Youngstown Ohio Works

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Youngstown Ohio Works (1906), with pitcher Roy Castleton seated in second row, second from left
Youngstown Ohio Works (1906), with pitcher Roy Castleton seated in second row, second from left

The Youngstown Ohio Works baseball team was a minor league club that was known for winning the premier championship of the Ohio–Pennsylvania League in 1905,[1] and for launching the professional career of pitcher Roy Castleton a year later.[2] A training ground for several players and officials who later established careers in Major League Baseball, the team proved a formidable regional competitor and also won the 1906 league championship.

During its brief span of activity, the Ohio Works team faced challenges that reflected common difficulties within the Ohio-Pennsylvania League, including weak financial support for teams.[3] Following a dispute over funding, the team's owners sold the club to outside investors, just a few months before the opening of the 1907 season.[4]

The club's strong record and regional visibility spurred the growth of amateur and minor league baseball in the Youngstown area, and the community's minor league teams produced notable players throughout the first half of the 20th century.[5] In the late 1990s, this tradition was rekindled, with the establishment of the Mahoning Valley Scrappers, a minor league team based in neighboring Niles, Ohio.[6]

Contents

[edit] Formation and league championship

O - P League Champions (1905)
O - P League Champions (1905)

The Ohio Works team was organized in Youngstown, in 1902, under the sponsorship of Joseph A. McDonald, superintendent of the Ohio Works of the Carnegie Steel Company.[7] In 1905, the club joined the Class C Division, Ohio-Pennsylvania League, which was founded that year in Akron, Ohio, by veteran ballplayer Charlie Morton.[8] The league's Ohio members included clubs from Akron, Barberton, Bucyrus, Canton, Kent, Lima, Massillon, Mount Vernon, Newark, Niles, Steubenville, Washington, Wooster, Youngstown, and Zanesville, while Pennsylvania was initially represented by teams from Braddock, Butler, Homestead, and Sharon. Within the first two weeks of the season, clubs from Lancaster and McKeesport also joined the league. Only 10 of the original 21 participating clubs finished the 1905 season, however.[4] The name, "Youngstown Ohio Works", became officially associated with the Youngstown team when it joined the Ohio–Pennsylvania League.[9] From the outset, the Youngstown ball club was managed by ex-major leaguer Marty Hogan, a former outfielder for the Cincinnati Reds and St. Louis Browns.[8]

The team opened the 1905 season with an unexpected 4–1 loss to the Canton Protectives, inspiring a local newspaper to comment that the Youngstown team made "as many errors as hits while Canton fielded almost perfectly and hit opportunely".[10] The Ohio Works club gained steam, however, and began to win games. On May 11, 1905, the Youngstown team garnered controversy when The Akron Times-Democrat reported that the Ohio Works' sponsors provided player salaries that nearly doubled those offered by other clubs in the Ohio–Pennsylvania League.[11] In a report on the outcry in Akron, The Youngstown Daily Vindicator warned that, "if the Youngstown backers keep adding and force the other clubs to add to the salaries, it is a question of only a short time until independent baseball will be an impossibility".[11] The newspaper article concluded that the large salaries provided by the Ohio Works's sponsors placed a special burden on teams based in "smaller cities".[11]

Competition among league participants was intense, and games were often raucous affairs. On July 16, 1905, a riot broke out during a contest with a team in neighboring Niles, Ohio. According to a newspaper account, the trouble began when two female fans became involved in a "hair-pulling fight". At one point, two "well-known men" were arrested for "taking an umbrella from a woman and breaking it after she had been annoying them with it". Finally, dozens of fans swarmed into the field, where they "pushed around the umpire and interfered with the defensive play of the Youngstown fielders".[12]

In September 1905, the Youngstown Ohio Works won the first league championship, though sources disagree on the club's final record. This confusion may be due to the disorganized nature of the new league, with its sprawling roster of teams.[1] According to the Spalding Guide (1906), "The failure to furnish official reports was probably due to the clubs being new to a league".[13] Baseball researcher Jim Holl summarizes the varied accounts as follows: "The Reach Guide (1906) credits Youngstown with an 84–32 won–lost record where the Spalding Guide of the same year list a 90–35 record. The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball (1993) tells a third story, giving Youngstown an 88–35 mark".[1] Despite this uncertainty over the club's record, its championship status was not in dispute, and the team became popularly known as "the Champs".[14] This moniker, however, was not officially connected to a Youngstown-based ball club until 1907, when it became the legal name of the Ohio Works' local successors.[9]

[edit] Final season

Roy Castleton
Roy Castleton

By the outset of the 1906 season, the Ohio–Pennsylvania League had trimmed down to a more manageable eight teams. Departing teams included franchises from Barberton, Braddock, Bucyrus, Butler, Canton, Homestead, Kent, Lima, Massillon, McKeesport, Mount Vernon, Niles, Steubenville, Washington, and Wooster. At the same time, the league attracted new teams from New Castle, Pennsylvania, and Mansfield, Ohio.[2]

Early in the season, as the Ohio Works team prepared for a second game with the Zanesville Moguls (close rivals in the 1905 championship games),[13] the club manager, Hogan, spoke confidently on their chances of capturing the league pennant. "If the boys go through the season as they are playing now, we will have no trouble winning out", he said to a reporter with The Youngstown Daily Vindicator. "Our pitchers are in good condition and are holding the opposing batsmen to few hits. It is the pitching staff that has saved many a game for us. We have no .350 batters on the club, but any man on it is liable to step in and break up a game".[14] A local newspaper confirmed Hogan's assessment of the team, observing that only one player, outfielder Will Thomas, had worked up a batting average of .306.[15] Nevertheless, as Hogan predicted, the team defeated the Moguls, with a final score of 11–8. The game's highlights included the pitching of "Long John" Kennedy, who kept the Moguls to seven hits, and the batting of Edward Hilley, who "unloosened a drive to middle field that permitted him to go all the way around".[16]

Hogan's overall confidence in the club was rewarded. The Youngstown team closed the season with an 84–53 record and won its second consecutive Ohio–Pennsylvania League championship.[4] The star of the Ohio Works team was a gangling, left-handed pitcher named Roy Castleton, a Utah native who went on to pitch for the New York Highlanders and Cincinnati Reds.[2] On August 17, 1906, Castleton gained national recognition when he pitched a perfect game against rival Akron, shutting them out at 4–0.[2] With Castleton's assistance, the Youngstown Ohio Works claimed its third consecutive Ohio state pennant, a prize distinct from the league championship.[17]

[edit] Dissolution

Zanesville Signal, February 18, 1907
Zanesville Signal, February 18, 1907

Despite the club's apparent success, disagreements over funding led to its sale and relocation. On February 18, 1907, the Zanesville Signal reported that Hogan had received permission from "the Messrs. McDonald" (Joseph McDonald and brother Thomas G. McDonald) to negotiate a $3,000 deal for the sale of the team, including its players, to a group of Zanesville investors.[18] The following day, Hogan was quoted as saying, "Youngstown couldn't or didn't raise enough money to cover a sparrow's blanket".[19]

The ball club manager's evident frustration during this period was reflected in comments published in The Youngstown Daily Vindicator almost a week after the team's sale. When questioned on his widely publicized decision to resign as manager of the Youngstown club before the opening of the 1907 season, Hogan reportedly said that he had received "the short end of the deal".[20] No reference was made to the club's sale.[20]

The former Ohio Works manager was apparently not the only observer to suggest that Joseph McDonald engaged in "unsportsmanlike tactics".[21] A feature story, that appeared in The Youngstown Daily Vindicator in 1920, stated that McDonald took deliberate steps in 1907 to replace the Ohio Works team with a more seasoned club from Homestead, Pennsylvania.[21] The new club became known officially as the "Youngstown Champs".[9] Rumors of McDonald's supposed strategy apparently angered local baseball fans.[21] According to the 1920 feature article, the Youngstown media highlighted the Champs' unexpected loss to the amateur Rayen Athletics in 1907.[21] The Champs, however, went on to win the Ohio–Pennsylvania League championship, closing the season with an 86–52 record.[4]

Meanwhile, former Ohio Works players in Zanesville struggled to regain their previous momentum. At the close of the 1907 season, the Zanesville club placed a lackluster third in the eight-team Pennsylvania-Ohio-Maryland League, a Division D league that enjoyed far less prestige than the Ohio–Pennsylvania League.[22] In 1908, Hogan's final season as manager, the team was christened as the Zanesville Infants and joined the Central League.[23] Further research is needed to determine the Zanesville Infants' league ranking at the close of the 1908 season, but available information shows that the team neither won the championship nor placed as a runner-up.[23]

With the notable exception of Castleton, the progress of former Ohio Works players is difficult to track. Much is known about their ex-manager's subsequent career, however. In 1909, Hogan moved to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he signed future Hall of Fame pitcher Stan Coveleski to his first professional contract.[24] In 1909, the Lancaster Red Roses worked up a 75-39 record,[25] seizing the championship of the Tri-State League.[26] As Spalding's Baseball Guide (1910) reported: "Lancaster, under manager Marty Hogan, won its first pennant in the league, and the top rung of the ladder was only gained by the hardest kind of fighting".[26] The following year, however, the Red Roses' performance fell short of the previous season when it placed second, with 63 wins and 47 losses.[27] Then, in 1911, Hogan's last year as manager of the Lancaster team, the club placed a disappointing fourth in the eight-team league,[27] with 54 wins and losses, respectively.[25]

Hogan went on to manage clubs in Zanesville and Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin.[28]. In 1913, during a stint in Zanesville, the manager signed pitcher Sam Jones to his first professional contract.[24] Apart from such highlights, however, Hogan's later career as a minor league baseball manager proved uneven when compared to his record as manager of the Youngstown Ohio Works. In the mid-1910s, he permanently resettled in Youngstown, where he helped to organize the Youngstown Gun Club and became athletic director of Thomas Field, a ballpark owned by the local Brier Hill Industrial Works. Hogan died in Youngstown in 1923, several months after being injured in an automobile accident.[29]

[edit] Legacy

Youngstown, Ohio
Youngstown, Ohio

The Youngstown Ohio Works team not only gave pitcher Roy Castleton a prized "shot" at the major leagues, but it also played an indirect role in launching the career of Hall of Fame umpire Billy Evans. On September 1, 1903, Evans, a reporter at The Youngstown Daily Vindicator, was assigned to cover a game between the Ohio Works and the Homestead Library Athletic Club that was held in Youngstown. Evans took his first step toward a legendary career when club manager Hogan offered him $15 to fill an umpire vacancy.[30] (In 1905, Evans received a major career boost from Youngstown native Jimmy McAleer, who recommended Evans to the American League.)[30]

The story of the Ohio Works team proved to be an early chapter in Youngstown's long history of amateur and minor league baseball. In the 1930s and 1940s, the city was a frequent host of the National Amateur Baseball Federation (NABF) championship. NABF officials praised the community for the condition of its sandlot baseball diamonds, which they rated as among the best in the country.[31] During the first half of the 20th century, Youngstown-based teams provided experience and exposure to future major league players such as Everett Scott,[32] Floyd Baker, and Johnny Kucab.[5] Today, the Youngstown–Warren area is home base to the Mahoning Valley Scrappers, a minor league team that competes in the Class A New York–Penn League.[6]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c Holl, Jim. Ohio-Pennsylvania League of 1905. Society for American Baseball Research. Retrieved on 2007-03-04.
  2. ^ a b c d Lammers, Craig. Roy Castleton. Society for American Baseball Research. Retrieved on 2007-03-08.
  3. ^ Spalding's Official Athletic Library Baseball Guide (New York: American Sports Publishing Co., 1910), p. 217.
  4. ^ a b c d Ohio-Pennsylvania League. Baseball Reference. Retrieved on 2007-10-10.
  5. ^ a b Landolf, Charles A.. "Youngstown Once Main Link in Minor League Loop Baseball Chain", The Youngstown Vindicator, April 1, 1977, p. 26. 
  6. ^ a b Mahoning Valley Scrappers Web site. Mahoning Valley Scrappers. Retrieved on 2007-03-08.
  7. ^ "Baseball Bits: Regard Them as Champions", The Youngstown Daily Vindicator, May 3, 1905. 
  8. ^ a b Spalding's Official Athletic Library Baseball Guide (New York: American Sports Publishing Co., 1906), p. 288.
  9. ^ a b c Filchia, Peter (1993). Professional Baseball Franchises: From the Abbeville Athletics to the Zanesville Indians. New York: Facts on File, p. 258. 
  10. ^ "Defeated: Ohio Works Lost Its First Game of the Season to Canton", The Youngstown Daily Vindicator, May 3, 1905. 
  11. ^ a b c "They Scream: Akron Believes Youngstown Will Kill the Independent Game", The Youngstown Daily Vindicator, May 11, 1905. 
  12. ^ "A Century of Sports: The Mahoning and Shenango Valleys", The Vindicator, April 11, 1999, p. D-6. 
  13. ^ a b Spalding's Official Athletic Library Baseball Guide (New York: American Sports Publishing Co., 1906), p. 289.
  14. ^ a b "Champs Back: They Returned from Zanesville on Early Morning Train", The Youngstown Vindicator, June 19, 1906. 
  15. ^ "Fielding Is Improved; Batting Not So Strong", The Youngstown Vindicator, June 25, 1906. 
  16. ^ "Moguls Were Swamped; Champs Had Many Hits", The Youngstown Vindicator, June 21, 1906. 
  17. ^ "Hogan Is Popular Here; Fans Glad He Returned", The Youngstown Vindicator, October 14, 1906. 
  18. ^ "Franchise, Team and Marty Hogan are Coming Here", The Zanesville Signal, February 18, 1907, p. 1. 
  19. ^ "Zanesville Has Them Guessing; Marty Hogan Says He's Glad to Be Located in This City", The Zanesville Signal, February 19, 1907, p. 1. 
  20. ^ a b "Why Hogan Withdrew", The Youngstown Vindicator, February 24, 1907. 
  21. ^ a b c d "Youngstown's Old Circus Grounds", The Youngstown Vindicator, May 2, 1920. 
  22. ^ Pennsylvania-Ohio-Maryland League. Baseball Reference. Retrieved on 2007-12-08.
  23. ^ a b Central League. BallParkWatch. Retrieved on 2007-03-12.
  24. ^ a b Lammers, Craig. Roy Castleton. Society for American Baseball Research. Retrieved on 2007-03-04.
  25. ^ a b 1906-1914: A Rose by Any Other Name. Lancaster County Historical Society. Retrieved on 2007-03-04.
  26. ^ a b Spalding's Official Athletic Library Baseball Guide (New York: American Sports Publishing Co., 1910), p. 181.
  27. ^ a b BR-Bullpen Page on Lancaster Red Roses. Baseball.Reference.com. Retrieved on 2007-08-17.
  28. ^ "Hogan to Manage Fond Du Lac Nine", The New York Times, July 20, 1913. 
  29. ^ "Death Takes Marty Hogan: Baseball Star Succumbs After Long Illness--Hurt in Auto Crash", The Youngstown Daily Vindicator, August 17, 1923. 
  30. ^ a b Baker, Jon. "In Valley's baseball history, Evans was an early scrapper", The Valley Voice, July 1, 2005, p. 27. 
  31. ^ Ward, Frank B.. "Along the Sports Rialto", The Youngstown Vindicator, September 16, 1946, p. 7. 
  32. ^ Lewis Everett "Deacon" Scott. 1918 Red Sox. Retrieved on 2008-01-31.

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