‘Smiling Pete’ the happy baseball player
In his latest Times Past column, Jonathan Smyth recalls a Cavan-born baseball player most likely from Shercock who played with many of the American teams.
The earliest baseball games in America were played as a popular pastime from the 1840s onwards. Abner Doubleday, a famous United States Army Officer and Union General who fired the first shot in the American Civil War, while training some two decades earlier as a cadet at Cooperstown, New York, devised an early form of the sport’s rules in 1839. This is sometimes disputed by purists who say baseball’s roots are in earlier games like cricket.
However, it was in the throes of the American Civil War that baseball came to the fore as a diversion for weary soldiers who played the game on both sides. Following the cessation of fighting, it soon evolved professionally with established teams across the United States providing Americans with a new form of entertainment, creating new sports stars and millions of fans. In those early decades, Peter J. Daniels, otherwise known as ‘Smiling Pete’, was an early Irish-American professional baseball player. He was born in County Cavan on April 8, 1864.
Cavan’s baseball links
In August 2016, the story of Cavan-born Andrew ‘Andy’ Jackson Leonard (1846–1903) was recalled in an article by Seamus Enright for this paper on the occasion that a plaque was erected in Cavan Town in memory of Andy’s achievement as the first ‘Irishman to professionally play Major League Baseball’. A famous leftfielder, he played with the Cincinnati Red Stockings in 1869 and was recognised as one of the sport’s ‘top performers’ of the 19th century.
A few years ago, a collection of Leonard’s memorabilia, including contracts and letters went under the hammer for $60,000. His grandson Charles McCarthy reminisced that Andy was born in County Cavan and, in 1848, travelled with his mother and siblings as a two-year-old to evade the effects of the Great Hunger. They eventually put down roots in Newark, New Jersey and this was where Andy started playing baseball and his unique ability was soon realised. At the time of the auction in 2016, Charles then aged 82 years, said: ‘He was one of the original boys of summer, and we need to do what we can to promote his legacy.’
Then there was the major league baseball player Big Charlie Comiskey (1859-1931), the son of Cavan parents John and Mary Comiskey, who in his early days trained as a plumber, before going on to play professional baseball, becoming a founder member of the Chicago White Sox. Later, as financial success came, he became the manager and owner of the club. Comiskey’s association with baseball lasted 55 years and he was posthumously added to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939.
Other Cavan born baseball players and baseball-linked persons include Hugh Daily (player), and those of Cavan parentage include players like, Ian Desmond, Greg Maddux, the manager/coach Bob Melvin, Mike Roarke (catcher and coach), and Vin Scully (lead baseball broadcaster).
‘Smiling Pete’
Peter Daniels got the nickname ‘Smiling Pete’ because of the devastating smile he flashed at his opponents every time he scored against them. Daniels made the big-time when he graduated into the major league in April 1890 playing with the likes of the Pittsburgh Alleghenys and the St Louis Browns. I recently stumbled across a beautifully written, well-researched article by Chris Rainey, on Smiling Pete Daniels, which explored the baseball hero’s life and career. According to Don Doxsie in the book, ‘Iron Man McGinity: A Baseball Biography’, Daniels was also called ‘Lucky Pete or the Smiling Mickey Welch of the Western League’.
Born in Cavan, Peter’s parents were Edward and Mary Daniels and, following a search for Edward Daniels, the genealogical records showed one possible match near Shercock for an ‘Edward Daniel’. Of course, there are a multitude of variations of the name with spellings like Daniel, McDaniels and then Daniels, which I found in Bailieborough, Cavan and Kingscourt.
After the Daniels family went to America, Rainey wrote how they first lived ‘near Moundville, Virginia’, where Edward worked the railroad as a labourer before moving to Louisville, in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Louisville was a city in which a major league baseball team was founded and its influence on the young Irishman Pete Daniels would send him on a career path of cheering hero-worshippers.
Having trained as a marble cutter, Daniels who loved baseball was playing the game from a young age with numerous teams before joining the Quincy Ravens for the ‘Illinois-Iowa League’, followed by the Class B Mobile Blackbirds and in 1894, on the Kansas City team in the Western League and in 1902, he ‘hurled 26 games’ for the Decatur Commodores. Every champion has their day, and Pete, who stood at a height of 5 foot 8½ inches, by this time was being called ‘Ancient Pete’ by the press. He now felt the urge to retire back to, Louisville which he did and moved home to be a help to his mother.
On February 13, 1928, Pete Daniels died suddenly at the home of James Daniels, his youngest brother in Indianapolis, Indiana, where by then he was living. Chris Rainey recalled that Pete later moved to Indianapolis following his mother’s death.
After Pete’s funeral mass, his remains were interred at Holy Cross Cemetery, Indianapolis, Indiana. For further reading and an in-depth look at the career of Smiling Pete the Cavan-born baseballer, take a look at: www.sabr.org/bioproj/person/pete-daniels/
MULLAHORAN MAN WHO STRUCK A DUKE
In August 1905, the Duke and Duchess of Manchester met with a rude reception while driving through the Irish midlands. They had been enjoying their ‘motor tour’ on a journey to Athlone until the came into Cara ‘about a mile outside Granard’ where a horse, the property of a man named Lynch from Mullahoran, Co Cavan, shied.
The Duke slowed up his car, jumped out, and grabbed the horse by the bridle bringing him under control and lead it away from his vehicle. What happened next, knocked the Duke for six. Lynch, it seems misinterpreted the Duke’s intentions, and taking umbrage, whacked the Duke with a stick.
Another man on the road at the time ran to part the men and ‘reprove’ Lynch for striking a gentleman who had come to the assistance of the man’s beast. The Duke went to Granard police station and, not before long, Sergeant Donohoe and Constable Brady caught up with Lynch who was handed a summons to appear at the next petty sessions.
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