[Tom Hufford]

Buck Hooker is one of my favorites, too.

The early baseball reference books (even The Baseball Encyclopedia by Macmillan, 1969, I think) had his biographical info all messed up. If I'm not mistaken (and I don't have the book handy right now), they listed him with a "Birth Name" of Cyrus Hoch, and a death date in 1911. Cy Hoch was a pitcher with Buffalo in 1900 (American League) and 1901-02 (Eastern League), and I think someone confused their records along the way. I see that Baseball-Reference now lists the Buffalo pitcher as Ernest J. "Cy" Hooker. Don't know where that came from, and it looks like there's a bit more work to be done.

Anyway, about 1974-75, I located Buck's sister, Florence Hooker Ashby, in Richmond, VA and she filled me in with the bio info that we now show,

William Edward Hooker
b. August 28, 1880 Richmond, VA
d. July 2, 1929 Richmond, VA
buried: Riverside Cemetery - Richmond, VA

She called him "Buck," and I'm fairly certain that was the only nickname he used. I've never seen "Bock" in any contemporary story about him - in fact, the first time I ever saw him referred to as "Bock" was on the label of a graded T206 card. And since that was before there was any attempt to assign first names to the tobacco card players, I think the reference books picked up "Bock" from that graded card.

I think the minor league affiliates shown for Buck in B-R.com is pretty complete, except that nothing is shown for him in 1914. I'm fairly certain that he played in the Virginia Mountain League (either Staunton or Clifton Forge, I think) - but no statistics are (yet) available for that League).

I've also seen several articles mentioning that he was hired as baseball coach at Virginia Tech (my alma mater) in 1913, even though he's not listed in the VT Baseball Media Guide. But, he could have coached the college team in the spring, then joined Johnson City for the last part of the season (he was only in 70 games).

I'll try to attach photos of a couple other Buck Hooker items - hope they come through. The Old Mill cabinet isn't mine (just happens to share a scan with another card, from an auction catalog), but the signed 1903 Reds pay voucher (dated two days after his last Major League game) IS from my collection.