(Entry No. 16)

Can You Name This Week’s Mystery Players?

**Important note for all Mystery Player participants**

The New Mystery Player World Series Tournament!

To make things a little more competitive, I’m thinking of turning the weekly Mystery Player game into a three-round tournament. To use baseball logo that we all enjoy, I’ll refer to each round as the East, Central, and West Divisions. Each round will consist of six weekly entries. Each division winner and one wild card player will advance to the four-player Mystery Player World Series tournament!

We’ll start the tournament next week with the East Division, and after six weeks, I’ll announce the East Division winner. Then we’ll start over in the Central Divison, followed by the West Division. 

Player Identities: Monte Irvin and Larry Doby

To mix things up a bit, the posting of each weekly entry will always be sometime on the weekend, but the time will be varied and unannounced…so that no one will be sitting on my fastball anticipating the post at a set time.

Tournament Prizes

The winner of the tournament will receive a $25 Amazon gift card, a winner’s certificate worth framing, and a complimentary copy of my new book, soon to be published, The Best of Baseball History Comes Alive. The runners’ up will receive certificates of participation and also complimentary copies of my new book.

Tournament Scoring

As each round progresses, I’ll keep a running tally of players’ scores and weekly standings. Scoring will be as follows:

• Three points: The weekly winner – the first to correctly identify the Mystery Player and answer all bonus questions correctly.
• Two points: Everyone else who correctly identifies the Mystery Player and answers the bonus questions correctly.
• One point: Those who correctly identify the Mystery Player.

Participation will be open to all readers of Baseball History Comes Alive and our Old-Time Baseball Photos Facebook page. Please extend an invitation to any friends or relatives who might also enjoy playing.

I think we can have some fun with this, so I hope you all will consider participating. There’s nothing like a little competition to get the juices flowing and the brain cells engaged! If you have any questions, please let me know.

How well you do know your old-time players?

My goal with this feature is to shine our baseball spotlight on some very good players from days gone by who have been overshadowed by the likes of Ruth, Gehrig, Speaker, Hornsby, Grove, Greenberg, Robinson, Paige, Gibson, and Williams, among many other superstars the game has produced. Hopefully, we can give them a little exposure before they are totally lost over the passage of time. 

As always on Baseball History Comes Alive, we can have some fun while enhancing our baseball history learning experience. Each entry will include a short description of the player and highlights from his career. I’ll try to make each selection not too hard nor too easy. Some of the entries might require you to do a little research on your own. I might even add a personal comment or two about him.

So as to give everyone a chance to guess without the player’s identity being immediately revealed, send me your answer via e-mail instead of leaving your answer in the comments section. Send your answers to me at: Livac2@aol.com.

This week’s Mystery Players (from Wikipedia):

This week’s Mystery Players are both in the Hall of Fame. They were teammates in the Negro Leagues. The player on the left grew up in New Jersey and was a standout football player at Lincoln University. He left Lincoln to spend several seasons in Negro league baseball. His career was interrupted by military service from 1943 to 1945. When he became a major leaguer,  he was one of the earliest African-American ballplayers following Jackie Robinson.

The player on the right was the second black player to break baseball’s color barrier and the first black player in the American League. He joined the Navy during World War II. His military service complete, he returned to baseball in 1946, and along with his teammate pictured above, helped them win the Negro League World Series.

This week’s bonus questions:

1. Mystery Player on the left played in two World Series with what team?
2. Mystery Player on the left acted as a mentor to which future African-American Hall-of-Famer?
3. Mystery Player on the right and teammate ____________ were the first African-American players to win a World Series championship.
4. Mystery Player on the right was the second African-American to be a manager when he managed ____________.
5. Mystery Player on the right served as a director of the _____________of the National Basketball Association.

Good luck! 

If you’d like to take a stab at identifying these players, please send me your answers via email. But feel free to add any thoughts or personal reflections you might have about him in the comments section below. Remember you don’t have to answer everything to submit an answer. Just give it your best shot!

Send your answers to me at: Livac2@aol.com

At the end of the week, I’ll post the names of everyone who go the correct answers, including the winner, the first one to get it right. 

Last Week’s Winners:

Congratulations to: 

William Carter

 He was the first to identify last week’s Mystery Players correctly and also answer all the bonus questions correctly.

The Mystery Players were:

Joe Tinker and Frank Chance

Answers to the Bonus Questions:

I tried to fool everyone by picturing Frank Chance in a Red Sox uniform instead of a Cub uniform, and Joe Tinker in street clothes, but you guys are pretty sharp!

Joe Tinker had a famous feud with teammate Johnny Evers; he played in the Federal League for the Chicago Feds/Whales; Frank Chance’s nicknames were Peerless Leader and Husk; he managed the Cubs, Yankees, and Red Sox.

The following also identified the Mystery Players correctly: 

Terry Farmer, Joe Chasteen, Paul Doyle, Marvin Hult, Ed Cassidy, Mike Bresina, Bill Cunniff.

Mystery Player Contest Standings

Occasionally I’ll post the standings of the weekly winners:

Terry Farmer -5, Paul Doyle -4, Don Stokes -2, William Carter -2, Ed Cassidy -1, Robert Rambo -1, Pete Aman -1.

Thanks to all who have participated!

Click here to see previous Mystery Player entries