Gilkerson’s Union Giants

Robert Gilkerson’s Union Giants were one of the best “minor league” black teams during the era of segregated baseball.  Based out of Spring Valley, IL, a small coal-mining town 100 miles southwest of Chicago, the Union Giants played over 100 games per season, traveling through the Midwest and Canada each summer.

 

They were similar to the International League’s Baltimore Orioles, during the Lefty Grove era of the early 1920s.  In other words, a dominant minor league team which may have held it’s own, had they played a Major League schedule.  Clearly, the Union Giants were better than some of the bottom feeders in the Negro National League, but Mr. Gilkerson had found a niche, traveling to small country towns, where citizens were starved for live entertainment.

 

The ball club generated enough money to attract top talent, often featuring big name ballplayers either on their way up (or on their way down) from black Major League teams. One of their best seasons was 1931, when they featured Cristobal Torriente, Alec Radcliff, Steel Arm Davis and Hurley McNair in the starting line-up.  According to a November 1931 article in the Chicago Defender, the Union Giants finished the season at 100-26.

There were some other good black teams in 1931.  Putting strength of schedule to the side for one moment, here are the published (unconfirmed) records of several teams you may have heard of.

 

TEAMS  (1931 SEASON)	W	L	PCT.
Homestead Grays	136	17	.889
Hilldale	120	31	.795
Gilkerson’s Union Giants	100	26	.794
Pittsburgh Crawfords	99	36	.733

 

Here are the partial (again, unconfirmed) Union Giants’ batting statistics:

 

PLAYER	AVG.	AB	H	2B	3B	HR
Steel Arm Davis	.430	587	264	60	21	35
Alec Radcliff	.401	531	233	47	27	27
Red Haley	.367	334	190		18	20
Cristobal Torriente	.361	277	100
Owen Smaulding	.340	420	142
Subby Byas				48	13	12
Hurley McNair				38	17
Charlie Akers				37		17

 

And now for the unconfirmed pitching figures:

PITCHER	W	L	PCT.
Jimmy Claxton	13	1	.929
Owen Smaulding	22	3	.880
Cristobal Torriente	20	3	.870
Allen	13	6	.684
James Winston	2	2	.500

 

 

I decided to run a quick alpha-sort of my Black Minor League team database to see what sort of record I could confirm for the Union Giants.  Over a 15 season span (1920-34), I have 232 box/line 237 box/line scores and game stories for the Gilkerson’s team.  In 1931, I have 18 line scores, in which the team went 15-3 .833.  Here is their record, broken down by competition level, for ALL their games in my database (1920-34):

UPDATE(3-10-09): I’ve found a couple more 1931 box scores in the vault.  The team was 20-3 in the games I’ve located, scoring 10.6 rpg versus 4.2 for their opponents.  They were an offensive juggernaut, as the published statistics suggest, winning games by 19-3, 17-5, 15-6 and 15-3.  Against white minor league teams they average 8 runs per game.  In an early season newspaper story, the team was supposedly on the verge of signing Army Cooper and Dink Mothell, both KC Monarchs veterans, but both men wound up staying with the Kansas City squad.  Steel Arm Davis was clearly the marquee player for this group.  During one stretch (late July/ early August) he supposedly hit 14 home runs in a span of 14 games.  Based on several boxes in my possession, it seems probable.  Typcial line-up: Haley, McNair and Davis in the middle of the order.  Sometimes Radcliff was in the middle and Davis would lead off!!

 

GILKERSON’S U.G.	W	L	PCT.
Black Minor Lg teams	9	3	.750
White Semi-Pro	160	54	.748
White Minor Lg teams	5	6	.455

 

Does anybody out there have game stories or box scores featuring the Union Giants against Negro National League teams?  I’m sort of surprised that no such occurrences have popped up in my data base.  Although many of the other black “minor league” teams played the major level squads, I’ve yet to uncover any Union Giants games, circa 1920 to 1934.

A Good Movie Could be Made About…

the infamous Dave “Lefty” Brown.

 

Gary Ashwill has uncovered some very interesting information about the Negro League pitcher, posted over at agatetype.  For the uninitiated, Brown was an outstanding left-hander in the early 1920s.  Hall of Famer Rube Foster had supposedly posted bail for the troubled young man and gave him an opportunity in professional baseball.

 

After a couple stellar seasons, Brown jumped Foster’s Chicago American Giants and took his glove to the New York Lincoln Giants.  In April of 1925, after a late night out drinking with teammates, Brown allegedly shot and killed one Benjamin Adair during an altercation on a sidewalk.  He immediately fled the Big Apple and later resurfaced under an alias, pitching for integrated semi-pro teams in the upper Midwest and Great Plains.  One of the teams he supposedly pitched for was the Pipestone (MN) Black Sox.  Old newspaper clippings have been uncovered, raving about the strikeout feats of a mysterious left-hander.

 

Finally, after 13 years on the run, Brown resurfaces in Greensboro, NC.  He was arrested for hitting a white man over the head with a sandbag and stealing $4.  Local authorities connected the dots and quickly notified the New York authorities, letting them know they believed they might have a wanted fugitive.  You won’t believe how this all came about, and what happened to Brown next…

 

Theatrical suggestion: For some reason, I like to picture Barney Fife nervously making the arrest there in Greensboro, with Andy Griffith taking the responsible tack and contacting the big city boys in New York.  I’m not great with geography, but Greensboro’s near Mt. Pilot, ain’t it?  And inside the jail cell?  Slick talking Dave Brown and Otis the Drunk, playing cards.  Aunt Bea stops by to deliver some warm apple pie for the two prisoners.

 

Quick Note: For the Strat-O-Matic fanatics who lurk around this site, Dave Brown will indeed be included in our new set, scheduled for release very, very soon.  Keep checking the company website for additional details.

 

Other Note: In The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, James has Dave Brown listed as his “O.J. Simpson Award” winner in the Negro League section.  In light of the newly discovered information, his selection seems more appropriate than ever.

Good Wood?

February gristle…or, John Holmes: Eat your heart out.

According to Louisville’s local Fox-TV affiliate (Fox 41), Hall of Famer George “Mule” Suttles, veteran of the now-defunct Negro Leagues, had a 37-inch pole. Okay, not that pole. Talking about the big lumber one waggles back and forth across the plate, in an effort to redirect 90-mile-an-hour fastballs and 12/6 benders. But the word is (and everybody seems to be in agreement here), big George- a super slugger with the St. Louis Stars in the 1920s- waggled a mighty long weapon. Heavy, too.

This is one of those press-release deals, strategically distributed to coincide with major holidays or historical anniversaries. I’ll fess up to being a sucker for these quirky little fillers, because they’re usually loaded with the sort of minutiae my little brain finds attractive. You know, around the 4th of July, there’ll be breaking news about an elderly gentleman in Vermont who stumbled across an old trunk in his attic containing a set of George Washington’s wooden teeth. Or, during Woman’s History Month: a revelation from the medical research community regarding the discovery of a soft spot for men in Gloria Steinem’s heart. Or, around Christmas time, we learn of yet another mysterious benefactor maiming a Salvation Army bell ringer with a sack of gold kluggerands. I love this stuff.

Not so coincidentally, the Suttles information found legs in the middle of Black History Month, courtesy of the Louisville Slugger Museum in Kentucky. According to the museum’s currator, Dan Cohen, after years of searching its archives, the historic bat manufacturer had finally uncovered documentation connecting them with a specific Negro League player. The artifact? An order form for one George “Mule” Suttles, circa late 1930s, when he was a member of the Newark Eagles.

According to P.J. Shelly, the museum’s Tour and Programming Director, “Nobody had any proof that we (Hillerich & Bradsby) made any bats for the Negro Leaguers and here we found it.”

This was a gutsy move by the Louisville Slugger Museum, which- by sharing this information- ran the very serious risk of getting some much needed national exposure. Turns out a couple galleries at the site have been under renovation since December and will be re-opened to the public in April of this year. A little bit of chatter on TV and the web doesn’t hurt matters as we spiral into baseball season.

By all accounts, the LSM is a pretty cool place to visit. My son has not one, but two, personally engraved bats from the museum, courtesy of relatives who visited the joint, although my son does not (as far as I can tell) care much for baseball.

Now back to Suttles’ custom weapon, there doesn’t appear to be anything on the order slip indicating it’s weight. He was said to have swung one of the heaviest models in baseball history, at around 50 ounces. For comparison’s sake, Ruth supposedly used a 54-ounce model early in his career, then switched to a 40 oz. bat in 1927. Ty Cobb and Joe DiMaggio used 42 ounce sticks . Ted Williams and Stan Musial used bats in the 31-33 ounce range, which is right in line with most of today’s players.

And as for the Negro League’s association with Hillerich & Bradsby? It’s well known that a lot of black ball players used the H&B product, but most of these were stock models, purchased at hardware and sporting goods stores. In a 1972 story published in The Sporting News, Hall of Famer Buck Leonard talked about the equipment used in the black leagues:

“The ball we used (WILSON W 150 CC) just wasn’t a major league ball. It wasn’t as lively as the big league ball. Also, we used bats off the shelf, where the major leaguers had their bats made. Then the Washington Senators started to have our bats made along with theirs. They would order 800 (for the Senators) and order 100 for us (Washington Homestead Grays).”

LSM curator Cohen may want to go back to the archives and take a closer look at the Senators’ orders from the 1940s. He just might uncover some interesting information, but the one question I have may prove to be unanswerable: How did all the doubles, triples and home runs wind up in the Homestead Grays’ bats?