Tag Archives: Dummy Hoy

Ollie Pickering Gets “Discovered”

4 Oct

Ollie Pickering told The Cleveland Plain Dealer in 1902 the lengths he went to get “discovered” and signed to his first professional contract 10 years earlier:

“I went bankrupt buying postage stamps. I wrote to all the managers I ever heard of asking for a job and enclosing stamps for reply. None of them answered, so I pigged it from my home in Olney, Illinois to San Antonio.”

By “pigged it” Pickering meant he jumped a freight train loaded with pigs.

“Sixteen Hundred miles hanging to the brake rods.”

Pickering said he arrived in San Antonio with one stamp left. He sent a letter to John McCloskey who was managing the Houston Mudcats. McCloskey invited him to Houston for a tryout.

Pickering “lived under a sidewalk” in San Antonio and couldn’t raise the money for a ticket, so hopped another freight train.

“These days a player won’t report without advance money, transportation and Pullmans, but the pig train was good enough for me.”

Upon arrival in Houston—Pickering said it was the first day of the season.

Pickering

“I fell off a slow freight at Houston, hunted up McCloskey and said: ‘I’m here.’ He looked me over and said: ‘Who are you?’ ‘I told him, and he sort of gasped. I had a crop of whiskers with clinkers in them, one shoe and what clothes I wore were tied on with ropes and wire.”

Pickering said McCloskey gave him 50 cents and told him to return in the afternoon for his tryout.

“I blew 10 cents at a barber shop and the rest for grub.”

He headed to the ballpark:

“With a meal inside of me and rigged up in a new uniform I felt like a horse. Nothing could stop me.”

Pickering claimed to get seven hits, “In seven times at bat,” in the game in which he was tried out.

“When the excitement cooled down, I strolled around near McCloskey and wondered out loud if I would do. ‘Come here,’ he said. ‘He hustled me downtown, bought me a trunk, suitcase, suit of clothes, shoes, underwear, shirts, collars; in fact, a whole dude outfit and stabled me at a hotel with real beds in it.”

Pickering estimated his manager spent $25 on him.

“I was stuck on being a ballplayer, and that was how I broke into the game. And you know, it was weeks before I could ride in a Pullman car without holding on with both hands.”

How accurate Pickering’s story was is unknown, but Pickering was referred to by The Galveston Daily News within weeks of his arrival in Houston as, “Pickering, the box car artist.” Although The San Antonio Light said years later that Pickering had, “played several games,” with teams in San Antonio before meeting McCloskey in Houston—suggesting he wasn’t as down and out as related in the story.

Pickering bounced around the Southwest before making the major leagues with Louisville Colonels in 1896. He played part of eight major league seasons for six teams. He was th first batter in the American League’s inaugural game; on April 24, 1901, he led off for the Cleveland Blues against Roy Patterson and the White Sox. The Chicago Tribune said:

“Pickering was the first to face him and the first ball of the season was a ‘ball,’ but it was closely followed by a ‘strike’—an American League strike, and not the National League brand…The Pickering raised a high fly which gave (Bill ‘Dummy’) Hoy the first putout of the season.”

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Opening Day—1901

26 Mar

The Chicago White Sox opened the American League’s inaugural season as a major league on April 24, 1901, against the Cleveland Blues.  The three additional league games scheduled for the 24th were postponed on account of rain.

The Sox won the then-minor league American League championship the season before.

1900alchamps

 

Comiskey relinquished managerial duties in 1901 to Clark Griffith, the pitcher jumped from the cross-town National League Orphans for a reported $4,000; a $1,500 salary increase.

Clark Griffith

Clark Griffith

The opener at Thirty-Ninth and Wentworth included a parade, several bands, and speeches from many dignitaries—The Chicago Tribune said every member of Chicago’s City Council was on hand, but Mayor Carter Harrison, who had promised Comiskey he would appear to speak and throw out the first ball, “was kidnapped by William J. Bryan, who slipped into town unperceived. ‘Commy’s’ plans for having the Chief Executive start the opening game were shattered.”

The Tribune said American League President Ban Johnson also missed the game; he had traveled from league headquarters to attend the opener in Philadelphia “and it’s a 1,000 to 1 shot he was sorry when he found Comiskey was the only magnate who had squared himself with the weather man.”

Other than the absence of the mayor and the league president, the paper said the first game of the upstart league was a success:

 “Under the fairest skies the weather clerk could select from his varied stock of April goods; with a championship pennant floating high above them from the proudest pine of all Michigan forests; with 9,000 fans to cheer them from a pent-up enthusiasm that burst forth at every possible opportunity, the White Stockings open the American League baseball season on the South Side Grounds yesterday with a clean-cut victory over the aggregation from Cleveland.”

The Chicago Inter Ocean, which reported the attendance at 10,073 said:

“As a grand opening it was an unqualified success, something which Charles Comiskey can look back upon in after years with all the serene satisfaction of a baby who has just swallowed a tin Indian.  As a ball game it was a hideous nightmare, a cold and icy vision of the darksome night, a living horror, let loose to stalk adown a diamond field, hooting hoarsely…With pomp and ceremonial, with braying of bands and braying of fans, with an enormous audience gathered in the frapped stands, the American League season of 1901 was duly opened in Chicago, and the real champions, Comiskey’s White Stockings, began their campaign by giving the Clevelands all that was coming to them.  The afternoon was cold; the stands were Greenland, and the bleachers bore nets of icicles.  Yet 10,000 cranks and crankesses, keen devotees of the game.”

The Chicago Daily News said more than 14,000 fans were at the game:

“Promptly at 3:30 the two clubs lined up at the plate and, preceded by a “Rough Rider” band, marched to the flagpole at the south end of the field, where the championship banner was unfurled to the strains of ‘The Star Spangled Banner.’”

Cartoon of "pennant" being hoisted from The Chicago Tribune.

Cartoon of “pennant” being hoisted from The Chicago Tribune.

The Associated Press said the attendance was 8,000.

The Tribune said the crowd was enthusiastic despite the weather:

“There were cheers for everybody, from (William Ellsworth “Dummy’) Hoy, who couldn’t hear them, to (starting pitcher Roy) Patterson, the hero of many a hard-earned victory last year…there were flowers for (Dave) Brain, the youngest of the White Soxs [sic]…And at the end there was so much surplus exuberance that the bleacherites indulged in a merry cushion fight all through the concluding inning by way of celebration.”

Chicago scored two in the first and five in the second off Cleveland starter Bill Hoffer and cruised to an 8 to 2 victory behind Patterson.

The Inter Ocean said the most “ludicrous” play of the otherwise “uneventful” game took place in the sixth inning when Hoy attempted to steal third:

“(Catcher Bob) Wood threw wild, and (Bill) Bradley scooped up the ball way off from the cushion.  As Bradley, with no thought of the runner, turned to return the ball to the pitcher, Hoy, losing his balance as he ran, slid clear over third , out into the field and right into Bradley, his knee striking the ball clasped in Bradley’s hand.  It was possibly the first case on record of a man’s forcing a put-out on himself, and the crowd marveled greatly, perceiving that the science of the game had much advanced, and that there were new freckles every day.”

While the Chicago Orphans were losing their opening game in Cincinnati, The Tribune said the team’s president, James A. Hart, “was present and witnessed the game from a box at the south end of the grandstand.  He chatted with President Comiskey for some time and seemed to like the work of the players, but he did not voice his sentiments.”

Behind Griffith and his 24-7 record, the Sox won the league’s first pennant with an 83-53 record. Opening Day pitcher Roy Patterson was 20-15.  Cleveland finished seventh with a 54-82 record; Hoffer was 3-8 in 16 games when he was released in July, ending his major league career.

1901 Chicago White Sox

1901 Chicago White Sox

Comiskey and Hart were both members of their respective league’s “peace committee” at the January 1903 meeting in Cincinnati that led to the forging of the first National Agreement.

 

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Things I Learned on the Way to Looking up other Things #6

12 Mar

Umpiring “Revolutionized”

The Chicago Inter Ocean reported that an “innovation in baseball” would be introduced during the second game of a September 9 double header at Chicago’s South Side Park between the White Sox and the Boston Americans.

“The astonishing feat, an apparent impossibility, will be accomplished by the use of colors, and the inventor, George W. Hancock, expects the umpiring business to be almost revolutionized.”

hancock

George W. Hancock

Hancock was the inventor of indoor baseball in 1887; the game that evolved into softball.

“(Umpire) Jack Sheridan will wear a red sleeve on his right arm and a white one on his left claw.  For a strike he will wave the right arm, and for a ball the left one and the flash of the colors can be seen by people seated so far away that the voice even of Sheridan, the human bullfrog, would be inaudible.”

The “innovation” would likely have benefited one player, the popular center fielder of the White Sox, William Ellsworth “Dummy” Hoy, who was deaf.  But no mention was made of Hoy in the description of Hancock’s plan.

Hoy

Hoy

The “astonishing feat” turned out to be so insignificant that The Inter Ocean failed to even mention it in the summary of the double-header which the Sox swept.  Hoy did not appear in either game.  George W. Hancock’s plan was never mentioned again.

Luminous Ball

Another innovation that promised to revolutionize the game that never came to be was the luminous ball.  The Reading Times reported on the process in 1885:

“Charles Shelton, the leading druggist of Bridgeport, has discovered a compound which, when applied to a baseball, renders that object luminous.  One of the drawbacks of playing baseball at night under the electric light is the inability to see the ball when thrown or batted into the air with the black night background of sky behind it.  By saturating it with Mr. Shelton’s compound the ball while in motion is luminous.  At rest it does not retain any light.  The illuminating ball retains its meteoric irritation for 45 minutes.”

There is no record of Mr. Shelton’s invention ever being used in a professional game.

What’s a Dog Worth?

As part of the Federal League’s antitrust lawsuit against the American and National League’s affidavits were submitted from players detailing how organized baseball controlled the destiny and salary of player.  Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown, who jumped from the Cincinnati Reds to sign with the Federal League’s St. Louis Terriers, swore in his filing that players, on at least two occasions, had been traded for dogs.

William A. Phelon, of The Cincinnati Times-Star and “Baseball Magazine,” said:

“This thing of trading dogs for ball players—as outlined in the Federal affidavits—should be put upon a sane and sensible basis.”

Phelon provided a “definite standard and a set of unit values” for baseball to follow:

phelondogs

McMullin’s Long Route to the Plate

Before Fred McMullin became the least famous of the eight members of 1919 Chicago White Sox who were banned from organized ball for life, he was a popular player on the West Coast.

Fred McMullin

Fred McMullin

The (Portland) Oregonian told a story that was purported to have taken place when McMullin was a member of the Tacoma Tigers in the Northwestern League in a game with the Seattle Giants:

“He came in from third on a dead run and made a slide for the plate.  McMullin knew he didn’t touch it, but he was afraid to slide back, as the catcher had the ball in his hand.  The umpire also knew he didn’t score, but he said nothing, for that was none of his business.

“Fred dusted off his uniform and stalked nonchalantly to the bench.  A couple of Seattle players yelled for a decision.

“‘He wasn’t safe, was he?’ demanded (Walt) Cadman, who was catching for Seattle.

“The umpire shook his head no.  At that Cadman, holding the ball in his hand, dashed over to the Tacoma bench to tag McMullin.  Fred waited until he almost reached him and then slid to the other end of the bench.

“Cadman followed him, and as he did s slipped in some mud and fell to his knees.  McMullin leaped up from the bench, dashed for the plate and touched it.  The umpire called him safe.”

 

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