Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Legends by Rob Neyer

Author:Rob Neyer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Touchstone

1928

JOHN MCGRAW & “BUCK LAI”

Clark Griffith needn’t think he’s pulling something new when he introduces a Chinese into the American League this year. Twenty years ago, John McGraw unveiled a Chinese utility infielder named Buck Lai, who broke into a few games for the Giants.

—Eddie Brietz in The New York World-Telegram (reprinted in Baseball Digest, March 1945)

There’s an awful lot about baseball I don’t know. I don’t know one percent of one percent of what there is to know about baseball. Actually, I don’t know one percent of one percent of one percent. Nevertheless, I’ve read a lot of books and a lot of well-researched articles over the years, and when I came across this item, my reaction was “Really? There was a Chinese ballplayer? That would have been a big story, right? Wouldn’t I have read about that? Wouldn’t somebody have mentioned Buck Lai at a SABR convention, at some point?”

Anyway, after that reaction I did the obvious thing: I looked up Buck Lai—or rather, just Lai—on baseball-reference.com.

Nothing.

Next, I looked up the list of countries in which major leaguers have been born, to see if there’s ever been a Chinese-born major leaguer.

Nothing again.

I almost gave up then. But instead I looked up Lai in the Professional Baseball Player Database (PBPD), a CD-ROM that lists every player in Organized Baseball—majors and minors—since 1922 (there might actually be a more recent version that goes back farther, but that’s the one I’ve got).

Bingo.

Somebody named Bill Lai played for Jersey City in 1928 and batted .188. The PBPD lists batting average, home runs, and runs batted in for each player in each season, but Lai didn’t show up with any homers or RBI. Just that batting average. What this means, usually, is that he didn’t play enough that season to get a full statistical line in the baseball guides; that instead he garnered just a short summary in a section of little-used players.

Which in this case was the International League.

When I think of Jersey City, I think of the Jersey City Giants, a New York Giants farm club, which immediately suggests that Lai was indeed property of the Giants. However, a quick check of the book Professional Baseball Franchises: From the Abbeville Indians to the Zanesville Indians reveals that in 1928 they were the Jersey City Skeeters and had been the Skeeters since 1918. The franchise disbanded in 1933. Jersey City was without a team for four years, and then the Jersey City Giants were born in 1937. Further, according to The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball, the Skeeters weren’t officially tied to any major-league team until 1932, when they began a one-year relationship with not the Giants, but the hated Dodgers.

Okay. I’m sure that’s more than you really wanted to know about the history of Jersey City baseball. But I needed to know it. And now, back to the International League. I expected to find Bill Lai batting .188 in my 1929 Reach Official Base Ball Guide. I didn’t find Bill Lai at all.

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