Solly's Last Game

On this date in 1959, 36 year old Solly Hemus entered the game in the 8th inning as a pinch-hitter for shortstop Alex Grammas.  The St Louis Cardinals, playing at home, entered the 8th down 3-1 to the Cincinnati Reds.  With two out, George Crowe doubled home Ken Boyer, reducing the Reds' margin to one, and Solly came to the plate with Crowe on second and a chance to even the score.  Instead, he hit a weak grounder to shortstop Eddie Kasko who made the easy throw to first, ending the inning.  It was Solly's last appearance as a player in a major league game.

 

My first memory of collecting baseball cards was of the most frequent cards being those of Phillies shortstop Granny Hamner and Solly Hemus of the Cards, so this must have been 1959, or possibly 1958 (when Hemus was also with the Phillies).  It was always a disappointment getting Granny or Solly because I wanted to the big sluggers and tops pitchers who were rarities among the purchases we kids made.

Solomon Joseph Hemus was a shortstop, second baseman, and pinch hitter, who came up to the Cards in 1949, after spending four years during WW2 as an ordnance loader on aircraft carriers, playing with the Birds until traded to the Phillies during the 1956 season and returning to St Louis before the 1959 season. 

Born in Phoenix in 1923, Solly's SABR biography starts with this description:

Pepper pot. Bulldog. Firebrand. Scrapper. Solly Hemus answered to all those descriptions in 11 years as a major-league player and 2½ as a manager.

It goes on to quote Cards GM Bing Devine, “Solly was a hell-bent-for-leather, fiery ballplayer with limited talent.”   

Hemus was considered a weak defensive infielder.  That description is consistent across the board from the observers reported in the SABR biography. However, it raises an interesting question about the newer baseball metrics, because from 1951 through 1953, Hemus is rated by Baseball-Reference as the fourth, first, and sixth rated defensive player in the National League according to Wins Above Replacement (WAR).  Defensive performance is notoriously difficult to quantify and I think it more likely this is a problem with WAR than with contemporary observers.

Solly is also rated by WAR as a top ten offensive player in 1952 and 1953, even though his conventional stats (HR/RBI/Avg) don't look too impressive (15/52/.268 and 14/61/.279).  However, he drew a lot of walks, something no one was paying a lot of attention to at the time, finishing 4th and 5th in the league, making him 6th and 3rd in on-base percentage (another stat no one used at the time).  His effectiveness as a hitter also explains his extended career as a pinch hitter after he stopped being a regular after the '53 season.

According to the SABR biography, Solly was also a racist, something that became apparent in his 2 1/2 tenure as Cardinals manager which began with the 1959 season.  The Cards were one of the last National League teams to integrate and two young black players, Curt Flood and Bob Gibson, began their careers under Hemus.  Both grew to despise their manager for his remarks and treatment; Gibson about to quit baseball because of it until coach Harry Walker persuaded him to stay. Years later Hemus apologized to both players but the damage had been done.  The SABR bio concludes with this:

Late in his life he told author David Halberstam that he had grown up and started in baseball in an era when ethnic insults were common, and had failed to keep up with changing times. He always thought of himself as the underdog: “If you can’t hit, you can’t run, and you can’t throw, you’ve got to holler at them.”

Hemus prospered in his post-baseball career and lived until he was 94, passing in 2017.

Surf's Up

The first albums I owned were by The Beach Boys.  This song from 1963 got me interested in the group,  a knock off of Chuck Berry's Sweet Little Sixteen with a surf sound and new lyrics.  California seemed so exotic to a kid in Connecticut.

Four years later they were recording this.  It was all Brian Wilson. 

Heard the sad news about Brian today and thought about all the years I’ve been listening to him and admiring his genius. Rest in peace dear Brian.

— Bob Dylan (@bobdylan) June 11, 2025

Visiting Wickenburg

Wickenburg, about 60 miles northwest of downtown Phoenix, is the oldest town in Arizona north of Tucson, being founded in the early 1860s, beating Phoenix by about five years.  It owed its founding and initial growth to the discovery of gold and the presence of the Hassayampa River.

It had continued prosperity in the first part of the 20th century due to its location on the road from Phoenix to both Prescott and Los Angeles, losing that advantage in the 1970s, when I-10 from Phoenix to LA was located to the south and I-17 provided a faster route to Prescott, while avoiding Wickenburg.

Today we visited the Desert Caballeros Western Museum in the town, which proved to be a little gem of a museum.  The Caballeros museum is in the small downtown area and there are several restaurants within a block.  On its ground level floor the museum features interesting western art and exhibits on the history of Wickenburg, but it is when you descend into the basement that you find the real treasure - recreated stores and houses of 1912 Wickenburg along with well-done and fascinating dioramas of different aspects of the town and region's history.  A great way to spend an hour and a half, and kids would love that downstairs area, just as we did.

Indian Removal Act

On this date in 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act.  The bill had been the subject of much controversy in Congress, before being passed by the Senate 28-19 on April 24, and in the House, on May 26, by the narrow margin of 101-97.  The only Representative from a district containing, or adjacent to, the affected tribes to vote against the bill was David Crockett.  You can read about Crockett's objections here.

The Removal Act, as proposed by President Jackson, with the enthusiastic support of most of the white population in the south, was designed to remove members of the Five "Civilized" Tribes (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, Choctaw, and Seminole) from the southeast, moving them to what later became the state of Oklahoma.  The Removal Act provided the funding to allow this action.

The term "civilized" is used to distinguish these tribes from those in other areas of the country and in different eras.  These tribes all had established treaty relations, as autonomous nations, with the United States, and they were in compliance with those treaties.  The treaties established them on lands across the southeast and each tribe had organized governance structures and were pursuing agricultural and settled ways.  There was also considerable intermarriage between whites and tribe members.  This was a very different scenario from the situation with the nomadic tribes of the Great Plains like the Sioux and Comanche, which the federal government would face in future decades.

Some factions of each of the tribes would voluntarily remove themselves, but others refused to leave, leading to the forced migrations of the late 1830s, known as the Trail of Tears, as well as to the Seminole War of 1835 to 1842 in Florida.

Although it was their white neighbors who triggered the expulsion, it was carried out by the federal government, which, at the outbreak of the Civil War, led all the removed tribes, who also held black slaves, to support the Confederacy. 

The Indian ways of life in the Western Hemisphere were doomed from the moment Europeans first arrived.  The diseases the Europeans carried with them, and the lack of immunity of the native population resulted in population reductions of 80-90% across both continents.(1)  When the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth in 1620, they settled on the remains of an Indian village wiped out from disease.(2) 

Later, there was no way the United States would allow the nomadic raiding culture of the Plains Indians to continue.  The only path of survival was adaptation to European ways while keeping selective parts of native cultures.  This is what the tribes of the southeast tried to do and, indeed, they were living in peace with their neighbors in 1830.  The problem was the insatiable hunger for land by those white neighbors.  One of the arguments made in favor of the Removal Act was that the U.S. military establishment was so few in number that it could not prevent settler infringement on native lands, an infringement that would inevitably lead to violence, and thus the Removal Act actually protected the tribes. Whatever the arguments, the removal remains a blot on our history.

 -----------------------------------------------

(1) There is a lot of variation in population estimates for the pre-Columbian Western Hemisphere, but the bulk of Indians were south of the current borders of the U.S.  It's likely that less than 5% of the total population in 1491 lived within today's United States borders. 

(2) Mortality rates for the European settlers were also high.  Half of the Pilgrims died in that first winter, and in the Chesapeake region the toll was staggering, as you can read in The Barbarous Years.

Honoring

 THC Memorial Day posts can be found here.

The Missing Concert

Mrs THC and I had tickets tonight to see the Outlaw Tour with Sierra Hull, Billy Strings, Bob Dylan, and 92-year old Willie Nelson.  Unfortunately, I've got a bit of a condition that makes us unable to attend but the THC Daughter and friend will use our tickets.

In lieu of that, here's a mini-concert I put together.

Boom by Sierra Hull from her new album, A Tip Toe High Wire. 

Two from the Billy Strings album, Highway Prayers, released last fall, and hitting #1 on the charts (or whatever they call it nowadays).  An instrumental, Escanaba, named after a town on Michigan's Upper Peninsula that the Mrs and I passed through a few years ago, and Gild the Lily.

 

 

A couple from Dylan.  My Own Version of You from 2020's Rough and Rowdy Ways.  Dylan's voice is shot but that he could produce an album with such amazing lyrics, nearly 60 years after his first recording, is remarkable.  And Mississippi from 201's Love and Theft.

Finally, from Willie, an unusual choice.  This is Willie performing a Brian Wilson song, The Warmth of the Sun, with the Beach Boys harmonizing behind him.  Willie has an immediately recognizable voice.