Solve a mystery while I'm at work
 

Today, while writing about Dutch Meier from the 1906 Pirates, I started searching for more on him since his bio was pretty short. I found the newspaper article from the day he signed with the Pirates(Pittsburgh Press 11/22/1905) along with this note on that page "Meier played a few games for the Pirates last Summer, under an assumed name."

So I checked the 1904-05 Pirates, not sure what year "last Summer" was referring to and I couldn't find any unknown players. I checked out Bull Smith and his story fits, found the paper from his debut, but now I have to go to work so if someone could just find out when Dutch Meier played for the Pirates prior to 1906 and what name he used, that would be great. They may just have been exhibition games played on the team's off-days, the story doesn't get any more specific than what I wrote above.

If you don't feel like doing that, well there is five links here for George Van Haltren(and the 1893 Pirates outfield), who celebrates a birthday today and a story on Tom Burns, who is in the OJ set

http://blogs.piratesprospects.com/hi...tory-march-30/

He may mean that he assumed the name of someone else on the roster when one of the regulars got sick or had to miss a couple of games. Maybe, for example, Honus Wagner got sick in St. Louis, so "Dutch" Meier played under his name for a game or two.
Beat em Bucs
Mark

Dutch Meier may have played under an assumed name if he was attending college at the time. College athletes were not supposed to play professional sports, but did. Like former Cincinnati Red Larry Kopf who played under the name "Fred Brady" for this reason.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/pl...kopfla01.shtml

I suppose that must have been an unwritten rule for a while. Was that an actual rule of the nascent IAAUS (later NCAA), which came into being in March of 1906?

Interesting story, plenty of research to be done here. Looks like Dutch and Homer Hillebrand were teammates at Princeton, before being teammates for the Pirates. Seems as though Hillebrands' older brother Arthur "refused to play in the majors" at some point. Not sure why. Could be Meier and Hillebrand had similar philosophies regarding "the majors". Homer Hillebrand joined the club in April 1905, but Meier joined in 1906 (or under an assumed name earlier) only played a year and went back to Princeton to coach baseball. Wow, plenty of questions, no answers for you.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/bu...mer_Hillebrand

I dont know if this means anything to your research but I thought I would post it for you anyways. From the estate of a Princeton classmate and a very rare autograph.

Rhys

It was a fairly big deal for other sports, but affected baseball a bit less.

There was an attitude that sports were gentlemens games and playing for money sullied the purity of sport. Obviously a very big deal for stuff like track or any other olympic sport, a remnant of which remained with us into the 1980's and was still strongly held into the 1960's. It was fairly strong in football with a few articles decrying the rise of professionalism in the game and expressing dissappointment in those who played professionally.

One could say we still have a bit of it in the current NCAA rules.

Baseball didn't seem to have that taken so seriously, probably partly because it was more of sport for the masses, and partly because it had been played professionally for a few decades already.

Steve B

Didn't Thorpe lose his Olympic medals because he played for the Giants? Always seemed stupid to me. If a guy is a professional baseball player how does he have any advantages over amateur track and field athletes? I could see if he won his medals in baseball or football.

Can't add anything on Dutch, but rarely do I get a good reason to post a photo of Homer

http://farm1.staticflickr.com/31/917...02118902e1.jpg

Thanks for the replies everyone and the auto/Homer pic too, always good to see old Pirates stuff. I've read that players back then also played under an assumed name when they were signed to a different team but wanted a tryout with a major league team. Possibly they played in Outlaw Leagues or they were looking to jump a contract. I have plenty of free time tomorrow so I'll look through some old papers and see if I can come up with anything.

One of the players I checked was Steamer Flanagan, a T206 player. He didn't play anywhere in 1904 and only played with the Pirates in 1905 so I thought maybe there could be a mix-up. He actually played an exhibition game the day before his major league debut, then in his debut he pinch hit in the 9th inning but his name didn't make it into the boxscore. It was just a note in the bottom of the story

Even one of United States Presidents played Professional Baseball under an assumed name.

In 1911 Dwight Eisenhower is reported to have played for the Minor League Junction City, Kansas team under the assumed name of "Wilson" to protect his "amatuer" status as a Football player for West Point. He seems to have been a pretty good hitter!

Rhys

Meier is listed as right handed in both hitting and throwing. The 1905 Pirate roster has known players; then among the 'maybes' who played a few games, none of those guys are right/right. So I don't think Meier played with the Pirates in regular season games in 1905. Maybe he was sitting on the bench with them and never got into a game, maybe he was with the team during spring training...

I'm going to look tomorrow through some old boxscores for a name that doesn't match up in either 1904 or 1905. They used to print the scores from exhibition games in the Pittsburgh Press so maybe I'll find one on an off-day for the team. Don't think he was there during Spring Training though because it says "last Summer" so for now I won't check then. Luckily tomorrow I have absolutely nothing better to do except write an article in the afternoon so I will have plenty of time to check. At the very least, I'll find some interesting things to use at a later date

Thorpe competed in the Olympics in 1912, before he joined the Giants in 1913. He lost his medals for games played in the Eastern Carolina league in 1909 and 1910.

On an unrelated note to Meier, I've noticed a lot of talk in July 1905 about turning the American and National League into one 12 team league. Barney Dreyfuss had some harsh words about the teams from St Louis but he also said no city would be able to support two major league teams in the future

Jackpot. September 14,1905 Pirates play an exhibition game against the Springfield Senators. Batting third for the Pirates that day, playing left field was "Koch". The newspaper covering the game says:

"Koch, a recruit coming from nobody-knows-where, played left field for Pittsburgh yesterday"

So I followed that lead and found this on September 19

"It is rumored that "Koch" who has been tried by Pittsburgh is really Dutch Meier, an old Princeton player"

:D

Good. Now the world is slightly less mysterious.