From the desk: JOHN W. CONNOR'S REVENGE
On Sunday, September 25, 1921, the Bacharach Giants of Atlantic City defeated their rival, the Hilldale Club of Darby, Pennsylvania, at Ebbets Field, Brooklyn.
The visitors finally breakthrough with two runs in the fourth, but the Bacharachs answer in the bottom half of the frame with three. In their next at-bat, Hilldale scores knotting the game at three. After a quiet sixth, the Bacharach Giants take a 4-3 lead in the seventh. Cannonball makes it stand, closing out the game with four scoreless frames.
All told, Dick Redding holds Hilldale to three runs on ten hits and five walks with four strikeouts for the win. Center fielder
Otto Briggs (3) and shortstop
Bill Francis (2) account for half of Hilldale's ten hits, while first baseman
Toussaint Allen goes 2 for 4 with a double and registers a game-high eleven putouts. Meanwhile, Redding holds future Hall of Famers
Louis Santop and
Judy Johnsonhitless in nine at-bats.
Hilldale starter Phil Cockrell in a tightly contested loss, allows four runs on ten hits and two walks with four strikeouts. Center fielder
Jesse Barber leads the Bacharach Giants with three hits, including a double and a run scored, first baseman
Bill Pettus goes 2 for 4 with a triple, and second baseman
Sam Mongin wields two hits in two trips.
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Background: Why, JOHN W. CONNOR'S REVENGE? Mr. Connor, in 1904/1905, founded the Brooklyn Royal Giants. To John Connor's great dissatisfaction, booking games ultimately meant dealing with the East's preeminent booking agent, Nat Strong. The two maintained a contentious relationship from hello. Yet by the end of the decade, Nat Strong is officially listed as the Royal Giant's official business manager. By 1913, John Connor, for stated reasons, decides to step away from baseball, leaving (selling) complete control of the Brooklyn Royal Giants in the hands of Nat Strong. A debate remains whether Connor exited for stated reasons or was he effectively pushed out by Nat Strong.
The Atlantic City Bacharach Giants were formed in 1916, but they found themselves in financial straits within a few years. They needed an investor and found one in John W. Connor, who decided he wanted back into the game. By 1919 he and a partner are bankrolling the team and begin raiding rosters of the Brooklyn Royal Giants and Lincoln Giants. But Mr. Connor knows to generate profits, they'll need to invade New York City, Nat Strong's territory, where he wields control over almost all the main baseball venues. Strong, in alliance with the owners of the Lincoln Giants, conspire together to keep such Negro competition outside the New York City limits.
John Connor's ace up his leave is Charles H. Ebbets, co-owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers. During the earlier years of the Brooklyn Royal Giants, Charles Ebbets negotiated with Mr. Connor to let the Royal Giants play at Washington Park. Their acquaintance endured, and Ebbets once again pledged availability of his ballpark to the Bacharach Giants. In turn, John Connor's aggregation was in complete control of booking their own games and doing so on Nat Strong's turf. It's a saga unto itself.
