Dodge’s Spitfire Legend By Joey Marchant

The Georgia High School Association called a meeting for March 27th to discuss all possible options for resuming spring sports. Before that meeting could take place, Governor Kemp extended Georgia school closings through April 24th. The GHSA seems to be holding off on any sort of decision pending Governor Kemp’s next move, which should be made known in the next three weeks.
With no current baseball to report on, I thought it would be interesting to look back at one of Dodge’s oldest and most accomplished baseball players of whom I suspect most have never heard. John Byron (“Jimmy”) Vaughan was born in Eastman in 1892. Jimmy played baseball growing up in Eastman, but I do not know much about Jimmy’s exploits until he joined the Macon Peaches of the South Atlantic League in 1914.
Jimmy made his minor league debut 106 years ago to the day that I am writing this article on March 27, 1914. Jimmy was 22 years old. Jimmy’s first assignment was to face what would turn out to be the 1914 World Series Champion Boston Braves.
Jimmy, who had begun pitching at the age of 16, scattered six hits over nine innings in a 4-0 victory over the Braves. Jimmy allowed only one Brave past second base. To be fair to the future World Series Champions, this was a split squad game with the Braves’ A Team traveling to Atlanta to face the Minor League Atlanta Crackers while the Braves’ B Team stayed behind at the Braves’ spring training home in Macon to face the Peaches. The fact that Jimmy was facing the B Team means he probably did not see Boston’s Hall of Famers Rabbit Maranville and the newly acquired former Cub Johnny Evers. However, Jimmy’s feat was still impressive. These were real major league players on a World Series Championship Team.
When Jimmy arrived in Macon, he stood only 5’8” and weighed 145 lbs. He was armed with a good fastball and a curveball, but he had yet to develop his famous spitball. Throwing a spitball involved wetting the ball with saliva in certain spots. Applied over and over between pitches, the saliva would cause the ball to drop sharply as it crossed the plate. A good spitball was almost impossible to hit. Jimmy learned the spitball from another young Macon Peaches pitcher from Columbus, Georgia by the name of Dana Fillingim. The spitball would carry Fillingim all the way to the Major Leagues where he pitched six seasons with the Boston Braves and parts of two more seasons with the Philadelphia Athletics and the Philadelphia Phillies. Meanwhile, Jimmy played the 1914 and 1915 seasons with the Macon Peaches and the 1916 season with the Montgomery Rebels.
In 1917, Jimmy and his wife Joe Lee left Alabama and headed to Akron, Ohio where they both found jobs in Akron’s booming rubber industry. However, Jimmy’s baseball career was just getting started. Baseball was truly America’s National Pastime in those days. In addition to the Major Leagues and the various Minor Leagues existed several Industrial League Teams across America. These semiprofessional teams were sponsored by local industries and made up primarily of factory workers. However, the managers were not above bringing in a ringer or two. This is how Shoeless Joe Jackson found work after being banned from the Major Leagues for his role in the 1919 Black Sox Scandal. Back home, the Eastman Cotton Mill had a team.
Interestingly, Jimmy joined the General Tire Company baseball team despite being an employee of rival Firestone. As you might imagine, this did not go over well with either company. However, rather than changing baseball teams, Jimmy changed jobs taking a position with General Tire in 1919.
Jimmy dominated Akron Industrial League Baseball for several years. Jimmy pitched a total of 10 years for General Tire before the team disbanded in 1929 averaging nine strikeouts a game with a 1.75 ERA. Jimmy threw two no hitters. On six occasions, Jimmy pitched both games of a doubleheader. In 1919, Jimmy went 15-0 and pitched 56 consecutive scoreless innings.
Jimmy’s most famous performance came in 1922 when he hooked up with Firestone’s Percy McKinstry in a pitching duel for the ages. Jimmy struck out 24 batters allowing 7 hits and 0 runs in a game that went 20 innings before being called for darkness. It appeared that McKinstry had bested Jimmy by striking out 33 batters in the contest while allowing 5 hits and 0 runs. However, Jimmy got the last laugh when he blanked Firestone three days later by a score of 4-0 to give General Tire the League Championship. The marathon game is still talked and written about in Akron today.
While pitching for General Tire, Jimmy had several opportunities to pitch against Major League teams and some of the All-Time Greats in exhibition games. It was not uncommon for Major League teams in that day to play an exhibition game against a semiprofessional team in the middle of the regular season. One would expect the Major League teams to rest their star players for these exhibitions, but this was frowned upon as the stars were necessary to maximize the tickets sold and the profit. As Jimmy was General Tire’s best pitcher, he started many of these games.
Such was the case in September 1922 when the New York Yankees came to Akron to face General Tire. Akron was abuzz with news that the Great Babe Ruth was coming to town. The Akron Beacon Journal ran a contest inviting youngsters to guess the Babe’s weight. The kids mobbed Ruth at times during the game. Ever the showman, Ruth would have loved nothing more than to belt a homerun for the kids of Akron. Ruth had hit two homers and two doubles the day before in Philadelphia. The box score shows that Ruth had two hits and scored two runs in the Yankees 11-4 victory over General Tire. However, a newspaper account reveals that Jimmy kept Ruth in the park that day and struck out the Babe swinging in his final at bat.
In other exhibition games, Jimmy faced Hall of Famers Pie Traynor of the Pittsburgh Pirates and George Sisler of the Boston Braves. Jimmy also faced great Negro National League teams like the Kansas City Monarchs and the Homestead Grays who were stationed in nearby Pittsburgh. Jimmy also faced very talented hitters in the Industrial League. On one occasion, Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby brought his Boston Braves to town for an exhibition and left having signed two of Jimmy’s teammates and taken them with the Braves team on the train back to Boston.
Jimmy himself had a chance to sign a professional contract with the St. Louis Browns (now known as the Baltimore Orioles), but he declined presumably because the Browns made known they planned to send him to start off with their Mobile, Alabama minor league team. I wonder if it also had something to do with the Majors having outlawed the spitball after the 1920 season due in part to the death of Cleveland’s Ray Chapman who died after being struck in the head with a pitch. Chapman is believed to have been unable to see the dirtied up baseball. Seventeen major league pitchers then throwing the spitball were grandfathered in and allowed to keep throwing it. Among these was Jimmy’s old friend Dana Fillingim.
When Firestone struggled to defeat Jimmy on the mound, Firestone’s manager lobbied the Akron Industrial League to outlaw the spitball. I am not sure if the Akron Industrial League ever banned the pitch, but Jimmy quit going to his mouth with his fingers and learned to spit in his glove where he could apply the necessary saliva. Jimmy learned that he could produce more saliva by chewing a substance known as slippery elm. Some teams got wise to Jimmy and put a substance known as acacia on the baseballs, which was intended to make the balls less susceptible to spittle. Not to be outdone, Jimmy developed a paraffin ball by secretly applying the substance to his gray uniform and then the baseball. Jimmy would fake the spitball and throw the paraffin ball, which tended to sail rather than drop. Jimmy credited the spitball for his longevity. He noted that he threw the spitball about every three pitches and never had a sore arm. When Jimmy wasn’t pitching for General Tire, he picked up with other teams across Ohio and Pennsylvania getting paid as much as $100.00 a game to pitch.
Jimmy was inducted to the Summit County, Ohio Sports Hall of Fame in 1963. After retiring, Jimmy and Joe Lee moved to Fort Pierce, Florida where Jimmy died in 1966 at the age of 74. If you would like to read more about Jimmy including seeing many photographs, you can access old copies of the Akron Beacon Journal on newspapers.com. I hope that you have enjoyed reading about this forgotten Dodge County baseball player. Next week, I intend to write about Dodge’s first college football star. I doubt you have heard of him either, but you will certainly recognize the surname.