Game 23, May 1, 1924



In the 23rd game of the year, the Indians finally saw their fortunes turn around against the pesky Bees. They managed to beat back the "Mormon tossers", as the newsman refers to Salt Lake, 2 to 1. Former Cleveland pitcher Jim Bagby pitched a winning side for Seattle, bringing their record to 9 wins and 14 losses, and put them at 1 win against two losses in the current series.



Game 22, April 30, 1924

Another quick posting here just to get caught up. So in the 22nd game of the year, the second game of the fourth series, the Seattle Indians dropped another one. This time they gave the nameless reporter of the Seattle Daily Times another chance to expound on his idea that to win, you have to hit in bunches. That is, string together hits, move the runners along. And really, that's true. That was the basics of dead-ball strategy, and it goes by different names these days, small ball for instance, but essentially that's baseball. In a nutshell. Of sorts. The Indians out-hit the honeycomb of hitters the Bees brought to the ballpark, but couldn't convert those bases to runs.


This one went down 5 to 3, Salt Lake taking the victory. Looks like from the column description that LaZerre, or Tony Lazzeri as he has become known to history, was picking up his defensive game with a nice throw to home plate. The 60 home runs he would hit next year would be an historic achievement. He would, of course, go on to great things with the New York Yankees. Although that team already had Babe Ruth and Bob Meusel, the team that would be soon known as one of the greatest ever was about to form. Lou Gehrig was playing his first full season of pro ball in Hartford with the Eastern League, and 1924 was the rookie year for Earle Combs. Lazzeri would arrive in 1926 go to 7 World Series in the next 11 years, winning 5. He would mostly bat 5th or 6th. However, he was good enough in 1930 that he replaced Lou Gehrig at cleanup for a few weeks. Well, maybe it was more Gehrig slumping.

So, I digress, now the Indians are once again flirting with the basement, but soon would make their charge.
The starting lineup was the standard in the 1 through 7 holes. Frank Tobin was the catcher and Suds Sutherland pitched for the Indians. Jimmy Welsh picked up another at-bat, pinch hitting for Tobin in the 7th inning, and then Earl Baldwin worked behind the plate to finish out the game for the Indians.
I've included some extra scans below from the front sports page of the Seattle Daily Times for this days reporting. The Times had acquired a nice long range camera that year, and was now able to do really nice photo essays, bringing fans closer to the action. At this time, advances in wireless and wired telegraphy, photography, and printing processes, created what we know today as the mass media. The Times named their camera 'Aunt Eppie', for some reason I don't know. But, as I wrote in a previous posting where they premiered its usage, I believe its related to a character in a comic by Fontaine Fox.
Anyway, here we see reports about French boxer George Carpentier and, below that, a far more important article. If you are interested about the intersection of race and sports in American society, the way the potential Jack Dempsey/Harry Wills fight played out is an education unto itself. You can see in the column there are two conflicting reports.
This story will play out over the summer. But, I should point out, all of these stories have race as an underlying subject. After all, the team is called the Indians. We could almost look at that history as the aspirations of race played out in the dialogue about the integration of baseball while the reality of race played out in the boxing ring. 
Of course, what we need to think about then is what does the competitiveness and the desire to see a good fight by the fans represent something of the character of America? Or the rest of the world? After all, no one denies the exclusionary aspects of racism, but think for a bit about those who integrate, if even for only dollars? The Tex Rickards of the world, or the fans who didn't care as long as the punches being thrown were the best? As we look at history, we must be careful to not overemphasize the negative, because that is simply projection.

The reality is, when Jack Johnson beat Jim Jeffries, it was the people in power who were scared. The match itself happened because the marketplace demanded Johnson's aspirations be fulfilled. Of course, we can't ignore what happened to Johnson afterwards, but lets not forget those events did not occur in the arenas and gambling dens. Racism requires a fixed outcome. The free market doesn't. In a free market, which is of course not freedom, the value of the object being exchanged is simply free to move up and down. Then of course there's the racist free market, but that's another story entirely.

By that I mean, there's the apparent market, but its actually fixed at the outset through advantages that maintain the fixed position which power desires or rather necessitates so that it may continue to exist. I think what we actually see over time in resistance and revolution is the gradual alteration. The exchange price of freedom moves slowly through history, but it moves. Some of these ideas were best expressed by a study that was done starting in 1924 by Robert and Helen Lynd. Remember, its always back to 1924. The results of this study would be published in 1929. The Lynd's focused on Muncie, Indiana. Mainly, they developed the idea that social institutions functioned as buffers which maintained apparent rightness of our social structures.

The institutions, our political parties and machines, churches, schools, social clubs, etc., create a resistance to change.  This, of course, includes the newspapers. Marxist theoreticians had similar ideas. The Middletown studies were seen by Marxists to confirm the views held by Gramsci, and further back, to Engels. Engels idea at the root of this was that there was a false consciousness which functioned to keep the proletariat and working classes from realizing their revolutionary potential. It was this idea, expanded by Gramsci as the concept of ideological hegemony and then elucidated by the Lynd's as social institutional buffers, that attempted to explain why the working classes essentially remained as such. That is, when things didn't change, an explanation was needed to explain the lack of change.
Of course, things did change. It just took a lot longer. Eventually, baseball would have to change. However, when baseball integrated, it also wiped out the Negro Leagues as the best players in those teams gradually integrated into professional minor leagues owned and organized by interests related to Major League Baseball. Then the mere fact of integration became the 'apparent' equality or nature of the system. That freedom had happened. Something else though, African-American ownership of its baseball teams had disappeared. Real integration would have been to include a minority owned team.






Game 21, Salt Lake Bees at Seattle

Well, these things keep taking longer and longer so I am going to just post the next two or three series in full order without the transcriptions of the dailies. I will still scan all the stories and the box scores, and maybe highlight something here and there, and maybe do a few other things to make this run on a little further.

For the 21st game of the season, the Indians welcomed the Salt Lake City Bees to Seattle. The Bees had opened quite the can of Bonneville Park whoop-ass on the Indians. Now, we get to see if the Indians can take advantage of their own home field. As luck would have it, the rain gods were not in Seattle's favor, as they lost 2 to 0 in a rain-out.

As usual, the scribes of sportswriting's golden era had fun with this one, making up a nice little story to go with the rain out.
Seattle's Starting Lineup:
Billy Lane, Center Field
Cliff Brady, Second Base
Sam Crane, Shortstop
Brick Eldred, Right Field
Elmer Bowman, First Base
Ray Rohwer, Left Field
Ted Baldwin, Third Base
Earl Baldwin, Catcher
Wheezer Dell, Pitcher

George Steuland came into the game in the fifth to run for Wheezer Dell. Dell was replaced on the mound by Vean Gregg. George Cutshaw then batted for Gregg, and Jimmy Welsh batted for Earl Baldwin. Then the rain was just too much. Read the Salt Lake part of the box score, some pretty legendary names there.

Okay, almost back into the swing

Well, I've been doing a bunch of research on leadoff hitting. Trying to get that in order. I am almost ready to go back and continue transcribing the 1924 Indians season. In the meantime, here's the 1948 Cleveland Indians in the World Series

Recap

Well, things have slowed down here a bit for the 1924 Seattle Indians blog. I didn't realize how much work it would be when I started trying to provide an in depth recap for every single game. Nonetheless, I am committed to that, as I think it is the best way to understand the season and place the 'information' in context. For instance, Sacramento pitcher 'Chief' Moses Yellow Horse was the first full-blooded Native American to play MLB baseball. That is, as far as anyone knows. However, there is so much more going on in that statement than one can imagine. For instance, the distance of time from today to April 1924, 88 years, is the same distance from that time to 1836. I don't know about you, but the last 88 years of my family is pretty important to where I ended up today. So what happened to Moses Yellow Horse's family, and did he carry that with him from Oklahoma to Pennsylvania to Sacramento? In 1924, the Indian Citizenship Act became law on June 2. How many baseball players in history had an act of Congress push citizenship on them? 1836 was a year roughly in the middle of the first phases of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Those 'removals' took place between 1831 and 1838 initially. That's the Trail of Tears. There were more tears, however. Among them were the Pawnee of Nebraska, who were 'relocated' in the 1870s to Oklahoma, which was now the Indian Territory. But, of course, that land was needed and eventually you end up with the State of Oklahoma. But, Chief Yellowhorse, as he was called, this is his history. His family. His world. More on all of this later. I think all of these games highlight such stories, and its good to have the context of where people came from and what the world was like in which they lived. I'm not a professional historian, but I am a slow one.

Recap: Still, we are following the Seattle Indians here, on their way to a championship season. I am slowing down here while I do some research on contemporary baseball. I will be starting another blog for all that other stuff.


Date Opponent Location Result Record
Tuesday, April 8, 1924 Los Angeles Angels Washington Park, LA Lost, 5-1 0-1
Wednesday, April 9, 1924 Los Angeles Angels Washington Park, LA Lost, 6-5 0-2
Thursday, April 10, 1924 Los Angeles Angels Washington Park, LA Lost, 8-3 0-3
Friday, April 11, 1924 Los Angeles Angels Washington Park, LA Won, 9-5 1-3
Saturday, April 12, 1924 Los Angeles Angels Washington Park, LA Lost, 5-3 1-4
Sunday, April 13, 1924 Los Angeles Angels Washington Park, LA Lost, 4-1 1-5
Sunday, April 13, 1924 Los Angeles Angels Washington Park, LA Won, 20-1 2-5
Monday, April 14, 1924 None Travel: LA to SLC
2-5
Tuesday, April 15, 1924 Salt Lake City Bees Bonneville Park, SLC Snow Out 2-5
Wednesday, April 16, 1924 Salt Lake City Bees Bonneville Park, SLC Lost, 9-8 2-6
Thursday, April 17, 1924 Salt Lake City Bees Bonneville Park, SLC Rain Out
Friday, April 18, 1924 Salt Lake City Bees Bonneville Park, SLC Lost, 13-6 2-7
Saturday, April 19, 1924 Salt Lake City Bees Bonneville Park, SLC Lost, 9-8 2-8
Saturday, April 19, 1924 Salt Lake City Bees Bonneville Park, SLC Won, 13-11 3-8
Sunday, April 20, 1924 Salt Lake City Bees Bonneville Park, SLC Lost, 15-11 3-9
Sunday, April 20, 1924 Salt Lake City Bees Bonneville Park, SLC Lost, 11-4 3-10
Monday, April 21, 1924 None Travel: SLC to SEA

Tuesday, April 22, 1924 None Off Day

Tuesday, April 23, 2024 Sacramento Senators Home, Coast League Park Won, 9-2 4-10
Wednesday, April 24, 2024 Sacramento Senators Home, Coast League Park Won, 11-5 5-10
Thursday, April 25, 2024 Sacramento Senators Home, Coast League Park Won, 9-1 6-10
Friday, April 26, 2024 Sacramento Senators Home, Coast League Park Won, 7-6 7-10
Saturday, April 27, 2024 Sacramento Senators Home, Coast League Park Won, 3-2 8-10
Saturday, April 27, 2024 Sacramento Senators Home, Coast League Park Lost, 13-5 8-11
Sunday, April 28, 2024 Sacramento Senators Home, Coast League Park Lost, 4-1 8-12