Ralph “Spud” Johnson
RBI champion died in obscurity; guest column by Peter Morris
We are pleased to post a guest column by Peter Morris, a great historian of the game and my longtime friend.
When a seventyish Chicagoan died of pneumonia at the West Chestnut Street home where he lived alone in February of 1928, it proved no easy matter to find someone capable of providing the information required for his death certificate. Eventually, a man named John McInerney offered to help, but the resulting document makes clear that their acquaintanceship was not particularly close. McInerney reported that the dead man’s name was James R. Johnson and that he had been an actor, but that pretty much exhausted his store of knowledge. He estimated Johnson’s age to have been “about 65” and was able to provide no information at all about his wife or parents. McInerney did report that Chicago was Johnson’s place of birth, but in light of the gaping holes in what he knew, this too was likely little more than a guess.
The result of those gaps is a conundrum that endures to this day. Was the man who died in obscurity in 1928 the enigmatic slugger with a sweet left-handed swing who had once been a major league RBI champion? And if not, what did become of one of baseball’s most implausible stars?
That mystery is made all the more tantalizing by the details that have emerged. James Ralph Johnson was born in Upper Canada in December of 1856, the son of William and Mary Johnson, mundane names that add to the difficulty of tracing the family. No vital record provides the exact location, but there is only one family on the 1861 census of Upper Canada that remotely fits the known details, and it is such an exact match that it seems safe to assume this to be the family of the future ballplayer. The entry in question is from Seneca Township, a rural community on the Niagara Peninsula, and it shows five-year-old Ralph to have been the youngest of three children. Living next door to the Johnsons are Ralph’s grandparents, Lavinia and Merritt Johnson, the latter picturesquely listed as a “yeoman.”
Alas, this idyllic snapshot would be marred by grim realities. One year earlier, William’s sister had died at the age of twenty-three, leaving her husband to raise their young family. At an undetermined date a few years later, that tragedy was compounded by the death of William and Mary’s middle child, a son also named William who was only one year older than Ralph. Perhaps it was those dual blows that impelled the family to make the move to the bustling city of Chicago at the end of the U.S. Civil War.
In his new home, Ralph Johnson soon showed an aptitude for the American national pastime and by 1878 was playing for the West Ends, one of Chicago’s premier semipro teams. But there’s no reason to believe that he had serious aspirations of a career in baseball, and the 1880 census indicates that he was working as a railroad clerk and that his father was in the insurance business. Any possibility of playing baseball professionally seemed at an end in the spring of 1882 when Ralph traveled to Wisconsin for a shotgun wedding to eighteen-year-old Mary Louise Larsen, who two months later gave birth to a daughter they named Hazel.
In the ensuing years, Ralph Johnson continued to build on his reputation as one of the most feared hitters on the Chicago sandlots. But he was also following in his father’s footsteps by accepting a position with the Traders’ Insurance company, and with a wife and infant daughter to provide for, there was no reason to imagine that baseball would ever be more than a sidelight. Ballplaying, after all, was still a risky proposition at the best of times, while insurance was as stable as could be. So Ralph continued to turn down all overtures from professional teams.
In December of 1886, Ralph Johnson celebrated his thirtieth birthday and had yet to play a single game in Organized Baseball, making it seem preposterous that he would one day lead a major league in a major statistical category. But something changed that month, as Topeka’s Western League team announced that the longtime Chicago sandlot standout had finally signed a professional contract.
What had changed Johnson’s mind? The baseball world was abuzz that winter with rumors of the sale of star players for unprecedented amounts, capped by the news that Chicago legend Mike “King” Kelly had been sold to Boston for the jaw-dropping sum of $10,000, so perhaps that played into his decision. His marriage had produced no additional children, so maybe by this time he felt that he could afford to take a chance. Or perhaps it was some combination of this and other considerations. As with so much about Ralph Johnson’s life, we simply don’t know.
What we do know is that his long-deferred career took off. Finding a suitable position for Johnson proved a challenge, and it was only after unsuccessful trials at third base and other spots in the infield that he eventually found a home in right field. His ability at the plate was never in doubt, however, as he batted well over .400 in the Western League in 1887 and then led the Western Association in batting average in 1888, allowing him to start the following season as a 32-year-old rookie major leaguer.
The league in question was the American Association, a name that is a frequent source of confusion because a minor league with the same moniker was in operation for most of the twentieth century. The nineteenth-century American Association, however, was very much a major league. To be sure, when launched in 1882, detractors made unflattering comparisons to the National League and dubbed it the “Beer and Whiskey” league because its base was in the midwestern cities known for practicing the more relaxed Continental Sabbath. Nevertheless, by 1889 when Johnson made his debut with Columbus, the upstart circuit was a very worthy rival for its more straitlaced counterpart.
And what a debut it was! Facing ace Baltimore southpaw Matt Kilroy on Opening Day, Johnson went 4-for-4 and scored three runs in a 13–3 victory. Of course, he couldn’t keep up that lofty pace, but when he wrapped up the season with a .283 average and 91 runs scored, it was a most auspicious debut for any rookie, let alone one who had spent his twenties at desk jobs.
In his sophomore season for Columbus in 1890, Ralph Johnson’s batting numbers reached new heights, including a .346 batting average, 106 runs scored, and 113 runs batted in. The latter figure not only led the league, but made him the only American Association batter to surpass the 100-RBI threshold that season. So what did Johnson do to celebrate the RBI title? For all that is unknown about this shadowy figure, this is one question that can be answered with complete certainty — there were no festivities at all, because runs batted in were not yet part of the pantheon of baseball statistics, with the result that his accomplishment did not become known until decades later when RBIs were retroactively compiled.
For that matter, nobody connected to baseball was in the mood for celebrating at the end of the tumultuous 1890 season. Amid mounting labor strife, a third major league had entered the fray that season and had enlisted the services of many National League and American Association stars, leaving both circuits a shadow of their former selves. In the spring, the upstart Players’ League showed signs of becoming the people’s choice, but by summer the stands were empty at the parks of all three major leagues, leading to massive financial losses. So instead of throwing a party, Johnson reportedly grumbled that he had been robbed of the batting title by the preferential treatment given to winner William “Chicken” Wolf by a hometown official scorer.
That marked the end of Ralph Johnson’s meteoric rise, and his descent was just as precipitous. With the Players’ League having folded, he started the 1891 season with Cleveland of the National League, but after posting a far-less imposing .257 batting average with 46 RBIs he was released in early August. Nothing came of rumors that he was negotiating with Pittsburgh, and he remained unsigned until the following June, when he caught on with a minor league team in Rochester. After two weeks, however, he returned to Chicago to tend to his ailing mother, and there is no record of him ever again setting foot on a baseball diamond.
In the immediate aftermath of his playing days, Johnson’s name was often mentioned in the sporting press. In 1896, he was reported to be the editor of a Chicago publication called Stage and Field. Over the next couple of years, he made an unsuccessful bid to become an alderman in Chicago’s Twelfth Ward and branched out into show business, taking a vaudeville company on the road and serving as the advance agent for a tragedian named Walker Whiteside. Then in 1898, he leased a hotel and opera house in Portsmouth, Ohio, inspiring another flurry of notes in the sporting pages. But after only a year, he returned to Chicago and had to deal with another series of personal losses.
The last known press reference to Johnson’s wife appeared in 1889. Exactly when and where she died remains yet another unknown, but the 1900 census lists him as a widower, living with his parents and his now seventeen-year-old daughter Hazel, so presumably Mary Louise Johnson had died during the intervening decade. That loss was followed by the death of his father in 1902 and of his mother in 1906. Back in Canada, his venerable grandfather, by now listed simply as a “gentleman,” also passed away.
While back in Chicago, Ralph Johnson found work as a solicitor and renewed his connection to baseball. In 1906, he was one of more than a hundred locals who formed an old-time ballplayer’s association and were the guests of Charley Comiskey at a White Sox game. But when the death of his parents and the 1907 wedding of his daughter Hazel left him again free to roam, he moved to New York and his doings again became the subject of press interest. According to one account, “Old-time third baseman Ralph Johnson is an executive at the Hotel Vendome, 41st and Broadway, and hopes to persuade clubs to stay there.” Several other articles had him back in show business, including one in December of 1908 that reported that Johnson had attended baseball’s recent winter meetings and was “now in the theatrical business … He can be addressed care of the Dramatic Mirror, New York City.”
After that, however, he fell entirely out of the public eye and there are only a few scattered clues. A 1910 census listing shows him residing at the Mills Hotel in New York City and working as a real estate salesman. His daughter Hazel died in 1916 and his sister Jennie four years later, leaving Ralph Johnson the last surviving member of his immediate family. By the time of the 1920 census, a man believed to be him has returned to Chicago, his occupation listed as “theatrical actor.” With that, the trail of the man who emerged from obscurity to become a major league RBI champion goes ice-cold.
If a closer acquaintance of the James R. Johnson who died in 1928 had stepped forward to provide vital statistics, then we would know for sure whether he was indeed the elusive James Ralph Johnson. But while definitive proof remains elusive, the circumstantial evidence points strongly to that conclusion, beginning with one of the few pieces of information that informant John B. McInerney did supply about that man — the fact that he was an actor, which is compelling evidence in light of the ballplayer’s longstanding ties to the theater.
Researcher Tim Copeland recently found more support for that conclusion by hunting down a 1929 obituary of McInerney that described him as a lifelong friend of White Sox owner Charles Comiskey and one of the founders of the Woodlawn Bards, the team’s rooting organization. In light of Ralph Johnson’s involvement with the local old-time baseball association, this offers a plausible explanation for both their acquaintanceship and for the many gaps in McInerney’s knowledge. Thus while mystery continues to swirl around baseball’s most implausible RBI champion, there is still hope that one day it will be possible to fill in one of the blanks alongside James Ralph Johnson’s name in the record books.
