Dwight Ely Stone was born August 2, 1886 in Minneola (Holt County), NE to George Frank and Jane Eliza (Ely) Stone – his mother’s maiden name providing the source of Dwight’s middle name. Dwight was one of four children born to the carpenter and his busy wife, though only three were alive by the time each reached adulthood. The family assembled in New York and Massachusetts, but traveled some in the Midwest – with children born in Iowa, Nebraska, and Iowa. By 1900 the Stones had moved all the way west and lived in Anaheim, CA. Like his father, Dwight worked with tools and saws in lumber mills and lumber yards – which is where he worked when not playing baseball.

Stone was a pitcher with an Anaheim area semi-pro team, until he got a chance to show his skills with a low level minor league team in Boise, ID. There, with the Boise Irrigators, he was not only a fine pitcher but a guy who could be used as a pinch hitter as needed. However, Boise was not long for the Union Association (not to be confused with the 1884 Union Association) and when that team disbanded he was sent to Ogden, Utah. There, Stone pitched well despite a team behind him that wasn’t known for its fielding prowess. He’d build a decent reputation as a pitcher despite a 2 – 8 record with Odgen in 1912. The St. Louis Browns, deep into a stretch of bad baseball seasons, took a flyer on Stone and purchased his rights.

Stone’s time with the Browns had few bright spots, but one was a shutout – his first MLB win – where he stranded a rugby squad worth of baserunners, leading to this game story essay.

May 22, 1913: Browns’ Dwight Stone strands 15 runners to shut out the Yankees

St. Louis wouldn’t keep him, though. Stone was sold to Oakland in the Pacific Coast League. Working in Stone’s favor, however, was the advent of the Federal League and Stone would sign with the Kansas City Packers for 1914. This angered Oakland Oaks management, who spitefully dispatched his rights to the Southern Association. On the heels of his 2 – 6 run with the Browns, Stone struggled to an 8 – 14 mark (and a 4.34 ERA) on a sixth place Federal League club. Worse yet, as a jumper to a rival league, Dwight was blacklisted from organized baseball and when he went home to Baker, Oregon, what seemed like a promising life was about to change in big ways.

Dwight Stone first married Lillian Agnes Stark in Baker, Oregon in 1911. At the time, Dwight was a lumberman living in Los Angeles. However, his baseball career took him all over, ended in a heap, and by 1917 Lillian Stone was living alone in Oregon. They soon divorced.

At the time of his World War One registration, he was still playing ball for the independent Sugar Teton baseball club in Teton, ID. He enlisted in the U.S. Army during the first great war; his gravestone notes the service of Sgt. First Class Stone, a member of the 32nd Balloon Company, who entered the service on December 15, 1917 and returned home in 1919.

He returned to Teton, ID where he and his new love, Lillie Clark, soon married. By 1920, the couple had moved back to Los Angeles – Dwight is still listed as a ballplayer in his census record (he played for that same Anaheim semi-pro team when he returned), but for at least a couple of years Stone and his father ran a farm near San Bernadino. Before long, however, Stone would be back working in a lumber yard. By World War II, Stone joined the Lounsberry and Harris lumber company in Los Angeles advancing to a supervisor position at one of their lumberyards in 1950.

Dwight and Lillie had one son, Clark Dwight Stone, who died in World War II while a member of the 380th Bomb Group, a team of bombers that were based in Australia and made a number of very long bombing runs. He was flying in a plane that had engine trouble. When the aileron controls failed that plane crashed in Papua, New Guinea in 1944.

Dwight Stone died on June 3, 1976, two months shy of turning 90, in Glendale, CA and is buried in Valhalla Memorial Park in North Hollywood, CA. One source suggested that lung cancer took him to the next league. Lillie died six years later and is buried next to her husband.

Notes:

Baseball-Reference.com
FindaGrave.com
1900, 1950 US Census
1917 Baker, OR City Directory
Oregon Marriage Records
Idaho Marriage Records
US Military Headstone Applications
WWI Military Registration
WWII Military Registration

“Slaughter of Innocents,” Anaheim Gazette, March 24, 1910: 8.
“Stone Popular in St. Louis and Will Stay,” Idaho Statesman, April 8, 1913: 6.
“O.B. Turns Down Applicants,” Kansas City Star, April 15, 1915: 2.
“Oaks Release Stone and Schwenk,” Los Angeles Evening Express, January 15, 1914: Sports-1.
“Valley News,” Victor Valley News-Herald, June 15, 1923: 3.