Good Old Uncle Harry: Harry Redmond Major League Baseball 1909

My Uncle Harry played Major League Baseball. It’s true, you can look it up. Harry Redmond, Brooklyn, 1909. He actually was my father’s Uncle, my Grandfather’s brother. He played in six games and batted nineteen times, never got a hit. Still, he played in the Majors. He played in the Show. You could look it up.

When I was a kid there was this book called the Baseball Encyclopedia. This is the seventies, obviously pre-internet (prehistoric times). The Baseball Encyclopedia was a giant book that contained the stats of every player who ever played a game in the Major Leagues. I found this astounding. It was a monster of a book that cost around fifty dollars, at the time, an obscene  amount of dough. Every time I visited Burrows bookstore in the mall, I would open the Encyclopedia and checkout Uncle Harry’s stats. I was very proud I had a great Uncle in that book.  I still am.

The 1909 Brooklyn baseball team was known as the Superbas. They wouldn’t become the Dodgers for a few years yet. The Brooklyn Superbas. A Superba, I believe, was another word for super or superb or something.

1913 Edmonton Graybills. Harry Redmond is in the back row the fourth from the right

Harry was playing for the Winston-Salem (North Carolina) Twins when his contract was bought by Brooklyn on July 28th.  He debuted on September 7, 1909 going 0-1 against Philadelphia. He played second base and was the backup to Whitey Alpermann. He played his last Major League game on September 14th, again, against Philadelphia going 0-3. Although he never played another game for Brooklyn, he remained on the team for the rest of the season and was on the roster in early 1910 but was released before the regular season started.

The 1909 Superbas were not a very good baseball team. They were led by player manager Harry Lumley and finished the season 55-98 for sixth place in the National League.  They played their home games at Washington Park which was located at First and Third Streets. The park was abandoned in 1913 but one of the walls still remains standing as part of the Brooklyn Con Edison complex. That must be some wall.

1909 also saw the debut of future Hall Of Famer Zack Wheat.

Zack Wheat

Brooklyn bought his contract from the Mobile Sea Gulls and he played his first game on September 11th, four days after Harry made his debut. Considering they were both rookies, the same age (21) and came up around the same time, you would think they may have hung out together. (They actually both played in the Southern Association in 1908. Harry for Memphis and Wheat for Mobile, so they may already have known each other.) Wheat would play nineteen years in Major League Baseball all but one of those years with Brooklyn. He had a lifetime batting average of .317 and was elected to the Hall Of Fame in 1959.  He still holds the Dodger franchise records for hits, doubles, triples and total bases.

While the Superbas had one of the future greats on their roster, they also had catcher Bill Bergen who arguably is the worst hitter to ever put on a Major League uniform. In 1909, Bergen batted 327 times and hit  a paltry .139. Over his eleven year career playing 947 games and batting 3,229 times he hit over .200 only once (.227 in 1903 with Cincinnati) and had a lifetime batting average of only .170. He is considered one of the best defensive

Bill Bergen

catchers in the history of the game which is obviously why he stuck around for eleven years.  As a weird and tragic side note, his brother Marty played in the Majors for four seasons with the Boston Beaneaters (1896-1899). He suffered from severe mental illness and on January 19th 1900, he killed his wife and two children and then took his own life.

Although Harry only played one season in the Major Leagues, he played for at least six seasons in the minors.  Starting in 1907 he played for the Vicksburg Hill Billies (Cotton State League), the Memphis Egyptians (Southern Association), the Winston-Salem Twins (Carolina Association), the Springfield Ponies (Connecticut State League), the Galveston Sand Crabs  (Texas League) and in 1913 he played for the Edmonton Graybills (Western Canada League).

According to Baseball Reference, Harry’s professional career ended in Edmonton in 1913. But records are sketchy from the deadball era and he may have played elsewhere. I have some material from the 1910 census stating that he was employed by the Ohio State

1913 Edmonton  Graybills. Harry is sitting in the front row second from right

League but there is no record of him appearing in a game in that circuit. Also, he played in 1911 and 1913 but there is no record for 1912. Was he out of organized baseball that year or have his stats for that year been lost to time?

Harry was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1887 and died there in 1960, five years before I was born. My dad described him as a jovial guy who loved to have a good time. Supposedly, he was a popular bartender for many years at various establishments in Lakewood, a Cleveland suburb, But his obituary in the Cleveland Plain Dealer stated that he was a VP at a company owned by his brother.. Who knows? The truth is lost to time.

He married late in life (to the outrage of some of his siblings) and had no children. He died on July 10th 1960. He is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Cleveland.

Uncle Harry RIP.

--Casey Redmond
   May 10, 2019

Here is a song I wrote in Harry’s honor, “Uncle Harry’s Ghost”

                                           Uncle Harry's Ghost

Harry Redmond's Major League Statistics

Harry Redmond's Minor League Statistics

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