Great Expectations

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Posted By: Rhys

In response to Darren's question above, Sockalexis was horribly ridiculed in his 1st year of baseball. People yelled and screamed and mocked him mercilessly every time he came to the plate and it basically drove him to the bottle worse than ever, then he tried to escape out of a second story hotel where Patsy tebeau (Cleveland Manager) had him locked up so he couldn't drink, and he busted his ankle. Since he was not playing for a while his drinking just got worse and worse. The prejudice was worse than people would think, 1896 was only 20 years after some of the most intense Indian/American fighting of our History and many people had very negative feelings toward Indians, plus he was BETTER than all the white heroes.

If you type in "sockalexis" on Amazon or other websites you will see there are about 9-10 books written about him. I am actually from Maine where he was from. My prized possession in the collecting world (tying this back into the Baseball Collectibles Board) is an 1895 Holy Cross University Team Imperial Cabinet with Sockalexis, and also Jesse Burkett who helped manage the team (since he lived in Worcester Mass.). The photo I have is the only known example outside of the Holy Cross University Archieves and belonged to one of the players in the photo.

There are about 20 other Sockalexis stories I could tell but I wont spill it all out on this thread. He is my favorite baseball player of all time so I never get tired of talking about him. I will post a picture of my cabinet sometime.

Rhys