By Marty Appel
Of all the “classic” early baseball books still to be found at pricey used book stores and through antiquarian dealers, an 8 ½ x 11 ½, hardcover volume from 1933 remains one of the most handsome and informative reference works ever associated with the game.
“Who’s Who in Major League Baseball,” edited by Harold “Speed” Johnson, remains on the wish list of most serious collectors, even while its price rises into the hundreds of dollars. For those who actually had a book budget during the Great Depression and spent a few bucks on this one, one can only imagine the hours, months, and years of pleasure it gave them. It still provides pleasure today, not only collector’s value.
Johnson, a 48-year old Chicago sportswriter and editor, was enlisted by a local publisher, Grover Buxton, to compile the definitive volume on the baseball “family,” such as it was, in 1932.
So comparatively innocent was the game, even the word baseball would occasionally appear as “base ball” in this book, a style which had really vanished two decades earlier. With reverence associated with the period, Judge Landis was called the “High Commissioner of Baseball.” Along with the distinguished league presidents, it was written in this volume, “May the same trio continue to pilot the national game for many years to come.”
Not surprisingly, the league offices were a great help in making the project a reality. In a pre-licensing era, when everything seemed to be “official,” this project was sanctioned by all 16 teams, who cooperated with its development, even though it was an independent, for-profit publishing venture.
Buxton and Speed Johnson (whose nickname was bestowed by old-time Chicago “Black Sox” manager “Kid” Gleason, after speedy Phillies outfielder Sherry Magee), conjured up a book project under which everyone who came into Chicago during the 1932 season – players, executives, umpires, trainers, writers, announcers, coaches, and more – would fill out questionnaires, and sit for a studio-lit photo session at a makeshift studio in the team hotel.
At the Del Prado, the Knickerbocker, the Parkway, the Southmoor, the Sutherland, the Auditorium, and Carolan, the Windermere, the Belmont and the Chicago Beach Hotels, officials permitted the studio of Moffett-Russell to set up the kind of lighting conditions Hollywood photographers were using for stars like Chaplain, Barrymore and Harlow.
With Johnson and Buxton following the schedules of the White Sox and the Cubs, arrangements were made with the team managers and executives to get the players to file in for the photo shoots. It is hard to imagine such cooperation today. (“Rickey, make sure you’re groomed and dressed and in the lobby no later than 10:30.”)
One by one, every player entered the room. The ace photographer was Jimmy Iovino, shooting each player four times (six for managers and team officials!). More than 2,300 exposures were created between April 10 and May 25, a monumental task.
The Cubs were shot at Wrigley Field, the White Sox at the various hotels they lived in during the season. Umpires posed at the ballparks. Only one unidentified ballplayer chose not to be photographed.
It wasn’t Babe Ruth. He dutifully showed up at the Del Prado with his Yankee teammates, looking handsome in his suit and tie, his hair slicked back. Like all the players, he filled out his questionnaire: Born: Baltimore, Md. Feb. 7, 1894. Throws and bats lefthanded. Height 6 feet 2 inches. Black hair. Brown eyes. Weight 220. Nationality, American of German extraction. Married. Has two adopted daughters. Home address: 345 West 88th Street, New York City, N.Y.
Imagine the players filling in their home addresses for publication. (Dolph Luque: Calle Sitos, 29, Havana, Cuba).
All the players posed in suits and ties. It was an all-white game, a fact few book purchasers may have even pondered. The players looked more mature than they did in uniform, with each given a full page and a 450-word biography, and year-by-year stats. In some cases, beat writers contributed the bios, but apparently Johnson wrote most of them.
As you would imagine, the biographies, as was the style of the day, are heroic and filled with hero worship.
Of Babe Herman: “Herman is married and a devoted family man, the father of two charming children. He handles his finances skillfully and is a foxy salesman of his own talents. Babe is generally regarded as a swell golfer and each winter finds him scorching the magnificent courses of Southern California.”
Of “Huck” Betts, a Boston Braves pitcher (who appears to be wearing a suit for the first time), it is written, “Betts provides a sterling example of an earnest young man, toiling diligently at his chosen profession until he became a topnotcher by dint of application and perseverence.” {sic}.
In the publishers’ statement on page 11, Buxton wrote “You will be pleased to see these heroes of our great national game as they appear in real life. We know that many of you will be surprised, as you look into the faces of these men whom you have always seen in uniform. They are a clean, healthy bunch of fellows, far above the average in intelligence and personal appearance.”
It was true about personal appearance; all are handsomely groomed, even “Old Stubblebeard,” Burleigh Grimes, nearly 40, who looks like he could be your family pediatrician.
Team officials appear, four or five to a page, with bios, and we get our first look at Phil Wrigley (home address 2466 Lake View Ave., Chicago), the new owner of the Cubs, as well as such great names as Connie Mack, Branch Rickey, Jacob Ruppert, John McGraw, (by now, a Giants Vice President), Bill Veeck Sr., Clark Griffith, Ed Barrow, Frank Navin, and Tom Yawkey.
Charles Comiskey of the White Sox had died in 1931; William Wrigley of the Cubs in ’32. Both are given grand opening portraits and biographies.
In the players section, we meet Walter Johnson, Waite Hoyt, Carl Hubbell, Gabby Hartnett, Rogers Hornsby, Dizzy Dean, Lou Gehrig, (“Lives with parents a 9 Meadow Lane, New Rochelle, N.Y.”), Lefty Grove, Charlie Gehringer, Hank Greenberg, Earle Combs, Pepper Martin, Pie Traynor, and so many more immortal names.
There is a coaching section, featuring Casey Stengel in a light-colored suit, and even an old-timers section with names like Wagner, Mathewson, and Young.
The sportswriters section features five per page, with bios, and include many of the greats of the time, like John Carmichael, Shirley Povich, Harry Salsinger, Joe Williams, Grantland Rice, Frank Graham, John B. Foster, Hugh Fullerton, Arch Ward, Dan Daniel and Taylor Spink.
Radio announcers include the early pioneers of the medium, like Hal Totten, Arch McDonald, Ty Tyson, Ted Husing, Graham McNamee, Bob Elson, and a young man with bushy red hair named Walter (Red) Barber.
The book contains 544 pages. Buxton and Johnson followed it up with an smaller (6×9) edition from 1935 to 1937, before the project was taken over by John Carmichael. But these were versions lacking the full baseball “family” and the players never did anything so ambitious as the photo sessions to recreate the special feeling of the original version. They do not hold nearly the value nor place in collector’s hearts that the 1933 version does.
How many exist today? Probably fewer than 100, few with dust jackets. Each player apparently received his own copy with a different cover and his name engraved. Those versions are very seldom seen. The general public versions have been sold for as much as $600.
As a period piece for early ‘30s baseball, when the game was filled with names we now think of as immortal, there are few volumes that provide such a loving look at the game’s simpler times. And few books have been so ambitious in plan, and delivered so fully.
Imagine getting all those players to pose and fill in their home addresses, without any fee or licensing agreement, without any agents or royalties. What an easier world it was then.