Hello and welcome to Issue 015 of Clearing The Bases, an email newsletter in conjunction with the My Baseball History podcast hosted by Dan Wallach.
The latest episode of the podcast with JEREMY FEADOR went live on Wednesday, May 8, so if you haven’t had a chance to listen to that yet, make sure you do. Jeremy is the official team historian of the Cleveland Guardians. We spoke about the many names the professional baseball teams in Cleveland’s rich history have gone by, dating all the way back to the 1860s, and remembered a bunch of great ballplayers and executives who were parts of those teams over the past century and a half.
We discussed how progressive Cleveland’s franchise has been, being the first team to wear numbers on their uniforms, signing the first Black player in American League history, hiring the first Black manager in Major League History, and many other significant milestones. Did you know Cleveland had a team Hall of Fame inside their stadium as early as 1952? If you listen to the episode with Jeremy, you’ll hear its crazy story, and learn how Heritage Park at Progressive Field is a not only a nod to the past, but a wonderful way to honor the players who have shaped baseball in The Forest City.
One player we spoke at length about was Ray Chapman, who died after being hit by a ball thrown by Yankees submarine pitcher Carl Mays in 1920. It’s one of the saddest stories in baseball history, and Ray’s grave – which is located in Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland – is still visited by and decorated with mementos from baseball fans to this day. I went to pay my respects when I traveled to Cleveland for this interview with Jeremy, but since the last newsletter came out, I did some cemetery touring in my home city of Chicago with my mom. We went to Graceland Cemetery to see the final resting places of many of the First Families of Chicago, as well as lots of legendary architects (and their work).
Of course, we made sure to hit the baseball-related markers, too. We saw the grave of a Hall of Famer who many people have never heard of. William Ambrose Hulbert was an executive who was one of the founders of the National League, which is considered by many to be baseball's first major league. Hulbert also served as the president of the Chicago White Stockings franchise. In his tenure as president of the National League from 1877 to his death at the age of 49 in 1882, Hulbert ruled with an iron fist and took steps to ensure league integrity and compliance with league rules. Perhaps his greatest challenge was dealing with four members of the Louisville ball club who conspired to throw the 1877 pennant. In a move that established a precedent for future handling of dishonest ballplayers, Hulbert banned all four players from the league for life. Hulbert actually had two markers at Graceland, but I’m sure you’ll be able to guess which one was my favorite.
Ernie Banks was also buried in Graceland, which is just half a mile up Clark Street from Wrigley Field, where Mr. Cub played his home games from 1953 through 1971. Of his 512 career home runs, Ernie hit 290 of them at The Friendly Confines, including his 500th on May 12, 1970. It just so happened that my mom and I were at Ernie’s grave on the 54th anniversary of that historic homer. After the cemetery closed, my mom and I got some ice cream and walked over to Wrigley to check out the statues outside the ballpark. Ernie’s is at Gallagher Way along with Ferguson Jenkins, Billy Williams, and Ron Santo. They will be joined by Ryne Sandberg on June 23, which will be the 40th anniversary of “The Sandberg Game,” making it the perfect occasion to unveil his statue. We also walked around to the other side of the stadium to see the Harry Caray statue at the corner of Waveland and Sheffield, just under the bleachers. If you’re ever in the neighborhood, don’t miss that one, even if it means you have to walk more!
On May 16, my mom and I went to the Chicago History Museum for the book launch of Last Comiskey. Originally a three-part documentary which was released in 2023 by filmmaker Matt Flesch, LAST COMISKEY chronicles the 1990 Chicago White Sox season, which was the final year the team played at Comiskey Park. The film includes archival footage, interviews with players, coaches, media personalities, stadium employees, and longtime fans, as well as the music of longtime White Sox organist Nancy Faust.
Stadium photographer and sports travel blogger KEN SMOLLER recently released a book version of the film through Eckhartz Press. The book, created with Flesch's cooperation, is 186 pages in length, and contains hundreds of photographs, including many which appeared in the documentary. The book also includes numerous quotes from the film, as well as additional textual comments and a foreword from former White Sox shortstop and manager Ozzie Guillen. At the book launch at the Chicago History Museum, former White Sox players Donn Pall, Ron Kittle, and Black Jack McDowell were in attendance for a Q&A after a shortened screening of the film, and Nancy Faust provided the music all night on her organ. It was an incredible evening, and the book is as great as the film.
My mom and I got to the museum very early that day so we could see some of the exhibits before the event started. There was an enormous exhibit on the Chicago Fire which was fascinating and showed maps of the city at roughly 12-hour intervals so you could see how far and how quickly the fire spread. They had the actual bed which Abraham Lincoln died in after he was shot by John Wilkes Booth. They had the original archway which served as the entrance to the Union Stockyards. There was an original section of the Bulls’ court from Chicago Stadium and an original pinwheel from Bill Veeck’s exploding scoreboard at Comiskey.
But above all else, the one thing I was most thrilled to see was an original tie clip from the 1917 World Series Champion Chicago White Sox which was owned and worn by pitcher Joe Benz. It’s quite small, and to most people there probably isn’t much significance other than the connection to the last White Sox championship before 2005. But this was the same gift Shoeless Joe Jackson received for winning the 1917 World Series. Now remember, this was before teams gave rings to their players after winning the World Series. But Joe turned his gift into a ring, which may have inadvertently been the first World Series ring ever. Joe proudly wore that ring, and since we know who has it today, I have been lucky enough to wear it on a couple of different occasions. While I had seen what Joe did to his World Series gift, I had never seen one in its original state, so for the Chicago History Museum to have had one innocuously on display was a wonderful surprise.
The first episode of Season Four of My Baseball History will be with one of the people mentioned earlier in this newsletter, and we will be doing a couple giveaway contests when that episode airs for a DVD copy and a book copy of Last Comiskey, but don’t forget that our current episode with Jeremy Feador also has two contests going on. If you’re following @shoelesspodcast on twitter, all you have to do is retweet our pinned tweet and you’ll automatically be entered for a chance to win an autographed copy of either Luke Epplin’s Our Team: The Epic Story of Four Men and the World Series That Changed Baseball or Vince Guerrieri’s Weird Moments in Cleveland Sports: Bottlegate, Bedbugs, and Burying the Pennant. No matter which book you win, it will be autographed by its author, so thanks again to both Luke and Vince for doing that for us.
Okay, one more thing! If you happen to be in or around Cooperstown, New York this weekend for the Hall of Fame East-West Classic: A Tribute to the Negro Leagues All-Star Game at Doubleday Field, keep an eye out for me and come say hey! I’ll be there with WILLIAM PEEBLES of Huntington Base Ball Co. and we’ll be in and around town all weekend, both at the game and at the museum for the new exhibit. I’ll take lots of pictures and talk about the experience in a future newsletter.
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Until next time, I’m Dan Wallach, and this is My Baseball History.
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1) Ah, crap, I forgot you'd be at the East-West Classic! I was there covering it but unfortunately didn't see you. 2) When my wife and I visited Ernie Banks' grave a few years ago, we were admiring it when a cemetery truck drove past with an SUV behind it. As he drove by, the cemetery employee reached out his window and pointed over the roof of the truck to Ernie's grave and the SUV stopped. My wife and I -- who had found it on our own -- chuckled.