Reclaiming Ballplayer Babetish's identity (historical research)

[BMW]

I was running a historical sim. As I often do when I pause, I look at some obscure low level minor league to see what's happening in the hinterlands.

I was amused to find a player ripping up the league named "Ballplayer Babetish" in the 1932 Piedmont League. I looked him up on Baseball-Reference, and there was a Babetish who played on the Bisbee Bees in the Arizona-Texas League.

No bio information aside from his last name. So I get out my 1933 Spalding guide (I have all the guides from roughly the last 100 years). I locate Babetish there, but nothing else biographically (although it has much more of his stat lines from that year). No first name, no first initial. I can see he's an infielder, but that's it.


So I went to Newspapers.com. If the league was covered at all, this guy hit .340, so he must have had a mention.

Eureka. Literally 200+ articles for the Bisbee Bees in 1932 alone.

Quickly, I solve part of the mystery. The Bees have a third baseman batting in the middle of the order named "Labetich." Spalding's records had the name wrong.

I check Baseball-Ref for Labetich. There's a John Labetich who was a third baseman in 1929-1932 in the minors on the west coast. He even played in the PCL in 1932. Just 4 games, meaning he could have gone to another club that season.

Now I have a full name, and a mystery that nobody has thought about in over 80 years is solved.

My search in confirms that "Babetish" is indeed John Labetich as he is mentioned as such in a few articles.

He is in the OOTP database three times. Once as John Labetich, once as Ballplayer Labetich and once as Ballplayer Babetish.Newspapers indicate he played on the Tucson Missions in the Arizona-Texas League in 1931, but Baseball-Reference has only scant data on that club.




What happened to John?

His pro record stops in 1932. He returned to Oakland by 1934 and played on semi-pro teams until at least 1937.

His WW2 draft card indicates that moved to Biloxi, Mississippi by 1940. He married Dina Mladinich there and ran Johnny's Cash Grocery. He had a ruddy complexion, light brown eyes, dark brown hair and a scar on the right side of his face. He owned no telephone.

His brother, Joseph, died in Oakland in 1943. He may have stayed in the area after the funeral because he passed away just a few months later in Feb 1944 in Monterey at the age of 34. His service was held at the same church where his brother's was a few months earlier, and the newspaper mentions that his interment would be in Biloxi.

Thanks for reading. Now one more person knows about "Babetish."