Hunky Shaw
This obscure member of the 1908 Pirates wasn't all that obscure after all.
Hunky Shaw
Well, I stumbled across another one.
Hunky Shaw is about as obscure as they come. I guess you can technically say that he played with the 1908 Pittsburgh Pirates. Here are his career stats:
I mean, I guess that gives him a leg up on Moonlight Graham, but not by much. He struck out in his only plate appearance.
That appearance, by the way, came on May 16, 1908, when the Pirates took on the Philadelphia Phillies at home. Shaw was a pinch hitter and did not play in the field.
That little tidbit about Shaw doing “hand springs and lofty tumbling” is one of the few mentions I was able to find about him in the Pittsburgh press. And that’s the way it goes for guys like this.
If you play any of the major baseball simulators, you’ll see Shaw listed as a pinch hitter. Chances are that you won’t ever want to use him. It’s kind of hard to come up with a theoretical hitting card for a guy who never actually got a hit.
But, of course, there’s more to the story.
Pacific Northwest
All major league baseball players have a backstory. No matter what year you look at, every player you see is somebody who had some sort of accomplishment.
Thankfully, we have the SABR Biography Project to help us plug in some of the gaps. Hunky Shaw’s biography is worth a read. This is how it starts:
I don’t want to get too deep into the details. Rather, I just want to take a quick look and see what we can learn about Shaw from old newspapers from Washington state.
The earliest reference I could find to Hunky Shaw relates to his football days. He played halfback at North Yakima High School, earning praise in the papers like this:
Of course, back in those days good football players often turned to baseball when high school was done. College football was a thing, of course, but college wasn’t for everybody:
And, well, Shaw really was a star in those early years. Accounts of games like this one are actually quite common:
Shaw was originally going to go to St. Paul, but soon caught the eye of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Shaw was a third baseman (though most simulations you’ll play will only have him listed as “pinch hitter”), and I suppose the Pirates were looking for somebody who could replace Alan Storke. Storke was pretty ineffective in 1907, and decided that attending Harvard Law School was more important than starting 1908 with the Pirates. Once again, his SABR Biography comes to the rescue:
As you probably already know, Tommy Leach wound up returning to third base for the entire 1908 season. Storke’s 56 appearances were almost exclusively as a first baseman.
Shaw did his best to help Tacoma out during the pennant stretch of 1907. Remember, of course, that this is back before the farm system was officially established — back when people actually cared about their local minor league pennant races.
That tryout with the Pirates, by the way, seems to have been at least somewhat successful:
Spring Training, 1908
And now comes the fun part.
Say what you want about baseball journalism today. It can’t hold a candle to what it was back in 1908.
Don’t believe me? Stick around and see for yourself.
Right from the start — right from when the players started to assemble in mid-March — there was talk about Shaw. Hunky Shaw was known by his actual first name Royal in the Pittsburgh press: keep that in mind in case you want to find the articles I missed.
Of course, the big news was Honus Wagner’s early retirement, which I wrote about here.
The Pirates went down to Hot Springs, Arkansas for spring training in those days. Remember, of course, that this is 1908. You didn’t exactly have much by way of modern amenities back then.
Curious to know what Hunky looked like? Here you go:
Note, of course, the mention in that last caption about Alan Storke being out of the lineup until June due to school.
Now, those early accounts of Shaw show that he was something of a defensive wizard at the beginning of spring training that year:
However, the difficulty of spring training in those days soon caught up with Shaw.
The more I play with the 1908 season, the more I appreciate reading about some of the forgotten players in articles like this:
I mean, say what you will about kids in that era never getting a fair chance. It seems to me that they got more than their fair share during spring training.
And here’s another clip about Shaw’s fielding:
Back in Tacoma, the press got wind of Shaw’s bright outlook:
I’m not quite sure who “Wetzel” is supposed to be. The Pittsburgh papers mentioned Warren Gill, who wound up playing first base (not third) briefly during 1908, his one and only year in the majors:
And that’s apparently when the bottom started falling out for Shaw. Paragraphs like this one started to pop up:
I suppose that’s how it goes in baseball sometimes.
Even still, local reporters felt that Shaw was going to be the starting third baseman, alongside our old friend Charlie Starr, Wagner’s replacement at shortstop.
Sadly, though, Shaw just didn’t make the cut in the end:
And so it was. Shaw had nothing more than a single at bat in the majors, and went down to the minors in a jiffy.
So What?
So what can we learn from all of this?
Obscure players aren’t generic. In fact, when you really start digging in, you’ll wonder why anybody would ever refer to a “replacement level player.” We simply don’t know what the likes of Warren Gill, Charlie Starr, or Husky Shaw could have done had they been given a real chance. Kind of reminds you of Ryan Schimpf, right?
Spring training in 1908 was brutal. The Pirates aren’t the only team that suffered through this. If you don’t believe me, go pick up a copy of The Unforgettable Season and read about what the training camp was like for the New York Giants.
The press is fickle. One day you’re a hero, the next day you’re a kid who simply can’t make it, and there’s nothing you can do about it. I haven’t seen a lick of evidence that there was anything wrong with Shaw.
Finally, it’s worth it to dig into the old newspapers. This is especially true when you are far enough into your replay to get to know the players. These guys were people, not just names and numbers. The more you dig, the more it will come alive.
I love researching guys like Husky Shaw. And, as much fun as this was, we didn’t even get to his exploits when he returned to the Pacific Northwest!