<— JULY 11     JULY 13 —>

BIRTH ANNOUNCEMENTS:

1844 George Zettlein
1846 Doug Allison

Catcher on the 1869 Cincinnati Red Legs baseball team that went undefeated against all the professional and semi-professional clubs of any repute when touring the country.

1859 Frank McIntyre
1872 Joe Regan
1878 Bill Coughlin
1881 Jim Pastorius
1886 Hank Butcher
1888 Roy Golden
1888 Harry Krause
1888 Lester (Lep) Long
1889 Ray Mowe
1889 Harry Pearce
1891 Hank Schreiber
1894 Lee Meadows
1895 Artie Dede
1897 Hod Fenner
1899 Walt French
1900 Rudy Miller
1903 George Darrow
1906 Herb Smith
1907 Bob Cooney
1910 Eddie Powell
1912 Willie Young
1913 Tom Hafey
1914 Al Glossop
1914 Rafaelito Ortiz
1918 James Abernathy
1919 Johnny Wyrostek
1920 Jim Colzie
1924 Rayford Finch
1927 Jack Harshman
1931 Paul Penson
1935 Dave Ricketts
1938 Ron Fairly
1940 Mike Page
1940 Jack Warner
1941 Dick Rusteck
1943 Ron Willis
1944 Tom Tischinski
1947 Scipio Spinks
1953 Roy Branch
1956 Mario Soto
1956 Bryan Clark
1964 Mike Schwabe
1965 Mike Munoz
1965 Wally Ritchie
1972 Kelly Wunsch
1976 Dan Reichert
1979 Adam Johnson
1980 Brad Eldred
1981 Phil Dumatrait
1981 Sam Narron
1982 Tom Gorzelanny
1983 Tony Sipp
1983 Howie Kendrick
1986 Nick Vincent
1990 Chasen Shreve
1992 Nicky Delmonico
1994 J. D. Hammer
1994 Nathan Lukes
1995 Narciso Crook
1995 Bailey Ober
1995 Logan Porter
1999 Austin Wells

OBITUARIES:

1892 Alexander Cartwright

Cartwright left New York in hopes of striking gold in California but that wasn’t far enough west, so he wound up in Hawaii. (Actually, he got dysentery in San Francisco and was advised to go to Hawaii to recover.  He landed good jobs there and decided to stay.)  That was in the 1850s; he never actually played major league baseball.  He’s in the Hall of Fame, though, as a pioneer (he played on teams in New York during the 1840s).  His plaque tells you that he practically invented the game, but research suggests otherwise and Doc Adams would have been a better selection for the Hall.  That being said, Cartwright was a very prominent man in Honolulu, an advisor to royalty, a wildly successful businessman, and a significant contributor to libraries and hospitals there.

Cartwright was still a healthy man when he got a carbuncle in his neck and the staph infection spread quickly and killed him.

“Alexander J. Cartwright,” (Honolulu) Commercial Advertiser, July 13, 1892: 1.
“A Great Loss,” (Honolulu) Evening Bulletin, July 13, 1892: 2.

1899 Frank Kreeger

1929 Jack Cronin

One of the ballplayers that John McGraw stole from Baltimore when he left the team to take over the Giants… Cronin was tending his garden when he suffered a massive stroke that felled him. Cronin had a fair career on some less than successful teams.  Oddly, after more than a decade as a top level professional and his busiest season with Brooklyn in 1904, his major league career ended.

“John Cronin, Ball Player,” Yonkers Herald, July 15, 1929: 17.

1943 Bill McCall
1955 Dan McGeehan
1955 Harry Taylor
1955 Jesse Stovall
1957 Farmer Brady
1963 Jack Cameron
1966 Edgar Wesley
1968 Kettle Wirts
1971 Ed Weiland
1973 Billy Urbanski
1978 Herb Souell
1979 Tom Lovelace
1987 Joseph Burns
2008 Bobby Murcer
2008 Harry Schaeffer
2011 Howard Hilton
2015 Buddy Lively
2015 Mahlon Duckett
2019 Joe Grzenda
2020 Bill Gilbreth

YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE!!!

1901 Cy Young, pitching for the Boston Americans, wins his 300th game over the Philadelphia Athletics. He’s still got a couple hundred to go…

1910 You know it as “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon”, but it was originally published with the title “That Double Play Again” in the New York Daily Mail. It’s the tale of Tinker, Evers and Chance, as told by Franklin P. Adams.

The Chicago Tribune reprinted it on July 15th, entitled “Gotham’s Woe.” Soon after, it made the rounds.

I can’t prove it, but there was a wire service article authored by Hugh S. Fullerton and John J. Evers that discussed “combination plays” that made the rounds about six weeks earlier (and for weeks afterward) that talked about Cubs plays and harkened back some to Cap Anson’s days before that and it included the phrase “Tinker to Evers to Chance” a few times. I wonder if Adams read it and it kind of jostled his creative juices.

1951 Allie Reynolds and the Yankees top Cleveland, 1 – 0, with Reynolds not allowing a hit.

1955 Stan Musial leads off the bottom of the 12th inning of the All Star Game with a homer – the NL wins, 6 – 5.

1979 Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park!!!

TRANSACTION WIRE:

1906 The Giants purchased pitcher/outfielder Cy Seymour from the Reds for $12,000.

1928 The Giants purchased screwball thrower Carl Hubbell from Beaumont of the Texas League for $25,000.

1966 The Mets signed amateur free agent pitcher Ed Figueroa.

1997 The Cubs signed amateur free agent pitcher Carlos Zambrano.

2006 Tampa Bay sent Aubrey Huff and cash to the Astros for Ben Zobrist and Mitch Talbot.