Jerry Martin

Jerry Martin was an outfielder of the 1970s and 1980s who, unfortunately for him, is probably best remembered for being convicted of cocaine possession, along with two teammates, in 1983.

Jerry was born May 11, 1949, in Columbia, South Carolina; his father Barney, who was also born in Columbia, was a pitcher who got into one major league game, with the Reds in 1953. Barney missed the 1949 season but I don’t know why. Jerry’s younger brother Mike pitched for several years in the minors but never made it to the majors.

Jerry attended Furman University in South Carolina, where he was a basketball star. After finishing college in 1971 he signed with the Philadelphia Phillies and was sent to their Rookie Class team, the Pulaski Phillies of the Appalachian League. He played 40 games, all in the outfield (in his 1500+ game pro career, he played five games at first base and otherwise was exclusively an outfielder) and hit well. In 1972 he was moved up a notch to Spartanburg of the Class A Western Carolinas League, where he hit .316 with 12 homers and 112 RBI, with a .468 slugging percentage and 21 stolen bases in 22 attempts; he also had 15 assists from the outfield, and he was named the league’s Most Valuable Player.

In 1973 the Phillies moved Jerry up to Reading of the Class AA Eastern League, where he hit .300 and slugged .483, hitting 17 home runs. In 1974 he completed his tour of the Phillies’ minor league system with the AAA Toledo Mud Hens, hitting .290 but with only eight homers. Still, after the International League season ended he was called up to Philadelphia; he got into 13 games, mainly as a pinch hitter and defensive sub, getting three hits in 14 at-bats.

Jerry started 1975 back in Toledo but got called up again in late May to be the Phillies’ everyday center fielder during an injury to Garry Maddox. He didn’t hit especially well but seems to have been regarded as an adequate fill-in. On July 10 the Phillies played an exhibition game against the Mud Hens, and Jerry hit a home run against his brother Mike, who apparently was called up from Class A just to pitch in the game; immediately afterwards Jerry was sent back to Toledo. He finished the International League season with the Mud Hens, and in 342 at-bats he hit .260, walking enough for a .354 on-base percentage. He hit 14 homers and stole 24 bases in 29 attempts. He then finished the season back in Philadelphia, ending up with 113 major-league at-bats for the year, hitting .212/.288/.345.

During the off-season there were reports of a great deal of interest in Jerry from other teams, but in 1976 he was back with the Phillies, and he spent the whole season with them. He played in 130 games but rarely started, being used as a pinch hitter, pinch runner, or defensive sub, batting an average of once per game played. In 1977 he got more chances to start, especially against left-handed pitchers, playing in 116 games and batting 238 times, and hit pretty well, .260/.328/.447. During the following off-season there were again rumors of a trade—and Jerry was outspoken about wanting to go somewhere he could play regularly—but again it didn’t happen.

In 1978 Jerry again played quite a bit against lefties and also got into the lineup a little more versus righthanders, giving him 298 plate appearances in 128 games, and he hit a solid .271/.339/.451. He played in two games in the NLCS, hitting a home run and a double as the Phillies came up just short of the World Series for the third straight year. He had missed some time in September due to a knee injury, and after the season he underwent surgery.

In February 1979 Jerry finally got his wish and was traded, to the Cubs in an eight-player deal. The Cubs wanted to make him their everyday center fielder, and that’s what happened—he had 579 plate appearance in 150 games, and hit .272/.321/.453, with 34 doubles, 19 homers, and 73 RBI. He also finished second among National League center fielders with 12 assists. But his honeymoon with the Cubs ended over the off-season, when GM Bob Kennedy refused to give him a five-year contract, and Jerry demanded to be traded. He didn’t get his wish, and spent another season as the Cubs’ center fielder, hitting just .227/.281/.419, but equaling 1979’s 73 RBI and setting a career high with 23 homers.

In December 1980 Jerry got his trade, going to the Giants in a four-player deal. In February he and the team agreed on a five-year deal, minutes before their arbitration hearing was scheduled to begin. But the Giants had a lot of outfielders, and Jerry began the season on the bench. He ended up playing in 72 of the team’s 111 games in the strike-shortened season, starting 60, mostly in center. His batting average and on-base marks were up a bit from 1980, but his power was down as he hit just four homers. He was unhappy with not playing every day, and unhappy with playing in Candlestick Park, so on December 11 (two weeks after moving with his wife, Scarlett, and two sons, to 50 acres near Columbia) he was happy to learn he’d been traded to the Royals for two pitchers.

With Amos Otis in center field, the Royals moved Jerry to right in 1982, and he played there regularly. He had a great start and a great finish (as the Royals came up just short of a division title) with some slumps in between, and wound up hitting .266/.316/.399, with 15 home runs and 65 RBI in 147 games.

Jerry opened 1983 still as the Royals’ right fielder, and was off to another hot start until, on May 1, he was put on the disabled list with tendinitis in his left wrist. Eventually he had surgery, and on August 7 it was reported that he had started to work out with the team. But on August 9 it was reported that Jerry, along with teammates Willie Aikens, Vida Blue, U.L. Washington and Willie Wilson, was being questioned by the FBI as part of a cocaine investigation. While he never did get back onto the active roster, there was no real news on the investigation until October 10, when Aikens and Wilson pled guilty to misdemeanor charges of attempting to obtain cocaine. Jerry pled guilty to the same offense on October 14, in exchange for an agreement “to press no additional charges concerning other possible involvement in narcotics.” In his statement in court he said that he had attempted to obtain one gram of cocaine on June 18. The same day, the Royals announced that they had informed Jerry that his contract would not be renewed for 1984. In a statement released to the Columbia State, his hometown newspaper, he said:

I would like to apologize to my family, friends and fans. I’m embarrassed by this, and I realize the problems created. 

I’m hopeful people will judge me by my entire life and not one stupid mistake. I hope I will be forgiven for being stupid once and I can go forward from here.

On November 17 Jerry was sentenced to one year in prison and a $2500 fine, with all but three months of the prison term suspended, followed by two years of probation. He and Wilson began their sentences at the Federal Correctional Institution at Fort Worth on December 5, while Aikens was allowed to wait until January in order to complete a rehab program. On December 15 baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn announced a one-year suspension for the three Royals and Dodger pitcher Steve Howe. Jerry was 34 years old and it was widely speculated that this might end his major league career.

On February 5, 1984, Jerry’s agent, David Landfield, said that the New York Mets had expressed interest in Jerry, that Jerry was particularly interested in the Mets because of his friendship with manager Davey Johnson, and also that Jerry was going to be released before the original March 5 date because of good behavior so he was likely to be available to report to spring training on time. On February 23 he (along with Willie Wilson) was in fact set free, and he then reported to spring training with the Mets and began working out while waiting for the hearing on a grievance filed by himself and Wilson challenging their suspensions. On March 16 he signed a Mets contract, and on April 3 an arbitrator ruled the two players could return to action on May 15.

Jerry started a few games in the outfield but was used mostly as a pinch-hitter and defensive sub. On July 8 the Mets optioned him to Class AAA Tidewater to get a chance to play regularly and hopefully find his hitting stroke; at this point he was hitting .081 in 37 at-bats. He played in six games for the Tides and went 6-for-24 with two doubles and a home run. Upon his return to the Mets he got to start a bit more often than he had previously, and he hit a bit better, but still he ended up hitting .154/.206/.264 in 91 at-bats in 51 games. At the end of the season he was released.

Jerry tried to find a team to go to spring training with in 1985, but was unsuccessful. He worked at various jobs, and got divorced. In 1989 and 1990 he played in the Senior Professional Baseball Association, and in 1990 got hired by the Phillies as a coach for their Martinsville farm team in the Appalachian League. He was a minor league hitting instructor for the Phillies for the next eight years, then spent five years as a coach for their farm teams in Wilkes-Barre and Scranton. From 2004 through 2009 he was the Phillies’ roving minor league outfield coordinator, then he spent 2011 and 2012 as a coach for the Detroit Tigers’ Class AA affiliate, the Erie SeaWolves of the Eastern League, before retiring from baseball.

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/M/Pmartj001.htm

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/martije01.shtml

http://www.thebaseballcube.com/players/profile.asp?ID=14816

Mike Palagyi

Mike Palagyi pitched in one game for the 1939 Washington Senators, with an earned run average of infinity.

Mike was born on the 4^th of July, 1917, in Conneaut, Ohio, which is in the far northeast corner of the state, bounded by Lake Erie on the north and Pennsylvania on the east. He was the seventh of ten children of Hungarian immigrants Joe and Anna; the oldest and youngest were girls, all the rest boys. In the 1920 census the family is living at 620 Darling Street in Conneaut, and Joe is a railroad laborer. In the 1930 census they are living on farmland on Center Road; Joe is an inspector for the railroad, oldest daughter Annie is out of the house, Joe Jr. (22) is a railroad laborer, George (20) and John (17) are farmers, and James (19) is in school, as are the younger children. (George was a local star semipro pitcher who in late 1932 was reported to have signed a minor league contract, but nothing came of it.)

Mike was a baseball star and threw the discus at Conneaut High School, and graduated in 1935; he also played American Legion ball in 1934 and 1935, pitching a no-hitter in 1934. In 1936 he signed a contract with the Cleveland Indians and was sent to the Monessen Indians of the Class D Pennsylvania State Association. He went 13-7 with a 3.94 ERA in 176 innings in 23 games, then finished the season by getting into two games with the Zanesville Greys of the Class C Middle Atlantic League.

In 1937 Zanesville became a Red Sox affiliate so the Springfield Indians became Cleveland’s team in the Middle Atlantic, and that’s where Mike was sent. He went 18-9 with a 4.55 ERA in a high-scoring league, both starting and relieving in 40 games for 200 innings, and more than doubled his strikeouts per 9 innings over the previous year. He also batted .303 with five doubles and three homers in 76 at-bats, for a .487 slugging percentage. At the end of the season it was announced that he and four teammates had all been sold by Springfield to the New Orleans Pelicans of the Class A-1 Southern Association, which seems odd because Springfield and New Orleans were both Cleveland affiliates and seemingly it was Cleveland that owned him.

Mike went to spring training with the Pelicans and was highly spoken of by their Manager Larry Gilbert, but on April 3 Gilbert announced that he was sending him to the Spartanburg Spartans of the Class B Sally League. Mike started the second game of the season and was in the rotation the entire year, though he also relieved several times. On May 26 he pitched Spartanburg’s first-ever night game, winning a six-hitter and hitting two doubles. The next day he came in at first base after the first baseman was ejected; he also did some pinch-hitting and played right field in a couple of games when the team was short on players.

On June 26 the Macon Telegraph ran a story about some of the Macon players naming the pitchers who gave them the most trouble, and shortstop Eddie Moore mentioned Mike. On July 4, his 21^st birthday, Mike pitched a four-hitter but lost 4-1 as his teammates made seven errors behind him. On August 30 he pitched a five-hitter against Augusta and won 5-2, the Augusta Chronicle reporting: “Palagyi used a medium-breaking curve ball to tantalize the Tigers into submission. Heady, Palagyi pitched to ‘spots’ all during the night and had the hard-hitting Bengals at his mercy.” He finished the season with a 12-15 record and 4.35 ERA, pitching 213 innings in 36 games, at least six of those in relief, completing 17 of his starts, while his strikeouts went way down again. He also played in nine games as a non-pitcher, and hit .245 with a .358 slugging percentage in 106 at-bats. Just before the season ended it was announced that Mike had been sold by the New Orleans Pelicans to the Wilkes-Barre Barons of the Class A Eastern League—also a Cleveland affiliate.

In 1939 Mike spent time in the Cleveland training camp before Wilkes-Barre began theirs in early April. On April 9 he pitched in an exhibition game for the Barons, then I find nothing about him until June 12, when he made his first appearance of the year for Spartanburg—apparently Wilkes-Barre sent him back. Neither the online stats nor the 1940 Spalding-Reach Guide show him making any regular-season appearances with the Barons, so I don’t know what he was doing during that gap.

By the end of July Mike had pitched 90 innings in 11 starts. On August 1 it was announced that he had been purchased by the Washington Senators; the AP story by Eddie Gilmore appeared in many newspapers and was concerned mainly with his funny last name. It was run under headlines such as “Clark Griffith Imports Another Tongue Twister” and ‘Clark Griffith Importing New Typographical Terror”:

A low moan rose in the composing rooms of the Capital’s newspapers today as Clark Griffith, president of the Washington Senators, announced he was bringing in another typographical terror. 

The Senators may not be leading the American League, they may not even be in the first division, but they do pace the field in names hard to spell and pronounce. 

Newest of the tongue twisters is Mike Palagyi—a six-foot, right-handed pitcher from the Spartanburg, S.C., club of the Sally league. 

Griffith’s first string catcher of the moment is Angelo Giuliani, which is quite a mouthful. To confuse the issue, the ball park score cards spell his name Guiliani. 

Palagyi and Giuliani! 

“That’s some battery,” mused Griffith, “I hope they are as tough as they sound.” 

Last year the Senators started using as a regular pitcher one Joseph Victor Lawrence Krakauskas, a Lithuanian from Hamilton, Ontario. 

This was tough enough for the typesetters and proof readers, but it was nothing compared to the situation when Griffith began importing baseball talent from Cuba and Venezuela. 

From Cuba he got Rene Monteagudo, Robert Ortiz and Roberto Estalella, who is never certain whether the two L’s should come before the second E or after it. 

From Venezuela, Griffith purchased one Alejandro Carrasquel. It was too much. The printers on one newspaper begged for relief and their sports department compromised by calling him just Alexandra. 

This made Carrasquel angry and offended a great many Venezuelans. 

On occasion this season, Griffith employed in the outfield John Welaj, who insists that his name be pronounced Will-Eye. 

“This ain’t the end, either,” said Griffith, “before the season’s out we’ll probably bring in a shortstop-second baseman combination named Leip and Quick.” 

The Senators of 1939 have included: 

Three Cubans. 

Two Italians. 

One Venezuelan. 

One Lithuanian. 

One Swede. 

Two Poles, one of whom, Peter Jablonowski, changed his last name to Appleton.

Mike pitched three more times for Spartanburg before reporting to Washington, ending his Sally League season with a 7-6 record and 4.07 ERA in 115 innings in 14 starts, ten of them complete, and also batted .354. On August 11 the Columbia Record reported “Spartanburg got only $2,500 from Washington for Mike Palagyi,” on the 13^th the Washington Evening Star said that Mike would be reporting on the 15^th, and on the 18^th the same paper said that he had reported that day, adding “Bucky Harris means to look him over thoroughly but he is making no pitching plans for him…Pitching in the Sally League is one thing and hurling in the American is quite another in Bucky’s book.”

Bucky made a good point. Mike made his major league debut that night, relieving starter Alex Carrasquel to start the 9^th inning with the Senators trailing the Red Sox, 3-1, at home. He walked Doc Cramer, hit Jimmie Foxx with a pitch, walked Ted Williams, and walked Joe Cronin, at which point Harris took him out of the game. Foxx and Williams came in to score off the next pitcher, and the Senators lost the game, 6-2. The Boston Herald’s game story said Mike “suffered the usual stage fright,” and the Evening Star described him as “scared to death.” Later in life Mike said that he had thrown two strikes out of 15 pitches. In an interview published in the Evening Star on the 20^th, Clark Griffith talked about manager Harris being angry with scout Joe Cambria, who had found Mike, and continued:

“Wal, I feel sorry for Bucky,” Griff defended. “Cambria told us that Palagyi worked like an old pitcher—calm, steady, and all that stuff. Bucky put him in the game against the Red Sox and the poor guy was scared to death. He’d have walked everybody in the ball park if Bucky had left him in the game. S’ funny thing. Cambria paid a lot of money for that Palagyi. A lot of money for a class B ballplayer, I mean.”

That was the end of Mike’s major league career, and apparently the end of his season as well, as there is no evidence of his playing anywhere for the rest of 1939—perhaps he was sitting in the Senator bullpen the whole time. A November 19 report in the Charlotte Observer said “Four players who finished the season with the Hornets will be traded, sold or released…And so will Mike Palagyi, sold to Washington by Spartanburg last season and then optioned to Charlotte.” But he does not appear in the 1939 Piedmont League stats, so I assume he was optioned to them after the season.

Mike went to 1940 spring training with Charlotte, but on March 22 was traded to the Springfield Nationals of the Eastern League. He started on April 30 but was taken out of the game in the fourth inning after allowing five runs, and after the game was optioned to the Greenville Spinners of the Sally League. He wound up with a 13-15 record and 4.23 ERA in 219 innings in 38 games, with several relief appearances among his starts, and batted .286 with eight doubles in 91 at-bats; he also led the league in fielding, with no errors in 52 chances.

Mike went to spring training with Greenville in 1941, but got drafted into the Army before the season began. As he later summarized it, he spent three years and nine months in the Signal Corps, five months in the Infantry, and seven months in Field Artillery. He was discharged on December 12, 1945, by which time he had gotten married, to Margaret Burr, who had graduated from Conneaut High three years after he did.

Mike went to spring training in 1946 with the Dallas Rebels of the Class AA Texas League, a Detroit Tigers affiliate, hoping to resume his career. On March 16 he filled out an American Baseball Bureau questionnaire, in which he gave his address as 318 Sandusky Street in Conneaut, his height and weight as 6-1, 190, and his nationality as Hungarian. He listed no college, said he was married with no children, gave his off-season occupation as farm laborer, and said that his favorite sport other than baseball was basketball, his hobbies were fishing, hiking, and bowling, and his ambition in baseball was “the majors.”

On May 2 it was reported that Mike had been optioned by Dallas to the Williamsport Grays of the Eastern League. He didn’t pitch in a game for them, though, and somehow he wound up with the Montgomery Rebels of the Class B Southeastern League. He made one appearance, pitching two innings, and retired; later he said that his arm “just didn’t have it.”

He and Margaret went back to Conneaut, where Mike worked for twenty years as a plumber, then as a maintenance man for Allied Resinous Products; Margaret was a nurse. They had one son, Michael Jr., in 1947; he was a television announcer, known professionally as Mike Edwards, who was killed in a small plane crash in 1971. Margaret passed away in 1998 at age 77, and Mike died at home on November 21, 2013, at the age of 96.

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/P/Ppalam101.htm
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/p/palagmi01.shtml
http://www.thebaseballcube.com/players/profile.asp?ID=16305

Henry Easterday

Henry Easterday was a shortstop who played 322 major league games, with Philadelphia of the Union Association in 1884 and various American Association teams from 1888 to 1890.

Henry was born in Philadelphia during the Civil War, on September 16, 1864, the youngest of seven children of Henry and Catherine Easterday. In the 1870 census Henry Sr. is 53 and a wharf builder, Catherine is 47, brother David is 19 and drives a cart, 16-year-old Amanda is helping at home, 14-year-old William works with a butcher, Maggie (12) and Catherine (Catherine Jr.?, 10) are in school, and 5-year-old Henry is a useless layabout. Oldest brother George is out of the house. In the 1880 census their address is given as 221 Williamson Street, still in Philadelphia; Henry Sr., still a wharf builder, has aged 12 years while Catherine has only aged 8, and the only kids still at home are 30-year-old David, a laborer, and 15-year-old Henry. William is a butcher and lives two doors down with his wife and children.

Henry is supposed to have gotten married to Rosanna Gleason in August of 1882, at age 17, but I don’t know what the source is for this; supposedly they had their first child, son William, on July 2, 1884. Meanwhile Henry played amateur baseball in Philadelphia, and made his professional debut on June 23, 1884, for the Philadelphia Keystones of the Union Association. (The UA was formed to be a third major league but was not up to the quality of the other two; today it is officially listed as a major league but is widely considered not to deserve the classification. It only lasted one season.) He played 28 games, all at shortstop, for the Keystones, usually batting fourth, before the team folded in early August. His fielding was praised but his batting was nothing special; he hit .243/.275/.287, though that wasn’t as bad as it seems, as the league averages were .245/.272/.316.

In 1885 Henry played for the Augusta Browns of the Southern League. He appeared in 101 games, mostly at shortstop, and hit just .180 and slugged .205; in the games I found he batted eighth or ninth. In 1886 he was with the Bridgeport Giants of the Eastern League, where he played 83 games, all at shortstop, hit .198 with a .231 slugging percentage, and apparently was regarded as a success. He spent 1887 with the Buffalo Bisons of the International Association, though no statistics seem to exist—all I can say about him during that season is that on April 5 he played in a game at Baltimore that was called after five innings due to “intense cold,” and that on April 30 he played shortstop and batted eighth.

After the 1887 season he appeared on Buffalo’s reserve list, and on October 26 the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported “Louisville has signed Easterday, the little short stop of Buffalo. This is a bluff at Billy White, who is worth six Easterdays.” (Henry is listed as having been 5-6, 145 pounds.) The Louisville Colonels were in the American Association, which was not the minor league American Association of later years but a major league. On January 18, 1888, Sporting Life reported “Easterday’s place [with Buffalo] will be filled by the veteran Nelson, who is certainly a better batter and base-runner and probably as good a fielder as little ‘East.’” On March 21 the Kansas City Star listed him as the second baseman for Louisville, but stated:

Easterday is now playing with the Louisvilles, but as the southern team has more men than is needed at present, it is willing to release him to Kansas City. Kapple, the heavy second baseman of the Cincinnati team, may be signed this week by Manager Rowe. He is a good general player and a strong batter. If Kapple is signed Easterday may be played at short stop.

On March 28 the Plain Dealer reported “Easterday, of the Louisvilles, is in excellent trim and gives promises of being one of the season’s best outfielders.” I suspect that was a mistake, as if Henry ever played outfield in his life there is no other evidence of it. On May 2 it was reported that he had in fact been released by Louisville and signed by AA rivals the Kansas City Cowboys. On May 19 the Cowboys won 1-0 in Brooklyn, and the New York Evening World’s coverage included a detailed play-by-play of the game, from which the following are taken:

Third inning…Easterday made a gallery catch of McClellan’s fly in right field… 

Fourth inning…Dave Orr banged the ball to Easterday, who managed to get it to first before the big fellow could wade there… 

Seventh inning…The ball was landed safely in right by Fouts for a base, but he was doubled up with Smith again by Easterday, who made a running one-hand pick-up of a hot bounder at bag two… 

Eighth inning…Easterday wasn’t letting anything go by him, and so Peeples died at first….

Henry was the regular shortstop (or short stop) and eighth-place hitter for Kansas City that year. He hit .190/.256/.259, playing in 115 of the team’s 132 games, was fifth in the AA in strikeouts with 70, and led the league’s shortstops in fielding percentage (.888) and range.

For 1889 Henry ended up with the Columbus Solons, a new team in the AA replacing the Cleveland Blues. On May 27 the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported:

While some of the Columbus players were standing in front of their hotel on Saturday, Mark Baldwin, in a joking way, attempted to kick a pencil out of Easterday’s hand while the latter was sharpening it, and, striking the knife, received a cut in the calf of the leg, which, while not serious, is liable to lay him up for a week or two.

 Henry also missed some time that season, seemingly in July and August, playing in just 95 of the team’s 140 games, batting eighth or seventh. He hit .173/.270/.275, walking more often than previously and also showing a little more power (five doubles, eight triples, and four homers in 324 at-bats). His fielding percentage at shortstop was .890, which is not shown in the league leaders but would be fourth. After the season he appeared on the Solons’ reserve list, and in mid-December a picture and short bio appeared in several newspapers:

Harry Easterday, the Shortstop. 

Harry Easterday, whose picture is here given, is the shortstop of the Columbus club. He was born in Philadelphia, Sept. 16, 1864. He began his career as an amateur on one of the teams in his native city. His first professional engagement was with the Keystone club, of Philadelphia, during the season of 1884. The following season he played with the Augusta team, of the Southern league. During the season of 1886 he played shortstop for the Bridgeport (Conn.) club of the Eastern league. He made a great record with it, and was signed by Manager Chapman of the Buffalo club, which then belonged to the International association. He remained with the Buffalos until the latter part of the season of 1887, when he signed with the Louisville club. When the Kansas City club took the place of the Metropolitan, of New York city, Easterday was one of the players assigned to the new team. His work at shortstop was of the highest order. Easterday is a fair batter only, but his fine fielding more than offsets his work with the stick. His record with Columbus during the past season was of a very brilliant standard. He ranks well up among the leaders in his position.

Henry/Harry opened 1890 still with Columbus. On May 4 the Philadelphia Times reported “Easterday has fully recovered from his recent illness and is doing some splendid work at short.” Regularly batting eighth, his hitting fell off, perhaps related to his illness, and on July 12 the New York Sun and Press reported:

The directors of the Columbus Base Ball club have released William Widner, pitcher, and Johnson and Sneed were given to understand that they would follow unless an improvement was soon made. The next man to go will be Harry Easterday, and his place will be filled before the team goes East. The management is getting tired losing games with the high salaried team in the Association, and a change must come if the whole team is to be released.

On July 16 it was reported that he had in fact been released, and the next day the Cincinnati Post said that “Philadelphia wants Easterday, the Columbus short-stop.” Within a week he was playing for the Philadelphia Athletics, still in the AA, at shortstop and batting eighth. He lasted just 19 games, hitting .147 (after a .157 mark in 58 games for Columbus) with no power but more walks, though walks were up in baseball in general. He soon resurfaced with the Louisville Colonels, with whom he had spent time two years earlier without playing in a regular-season game. This time he played in seven games, hitting .083, and was released on September 29.

In 1891 Henry was the everyday shortstop for the Providence Clamdiggers of the Eastern Association, a high minor league at the time, playing in every one of the team’s 83 games before it disbanded in August. In the two box scores I found he batted second and fourth, and for the season he hit .215 with a .287 slugging percentage, his highest marks since 1884.

In 1892 the Eastern Association changed its name to the Eastern League, the Providence team became the Grays, and Henry went to spring training with the Rochester Flour Cities. He was released on April 29, and the next mention of him I find is in the Wichita Daily Eagle on July 15: “Harry Easterday has been suspended by the Pennsylvania league. He accepted Harrisburg’s terms and then jumped to Johnstown.” The Harrisburg team actually disbanded on July 14, and then was replaced by Scranton; the final Pennsylvania State League (Class B in the new classification system) stats show Henry with 31 games with Harrisburg/Scranton and two with Johnstown. He hit .183 with a .230 slugging percentage.

On August 21 the Philadelphia Inquirer ran the following obituary:

EASTERDAY. On the 17^th inst. Catharine K., widow of Henry Easterday aged 65 years. 

The relatives and friends of the family are respectfully invited to attend the funeral, on Sunday afternoon, at 1 o’clock, from the residence of her son, Henry Easterday, No. 1820 South Front Street. Interment at Wharton Street Vanit. [I’m not sure about the last two digits of the address.]

After this Henry seems to have been abducted by aliens, as there is no sign of him anywhere during 1893. He started 1894 with the Macon Hornets of the Class B Southern Association, played nine games, and batted .103. He then went to the Lynchburg Hill Climbers of the unclassified Virginia League, where the only trace of him I found was a boxscore from May 18 where he played shortstop and batted first; no statistics have turned up.

This was the end of his baseball career. On March 30, 1895, age 30, he died of typhoid fever in Philadelphia. The obituary in the Inquirer read:

EASTERDAY. On the 30^th ultimo, Henry Easterday, son of Henry and the late Kate Easterday, aged 32 [sic] years. The relatives and friends of the family are respectfully invited to attend the funeral, on Wednesday afternoon, at 1 o’clock, from his late residence, 134 Mercy Street. Interment at Fernwood Cemetery.

On April 17, 2006, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram named Henry as the shortstop on baseball’s all-time Easter Sunday lineup.

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/E/Peasth101.htm
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/e/eastehe01.shtml
http://www.thebaseballcube.com/players/profile.asp?ID=190881