Cool Article About Walter Johnson Pitching vs a Negro League Team
 

Just saw this retweeted by Keith Olbermann on Twitter. Cool research piecing together a story of the Big Train pitching in Harlem.

http://agatetype.typepad.com/agate_t...o-leaguer.html

Enjoy.

Danny

Interesting, but a lot of odd inconsistencies in the stories. If Johnson said that "Home Run" Johnson played for the Lincoln Giants and hit a home run off of him, that I believe he did. But I'm not as confident that Shirley Povich got his story straight.

Also, I didn't see any mention of Wayne Stivers or SABR, and if anyone could verify the box score it would be Wayne or SABR.

Wayne is a great guy. I met him when I lived in CO for a couple years. He is definitely a go to guy when it comes to Negro League items and history.

AndyH

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He helped me immensely with my research, and I was lucky enough to be able to supply him with quite a few box scores he didn't have.

Thanks for posting Danny. That's some great stuff. My favorite part is when Walter is pitching as a ringer for a New York fire department team called the Fire Eaters and he loses to an obscure Negro League pitcher named "Gunboat" Thompson, 2-0. "Gunboat" actually has a page at baseballreference.com, but very little is unknown about him. If ever somebody deserved his 15 minutes of fame ...

thanks for posting
 

I dont live too far from Harlem and I think come Spring I'll go check out what's standing where those old ballparks those used to be.

Among the seven games I came across in the research for my biography of Walter Johnson in which he pitched against black teams are the two mentioned against the Lincoln Giants in 1911 and the Lincoln Stars in 1914. He also pitched against the Mohawk Giants in 1913, and in those three games he did pitch against three of the best black pitchers of the era: Gunboat Thompson, Dick McClelland, and Frank Wickware. And that was indeed Honus Wagner at shortstop for the "All-Leaguers" vs the Lincoln Giants who had Pop Lloyd playing there for them. Wagner and Lloyd in the same game, it actually happened! I am of the firm belief, however, that Johnson and Smokey Joe Williams never pitched against each other, and that the story of their supposed matchup is a conflation of Johnson's 1-0 loss to Wickware and the Mohawk Giants on October 5, 1913, and Williams's 1-0 victory over Grover Cleveland Alexander the same day.

Geat read...in the boxscore from the likeliest scenario...wajo provided most of the offense that game too...WOW!!!

That's all great, but I wouldn't have thought Johnson's memory would have been so bad that he would have imagined someone named 'Home Run Johnson' hitting a home run against him, and that being the only run. Seems unlikely.

Memory's a much, much trickier and far more malleable thing than most folks suppose. It wouldn't surprise us in the least
if Johnson confused or conflated the events of one or more exhibition games -- all apparently with similarly low-scoring results
-- that occurred close to thirty years earlier.
The blogger himself confuses or misinterprets the statements in one of the articles he presents. "'...About ten years ago'
in the Bronx... Williams won, 1 to 0'" says the blogger, misquoting the article which reads "...about ten years ago,
Johnson beat 'Smoky Joe' Williams by a score of 1-0."

Butch, memory lapses are one thing. What Shirly Povich attributed to Johnson, based on what Hank and others have found, would indicate senility. And Johnson wasn't senile. There's something fishy with the story, and we all know how journalists can be when they are 'creating' a story.

Count us senile, too, then, for frequently conflating and misremembering details of signature events in our own lives that occurred
a lot more recently than thirty years ago. And our families and friends, too, for similarly having widely disparate accounts of those same events.
But you are quite correct about the disturbing lack of consensus on the Johnson exhibition games, and certainly the embellishments and
distortions of various sports writers in an effort to tell a "better" story must play a part in that...

I would bet that Povich had much more journalistic integrity than most any of the the semi-literate morons who write about sports today.

+1. This story is great and a fun read. I wish there was more good talk like this in the forum

I hear you - I have as bad of a memory as anyone, but for a lot of reasons, the Povich account just doesn't ring true for me.

In addition, Johnson was NOT known for throwing at batters - quite the contrary. I can't see him gloating about brushing back a batter and then finally plunking him.

And yeah, I probably appreciate the old sportswriters (including Povich) over the new ones, as much as anyone. Just saying - they are/were embellishers, salesmen, etc., and it sounds like this particular story was a color piece more than a presentation of facts.