I first met Fred Raymer in 2020, the identical method I met each different main leaguer I do know—in a field rating. However these field scores weren’t main league information. I used to be working, as I’ve written about before, on the 1910 Pacific Coast League for the Chadwick Venture. Studying each field rating of each recreation, typing every identify and temporary stat abstract into textual content information, you get to know the commonest names shortly. And Raymer was the on a regular basis second baseman for the Sacramento Solons that season.
I by no means paid a lot consideration to Raymer till Fred Snodgrass talked about him to Larry Ritter. Born in 1875, Raymer was twelve years older than Snodgrass when the latter would shag flies with 1902 Los Angeles California League crew (the Lavatory-loo’s). Snodgrass advised Ritter that Raymer “was the one ballplayer who would speak to us boys”. Speaking to Ritter sixty years later, Snodgrass nonetheless remembered Raymer’s kindness.
Born in japanese Kansas about 30 miles north of Kansas Metropolis, Fred Raymer’s youth is basically unknown to me, however he started getting modest press taking part in for the Albuquerque Browns within the mid-Eighteen Nineties. At 21 he was elected president of that ballclub and left the following yr to play professionally in El Paso. He spent 1897 making an attempt to stay someplace with the Texas Affiliation, a Class C league when the best degree within the minors was Class A. A pair years later in 1899 he signed with Kansas Metropolis of the Western Affiliation, one degree under the most important leagues.
That yr, Raymer met and married a recently-widowed girl, Nettie Kinney, who introduced alongside a seven-year-old son, Lowell Smith, by her first husband. Raymer and Nettie weighed the unsure lifetime of a ballplayer towards a possibility to quiet down. Stability gained. In July, Raymer left the Kansas Metropolis crew to just accept a place as a “sanitary plumber”—answerable for putting in water and sewage methods—working to assist the US Military rebuild Fort Wingate after a hearth gutted a lot of the base in 1896.
However Raymer by no means reported. In August he was taking part in for Oklahoma Metropolis in an impartial league, and had returned to Kansas Metropolis, Nettie’s dwelling, in late 1899. Connie Mack signed him to play in Milwaukee for the 1900 season, however despatched him to Sioux Metropolis after a number of weeks. Raymer performed for 4 groups, caught and recovered from smallpox, and helped nurse his spouse again to well being earlier than the tip of the season. Nettie’s well being can be on Fred’s thoughts as he moved from crew to crew for the remainder of his taking part in days.
After one season in Chicago with the Nationwide League in 1901, Raymer moved his household to Los Angeles, the place younger Fred Snodgrass met him. He caught with the Boston Nationals for 1904 and 1905, however Nettie’s well being didn’t agree with New England, so Raymer took his profession and household again to Los Angeles in early 1906. He was banned from the Nationwide League for failing to report back to Boston that spring.
After a pair years at Class B elsewhere, Raymer landed a job with Sacramento in 1908 and stayed there for a number of years, transferring his household north to be with him. He was claimed by main league groups greater than as soon as however refused to report every time, his household and his spouse’s well being taking precedence. However his Pacific Coast League years have been stable statistically and he’s acquired fairly a number of good playing cards within the T212 set.
In July, 1910, Raymer steps into what he expects to be a spitball and the fastball he by no means sees knocks him unconscious for a couple of minutes. He spends the following few weeks in a hospital and doesn’t end the season. He performed and managed the Victoria (British Columbia) crew within the Northwestern League in 1911 earlier than leaving the sport for good.
All the time blissful and wholesome in Southern California, Fred and Nettie established a duck looking membership within the Imperial Valley about 100 miles east of San Diego. Their enterprise was profitable there they usually remained till Nettie died from a stroke in early 1923 in her mid-40s. Raymer would meet and marry three extra ladies over the following fifteen years, however it’s unclear whether or not he ever discovered happiness at dwelling once more. Each his stepson and daughter married however neither had youngsters. Raymer handed away in 1957 and has no descendants residing right now.
What is obvious is that Raymer was wildly common as a participant amongst his teammates. Sportswriters and teammates wrote of “King Raymer” in multiple metropolis the place he performed. His friendships reached even additional in his years after the most important leagues along with his looking golf equipment on the shores of the Salton Sea. By the point he was solidly established with Boston within the Nationwide League at 29 years of age, Raymer seemingly had 5 or extra years forward of him within the majors. However like a lot of his Pacific Coast League teammates a number of years later, he selected the West Coast and his spouse’s well being as an alternative.
Of all of the ballplayers I’ve met within the field scores, Fred Raymer is one I want it have been doable to satisfy right now. One thing about him caught with Fred Snodgrass for sixty years, and his selection of household over baseball fame elevates his up-and-down profession to a higher accomplishment than his stat strains can convey alone.
–Jay Wigley, creator of How Retrosheet Saved Baseball History
(Notice: Don’t trouble in search of that quote in Ritter’s The Glory of Their Times. Ritter didn’t transcribe that tidbit from Snodgrass, however fortunately the audio recording captured it, out there on the CD model of the ebook (2008). Whereas that model is out of print, you’ll be able to hearken to the Snodgrass audio interview here.)
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