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.
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| The Sacramento Bee 5/8/35 |
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.
Good luck with this; I bet you will get it. Gary? Garry? Berry? etc.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate the confidence, but my research skills are far from elite, so it's very possible that I won't be able to find him on my own. And yes, I did try those names, along with Geary and Jerry (among a few others).
DeleteHope this mystery gets solved eventually. It's interesting that the box score details the putouts, assists, and errors... yet omits the strikeouts and walks for the pitcher. I wonder if that was a common thing for the era or if that was the style that the Sacramento Bee went with.
ReplyDeleteMay 8th was a weird day, most of the papers only did brief recap. And the couple that did do a box score, did them like this, missing stats and all. It was highly uncommon, and I don't know what the deal was.
DeleteGetty?
ReplyDeleteI wonder how hard it would be to get a full directory of Portland residents of the era. Seems like something a geneology site would have.
I hadn't tried that one, but did go back and look again. No dice.
DeleteI don't know either. Finding such a thing is probably beyond my abilities.
Do you have the box score of the game from the Portland paper or another paper? Sometimes the names can differ especially if he was a new player and/or local to Portland, etc. In other words, the Sacramento folks might have messed it up.
ReplyDeleteIf it turns out to be Gerry, Bo's suggestion of trying to find a city directory could be helpful.
As I mentioned above, most papers didn't do box scores for the games from May 7th. Those that did, all have him listed as Gerry, and he is listed as such in all of the brief recaps as well. I only used the Bee's box score because it was the clearest.
DeleteIt probably would, but I have no idea how to go about finding such a thing.