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.

The Mystery Continues: Maxmeyer

The Beavers wrapped up their 1932 season with a seven-game series against Seattle. Portland won 6 of those seven outings, only losing the second game of the final days doubleheader.

The Fresno Bee 10/3/32

During their last game, a pitcher by the name of "Maxmeyer" came in for a couple of innings of relief work, giving up eight runs and taking the loss in Portland's eventual 12-9 defeat. Maxmeyer would never pitch for the Beavers again.

The 1932 season wasn't just any season for the Beavers, it was a pennant winning season; their first in 18 years. Portland finished five games ahead of Hollywood, and while they had technically secured the the title a couple of days before, the felicitations didn't come until after the final game had been played. Because of the long drought in-between pennants, most of the article that ran in the days followings papers, focused on their winning season, with only minor mention of that last doubleheader. Maxmeyer wasn't mentioned in the games brief recap, but did appear in every single papers box score, so I don't think that he's another Grogan. Maxmeyer existed, it's just that no one ever bothered to mention his first name.

                         

He is listed on both Baseball Reference and Stats Crew, by last name only, of course. 

The two sites differ on the length of his outing, but provide very little other information that one can use to try and track him down. Maxmeyer not being a very common last name, one would think that it wouldn't be very hard to identify this fellow, problem is, it doesn't appear that there were any other Maxmeyer's playing ball in or around '32. I've triple checked all of the newspapers sources, and no results were produced, at least none in regards to this matter. Wondering if his name may have been misspelled, I tried some searches using the traditional German spelling of his name, Maxmeier, which also yielded no results. Max-Meyer drew a blank as well. Max Meyer, as a full name, was a longshot, but I had to try; nothing on that front either.

I had planned on ending this post here, but before wrapping it up, I decided to look through some of my yet to be researched, non-Beavers, Portland baseball files. This yielded an interesting, albeit very distant possible solution to this mystery.

San Francisco Call 3/14/12

Richard Maxmeyer pitched for the Beavers farm team, the Portland Colts, of the then Northwestern League, during the 1911 season, and came back for a couple of games in 1912 before being released in April of that year. Where he was before and after that, I could not say. I've yet to find any mention of him before or after his stint with the Colts. Given that there doesn't appear to have been any other pitching Maxmeyer's, could this be the same Maxmeyer from that last game in 1932? If he were only in his late teens during his time with the Colts, it's entirely possible that the same fellow could've come back twenty years later and thrown for a couple of innings. Why he would be doing so is completely different matter. It could've been for a favor, or as a thanks for past services rendered to the organization, who knows? Heck, with so much time in-between, the '32 Maxmeyer could've even been the 1911/12 Maxmeyer's son. Or it could just be two completely unrelated Maxmeyer's -- although as uncommon of a last name as this was, I find this last option a bit harder to get behind.

This mystery will have to remain for the time being, but I don't think we'll have to wait too long for an answer, as this one feels very solvable. 

The mystery continues: Holman

As mentioned in the previous post, I've been meaning to try and identify the many former Beavers who are currently listed on various sites by just their last name. Seeing as how this is the second post in a row on this topic, I think it's safe to say that I've finally found the energy to get this item crossed off the to-do list. Not to toot my own horn, but I was able to successfully "identify" the player in Sunday's post. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same about today's.

Holman isn't the most common of last names, so if there was any information out there, it didn't seem like it would be very hard to find -- problem is, at this time, there's only two mentions of this Holman, and both are from recaps of a two-game series.

The 1914 season was one of the better seasons in Beavers franchise history (113-84). They had already locked up the pennant with a couple of games left to go in the season, and a such, were still competing, but were not going out of their way to risk injury to any key players. The final day of the season saw the team down in San Francisco for a double-header against the Seals. There was some effort on the part of the Beavers to compete during the first game, but they ran into a buzzsaw in Skeeter Fanning, and were ultimately shutout 7-0. The second game however, was more of a "let's just get this over" kind of affair, which was reflected in the final score, 13-1.

Despite already having the season in hand, and clearly not caring too much about these last two games, it's a bit surprising to see that so many of the regulars still played in both of these games. The only exceptions were  Ed "Soldier" Barnes being handed the rock for game 2, and the mysterious Holman getting one at bat in each game.

The Oregon Daily Journal 10/26/14

This recap provides the only additional information that I could find on Holman, and it isn't much to go on. Apparently he was from Eugene, and played in Tillamook. Given that he was referred to as a "busher", I'm assuming that his time in Tillamook was spent playing for the cheese factory's amateur team. I couldn't find any team info for 1914 or 1913. There's a notice about a team being fielded in 1912, but he isn't listed amongst it's members.

Aside from telling us that he spent at least one inning in right field during the first game, and at least one inning in left during the second game, the box scores yield no additional information.

The San Francisco Chronicle 10/26/14

The Chronicle didn't provide any assistance either, other than to remind everyone that the beat writers in bigger leagues really didn't think too highly of the "bushers" back in those days.

Hopefully some more info will come to light one of these days, but until then, the mystery of Mr. Holman's first name will continue to be just that, a mystery.