A 1910 advertisement for Gillette featuring Chicago White Sox pitcher, Hall of Famer “Big Ed” Walsh.
“The Gillette wins the pennant in the razor league every year and undoubtedly is the World’s Champion.”
—
“The men who play the fastest, cleanest baseball use the GILLETTE. Quick, cool shave that braces a man up to do his best.”
A rare 1916 photo of two Hall of Famers. Chicago White Sox catcher Ray “Cracker” Schalk tags out George Sisler at first base ending a rundown after the St. Louis Browns first baseman was caught off first by Sox pitcher Claude “Lefty” Williams. The play, which also included leftfielder “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, was scored 1-3-4-3-6-1-7-2–Williams-Jake Fournier–Eddie Collins-Fournier-Zeb Terry-Williams-Jackson-Schalk. The White Sox won the April 17 game 6-5.
The Box Score
When he signed 18-year-old Jacinto “Jack” Calvo Gonzalez, Washington Senators manager/owner Clark Griffith was no stranger to Cuban players, having managed Armando Marsáns and Rafael Almeida with the Cincinnati Reds, but Calvo’s signing was the beginning of Griffith’s 40-plus year commitment to signing players from Cuba. During his tenure the Senators signed more than half of the 63 Cuban players in the major leagues.
Calvo was “discovered” while playing with Almendares in the Cuban National League, where he hit .342 in 19 games. He made even more of an impression during a series Almendares played against the New Orleans Pelicans of the Southern Association, Calvo hit .400 and his older brother Tomas hit .385.
He also hit .400 during a six-game series with the Philadelphia Athletics, The Associated Press said he didn’t compile those numbers facing minor league pitchers picked up for the series, but “against (Eddie) Plank, (Jack) Coombs, and (Charles “Chief”) Bender.”
When rumors circulated that Washington might have signed Calvo, Bender said:
“I never saw a faster youngster in my life; he can hit too, and looks for the entire world like a class ball player…If Griffith has signed him he will never regret it, for there is no chance for him to be a failure.”
By December of 1912 Griffith had Calvo under contract. The Pittsburgh Press said:
“The young Cuban sent a letter to Griff, written in Spanish. ‘They did not teach Spanish where I went to school,’ said The Old Fox, ‘so I can’t translate the missive. However, as he signed his contract I guess everything is alright.’”
The Boston Red Sox signed Tomas Calvo later in December.
While Tomas never made it in Boston, Jacinto made his debut with the Senators on May 9; he hit only .242, but everyone noticed his arm. After a June game with the St. Louis Browns, The Associated Press said:
“The youngster astonished the bugs yesterday with his remarkable throwing arm. At one time he heaved the ball from the right field fence directly to (Germany) Schaefer’s hands at second.”
On August 13 Calvo was sent to the Atlanta Crackers in the Southern Association and made his first appearance with the team the following day, batting seventh, going 1 for 4. The Atlanta Constitution said “He’s fast, fields pretty well, throws like a shot and meets the ball squarely.”
Calvo only lasted 10 days in Atlanta. He was hit on the right arm with a pitch thrown by Charles “Curly” Brown of the Montgomery Rebels. He was returned to the Senators and did not appear in another game that season. (Some sources show Calvo with the Long Branch Cubans in the New York New Jersey League—it was most likely his brother Tomas, an infielder, rather than career outfielder Jacinto, who played shortstop for the team in 94 games).
Calvo started the 1914 season with the Los Angeles Angels in the Pacific Coast League. After only 11 games (he was 4-8 with one double, one triple and a stolen base) he was sent to the Victoria Bees in the Northwestern League. Later in the season a story came out explaining his abrupt departure from Los Angeles.
Calvo with the Washington Senators
The Spokane Spokesman-Review said, “Calvo has been the victim of a cruel and merciless conspiracy,” despite the fact that “in the exhibition games last spring against the White Sox Calvo loomed up head and shoulders above the other Angel gardeners, out hitting them by a wide margin and displaying more speed on the bags than the whole Angel team combined.”
The paper claimed that a female reporter:
“(o)n one of the local papers…dragged out of him the fact that his father was a rich sugar planter in Havana, and that he played baseball for fun and not for money…That was the beginning of the end for little Calvo. “
The story said fans began harassing Calvo, and:
“Instead of coming to his rescue, the players on the Angel team ‘rode’ the boy unmercifully. It was pathetic to see the friendless little Cuban trying to get into the good graces of his teammates. One day, in the clubhouse the boy sat down on a bench and cried before them all. His spirit was broken.”
Calvo hit .289 for Victoria in 1914, and spent the spring of 1915 with the Senators before being release before the beginning of the season. After his release he played with his brother Tomas for the Long Branch Cubans, by then a member of the Independent Negro League; he also played for Havana in the Cuban-American Negro Clubs Series.
Calvo next played for the Vancouver Beavers in the Northwestern League and the San Francisco Seals in the Pacific Coast League, hitting .329 in 1916, and slipping to .263 in 1917. After the 1917 season, the outfielder returned, unsigned, the contract sent to him by Seals owner Charlie Graham.
Calvo had been very popular in San Francisco during his nearly two seasons with the Seals, but was criticised by fans and local press for his holdout, especially because he was holding out on the even more popular Graham. The San Francisco Chronicle said:
“He sent his terms, and as they were exactly what he asked for before. (Charlie) Graham is wondering why the Cuban went to the trouble to wire at all.” The paper criticised Calvo for “asking for more money than he got last year,” while “better players than he have submitted to a salary slash on account of war conditions.”
San Francisco Seals owner Charlie Graham
The Chronicle lamented the fact that Seals outfielder Biff Schaller would miss the entire season with an injury, otherwise “Calvo could have stayed in Havana for all that anyone here cares.”
As it turned out, Calvo did stay in Havana. For all of 1918 and ’19, not returning to the states until 1920. Tomorrow–Jacinto Calvo’s return.
Fred “Crazy” Schmit was widely considered to be the first pitcher to keep a “book” on hitters, it was mostly attributed to his poor memory, and the pitcher kept an actual book in his pocket listing the weakness of each hitter. The earliest reference to Schmit’s book was in The Sporting Life in 1894, but the story was repeated in newspapers for the next thirty years, usually as a story told by John McGraw or Hughie Jennings.
The article said Schmit kept:
“(A)n account of the weakness at bat of his opponents, setting them down in a small book, which he always carried with him on the diamond…One day when he had the Chicagos as opponents (it was the season that Captain Anson led the League in batting), Anson came to the bat. “Crazy” Schmit looked at the big first baseman, then went down into his pocket, and, taking out his book, read “Anson, base on balls.”
Over the years the story changed—the batter was sometimes Elmer Flick, Nap Lajoie, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Tris Speaker, and as Jennings said in 1926, “Every good hitter since Anson’s day, but Anson is the player whose weakness was reported to be a base on balls.”
“Cap” Anson
Jennings also claimed that during the 1890s as part of a prank by teammates aboard a ferry, Schmit’s suitcase, with his book inside, fell overboard, and said:
“Schmit was a losing pitcher from that time on. He won a few games but lost a great many more…The bottom of Hudson River held his ‘pitching arm.’”
Pitcher turned sports cartoonist Al Demaree said Schmit “used to warm up with an old water-soaked ball that weighed several pounds—at a distance of 75 feet, and not the regulation 60 feet from his catcher.”
Al Demaree’s Schmit cartoon–as with most references to the pitcher, his name is spelled incorrectly
After his final game with the Baltimore Orioles in 1901, Schmit continued to play with semi-professional and quasi-professional teams for more than a decade. His antics continued to make the papers.
In 1906 Schmit joined Jim “Nixey” Callahan’s Logan Squares in the Chicago City League. The Sporting News’ Revere Rodgers told a story (complete with Schmit speaking in a comic German accent) about the team going to Joliet, Illinois for a game:
“(The Logan Squares) knew the umpire was a ‘homer’—a man who couldn’t see a close decision without giving his team the best of it. He stopped before the grandstand, hat in hand, and announced (the batteries)…’Crazy’ Schmit was right behind him and when (the umpire) finished Schmit took off his cap and making a sweeping bow said: ‘Laties and schentlmen, der umpire for der game today vill be Mister Miller of Joliet and he vill as usual slightly favor der home glub mit his decision.”
According to The Chicago Tribune’s Hugh Fullerton Schmit was deeply disappointed at the end of the 1906 season when Callahan did not allow him to pitch in the Logan Squares victories against the World Champion White Sox, and National League Champion Cubs.
Schmit continued to play in the Midwest and also did some scouting for John McGraw’s New York Giants. A story that appeared in The Duluth News-Tribune said Schmit pitched a few games for the Fond du Lac in the Wisconsin-Illinois League (Schmit’s name does not appear on any Fond du Lac roster in either of the two years the other player mentioned in the story was with the team (1909, 1911)so the story may be apocryphal):
“Along about the seventh inning, with Rockford leading by 6 to 4 the first man up got on. Schmit pitched out three times in an attempt to get the runner going down to second base, but the runner made no attempt to purloin the sack. With the count three and nothing on the batter he grooved the next one, only to have the batter lean on it and drive it over the left field fence for a homerun.
“After the runners had circled the bases the umpire threw up another ball. Schmit took it, shook his head and walked over to Bobby Lynch, who was playing third base…and said to him ‘Say, Bobby, no wonder I can’t beat these fellows. I won’t pitch against them any longer. I quit right now. They don’t know how to play baseball and yet they are leading in this league. The runner that was on first base just let me waste three balls and yet he does not attempt to steal; then when I put one over for the batter who has three balls and no strikes, he hits it. Tell me, how can a man of my intelligence and baseball knowledge pitch a game of baseball against such boneheads and unscientific playing of the game?”
“Crazy” Smith died in Chicago in 1940.
A 1912 advertisement for Ever-Ready Safety Razor featuring Chicago Cubs star Henry “Heinie” Zimmerman.
“Ever-Ready is my motto. My bat is ever-ready and I use “Ever-Ready” Safety Razor because it is always ready, sharp, cuts clean, works in a jiffy. It makes a bit hit with me. Try it boys.”
The 1917 World Series, which the White Sox won 4 games to 2, was the low point of Zimmerman’s career. Now playing for the Giants, the former Cub had once said: “I’d rather play in hell than in Comiskey Park.” White Sox fans did not let him forget it. Called “The sassiest and most ill-tempered player in the game,” by a wire service article before the series which also said, “Can you imagine what he will endure when the W.S. takes place?”
He did endure a lot. Zimmerman was jeered by Sox fans throughout the series. He hit .120, committed three errors, and was undeservedly blamed for a botched rundown when Rube Benton and Walter Holke failed to cover the plate, and the Sox’ fleet second baseman Eddie Collins beat the slower Zimmerman in a footrace home, scoring the winning run in game 6.
On October 12, 1906, with the World Series between the Chicago White Sox and Chicago Cubs deadlocked at two games apiece, August “Garry” Herrmann, President of the National Commission, received a telegram from Fresno, California:
“Fresno will give $25,000 guarantee; guarantee 40,000 fans and sunshine for deciding game of World Series.
–Mike Fisher”
Fisher said the offer to bring the series and Fresno native Frank Chance to town was backed by “the businessmen here.”
It is doubtful Herrmann took the offer seriously, and it’s probably just as doubtful that Fisher took it seriously, but it was picked up by newspapers across the country, and Fisher enjoyed the publicity.
It was a last bit of publicity before his career in organized baseball ended. Later in the month he was dismissed as manager of the Fresno Raisin Eaters, and the team was dropped from the Pacific Coast League (PCL) the following spring.
Within weeks Fisher had moved on to a new project; he announced that he was in the process of forming a team to travel to Hawaii. The San Francisco Call said “It will be the first American ball team to make the trip across the Pacific in a little over nineteen years,” since Spalding’s world tour.
In conjunction with Jesse Woods, a Honolulu promoter, Fisher organized a tour of the Hawaiian Islands with a team of PCL stars.
Mike Fisher
Upon his return, Fisher got more ink on the West Coast, when he headed to Nevada with Charlie Irwin of the San Francisco Seals; the two met with businessmen in the mining towns of Goldfield and Tonopah to discuss forming a professional league—Fisher told The San Jose Mercury News that he was now “against organized baseball,” and if he got involved in the league “it will be an outlaw organization.”
Fisher chose not to get involved in the new league, but immediately went to work on an even more ambitious tour than the 1907 Honolulu trip.
With the sponsorship of the Reach Sporting Goods Company, Fisher would accompany a group of stars to China, Japan and the Philippines. Early publicity promised the travelers would include Ty Cobb, Hal Chase, and Frank Chance.
When the ship set sail in November of 1908 those three stars were not on board, but “several hundred fans and friends” were present when the steamer China left the port in San Francisco to see the group off. The team was substantially the same as the one that toured Hawaii the previous year—an aggregation of PCL stars and a few National and American League players– and consisted of: Jim Delahanty, George Hildebrand, Bill Burns, Pat Flaherty, Jack Bliss, Babe Danzig, Harry McArdle, Nick Williams, Joe Curtis, Heine Heitmuller, Jack Graney and Bill “Brick” Devereaux.
Despite the failure to land Cobb, Chase or Chance for the tour, the West Coast press applauded Fisher for even attempting the trip, The Call said:
“The undertaking which he has fathered and which is so successfully underway at the present time is a big proposition. With the single exception of the around-the-world trip of the A.G. Spaldings years ago, nothing on as big a scale as this has ever been attempted. To take a team of American baseball players over a journey that will total 10,000 miles before they return, to play games in China, Japan, Manila and Honolulu is something that two or three years ago would have been laughed at as an impossibility.”
The tour lasted more than three months, with the team barnstorming through Japan, China, the Philippines and Hawaii, playing local and US Service member teams. Though reports varied, the team played between twenty and thirty games, and lost no more than four.
While they drew large crowds throughout the trip, the newspapers back home reported that the tour was a financial disaster; when the players arrived back in San Francisco on February 15, 1909 aboard the Tenyo Maru, Fisher responded to the reports:
“I hear that it has been said that the trip was a financial frost. Well, anybody who says that is a liar. We broke even in Japan and made money in Manila and Honolulu. I am satisfied with the trip.”
Fisher didn’t mention the financial results in China; likely because that leg of the tour was a disaster financially. Years later he would tell a story about the team’s experience there, complete with his usual exaggerations:
“In one game we played in Canton we had 150,000 people inside, and as the gatemen had been instructed to accept Chinese money it required the combined efforts of the entire team to tote the money up to the hotel. A special staff of accountants was busy all night totaling it up and in the morning we discovered we had $46.15.”
Fisher promised to take a team to Australia the following year. The trip never took place; instead Fisher purchased a Seattle dance hall called the Dreamland, and quickly became the target of the pious women of the city. Early in 1910 Fisher was indicted by “The King County grand jury, as a direct result of the activity of the Women’s Clubs,” for violating liquor laws, allowing “unescorted women” into his dance hall, and other assorted charges. A special prosecutor, Justice William Henry White, one of the most respected jurists in Washington State, was appointed to prosecute Fisher and other club owners targeted by the women.
Ever the promoter, Fisher used the indictment to promote his dance hall and rally public support. After the indictment was handed down Fisher sponsored a “Sermon in the Dreamland rink.” According to The Seattle Times, Fisher engaged Reverend Frank Herthum, who “has liberal ideas about amusements.”
Mike Fisher’s Dreamland Dance Hall, Seattle
Herthum preached, and Fisher presented a free vaudeville show. The paper said Fisher had stirred up a “protest against the effort to close the dance hall without having provided a substitute where clerks, servant girls and employees in the shops may pass an evening to their liking.” At the same time The Times noted that the prosecutor was becoming impatient with the women who brought the charges because they continually promised to provide evidence that “has not yet come to light.” The charges were quietly dismissed within weeks.
Fisher left Seattle sometime in 1911 and began operating the Arcadia Dance Hall in San Francisco.
Advertisement for Fisher’s Arcadia Dancing Pavilion.
In January of 1917 Fisher made headlines in California when he announced that he was directing an effort to restart the California State League, which had folded after the 1915 season. He said he would have clubs in Sacramento, Fresno, Stockton and San Jose. Within two weeks Fisher abandoned the plan. The San Jose Mercury News was not surprised:
“Mr. Fisher, the wonderful getter of publicity, has his publicity and is through. Probably he has done wonders for his dance emporium or whatever it is he runs.”
The following year the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League came on the market; the first name reported as a potential buyer was Mike Fisher. Fisher again got his headlines, but it was his old friend Charlie Graham who got the team. Graham, and a group of investors purchased the Seals and the former catcher was installed as manager.
Charlie Graham, left, Mique Fisher, right, with World Middleweight Champion and actor Freddie Steele.
With his friend in charge The Mercury News said Fisher became a fixture “around the San Francisco ballpark ever since Graham bought in on the Seals in 1918,” he would remain a fixture at Recreation Park, and later at Seals Stadium for more than 20 years , and continued to provide copy for West Coast s sports writer
As a result of his friendship with Graham, who recommended he get the honor, 77-year-old Fisher was selected to travel to Cooperstown to represent the PCL at baseball’s centennial celebration in 1939. The man who so loved seeing his name in the paper received headlines one more time, when he died in San Francisco on June 6, 1943.
Samuel Porter Jones was one of the country’s most prominent Evangelists from the late 1870s until his death in 1906—the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, home of The Grand Ole Opry, was originally called The Union Gospel Tabernacle and was built for Jones’ ministry.
Jones was not a baseball fan.
Speaking at a tent revival in his hometown of Cartersville, Georgia in 1885 Jones stirred up a crowd with his attack on the game.
Evangelist Samuel Porter Jones
According to The Atlanta Constitution, Jones read a note from one of the flock which said, “Our children have often gone off to the baseball grounds during this meeting and grieved our hearts,” and asked Jones for his opinion. The preacher first said he’d hold his comments about the game for a later date, and then proceeded to give his views:
“In this town this year one poor wretch went into the baseball business regularly neglected his work and finally stopped doing anything whereby he could make a living. His wife had to go to her father’s to get something to eat. Yes, my views on the baseball question are very clear, and I intend to give those views with a vengeance at some future time.”
And then he continued again:
“I have a profound contempt for the game. All that agree with me say ‘amen.’”
The Constitution said there were several ‘amen’s’ repeated in the tent:
“It is all very well for little boys under ten years of age to play baseball, but for men it is a crying shame and an abominable sin. Why, I would not get mad with a man if he should kill my dog if he found him on a baseball ground. My boy can play baseball until he is 10-years-old, but after that time I will give a hundred lashes every time he plays. ..If this meeting breaks up baseball in this town it will do well; if it does nothing else. In three years no decent man will be found in the baseball business, if the game is carried on as it is now.”
The evangelist, and others who railed against the game in the late 19th Century did little to curb the growing popularity of the game..
Jones is buried in Cartersville.
Cartersville’s other connection to baseball is seven time American League all-star Rudy York, who played for the Detroit Tigers, Boston Red Sox, Chicago White Sox and Philadelphia Athletics. York’s family moved there in his teens, and he played ball on a company team at the local textile mill and for the Atlantic Transportation Company team in nearby Atco, Georgia, before being signed for the Tigers by scout Eddie Goostree in 1933.
Rudy York, circa 1930, with local textile mill team.
York died in 1970 and is buried four miles away from Jones in Cartersville.
Eddie Goostree, signed York for the Tigers
While with the players who took part in the world tour between the 1888 and ’89 seasons, Si Goodfriend observed:
“My experience in traveling with baseball clubs, the circumstances of which necessarily brings about a close association, has impressed me with the fact that most of them are, as a rule, men of far more intelligence and better manners than they are generally given credit for.”
Among those players were all four members of the Chicago White Stockings “Stonewall Infield:” Adrian Constantine “Cap” Anson, Nathaniel Frederick “Fred” Pfeffer, Edward Nagle “Ned” Williamson, and Thomas Everett “Tom” Burns.
Goodfriend said of Anson:
“Decidedly the most unique and interesting figure of all is that of Captain Anson. He shows the same peculiarities of temperament off as on the ball field. He takes advantage of every point he sees and, and holds it…He may not admire a fellow baseball player personally, but this will not induce him to detract from his skill or standing as a player.
“’Old Anse’ has genuine sporting blood in him, and will bet on anything that turns up…There isn’t anything (aboard)the ship he won’t bet on if he has a fair chance of winning. Anson’s nature is not nearly as harsh as some people imagine. The rippling water in the moonlight or the graceful soaring of a bird will draw out the greatest sentiments from him.”
Like John Tener, Anson would enter politics, but was less successful. After being elected Chicago’s city clerk in 1905, he was defeated in the Democratic primary for Cook County (IL) Sheriff in 1907
“Cap” Anson
Of Pfeffer he observed:
“(He) is handsome and has no striking mental characteristics. He has a long, flowing, brown mustache and soft brown eyes, both of which would readily come under the head of a womanly ‘lovely.’ To show the nature of the man I need only mention a little incident that is causing him much worry at the present time. His only relative is his mother who lives in Louisville. Before leaving on the trip he promised to write to her regularly and while on the ocean he promised to cable home from every point possible. He did not know there was no cable from Honolulu, and now he is worrying himself that his old mother will be anxious about him until he can cable from Auckland. It will seem an age to him until that city is reached.”
Pfeffer, along with “Monte” Ward was a leader in baseball’s nascent labor movement, Pfeffer was frequently at odds with Anson, and led the exodus of most of the White Stockings’ starters to the Players League. Despite that, in 1918 Anson called Pfeffer the game’s all-time greatest second baseman after sportswriter Grantland Rice said Eddie Collins of the White Sox was the best ever.
Fred Pfeffer
Williamson, he said, was “unassuming” and:
“(A) big tender-hearted fellow, whom everybody likes. He writes in an exceedingly clever and interesting style, and can ‘fake’ a good story like a veteran journalist.”
Ned Williamson with White stockings mascot
Williamson wrote his own dispatches from the tour which became popular features in Chicago papers. He injured his knee on the tour and A.G. Spalding refused to help him with medical expenses; the 36-year-old Williamson jumped to the Players League in 1890, but his health began to deteriorate that year while playing for the Chicago Pirates. He died of tuberculosis in 1894.
Goodfriend on third baseman Burns:
“(He) is a bright, intelligent man, who spends most of his time in reading; works of a standard heavy and weighty character being favorites. He has the reputation of being a great dresser, and is said to have as many trunks with him as a New York belle would carry to Saratoga.”
Tom Burns
Nearly a decade after the tour, Burns would be the man who replaced Anson as manager of the Chicago National League ballclub. Burns took the reins of the “Orphans” in 1898, ending Anson’s 19-year run as manager.
Burns was named manager of the Jersey City Skeeters in the Eastern League in 1902, but died just weeks before the beginning of the season.
During the first decade of the 20th Century cartoon ads from Chas. Dennehy & Co., distributor of Underoof Bourbon and Rye Whiskey appeared regularly in Chicago newspapers. Most focused on the Cubs and White Sox, the two featured today do not.
The ad above appeared after game 4 of the 1909 World Series when the Detroit Tigers evened the series with the Pittsburgh Pirates at two games apiece on George Mullin’s a five hitter; Pirate star Honus Wagner, who would hit .333 for the series was held hitless by Mullin. The Pirates would go on to win the series in seven games.
The one below was published on June 6, 1910 when the New York Highlanders, after winning two of three in a series with the White Sox, moved into first place. The Philadelphia Athletics quickly overtook New York and would win the American League Pennant by 14 1/2 games.
During the first decade of the 20th Century cartoon ads from Chas. Dennehy & Co., distributor of Underoof Bourbon and Rye Whiskey appeared regularly in Chicago newspapers. Most focused on the Cubs and White Sox, but other teams were featured as well. The ads above and below are from 1910.
The first ad appeared on May 2; The White Sox beat the Detroit Tigers 4-3. the Cubs beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 2-1.
The second appeared three days later after the White Sox lost 4-0 to Detroit and the Cubs were beaten 8-3 by the Pirates.
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