Hall of Famer Pie Traynor tried out with the Boston Red Sox in the spring of 1920. The Red Sox were impressed enough to recommend him to the Portsmouth Truckers of the class B Virginia League, a team they had an unofficial relationship with.
Already 21 years old, Traynor starred with Portsmouth in his professional debut in 1920, hitting .270 and finishing in a three-way tie for first in home runs, with eight. He also finished second in fielding percentage among shortstops, with .947.
The Red Sox had thought Traynor was nicely tucked away for them in Portsmouth but Portsmouth owner H.P. Dawson had other ideas, and sold Traynor to the Pittsburgh Pirates for $10,000 on September 11, 1920 - the highest price ever paid for a Virginia League player at the time.
Traynor hit .336 for the Southern Association Birmingham Barons in 1921, became the Pirates' regular third baseman in 1922, and went on to a Hall of Fame career with Pittsburgh, hitting .320 over 17 seasons.
For a while I've wondered: what was Traynor doing in 1919? He was 20 years old and not in college - he must have been starring somewhere.
Yesterday I stumbled upon the answer. He played for two Boston-area semi-pro teams: the Somerville B.B.C. and the Oak Bluffs/Falmouth team. It's just that his play for them has been mostly unnoticed - partly because of the general neglect of semi-pro history and partly because the Boston Globe almost always misspelled his name as Trainor or Trainer.
Already 21 years old, Traynor starred with Portsmouth in his professional debut in 1920, hitting .270 and finishing in a three-way tie for first in home runs, with eight. He also finished second in fielding percentage among shortstops, with .947.
The Red Sox had thought Traynor was nicely tucked away for them in Portsmouth but Portsmouth owner H.P. Dawson had other ideas, and sold Traynor to the Pittsburgh Pirates for $10,000 on September 11, 1920 - the highest price ever paid for a Virginia League player at the time.
Traynor hit .336 for the Southern Association Birmingham Barons in 1921, became the Pirates' regular third baseman in 1922, and went on to a Hall of Fame career with Pittsburgh, hitting .320 over 17 seasons.
For a while I've wondered: what was Traynor doing in 1919? He was 20 years old and not in college - he must have been starring somewhere.
Yesterday I stumbled upon the answer. He played for two Boston-area semi-pro teams: the Somerville B.B.C. and the Oak Bluffs/Falmouth team. It's just that his play for them has been mostly unnoticed - partly because of the general neglect of semi-pro history and partly because the Boston Globe almost always misspelled his name as Trainor or Trainer.
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| Pie Traynor sits third from left in the back row. Boston Globe, 1919-9-15, p.7 |
The Somerville club was one of the best teams in Greater Boston as well as one of its oldest. It also happened to represent Pie Traynor's hometown of Somerville which, according to his SABR bio, stood "three miles northwest of downtown Boston." Traynor was born in Framingham, MA., but his family moved to Somerville when he was five. It was Somerville where Pie played neighborhood games of baseball as he grew up, Somerville where he attended high school (though it doesn't seem like he played for its baseball team) - and Somerville where he acquired his nickname of murky provenance, Pie.
The Globe noted that "Pie" Traynor was "another clever all-around player" and had done "particularly good work with the bat."
At the same time, Traynor also played for the Oak Bluffs club.
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| Traynor sits second from right in the back row. Boston Globe, 1919-9-06, p.7 |
Oak Bluffs is and was a small town on the northeastern tip of Martha's Vineyard. The 1919 Oak Bluffs team played three games a week representing Oak Bluffs and another three games a week representing Falmouth. (Traynor's SABR bio does mention that he played with Falmouth in the Cape League - it just doesn't have the full story. Also, I can't confirm that a Cape League even existed in 1919.)
Oak Bluffs had an excellent season in 1919, winning 28 games and losing 8, and their shortstop Hal Trainer [sic] hit a stunning .510. (At least according to the Globe. I found box scores for five of Traynor's Oak Bluffs games and two of his Falmouth games, and he hit .296 (8 for 27) between them.)
I'll conclude with a 1919 box score from each of his teams:
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| Boston Globe, 1919-6-22, p.16 |
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| Boston Globe, 1919-8-12, p.11 |
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| Boston Globe, 1919-8-29, p.7 |
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