Tag Archives: Homer Croy

Lost Pictures–Frank Chance by Oscar Cesare

12 May

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Frank Chance, as seen through the eyes of Oscar Cesare, cartoonist for The New York Evening Post; the sketch appeared along with a 1911 feature article by Homer Croy of the International Press Bureau:

“Frank Chance is the “Peerless Leader” to all America with W.J.B. (William Jennings Bryan) just coming in sight around the bend.  W.J. may be the last syllable when it comes to a crown of thorns, but what does  he know about first base?  When it gets down to real peerlessness, Chance of Cook County has got the Lincoln leader lashed so tightly to the mast that he can’t move an eyebrow.”

Croy noted Chance’s fear of the “hoodoo:”

“He is one of the most superstitious men in baseball, but having 13 for his lucky number.  When on a Pullman it would take a straightjacket and a new cable to make him sleep anywhere except in lower 13;  if the club gets a car with only twelve berths he writes 13 on the door and doubles up in the stateroom.  He refuses to change his shirt as long as the Cubs are winning; he’s very firm about this and cannot be won over with either pleading or powder.”

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Lost Pictures–Ty Cobb by Oscar Cesare

5 May

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A sketch of Ty Cobb by Oscar Cesare of The New York Evening Post.

The picture accompanied a feature story by Homer Croy, of the International Press Bureau about Ty Cobb published in the Winter of 1911.  Croy would later become a well-known novelist and screenwriter, best known for writing “They had to See Paris,” Will Rogers’ first sound film.

“Residents of Royston, Georgia say this world has produced three great men: Shakespeare, Napoleon–and Ty Cobb.  The bearded bard of Avon may have written a few plays that now give employment to Julia Marlowe and E.H. Sothern, but what did he know about the fall-away slide?  The bow-legged little man who always wore his hat crossways may have won a war or two, but what sort of batting average did he have.

But speaking of real men whose names will go resounding, reverberating and re-echoing down the corridors of time, there is Mr. Tyrus R. Cobb who was born right in this town, sir!”

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“He is the master of the slide, being able to coast in between the ankles of a knock-kneed man and never gets touched…He never gets hurt.  If he went into the aviation business or become an auto racer he would still live to be as old as Shem, who carpentered on the ark for Noah at a hundred and twenty years.  Ty needing only a package of court plaster or so every decade.  In coming down in an aeroplane he would always hop out at the fourth floor, come in on the hook slide on his hip, and then get up as sound as a simoleon to see if the umpire had called him safe.

“In the time the Empire state Express of baseball lives in Augusta, sells automobiles and talk about the new baseball phenom he has discovered—Tyrus Jr.”  (Cobb’s son—Tyrus Raymond Cobb Jr. was born the previous year.”

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Hal Chase, 1912

17 Feb

Hal Chase resigned as manager of the New York Highlanders after the 1911 season but remained with the club.  Before the 1912 season, he was the subject of the profile written by Homer Croy for the International Press Bureau.  Croy would later become a well-known novelist and screenwriter, best known for writing “They had to See Paris,” Will Rogers’ first sound film.

The feature also included a sketch of Chase by Oscar Cesare of The New York Evening Post.

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Croy wrote:

“Hal Chase, the great billiard player, is also captain of the Yankees.  He would rather play billiards, after being out on a month’s camping trip with nothing to stay the inner man except canned calf’s tongue, pemmican and an uninterrupted view of the landscape, than have a plush-button, golden-backed chair in the dining room of the Waldorf with three waiters and a water boy to heed his beck.

“A three-cushion carom is as easy for him as a pick-up…He has such good shoulders and leaps so gracefully that he has to have a penknife operated by foot power to open his mashing notes.”

Of Chase’s brief stay at Santa Clara College, Croy said:

“He went one year to college, making a major of second base, a minor of handball and a bluff at calculus.  The faculty couldn’t see him with a microscope and full lights on, sighing with relief when he climbed in the chair car homeward bound.”

Croy said besides billiards, hunting and horseback riding were Chase’s favorite activities, “When he gets out of his baseball togs his favorite outdoor diversion is keeping his heels in, his elbows stiff and his thumbs pointing up.  He can give a riding master the lag.”

By the end of the decade, Chase’s name would be synonymous with gambling and game-fixing, but in the spring of 1912, to Croy, he was:

“The greatest first baseman between the Canadian Pacific and the Gulf Stream.”

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