Mystery solved: Richard Maxmeyer

* Editor's note: This is a follow-up to last weeks post. Thank you to Bo (Baseball Cards Come to Life!) for his assistance, without it, today's piece wouldn't have been possible.

The last post saw me trying to figure out who the unknown "Maxmeyer" was that pitched in one game for the Beavers back in 1932. My efforts came up short, but I did wonder at the end of the post if that Maxmeyer was the same, or any relation to, the Maxmeyer that was with the Portland Colts in 1911 and part of 1912. Thanks to the efforts of Bo, I now know that both Maxmeyer's were one in the same.

Richard Maxmeyer (later nicknamed "Maxey" and "Rube") was born in Germany in 1890. His family immigrated to Tacoma, WA when he was three months old, and would then later move to Portland (or possibly to Corvallis then Portland).

Given his lankiness (6'2 and 180 pounds in 1911), and odd pitching mechanics, it took some effort on his part to get a tryout from Portland management, but his persistence finally paid off and he was given a chance with the Beavers farm team (the team didn't have an official name in 1911, so depending on the source, you will often see them referred to as the Colts, Pippins, or "Nicks", after manager Nick Williams) in the Northwestern league.

Rube Maxmeyer c. 1911

Even as a young man, Richard was described as eccentric. He was good natured, and wherever he would go in the future, much would always be made of his large feet. These traits along with his awkward delivery made him an instant favorite with fans, and the local beat writers. 

Unfortunately, the aforementioned characteristics that made him so popular with everyone else, would also be the source of constant amusement by his Colts teammates, who spent the better part of 1911 pranking him pretty regularly. Being college educated probably didn't do him any favors either, as that was a big no-no for ballplayers back then. The practical jokes were said to have been all in fun, and by all appearances Richard seems to have taken them as such, but more than one writer at the time would wonder if they didn't hinder his progress with the team.

He spent all of 1911 with the Colts, finding more success than not. Despite that, he was only brought back for an extended tryout in 1912, then released (along with catcher, Jess Troch) on April 15th, less than a month into the season. Richard would later cite differences of opinion with manager Nick Williams on how he should be pitching (Nick pitched for the teams as well). It also didn't help that he was the only member of the pitching staff who wasn't being paid.

Not unlike most cities, and their surrounding areas at the time, Portland was a hotbed for baseball during the early part of the last century. Fans were treated to games played by minor league teams, semi-pro teams, and amateur/sandlot teams almost every day of the week from February to early November. There were countless leagues in just western Oregon alone, and over the course of about twenty years, Richard Maxmeyer would go on to play for many of them.

Two weeks after being released by the Colts, Richard was pitching for the Lents Giants of the A. & W. League [Today, Lents is a somewhat affluent neighborhood in SE Portland, but back in 1912 it was an ignored section of the city that was made up of mostly impoverished immigrants]. In June of that year he found himself back in the Northwestern League, this time with the Vancouver Beavers. He would be cut just days later after a couple of unimpressive outings, one of which, ironically, was a walloping at the hands of his former Colts team. Six days after his initial Vancouver deal, he agreed to terms with the La Grande Pippins of the Class B Tri-State League. He spent one month with the Pippins, going 2-3. He left because he thought the leagues level of competition was beneath him. There's no way to know for sure, but given how things would go, I suspect that he might've later regretted making that statement.

Morning Oregonian 8/14/12

Playing on pickup squads would be a staple of the rest of his career. Here he was pitching against his former Giants team. Unfortunately there are no details on who made up the rest of his team. 

In October of '12, Maxey signed on for a tryout with Spokane of the NWL, but was cut before the 1913 season started. He was then given another tryout with the Colts, but didn't make the cut there either.

1913 saw him playing for two more semi-pro teams, the Woodburn Red Sox in May, and the Archer-Wiggins Weonas in June, before finally a winning a ring in July...

The Oregon Daily Journal 7/21/13

The happy couple moved to a 160-acre farm in Crawford, WA, and Richard appears to have spent the better part of the next two years away from baseball, during which time a daughter was born.

Maxey let it be known that he was ready to come back in 1915, and was then promptly signed by the Sellwood Merchants of the Portland City League.

Most of 1916 was spent in the Inter-City League, where he would pitch for Log Cabin, the Kirkpatricks, and the Baby Beavers. 

The Oregon Daily Journal 3/22/18

There's a reference to Rube taking a job in the shipyards in 1918, but he must've done so a year prior, as he pitched for the Cornfoot team, of the Columbia-Willamette Shipbuilders League, during the 1917 season. He moved over to the Peninsula yards, and team, sometime after the 1918 got under way. He threw for at least one more game with Vancouver NWL club again that year as well. In fact, on July 1st, he pitched for the Cornfoot team in an early game, and then started for Vancouver later that same night; both of which were complete games by the way. He lost the first game in a pitchers duel, and then just ran out of a gas during the later game, which resulted in a loss.

1918 Peninsula team. Rube on the far right. Link to a better resolution photo.

Richard decided to retire 1918, and appears to have committed to that decision, at least until 1921 when he shows up back in the Inter-City League pitching for the Gresham Giants. He switched over to the St. Helens American Legion for the 1922 Inter-City season.

Vernonia Eagle 9/10/26

After a couple of years gap, we get this little tidbit. Rube was apparently living in Columbia City at this time, which is located on the Northwestern Oregon border with Washington.

He pops up again playing with the Woodmen (?) in the Portland City League in 1927, then shows back up at the age of 42 for his one game with the Beavers in 1932 (see previous post).

Maxey started appearing in old-timer games in 1936, and would continue to do so for the next couple of decades.

There's a lot of gaps in Richard's baseball timeline, many teams and years are missing, and as of this writing, I cannot find an obituary, so I can't even tell you when he passed. If any of this information comes to light at a later date, I will come back and update the post when possible. In the meantime, it would seem that he led a very interesting, and colorful, life. And though it appears that he lost more games than he won, he remained ever popular with the fans. He got to travel quite a bit, lived in many different places, had a family, and played a LOT of baseball; I suspect that a fella like him couldn't have asked for too much more than that.

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. 

Where did you come from?

Baseball Reference and Stats Crew both have a "Grimm" listed as having played for the Beavers in 1926 and 1930, but as far as I can tell, no "Grimm" saw any action with the Beavers during that time, or any other for that matter (there was Bob Grim, but he came along much later).

I have gone through every single available (which is almost all of them) Beavers box score for '26 and '30, and not once is there a "Grimm" mentioned. In fact, the only other baseball "Grimm" that is even mentioned on the same newspaper pages during those two years is, Charlie Grimm, then of the Chicago Cubs.

I briefly thought that somebody might've gotten confused while reading the recaps of the two Beavers-Cubs exhibition games that took place in 1930, and added Charlie to the Beavers for these sites by mistake, as he did appear in those two games. But the teams didn't play in '26, so that possible explanation doesn't hold much water.

It's a tad frustrating to know that I haven't gotten a response to either of the emails I've sent to Baseball Reference in recent months regarding other corrections, both of which were backed by solid research (and links to blog posts), nor have any changes been made; and yet somebody else was apparently just able to add a random name willy-nilly to the site, with seemingly no additional information needed to justify the addition.

I spent a couple of hours, and clicked on hundreds of pages in search of this "Grimm", and found absolutely nothing. So, unless proven otherwise, I'm just going to go ahead and say with near certainty that at no point was there a "Grimm" playing for the Portland Beavers in 1926 or 1930.

One Gilbert became two

Baseball reference currently has an unknown "Gilbert" listed as having pitched for the Beavers during the 1921 and 1922 seasons.

The Stats Crew also has an unknown "Gilbert" listed on the rosters for 1921 and 1922, and while they don't implicitly say that it's the same guy, it's easy, especially when combining it with the scant information from Baseball-Reference, for one to assume that it would be. So, with very little to start with, and no one saying anything to the contrary, I went into the research for this attempted identification looking for one "Gilbert", and ended up identifying two; one Gilbert for 1921, and one Gilbert for 1922. 

Let's begin with the 1921 Gilbert...

The San Francisco Examiner 7/25/21

The first mention of "1921 Gilbert" appears on the 25th of July, 1921, recapping his previous days' debut in the second game of a doubleheader with the Seals (both were losses for the good guys). The Oregon papers were more straightforward with their stories, but I've included this clip from the Examiner's pithy wrap-up (one can expect nothing less from the Examiner), if only because it provided the first clue in attempting to identify this Gilbert, namely that he might have been a bit on the older side. It isn't much, but it's something.

Our Gilbert didn't fare so well in his first outing, at least not on the mound, giving up 3 runs (including a HR), and issuing 3 walks in 4 innings of work. He fared a bit better with the stick though, collecting two hits and driving in a run during his two appearances at the plate.

Our next clue(s) comes from the following day:

The Oregon Daily Journal 7/26/21

Finding out that he was once in the Three-I League helped quite a bit. The part about him "attempting to stage a comeback" was useful as well, as it implies that he had either been injured, or that he might've been past his prime. Given the comments from the Examiner's beat writer, and this mention of a comeback, I put all of my eggs in the possibly "past his prime" basket. I know next to nothing about the Three-I League, but switched gears at this point and started looking for him on the team rosters from the previous couple of years of this league; which yielded bupkus, a whole heaping plate of it! So, back to my comfort zone I went, that being the PCL.

The final clue, the lynchpin if you will, in identifying this Gilbert shows up just two days after the previous article:

The Oregon Daily Journal 7/28/21

R.W. Gilbert!!! Huzzah! Initials make all the difference in the world when trying to identify an unknown person from over a hundred years ago. R.W. Gilbert becomes Rufus Wellington Gilbert, who did indeed pitch in the Three-I League some years earlier. Prior to his stint with the Beavers, Mr. Gilbert's last go in the minors had occurred five years previously with Terre Haute of the Central League, who he was also managing at the time.

The Richmond Item 11/30/20

Rufus Gilbert was 36 years old at the time of his attempted comeback, which explains all of the allusions to his age. Unfortunately for him, the one inning of work he got on July 25th, would be his second, and last, game with the Beavers; issuing a walk, and striking out in his only at bat in the team's 17-7 loss to Vernon (Tigers). It appears that this was also his last appearance in baseball, at any level. Why this comeback was attempted, and how it came to be with Portland, when he had never played further west than Denver is unknown, and at this point will likely remain forever unknown. I'd like to think that I might revisit him later on down the line and do a more well-researched piece on him, but I have so many other guys to cover on here that it'll probably be left for someone else to write a more in-depth piece on him. Hopefully someone who knows more about the Midwestern leagues.

Moving on to the second "Gilbert", aka "The 1922 Gilbert".

The Oregon Daily Journal 9/11/22

The 1922 Gilbert was considerably easier to identify, it took all of two minutes, at best to do so. Somebody else should've done this by now.

From what I can gather, the Goshen Giants were an amateur team out of tiny Goshen, OR, and Carl Gilbert was their star pitcher at the time. Given the size of the town at the time, and the fact that there's an article in one of the papers about them seeking out opponents, I hesitate to refer to them as a barnstorming team, but it appears that they didn't mind traveling to find competition. Like seemingly everything else, the Goshen team is in need of some serious research. This however is a blog about the Beavers, so back to the beavers, and young Carl Gilbert; who by the by, would see his first action just one day after signing with the team.

The Oregon Daily Journal 9/12/22

In four innings of work, Carl gave up two runs on four hits, and hit a double in his only at bat in the teams 7-3 loss against the Angels. On an unrelated note, Oregon was in the midst of a heat wave during September of '22. The game time temperature for this one in Portland was 93°.

This article about Carl's first outing appeared the following day:

Morning Register 9/13/22

Three out of four scoreless innings isn't too bad for someone who had never pitched minor league ball at any level before.

Morning Register 9/14/22

Management seems to have been intrigued by Carl's lone appearance that season. This would his one and only game with Portland.

Stockton Evening and Sunday Record 2/14/23

He made it to Spring Training, and made the Spring Training roster...

The Fresno Bee 2/24/22

... but wasn't on the roster once the season got under way, and as of right now, there's no mention of him being released in any of the papers available online. He shows back up with the Goshen team later in '23, and then the trail goes mostly cold. There's mention of a Mrs. Carl Gilbert in Eugene in '33, and another article from Eugene about Carl working with the Boy Scouts in '42, but that seems to be a about it. One can only speculate in an instance like this, but I can't help but wonder if he suffered an injury of some sort in '23 or '24, one that was severe enough to knock him out of baseball. It does seem rather odd that a pitcher who showed some promise in his one minor league would never end up playing in another league again.

I wasn't expecting this mysterious "Gilbert" to turn into two separate Gilbert's, but I guess that's the way it goes sometimes, or at least that's the way that it went this time. Both Gilbert's have been added to the all-time list, and with this name out of the way, the list of unknown players is now down to 21.

The all-time list is finally done!

This blog hasn't worked out quite as well as I had hoped, or at least as of this writing it hasn't. Producing mini biographies is considerably more difficult than I thought it would be (taking some writing courses way back when probably would've helped with this). I envisioned doing at least a few posts a month, but have only managed a handful over the last year or so. I have about a dozen unfinished drafts though; that counts for something, right?

I'm hoping things will pick up around here at some point, but on the off chance that they don't, I wanted to at least do one thing to make this blog stand out from any other similar sites; that being to finish my already more complete than any other sites list of all-time Beavers players. And I'm happy to say that I've finally done it.

I've been going at it pretty hard for the last four weeks, but I think that the effort was well worth it, as I now have a list of every known Portland Beaver, ever! The only downside is that all of this research has added a few more names to my list of unidentified players, which as of a few days ago was at 23. I have identified one more as of this writing though (post coming soon), so now it's down to 22. These names will be added to the overall list as they're identified, or probably in some cases, not identified. 

I'm not sure how many names are on the all-time list, but I noticed a while back that my old list seemed to be testing the limits of how much data one can store on a Blogger page, as it was slowing down all of my devices every time I attempted to add another name. With this in mind, I did have to break up the list in to two pages, A-L, and M-Z. It's not ideal, but it'll do for the time being.

I realize that there will only be a finite amount of people who will ever be interested in such a list, but if you just so happen to be one of those people, you can check out A-L here, and M-Z here. Of course you can always just click on the tabs that are underneath the blog's header too. I'd like to make those stand out a little more, but haven't figured out how to do it yet. I will though.

It took considerably longer to finish than I had imagined, but it's done, and now I can focus a bit more on those mysterious final 22 guys that no one currently has any real information on.

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.

The man who never was: Grogan

As far as this blog goes, I have many things on my to-do list; one of which is to try and go back and identify all of the former Beavers who appear on multiple websites as just a last name.

Today's name, ___ Grogan, is mentioned on three sites that I know of, including Baseball Reference...

Not a lot of information to go on there, huh? I'm sure that it won't always be the case, but thankfully today's name took very little research to find.

Let's start with what has to be the source for this mysterious "Grogan".

The Salt Lake Tribune 5/8/22

The Beavers played a doubleheader against Seattle on May 7th, 1922. This box score appeared in the following day's Salt Lake Tribune. One can clearly see a "Grogan" listed as having pitched in the first game. However, the summary doesn't mention a "Grogan", instead showing that Walt Leverenz went seven innings, and Harvey Freeman, not this mysterious "Grogan", relieved him for the final two.

This unto itself could prove to be confusing if it were the only available box score for this game, but less than a minute's worth of searching yields multiple examples from other papers, none of which show a "Grogan" as having pitched in this particular game. 

One correct example from the Oakland Tribune 5/8/22

This, along with the correct information appearing in the Salt Lake Tribune's own Summary, is enough to prove that there wasn't, and never would be, a "Grogan", who played for the Beavers.

Even if someone wanted to play devil's advocate, and say that every other papers box score was wrong. It would have been highly unusual for a player, especially a pitcher, to have appeared in only one game less than two months into the season. Doubly so for a pitcher who, if he existed, gave up no runs in his only two innings of work. One could try to say "Oh, but maybe he was injured?". Sure, but then it would've been mentioned. Injuries were always mentioned. 

The 1922 season wasn't a good one for the Beavers (87-112), and a handful of players were brought in for management to get a look at during the latter part of the season, when it was clear that they would be finishing in last place. However, as of May 8th, they were only 11-17, and no team in those days would've been giving up on the season that early, and therefor would not have been bringing in an unknown to pitch only two innings of relief work. Such things just didn't happen.

"Grogan" was clearly just a typo, and yet, that "source" alone seems to have been enough to get "his" name added to the list of former Beavers on multiple websites. For my sake, or anyone else out there who's contemplating doing the same research, I sure hope that the rest of the mystery names will prove this easy to identify. 

P.S. If anyone reading this has any pull with Baseball Reference, maybe you could get them to remove this name from their site. It might make things a little easier for folks in the future.