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| Des Moines Tribune. August 29, 1925 |
Langford, age 22, had a batting average of .350 and was the leading scorer in the league. The Des Moines Tribune said he was a long-distance hitter and averaged a home run in every games as well as several doubles and triples.
Upper row: (left to right) Con Strothers; Whitaker; Routcliffe; and Henry Schuhknecht.
Middle row: (left to right) Joe Kappel; Sammy Nichols; Bob Allen, captain; Charles Gessinger; and Henry Kappel.
Bottom row: (left to right) jerry Harrington; Billy Rhines; Jack Fanning; Jack and Jacj Lauler.
Cyril Charles Slapnicka was born in Cedar Rapids in 1886.
Farm country. Immigrant parents. Baseball was the quickest way out of town and
the surest way back in.
He pitched forever in the minors. Iowa. Illinois.
Anywhere they’d pay him. In 1911 he won 26 games in Rockford and forced the
Chicago Cubs to notice. September call-up. Big league clubhouse. A few
appearances. Then, back on the train.
He resurfaced with Pittsburgh in 1918. Ten major
league games total. Record: 1–6. He wasn’t a star. Not even close.
A lot of men would’ve faded right there.
Slapnicka didn’t.
In 1921, he signed on with Cleveland as a scout.
That’s where the story actually starts. He had an eye, and knew what a
big-league arm looked like before it knew itself. He drove Iowa’s back roads.
Watched high school kids throw in half-empty parks. Talked to parents. Took
notes. Made bets with other scouts and usually won.
In 1936, he found Bob Feller, an Iowa farm kid
throwing gas past grown men. Slapnicka signed him. That changed Cleveland for a
decade. Later came Bob Lemon and a pipeline of players who filled out rosters
that could actually win.
For a stretch in the mid-1930s, he ran the club.
General manager. Contracts, salaries, egos. No draft system back then. You
wanted a player; you found him first and signed him fast. Slapnicka operated
like a man who understood scarcity. Talent was gold. Hesitation was death.
He stayed with Cleveland over forty years,
scouting into his seventies because he trusted his judgment more than anyone
else’s reports.
He died in 1979 at 93, back in Cedar Rapids.
Here’s the clean version: He had a short,
forgettable pitching career and a long, consequential second act.
He didn’t conquer the mound. He built the roster.
And in baseball, that can matter more.
Robert Gates, catcher; Andrew Chalmers, pitcher and team captain; Martin Peterson, first base; Fred Gates, second base; Walter Sargent, third base; Ray Prather, shortstop; Burt Sargent, left field; Ray Hampton, center field; John Dwight, right field; and Benjamin Franklin and Charlie Holmes, substitutes.
In October 1916, every eye in Iowa was focused on the World
Series and Babe Ruth. Farmers leaned on fence posts. Barbers argued over box
scores.
Telegraph wires hummed like angry bees. Out there in Boston, a thick-armed kid with a mean fastball was turning October into his own private carnival.
Ruth wasn’t the Sultan of Swat yet. He was just a left-handed wrecking crew in wool flannel, chewing up the Brooklyn Robins. In Game 2, he worked fast, jaw set, eyes flat. Brooklyn hitters swung like men chopping at ghosts. Boston won. No fuss.
Game 5 was where things got strange. Fourteen innings. No lights. No mercy. The crowd sagged and swayed. Pitch after pitch, Ruth kept firing, as if he’d tapped into some private reservoir of stubborn American madness. When it ended—scoreless for Brooklyn—he’d stacked up nearly 30 straight World Series innings without allowing a run.
Iowans read the numbers in the morning papers and shook their heads. They didn’t know they were witnessing the early rumble of a coming storm that would blow the fences down and change the sport forever.
Babe Ruth would be an unstoppable force in the game.
Ray Fisher, 18, was the leading picture for the Des Moines Federal League in 1916. When he pitched for the MsCurmin Drug team, he won twelve straight games, averaged twelve strikeouts, and five hits per game.
He got his start in the West Des Moines Sunday School League, where he played for the South Des Moines Methodist team. In 1916, he was given a trial with the local Western League Club.
(Picture from the Des Moines Register. February 20, 1916)
Top row (left to right): S. Dale, manager, W. Heck, J. Bunting, M. Koch, Ed O’Connell, C. Prabel, G. Cronkite, and T. Hardiman.
Bottom row (left to right): F. Kerres, H. Gallagher, E. Bishop, H. Michaels, G. Garden, and E. Smith.
