Mormon Baseball

[crossposted from Keepapitchinin at the suggestion of Ardis Parshall. Comments should be made on the original post.]

The time for preparation was drawing to a close. It was mid-July, 1917, and on August 5, the young men – most of them Mormons – who would be members of the 145 Field Artillery – were due to leave their homes and formally enter the U.S. Army. They would train at Fort Kearney, near Linda Vista, California, then months later they would sail to France, prepared for war. With them would be B.H. Roberts, their chaplain.

“A chaplain in the army,” Roberts wrote, “as I understand it, is the fellow who, in addition to the praying and preaching and helping every fellow who gets into trouble and shares everybody’s troubles, may also look after their amusements and guide their sports.” One of the best activities, Roberts decided, would be baseball – not only would the men enjoy the friendly competition and the exercise the game provided, directing their play would increase his opportunities to mingle with them and minister to them. “Providing this means of wholesome amusement for the men of the Utah batteries will make one of many approaches for me to their hearts.”

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It is a simple journal entry by Mormon Battalion member Azariah Smith. After spending most of 1846 struggling along the long, 1,900 mile road from Council Bluffs, near what is now Omaha, Nebraska, through the territory we know as Kansas, New Mexico, and Arizona, and after arriving in southern California, near San Diego, Smith recorded in his diary early in 1847 how he and some fellow soldiers chose to entertain themselves:

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Sunday March the 6th. We drilled as before and through the day we play ball and amuse ourselves the best way we can. It is very cool weather and clothing scarce.

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There is significantly less movement before spring training among minor league players. After the minor league seasons end, players who haven’t performed well enough are released, but otherwise not much changes. I imagine this is because where each player is in an organization is decided on a top-down fashion: first the organization decides who is on the major league squad, then who makes the AAA squad, then the AA squad, etc. As a result, the roster of each team in the organization can only be finalized as evaluations are made during spring training. [Of course, this is largely an ongoing process throughout the year, but decisions on where players start the season culminate in spring training.]

As a result, for Mormon players few changes have been made so far. A few have been released or have become free agents. And in the process of reviewing this information, I discovered that one player, Brandon Duckworth, moved to the Japanese league after he was released by the Red Sox last summer.

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I’ve neglected following the transactions and changing status of the Mormon players for the past several months — a bit of a vacation, I suppose. But with spring training rapidly approaching, I thought I should get the status up to date and start following where everyone is. Today’s update only includes the players who played in the Majors last year.

There are still a couple of players who have played in the majors in previous years whose status is uncertain—Kyle Farnsworth and Brandon Lyon both had strong enough years in 2012 that I think they are likely to be picked up by someone.

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Despite a heartfelt campaign led by his children, LDS baseball star and former Massachusetts Boston Mission President Dale Murphy was not inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame, according to the results announced this afternoon. While that result was expected, the fact that fellow Mormon Jack Morris was also not selected was almost as suprising as the fact that the BBWAA selected none of the eligible players this year. The group last failed to add any players to the Hall of Fame in 1996.

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One time Baltimore Orioles ace Jeremy Guthrie, a returned missionary who served in Spain, has landed a contract with the Kansas City Royals for the next 3 years. The deal, worth $25 million, inline with the contract he signed last year with the Rockies and inline with his career high.

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Two Mormon players are part of the massive trade between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Miami Marlins last week that involved a total of 10 players and gutted the highly-paid Marlins team. High performing pitcher Josh Johnson and struggling catcher John Buck were both traded to the Blue Jays as the Marlins reduced their payroll following a losing season. The deal is pending league approval.

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The Washington National’s Bryce Harper has been named the 2012 National League Rookie of the Year. Harper was selected over fellow finalists Todd Frazier of the Cincinnati Reds and Wade Miley of the Arizona Diamondbacks, both of whom had strong seasons through most of the year but struggled in the final months. In contrast, Harper struggled in July and August and then finished very strong in September, helping his team make the playoffs.

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Next week baseball will announce its major awards, including the MVP, Rookie of the Year and Cy Young awards, next week after digesting the results of the 2012 season. And while most Mormons may focus on the possibility that Bryce Harper will be the National League’s Rookie of the Year, the Chicago Cubs’ Darwin Barney has already earned a Gold Glove at 2nd base, which could well leave him the only Mormon awarded for this year’s play.

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“In the 1830s, on the western frontier of Missouri, ball was the favorite sport of Joseph Smith, founder of a new religious sect called the Mormons¹.”

A couple of years ago I received as a Christmas present the Baseball documentary by Ken Burns, the PBS series that as much as anything has driven my current fascination with the game and led to this blog. Early in the first of the documentary’s 10 parts, the narrator makes the above claim, something that even today I don’t hear from Mormon historians. Could it be that Joseph Smith played and loved baseball?

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