Tommy Cafego

Tommy Cafego played in just four major league games, for the 1937 St. Louis Browns.

He was born August 21, 1911, in Whipple, an unincorporated community in the coalfields of West Virginia. His parents, John Cafego and Mary (Beder) Cafego, were both born in Hungary and emigrated to the United States in 1895, when John was 32 and Mary was 15. In the 1920 census the family lived in Scarbro, West Virginia, the nearest incorporated town to Whipple, with sons Joe (18), Mike (14), Steve (12), Tommy (9), Frank (7), George (5), and Paul (2); John and Joe were coal miners, as was oldest son John Jr., who was no longer living at home. (George would grow up to be the celebrity in the family, an All-American football player at the University of Tennessee and a member of the College Football Hall of Fame.)

Tommy finished grammar school but didn’t go to high school, presumably then going to work in the coal mines, though information about him before age 25 is sketchy. In 1931, at age 19, he was signed as a catcher by the Richmond Byrds of the Class A Eastern League; on April 21 the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported “The squad has been cut another player, Cafego, a young catcher, picked up in West Virginia by Ryan during the spring, having been turned over to the Waddey club of this city, members of the Tri-City semipro loop.”

The next mention of Tommy I find is in the November 16, 1933, issue of the Sporting News, in which he appears on the reserve list of the Beckley Black Knights of the Class C Middle Atlantic League. His Baseball Reference stats show him having gone 5 for 25 in nine games for Beckley that season; 1933 is the only year prior to 1937 that they show him playing professionally. But the Augusta Chronicle of September 13, 1936, ran the following story, from the Associated Press:

CRACKERS BUY CATCHER 

Earl Mann, president of the Atlanta Crackers, announced today signing of Tommy Cafego, young Scarborough [sic], W. Va. Catcher. With Paul Richards, Cracker backstop, out of the game with an injured finger, the Atlanta league-leaders are shy a catcher. Cafego will assist Jim Galvin.

I found no other reference to him during 1936. He next turns up in April of 1937, when the Crackers released him to the Jackson Senators of the Class B Southeastern League, a New York Yankees affiliate. He began the season as Jackson’s catcher, and in the May 6 Sporting News he was shown as third in the league in batting average at .400, 16 for 40. But sometime between May 8 and May 16 he made his way to the Meridian Scrappers, a St. Louis Browns affiliate, also in the Southeastern League. He started out catching for Meridian but as the season went on he played more and more in the outfield; the final league stats published in the Sporting News show him with 131 games played, 78 games in the outfield, and 53 at catcher, but he is shown as “Cafego, Meridian” so I can’t be certain that those numbers include his time with Jackson. He is credited with a .305 average in 478 at-bats, with 25 doubles, 18 triples, and five homers.

There was more to Tommy’s 1937 season, though. On August 29 he and two Meridian teammates were purchased by the parent Browns, and on September 3 he made his major league debut, striking out as a pinch-hitter at home against the Cleveland Indians. On September 5 he pinch-ran, on September 8 he started in left field, batting second, and went zero for three, and on September 9 he pinch-ran again, scoring a run. Those four games were the extent of his major-league career.

During the off-season Tommy appeared on the reserve list of the Browns’ Class A-1 affiliate, the San Antonio Missions of the Texas League, but in January he was sold to the Macon Peaches of the Class B South Atlantic League. The Macon Telegraph, which covered the Peaches very thoroughly, reported on February 20:

Local club officials feel satisfied with the acquisition of Tommy Cafego, the all-star catcher of the Southeastern league last year. He had a batting average of about .315 and there were less than a dozen players in the league to hit over .300.

On March 31:

Cafego, who hit .310 against Class B pitching last summer, couldn’t be still. He participated in every pepper game he could find around the park, caught in batting practice, then shucked off his heavy glove for a light one and went to the outfield to shag flies.

April 1:

Tommy Cafego, the catcher bought from San Antonio, is nursing a lame arm and working out in the outfield. But his hitting prowess is noticeable in drills.

On April 5 the Telegraph reported that Farmer John Willoughby had won the first-string catcher job. On April 12:

Tommy Cafego still looks like another good utility man in the class of Dee Moore and Shotgun Williams. He handled 15 chances flawlessly at first base yesterday, taking the place of Jerry Tieman…Cafego appears to be a good hitter and one of the fastest men on the squad. Manager Milton Stock has indicated he may start him in the outfield when the season opens.

When the season opened he was in the lineup most games, mostly in left field or catching, occasionally at first or third. On May 29 the Telegraph mentioned “After all this time Tommy says his name is pronounced Caf-ego with the accent on the first syllable. Shucks…” On June 13 they reported “Tommy Cafego, second-string catcher, was badly cut behind the ear in the eighth inning when struck by Sonny Sonnier’s bat, but returned to the game.” This was followed by an extended stretch where he was the everyday third baseman, due to an injury to the regular second baseman and some position switching. On July 10 he took part in some races between Macon and Savannah players before their game, circling the bases in 14.0 seconds, tying for third place, and tying for second in the 70-yard dash.

On August 28 the Telegraph reported that ten home runs had been hit at Macon so far in the season, eight of them by Macon players, and three of those by Tommy. He finished up the season catching during an injury to Farmer John Willoughby, and on the final day, September 5, he was described by the Telegraph as “the little man with the big chew of tobacco always in his cheek.” He finished third in a poll of fans for the most popular Macon player, behind the aforementioned Willoughby and Tieman, and finished the year hitting .280 and slugging .432 in 354 at-bats, with 13 doubles, 13 triples, and five home runs, and 14 stolen bases in 23 attempts. Defensively, he caught 45 games with 40 in the outfield and 23 at third base.

The Peaches finished second and played a playoff series with Augusta; Tommy caught the first two games but pulled a ligament in his side (or sprained his back—stories differed) and had to move to left field while the Peaches borrowed a catcher from the Columbus team with Willoughby still out. Macon won the series and moved on to the championship series with Savannah, who refused to let the borrowed catcher play so Willoughby had to catch despite his mangled fingers while Tommy remained in left field. The Peaches won the league championship and went on to the “Little Dixie Series” against the Southeastern League champ Mobile Shippers; Macon won the series with Tommy playing first base for the injured Tieman.

Tommy returned to Macon for 1939, again competing with Willoughby in spring training for the catching job. On March 2 the Telegraph reported:

Tom Cafego, second-string catcher and utility man, also will be considered for an outfield post. His long-distance clouting and versatility played a major part in Macon’s playoff triumphs and capture of the South’s class “B” championship from Mobile.

From the March 23 Charleston News & Courier:

The outfield must be rebuilt, but a stronger trio offensively is anticipated than the one used in 1938. Tom Cafego, heavy-hitting second-string catcher, will be converted to the garden for regular duty.

Back to the Macon Telegraph, for April 20:

Tom Cafego, the second-string receiver and utility man who finished last season at first base with a finger glove, takes a catcher’s mitt into the outfield to shag flys. You never know what he’ll do next.

Tommy started the season playing part-time, mostly at catcher, usually hitting second in the lineup behind new shortstop Eddie Stanky. On May 16, though, it was announced that the Peaches had released captain and first baseman Jerry Tieman, who had gotten off to a poor start offensively, and that Tommy, hitting .372 at that point, would take over at first. On May 19 the Telegraph assessed his play, saying “Cafego is no picture of grace upon the first sack, but he performed capably in the role during the Little Dixie series last fall, and while he insists on wearing a finger glove rather than a pad, he has made no mistakes and only one mechanical error on the bag.” On May 26 they offered this analysis:

Cafego undoubtedly could be the most powerful hitter in the circuit if he could learn to hit his “power,” an inside pitch, which more times than not he lets go by for one on the outside which usually is a fly ball to centerfield. When Cafego learns to pull that inside ball to right he’ll be the peril among the southpaw swingers that Grey Clarke was among the righthanders in ’37.

Tommy played first base and batted second through May, at which point the Peaches signed a new first baseman and he went back to playing some left field and catcher. In July the Telegraph was critical of his baserunning; on July 6 they said “Tom Cafego, one of the fastest men in the league, twice was caught stealing by Crompton’s throws. Tommy just doesn’t seem to get that necessary jump on the pitcher’s delivery.” And on July 14:

This is the slowest ball club in Macon since reorganization of the league. Tom Cafego and Joe Dobbins, the only faster-than-average speedsters, are not good base runners. Each has been thrown out more times stealing than he has successfully reached his prospective base.

On July 25 the regular left fielder was released and Tommy took over the position for the rest of the season, except for occasional catching, and batted second in the order. He ended up with 50 games in the outfield, 29 at catcher, and 25 at first base; in 115 total games he hit .314 and slugged .457, with 17 doubles, 10 triples and six home runs, and stole 14 bases. In a review of the season published on December 2, the Telegraph said “Tom Cafego hit hard enough, and was fast enough, but a poor judge of fly balls.”

Tommy went back to spring training with the Peaches in 1940. After some speculation that he would be the regular first baseman, he began the season in his usual utility/second-string catcher spot and filled in at third base early on due to an injury. On May 15 the Telegraph mentioned that “His power came from swinging a pick in the coal mines.” In early June he was sold to the Montgomery Rebels of the Southeastern League; strangely I can find no mention of it in the Telegraph at the time. With the Rebels he played catcher, outfield, and first base, and in 74 games hit .371 and slugged .512 with 13 doubles, 5 triples and two homers; while with Macon he had hit .306 in 40 games.

On October 16 Tommy filled out his draft registration. He gave his residence as Scarbro, his employer as the New River Company, a West Virginia coal mining company (which seems to be a hint as to what he was doing in the off-seasons), his next of kin as his brother Mike, and his description as 5-10, 168, light complexion, brown eyes, and brown hair.

In 1941 Tommy went to spring training with the Rebels, but was sold before the season started to the Madison Blues of the Class B Three-I League. He played in 81 games, mostly in the outfield and at third base, and hit .276 and slugged .423 with 14 doubles, 9 triples, and three homers, and 15 stolen bases. His Baseball Reference page shows him as having also played in four games back with Montgomery, though I didn’t find any other evidence of this.

On January 10, 1942, Tommy enlisted as a private in the US Army, at Milwaukee. On May 31 it was reported that he was playing left field for Fort Bragg. Eventually he was shipped to Europe; details are sketchy, but he lost his right arm in beachhead action at Salerno, Italy, which places it in September 1943.

Back in West Virginia, the West Virginia Marriages Index shows that he married Katherine Tucker in 1944, though the West Virginia Births Index shows that he and Katherine had a daughter Sandra on November 11, 1941, and his 1942 enlistment paperwork gives his status as single with no dependents, so I don’t know what to make of all that. At any rate, they ended up in Dearborn, Michigan, where they were listed in the city directory from 1948 to 1959 as living at 2931 Katherine Street, with Tommy as a janitor for the Ford Corporation.

On October 29, 1961, at the age of 50, Tommy died in Detroit of a seizure. His obituary in the Knoxville News-Sentinel said he was a sales parts manager for Ford, so apparently at some point he had worked his way up from janitor, and also said that his two children were George, age 16, and Sandy, age 11 (though Sandy appears in a Dearborn high school annual in 1957). The obituary ran under the headline “George Cafego’s Brother Dies.”

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/C/Pcafet101.htm
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Hal Dues

Hal Dues was a pitcher for the Montreal Expos in 1977, 1978 and 1980.

Hal Joseph Dues (Hal is his given name, not a nickname) was born September 22, 1954, in La Marque, Texas. The Expos signed him as a free agent on May 20, 1974, and sent him to Kinston of the Class A Carolina League, where he went 4-7 with a 3.27 ERA in 110 innings. He started 1975 with the Quebec Carnavals of the Class AA Eastern League, but after giving up 19 runs, 12 earned, in 14 innings with two strikeouts and ten walks in his first three starts he was sent back down to A ball, this time with West Palm Beach of the Florida State League. Here he did much better, posting a 2.97 ERA in 118 innings, but the Expos kept him at West Palm Beach again in 1976.

Hal spent the entire 1976 season at West Palm Beach, starting 24 games and completing ten, going 12-10 with a 2.06 ERA. 1977 found him back at Quebec, where he went 6-6 with a 3.75 ERA in 96 innings in 16 starts, and when the Eastern League season ended he was called up by the Expos. He made his major league debut on September 9, starting in Pittsburgh, and won 2-1. The AP quoted him as saying “I was nervous before the start, but I think I got over it once the game started. I knew that I would be in trouble if I stayed nervous.” He had one more solid start, then two poor ones, then two relief appearances, ending up with a 4.30 ERA for the six games.

Hal signed a Montreal contract at the beginning of February 1978, but was not expected to make the major league roster. He did, though, the Sporting News remarking “The 23-year-old Texan Dues was an absolute dark horse, but he was the most consistent of the righthanded relievers, most of whom eliminated themselves.” He went back and forth between relief and starting appearances, his fifth start of the year coming on June 22, on which the AP reported:

Ryan-Like Dues stifles Mets, 2-0

Hal Dues is a tall, lanky Texan who grew up about 12 miles from where Nolan Ryan now lives.

And the Montreal right-hander was asked Thursday night—after he and Mike Garman combined for a two-hit shutout over the New York Mets—if there had ever been a comparison made.

“Naw, I’ve never even met him,” Dues said in a soft drawl. “I was supposed to go fishing with him once, though, but it never worked out.

“He had the same agent who signed me, and he (the agent) tried to set something up for us, but it got fouled up somehow.”

Dues, who hails from the little town of La Marque, just a rock’s throw from Ryan’s home in Alvin, is 6-foot-3 and 190 pounds and, like Ryan, can throw smoke.

On Thursday, however, he mixed his fastballs with a good curve and gave up just two singles through six innings, when he was lifted for a pinch hitter. He walked one but didn’t strike out anyone, and Garman pitched hitless ball the last three innings for his fourth save.

The victory was Dues’ first of the season after three losses in four previous starts, and it earned him a spot in the Expos’ starting rotation.

Expos Manager Dick Williams said he took Dues out because “five or six innings was all we wanted from him. I don’t think he’s gone more than five, maybe six innings all season, and his elbow has been a little tender.”

“We’re in a five-man rotation,” Williams added, “and he’s in it. Right now, he’s got as strong an arm as anyone on the team.”

…”He (Dues) threw real well,” said Mets Manager Joe Torre. “He had a live fastball and a real good breaking ball, and that’s what you need. He was around the plate and ahead of the hitters most of the time, and that impressed me.”

…Dues, in his first full season with the Expos after splitting time last season with Montreal and Quebec in the Eastern League, said he knew it wouldn’t take much in the way of runs to beat New York.

“I knew the Mets weren’t a real good hitting ballclub,” he said, “and if we could get two or three runs, we’d be right in there.”

Dues’ last start was on May 28 before running into some arm troubles that sidelined him for a couple of weeks. Williams said Dues didn’t tell the club about the sore elbow at first, “and it hurt him, but he took a little cortisone and now he’s alright.”

Dues explained: “At first, I really didn’t know if it was sore or not. It just felt tight. I went to the doctor and he took a look at it and gave me some cortisone. Now it feels super.”

Hal lost his next start 1-0 on a Greg Luzinski home run, then continued in the rotation through July. On July 8 he pitched his one complete game of the year, a win against the Phillies, and the Trenton Evening Times said “Montreal’s talented young righthander, Hal Dues, the kid who uttered the naughty no-no on Ralph Kiner’s television post-game show recently in New York, let his pitching do the talking and it quieted Phillies’ bats for an 8-1 Montreal win in the afterpiece.” I didn’t find any more information about his television incident.

The July 15 issue of the Sporting News featured an article on Hal:

Expos’ Dues Can Pitch…But He Can’t Hit

Rookie Hal Dues has an interesting lament, one which soon may become common because baseball has different rules for different leagues.

The righthanded Texan has been most impressive while winning a spot in the Expos’ starting rotation, despite an unexciting record. However, he feels he has let himself down at least twice because he can’t hit.

One reason he can’t hit is rather elementary. The minor leagues have adopted the designated hitter rule, which is in force in the American League, so the pitchers coming up don’t get a chance to hit.

In his first two starts since replacing Wayne Twitchell in the rotation, Dues won one and lost one. He gave up just one run in 13 innings, that in a 1-0 loss to the Phillies on June 27.

The 23-year-old Dues pitched the first six innings of the Expos’ 2-0 win at New York on June 22 when the Expos took the rubber match of a three-game series with the Mets.

“Why don’t they teach us how to hit in the minor leagues?” moaned Dues after being yanked in favor of a pinch-hitter in the seventh inning at New York.

“They don’t even teach us how to bunt. I understand him (Manager Dick Williams) taking me out. I can’t hit, damn it.”

…Then, in his 1-0 loss to the Phillies on Greg Luzinski’s home run, the lack of hitting hurt him again. Gary Carter led off the seventh with a double and Larry Parrish singled.

After failing to sacrifice, Dues struck out.

“I wish I could hit,” Dues lamented again. “I’ve never been a good bunter, but what do you expect?

“All the way up through the minor leagues they had the designated hitter and I never had a bat in my hands.

“I’d like to practice, but it seems that every time we’re in Montreal, it’s raining.”

Though he was 1-4 after that loss, Dues had a decent earned run average of 2.77.

Dues is heading in the direction of the team’s hard-luck ace Steve Rogers. In his last four starts, the Expos have scored four runs for Dues.

The rookie knows all about Rogers’ problems and also about his abilities.

“I’m becoming a much better pitcher just watching Rogers pitch,” Dues said. “I don’t have to ask him what he’s doing, I just watch him. He’s the best pitcher in the league. The other teams get dinky hits off him and then we don’t score.

“I know he’s the best pitcher I ever saw.”

After a start at Houston on July 24 Hal was 4-4 with a 2.17 ERA, but he had suffered a muscle tear in his elbow and pitched little after that—four relief appearances between August 9 and 20 and a start on August 29 which didn’t go well and brought his season ERA up a bit to 2.36, still excellent. He ended up pitching 99 innings in 25 games, 12 of them starts. But before the season even ended both he and Steve Rogers had undergone surgery. As reported in the Sporting News of October 14:

Pitchers Steve Rogers and Hal Dues underwent arm surgery by Dr. Frank Jobe in Los Angeles on September 22 and both operations were reported as successful. Rogers already is taking therapy, but Dues’ operation was more complicated, and more painful, and Williams lists him as “a question mark” for next spring.

On February 10, 1979, the Sporting News reported that Hal had been in Montreal for a checkup and had been given a clean bill of health: “Dues, who signed his contract while in town, showed an elbow with curving scars on both sides of the limb. What made the Texan so happy though was that he could straighten out the arm for the first time in two years.”

From the March 3 Sporting News:

“We’ll go along slowly with Dues,” Williams said about the Texan who climaxed two sore-armed seasons with elbow surgery in September. “Unless he shows us that he’s ready to pitch, we won’t rush him. There’s no problem with Dues. We just want to make sure that he’s sound.

“That’s something we’ll find out in the spring.”

During spring training there was speculation that Hal would be the Expos’ fifth starter, but at the end of March he was sent to the Memphis Chicks of the Class AA Southern League to work on getting his elbow back into shape. He had a 4.09 ERA in 44 innings in seven starts for Memphis, then was bumped up to the AAA Denver Bears of the American Association in late May, where he pitched only 20 innings in five starts, with a 9.45 ERA, before being shelved for the rest of the season. He got a mention in a September 1 Sporting News story about Expo pitcher Dan Schatzeder:

Schatzeder struggled a little in the August 15 outing when he had to be removed after five because of tenderness in the shoulder. It seems that “Schotz” slept over at the home of injured teammate Hal Dues in nearby Dickerson, Tex. The air conditioning was on high and Schatzeder wasn’t covered properly. The shoulder muscles simply didn’t loosen up.

A UPI story that ran in papers on February 28, 1980, went:

The hard-luck Dues had his attempted comeback from major elbow surgery delayed after he was bitten by a dog while jogging near his Dickinson, Texas home Sunday. With stitches in three gashes on the back of his right knee, the 25-year-old Dues will not be in uniform until Saturday. Dues has a tough fight ahead to win a spot on the roster.

The last man to make the squad two years ago, Dues was 5-6 with an ERA of 2.36 through 99 innings, then underwent surgery in September 1978. He started in Memphis last year and moved quickly up to Denver. However, by June 14 Dues was on the disabled list and dreaming of a comeback this spring.

On March 25 it was announced that the Expos had sent him to their minor league camp for assignment; he ended up back with Denver. After allowing just two baserunners in a seven-inning complete game on May 9, he had a 4-0 record and a 1.95 ERA. He then went to 5-0, but on May 20 he was relieved after four innings due to a stiff shoulder, and on May 30 he was scratched from a start due to shoulder soreness. He spent some time on the disabled list in June and July, then made a few more starts before being called up to Montreal on August 7. The Expos needed him to start the second game of a doubleheader on August 9, then he made three relief appearances in the next two weeks before being sent back to Denver on August 27. He lost a game at the end of the Bears’ season, finishing up 7-4 with a 3.40 ERA in 16 starts, then lost a game in the American Association playoffs before being recalled back to Montreal. With the Expos he made just two relief appearances in the final month of the season, ending with a 6.57 ERA in 12.1 innings in his two stints there.

Hal signed a 1981 Montreal contract in February; it was reported that he was fighting for the fifth starter spot, but at the end of spring training he was optioned back to Denver.

He spent the entire season with the Bears, spending some time on the disabled list in midseason after having his ankle fractured by a Bobby Bonds line drive on June 7. He wound up with a 6.73 ERA in 91 innings in 20 appearances, 18 of them starts, and his control was worse than ever before, yet he started and won the deciding games in Denver’s first round and championship series playoff victories.

In 1982 the Expos’ AAA affiliate was switched from Denver to Wichita, and Hal went to spring training on the Wichita roster, but in early April he was optioned to AA Memphis, where he had played in 1979. In their May 31 issue the Sporting News ran the following short article:

Suns Pay ‘Dues’

Memphis pitcher Hal Dues took out his frustrations on Jacksonville May 14, allowing four hits and fanning 12 en route to a 6-1 victory. The 27-year-old righthander once was one of the brightest prospects in the Montreal Expos’ organization, posting a 5-6 mark and a 2.36 earned-run average with the parent club in 1978. Since then, Dues has had elbow surgery, a sore shoulder and a broken ankle, and he thinks the Expos have given up on him. “I gotta get out of this organization,” he said. “I’ll never pitch for Montreal again. They think I’m washed up. I was going to hang ‘em up this year, but I decided to try to impress another organization by pitching well in Double A. I just wanted to get noticed and get traded or picked up by somebody else.”

He had a 4.85 ERA in 89 innings for the Chicks, but that was good enough for him to be sent back up to Wichita on June 19. On July 16 Wichita manager Felipe Alou, who also moved over from Denver, was quoted as saying of Hal: “When he’s in trouble, he can go with that curveball and he didn’t do that last year.” Hal started the Aeros’ final game of the regular season on three days’ rest, against Omaha, who trailed Wichita by one game; the game was suspended due to rain in the 8^th inning, and Omaha eventually won the game and the one-game playoff. His Wichita stats were very similar to those he accumulated with Memphis, and he finished with a 4.63 ERA in 91.1 innings. On September 1 the Wichita Eagle reported that he had talked about quitting.

Hal was one of eight non-roster players invited to the Expos’ 1983 training camp, but on February 7 the Sporting News reported:

Righthander Hal Dues, 28, has retired. Dues was considered a super prospect when as a 23-year-old he went 5-6 with an ERA of 2.36 through 99 innings in 1978. However, his heavy sinker took a toll on the elbow. After surgery he never regained that touch.

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