Tsaiko
05-21-2011, 07:09 PM
Can anyone identify this player?
Tsaiko
05-31-2011, 07:05 PM
The two deleted guesses were deleted, I'm supposing, because they realized who the player was, which I think was the easy part of the question. Correct me if I'm wrong, please.
Here's the rest of the picture.
Tsaiko
05-31-2011, 07:06 PM
Jack Robinson seems to be an interesting fellow, even if only to me, but there is very little information about him that I could find, outside of baseball.
He was born in Maine and apparently went to Harvard, but who knows if he graduated. A Harvard grad meandering around the minor leagues for most of his young adult life would seem out of the ordinary. Although he did make it to the major leagues with the New York Giants, but for less than a month, after being loaned to the Giants from Waterbury, Bridgeport. He played four games but didn't get any hits after 9 at bats according to Wiki. Maybe he always dreamed of going back.
After going back to Waterbury in 1902, I don't think he ever went north of the mason dixon line again. He played with and co coached the Jacksonville Jays from 1904 to 1906, when he got traded to Macon Brigans. He stayed with Macon until 1909, when according to the Macon Telegraph headline he was sold to Fort Worth Texas.
After that he vanished, as far as I can tell, until his death, in Macon at 41, in 1921. I read somewhere that he was considering opening up an automobile dealership with Ty Cobb, but can't find any other news about that happening. Unfortunately the online archives of The Macon Telegraph only go up to 1908, but I was hoping some people at net54 might know more.
Apparently he had a great arm, was a hard worker and was popular in Jacksonville as a manager as reported in The MaconTelegraph July 9th and 14th 1904.
But by Sept 8th 1904, it appears that he was inconsistant. (Pieces of the articles below)
There was a human intrest story about him finding a pearl and striking it rich on Feb 8th 1907 in Macon.
Then according to The Macon Telegraph, Dec 1908, the Macon team was undergoing some changes and a blurb about Robinson appears discussing the 1909 line up and the possibility that he might not make it.
So, was he tempermental, a trouble maker, talented but a boozer, who knows, but there must be some more information about this guy, unless he changed his name.
A popular expression, which can be seen quoted many times for years in Telegraph stories is, "quicker than you can say Jack Robinson", an expression that goes back as far as the 1700's. Maybe he was teased and had had enough?? He died young, so maybe he was a boozer. The answer is probably out there, but the question is, does anybody really care?
DixieBaseball
05-31-2011, 07:55 PM
I was stumped, thus removed my previous post ! Very intersting info - Thanks for sharing...
Tsaiko
05-31-2011, 10:43 PM
That you were stumped on the player is hard to believe with all your knowledge of southern leaguers, but I'm glad you found it interesting.
I guess what happened to Jack between the time he was traded to Fort Worth and the time of his death will remain a mystery. There are probably some answers in later editions of The Macon Telegraph, but that, right now, is a mystery too.