The Old Ball Game (Volume 6) – A Leo’s World Special

Good Tuesday morning, Uni Watchers. I hope everyone had a pleasant Monday.

ICYMI, yesterday our latest uniform design contest, a collaboration between UW and UTEP, to design a future alternate uniform for either the men’s or women’s (or both) basketball teams from UTEP, was announced. You can read all the details here. The contest offers the winners (yes, plural) a $1,250 cash prize, and their designs will be showcased in a conference game during the 2025-26 UTEP men’s and women’s basketball seasons. The deadline is July 8th, and you know what to do.

Also, in a later article, our own Susan Freeman did an amazing breakdown of the uniforms and hosiery(!) of the Women’s College World Series. Susan not only did a great job reviewing the unis, but there are a lot of them, and almost every team has some amazing stirrup/sock game. If you didn’t see it yesterday, it’s definitely a great read.

Now then.

As he has for the past month and a half, Leo Strawn continues his look at early 20th Century baseball. So far, Mr. Strawn graced us with the The Old Ball Game (Volume 1), Volume 2, Volume 3, Volume 4, and Volume 5. The series continues today with Volume 6.

Enjoy!

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The Old Ball Game (Volume 6)
by Leo Strawn, Jr.

I’m Leo…welcome to my world!

Let’s finish up this look at baseball in the 1910s.

I’m sure everyone knows the Cleveland Indians were the first MLB team to wear uniform numbers, which were prominently displayed on the left sleeve. But I have a couple of oddities I wanted to share. (Apologies if I have talked about this before.) The player in this photo wearing #9 should be catcher Josh Billings. Not sure who the catcher on the left is. The odd thing about this photo is that both players are wearing the 1916 home jerseys but sporting 1917 road caps.

This pic features first baseman Lou Guisto. He is wearing the 1916 home cap with his 1916 jersey, but the jersey number is on the opposite sleeve. The team photo from that season shows that none of the players pictured had numbers on the right sleeve. However, Guisto is missing from that team photo.

I know I featured the Robins last edition because I like the Brooklyn “B”, but they added to that in 1916. I don’t think it’s an attractive look, but the photos of teams wearing checked patterns in those days are certainly interesting, and these are two of the cleanest pics I have of the Robins. Pictured below, from left to right, Ivy Olson, Casey Stengel, Jimmy Johnston, Hy Myers and Zach Wheat.

Speaking of unusual uniforms, look at what the Giants were wearing in 1916! That’s Bill McKechnie in what looks like flannel pajamas with a horizontal striped pillbox, a truly bizarre combination. (I learned at a very early age never to wear a mix of stripes and patterns. Apparently, the Giants didn’t get that memo.) After years of wearing pillbox caps under John McGraw, New York started sporting the more common style in 1908, but, for a single season they returned to the pillbox style while joining Brooklyn in wearing a really odd uniform design choice. Okkonen describes it as “an audacious purple plaid.” The Giants wore checks on the road in ’17 but, as far as I can determine, never wore pillbox caps again. In my humble opinion, they should have kept the caps and dumped the weird uniforms. <sigh>

A couple of weeks ago, I shared photos of what might be called the first unofficial ASG, the Addie Joss benefit game in Cleveland. I’m not sure if this was the second, but in 1917 there was a benefit game in Boston for the family of Tim Murnane, who played with a few National Association clubs, then when the NL was formed, went on to play with the Boston Red Caps (n.k.a., Atlanta Braves) for two seasons. He retired the following year, 1878, after playing for a season with Providence, then came out of retirement for a season in 1884 to be player/manager for the Boston Reds of the Union Association in that team’s only year of existence. Tim died in Boston in 1917 and was obviously loved by the city and players of that time who showed up as had been the case in Cleveland for the Joss family, six years prior. This time, there was one National League player in the mix, Rabbit Maranville of the Boston Braves. Rabbit is squatting between Howard Ehmke of the Tigers (who would ironically throw a no-hitter for the Boston Red Sox in 1923) and Connie Mack (standing). Willie O’Connor, mascot for the Braves is at the end of the top row.

There are a couple of oddities of note in this photo. On the top row, between Mack and Ty Cobb is Ray Chapman of Cleveland, who would die from a beanball in a game versus the Yankees, almost exactly three years later. There was no benefit for Chapman’s kin, but the team did wear black armbands for the rest of that season and went on to win the franchise’s first World Series in his honor that year.

The other oddity is this: As I noted in the Addie Joss benefit photos, the Georgia Peach apparently didn’t bring his Tiger uniform and had to wear an Indians road uni. For this benefit game, Cobb wore a Detroit uniform, but not their 1917 togs. Instead, Ty wore what appears to be a 1916 Tiger jersey with a generic white cap that the team didn’t wear. If not that, then he must have borrowed a 1903 Tigers uniform (his rookie year was 1905). That year they had a similar looking jersey and plain white cap. Kind of weird to me that he didn’t seem to want to wear his current uniform for benefit games. Anyone have any info on this?

Here’s a good look at (most of) the logo on the front of that Boston Braves jersey on John Henry in 1918.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I love, love, love this 1917 White Sox jersey.

In Volume 4, I shared photos of the great Jim Thorpe in his days with the Giants. In 1917, New York traded him to Cincinnati where he would play 77 games with the Reds.

Here’s a rare look at the 1918 Cubs home uniform. As you can see on that link, Okkonen recorded this as having blue lettering in a red outline on the jersey and red, white and blue stripes on what looks to me to be cream colored socks. In this photo, however, the value of the lettering doesn’t come close to the value of the red or blue of the bunting or the stripe colors, but more closely resembles the sock color. Remember, the Cubbies wore yellow (or gold, whatever you want to call it) about a decade and a half later, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that the lettering may have matched the sock color in this ensemble. Maybe some Chicago Cubs uniform researchers could look into this?

On the South Side in that same year, the White Sox were wearing white sox on the White Sox jersey logo.

They looked pretty sharp in 1919, also. Well, except in the World Series.

This is the legendary Home Run Baker and his 1919 Yankees jersey. John Franklin (a.k.a., Frank) Baker earned his nickname during the 1911 World Series while playing with Mack’s Athletics, hitting the game winning HR in game 2 and game tying homer in game 3. In 13 seasons, 7 in Philly and 6 in New York, he hit 96 round trippers, an average of less than 7 1/2 home runs per season. He led the AL in HRs four straight seasons while with the Athletics, 1911 (11 HR), 1912 (10), 1913 (12) and 1914 (9). He would finish second 2 times with the Yanks, 1916 with 10, finishing runner-up to Wally Pipp’s 12 and again in 1919 when he, Tilly Walker and George Sisler each hit 10 HRs behind Babe Ruth’s whopping total of 29 in his last season with the Red Sox.

Rogers Hornsby of the Cardinals is pictured here wearing a pillbox cap in 1919. Prior to that season, the last time St. Louis of the National League had worn pillbox caps was in 1898 when they were known as the Browns.

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That will wrap it up for the decade of the 1910s. Soon, we’re gonna party like it’s 1929.

Until next time…

Cheers!

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Thanks, Leo — yet another fun one. The 1910s would prove a pivotal decade for baseball, and the future implications on the game. Although no one knew of the Black Sox scandal at the time, once the plan to fix the World Series became known, baseball would find itself at a crossroads. The scandal might have ruined baseball if not for newly hired Commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis and a kid from a reformatory school in Baltimore named Babe Ruth. But that’s for another day, and we’re here for the uniforms. Looking forward to Leo’s next look at the old ball game in the roaring 20s!

Readers? What say you?