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Howard W. RosenbergI guess no one's mentioned George Davis, and in my newest Cap Anson book I tell a long story related to the 1894 Temple Cup involving Davis and John McGraw, then of the Orioles.
The set-up for the story is that the Baltimore American made the following barb about Jack Doyle after Baltimore acquired him from New York after the 1895 season.
The American said it was surprised by the trade, as Doyle is ``more the traditional enemy of such men [Baltimore's Hughey Jennings and McGraw] than any other man in the business.’’ In explaining itself, the American alluded to an allegedly informal agreement made before the 1894 postseason championship series by Baltimore and New York players to equalize the winning and losing share. New York won the series, and several of its players, including Doyle, allegedly reneged on the 50-50 split.
Under the informal agreement, Doyle was supposed to give some of his winnings to Baltimore’s Willie Keeler. More than a year after Doyle’s refusal to do so, the American roasted ``Doyle’s actions in holding up the Temple Cup money of Willie Keeler, and in acting so surlily [arrogant] about it.’’
By the way, McGraw, around the time of his marriage in February 1897, was suing New York’s George Davis, the player he had been supposedly paired with to equalize their Temple Cup shares. The Baltimore Sun said the suit, which was for $178, about $3,500 today, ``has been non prossed [dismissed] in the Superior Court [presumably in Baltimore]. McGraw attached wages that might be coming to Davis, but it was found Davis owed the [New York] club $1,024.’’ In spring training in 1895, Andy Anderson of the Baltimore Herald had written a story with the headline, ``Buncoed by the Giants,’’ which stated, ``McGraw has taken legal counsel, and has been advised that he can recover the money by suit at law.’’
Days after Anderson wrote that, O. P. Caylor of the New York Herald denied that a 50-50 split had been agreed to and printed the following from a letter he had received from Davis: ``The whole story is a lie. Instead of acting like square men, they are looking for a loop-hole to crawl through. They are smarting under their defeat of last fall and are trying to get up a feeling against the Giants to offset our honors.’’ Apparently alluding to McGraw’s threat of a suit, Davis wrote, ``The only way they could possibly beat us in a majority of our games [during the upcoming season] would be to carry out their threat and get our best men locked up on a trumped up charge.’’
The following day, in his weekly column in the Baltimore Herald, Caylor said the buncoed story surfaced after McGraw, Kelley and Keeler ``didn’t get as much salary [in their 1895 contracts] as they hoped for. So a make believe claim goes a little way in making up for what they didn’t get from (Baltimore President and manager Ned) Hanlon.’’
Hope the story was clear (enough 
).