The Mystery Continues: Gerry

I haven't mentioned it on here in the last few months, but I'm still working on trying to identify all of the "mystery" Beavers. As evidenced by previous posts, I've had some pretty good luck in doing so thus far, but have recently encountered another player whose first name, despite many hours of research, continues to allude me.

The player in question is a certain "Gerry", who appears to have pitched in exactly one game on May 7th, 1935.

The Sacramento Bee 5/8/35

Given his lack of stats, it would appear that "Gerry" came in for the bottom of the 9th (although he could've just as easily have pitched the 8th and 9th innings) during a 11-11 game, gave up a run, picked up the loss; and then disappeared off the face of the earth.

This was the Beavers 29th game of the season, and although they were already below .500 (12-17 after this loss), management wouldn't have been panicking quite yet. And it was certainly still too early in the season to be bringing guys in from any great distance, especially not for just one game. My gut tells me that "Gerry" was local, probably playing on a semi-pro or college team no further South than Salem, and no further North than Vancouver, WA. Seattle's possible, but that seems like a bit of a stretch. 

I've looked around for any "Gerry" playing baseball in the area, with a heavy emphasis between 1930-40, and have come up with absolutely nothing. Part of me is wondering if his name is wrong in the box scores, but until someone can prove otherwise, I'll just have to assume that it's correct.

Seeing as how there's at least two unidentified players now, I'm going to be creating another page at the top of the blog for the names that have alluded me, in the hope of course that some new material will become available at a later date, or that somebody with the necessary information will stumble upon the blog at some point, and hopefully be kind enough to share said information.

Portland Beavers vs. Dai Nippon: April 1-2, 1935

Following the hugely successful tour of U.S. baseball players to Japan in 1934, Japanese organizers, along with Lefty O'Doul, decided to capitalize on said success by arranging a tour of their own. 

A new team, dubbed, Dai Nippon, made up mostly of players from three universities, was assembled, and in 1935 would become the first professional Japanese team to play on North American soil.

The original plan was for the team to play between 60-80 games, but by the time all was said and done, they wound up competing in 109 contests in just a little over four months. 

Given Lefty's then current position as manager of the San Francisco Seals, it's not much of a surprise that the Coast League teams would be worked into the schedule. A total of 22 games were played against the eight Coast teams, each team seeing the Japanese at least twice.

Portland's final two warm-up games before starting the 1935 season were played against Dai Nippon on April 1st and 2nd.

Game 1:

The Ventura County Star 4/2/35

[Note: Because of how they were originally laid out in the paper, I had to do quite a bit of chopping, more so than normal, to get both of today's recaps to fit, and be readable, on Blogger.] 

Dai Nippon only had four designated pitchers for this tour; Eiji Sawamura, Kenichi Aoshiba, Toshihide Hatafuku, and the very young future HOFer, Victor Starffin (who had won the day before against Seattle). The only relief they got was from third basemen, Shigeru Mizuhara, who pitched in seven games, and second basemen, Takeo Tabe, three games; this being one of those three games. It's worth noting too that Takeo Tabe, who Lefty O'Doul thought had MLB potential, was one of the standouts from this tour, amassing 109 stolen bases, among other things. Despite his success, he for some unknown reason never played baseball again, and died in the war ten years later.

Game 2:

The Ventura County Star 4/3/35

There's no way of knowing for sure, but it sounds like this would've been closer to the real score, had it not been for all of the errors, in the first game as well. And it doesn't appear that Kenichi Aoshiba's injury was too severe, as he was back on the mound two days later (picking up the win against a Brawley, CA ensemble called Pirrone's All-Stars).

In 22 games against the PCL, Dai Nippon went 7-15. However, they did beat 7 of the 8 teams at least once; the Beavers being that one outlier. 

If anyone's interested in reading more about Dai Nippon's mind boggling 1935 tour, Western Canada Baseball has a very in-depth piece up on their website about it (nothing about the two losses to Portland though), which I would highly recommend. Knowing almost nothing of Japanese baseball, I used the article as my primary source for information on the players, and the tour itself.