On August 16, 1920 the Cleveland Indians prepared to take the field against the New York Yankees to start a crucial three-game series at Yankee Stadium that pitted the first-place Indians against the third-place Yankees. Cleveland was a mere four percentage points ahead of the Chicago White Sox in the standings; New York stood within a half game and only 10 percentage points of first place. The Yankees, perennial also-rans over most of the franchises first two decades, had been strengthened greatly by the acquisitions of manager Miller Huggins in 1918, pitcher Carl Mays in 1919 and outfielder Babe Ruth in 1920, and were contending for their first American League pennant. The Indians were basically in the same boat, having finished higher than third place only once in their first 17 years in the league, before consecutive second place finishes in 1918 and 1919 put them among the Junior Circuit’s elite.

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If you’ve hung around this site you’re no doubt familiar with our “Who, You Ask?” series of articles which celebrates the careers of largely forgotten ballplayers who fashioned excellent careers but slipped through the cracks of our collective memory. Every once in a while, however, I run across players who I’m unfamiliar with whose careers intrigued me enough to want to find out more. More often than not these players had brief stays in the majors and don’t warrant full-length articles, so I’ve created a category specifically for them called “Cup of Coffee.”

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