that was atypical for the era in several respects. First, the game, a makeup of an earlier rainout between the clubs, was played on a Sunday. Avoidance of […]
In a remembrance published in the Bangor (Maine) Daily News of January 18, 1962, the decades-deceased Gil Whitehouse was described as “the Babe Ruth of his time” and “the greatest baseball player in Maine’s history.”1 Something of a baseball prodigy, Whitehouse reached the major leagues as an 18-year-old catcher. But a one-game audition with the 1912 Boston Braves proved a […]
An Indianapolis native and prosperous city hotelier with no previous connection to baseball, J. Edward Krause served as club president and principal public spokesman for the Indianapolis Hoosiers, the premier franchise of the Federal League for the first two of the circuit’s three-season existence. On the field, the Hoosiers were sterling, capturing the flag in […]
Right-handed pitcher Chick Brandom reached the pinnacle of his professional career at the tender age of 22. A promising but little-used member of the 1909 World Series champion Pittsburgh Pirates, Brandom fared poorly the following spring and was promptly relegated to the minors by the pitching-rich Pittsburgh club. He remained there until reprieved by the […]
Like the hotel wallpaper, Ashley Lloyd was little noticed at the National League meetings that he regularly attended as a front-office executive and minority-interest baseball club owner. Now a century later, Lloyd is virtually forgotten, with his name mentioned only in passing, if at all, in most histories of the Cincinnati Reds and New York […]
Days after his graduation from college in June 1915, Rupert Mills was signed by the Newark Peppers of the Federal League. A Newark native and a locally renowned schoolboy athlete, Mills was deemed the potential fan magnet desperately sought by Peppers management. Unhappily, the new recruit proved unequal to the task, batting an anemic .201 […]
For most of the first 30 years of the club’s existence, the New York Giants were commanded by men of stature in baseball’s executive ranks, team owner-presidents John B. Day (1883-1892), Andrew Freedman (1895-1902), and John T. Brush (1902-1912). Although possessed of dissimilar temperaments and character, the genial Day, the tempestuous Freedman, and the taciturn […]
Harry Moran was born in Slater, West Virginia, on April 2, 1889. He was the son of L. D. (Lorenzey Dow) and Ella Moran, two native-born West Virginians. He was brought into at least a modestly wealthy family. At Harry’s birth L. D. was, according to the 1880 Census, a blacksmith laborer, a trade he […]
Grover Cleveland Gilmore was born in Chicago on November 1, 1888. He was the son of William Gilmore, born in Chicago, a railroad engineer, and Catherine Nantz, born in New York City, the daughter of German immigrants. Grover Gilmore was a man with legends surrounding his life. Check out his few lines in Total Baseball […]
Cy Falkenberg was perhaps the most unlikely pitching star of the Deadball Era. Nothing special for most of his career, he developed a deadly emery ball at age 32 in 1913, and rocketed to the forefront of major league pitchers. “Falkenberg has upset all possible existing dope, has broken preconceived notions into a million scattered […]
St. Louis Browns owner Phil Ball, second from left, meets with American League owners Frank Navin (Detroit Tigers, far left), Clark Griffith (Washington Senators, middle), Ben Shibe (Philadelphia A’s, second from right), and American League president Ban Johnson, far right, in Chicago, circa 1920. (Chicago History Museum, Chicago Daily News collection, SDN-062283) Phil Ball […]
James Gilmore, left, and Charles Weeghman of the Federal League, circa 1914 (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS) In the early 1890s “Lucky Charlie” Weeghman descended on Chicago as a teenager seeking fame and fortune. A natural salesman, he soon became one of Chicago’s best-known restaurateurs and a celebrity man about town. Then the baseball bug bit. […]
Tom Parker, who also answered to the sobriquets of “Big Train” and “Country,” enjoyed a long and successful career in professional baseball. He was a pitcher and outfielder not only on the 1948 Homestead Grays, the final Negro League World Series champion, but also for an array of teams both before and after that championship […]
Baseball fans attending games today are still experiencing features of the sport that were introduced by Charles Abner Powell, a baseball pioneer of the late 19th century.1 In June 1950 Connie Mack sent a 90th birthday message to Powell, adding “You, Abner, have contributed more to the game of baseball than any other man alive […]
While common wisdom dictates that baseball games are won with bats, balls, and gloves, Charlie Dressen believed until his dying breath that any game could be won with brains. Well, any game could be won with his brains. And it’s not hard to see why. Few field leaders had the percentages figured better than Dressen, […]
Bill Phillips’s professional baseball career spanned a quarter century from 1890 to 1915. A right-handed pitcher, he was a five-time 20-game winner in the minors and pitched for the Cincinnati Reds for six seasons. A smart and respected baseball man, Phillips managed several teams, most notably the Indianapolis Hoosiers, champions of the Federal League in […]
Although twice a 20-game winner in the Federal League, lefthander Gene Packard lingers in baseball’s consciousness only because of a phrase once purportedly inscribed next to his name: 1918 Series fixer. The accusation, attributed to a diary maintained by Chicago White Sox club secretary Harry Grabiner, did not surface during Packard’s lifetime. Rather, it appeared […]
On his 18th birthday, righty Chris Haughey appeared in his only major-league game, pitching for the Brooklyn Dodgers on October 3, 1943. He appears to be one of only three players in big-league history whose lone appearance came on his birthday.1 It was a Sunday afternoon game in Cincinnati, the last game of the season. […]
George Kaiserling was born to a German immigrant couple, Frederick and Johanna (Becker) Kaiserling, on May 12, 1893, in Steubenville, Ohio. He was the sixth born of eight, six sons and two daughters. His father worked as a millhand in the basic steelmaking industry and his mother was a homemaker.1 There is only data […]
Jim Suchecki was born in Chicago of Polish-American parents. All four of his grandparents had come to America from Poland, but his parents – Joseph Suchecki and the former Josephine Piotrowski – were both born in Illinois. James Joseph Suchecki was their first-born, arriving on August 25, 1927. About five years later, they had another […]
On April 16, 1915, an overflow crowd jammed newly constructed Harrison Park to witness a historic event: the home opener of the Newark Peppers of the Federal League, the first major-league club based in New Jersey in more than 40 years. And, sadly to Garden Staters, the last. When the renegade circuit disbanded the following […]
Refreshed from a day off, the Indianapolis Hoosiers of the Federal League hosted the Brooklyn team, owned by brothers Robert and George Ward. Robert had ascribed the team its name after the Ward Bakery Company’s best-selling product, Tip-Top Bread. The Indianapolis club was owned by Harry Sinclair, a millionaire by age 30, at the time […]