Tag Archives: Inter-Mountain League

Homer Hausen

14 Jan

When Homer Hausen of the Sioux City Cornhuskers hit Omaha Omahogs catcher Bill Wilson in the head with a bat it was the culmination of a feud a over a woman.

While initial reports said Wilson was near death, the catcher made a full recovery.

In the aftermath of the July 1900 incident, Hausen was blacklisted by the Western League, joined a semi-pro team in Rock Rapids, Iowa, and was reported to have married the object of the feud.

If the wedding happened, as reported by The Associated Press, it didn’t last—there is no record confirming the marriage took place, and there is a record, six years later, for Hausen’s marriage to his wife Nellie.

Hausen went to Utah in 1901 and joined the Ogden club in the newly formed Inter-Mountain League; then returned to the Western League in 1902, splitting time between the Denver Grizzlies and Colorado Springs Millionaires.

During his time in Ogden in 1901 The Deseret News said Hausen seemed to “have trouble wherever he goes,’ with Utah fans:

“This happened again yesterday afternoon at Lagoon and Hausen attempted to reply to the taunt.  That only made matters worse and he got it harder than ever.  He remarked that some of the rooters were ‘Salt Lake curs,’ and said that he would ‘spoil the face of one dirty cur.’ before he left the state.”

Despite his problems with the state’s  fans, he returned to Utah in 1903, and became involved in another incident involving a bat to the head.

Homer Hausen

Homer Hausen

This time he was on the receiving end.

On June 28 Hausen was behind the plate for the Ogden team in a Utah State League game against Salt Lake City in Ogden.

The Desert News said:

“A most brutal and murderous assault took place yesterday afternoon on the Glenwood park ball grounds when George Marshall, one of the Salt Lake baseball team maliciously struck Hausen of the Ogden baseball team over the right side of the head with a baseball bat, breaking Hausen’s upper jaw and terribly battering his face.“

The Salt Lake Herald said:

“(Pitcher Erven “Si”) Jensen delivered one that went wide of the plate and was called a ball…Hausen had returned the sphere to Jensen and was squatting back, apparently giving the signal to Jensen for the next delivery when Marshall whirled and brought his bat down on the catcher’s face…Marshall was quite excited and shouted to the grandstand that Hausen had called him an insulting name.”

The blow broke his cheek bone below his right eye—rather than his “upper jaw”—had been broken, and “But for the mask the blow might have killed Hausen.”

From an Ogden jail cell, Marshall told a reporter from The Herald he “resented” a name Hausen had called him but, “did not mean to strike hard enough to break any bones.”

The Deseret News said the incident was the result of a long-standing feud between the players:

“Yesterday morning, it is stated, the two men had words in a cigar store, in this city, which almost resulted in blows, and it is also stated that the police have proof that Marshall has made the statement that he would hit Hausen the first chance he got, and it is fully believed by those who saw the murderous blow struck yesterday that Marshall intended to kill Hausen.”

Unlike Hausen, who three years earlier, avoided any legal action in Iowa, Marshall was charged with assault with a deadly weapon, and was unable to make bail.  Despite the serious charge, and the alleged “proof” of intent the police were said to have, the charges were reduced to assault and battery and a sympathetic judge “took into consideration the boy’s age—18—and the fact that he had already served considerable time in jail (nine days)” and sentenced Marshall to time served and a $50 fine.

It’s unknown what became of Marshall after his release.

Hausen continued the life of an itinerant early 20th Century ballplayer.  He returned to Iowa late in 1903, then back to Salt Lake City in 1904, for his best season.  He hit .318 for the Salt Lake City Elders in the Pacific National League, and his contract was purchased by the St. Louis Cardinals, but was returned to the minor leagues early in the spring.

The 1904 Salt Lake Elders, Hausen is standing second from the left

The 1904 Salt Lake Elders, Hausen is standing second from the left

Hausen spent time in the Southern Association and Central League before returning to Utah in 1909.  He played several more seasons of semipro ball until retiring to a farm in Rupert, Idaho.  He died there in 1935.

Advertisement for a 1909 Utah State League game between Salt Lake City and Ogden. Hausen played third base.

Advertisement for a 1909 Utah State League game between Salt Lake City and Ogden. Hausen played third base for Ogden

Despite his early trouble with fans in Utah, they seemed to have warmed to him later in his carer;

During one of his many stints playing in the state, The Salt Lake Tribune said of Hausen:

“No better or more faithful ball player ever stepped on a Utah diamond.”

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“Mr. Borchers has Merely made Excuses.”

12 Feb

After two arrests and a season-long suspension in 1889, and another arrest and stints with four teams in 1890, George Borchers seemed to have settled down.

The San Francisco Chronicle said in January of 1891 that he was “taking excellent care of himself and will be ready to play winning ball.”

George Borchers

George Borchers

From 1891 through 1893 he pitched in the Pacific Northwest and California League’s and seems to have stayed sober and out of jail.

He was essentially a .500 pitcher, with less than average control; when he was with the Los Angeles Angels in 1893 he walked 210 batters, hit 24 and had 17 wild pitches.

The Los Angeles Herald regularly noted Borchers’ wildness.  In his first appearance for the Angels in April of ’93 he walked six and hit two batters in the first inning, yielding four runs, and was removed in the second after another walk and two more hit batsmen.  After a 21-12 May victory against Stockton the paper said:  “Borchers did himself proud, allowing 13 men to walk to first base, 12 for base on balls and one for being hit.  How the Angels managed to win with him in the box is a marvel.”

From 1894 through the 1896 season he was a baseball nomad, playing for nine teams in six leagues, including a single, disastrous final major league appearance with the Louisville Colonels in May of 1895—he started a game against the Brooklyn Grooms, lasting just two-thirds of an inning, giving up a hit, three walks, a wild pitch and two runs—earning the loss as the Colonels went down 11 to 0.

Caricature of Borchers from The San Francisco Call

Caricature of Borchers from The San Francisco Call

Borchers was out of organized baseball in 1897 and it’s unclear what he was doing and where he was doing it, but he resurfaced the in 1898 as a minor league team owner.  The Pacific Northwest League, which folded after the 1896 season, was resurrected as a four-team circuit organized by Dan Dugdale and William Works.  Dugdale took the Seattle franchise; Works took Tacoma, a Spokane “newspaperman” named Hutchinson took that town’s team, and George Borchers was awarded the Portland club.

The league struggled, and Borchers was stripped of his franchise in early July.  The Tacoma Daily News explained the problem:

“George Borchers is beginning to look upon matters of baseball in a new light.  The (league) is holding an inquest on his official corpse this afternoon, sitting in Portland.  The chief is not to figure any longer as manager of the Portland baseball team…The trouble has all arisen over Borchers’ treatment of his men.  He has not distributed cash since the opening of the season and as he is still short on the amount due the league will be displaced…Mr. Borchers has merely made excuses.”

Borchers returned to California and appeared in games for three Pacific Coast League teams during the remainder of the season: Santa Cruz, Stockton and Watsonville.

Borchers would continue, on and off, as a player until 1903—including a season as player/manager with the California League’s San Jose Brewers in 1899.  But in 1901 he made headlines when he became embroiled in a scandal.

 

Borchers was pitching for the Oakland Commuters in the California League, and failed to show up for a game he was scheduled to pitch on May 1.  The San Francisco Call said:

“George Borchers, the star pitcher of the Oakland baseball nine, has disappeared…None of the missing player’s close friends in baseball circles can explain why he decamped so suddenly nor where the absent ballplayer has gone.”

—

“Some of the Oakland players are injecting a bit of romance into the story, the names of some of the fair enthusiasts of Golden Gate being introduced as the possible cause for the handsome pitcher’s sudden leave taking.  But none seem to be able to tell with certainty the story that he has fallen victim to the charms of some fair one.”

The plot thickened the following day when Oakland owner J. Cal Ewing hired a private detective to track the missing pitcher, and an angry father went public.

J. Cal Ewing

J. Cal Ewing

While Ewing’s investigator hunted, an Oakland real estate developer named Don Miller told The San Jose Evening News his daughter Grace had disappeared:

“(Miller) is convinced that she has gone with the ballplayer.  Neither Borchers, who has a wife in Portland, not Miss Miller has been seen since last Monday, when they boarded an eastward-bound train.”

Miller told the paper:

“I am endeavoring to locate them now, and if I ever find the man who has broken up my home he’ll need nothing but a coffin.  I’ll find them yet.”

After a week, he turned up in Ogden, Utah, pitching for that town’s club in the Inter-Mountain League.  The Santa Cruz Evening Sentinel said:

“He says he left simply to better his position and justifies his action on the ground that the California League takes players who skip out on other leagues and the local players are in competition with them all the time.  He thinks he had the right to skip out likewise and better his position.  He claims the reason he left secretly was because he feared Ewing would cause him trouble.

“He was worried over the account that he had left with Miss Grace Miller, but denied it.”

The paper noted that while Borchers wife remained in Portland, he had received two train tickets from the Ogden club.

Eventually, the truth came out.  Borchers returned to California to secure a divorce from his wife and married the former Miss Miller.  He spent 1902 playing and managing for a team in Salt Lake City, and managing a bowling alley there.

The second Mrs. Borchers became ill in November of 1902 and died two weeks later from peritonitis.

His last scandal behind him, Borchers married again and operated a large dairy in Sacramento until his death in 1938.

 

 

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Fielder Jones and the Chehalis Gophers

11 Feb

Most biographies of Fielder Jones—player-manager of the 1906 World Champion Chicago White Sox, the Hitless Wonders—mention that he managed the Chehalis Gophers, a team in the Washington State League, in 1910;  they never mention that he ended up there because of a near-fatal assault before he arrived.

The 36-year-old Jones left the White Sox after the 1908 season to settle in the Portland, Oregon and tend to his many business holdings in the area.  In 1909, he was named president of the Northwestern League, and served for one season.  According to West Coast newspaper reports, Jones was in the running to named president of the Pacific Coast League in 1910, before Thomas Graham was elected as a compromise candidate.

In the spring of 1910, Jones coached the Oregon Agricultural College (now Oregon State) baseball team to the school’s first conference championship.

At the same time, Jones was coaching at OAC, the Washington State League was getting underway—the league had been operating for at least three seasons, but 1910 was the first year it was recognized under baseball’s national agreement as an “official” minor league.

The Chehalis Gophers were led by 27-year-old Fred Nehring; he had previously played on the Pacific Coast, Northwestern and Connecticut State Leagues.  Nehring, who was born in Pueblo, Colorado in 1883, but grew up in Chehalis, had been playing on and off with the local team since leaving the Tacoma Tigers in 1908

1908 Chehalis team. Fred Nehring standing 2nd from left, Tamp Osburn, standing 4th from left.

1908 Chehalis team. Fred Nehring standing 2nd from left, Tamp Osburn, standing 4th from left.

Another player who had spent time with Chehalis since 1908 was a pitcher known variously as “Tamp” Osburn, Osborn or Osborne (for the purpose of this story we’ll call him Osburn—most common usage by contemporaneous sources).  Tamp Osburn has, at least, two separate, partial listings on Baseball Reference.

Osburn was considered a talented pitcher, but an erratic character.  While pitching for the Spokane Indians in Northwestern League in 1907, he quit the team in June.  According to The Spokane Daily Chronicle:

“The whole trouble yesterday started when a couple of misplays in the eighth inning put a losing aspect on the game…Tamp blames the whole trouble on (William ‘Terry’) McKune, who he says ‘threw’ the game on him.”

Osburn had additional problems with teammates and developed a reputation as an eccentric, and like all eccentric pitchers of the era there was one he was often compared; The Daily Chronicle called him “The Rube Waddell of the Northwestern League.”

After playing together for Chehalis in 1908, both Nehring and Osburn played in the short-lived Inter-Mountain League in 1909; both returned to Chehalis after that league folded in July.

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“Tamp” Osburn, 1908 with Spokane Indians

On May 20, just after the 1910 season opened, the Chehalis team boarded a train.  According to The Chehalis Bee-Nugget:

“(Osburn) who had been drinking before the train left Chehalis became so unruly on the train that the train crew called on Fred Nehring, captain of the Chehalis team to quiet him.  Tamp resented Nehring’s efforts to keep him from cursing in the presence of ladies, and pulled a knife and began to slash Nehring…Two severe cuts…in the left arm, and the other was in the breast.  If the latter had been an inch farther over, it would have penetrated the lungs.”

Nehring had the wounds dressed, left the hospital against doctor’s advice and managed the Chehalis team “from the bench.”  Despite the seemingly quick recovery, Nehring only appeared in a few games the rest of the season.  Osburn was arrested.

The Chehalis team floundered for the next several weeks.  In late June, it was announced that Fielder Jones would join the team as manager and centerfielder.

Under Jones, who was still property of the White Sox and needed Charles Comiskey’s approval to play, Chehalis easily won the league championship; Jones hit .358 in 37 games.

Jones had agreed to play for the team for no salary and was only reimbursed for his expenses.  This arrangement nearly cost Chehalis the league championship.  According to The (Portland) Oregonian, the second place Raymond Cougars protested to the league and the National Commission that all wins under Jones should be forfeited because Jones “was not under contract.”  The protest was denied and Chehalis was declared league champion.

Osburn was sent to the Lewis County Jail while awaiting trial, and according to The Oregonian was involved in an attempted escape along with other prisoners who occupied the jail’s first floor, a week after his arrest.  The paper said of Osburn “the baseball player, and one other man were taken to the cells on the second floor and locked up securely.”

There is no record of whether Osburn was convicted; in any case, he was free by July of 1911 and was pitching for the Missoula, Montana franchise in the Union Association when The Helena Daily Independent reported that Osburn:

“The Missoula pitcher, who started a rough house in a Missoula cafe and pulled a knife on a stranger, drew a severe panning from the judge, who, after fining him $25, -said: ‘There are some good men on your team, who behave themselves, but there is a lot of you whose conduct is a disgrace to the city and the national game. We don’t want that kind of men in Missoula uniforms, and you fellows have got to stop such actions.”

Contemporaneous newspaper accounts say he was a native of Utah, but given the inconsistent spelling of his last name, and a full first name never being listed, the trail for Osburn ends after this 1911 incident.

Nehring remained in Chehalis where he died on February 19, 1936.

Jones returned briefly to baseball in 1914 and 1915 as manager of the Saint Louis Terriers in the Federal League.  He died in Portland in 1934.

Fielder Jones, 1914

Fielder Jones, 1914

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