A Base Ball Flag

Last October marked the 100th anniversary of a classic World Series match-up between the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Athletics. The A's won the 1911 post-season affair in six games, all but the final contest being quite close and exciting.

Just two days after the conclusion of the Fall Classic, despite their team's loss, over 100 Giants fans attended a gala dinner to celebrate John McGraw's National League champion club. The event took place at New York's Hotel Imperial (seen below), at Broadway and 32nd Street.


Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Detroit Publishing Company Collection [LC-D4-71266 DLC]

The guest list for the October 28th reception was impressive. Nineteen members of the Giants attended, including Larry Doyle, Art Fletcher, Buck Herzog, Rube Marquard, Fred Merkle, Chief Meyers, Red Murray, Fred Snodgrass and McGraw. Local dignitaries included:

• Robert Adamson, secretary to the Mayor of New York City
• Charles Ebbets, owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers
• "Big Bill" Edwards, New York City's Street Cleaning Commissioner and former baseball player at Princeton
• Bernard Gimbel, one of the Gimbel brothers who, just a year earlier, opened their famous department store in New York City
• Job Hedges, who the following year would run as the Republican Candidate for governor of New York state
• General Edward McAlpin, who had months earlier been named President and Chief Scout of the American Boy Scouts

The evening's festivities included a baseball-themed menu (de rigueur for such events), waiters dressed in baseball uniforms, the appearance of a faux elephant that roamed the hall (a nod to John McGraw's infamous reference to the Athletics as "white elephants"), and the screening of motion picture footage of the 1911 Series. Sadly, the film no longer exists.

The toasts and speeches of the evening were congratulatory and humorous, but unremarkable. Unremarkable, that is, save for the comments of one Herman A. Metz (pictured below), the former New York City comptroller and a future congressman representing New York's 10th district.


Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, photograph by Harris & Ewing, [LC-DIG-hec-05285]

In a November 11, 1911, article published in Sporting Life, New York sports writer Sid Mercer wrote:

One of the grandest little ideas that has bounded fair on the field of fandom was that batted out last Saturday night by Herman Metz at the citizens testimonial dinner to the Giants at the Imperial Hotel. Metz thinks that base ball has become such an institution that it ought to have a flag—a distinctive symbol that will be recognized as the badge of the national game. While the idea of a base ball flag may not be original with the former Controller of New York City, he is the first man who has pursued it to a definite reality. To think with Metz is to act, and he is now having a design for the flag drawn up by one of the best architects in the city.

Metz was one of the speakers at the base ball banquet, and he improved the occasion to introduce the base ball flag idea. It was enthusiastically received. Everybody wondered why it had not been done before now. "Talking base ball with a friend of mine—an architect—the other day," said Metz. "I mentioned the fact that base ball has grown to wonderful proportions without a banner for its admirers to follow. Each team has its own color scheme, but there is no flag that stands as an emblem of base ball. Pennants are too scarce. There should be something that could be used for decoration at all base ball parks. I therefore believe that we should have a base ball flag—a symbol that could be universally adopted. I am a fan and would like to wear a button with such a symbol thereon. Well, to make a long story short, I have my friend at work on a design. If we can produce something that fits the situation I think we should try to get it adopted by the major leagues and so spread it, all over the country. I hope to present this design to Manager McGraw in a few days, and if it is approved by base ball men they are welcome to the idea."

This wasn't the first time that Herman Metz has made folks sit up and take notice. The idea of a base ball flag, as he presented it, made a big hit with a large gathering of New Yorkers of big ideas and accomplishments, and it's going to amount to something. Joe Humphreys was one of those who warmly applauded the flag idea. Yesterday Joe told it to George Cohan, and Cohan is already at work on a new patriotic musical play—with a base ball flag song as the big knockout.

THE NEW EMBLEM.
(With apologies to George M. Cohan.)
It's a brand new flag.
Base ball's latest gag.
And forever and ever may it wave;
It's the emblem of the game we love.
The sport over which we all rave.
Every fan should swear
By this rag and take care
That to hold it aloft is our brag.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot?
Keep your eye on the base ball flag.

[It should be remembered that Cohan's famous song "It's a Grand Old Flag," was not quite six years old at the time of this parody. The catchy tune had quickly become a major hit after its introduction in Cohan's 1906 Broadway musical George Washington, Jr.]

While Mercer and the party goers seemed impressed, the idea apparently went no further. In fact, other than this particular article, I can find no reference to Metz's base ball flag.

Of course, today, Major League Baseball has its own logo (seen below). [For the story behind it, check out the Wall Street Journal article titled "The Man Behind the MLB Logo".] But it is a logo, not a flag. And perhaps more importantly, it is the logo of an organization, not of the game of baseball.



Additionally, numerous baseball flags have been themed along the lines of the United States flag (a few are shown below), but baseball is a game without borders. Over a century after the idea was first proposed, baseball—not Major League Baseball, not professional baseball, not baseball in the United States, but all of baseball—still has no flag of its own.

Where the Bullpen Meets the Pigpen

A few days ago, Matt Rothenberg, an "alum" of the Steele Internship Program at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, kindly alerted me to an interesting map available at the Library of Congress's web site. Take a look:


Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-pga-03942

The map was a promotion of H.W. Hill & Company of Decatur, Illinois, "sole manufacturers of Hill's Hog Ringers, Hill's Triangular Rings, Calf and Cow Weaners, Stock Markers, etc." What's a hog ring, you ask? Well, in the good ol' days, one would affix a metal ring to a hog's snout to help deter the animal from its natural instinct of rooting in the ground. Apparently, Hugh W. Hill was the inventor of the startling practice. According to the Centennial History of Decatur and Macon County:

H. W. Hill was so disgusted with the rooting done by one of his hogs one day that he picked up a piece of wire and jabbed it through the nose of the big porker. It worked. With that wire in his nose the hog had to retire from the rooting business. Mr. Hill put the idea to work. He made the hog ringer and rings which bore his name, and the manufacture of which was a leading industry in Decatur for years and built him a fortune.

Indeed, Hill held quite a few hog-ringing patents, including ones for hog-ringing implements, hog ring pinchers, hog tongs, and improvements in snout-rings. Here's U.S. patent number 130,853, Mr. Hill's improvement in instruments for ringing hogs, granted on August 27, 1872:



Of course, all of this has absolutely nothing to do with baseball … until you take a look at the promotional map above and focus in on Maryland. Here's a detail from the map:



Just above North Carolina's hog stirring a pot of tar and to the left of New Jersey's clam-catching hog, there is Maryland's hog, with a bat in hand and a baseball heading his way. The nickname given for Maryland on the map is "Craw Thumper," a somewhat obscure and derogatory term for a Roman Catholic. As early Maryland was predominantly Catholic, the term was used to refer to anyone hailing from the state.

Just what Catholics or craw-thumping have to do with baseball is a mystery. Quite frankly, I have no idea why the illustrator chose a baseball motif for Maryland at all. Sure, baseball was a popular sport in the state in 1884, but not any more so than in numerous other locales around the country. The Baltimore entry in the short-lived Union Association of 1884 was an average contingent that finished with a 58-47 record, miles behind the class of the league, the St. Louis Maroons at 94-19. And the American Association Baltimore Orioles of 1884 finished in sixth place and would not rise to their peak until in the mid-1890s, by which time they were in the National League. The Orioles of the following season were nothing to write home about, either, but at least a nice photo of the club has survived:



Anyone have a thought as to why Maryland was singled out as the state to feature a ball-playing hog?

Who is Ray Lankford Mourning?

I recently bumped into this picture of the Cardinals' Ray Lankford as published in The Sporting News of August 4, 1997:



The caption reads: "Homecoming dance: For most of his career, Cardinals center fielder Ray Lankford appeared to be on a collision course with greatness. Now that potential finally is translating into success."

I was interested in the image because Lankford is clearly wearing a mourning band on his left arm and I have long kept track of such memorial markings. But this armband had me stumped.

Ray Lankford played with the Cards from 1990 to 2001, but only once during his tenure with St. Louis did the club wear black armbands. That was during Spring Training of 1990 when the club mourned the passing of owner August A. Busch Jr., who died during the last road trip of the 1989 season. But as far as I am aware, those armbands were worn only on the special all-red Spring Training shirts. This 1990 Bowman baseball card of Bryn Smith shows that armband/jersey combo:



Clearly the Lankford photo does not show the Busch armband, so I was left wondering: Who was Ray Lankford (and presumably the rest of the Cardinals) mourning?

My first step in answering this question was to determine as much about the photo as possible. Beyond identifying Ray Lankford with the Cardinals, we can quickly see that St. Louis is wearing road grays, while the catcher is wearing home pinstripes.

A closer look at the picture reveals that the catcher's mask is one of the hockey-style variety. Here's a closer look:



Toronto Blue Jays catcher Charlie O'Brien was the first to wear the innovative mask, introducing it to the big leagues on September 13, 1996. Given this earliest limit for the date and combining it with the fact that the photo was published in the August 4, 1997, issue of The Sporting News, I was able to whittle down the possible dates of action to sometime between late September of 1996 and early August of '97. But, since no big league catcher other than O'Brien wore the new mask until 1997 and the catcher depicted is not wearing a Blue Jays uniform, I felt comfortable eliminating 1996 and focusing on a pre-August 4 date in the 1997 baseball season.

At this point, however, my research started to fall apart. Further examination of Lankford's uniform shows that it doesn't match the duds worn by the Cardinals in 1997 (or 1996, for that matter). For example, in 1997 St. Louis donned dark blue helmets on the road, but despite the black-and-white version of the Lankford photo, it is clear that Ray's helmet is red. Furthermore, the Cardinals had dropped the red, white and blue stripes at the ends of their sleeves after the 1991 season, but there they are on Ray's jersey. Finally, Lankford is seen wearing the "sansabelt" pants that the Cardinals had worn from 1971 to 1991, but how could this be if there's clearly a hockey-style mask in the picture?

Hitting a bit of a dead-end with this line of research, I turned my attention to the catcher's uniform to determine ]what club he played for. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of clues provided in the picture. The catcher is clearly wearing pinstripes, but we cannot see his stockings, nor much else that might help identify his club. However, examining this detail from the picture, one can see what appears to be the letter "s" peaking just behind the catcher's chest protector:



The font of the "S" appears to be sans-serif and somewhat block-lettered, which eliminates numerous clubs that otherwise have "S"-ending nicknames or locales that adorn their jerseys. So, for example, the Braves and Expos, both clubs that wore pinstripes at home, can be eliminated as their shirt-front "S"-style does not match that seen in the Lankford picture. Alas, as I ran through all the clubs that wore pinstripes in 1997, none of their shirt-front lettering matched with that seen in the Lankford picture. Once again, I had hit a dead-end.

It seemed to me that the only way the photo made sense was if a time machine was somehow involved. As ridiculous as that sounds, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that perhaps that was a distinct possibility.

On July 11, 1990, the Chicago White Sox staged the first-ever "Turn Back the Clock" game, in which the club wore "retro" uniforms similar to those worn by the club back in 1917. I wondered if perhaps the Lankford picture came from a just such a "time machine" game.

A quick look at the list of memorial markings that is part of the National Baseball Hall of Fame's online exhibit titled Dressed to the Nines: A History of the Baseball Uniform revealed that in 1982, St. Louis wore armbands in memory of former player, coach and manager Ken Boyer, who had died on September 7 of that year. And 1982 wasn't just any old year. It was the season in which the Cardinals had last won a World Championship, topping the Milwaukee Brewers in seven games.

Is it possible that the Brewers hosted a "Turn Back the Clock" game against the Cardinals, celebrating the 15th anniversary of the '82 World Series? If so, the Brewers and Cardinals would be wearing uniforms similar to those worn by Lonnie Smith and Robin Yount on the cover of this October 25, 1982, issue of Sports Illustrated:



The uniforms seen above match those in the Lankford photo perfectly. Lonnie Smith's uniform features the armband, the red, white and blue stripes on the sleeves, and the "sansabelt" pants worn by Lankford. And Robin Yount's uniform is pinstriped, with the same "S" of the "BREWERS" across the jersey front, just like the catcher in the Lankford image.

In 1997, the Cardinals and Brewers were still in different leagues (the Brewers would move to the National League the following year), so if this was a "Turn Back the Clock" game, it was an interleague contest. I checked the 1997 Brewers Media Guide and found the confirmation for which I was looking. On June 17, Milwaukee hosted the Cardinals on Pick 'n Save Turn Back the Clock Night, celebrating the 15th anniversary of the clubs playing one another in the 1982 World Series.

With an exact date to work with, I was able to track down the Lankford photo with its original caption. Here's how the Associated Press image looked, for example, in the Huntington (PA) Daily News of June 18, 1997:



The caption reads:

BLOCKED OUT

Ray Lankford of the St. Louis Cardinals collides with Milwaukee Brewers' catcher Mike Matheny at home plate in the third inning Tuesday night. Lankford tried to score on a ball hit in the infield by Gary Gaetti, but was out on the play. The teams wore 1982 replica uniforms as part of a "turn back the clock" promotion.

Talk about "Turn Back the Clock!" The Brewers' catcher was Mike Matheny, who would later gain fame as a member of the Cardinals, winning three Gold Gloves in five seasons with St. Louis. Additionally, the Cardinals' starting pitcher that night was Fernando Valenzuela, making his first appearance with St. Louis after being acquired from the Padres just days earlier. Fernando made just five starts with the club, posting a record of 0-4 before being released in mid-July, never to play in the big leagues again.

Coincidentally, by the way, the uniform that Ray Lankford wore that night is apparently in the hands of a collector. Here's an image of the jersey as posted at the Game Used Universe Forum:



So, to answer the original question: On June 17, 1997, Ray Lankford may not have realized it, but he was mourning the passing of Ken Boyer ... almost 15 years after the Cardinals great had passed away.