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 17th 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 30th 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
No comments:
Post a Comment