Youngstown Ohio Works
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The Youngstown Ohio Works baseball team was a minor league club that was known for winning the premier championship of the Ohio–Pennsylvania League in 1905,[1] and for launching the professional career of pitcher Roy Castleton a year later.[2] A training ground for several players and officials who later established careers in Major League Baseball, the team proved a formidable regional competitor and also won the 1906 league championship.
During its brief span of activity, the Ohio Works team faced challenges that reflected common difficulties within the Ohio–Pennsylvania League, including weak financial support for teams.[3] Following a dispute over funding, the team's owners sold the club to outside investors, just a few months before the opening of the 1907 season.[4]
The club's strong record and regional visibility spurred the growth of amateur and minor league baseball in the Youngstown area, and the community's minor league teams produced notable players throughout the first half of the 20th century.[5] In the late 1990s, this tradition was rekindled, with the establishment of the Mahoning Valley Scrappers, a minor league team based in neighboring Niles, Ohio.[6]
The Ohio Works team was organized in Youngstown, in 1902, under the sponsorship of Joseph A. McDonald, superintendent of the Ohio Works of the Carnegie Steel Company.[7] In 1905, the club joined the Class C Division, Ohio–Pennsylvania League, which was founded that year in Akron, Ohio, by veteran ballplayer Charlie Morton.[8] The league's Ohio members included clubs from Akron, Barberton, Bucyrus, Canton, Kent, Lima, Massillon, Mount Vernon, Newark, Niles, Steubenville, Washington, Wooster, Youngstown, and Zanesville, while Pennsylvania was initially represented by teams from Braddock, Butler, Homestead, and Sharon. Within the first two weeks of the season, clubs from Lancaster and McKeesport also joined the league. Only eight of the original 21 participating clubs finished the 1905 season.[9] These included clubs from Akron, Homestead, Lancaster, Newark, Niles, Sharon, Youngstown, and Zanesville.[9] The name, "Youngstown Ohio Works", became officially associated with the Youngstown team when it joined the Ohio–Pennsylvania League.[10] From the outset, the Youngstown ball club was managed by ex-major leaguer Marty Hogan, a former outfielder for the Cincinnati Reds and St. Louis Browns.[8]
The team opened the 1905 season with an unexpected 4–1 loss to the Canton Protectives, inspiring a local newspaper to comment that the Youngstown team made "as many errors as hits while Canton fielded almost perfectly and hit opportunely".[11] The Ohio Works club gained steam and began to win games. On May 11, 1905, the Youngstown team garnered controversy when The Akron Times-Democrat reported that the Ohio Works' sponsors provided player salaries that nearly doubled those offered by other clubs in the Ohio–Pennsylvania League.[12] In a report on the outcry in Akron, The Youngstown Daily Vindicator warned that, "if the Youngstown backers keep adding and force the other clubs to add to the salaries, it is a question of only a short time until independent baseball will be an impossibility".[12] The newspaper article concluded that the large salaries provided by the Ohio Works's sponsors placed a special burden on teams based in "smaller cities".[12]
Competition among league participants was intense, and games were often raucous affairs. On July 16, 1905, a riot broke out during a contest with a team in neighboring Niles, Ohio. According to a newspaper account, the trouble began when two female fans became involved in a "hair-pulling fight". At one point, two "well-known men" were arrested for "taking an umbrella from a woman and breaking it after she had been annoying them with it". Finally, dozens of fans swarmed into the field, where they "pushed around the umpire and interfered with the defensive play of the Youngstown fielders".[13]
In September 1905, the Youngstown Ohio Works won the first league championship, though sources disagree on the club's final record. This confusion may be due to the disorganized nature of the new league, with its sprawling roster of teams.[1] According to the Spalding Guide (1906), "The failure to furnish official reports was probably due to the clubs being new to a league".[9] Baseball researcher Jim Holl summarizes the varied accounts as follows: "The Reach Guide (1906) credits Youngstown with an 84–32 won–lost record where the Spalding Guide of the same year list a 90–35 record. The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball (1993) tells a third story, giving Youngstown an 88–35 mark".[1] Despite this uncertainty over the club's record, its championship status was not in dispute, and the team became popularly known as "the Champs".[14] This moniker, however, was not officially connected to a Youngstown-based ball club until 1907, when it became the legal name of the Ohio Works' local successors.[10]
Final season
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By the outset of the 1906 season, the Ohio–Pennsylvania League had trimmed down to a more manageable eight teams. Departing teams included franchises from Barberton, Braddock, Bucyrus, Butler, Canton, Homestead, Kent, Lima, Massillon, McKeesport, Mount Vernon, Niles, Steubenville, Washington, and Wooster. At the same time, the league attracted new teams from New Castle, Pennsylvania, and Mansfield, Ohio.[2]
The Ohio Works team opened with 16 players, three of whom had been part of the club during the 1905 season.[15] The team's lineup included William J. Maloney of Bradford, Kentucky; Will M. Thomas of Morristown, Pennsylvania; Tommy Thomas of Piqua, Ohio; Lee Fohl of Allegheny, Pennsylvania; Louis Schettler of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; "Dotty" Freck of Columbus, Ohio; A. C. McClintock of Columbus; Roy Castleton of Salt Lake City, Utah; Lewis Groh of Rochester, New York; John Kennedy of Youngstown, Charles Crouse of Detroit, Michigan; Roy Chase of Andover, Ohio; Forrester J. Dressner of Garrettsville, Pennsylvania; Harry Schwartz of Cleveland, Ohio; and Roy Gould of Middlesex, Pennsylvania.[15] Other players associated with the club during the 1906 season were Edward Hilley,[16] Curley Blount,[17] and Charles McCloskey.[17]
The Youngstown club kicked off the 1906 season with an exhibition game against a Cleveland team, emerging as victors in a close contest of 3–4.[17] "Up till the closing minutes it looked like the visiting team, the Cleveland Leaders, would stow the contest away in their bat-bags and leave the field on top", the Vindicator reported. "The finish was exciting, and 400 fanatics who took chances on pneumonia had a chance to warm up and go home in good spirits.".[17] The paper stated that, at the top of the first inning, the Cleveland team was leading by one point, when "the Youngstown gentlemen got busy in the most approved style".[17] According to the Vindicator, Ohio Works player Curley Blount "stepped in front of a slow pitched ball and was sent to third", while A. C. McClintock "stole second with all hands asleep".[17] At this point, the paper added, "[Charles] McCloskey took another base hit and Blount and McClintock scored".[17] The Vindicator's summary of the game called attention to pitcher Roy Castleton, "who struck out all three batters in the tenth and got one in the ninth".[17] The paper described McClintock and McCloskey (the "two Macs") as the Youngstown club's "star hitters".[17]
Early in the season, as the Ohio Works team prepared for a second game with the Zanesville Moguls (close rivals in the 1905 championship games),[9] the club manager, Hogan, spoke confidently on their chances of capturing the league pennant. "If the boys go through the season as they are playing now, we will have no trouble winning out", he said to a reporter with The Youngstown Daily Vindicator. "Our pitchers are in good condition and are holding the opposing batsmen to few hits. It is the pitching staff that has saved many a game for us. We have no .350 batters on the club, but any man on it is liable to step in and break up a game".[14] A local newspaper confirmed Hogan's assessment of the team, observing that only one player, outfielder Will Thomas, had worked up a batting average of .306.[18] Nevertheless, as Hogan predicted, the team defeated the Moguls, with a final score of 11–8. The game's highlights included the pitching of "Long John" Kennedy, who kept the Moguls to seven hits, and the batting of Edward Hilley, who "unloosened a drive to middle field that permitted him to go all the way around".[16]
Hogan's overall confidence in the club was rewarded. The Youngstown team closed the season with an 84–53 record and won its second consecutive Ohio–Pennsylvania League championship.[19] The star of the Ohio Works team was a gangling, left-handed pitcher named Roy Castleton, a Utah native who went on to pitch for the New York Highlanders and Cincinnati Reds.[2] On August 17, 1906, Castleton gained national recognition when he pitched a perfect game against rival Akron, shutting them out at 4–0.[2] With Castleton's assistance, the Youngstown Ohio Works claimed its third consecutive Ohio state pennant, a prize distinct from the league championship.[20]
