Saturday, January 15, 2022
Herriman Saturday: March 11 1910
March 11 1910 -- A very strange cartoon by Herriman, odd enough that one wonders if Garge might have had a little TOO much fun at the ballpark before dipping his pen. Or, maybe if we knew the details of that game everything would be perfectly reasonable. I dunno.
The strip is made only more impenetrable by the condition of the paper. Beyond the typical woes of dealing with microfilm, this paper was torn, missing the upper left side, and looked like it had gotten wet, making the ink blot and bleed. Thankfully most of the Examiner material is in better condition than this.
Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons
Comments:
The "Murphy" gag refers to Frank Murphy, a player for the Angels who the previous year (1909) had played in the "Three I" (Illinois-Indiana-Iowa) league. He had batted .300 and had hit 14 triples and 24 doubles the previous season. Murphy, who was 34, only batted .228 for the Angels in 1910, which would be his last season. The "Gill/Finney" gag is somewhat obscure, but there was a player named Roy Gill on the Angels who pitched a few innings in 1910 for them. "Criger" is Elmer Criger, who would bat .147 in 40 games for the Angels in 1910. Elmer Thorsen and Andy Briswalter were to other Angels (who batted .183 and .167, respectively). "Daley" is probably Tom Daley, who would bat .262 (with 831 at-bats). The '10 edition of the Angels was not a very good team.
I did locate the account in the Los Angeles Times for March 11, 1910 of this game. The White Sox beat Los Angeles 4-1. This was, apparently, Criger's first appearance as a pitcher for the Angels, and he was "very wild," giving up two walks in the first (hence the curtain gag). Thorsen and Briswalter, the two other players in the gag, were the pitchers that followed Criger in the game for the Angels. Lee Tannehill was the shortstop for the White Sox (he was their starter for most of the oughts), and he made one of the Sox's 4 errors on the day, where he muffed an easy fly in back of third base (hence the ball-through-mitt gag). Murphy got one of the only 4 hits of the day for Angels, and it was a double. There was one player named "Gill" on each of the teams, hence the fish gag.
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