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Jiggs McGee · 08-16-2021, 02:52 PM

THIS WEEK IN FIGMENT BASEBALL

May 16, 1938

CHIEFS SLOW DOWN DYNAMOS

The biggest surprise in FABL so far this season has been the Detroit Dynamos. A Federal Association punching bag the last few years, the Dynamos seemed to turn a corner last August with a strong finish and picked up in April right where they left off. Detroit had not lost a series yet this season but that streak came to an end when the equally hot Chicago Chiefs invaded Thompson Field this past weekend. The Dynamos entered the 3 game set with a 17-7 record, good for a half game lead on the second place Chiefs but when the weekend came to an end Chicago had regained top spot by taking two of three from the suddenly relevant Dynamos.

The weekend started fine for Detroit as the Dynamos, returning home after 4 straight victories in Boston and Philadelphia, took the series opener by a 7-3 count thanks to a strong effort by Cleveland cast-off Roger Perry (2-1, 3.44) on the mound and the hitting of Ed Stewart (.295,7,26) and another former Forester in Leon Drake (.333,3,15). Stewart is one of the many new additions to a power laden Detroit lineup. Acquired from Pittsburgh in exchange for pitching prospect Ray McCarthy over the winter, it was expected Stewart would bring middle infield power to the Dynamos and he has not disappointed as his 7 homers to date tie him for second place in FABL, trailing only teammate and rising superstar Sal Pestilli (.313,8,16).

Unfortunately for Detroit fans, the Chicago Chiefs have something the Dynamos are still lacking - an ace pitcher. Well, Chicago actually has 3 of them and two, both ex-Gothams, put their talents on display over the weekend to halt, at least temporarily, the Detroit charge. On Saturday it was the incomparable Rabbit Day (5-1, 3.10) who went to work in a 6-2 victory to pull Chicago back to within a half game of the front-running Detroit nine. It was not Day's best effort of the season by any stretch - he did allow 14 hits- but he did what he normally does and limited the extra base knocks while consistently getting out of jams successfully and allowing his offense, which certainly rivals Detroit's in many aspects, to go to work.

On Sunday it was Jim Lonardo's turn. The 33 year old three-time Allan Award winner improved to 4-1 on the year with a big league leading 1.56 era as the Chiefs blasted Detroit 8-1 to move back into the Federal Association lead. Lonardo's success must have Gothams fans at their wits end as they watch their club continue to look like a mediocre AAA team and one can't help but think that Lonardo's departure to Chicago is perhaps the most one-sided trade in New York since the Indians sold the island of Manhattan for $25 worth of trinkets and beads.

FORESTERS FIRE

Just a couple of weeks ago many were thinking that age was finally catching up to the Cleveland Foresters. The club was 5-7 in April and players like Charlie Berry and T.R. Goins were struggling. However, as the calendar turned to May so did the Foresters fortunes. Roy Bradley is hardly an aging veteran but the 28 year old who came over from Washington prior to the 1937 season got the club turned around with a walk-off homer in the 12th inning to beat the Philadelphia Sailors. Neither Bradley, who entered that game hitting just .222 or the Foresters have slowed down since. Bradley has hit .394 in 15 May games and went 14-for-30 last week to earn the nod as CA player of the week. The Foresters have gone 11-4 this month including 6 wins in their last seven outings and suddenly find themselves tied with Toronto just a half game back of the Brooklyn Kings for top spot in the Continental Association. Goins is struggling but the seemingly ageless Barry, has overcome a very slow April start by hitting .321 so far in May. The 39 year old now needs just 13 more hits to reach the 2,200 mark for his career, something only 40 other players in the history of the game have accomplished.

KEY-NOTES

Courtesy of the Philadelphia Inquisitor
[list][*]The Keystones climbed a bit closer to .500 with a 4-3 week, but a 1-3 record against the top two teams in the Fed, earning a split against the Chiefs before dropping both to the Dynamos. It was the first chance since the big trade on the eve of the season that the new Dynamos suited up against the Keystones.[*]Frank Crawford defeated his former mates on Thursday in a 7-5 win in Philadelphia. He tired in the ninth, but he only allowed a run through eight innings before allowing a Marshall Strickland homer and walking two who came around to score after he was lifted. Frank LeMieux was 3-for-11 with a critical RBI double on Wednesday as part of a two-run rally to send the game into extra innings, a game Detroit would eventually win in 15 innings, 6-3.[*]On the bright side, the top of the rotation is pitching much better. George Brooks won both starts this week, with a 7-2 win over Chicago and a 7-4 win against Pittsburgh. Ed Baker spun a two-hit shutout against Pittsburgh over the weekend.

MOVING DAY IN NEW YORK

Courtesy of the New York World Telegram

No the Gothams aren't going anywhere. Not even to their new ballpark that has begun to rise alongside the Triborough Bridge in Astoria. That's for next season. And they woefully undermanned major league club isn't moving anywhere in the standings, having a stranglehold on the 8th position. Maybe as a reward to good performance, and maybe to distract fans from what is happening in the big city, the Gothams have started advancing some of their big name prospects.

At the top of the list is C Pete Casstevens, acquired frm Detroit in the offseason. Casstevens was hitting .277/.347/.431 with 3 homers at Rock Island. He will not report to Fresno in the B level COW league. Leaving Fresno and moving to class A Albany are recent top draft selections 2B Roosevelt Brewer (.370/.403/.712), 1B Walt Messer (.290/.347/.565), RF Ed Stoddard (.299/.324/.358) and CF Bill Murnane (.346/.362/.436). Moving from Albany to AA Jersey City are RF/3B Constantine Peters (.309/.365/.426) and SP Charlie Sutton (3-0 1.80). The remaining big name move was SP Bunny Edwards making the jump to AAA Toledo. Edwards has made his way steadily through the Gothams system since being selected in the 1st round in 1936. He was 2-0 2.96 at AA Jersey City this season.

There were another several accompanying moves made to adjust the various rosters. One other note. The Hardin Bates experiment didn't go well in NY. He's on waivers in case anyone else wants to see if there's anything left in the tank.

DYNAMOS ROUND-UP

Courtesy of The Detroit World

The Dynamos briefly took a 1 1/2 game lead in the Fed until dropping the last 2 of a 3 game series to the Chiefs. The Dynamos and Chiefs are all even in their season series at 3-3 with each club winning 2 out of 3 in the visitors park.
CF Sal Pestilli is looking very comfortable leading the FABL with 8 home runs. Now with 41 in his young career he is the youngest to hit 40 ever at 22 years 7 months and 6 days.
2B Ed Stewart is tied for 2nd in homers with 7 and leads the league in RBI’s with 26. He is doing all of this production from the lead off spot in the lineup.
Rookie 1B Red Johnson was moved up to the #2 spot in the lineup last week. The kid is hitting 293/429/873 with 3 home runs 9 RBI’s and scoring 16 runs. He has a 24-1 walk to strikeout ratio as well.
The Dynamos hitters are leading baseball with 28 home runs in 27 games.
The Dynamos 3 new starting pitchers are 9-3 with a 3.76 ERA led by Charlie Wheeler 2-0 2.78 ERA
One of the newcomers, Ron Coles, imploded in the finale against Chicago walking 10 Chiefs hitters. Coles is having some occasional control issues but that goes with the territory with Detroit pitching over the years. Walks, walks, walks.
Both the Chiefs and Dynamos are playing extremely well away from home as both clubs are 13-5 on the road so far this season.
Boston is 14-14 this season despite a -13 run differential. The Minutemen play the close games well with an 8-2 in 1-run games. The best 1-run game record in baseball belongs to the Toronto Wolves who have surprised everyone with their fast start at 16-11. The Wolves are almost unbeatable in early 1-run games going 10-1. On the other end of the spectrum are the struggling Montreal Saints who are 9-17. They have actually outscored their opponents by 4 runs so this season but a horrific 1-11 record in close 1-run games of 1-11 has been their undoing early this season.
Early season disappointing teams in the first month of the season. Well how about the defending FA champion Pittsburgh Miners who are off to a slow 11-16 start in defending their FA title as they are already 7 1/2 games off the pace of the Chicago Chiefs. On the CA side it has to be once again the Baltimore Cannons who are 10-15 and have the 2nd worst run differential in baseball (behind the lowly Gothams -53) at -29.

QUICK HITS

It was a busy week for Del Lyons but just an awful start to it for Brooklyn Kings all-star relief pitcher. The 32 year old lefthander appeared in 5 games last week but he was shelled in the first 3 as he gave up 12 earned runs in a total of 2 innings work and was tagged with 3 straight losses. We talked in a previous issue about how Lyons led the league in relief shutdowns with 32 last season while having 11 meltdowns. With those three straight defeats he now has 6 meltdowns already this season, a total that leads the league. Lyons did get back on track by finishing the week with 2 perfect appearances getting a win in one and the save in the other so hopefully the 3 brutal outings were just a small blip. It also moved Lyons "shutdown" total to 5 on the year, tied for second with Baltimore's Dutch Leverett. The leader? Well, it's another reason why the Detroit Dynamos should be taken seriously as Jim Hawkins has 7 of them already. A year ago the 29 year old Hawkins was pitching out of the bullpen in AAA Newark.
The Chicago Cougars and Brooklyn Kings had a two game series where in both games the Cougars scored 9, both games Bill Kline got the win, and both games Del Lyons imploded and got the lost
It is like a tale of two teams in Cleveland. When either Len Drouillard (5-1,3.61) or Sergio Gonzalez (4-2, 2.29) are on the hill the Foresters are averaging 6.3 runs per game but give the ball to Dean Astle (2-3, 3.71) or Lyman Weigel (1-3, 4.22) and it is a different story. Cleveland is scoring about half as often for those two with an average of 3.3 rpg for Astle and 3.2 for Weigel.
Who is getting the best run support right now? How about Rabbit Day (5-1, 3.10). Not that Day is necessarily a guy that needs a ton of runs to work with but in his 6 starts the Chiefs have average 8.0 runs per game. The only pitchers with 4 or more starts besides Day or the two Cleveland hurlers mentioned above to be getting 6 runs a game to work with are Brooklyn's Mike Murphy (4-2, 3.56), Gene White (3-1, 3.20) of the Keystones and St Louis rookie Buddy Long (4-2, 4.17).
Chiefs infielder Hank Barnett was a three true outcome player last week: average of .167 (4 for 24), 8 walks (OBP of .394), and 2 of his 4 hits were home runs. Just think how powerful Detroit might have been had they retained Barnett instead of flipping him to the Chiefs after acquiring him from Montreal over the winter. Here are the Fed slugging percentage leaders:
The Toronto Wolves are happy that even with a sub .500 week the team didn't lose much ground. Attendance is up in Toronto, hoping to keep it that way. Top prospect George Garrison is struggling in AA, along with the rest of the Chattanooga squad. The Reliables are anything but with a 6-11 start in the Dixie League with Garrison at 1-2 with a 5.18 era. OSA is not worried though with Garrison holding down the 5th spot in their latest top prospect rankings.
Another highly touted Toronto pitching prospect made his big league debut this week. Jim Morrison took to the hill against Cleveland just two days before his 23rd birthday but the Foresters present was to hang a loss on the former first round pick out of Indiana A&M. Morrison looked solid early but got into trouble late and ended up pitching 7 and a third innings on the wrong end of a 9-5 score. He allowed 6 runs (5 earned) in the game.
Injuries may be starting to play a role in how the season unfolds. The Philadelphia Sailors, who took Brooklyn to the brink last season before falling short in a one game tie-breaker, were already without outfielder Joe Watson, who suffered a sprained ankle in spring training after hitting .278 following his acquisition off the waiver-wire a year ago. Now they will be without William Jones for a month and a half. The 33 year old has been Mister Dependable on the Sailors staff that past decade and has never had an ERA+ below 118 in his 11 year career. He was a 20 game winner last season and finished third in the CA Allen Award voting. The Sailors still have their other 20-game winner from last season in Doc Newell (4-2, 2.72) and are getting the start of what could be a career year from 30 year old Walt Wells (5-1, 1.80) but will it be enough to keep them in the race until Jones returns?
Wells is worth talking about. He is just the kind of pitcher the Sailors always seem to be able to uncover. A groundball specialist they drafted way back in 1926 (6th round out of Brooklyn High School) and like so many other Sailors arms he was brought along slowly- spending 2 and a half seasons in Class B, parts of 2 years in A ball, a year and a half in AA followed by 3 full seasons in AAA. He finally made it to Philadelphia as a 27 year old in 1935 and after two seasons primarily in the pen he became part of the rotation finally last year. Wells went 13-12 with a 3.43 era as their number three or four starter (along with Merritt Thomas) and now he is looking like an ace. It is early so we will have to see if Wells can keep it up, especially with the added pressure of no William Jones.
In the Fed the Boston Minutemen got some news they certainly did not want to hear. Young first baseman Bob Donoghue is back on the DL. Donoghue, who the club was counting on heavily to stay in the lineup with Ken Mayhugh dispatched to Baltimore in the John Edwards trade, is out for 2 weeks with a muscle strain. The 25 year old was hitting .290 with just 2 homers after getting 20 round-trippers in 127 games last season. His talent is certainly there but it's keeping him in the lineup that is the concern as Donoghue has already had a number of serious injuries including one that cost him nearly all of the 1936 season.
Speaking of Edwards it looks like the new Minutemen hurler is starting to come around. He has had a couple of very bad outings to explain his 5.03 era to go with a 3-2 record but he looked very sharp in going the distance and winning each of his last two starts. One has to remember that even though Edwards has made 47 career big league starts he is still just 22 years of age. The other half of that deal, third baseman Ken Mayhugh, is also starting to come around after a slow start for the Cannons. Mayhugh hit 3 homers in May and has raised his average to .242 after going just 11-for-49 with only one extra base hit in April.

DRAFT PREVIEW

A LOOK BACK AT THE 1928 DRAFT

With the 1938 FABL rookie draft a little over a month away and the full draft class reveal coming very soon this is a good time to take our annual look back and reassess the draft picks selected a decade ago. The 1928 draft has to go down as one of the most disappointing classes of all-time, especially when you look at position players. The chart below illustrates just how rough it was. Each draft class from the 1920s is listed and the first column shows position players in that class who have played at least 1,000 FABL games. Subsequent columns are the total of players to play at least 500, at least 100 and finally at least 1 game in FABL since they were drafted.

Obviously the numbers will change going forward as a guy like Wally Flowers for example approaches the 1,000 game plateau but his 842 to date leave him shy of joining Bobby Barrell as a second 1928 drafted position player to appear in 1000 FABL games.

1928 is just bad across the board with Barrell being the only one to reach 1,000 games and only 4 players (Bobby Barrell, Wally Flowers, Art Summers and Oscar King) have reached the 500 mark. In comparison, the 1929 draft already has 12 players over the 500 mark and more than double the number of players to play at least 100 or at least 1 game. The second chart is for pitchers (organized by wins) and while the 1928 class does not fare as poorly there it is still well below average.

Code:


		POSITION PLAYERS TO PLAY FABL
		1000+	500+    100+     1+ 
1920 DRAFT	14	40	85     109
1921 DRAFT	 5	13	25	41
1922 DRAFT	 5  	15	26	32
1923 DRAFT  	12	27	65     102
1924 DRAFT 	 5      17	40	59
1925 DRAFT	10	19	55	82
1926 DRAFT	 1	11	39	70
1927 DRAFT	 7	18	30	49
1928 DRAFT	 1	 4	18	27
1929 DRAFT       0	12	39      59

		PITCHERS TO PLAY IN FABL
		100W	50+W	1+W
1920 DRAFT	 1	5	22
1921 DRAFT	 2	5	20
1922 DRAFT	 2	8	30
1923 DRAFT	 6     10	37
1924 DRAFT	 3 	5	36
1925 DRAFT	 4     12	36
1926 DRAFT	 1	7	41
1927 DRAFT	 1	7	31
1928 DRAFT	 0	5	31
1929 DRAFT	 1	1	 9

What stands out as well beyond the weakness of the 1928 class is how about those 1920 and 1923 groups? The 1920 class features Joe Masters, David Merchant, Phil Sandman and the still active Charlie Berry and Jim Hampton. 1923 is perhaps not quite as impressive but still features a number of active position players like Lou Kelly, John Lawson, Henry Jones, Tom Taylor and Carl Carr along with pitchers Rabbit Day, Charlie Stedman, Ed Baker and Jack Beach.

So I think we are pretty safe in saying the 1928 class was sub-par. It did give us a pair of very good pitchers in Tommy Wilcox and Mike Murphy but aside from Bobby Barrell and Wally Flowers the position players in this group were quite a disappointment.

Here is a look at the 16 players taken in the first round of the 1928 draft.

1- TOMMY WILCOX P BROOKLYN - For the first time in FABL history the number one overall draft pick was traded as the Brooklyn Kings parted with the 10th and 14th picks of round one and young third base prospect Dave Bristol for the right to draft Tommy Wilcox first overall. Washington would make the move down as the Kings tabbed the National College Player of the Year with the top selection. Wilcox would go on to have a brilliant start to his career and was later part of a huge deal that sent him and catcher Mike Taylor for Tom and Fred Barrell as well as Mike Murphy. A series of devastating injuries with the Cougars has robbed Wilcox' previously golden arm of it's luster and is career is all but over at 31, but he did win an Allen Award and post a 91-84 career record.

2- MIKE MURPHY P CHICAGO COUGARS - Murphy and first overall pick Tommy Wilcox just always seemed to be linked. First Brooklyn had briefly flirted with the notion of taking the hometown star from Brooklyn State first overall instead of Wilcox and then the Kings eventually ended up with Murphy when he was included in the big trade with the Chicago Cougars that involved Wilcox. Murphy proved to be a very solid second choice and, because of Wilcox's injuries, has surpassed the top pick in career big league wins. Murphy enters the 1938 season with a 97-55 career record including a pair of twenty-win seasons.

3- FRANK SHROPSHIRE OF ST LOUIS- Oh, what could have been. Imagine if the St Louis Pioneers had taken high school star Bobby Barrell instead of Shropshire with the third pick. By 1931 Barrell was a FABL regular and just might have been enough to convince the Pioneers to hang on to Max Morris instead of dealing him to the Gothams prior to the '31 season. Would a Pioneers team featuring Morris, Barrell, Roger Landry, Alex Ingraham and then Freddie Jones joining them in 1932 have won a pennant like the pair Barrell and Rankin Kellogg led the Keystones to? We will of course never know but that pick could have completely changed the direction of the Pioneers and the Federal Association could look quite different today as a result. Barrell did suffer a serious knee injury in his draft year so I guess you can understand the Pioneers hesitation, and 5 other clubs also bypassed Barrell.

As for Shropshire, well he is still kicking around at the age of 27 as a minor leaguer in the Montreal Saints system but his entire big league career thus far has consisted of 4 games for the 1934 Saints. Shropshire put up some pretty solid numbers in high school but for some reason the Pioneers played him in just 14 games at Class C his rookie pro year. Whether that stalled his development or not we will never know but Shropshire just never lived up to his lofty draft position.

4- CHUCK COLE P TORONTO - It took a while but Cole had a breakout season with Toronto as a 25 year old in 1935 and led the CA in wins the following season with 21. He had a decent high school career but much like St Louis, the Wolves fortunes could be quite different if they had called Barrell's name here.

5- PHIL HICKS P NEW YORK GOTHAMS - Ouch. This is a great example of what we started to see a lot of over the ensuing years: teams reaching for a pitcher. The Gothams have had some great success with some late round pitcher selections but they failed miserably taken an arm in the first round three consecutive seasons from 1927-29. First it was Huck Moore who went 6th overall in 1927 and pitched a grand total of 1 big league game. In 1929 it was Phil Newcom the Gothams took with the 9th pick. Newcom has pitched a bit in the majors, mainly for Washington and posting a 14-22 career record. In between we have Phil Hicks, who put up some nice high school numbers but suffered a serious injury early in his career and is now retired after winning just 3 FABL games.

To make matters worse for New York, the Gothams second round pick in '28 was a college pitcher by the name of Pat Albright. He, too, is retired and never made the big leagues. Now before we knock New York for this first round pitchers it should be noted that the Gothams did have some success with pitchers in later rounds -nothing like getting Jim Lonardo as a 10th rounder in 1925 - but Lou Ellertson was a pretty solid third round pick and Jack Elder was not bad for a fifth round selection.

6- BOBBY BARRELL OF PHILADELPHIA KEYSTONES - The Keystones lucked into Barrell and used him as a key piece of a pair of pennant winning clubs. He and Rankin Kellogg have terrorized Federal Association pitchers for most of this decade and with 2 Whitney Awards and 5 all-star appearances by the age of 27 it is quite obvious who the best player of the 1928 draft is.

7- GEORGE THOMAS P MONTREAL - Thomas put up some very good numbers in high school and despite a pair of fairly serious injuries has developed into a very solid starting pitcher for the Saints. Not an ace by any stretch but a good solid middle of the rotation option. His current career mark in FABL is 77-77 with the highlight being back to back 18-win seasons in 1935 and 1936.

8- KEN CURRY OF BALTIMORE - There were a number of highly touted center fielders in this class led by Bobby Barrell but former Brooklyn scout Rube Carter was one of several who had Curry number two on his list right behind The Georgia Jolter. Others to consider included Wally Flowers, Leo Clark, Ed Scott and Gary Lucas - none of whom with the exception of Flowers really did much. As it would turn out Curry did not do too much either. He is still active in the Baltimore system at age 28 but has played just 236 FABL games in his career, hitting .264 in the process.

9- JOHNNNY GUZZO SS PITTSBURGH - It was a very weak class for middle infielders as the only ones to play more than 100 FABL games so far are Grover Carson (1st rd), Oscar King (14th rd), Bob Cleveland (4th rd), Ollie Page (5th rd) and Harry Woodruff (9th rd). Guzzo will possibly join them as he sits at 99 FABL games as of this wiring although he is back in AAA in the Miners organization after playing 14 games last season and hitting a homerun in the WCS. The bottom line is there just wasn't much middle infield talent available.

10- WALLY FLOWERS OF WASHINGTON - Flowers was mentioned a bit earlier and aside from Barrell has to be consider the best position player to come out of the '28 draft. Injuries have derailed him the last couple of seasons but for a 4 and a half year stretch he was a .310 hitter with gap power. Flowers led the Fed in triples with 26 in 1925 and has 136 of them in 842 career games. A strained hamstring cost him the final two months of the 1936 season and he missed more than half of last season with a heel issue. At present he has 1028 career FABL hits, with only Barrell having more from this draft class.

11- BARNEY MEEKER 1B BOSTON - Originally an 8th round pick of St Louis in 1925, Meeker failed to sign with the Pioneers and went on to play for Commonwealth Catholic. He hit 28 homers over two seasons of college ball to go with a .368 batting average. His draft year he beat out Jake Shadoan for first team All-America status and the Minutemen selected him with their first round pick. Meeker had some good years in the minors, hitting 25 homers at AA as a 24 year old in 1931 for example, and spent over 3 seasons in AAA but never got the call to the big leagues. The Minutemen cut him loose after a 1936 season that Meeker spent mostly on the bench in AA and he retired.

12- LEO CLARK OF CLEVELAND - Clark was one of what was thought to be a deep crop of centerfielders but like most of the others in that group he never amounted to much. He missed much of his draft year at Dickson College with an injury and later messed his knee up pretty bad in spring training 1933 costing him the entire year. He had entered that season ranked #78 on the prospect pipeline and was coming off a 43 homer season in AAA. That might have been his chance to be a depth piece on a rapidly improving club but instead he went back to AAA when he was healthy again in 1934. After an 18 homer, .281 season in Cincinnati he was dealt by the Foresters to Baltimore for P Leo Drouillard. The Cannons were a bottom level team and it gave Clark his chance at the big leagues. Unfortunately he did not do much with it, hitting just .219 in 50 games as a 28 year old in 1935 and in a 21 game stint the following season he batted just .149 for the Cannons. Baltimore released him in 1937 and he signed with the Sailors organization where he has spent the past year and a half at the AA level.

13- FRED KELLER 1B DETROIT - It might be hard to find a first round pick who was a bigger bust that Keller. Hindsight is always perfect but when he started just 24 games for his high school club as a senior maybe the writing was on the wall that Keller should not be a first round pick. In 64 career high school games he hit .283 with just 2 homers and he would do about the same as a pro. He spent all but 1 game of his pro career in Class C, appearing in 207 games and batting just .254 with 2 homers for Biloxi. The Dynamos gave up on him in 1935 and he retired that year.

14- GROVER CARSON SS WASHINGTON - Like Wally Flowers, Carson was one of the players the Eagles selected with the picks they acquired from Brooklyn in exchange for the right to draft Tommy Wilcox. In all the 1928 draft turned out pretty nicely for the Eagles as Flowers, Harry Shumate and Carson all played regularly for a number of years while George Allen and Mike Knight, taken in the 9th and 15th rounds respectively, have each spent a fair bit of time in the Washington bullpen. The Eagles also drafted Ollie Page in the fifth round and it was the trading of him to the Cougars that landed the Eagles catcher Claude Ramsey.

As for Carson, he was just released a couple of weeks ago by the organization after spending the past couple of seasons in the minors but he did have a couple year stint as the Eagles everyday shortstop, playing in 406 games and hitting .258.

15- VALLIE TURNER OF CHICAGO CHIEFS - Four of the eleven position players taken in the first round never played a single game in the big leagues. They were Meeker, Keller and the final two selections of the opening round in Vallie Turner and Ed Scott. Turner was a college outfielder at Mississippi A&M and put up some decent numbers at that level with a .311 batting average and 14 homers in 81 games. He looked like a great pick early as he tore up Class B with a .374 average in half a season as a pro despite starting just 29 of the 79 games he played in. He seems to be a guy who just got caught in the numbers games because he only had one season in which he started over 100 games and that was in 1931 at AA when he hit .288 with 27 triples and 14 homers in 111 games. In 1932 the Chicago Cougars selected Turner in the Rule V draft but after he hit just .182 in camp he was returned to the Chiefs organization. The Chiefs released him midway through the 1934 campaign with Turner never playing above AA for the organization. He caught on with Austin of the Lone Star League and has been there ever since but, like his days with the Chiefs, he spends most of his time in the dugout as a backup.

16- ED SCOTT 2B PHILADELPHIA KEYSTONES - Not quite sure what the Keystones saw in Scott to warrant drafting him at all, let alone with their first round pick. He played 6 games for Indiana A&M as a freshman in 1926 but never played a game since then. Granted his numbers in those 6 games were impressive, a .381 average with 6 extra base hits but you have to wonder where the Keystones scouting staff saw him play. He actually did pretty good in 1929 as a rookie pro, hitting well and moving from Class C up two levels during the season. He would rarely play after that and by 1934 was released by the Keystones having peaked at AA. San Antonio of the Lone Star Association signed him and Scott, now 31, has been with the Gunslingers ever since.

Scott is now one of ten former first round picks currently playing in the fully independent Lone Star Association. Others include fellow 1928 first round Vallie Turner, 1929 first round Bill Kirby (a Washington pick) and 1933 Detroit first round selection Doc Leach.

A couple of other notes.
Most unusual pick that panned out is Harry Shumate. Washington took him in the 4th round despite the fact he, just like Ed Scott, did not play a single game in his draft year or the previous season and only had 2 career high school games under his belt when he was selected. It obviously worked out well as Shumate has been the Eagles starting first baseman the past 3 seasons and owns a .326 career average although his numbers have dropped following his breakout 1936 season when he hit .360 and led the Fed in doubles with 46.

Player I expected much more from: Andy Bethel. The second baseman had two very strong years at Lubbock State, including a .396/.463/.609 draft year that saw him named as first team All-American. Boston selected him with the 11th pick of the second round and he proceeded to hit .333 at Class B as a rookie and earn a late season promotion to AA. Bethel spent the next two seasons in B before finally getting moved up to class A as a 25 year old in 1932. He played sparingly that season but was promoted to AA for 1933. He didn't do much in 2 years of AA ball and his glove, which had been pretty good in Class B, deserted him just like his bat did in AA. The Minutemen released him in 1935 and he did not catch on with an Indy team so he retired at the end of that year.

JAPAN ROUND-UP

Looking like a pretty balanced group of clubs in the new Japanese professional league. Japan has a 4 way tie for 1st at the moment, with Yokohama, Nagoya, Kobe, and Osaka posting identical 6-5 records. Yokohama has been the hot team of late as the Kingfishers, after starting the season 1-5, have reeled off 5 straight victories including a pair of extra innings wins over Osaka. The Japanese League plays a split season format.

The Week That Was
Current events from the week ending 05/15/1938

The Administration's pending $3 billon dollar spending measure would provide over 4 million jobs according to House Appropriations Committee estimates.
House Rules Committee approved a resolution for a Congressional investigation of Nazi propaganda activities in the United States.
Hitting back at what Italy regards as anti-Fascist bias in the US, Mussolini warns of a Fascist Alliance if any are threatened by a "doctrinal war by the so-called democracies."
Scores killed as insurgent planes bombed the workers district of Valencia in a night raid designed to cut the Spanish government's life line to the Mediterranean. A British ship in the port was sunk during the bombing.
Hungarian government's anti-Jewish bill, which would restrict Jewish participation in trade, industry and the professions to at most 20%, was passed by the Upper House. Enactment would mean that some 30,000 Jews would lose their jobs.
Government forces in Brazil successfully repelled Fascist rebels attempting to take over the country with Brazilian President Vargas, revolver in hand, defending himself and his family at the Presidential Palace. Those arrested afterwards included seven officials with ties to a German bank.

08-16-2021, 02:52 PM	#222
Jiggs McGee All Star Reserve Join Date: Dec 2019 Posts: 677	This Week in Figment Baseball: May 16, 1938 THIS WEEK IN FIGMENT BASEBALL May 16, 1938 CHIEFS SLOW DOWN DYNAMOS The biggest surprise in FABL so far this season has been the Detroit Dynamos. A Federal Association punching bag the last few years, the Dynamos seemed to turn a corner last August with a strong finish and picked up in April right where they left off. Detroit had not lost a series yet this season but that streak came to an end when the equally hot Chicago Chiefs invaded Thompson Field this past weekend. The Dynamos entered the 3 game set with a 17-7 record, good for a half game lead on the second place Chiefs but when the weekend came to an end Chicago had regained top spot by taking two of three from the suddenly relevant Dynamos. The weekend started fine for Detroit as the Dynamos, returning home after 4 straight victories in Boston and Philadelphia, took the series opener by a 7-3 count thanks to a strong effort by Cleveland cast-off Roger Perry (2-1, 3.44) on the mound and the hitting of Ed Stewart (.295,7,26) and another former Forester in Leon Drake (.333,3,15). Stewart is one of the many new additions to a power laden Detroit lineup. Acquired from Pittsburgh in exchange for pitching prospect Ray McCarthy over the winter, it was expected Stewart would bring middle infield power to the Dynamos and he has not disappointed as his 7 homers to date tie him for second place in FABL, trailing only teammate and rising superstar Sal Pestilli (.313,8,16). Unfortunately for Detroit fans, the Chicago Chiefs have something the Dynamos are still lacking - an ace pitcher. Well, Chicago actually has 3 of them and two, both ex-Gothams, put their talents on display over the weekend to halt, at least temporarily, the Detroit charge. On Saturday it was the incomparable Rabbit Day (5-1, 3.10) who went to work in a 6-2 victory to pull Chicago back to within a half game of the front-running Detroit nine. It was not Day's best effort of the season by any stretch - he did allow 14 hits- but he did what he normally does and limited the extra base knocks while consistently getting out of jams successfully and allowing his offense, which certainly rivals Detroit's in many aspects, to go to work. On Sunday it was Jim Lonardo's turn. The 33 year old three-time Allan Award winner improved to 4-1 on the year with a big league leading 1.56 era as the Chiefs blasted Detroit 8-1 to move back into the Federal Association lead. Lonardo's success must have Gothams fans at their wits end as they watch their club continue to look like a mediocre AAA team and one can't help but think that Lonardo's departure to Chicago is perhaps the most one-sided trade in New York since the Indians sold the island of Manhattan for $25 worth of trinkets and beads. FORESTERS FIRE Just a couple of weeks ago many were thinking that age was finally catching up to the Cleveland Foresters. The club was 5-7 in April and players like Charlie Berry and T.R. Goins were struggling. However, as the calendar turned to May so did the Foresters fortunes. Roy Bradley is hardly an aging veteran but the 28 year old who came over from Washington prior to the 1937 season got the club turned around with a walk-off homer in the 12th inning to beat the Philadelphia Sailors. Neither Bradley, who entered that game hitting just .222 or the Foresters have slowed down since. Bradley has hit .394 in 15 May games and went 14-for-30 last week to earn the nod as CA player of the week. The Foresters have gone 11-4 this month including 6 wins in their last seven outings and suddenly find themselves tied with Toronto just a half game back of the Brooklyn Kings for top spot in the Continental Association. Goins is struggling but the seemingly ageless Barry, has overcome a very slow April start by hitting .321 so far in May. The 39 year old now needs just 13 more hits to reach the 2,200 mark for his career, something only 40 other players in the history of the game have accomplished. KEY-NOTES Courtesy of the Philadelphia Inquisitor [list][]The Keystones climbed a bit closer to .500 with a 4-3 week, but a 1-3 record against the top two teams in the Fed, earning a split against the Chiefs before dropping both to the Dynamos. It was the first chance since the big trade on the eve of the season that the new Dynamos suited up against the Keystones.[]Frank Crawford defeated his former mates on Thursday in a 7-5 win in Philadelphia. He tired in the ninth, but he only allowed a run through eight innings before allowing a Marshall Strickland homer and walking two who came around to score after he was lifted. Frank LeMieux was 3-for-11 with a critical RBI double on Wednesday as part of a two-run rally to send the game into extra innings, a game Detroit would eventually win in 15 innings, 6-3.[]On the bright side, the top of the rotation is pitching much better. George Brooks won both starts this week, with a 7-2 win over Chicago and a 7-4 win against Pittsburgh. Ed Baker spun a two-hit shutout against Pittsburgh over the weekend. MOVING DAY IN NEW YORK* Courtesy of the New York World Telegram No the Gothams aren't going anywhere. Not even to their new ballpark that has begun to rise alongside the Triborough Bridge in Astoria. That's for next season. And they woefully undermanned major league club isn't moving anywhere in the standings, having a stranglehold on the 8th position. Maybe as a reward to good performance, and maybe to distract fans from what is happening in the big city, the Gothams have started advancing some of their big name prospects. At the top of the list is C Pete Casstevens, acquired frm Detroit in the offseason. Casstevens was hitting .277/.347/.431 with 3 homers at Rock Island. He will not report to Fresno in the B level COW league. Leaving Fresno and moving to class A Albany are recent top draft selections 2B Roosevelt Brewer (.370/.403/.712), 1B Walt Messer (.290/.347/.565), RF Ed Stoddard (.299/.324/.358) and CF Bill Murnane (.346/.362/.436). Moving from Albany to AA Jersey City are RF/3B Constantine Peters (.309/.365/.426) and SP Charlie Sutton (3-0 1.80). The remaining big name move was SP Bunny Edwards making the jump to AAA Toledo. Edwards has made his way steadily through the Gothams system since being selected in the 1st round in 1936. He was 2-0 2.96 at AA Jersey City this season. There were another several accompanying moves made to adjust the various rosters. One other note. The Hardin Bates experiment didn't go well in NY. He's on waivers in case anyone else wants to see if there's anything left in the tank. DYNAMOS ROUND-UP Courtesy of The Detroit World The Dynamos briefly took a 1 1/2 game lead in the Fed until dropping the last 2 of a 3 game series to the Chiefs. The Dynamos and Chiefs are all even in their season series at 3-3 with each club winning 2 out of 3 in the visitors park. CF Sal Pestilli is looking very comfortable leading the FABL with 8 home runs. Now with 41 in his young career he is the youngest to hit 40 ever at 22 years 7 months and 6 days. 2B Ed Stewart is tied for 2nd in homers with 7 and leads the league in RBI’s with 26. He is doing all of this production from the lead off spot in the lineup. Rookie 1B Red Johnson was moved up to the #2 spot in the lineup last week. The kid is hitting 293/429/873 with 3 home runs 9 RBI’s and scoring 16 runs. He has a 24-1 walk to strikeout ratio as well. The Dynamos hitters are leading baseball with 28 home runs in 27 games. The Dynamos 3 new starting pitchers are 9-3 with a 3.76 ERA led by Charlie Wheeler 2-0 2.78 ERA One of the newcomers, Ron Coles, imploded in the finale against Chicago walking 10 Chiefs hitters. Coles is having some occasional control issues but that goes with the territory with Detroit pitching over the years. Walks, walks, walks. Both the Chiefs and Dynamos are playing extremely well away from home as both clubs are 13-5 on the road so far this season. Boston is 14-14 this season despite a -13 run differential. The Minutemen play the close games well with an 8-2 in 1-run games. The best 1-run game record in baseball belongs to the Toronto Wolves who have surprised everyone with their fast start at 16-11. The Wolves are almost unbeatable in early 1-run games going 10-1. On the other end of the spectrum are the struggling Montreal Saints who are 9-17. They have actually outscored their opponents by 4 runs so this season but a horrific 1-11 record in close 1-run games of 1-11 has been their undoing early this season. Early season disappointing teams in the first month of the season. Well how about the defending FA champion Pittsburgh Miners who are off to a slow 11-16 start in defending their FA title as they are already 7 1/2 games off the pace of the Chicago Chiefs. On the CA side it has to be once again the Baltimore Cannons who are 10-15 and have the 2nd worst run differential in baseball (behind the lowly Gothams -53) at -29. QUICK HITS It was a busy week for Del Lyons but just an awful start to it for Brooklyn Kings all-star relief pitcher. The 32 year old lefthander appeared in 5 games last week but he was shelled in the first 3 as he gave up 12 earned runs in a total of 2 innings work and was tagged with 3 straight losses. We talked in a previous issue about how Lyons led the league in relief shutdowns with 32 last season while having 11 meltdowns. With those three straight defeats he now has 6 meltdowns already this season, a total that leads the league. Lyons did get back on track by finishing the week with 2 perfect appearances getting a win in one and the save in the other so hopefully the 3 brutal outings were just a small blip. It also moved Lyons "shutdown" total to 5 on the year, tied for second with Baltimore's Dutch Leverett. The leader? Well, it's another reason why the Detroit Dynamos should be taken seriously as Jim Hawkins has 7 of them already. A year ago the 29 year old Hawkins was pitching out of the bullpen in AAA Newark. The Chicago Cougars and Brooklyn Kings had a two game series where in both games the Cougars scored 9, both games Bill Kline got the win, and both games Del Lyons imploded and got the lost It is like a tale of two teams in Cleveland. When either Len Drouillard (5-1,3.61) or Sergio Gonzalez (4-2, 2.29) are on the hill the Foresters are averaging 6.3 runs per game but give the ball to Dean Astle (2-3, 3.71) or Lyman Weigel (1-3, 4.22) and it is a different story. Cleveland is scoring about half as often for those two with an average of 3.3 rpg for Astle and 3.2 for Weigel. Who is getting the best run support right now? How about Rabbit Day (5-1, 3.10). Not that Day is necessarily a guy that needs a ton of runs to work with but in his 6 starts the Chiefs have average 8.0 runs per game. The only pitchers with 4 or more starts besides Day or the two Cleveland hurlers mentioned above to be getting 6 runs a game to work with are Brooklyn's Mike Murphy (4-2, 3.56), Gene White (3-1, 3.20) of the Keystones and St Louis rookie Buddy Long (4-2, 4.17). Chiefs infielder Hank Barnett was a three true outcome player last week: average of .167 (4 for 24), 8 walks (OBP of .394), and 2 of his 4 hits were home runs. Just think how powerful Detroit might have been had they retained Barnett instead of flipping him to the Chiefs after acquiring him from Montreal over the winter. Here are the Fed slugging percentage leaders: The Toronto Wolves are happy that even with a sub .500 week the team didn't lose much ground. Attendance is up in Toronto, hoping to keep it that way. Top prospect George Garrison is struggling in AA, along with the rest of the Chattanooga squad. The Reliables are anything but with a 6-11 start in the Dixie League with Garrison at 1-2 with a 5.18 era. OSA is not worried though with Garrison holding down the 5th spot in their latest top prospect rankings. Another highly touted Toronto pitching prospect made his big league debut this week. Jim Morrison took to the hill against Cleveland just two days before his 23rd birthday but the Foresters present was to hang a loss on the former first round pick out of Indiana A&M. Morrison looked solid early but got into trouble late and ended up pitching 7 and a third innings on the wrong end of a 9-5 score. He allowed 6 runs (5 earned) in the game. Injuries may be starting to play a role in how the season unfolds. The Philadelphia Sailors, who took Brooklyn to the brink last season before falling short in a one game tie-breaker, were already without outfielder Joe Watson, who suffered a sprained ankle in spring training after hitting .278 following his acquisition off the waiver-wire a year ago. Now they will be without William Jones for a month and a half. The 33 year old has been Mister Dependable on the Sailors staff that past decade and has never had an ERA+ below 118 in his 11 year career. He was a 20 game winner last season and finished third in the CA Allen Award voting. The Sailors still have their other 20-game winner from last season in Doc Newell (4-2, 2.72) and are getting the start of what could be a career year from 30 year old Walt Wells (5-1, 1.80) but will it be enough to keep them in the race until Jones returns? Wells is worth talking about. He is just the kind of pitcher the Sailors always seem to be able to uncover. A groundball specialist they drafted way back in 1926 (6th round out of Brooklyn High School) and like so many other Sailors arms he was brought along slowly- spending 2 and a half seasons in Class B, parts of 2 years in A ball, a year and a half in AA followed by 3 full seasons in AAA. He finally made it to Philadelphia as a 27 year old in 1935 and after two seasons primarily in the pen he became part of the rotation finally last year. Wells went 13-12 with a 3.43 era as their number three or four starter (along with Merritt Thomas) and now he is looking like an ace. It is early so we will have to see if Wells can keep it up, especially with the added pressure of no William Jones. In the Fed the Boston Minutemen got some news they certainly did not want to hear. Young first baseman Bob Donoghue is back on the DL. Donoghue, who the club was counting on heavily to stay in the lineup with Ken Mayhugh dispatched to Baltimore in the John Edwards trade, is out for 2 weeks with a muscle strain. The 25 year old was hitting .290 with just 2 homers after getting 20 round-trippers in 127 games last season. His talent is certainly there but it's keeping him in the lineup that is the concern as Donoghue has already had a number of serious injuries including one that cost him nearly all of the 1936 season. Speaking of Edwards it looks like the new Minutemen hurler is starting to come around. He has had a couple of very bad outings to explain his 5.03 era to go with a 3-2 record but he looked very sharp in going the distance and winning each of his last two starts. One has to remember that even though Edwards has made 47 career big league starts he is still just 22 years of age. The other half of that deal, third baseman Ken Mayhugh, is also starting to come around after a slow start for the Cannons. Mayhugh hit 3 homers in May and has raised his average to .242 after going just 11-for-49 with only one extra base hit in April. DRAFT PREVIEW A LOOK BACK AT THE 1928 DRAFT With the 1938 FABL rookie draft a little over a month away and the full draft class reveal coming very soon this is a good time to take our annual look back and reassess the draft picks selected a decade ago. The 1928 draft has to go down as one of the most disappointing classes of all-time, especially when you look at position players. The chart below illustrates just how rough it was. Each draft class from the 1920s is listed and the first column shows position players in that class who have played at least 1,000 FABL games. Subsequent columns are the total of players to play at least 500, at least 100 and finally at least 1 game in FABL since they were drafted. Obviously the numbers will change going forward as a guy like Wally Flowers for example approaches the 1,000 game plateau but his 842 to date leave him shy of joining Bobby Barrell as a second 1928 drafted position player to appear in 1000 FABL games. 1928 is just bad across the board with Barrell being the only one to reach 1,000 games and only 4 players (Bobby Barrell, Wally Flowers, Art Summers and Oscar King) have reached the 500 mark. In comparison, the 1929 draft already has 12 players over the 500 mark and more than double the number of players to play at least 100 or at least 1 game. The second chart is for pitchers (organized by wins) and while the 1928 class does not fare as poorly there it is still well below average. Code: POSITION PLAYERS TO PLAY FABL 1000+ 500+ 100+ 1+ 1920 DRAFT 14 40 85 109 1921 DRAFT 5 13 25 41 1922 DRAFT 5 15 26 32 1923 DRAFT 12 27 65 102 1924 DRAFT 5 17 40 59 1925 DRAFT 10 19 55 82 1926 DRAFT 1 11 39 70 1927 DRAFT 7 18 30 49 1928 DRAFT 1 4 18 27 1929 DRAFT 0 12 39 59 PITCHERS TO PLAY IN FABL 100W 50+W 1+W 1920 DRAFT 1 5 22 1921 DRAFT 2 5 20 1922 DRAFT 2 8 30 1923 DRAFT 6 10 37 1924 DRAFT 3 5 36 1925 DRAFT 4 12 36 1926 DRAFT 1 7 41 1927 DRAFT 1 7 31 1928 DRAFT 0 5 31 1929 DRAFT 1 1 9 What stands out as well beyond the weakness of the 1928 class is how about those 1920 and 1923 groups? The 1920 class features Joe Masters, David Merchant, Phil Sandman and the still active Charlie Berry and Jim Hampton. 1923 is perhaps not quite as impressive but still features a number of active position players like Lou Kelly, John Lawson, Henry Jones, Tom Taylor and Carl Carr along with pitchers Rabbit Day, Charlie Stedman, Ed Baker and Jack Beach. So I think we are pretty safe in saying the 1928 class was sub-par. It did give us a pair of very good pitchers in Tommy Wilcox and Mike Murphy but aside from Bobby Barrell and Wally Flowers the position players in this group were quite a disappointment. Here is a look at the 16 players taken in the first round of the 1928 draft. 1- TOMMY WILCOX P BROOKLYN - For the first time in FABL history the number one overall draft pick was traded as the Brooklyn Kings parted with the 10th and 14th picks of round one and young third base prospect Dave Bristol for the right to draft Tommy Wilcox first overall. Washington would make the move down as the Kings tabbed the National College Player of the Year with the top selection. Wilcox would go on to have a brilliant start to his career and was later part of a huge deal that sent him and catcher Mike Taylor for Tom and Fred Barrell as well as Mike Murphy. A series of devastating injuries with the Cougars has robbed Wilcox' previously golden arm of it's luster and is career is all but over at 31, but he did win an Allen Award and post a 91-84 career record. 2- MIKE MURPHY P CHICAGO COUGARS - Murphy and first overall pick Tommy Wilcox just always seemed to be linked. First Brooklyn had briefly flirted with the notion of taking the hometown star from Brooklyn State first overall instead of Wilcox and then the Kings eventually ended up with Murphy when he was included in the big trade with the Chicago Cougars that involved Wilcox. Murphy proved to be a very solid second choice and, because of Wilcox's injuries, has surpassed the top pick in career big league wins. Murphy enters the 1938 season with a 97-55 career record including a pair of twenty-win seasons. 3- FRANK SHROPSHIRE OF ST LOUIS- Oh, what could have been. Imagine if the St Louis Pioneers had taken high school star Bobby Barrell instead of Shropshire with the third pick. By 1931 Barrell was a FABL regular and just might have been enough to convince the Pioneers to hang on to Max Morris instead of dealing him to the Gothams prior to the '31 season. Would a Pioneers team featuring Morris, Barrell, Roger Landry, Alex Ingraham and then Freddie Jones joining them in 1932 have won a pennant like the pair Barrell and Rankin Kellogg led the Keystones to? We will of course never know but that pick could have completely changed the direction of the Pioneers and the Federal Association could look quite different today as a result. Barrell did suffer a serious knee injury in his draft year so I guess you can understand the Pioneers hesitation, and 5 other clubs also bypassed Barrell. As for Shropshire, well he is still kicking around at the age of 27 as a minor leaguer in the Montreal Saints system but his entire big league career thus far has consisted of 4 games for the 1934 Saints. Shropshire put up some pretty solid numbers in high school but for some reason the Pioneers played him in just 14 games at Class C his rookie pro year. Whether that stalled his development or not we will never know but Shropshire just never lived up to his lofty draft position. 4- CHUCK COLE P TORONTO - It took a while but Cole had a breakout season with Toronto as a 25 year old in 1935 and led the CA in wins the following season with 21. He had a decent high school career but much like St Louis, the Wolves fortunes could be quite different if they had called Barrell's name here. 5- PHIL HICKS P NEW YORK GOTHAMS - Ouch. This is a great example of what we started to see a lot of over the ensuing years: teams reaching for a pitcher. The Gothams have had some great success with some late round pitcher selections but they failed miserably taken an arm in the first round three consecutive seasons from 1927-29. First it was Huck Moore who went 6th overall in 1927 and pitched a grand total of 1 big league game. In 1929 it was Phil Newcom the Gothams took with the 9th pick. Newcom has pitched a bit in the majors, mainly for Washington and posting a 14-22 career record. In between we have Phil Hicks, who put up some nice high school numbers but suffered a serious injury early in his career and is now retired after winning just 3 FABL games. To make matters worse for New York, the Gothams second round pick in '28 was a college pitcher by the name of Pat Albright. He, too, is retired and never made the big leagues. Now before we knock New York for this first round pitchers it should be noted that the Gothams did have some success with pitchers in later rounds -nothing like getting Jim Lonardo as a 10th rounder in 1925 - but Lou Ellertson was a pretty solid third round pick and Jack Elder was not bad for a fifth round selection. 6- BOBBY BARRELL OF PHILADELPHIA KEYSTONES - The Keystones lucked into Barrell and used him as a key piece of a pair of pennant winning clubs. He and Rankin Kellogg have terrorized Federal Association pitchers for most of this decade and with 2 Whitney Awards and 5 all-star appearances by the age of 27 it is quite obvious who the best player of the 1928 draft is. 7- GEORGE THOMAS P MONTREAL - Thomas put up some very good numbers in high school and despite a pair of fairly serious injuries has developed into a very solid starting pitcher for the Saints. Not an ace by any stretch but a good solid middle of the rotation option. His current career mark in FABL is 77-77 with the highlight being back to back 18-win seasons in 1935 and 1936. 8- KEN CURRY OF BALTIMORE - There were a number of highly touted center fielders in this class led by Bobby Barrell but former Brooklyn scout Rube Carter was one of several who had Curry number two on his list right behind The Georgia Jolter. Others to consider included Wally Flowers, Leo Clark, Ed Scott and Gary Lucas - none of whom with the exception of Flowers really did much. As it would turn out Curry did not do too much either. He is still active in the Baltimore system at age 28 but has played just 236 FABL games in his career, hitting .264 in the process. 9- JOHNNNY GUZZO SS PITTSBURGH - It was a very weak class for middle infielders as the only ones to play more than 100 FABL games so far are Grover Carson (1st rd), Oscar King (14th rd), Bob Cleveland (4th rd), Ollie Page (5th rd) and Harry Woodruff (9th rd). Guzzo will possibly join them as he sits at 99 FABL games as of this wiring although he is back in AAA in the Miners organization after playing 14 games last season and hitting a homerun in the WCS. The bottom line is there just wasn't much middle infield talent available. 10- WALLY FLOWERS OF WASHINGTON - Flowers was mentioned a bit earlier and aside from Barrell has to be consider the best position player to come out of the '28 draft. Injuries have derailed him the last couple of seasons but for a 4 and a half year stretch he was a .310 hitter with gap power. Flowers led the Fed in triples with 26 in 1925 and has 136 of them in 842 career games. A strained hamstring cost him the final two months of the 1936 season and he missed more than half of last season with a heel issue. At present he has 1028 career FABL hits, with only Barrell having more from this draft class. 11- BARNEY MEEKER 1B BOSTON - Originally an 8th round pick of St Louis in 1925, Meeker failed to sign with the Pioneers and went on to play for Commonwealth Catholic. He hit 28 homers over two seasons of college ball to go with a .368 batting average. His draft year he beat out Jake Shadoan for first team All-America status and the Minutemen selected him with their first round pick. Meeker had some good years in the minors, hitting 25 homers at AA as a 24 year old in 1931 for example, and spent over 3 seasons in AAA but never got the call to the big leagues. The Minutemen cut him loose after a 1936 season that Meeker spent mostly on the bench in AA and he retired. 12- LEO CLARK OF CLEVELAND - Clark was one of what was thought to be a deep crop of centerfielders but like most of the others in that group he never amounted to much. He missed much of his draft year at Dickson College with an injury and later messed his knee up pretty bad in spring training 1933 costing him the entire year. He had entered that season ranked #78 on the prospect pipeline and was coming off a 43 homer season in AAA. That might have been his chance to be a depth piece on a rapidly improving club but instead he went back to AAA when he was healthy again in 1934. After an 18 homer, .281 season in Cincinnati he was dealt by the Foresters to Baltimore for P Leo Drouillard. The Cannons were a bottom level team and it gave Clark his chance at the big leagues. Unfortunately he did not do much with it, hitting just .219 in 50 games as a 28 year old in 1935 and in a 21 game stint the following season he batted just .149 for the Cannons. Baltimore released him in 1937 and he signed with the Sailors organization where he has spent the past year and a half at the AA level. 13- FRED KELLER 1B DETROIT - It might be hard to find a first round pick who was a bigger bust that Keller. Hindsight is always perfect but when he started just 24 games for his high school club as a senior maybe the writing was on the wall that Keller should not be a first round pick. In 64 career high school games he hit .283 with just 2 homers and he would do about the same as a pro. He spent all but 1 game of his pro career in Class C, appearing in 207 games and batting just .254 with 2 homers for Biloxi. The Dynamos gave up on him in 1935 and he retired that year. 14- GROVER CARSON SS WASHINGTON - Like Wally Flowers, Carson was one of the players the Eagles selected with the picks they acquired from Brooklyn in exchange for the right to draft Tommy Wilcox. In all the 1928 draft turned out pretty nicely for the Eagles as Flowers, Harry Shumate and Carson all played regularly for a number of years while George Allen and Mike Knight, taken in the 9th and 15th rounds respectively, have each spent a fair bit of time in the Washington bullpen. The Eagles also drafted Ollie Page in the fifth round and it was the trading of him to the Cougars that landed the Eagles catcher Claude Ramsey. As for Carson, he was just released a couple of weeks ago by the organization after spending the past couple of seasons in the minors but he did have a couple year stint as the Eagles everyday shortstop, playing in 406 games and hitting .258. 15- VALLIE TURNER OF CHICAGO CHIEFS - Four of the eleven position players taken in the first round never played a single game in the big leagues. They were Meeker, Keller and the final two selections of the opening round in Vallie Turner and Ed Scott. Turner was a college outfielder at Mississippi A&M and put up some decent numbers at that level with a .311 batting average and 14 homers in 81 games. He looked like a great pick early as he tore up Class B with a .374 average in half a season as a pro despite starting just 29 of the 79 games he played in. He seems to be a guy who just got caught in the numbers games because he only had one season in which he started over 100 games and that was in 1931 at AA when he hit .288 with 27 triples and 14 homers in 111 games. In 1932 the Chicago Cougars selected Turner in the Rule V draft but after he hit just .182 in camp he was returned to the Chiefs organization. The Chiefs released him midway through the 1934 campaign with Turner never playing above AA for the organization. He caught on with Austin of the Lone Star League and has been there ever since but, like his days with the Chiefs, he spends most of his time in the dugout as a backup. 16- ED SCOTT 2B PHILADELPHIA KEYSTONES - Not quite sure what the Keystones saw in Scott to warrant drafting him at all, let alone with their first round pick. He played 6 games for Indiana A&M as a freshman in 1926 but never played a game since then. Granted his numbers in those 6 games were impressive, a .381 average with 6 extra base hits but you have to wonder where the Keystones scouting staff saw him play. He actually did pretty good in 1929 as a rookie pro, hitting well and moving from Class C up two levels during the season. He would rarely play after that and by 1934 was released by the Keystones having peaked at AA. San Antonio of the Lone Star Association signed him and Scott, now 31, has been with the Gunslingers ever since. Scott is now one of ten former first round picks currently playing in the fully independent Lone Star Association. Others include fellow 1928 first round Vallie Turner, 1929 first round Bill Kirby (a Washington pick) and 1933 Detroit first round selection Doc Leach. A couple of other notes. Most unusual pick that panned out is Harry Shumate. Washington took him in the 4th round despite the fact he, just like Ed Scott, did not play a single game in his draft year or the previous season and only had 2 career high school games under his belt when he was selected. It obviously worked out well as Shumate has been the Eagles starting first baseman the past 3 seasons and owns a .326 career average although his numbers have dropped following his breakout 1936 season when he hit .360 and led the Fed in doubles with 46. Player I expected much more from: Andy Bethel. The second baseman had two very strong years at Lubbock State, including a .396/.463/.609 draft year that saw him named as first team All-American. Boston selected him with the 11th pick of the second round and he proceeded to hit .333 at Class B as a rookie and earn a late season promotion to AA. Bethel spent the next two seasons in B before finally getting moved up to class A as a 25 year old in 1932. He played sparingly that season but was promoted to AA for 1933. He didn't do much in 2 years of AA ball and his glove, which had been pretty good in Class B, deserted him just like his bat did in AA. The Minutemen released him in 1935 and he did not catch on with an Indy team so he retired at the end of that year. JAPAN ROUND-UP Looking like a pretty balanced group of clubs in the new Japanese professional league. Japan has a 4 way tie for 1st at the moment, with Yokohama, Nagoya, Kobe, and Osaka posting identical 6-5 records. Yokohama has been the hot team of late as the Kingfishers, after starting the season 1-5, have reeled off 5 straight victories including a pair of extra innings wins over Osaka. The Japanese League plays a split season format. The Week That Was Current events from the week ending 05/15/1938 The Administration's pending $3 billon dollar spending measure would provide over 4 million jobs according to House Appropriations Committee estimates. House Rules Committee approved a resolution for a Congressional investigation of Nazi propaganda activities in the United States. Hitting back at what Italy regards as anti-Fascist bias in the US, Mussolini warns of a Fascist Alliance if any are threatened by a "doctrinal war by the so-called democracies." Scores killed as insurgent planes bombed the workers district of Valencia in a night raid designed to cut the Spanish government's life line to the Mediterranean. A British ship in the port was sunk during the bombing. Hungarian government's anti-Jewish bill, which would restrict Jewish participation in trade, industry and the professions to at most 20%, was passed by the Upper House. Enactment would mean that some 30,000 Jews would lose their jobs. Government forces in Brazil successfully repelled Fascist rebels attempting to take over the country with Brazilian President Vargas, revolver in hand, defending himself and his family at the Presidential Palace. Those arrested afterwards included seven officials with ties to a German bank. __________________ Lead Columnist of The Figment Sporting Journal The Scripture of Sports Last edited by Jiggs McGee; 03-02-2023 at 02:09 PM.