[LansdowneSt]

“When Jim White Played”

By Dale Lancaster, 1936

The baseball cranks all sneer at me,
And poke a lot of fun,
Because I tell of plays they made
In the days of seventy-one.
And yet, who cares for fun and sneers?
By gum, I know I’m right!
Somehow the game ain’t played the same
As ‘twas by old Jim White.

James “Deacon” White was the first player to get a hit in a professional league. Later, he helped popularize the catcher’s mask and he was the first pitcher to go into a wind-up. He received the first MVP Award. He was in the first great pitcher/catcher battery with Al Spalding and the first brother battery with Will. His homemade catcher masks helped launch Spalding's sporting goods empire. He was in the first “Murderer’s Row” with Spalding, Ross Barnes, and Cal McVey. He was one of the first opponents of the reserve clause, famously stating, “No man is going to sell my carcass unless I get half.” He helped found the first, if short lived, player-owned league. And he believed with all his heart that the world is flat, because the Bible told him so.

This weekend, more than 70 years after his death at 91, he will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. White is the only man who’s being inducted as a player in this year’s class. No living players, including the supposedly drug-tainted Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds, garnered enough votes. Conveniently, the long-dead White is above reproach. He retired in the 1890s. Few have ever heard of him. I am not a baseball fan. I have little interest in sports of any kind. But I do know about James “Deacon” White. He is my great-grandfather. I am named after him by way of my Uncle Jim Watkins, Deacon’s first grandchild... - Slate.com, The Hall of Famer, by James B. Jackson, July 24, 2013

I love this article and so have presented it in full in a Word document. If you've read Glory of their Times, it's got that feel to it as fading recollections of this nearly forgotten star are recounted (though by their kin and not directly).

This facegen was a bear. Took me two hours to get that walrus mustache to look reasonable...