7. Art Smith. (1932)

In 1923, Lou Gehrig struck out 17 batters in a game pitching for Columbia University. Two years later, another two-sport athlete starred for the Lions on the mound. Art Smith was Columbia's ace during his time there, 1925 to 1928.

For the next few seasons, the Boston native pitched in the International League with the Jersey City Skeeters, the Montreal Royals, and the Toronto Maple Leafs. In early June of 1932, the Chicago White Sox, 16.5 games out of first place and coming off a brawl with an umpire which resulted in the suspension of a pitcher, came callin'. They sent a coupla Hals (McKain and Anderson) to Toronto, getting Smith in return.

Art made his major league debut on June 9th. He was the starting pitcher for Chicago at Comiskey park against the Washington Senators: six runs on eight hits and four walks over five innings, and a loss. At the plate, he struck out in what would turn out to be his only major league at bat.

Art Smith would appear in two more big league games, his final one being a start on June 13th against the last-place Red Sox, in which he didn't make it out of the first inning. A newspaper article from June 20th said he'd get his third start, but for whatever reason, it never happened. He soon found himself back on the Toronto club. He finished 1932 with an 11-13 record for the Leafs. His lifetime ERA in seven major league innings was 11.57.

I don't see any references to Art Smith after 1934, when he returned to the Montreal Royals. There are some mentions of an Art Smith pitching for the semi-pro Paramount Cubs in 1943, when our Art would have been 37, so maybe he kept right on pitching.

Art Smith died in Norwalk, Connecticut, in 1995, at age 89.


Photo (which I still can't believe I dug up) from The New York Times, 4/8/1928, taken during Columbia's 12-6 loss to Manhattan College.


Previous Smiths: #6, #5, #4, #3, #2 & #1.

Labels: SOBs

6. "Broadway" Smith. (1897-1906)

It's a toss-up between Broadway and Phenomenal for coolest nickname for a Smith--but Broadway wins because Phenomenal was born with a different last name.

Alexander Smith was born in the 1870s in New York City. A Jewish ballplayer, rare at the time, he broke into the majors as a catcher for Brooklyn in 1897. He hit .300 in 66 games that year, and while that would be the most he'd play in any season, he was still playing in the majors as late as 1906, and kept playing semipro ball for another decade after that.

Most of his life was spent in New York, either on the ballfield, at the racetrack, or enjoying the nightlife. And that's how a guy at the turn of the last century came to be called "Broadway," well before Joe did.

Briefly, he was a member of the first World Champions, the 1903 Boston American League squad, now known as the Red Sox. And after playing only 11 games for the Cubs in 1904, and missing all of the 1905 season (he seemed to be plagued with arm injuries), he signed with the New York Giants in 1906, but not before nearly killing a young boy with a line drive during a March tryout in Memphis.

In 1907, there was more controversy. A Washington Post article said: "'Broadway Alec' Smith, well known in sporting circles the country over, in future will not be permitted to visit race tracks under the control of the Jockey Club." The New York Times, referring to him as "Broadway Alex," added that the Saratoga Racing Committee decided that Smith's "acquaintance with and influence over certain jockeys was detrimental to the interests of racing." Broadway claimed innocence, saying he only spent time with jockeys for billiards, bowling, and occasional "surf bathing." He had again trained with the Giants that spring, and had quit the team after winning a bundle at the track and deciding to make that his full-time job.

I can't find any more on the racing incident, but Broadway was still making it into the New York Times in 1910, listed in the billiards results--referred to here as "Broadway Alec."

The big baseball sites (Retrosheet, Baseball Reference, etc.) currently refer to him as Aleck. However, most of the articles from a hundred years ago call him Alec or Alex. His New York Times obituary, which mentions racing and his friendship with manager John McGraw, is titled, "Broadway Alex Smith Dead." (He died at his home...on Broadway.) So where does "Aleck" come from? I have found articles talking about a golfer from the same era named "Aleck Smith." I really wonder if this is where it came from. My thought is that he was mainly referred to as Broadway Alex. But there are enough instances of "Alec" to make one wonder. How the current sites decided on "Aleck" is anyone's guess.

Two team photos featuring Broadway, including the smaller one shown here, can be found here. A bio with another pic (which is where the larger shot at the top of this post comes from) can be found here, with credit to Frank Russo of The Deadball Era.

The Oswego Daily Palladium, July 10th, 1919, said this in Broadway's obituary:

"An athletic heart was given as the cause of his death, brought on by strenuous activity on the ball field in almost every State in the Union. He was born in New York forty-six years ago." The technical cause of death was his chronic myocarditis. And my math tells me he would've been born in 1873, though it's listed everywhere as 1871. Either way, he died too young.

This note in the Oswego Daily Times from 6/6/6 (June 6th, 1906) really says it all about Broadway:




Previous Smiths: #5, #4, #3, #2 & #1.

Labels: SOBs

5. Al "Fuzzy" Smith. (1953-1964)

In this grainy old newspaper photograph, Al Smith is seen among his White Sox mates, posing for a picture after winning the team's first pennant in 40 years. In the background, another player is seen tilting a can of beer over Smith's head in celebration. This photo of a jubilant Smith should be his legacy. He came from the Cleveland Buckeyes of the Negro Leagues, was traded to the White Sox by the Indians, and was booed simply because he replaced fan-favorite Minnie Minoso--but ended up hitting a home run against his old team to help clinch the pennant down the stretch.

The White Sox would go on to lose the World Series that year, 1959, to the newly transplanted Dodgers. And Al Smith would be remembered for getting beer dumped on his head, but not in celebration. In Game Two, as he chased a Charley Neal fly ball to the outfield fence, a beverage was knocked off the ledge as fans went for the souvenir. This moment was captured by two different photographers, and became one, or two, of the most famous baseball images ever.

But I prefer to remember Al in the moment justice was served for him. I found an article from July of '59 in which the writer (who consistently calls Al "Smitty," not "Fuzzy") talks about how he'd already turned the crowd in his favor by then with his clutch hitting. After not being allowed to play in the big leagues due to his skin color, and then being booed for something that wasn't his fault, nobody deserved to have a celebratory beverage poured on his head that year more than Al Smith. And nobody deserved to have it spilled on him by accident less.

To make sure fans stayed on his side, Bill Veeck held an "Al Smith" night in August of that pennant-winning season. According to Wikipedia, anyone named Smith, Smythe, Schmidt or Smithe was let in for free and given a button that read, "I'm a Smith and I'm for Al."

For his career, Al ended up with a .272 average and 164 homers over 12 seasons, and was a fine outfielder. He played in two World Series ('59 and in 1954 with Cleveland), and three All-Star games, and once finished third in the AL MVP voting. He finished his career with a brief stint in Boston, where he wore #28 for the Red Sox, which had been worn by Riverboat Smith eight years earlier. #41 and #48 were also worn by two Red Sox named Smith.

Al Smith died in 2002 at age 73. Below, Smitty in the visitors' clubhouse at Fenway Park in 1954 (bottom right). (courtesy of Corbis)




Previous Smiths: #4, #3, #2 & #1.

Labels: SOBs

4. Al Smith. (1926)


The most intriguing players in the Baseball Encyclopedia are the guys who only played in one game. On June 15th, 1926, the New York Giants signed 22-year old right-handed pitcher Al Smith, who'd just helped Villanova University to a 19-3 record under head coach Charles McGeehan. He wasn't the only college boy to be picked up by the Giants. On June 19th, 1926, The New York Times' Harry Cross wrote of the previous day's New York-Pittsburgh game:


The game took on a decidedly intercollegiate atmosphere before the afternoon was over. John McGraw just at present has a decided complex for the educated ball player. The Polo Grounds is all cluttered up with young men who can scan Greek verse, throw a problem in calculus, tear off a bit of Sanscrit or tell you just what's wrong with the universe. But are they also baseball wise? That's the riddle. Pete Cote, just out of Holy Cross, went in as a pinch hitter on his first day with the club. Al Smith, who took curving the baseball as part of his curriculum at Villanova, pitched a couple of innings. Neither of the students had his mind completely off his books.


Smith pitched the seventh and eighth against the defending World Champion Pirates that day, giving up two runs and four hits, and walking two. (Boxscore pictured.) He was pinch-hit for in the bottom of the eighth by Travis "Stonewall" Jackson, who was making his return from a month-long absence to due a "wounded knee." Jackson would play another decade, eventually being voted into the Hall of Fame. Al Smith would never play in another major league game.

Smith was one of several players given a brief chance by McGraw that June, before being thrown on the scrap heap. The captain of Al's Villanova team, Joe Connell, appeared in two games for New York, too, and Pete Cote only played in one more after the game described above. The '26 Giants, two years removed from winning four straight pennants, would quickly fall out of the race, finishing in the second division for just the second time in the modern era. They wouldn't win another league title until another Al Smith came along.


Al K. Smith died 13 years ago, at the age of 91, in San Diego, California.

Previous Smiths: #3, #2 & #1.

Labels: SOBs

3. Al Smith. (1934-1945)

The October 12th, 1936 issue of Time magazine states*:

Feeblest of the Giant pitchers was Alfred J. ("Al") Smith. When he had failed to retire three of the four batters to whom he pitched in the third inning, a spectator squealed: "Take out Al Smith and put in Roosevelt."

FDR was president at the time, but had been governor of New York a few years earlier, succeeding the politician Al Smith. I've read enough of these old articles to surmise that either the writers invented witty quips by baseball fans who happened to be within earshot, or crowds were as creative with their heckling back then as writers were with their descriptions.

But the ballplayer, Alfred John Smith, had a fine 12-year career, despite giving up a grand slam to Tony Lazzeri in the blowout that was game two of the '36 subway series mentioned above.

He pitched to a winning record with an ERA around the league average in his four years with the Giants--leading the NL with 4 shoutouts in 1936--before being sold to the Cardinals in December 1937. Later that month, the Phillies claimed him off waivers. After a horrible 1938 campaign, he spent much of 1939 nursing a sore arm with Buffalo of the International League. Cleveland picked him up that September, and he turned in a fine 1940 season, going 15-7 with a 3.34 ERA, and helping his own cause at the plate hitting over .300 in 62 at bats. He would be a staple of the Indians' starting rotation for the next five years. His best season was 1943, when he made the All-Star team and even scored some MVP votes, and finished 17-7 with a 2.55 ERA.

Al never got a World Series ring, his Giants losing to the Yanks in '36 and '37, and getting knocked out of the NL pennant race by the rival Dodgers in the penultimate game of his rookie year, 1934. Young Al pitched in the ninth against Brooklyn on September 29th, but only hurt his team's cause in front of a pro-Dodger crowd at the Polo Grounds. (The linked book also mentions presidential heckling, this time citing fans asking if Herbert Hoover would be coming into the game. Maybe they weren't being creative, but totally obvious. Maybe things haven't changed too much after all.) Then in 1940, his Indians lost the AL pennant to the Tigers in the final series of the season, in a game that saw Birdie Tebbets get knocked out by a basket of tomatoes, but was later allowed by police to punch the fan that dropped it on him!

But Smith was one of the pitchers who put a halt to Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak in 1941. In three plate appearances against Al in game 57, Joe walked and hit two stinging grounders, both famously fielded by Ken Keltner. And a year after his rancid performance in the '36 World Series, he fared much better against the Yanks in '37, though the first batter he faced, Lazzeri, took him deep again. He got a third shot at Lazzeri, and drilled him.

It looked like Al might have a shot to stay with Cleveland after 1945, but with lots of players returning from World War II, he found himself out of baseball for good. His final line is very Even Steven: An ERA of 3.72, right about at the league average, the same number of walks as strikeouts (587), and had one more of his losses been a win, his career record would've been 100 wins, 100 losses.

Al was born in Bellesville, Illinois--Brian Daubach was also born there--and died in Brownsville, Texas in 1977 at age 69. He was cremated. Uniform numbers worn: 14, 18, 21, 27, 32.

This is the latest installment in my ongoing series, The Smiths of Baseball. Note: I planned on doing several Smiths per post, but I think the players with long careers will get their own post.


*With the good of those old articles, comes the bad of the racism contained within. The first paragraph talks about the guy who waited 12 days, first on line for World Series tickets, noting that food was brought to him by a "colored friend" whom he refused to be photographed with. Terrible job.

[Bonus section, 6/4/08, 1:00 AM: I noticed that retrosheet has the next Al Smith on the list of Smiths (Alfred Kendricks Smith) as having been a coach for the Giants in 1933. (That Al only played one game, in 1926.) While looking into that, I found articles that proved that the 1933 Giants' "coach" named Al Smith was actually Alfred John Smith, i.e. the guy who the above post is about. He pitched for the Giants in spring training in 1933, but then was converted to "coach" to keep the roster at the league maximum of 23, as reported by the New York TImes on May 14th, 1933. For the rest of the season, Al would only pitch in exhibition games, including a 9-3 win over Sing-Sing on September 25th. (In front of a crowd of 2,000 inmates!) He even made the 1933 World Championship team photo, listed as a "pitcher." (see pic) Then he started his career for real the following season on May 5th, 1934. Other articles I found from '33 refer to Al as being from "sidewalks of Kansas City" and "the plains of Kansas." So I guess he grew up in...Kansas City, Kansas? And not Bellesville, Illinois, where he was born. Anyway, I've contacted retrosheet about their mistake, as is my tradition, so you don't have to lose any sleep over it.]

Labels: SOBs

On May 18th, 1871, 30-year old Charles J. "Charlie" Smith of the National Association's New York Mutuals stepped onto the Haymakers' Grounds, a baseball field in Troy, New York. This marked the first time a person named Smith would play in a professional, major league baseball game.*

On October 28th, 2007, Seth Smith made the final out of the World Series in Denver, Colorado, marking the most recent time a Smith was in action.

In the one hundred thirty-six years and five months in between, 140 other people named Smith--all male, but hopefully that will change in our lifetime--have appeared in major league games. Why do I care? Because my last name is Smith.

So, welcome to a new series here on ARSFFPT. A 20-something-or-more-parter called "The Smiths of Baseball."

I'll be presenting them alphabetically over the next few, uh, we'll say...months? There will also be a wrap-up of Smiths who played in the Negro Leagues, but never got to play in the American or National League.

Note: When my laptop's hard drive died, I lost a lot of research I was doing for this project. Pictures, stories, stats that had special meaning, etc. I was working on ranking the 142 Smiths in order from coolest to lamest, too. Now I have to do them alphabetically, and just find info on each guy as I get to him. But that'll make it easier, I think. I had also marked which ones had played for the Sox, and which had played for the Yanks. As I recall, the Sox have had way more Smiths. But we'll find that out at the end, when I'll do the totals.

Before we get to the A. Smiths, here are two Smiths who were only referred to as "Smith" in the record books:

1. Smith. (1884)

June 5th, 1884. The Baltimore Monumentals took on the Boston Reds at Baltimore's Belair Lot, it a Union Association matchup. Baltimore's starting pitcher that day was this unknown Smith. It would be his one and only game. He went six innings, getting a no-decision in a 15-12 defeat. He also singled in five at bats that day. (It should be noted that there was an Ed Smith on the Baltimore team who played in nine games. This unknown Smith could just be Ed, listed only as Smith for this one game.)

2. Smith. (1886)

This unknown Smith also appeared in just one game, and was also a starting pitcher. He played for the Cincinnati Red Stockings (today's Cincinnati Reds) of the American Association. His day in the sun was May 31st, 1886--game one of a doubleheader against two different teams. Smith took the loss in an 8-6 defeat to the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers at Brooklyn's Washington Park. He also singled in four at bats. The article and boxscore of the game--along with Brooklyn's second game that day--are here. (Click "view full article for PDF.) According to the article, Brooklyn "used their bats vigorously at times." Poor Smith. I also like how doubleheaders in the pre-lights days were morning and afternoon. And that boxscore shows three wild pitches by Smith, which retrosheet does not show. (I thought this guy might be "Mike Smith," who pitched in nine games later that year for the Red Stockings, but this article from 9/11/1886 talks about Mike Smith being a new pitcher from the Southern League. So the unknown Smith from May is definitely a different guy.) (And you'll also see that retrosheet's game log shows Mike Smith as the pitcher for the 5/31 game as well as the September games. That's wrong, and yes, I e-mailed them and they said they'd correct it on their next big update next summer. So you need not e-mail them, ha. If you add up Mike Smith's stats, it all adds up, they only messed it up in the game log.)


*MLB doesn't consider the National Association a major league, though it was a professional league. Then again, there were also other supposedly "professional" games played before and during 1871. I'm going by the players listed by Retrosheet (and the other usual literature: BR, Almanac, Cube, Roylance, Spates Catalogue, Tobin's Spirit Guide--all of whom are vital to this project, by the way), which includes NA (1871-1875), NL (1876-present), American Association (1882-1891) Union Association (1884), Players League (1890), AL (1901-present), and Federal League (1914-1915).

Of course, there are also other pro leagues around the world. A Japanese or Cuban team could kick the butt of an MLB team on any given day, but, we really don't have access to all those records and besides, there probably haven't been a lot of Smiths in those leagues.

Final note: I'm doing this in a fun way, not in a "we are the sacred Smiths, we will destroy you!" way. Hopefully you'll enjoy just learning about the players, and will want to do this for your own name on your own blog or whatever. (It should be much easier for you than it will be for me, provided you're not a Williams or a Jones or a Johnson, and especially if you're a Cvengros.)

Labels: SOBs