[BillyCoxDodgers3B]

To be clear, there must have been some Major Leaguers from that era who were functionally illiterate beyond signing their names and perhaps a few basic other words.

Sometimes, what you see isn't always what you get. I recall seeing the autograph of a man named Jerry Standaert for the first time many years ago. During his playing days, he had signed a 3X5 in 1929 and also added "Boston Red Soxs" (actual spelling). It appeared to have taken him half an hour to write these things; lots of stops and starts in strange places, almost between every letter. Clearly, based on all of this, one would surmise that Mr. Standaert had to be pretty close to illiterate.

Some years later, I unearthed an impressively large trove of handwritten player questionnaires from the 1920's that were gathering dust in a library. I drove over ten hours specifically to check all of these out. There was one from Standaert. In a slightly less labored hand (and in pencil, which maybe he was more comfortable using), he wrote an entire page of words. It should be noted there were no spelling mistakes, either.

Later on, I also discovered a questionnaire that one of his relatives had completed for a baseball researcher after his death. He is listed as having a 10th grade education.

Then, there is the truly perplexing. Take the case of Champ Osteen. He signed his WWI draft registration with an X mark, yet I know that he was literate, could sign his name and had two years of college education! Furthermore, while 99+% of these documents were filled out by someone else, then signed at the bottom by the player, this one certainly appears to have been filled out by Osteen himself! And I am not even sure what's going on with the fact that someone else signed their name at the bottom, then it was crossed out and signed by Osteen. Attached is also a much later Osteen signed 3X5. While the infirmities of age definitely affected some letter formations, the similarities in many of them speak for themselves (compare with the "James Champ Osteen" at the top of the document). Right down to placing dots in strange places! "James. Champ" and "Champ. Osteen.". I think I even see a faint dot between Champ and Osteen on the draft card. Figure all of that out! I sure can't. Maybe he had a strange sense of humor in signing with an X? Maybe he was trying to claim illiteracy in an effort to not be drafted? Either way, he was 41 years old when he signed the document, so his chances of having to serve were not really even an issue.