ANOTHER Old Judge Transaction & Member Shout-out

[Rad_Hazard]

Well, it happened twice in one week! Thank you Ben Yourg for a smooth transaction and the leader of my 19th century squad, Truthful Jim Mutrie.

[Rad_Hazard]

https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/jim-mutrie/

Although Mutrie was somewhat hunched at the neck and shoulders, she remembers him as distinguished in appearance with a full head of gray hair and a large gray mustache. Granito recalls that Mutrie would sit on his front stoop smoking a pipe. She often ran errands for the Mutries, mostly to a nearby Ralston store. She remembers that one of her brothers, now deceased, was always talking to Mutrie about baseball.[80]

Another neighborhood kid, Carmine DeRenzo, a little younger than Granito was interested in baseball to the extent that he played professionally in the minor leagues (1943-1947). DeRenzo, too, ran errands for the Mutries. He can remember being in the parlor of the small house, where Mutrie had a collection of baseball trophies. DeRenzo can recall Mutrie explaining what the trophies represented, but he can no longer recollect Mutrie’s explanations.[81] As for the fate of the trophies, no one knows; perhaps they survive somewhere, but scrap metal for World War II would not be an outrageous assumption, as Mutrie’s widow died just weeks after America’s entry into the conflict.

Mutrie, however, still had one more baseball game in him. On August 13, 1936, Mutrie made his final appearance at the Polo Grounds, and as far as is known, his final trip to a major-league game. The occasion was an Old-Timers Day with a special theme, the 60th anniversary season of the NL. At least two of Mutrie’s former players were present, Mickey Welch the former Giant, and Arlie Latham, who played for Jim with the minor- league Brockton team, and who went on to a considerable major league career as a player and coach. Mutrie was “trundled in an ancient victoria” to home plate where he was greeted by Giants manager Bill Terry. According to the New York Times account of the event, Mutrie and Terry “exchanged pleasantries while they compared playing methods of the past and present, and Mutrie insisted there was little fundamental change.”[82] One particularly poignant newspaper photograph showed Terry in his contemporary Giants uniform shaking hands with Mutrie, who wore a dark three-piece suit, with white shirt and dark tie while he held a straw hat and walking stick.