Baseball Personalities
SHOCKER! DISCOVERING A SILENT HERO OF BASEBALL'S GOLDEN AGE weaves a dozen baseball people into the story, including Hall-of-Famers Brown first baseman George Sisler, Yankee manager Miller Huggins, and spitball pitchers Ed Walsh, Burleigh Grimes, and Stan Coveleski. The book captures their personalities and bonds of friendship, as well as their love of the game. It follows them from rising stars to veterans on the way down. Like Urban Shocker, most of these men were household names in the Teens or 1920's, but are merely dim memories now. Like Urban, they too have stories worth telling.
This website features articles from Baseball Magazine of that era about these characters.
While the forthcoming book includes many baseball figures, it puts special emphasis on these fascinating and significant baseball people, about whom so little has been written. These characters include:
Urban's Managers:
Wild Bill Donovan of the Yankees (1916-1917), Lee Fohl of the Browns (1920-1923), and Miller Huggins of the Yankees (1925-1928). The dates are the years they managed Urban, and not their total stint at the helm of these teams.
Urban's Teammates:
George Sisler of the Browns, and Mark Koenig and Bob Shawkey of the Yankees.
Urban's Fellow Spitball Pitchers:
Ray Caldwell, Stan Coveleski, Burleigh Grimes, John Picus Quinn, and Ed Walsh, Sr. While Ed's career wound down when Urban's was starting, he was still active as a coach and was respected as the greatest spitball pitcher who ever lived, the 'godfather' of the men who delivered the 'wet one' in the 1920's. This website features articles from Baseball Magazine of that era about these characters.
Ray Caldwell
(1888 - 1967)
Burleigh Grimes
(1893 - 1985)
Stan Coveleski
(1889 - 1984)
John Picus Quinn
(1883 - 1946)
Ed Walsh
(1881 - 1959)
Others:
Rogers Hornsby
(1896 - 1963)
Milt Gaston
(1896 - 1996)
Dave Danforth
(1890 - 1970)
Helene Britton
(1879 - 1950)
Robert Lee Hedges
(1869 - 1931)
Phil Douglas
(1890 - 1952)
John McGraw
(1873 - 1934)
Jacob Ruppert
(1867 - 1939)
Del Pratt
(1888 - 1977)