Wednesday, November 19, 2008

House of David

Scott Simkus has a nice little post about the famous, but largely forgotten, House of David barnstorming team from the early 20th Century:
Their baseball team (actually, they sometimes had 2 or 3 traveling around the country at the same time), was really a big deal. Up there with any of the big name Negro League clubs in terms of traveling gate attractions, and like any barnstorming team worth its weight in salt, claimed to win upwards of 80-85% of their games.

They lied. Oh, they had a number of former minor leaguers on their roster (hired to play on behalf of the colony), and a few washed up big leaguers. They even hired Satchel Paige for a few weeks and won a tournament. They had good years, that much is true. But they didn’t win anywhere close to 85% of their games.
Click through to Simkus' post to see how they really did.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

They were featured in the Ken Burns documentary. I forget which disc/era they were on, but it was very interesting.