Gifts from the "Yoda" of community journalism

 I still, to this day, relish telling J. Tom Graham stories of my own, and ones that he told me over time.

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

A number of years ago, in late December of 2000 to be precise, long-time newspaper publisher J. Tom Graham sent me a package with collection of giant postcards from the old Sanborn Souvenir Co. of Denver.

Sanborn was a publisher of books and postcards of the American West from 1920 to 1976, but mostly of Colorado and Wyoming. They first produced real photo postcards carrying the Sanborn name. They later went on to produce tinted halftone postcards and eventually photochromes. 
J. Tom, my good friend and mentor, told me he had bought them at yard sale in Pasadena, Texas, if I remember correctly. 
I was publisher of the Courier at the time, and he said he thought I could possibly get some use out of them. He was Chief Operating Officer of the 60-plus newspaper group we were owned by at the time. J. Tom was a charming character, that had written for the Stars & Stripes while in the service during Korea. 
He also had worked for Rupert Murdoch in the Australian outback, written the popular book "Quaint, We Ain't," ran papers of almost every size, and even made a living for short while as a stand-up comedian. 
I still, to this day, relish telling J. Tom Graham stories of my own, and ones that he told me over time. The old newspaper editor, publisher, self-described sweep-out boy, lost a long battle with cancer in October and I was thinking of him when I ran across these. 
For about 15 years, I wrote a monthly column for the trade magazine "Newspapers and Technology. " J. Tom Graham always encouraged that practice and even helped me get a few speaking gigs in Boston and California. I wrote the following column about him when he retired from A.S.P. Westward in 2005, and as mentioned earlier, I have more than a few memories, as well as the  generous image keepsakes that call to mind his wisdom for the ages.
Photographer Harold Sanborn amassed thousands of images showcasing scenes in Colorado, Wyoming, and other Western states, starting about 1920. His son Bill took over the business from the 1950s until 1976.
The postcards were created in the tradition of William Henry Jackson, frontier and train travel photographer who created the tradition and carried it on for more than half a century beginning with the U.S.G.S. survey in the 1870s for Ferdinand V. Hayden, M.D., and on through his work with the Detroit Publishing Company well into the next century.
As mentioned, my good friend J. Tom Graham, appreciated my appreciation of such efforts, and gifted me with following prints many years ago. The images are only representative of the many benefits and other gifts I realized from my opportunity of knowing and listening to such fine newspaper man.

The following column first appeared in Newspapers & Technology in February 2006.

Advice for the ages

---

An old friend, mentor and survivor of nearly five decades in the community newspaper business, J. Tom Graham, retired at the end of 2005.
Graham is the former chief operating officer of ASP Westward LP, the company that signs my paycheck. But I can’t resist repeating a few “J.Tomisms” from my sounding board of nearly 10 years.
No. 2 on Graham’s “12 tactics for surviving the community newspaper business” was “The Old Man Hanks’ Find-Something” tactic.
The Abilene, Texas, founder of the Hart-Hanks Group had two inviolate rules, wrote Graham. “The first was this: All male employees had to wear hats.
“Forget that rule.
“The second, however, withstands the decades: ‘For every person who comes in the building to give the (Abilene) Reporter-News a story or a tip, the result must be a story in the newspaper.’
“He was adamant,” Graham said. “If an editor could not use what the reader brought in, he had better find something. Every visitor could [then] point to the newspaper and say, ‘That little story was the result of my visit to the paper.’”
 
Redefine relationship
Today, we need to redefine what an actual reader’s visit is because not too many people have time to come down to the paper anymore. But they will e-mail information to us, and give us phone calls, fax us info, and draw us aside at the chamber mixer.

The rule still holds in principle even if it needs adaptation. A newspaper must engage in some type of conversation within the community to survive in today’s world of blogs, instant feeds and explosion of information.
The art of conversation requires an exchange. As a paper, we have to listen well, write it down correctly and present it attractively.
Almost more important, we must provide an easy feedback loop to know how we are doing and how we must change and adapt to current conditions.
Design elements of your paper and its accompanying Web site should encourage this feedback.
To fuel participation, papers should end columns and stories with the writer’s e-mail address. E-mail and Web addresses should be institutionalized in page headers. Surveys asking readers for their opinion about how the paper is doing should be frequent and easy to respond to.
We need to make it easy for anyone to get involved in this newspapering thing.
 
Making things difficult
How hard is it now to fill out a wedding, birth, death, engagement and anniversary announcement in your paper? How difficult is it to place a classified for a garage sale next week, or to make sure everyone knows there is a scout meeting? Can you do all of that at 2 a.m. when you bolt upright from a sound sleep because you forgot to take care of it during the day? Can you easily take care of it in your underwear? Can you let those guys at city hall know how you feel about the new sign regulations?
If you can’t, maybe your paper is a little one-sided in its conversation skills.
And yes, there is a proper way to manage this flow of information.
J. Tom Graham’s Rule No. 6: “Keep the In-Baskets Empty” tactic goes as follows:
“Brock, the world’s most disorganized editor, would swear on the Bible he knew everything in the three-foot pile climbing out of his in-basket. But, quite mysteriously, stories kept getting lost. When the third obit disappeared into his teetering piles, Brock took his journalism degree and became a clerk in a liquor store.
 
Hats in the newsroom
“One veteran deskman described newspapering as an ‘organizing contest,’ and he wasn’t far off the mark,” Graham wrote.
“The walls may be stacked and the drawers may be overflowing in a newspaper, but the copy flow system must be meticulously maintained with the in-baskets cleaned all the way down to the wire and not treated as pending files or ‘maybe tomorrow’ stacks.
“The community newspaper version of ‘wire services’ is input from the community. The best way to build input is to get the stories in the newspaper every time, without fail.”
We need to keep that advice in mind. The way this business is changing so quickly, failure to adapt could mean that newspapers will go the same way as hats in the newsroom.
 
Rob Carrigan specializes in prepress systems for weekly newspapers. He is the publisher of the Ute Pass Courier in Woodland Park, the Gold Rush in Cripple Creek and the Extra in Teller County, all ASP Westward LP weeklies in Colorado. 


The next column first appeared in Newspapers & Technology in May of 2004


Understanding the 3 Ps

---

Every headline-writing hack succumbs at some point to the temptation of alliteration.

I am no better or worse. All things required to run a little newspaper might be boiled down into the “the primary three Ps” - product, people and possibilities.
Product, the most important, focuses on what you should be providing your customers. It has many aspects and includes everything from customer service and content development to production flow and packaging: everything, in fact, to delivery of the final product.
Storing so much under the product umbrella makes the rest of the would-be publisher’s job easier. Even the other two “Ps” have ramifications in the final product. Indeed, product is the ultimate periodical publisher’s pigeonhole.
 
Consider cost centers
Consider some additional alliteration governing the three major cost centers facing small newspaper publishers: payroll, printing and postage. If you navigate these centers correctly during the budgeting process, chances are you’ll have successfully charted your expense side of the business.
Back to the primary Ps: When focusing on product you must have the most relevant content, the most cost-effective delivery, results-focused advertising, attractive news presentation, an interested readership and a sustaining business model.
And that’s where people come in. People make all of this happen.
In the words of my friend, longtime publisher J. Tom Graham, newspapers will always be a people business.
“We are labor intensive,” Graham said. “If you have good people, you can be a good newspaper. If you don’t, you won’t. So staffing is the most important thing we do as managers.”
 
Common problems
Graham identifies some common problems community newspapers face when staffing:
*Rewarding too many key people not to get their job done.
*Hiring too few salespeople. You should have at least one for each writer. Salespeople should bring in three times as much revenue as their cost to the company. Keep hiring and firing until you reach that point.
*Recruiting key people instead of promoting from within. New management hires have no better than a 50-50 chance of success; those promoted usually are successful between 80 percent and 90 percent of the time.
*Under-challenging key people. To us the world looks busy because we are. Most of our best employees could do much more.
*Giving an employee responsibility without authority. People make the difference.
With product and people now addressed, that leaves “possibilities” up to you. Technology, training and trying out new things might all offer additional possibilities. Another great lesson of the newspaper industry has to do with avoiding assumptions. Don’t assume anything. It is your safest bet in this business. Things change and what worked before may not work as well the next time.
 
Simple ideas
Good ideas can come in the simplest forms. In a recent conversation with Steamboat (Colo.) Pilot & Today Editor Scott Stanford, an idea to share local news budgets with other ski-area newspapers has offered him the opportunity to print more skiing-related content popular with many of his readers.
To do that, each day he e-mails newspapers a copy of his rundown of local stories and photos. The other newspapers return the favor, and then each selects the stories it wants to exchange. This sharing occurs despite the fact the papers are owned by different companies.
The swap is simple, via e-mail. Stanford said both the WorldWest LLC-owned Pilot and rival newspapers benefit from the arrangement.
The relationship also allows Stanford to rely on the resources of those newspapers when circumstances warrant. Instead of sending a Pilot & Today sports reporter to cover some far-flung high school basketball game, Stanford can print the game wrap-up filed by the cooperating newspaper.
 
Ask for help
When trying new things, if you don’t know how to do something, ask somebody who might. Help can come from the strangest of places but the obvious starting point is newspaper directories and entries for operations that are similar in size and function to your own.
One final thought. The primary three Ps can go a long way to solve the most pressing publishing problems, but, personally, publishers should probably plan to punish all annoying alliterating authors.

 
Rob Carrigan specializes in prepress systems for weekly newspapers. He is the publisher of the Ute Pass Courier in Woodland Park, the Gold Rush in Cripple Creek and the Extra in Teller County, all ASP Westward LP weeklies in Colorado.  

He can be reached by e-mail at robcarrigan@yourpeaknews.com

From hoof, to hook, packed on ice, railcar shipped

Monument was 'meat and potatoes' kind of place

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

In the fall, cattle ranchers around Monument would drive their herds off the range and into town to ship them on the railroads to markets in Denver and beyond.
The Denver and Rio Grande arrived in 1872 and the Santa Fe in 1892, and both railroads had stockyards in town.
Many ranchers had their cattle on government range all summer, and a fair amount of time and effort was involved in checking brands and other busy events of the fall drives.
Several days before cattle were driven in, rail companies would line up cattle cars on the sidings, and almost everyone would ship the same day.
A switch engine would move cars around as the cattle were loaded, and preservation of local meat stocks were also a part of the process.
Several hundred head of cattle, men on well trained horses, local butchers, barkeeps, and ice contractors, and railroad employees had a busy few days.
When automatic blocks became available in the 1940s, the process that went on at the two depots in Monument, Pring Station, Greenland, Palmer Lake and Husted all changed.
For several years afterward, northbound trains all ran on the old Santa Fe tracks and southbound ran on the D&RG. Santa Fe tracks were eventually torn out in the late fall of 1974.
But in the early days, Monument was a meat-eating, beef-producing, package-it-up-and-keep-it cool kind of town.
"Chas. Allis had a butcher shop on the corner of Second and Washington Streets in the 1890s," noted Lucille Lavelett. "George Betz and John Boling operated a meat market and delivered meat by wagon for several years.
“There was Paul’s Meat Market operated by Paul Close and Paul Valentine. When meat was delivered by wagon, the back of the wagon was closed in, with hooks to hang the meat on, a meat block and scales. In the summer time, large tubs were filled with ice to keep the meat cold."
That is where the local ice business came in.
Fred Lewis’ wife, Myrtle McKee Lewis, was a teacher in the Lewis Consolidated School (and namesake for Lewis-Palmer District 38). She was the brother-in-law of W.E. Doyle, and went to work for him at the ice company in 1910.
Doyle and a partner, Thomas Hanks, had leased what is now known as Monument Lake (then State Reservoir) and built the original ice house.
Doyle bought out Hanks in 1909 and improved the operation with new ice houses and a chain-operated conveyor system powered by a steam engine from an old threshing machine leased from Charlie Schubarth. Doyle continued to operate up until the early 1940s.
“A spur railroad track was put in to load ice directly into the railroad cars,” wrote Lavelett. “Harvesting at that time was done by man and horses. Power conveying the ice up in houses by horses.
“Ice harvest began in the middle of December and the cakes of ice were 24-inches thick after being planed. Twenty-thousand to 30,000 tons were harvested. Four-thousand tons were stored in the houses and the balance shipped to Pueblo and Denver.”
But the ice business was risky, subject not only changing times, but forces of weather including wind, changing climate, water — not to mention transportation and refrigeration technology modes.
Still, for a time, the floor of the butcher shop always had about three inches of clean sawdust, changed every week, to keep the ice cold and absorb any spills.
And every store, hotel, restaurant and some homes had their own ice house. As a result, Monument was a “meat and potatoes” kind of place.
But for the potatoes, that is a different story.

Photo information:

Photo 1: Betz Meat Market in Monument with Betz' chain-drive delivery truck out front.

Photo 2: Meat Market with prominent Monument meat moguls including  Chas. Allis, Mose Chandler, Dan Davidson, George Betz  and Charlie Schubarth.

Photo 3: Charlie Schubarth's steam engine used to power ice conveyors.

Photos courtesy of The Vaile Museum.

Cemetery brings veterans closer to home

“I believe it is the nature of people to be heroes, given the chance.”
– James A. Autry

I thought about that recently, taking some measure of solace in the dignity of my father's burial at Fort Logan National Cemetery in Denver.
The willingness of American veterans to sacrifice for our country has earned them our lasting gratitude. That simple message, and an update briefing on the Pikes Peak National Cemetery progress and challenges was delivered by Victor Fernandez one recent Saturday to Monument Hill Kiwanis.
"This Committee has been the focal point of the Veterans of Southern Colorado for establishment of a National Cemetery to serve our Veterans since May 1999. We have worked with the local, state, and federal elected officials over these past 16 years to seek Veteran's Administration approval and construction of this National Cemetery. As such, we are proud to submit our recommendation to name our cemetery. We submit: Pikes Peak National Cemetery," wrote Fernandez, a retired Army colonel and committee chair to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The name immediately identifies the location of the cemetery site, says Fernandez, and really the only logical choice.
"Pikes Peak is visible Upon entering the state from Kansas, and from most cities and towns in southeastern Colorado.  Pikes Peak is known as 'America's Mountain,' and as the location upon which the words to 'America the Beautiful' were written by Kathleen Lee Bates in 1913 when she first saw the 'purple mountain majesties and amber waves of grain' from the top of the 14,100 foot high Pikes Peak."
In June 2013, the Veterans Administration selected a 374 acre site on the south side of Drennan Road, a mile east of Mark Scheffle Road and purchased the site in early 2014. A Parker firm Architect and Engineering Firm released preliminary master design plans in December and Fernandez says "after much pushing from the cemetery committee, the VA erected on the site to I.D.  as the future location of the cemetery."
Today, with the blessing of the Colorado United Veterans Committee in Denver, Fernandez is asking for further blessing of the chosen name by service groups and veterans, and says they (the committee) can still use financial support.
Burial in a national cemetery is open to all members of the armed forces who have met a minimum active duty service requirement and were discharged under conditions other than dishonorable. A Veteran’s spouse, widow or widower, minor dependent children, and under certain conditions, unmarried adult children with disabilities may also be eligible for burial. Eligible spouses and children may be buried even if they predecease the Veteran. Members of the reserve components of the armed forces who die while on active duty or who die while on training duty, or were eligible for retired pay, may also be eligible for burial.

Photo 1: Monument Hill Kiwanis President Richard Storm, Pikes Peak Cemetery Committee Chairman Victor Fernandez, Gold Star Wife Linda Witt and El Paso County Veteran Service Officer Carl McDaniel at a recent Kiwanis briefing on the progress of Pikes Peak National Cemetery efforts.

Photo 2: Pikes Peak Cemetery Committee Chairman Victor Fernandez has been working on the project for 16 years.

Hoping discovery won’t slip through our fingers

“Organic life beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nurs'd in ocean's pearly caves;
First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;
These, as successive generations bloom,
New powers acquire and larger limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin and feet and wing.”

 __ Erasmus Darwin

 

I rather not let the thought slip, and melt into the high ground near Cow Mountain.

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

At least 10 year's ago, and maybe as many as 20, I first heard of the Ice Caves of Cow Mountain. I have tried to track down more information ever since.  I am afraid that additional understanding may have slipped from my gloved hands and perhaps melted into the ground, as time plods on.
The old newspaper labeled the startling discovery "a natural refrigerator.”
It went on to describe ice caves 200 feet underground, and about two miles from the town of Gillett in a headline. The discovery was made by a miner and reported in the August 17, 1897 edition the Cripple Creek Morning Times. Kathy Klein, a local history buff, brought it to my attention with a note a few years ago.
“This fall my friend Chris Clausen, who is the Cripple Creek Elks historian … told me about some old Colorado newspapers that he had won on Ebay,” said Klein in the note. “He was particularly taken with an article about ice caves outside Gillett and told me about this article as he knew that I had been researching the Gillette area off and on for another friend.”
The edition of the Morning Times itself describes the caves this way:
“Further explorations have been made in the wonderful ice cave discovered on Cow Mountain, two miles from Gillett. Three chambers have so far been discovered. The first, about 14 x 16 feet, heavily hung with icicles in every conceivable form resemble stalactites. From the first chamber a small passage led to still another, more wonderful and beautiful, in which the ice blended in various colors under the light of the candle, reflecting rays as from a thousand mirrors. From this cave, a passage scarcely large enough to admit the body of a man was discovered leading down at about an angle of 40 degrees, to a large cavern, perhaps 200 by 300 feet. Climbing to the ceiling were great masses of ice, like billows, and banked along the sides of the walls many feet in thickness were tons of ice, taking on the most grotesque forms imaginable and casting awesome shadows.”
The article describes more of the cavern.
“In the center of the room there is lake about 40 x 65 feet, clear as crystal and quite deep. There must be some outlet to it, for water drips constantly from the ceiling, yet the level of the body never rises, or overflows. The water is wet and pure, and as cold as the ice-coated walls of the room in which it is located, at a point 200 feet underneath the surface of the ground. There are undoubtedly other caves which have not yet been opened.”
Kathy Klein and her friend Chris Clausen continued to search, but if they found anything, I didn't hear about it.
“We have both done some more looking both backward and forward in the newspapers and other places and can find no more mention of the ice caves. I was wondering if you have ever run across anything on them or think the article may have been a hoax? I do hope that someday we will be able to find more about them, it’s so fascinating.” Klein wrote later.
My friend attorney Ken Geddes, graciously answered my inquiry at the time, about ice caves near Gillett, and as things like that go, we digressed into other topics of mutual interest. Namely what it was like growing up in Victor during the ‘30s and ‘40s. Geddes parents owned and published the Times Record (previously named the Morning Times and more recently called the Gold Rush) from 1941 to 1951.
Geddes died in September of 2011, so that line of discovery has been challenged.
“I have heard of them off and on for several years and have explored Cow Mountain several times for any evidence of them,” said Geddes of the caves then. “Unfortunately, I was unsuccessful but that doesn’t mean they are not there! I have an old book or publication regarding them but just like the caves themselves, I have trouble finding the article — I’ll keep looking,” he promised.
Maybe he is still looking, but we have failed to make contact.
Still, I rather not let the thought slip, and melt into the high ground near Cow Mountain.

###

Trying to influence content by threat crosses a line

No need to give a history lesson, or maybe there is, but one of the first things adjusted with the Constitution of the United States — The Bill of Rights, was originally proposed as a measure to assuage Anti-Federalist opposition to Constitutional ratification.

The First Amendment of the United States was ratified, along with nine other amendments to the Constitution of the United States making up the Bill of Rights, on Dec. 15, 1791.
The text of the First Amendment reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It is quite a simple little makegood, that has far-reaching ramifications.
Some of you have probably guessed that I am focused on the part about making no law "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." 
Not only that,  I am very outspoken on the protections afforded to the industry I have been involved in since childhood, and of course have my own ideas on what is right.
That particular right is protected because it is important. And as with all rights, goes responsibility.
But it has been my experience that anytime advertisers, or public relations practitioners, try to unduly influence content, perhaps with threats of pulling revenue from journalistic endeavors, a line has been crossed.
Not saying that First Amendment has been breached — but the spirit of Free Press has been attacked.
I bring this up, because, that exact circumstance has come to my attention.

"I am pulling our ads due to the extensive negative articles," read a recent email, in part, from government-related entity.

Certainly, it is every advertisers' particular right to vote with their feet and choose not to advertise. It can be, however, bad public relations. 

I would also hold that, being a government entity (and as such, spending public money) perhaps the writer of that email, and similar efforts to influence local coverage,  was not looking out for those who fund the operation in first place — the taxpaying public. 

Our negative articles (though we might argue whether or not they were truly negative) were aimed at informing public, rather than currying favor of local officials.

Such a suggestion not only raises the ire of journalists by suggesting that their favor can be bought our sold, it also short-changes the public in the process, with a form of prior restraint.

It is basically saying "write to please us," rather than inform readers. It also makes one wonder if there is perhaps something to hide.

Regardless, such activity is dangerous not only to a Free Press, and its practitioners, it is dangerous to an informed public.

###

Making the grade: Many railroads criss-cross state

Those swaying, lurching trains made it possible for Colorado's mines to expand and prosper

 By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Two Colorado pioneers were liquored up, and were walking the upgrade between the railroad tracks. One of them said, "this is is longest stairway I have ever been on."

To this, the other replied, "It's not the stairs that bother me, it's the low banister."

About 175 different railroads laid track in Colorado, and many had ties to mining industry here. Right from the start, it was the grade that challenged most of them.

And railroad builders challenged it back by changing the gauge. At the time most railroads in the state were being built, about 60 percent of the world's rail track was spaced “standard gauge” of 4 foot 8 1⁄2 inches in allowing inter-connectivity and inter-operability.

One common legend places that as the rut distance between chariots dating back to the heydays of the Roman Empire.

"The Denver and Rio Grande (D &RG), biggest and best known of all Colorado railroads, was incorporated in 1870 by William J. Palmer and some associated. Palmer introduced narrow gauge track 3 feet wide that could be installed for about two-thirds the cost of standard 4 feet and 8-1/2 inch gauge. It could also tackle higher curves and steeper grades," says the Historical Atlas of Colorado put together by historians Thomas J. Noel, Paul F. Mahoney, and Richard E. Stevens.

"Palmer's baby road initially heads south, creating the towns of Castle Rock, Palmer Lake, Colorado Springs and El Moro along the Front Range."

Later, it became the largest rail network and was reorganized later as the Denver and Rio Grande Western in 1921.

"The D & RGW remained an independent Denver-based outfit even after owner Philip Anshutz purchased the Southern Pacific in the 1980s. In the 1990s, to the dismay of Colorado rail fans, Anschutz began replacing the D & RGW with Southern Pacific livery. While 'Colorado's Pet' is a favorite with rail fans, critics claimed that D & RGW meant 'Dangerous and Rapidly Growing Worse,'" according to Historical Atlas of Colorado.

Sam Speas' and Margaret Coel's wonderful book about two generations of Colorado railroad engineers, called "Goin' Railroading," talks about the race to the mountains in this state.

"Those swaying, lurching trains insured Denver's future and made it possible for Colorado's mines to expand and prosper. From the discovery of gold in Colorado in 1858, until the first railroad arrived in 1870, the mines produced $32 million in gold, silver, copper, and lead. In the next twelve years, with railroads crisscrossing Colorado, mining production leaped to $163 million," according to Speas and Coel.

Interestingly enough, Speas father arrived at offices of the Union Pacific, which gained control of railroads in Northern Colorado in 1881, the master mechanic took a look at his letter that said he was "honest, sober and attended strictly to business," and cheerfully recommended him for employment. He was hired right away, and nothing was said of the upgrades, long stairways to mountain mining towns, or the low banisters.

###

Photo Information:

Photo 1: William J. Palmer's "Baby Road" headed south out of Denver creating the towns of Castle Rock, Palmer Lake, Colorado Springs and El Moro along the Front Range. This is the Palmer Lake Depot and Judd's Eating House in Palmer Lake in 1908.

Photo 2: Monument Santa Fe Depot with creamery in the distance.

Photo 3: Denver and Rio Grande depot in Monument.

photos courtesy of Lucretia Vaile Museum

Baseball diamond more circular than we think

Legacy, coincidence, high-powered names and old-time baseball

 By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmai.com

I really don't understand this, but maybe, the baseball diamond is more circular than we think — or it is truly a game of a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection.
I thought about that a while back, when I  ran into Rick "Goose" Gossage while walking my dogs one day.  He was out jogging, but said "Hello."

I thought about legacy, coincidence, high-powered names and old-time baseball. I didn't have my Yankee hat on, and the dogs didn't recognize him, or if they did, they didn't realize he was in the Baseball Hall of Fame. And nobody really remembers who was in the 1916 World Series, almost a hundred years ago.

A hundred years ago, the 1916 Monument Baseball team had a wonderful season. They won the El Paso County Championship that year, which was quite a feat, as they played mostly teams from larger areas in the Colorado Springs area.
"In those days, the team had to make their own expenses, and there was no charge for the games. The team gave dances, and Hagedorn family orchestra furnished the music. This money was used to buy the team's uniforms. Dr. McConnell always bought balls for them," wrote historian Lucille Lavellett.
Her brother, George Hagedorn first organized the town's baseball team in 1914. Along with George, the players of that early team were Dan Davidson, Bill Connell, Bud Connell, Tom Connell, Roy Gaunt, Jack Roser, Bryan Hagedorn, Marion Hagedorn, Wilbur Fulker and Iven Fulker was manager.

So much for dropping names, and talking baseball, and 100-year-old history.

Long before the Yankees were strong, Carrigan was a household name in Boston, Maine, and all over New England. 

Bill "Rough"Carrigan was "deadball era" catcher and played 10 seasons for the Boston Red Sox. In the middle of the season in 1913, he replaced defending World Series manager Jake Stahl as a player manager. Later, he returned as Boston's manager in 1927 and stayed until 1929. Carrigan was fairly small for major league baseball, only about 5 foot, 9 inches, and weighed about 175 pounds.

"In the spring of 1906 Carrigan was signed to a Red Sox contract by Charles Taylor, the father of Red Sox owner John I. Taylor. Carrigan joined the struggling Red Sox directly in the middle of the season, immediately catching the likes of Bill Dinneen and Cy Young," according to Mark Amour, for the SABR Baseball Biography Project.

The next few seasons established him as a reliable contributor on the field and in the box. 

"In July 1913 the Red Sox were grappling with a series of injuries, fighting among themselves, and limping along in fifth place. Team president Jimmy McAleer fired manager Jake Stahl just months after his World Series triumph, and replaced him with his 29-year-old catcher. Carrigan liked Stahl, as did most of the team, and was reluctant to take charge of a team filled with veterans, many of whom were just as qualified for the job as he. McAleer persuaded Carrigan to take it. The Red Sox were a team fractured along religious lines, as Protestants like Tris Speaker, Joe Wood, and Harry Hooper often crossed swords with the Catholics on the team, including Carrigan," says Amour.

"Smoking Joe" Wood began his baseball career on town teams in the Colorado San Juans, playing for Ouray teams in Telluride, Rico and Silverton, before his outstanding major league run.

"The well-mannered Carrigan earned the nickname 'Rough' for the way he played. He was a well-respected handler of pitchers, and had a fair throwing arm, but it was his plate blocking that caused Chicago White Sox manager Nixey Callahan to say, “You might as well try to move a stone wall.” On May 17, 1909 he engaged in a famous brawl with the Tigers’ George Moriarty after a collision at home plate, while their teammates stood and watched. He had a fight with Sam Crawford a couple of years later, and maintained a reputation as someone who would not back down from a confrontation," according to Amour.

After he replaced Stahl as manager, he led Boston to a second-place finish in 1914 and then, two world championships in 1915 and 1916, stacking up an 8–2 record as a manager in World Series play. Until Terry Francona duplicated the feat in 2007, he was the only manager to have won two World Series titles with Boston. Babe Ruth called Carrigan the best manager he ever played for.

"The most important event of the 1914 season was the purchase, at Carrigan’s urging, of pitchers Ernie Shore and Babe Ruth from Baltimore of the International League. Although Ruth gave his skipper a lot of credit for his development as a player, Carrigan was humble in his own assessment: “Nobody could have made Ruth the great pitcher and great hitter he was but himself. He made himself with the aid of his God-given talents.” Old Rough did allow that his protégé needed quite a bit of discipline, and Carrigan was there to provide it, even rooming with Ruth for a time. Carrigan caught Ruth in his pitching debut, on July 11," wrote Amour.

"In early September 1916, Carrigan announced that he would be leaving baseball at the end of the season. He had actually wanted to quit after the 1915 Series, and had so told owner Joe Lannin, but his owner talked him into the one additional campaign. Carrigan later wrote, “I had become fed up on being away from home from February to October. I was in my thirties, was married and had an infant daughter. I wanted to spend more time with my family than baseball would allow.” He retired to his hometown of Lewiston and embarked on careers in real estate (as co-owner of several movie theaters in New England) and banking. A few years later he sold his theaters for a substantial profit and became a wealthy man."

He returned home to his banking career, eventually becoming president of People's Savings Bank in Maine. In 1946 he was named to the Honor Roll in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame, in 1968 was named to Holy Cross College's Hall of Fame, and in 2004 named to the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame. "Rough Bill" Carrigan passed away in a Lewiston, Maine, hospital in 1969 at the age of 85. 

Not too many folks probably remember Carrigan's Red Sox defeated the Brooklyn Robins in 5 games to win the World Series in 1916.

Just a few years before, on Aug. 14, 1909, in the area known at the time as the town of Husted, (which was near my house and the North Gate if the Air Force Academy) unfortunately was the site of a terrible rail accident.
“Nine persons are dead, and others are expected to die; between forty and fifty are injured; three engines are in the ditch; two baggage cars, including the contents, are smashed to kindling wood, and several passenger coaches are badly damaged as the result of a head-on collision between east bound passenger train No. 8, and westbound passenger No. 1, on the Denver & Rio Grande, near Husted, thirteen miles north of this city, at 10:25 a. m. today. The wreck was due to a misunderstanding of orders, it is said.”
Report from papers all over the nation carried the dispatches.
As No. 8 drew into Husted about forty miles an hour, the crew of the engine saw a light engine standing on the switch north of the station.
“Mistaking the engine for the second section of No. 1, the crew did not stop, and went through the station as fast as the two engines could draw the thirteen heavily laden coaches. As soon as the train got out of the station, the engineer of the first engine of No. 8 saw another train coming slowly down the incline. He slammed on the air brakes, and the emergency brakes, and then shouted to the other members of the two crews to jump. Before they had time to jump, No. 3 had rammed No. 1 so hard that all three engines lay in the ditch,’ according to the Nebraska State Journal at the time.

Wilbur F. Fulker and his brother Iven were passengers on the southbound train out of Monument involved in the collision. Wilbur took a series of photographs with a new camera using that famously chronicled the accident. Wilbur’s son, also Wilbur, is the tuba-playing inspiration for the Colorado Spring’s landmark “Uncle Wilber’s Fountain” at Acacia Park and longtime teacher and administrator at the Colorado Deaf and Blind.
“Fireman J. A. Gossage, of train No. 8, was killed as he was firing his engine, and never knew what struck him. The members of the other crew escaped serious injury by jumping.”
The smoker, attached to train No. 8, was the car in which the people were killed. All those badly injured were in the same car.
Other reports said that J.A. or Jack Gossage, the fireman on the helper engine who lived at Husted and had just waved to his wife as the train passed his home was trapped between the engine and the tender when the collision occurred.
Jack Gossage's wife continued to work for the railroad for many years afterward as a cook for crews in Husted, and the Gossage name eventually became quite famous for other reasons in Colorado Springs. Jack Gossage is grandfather to Colorado Springs standout and major league baseball hall of famer Rick “Goose” Gossage.

Today, it occurs to me, that legends and names are relative. So much for dropping names.

Our name is written in the dirt alongside the plate. 

But the umpire can sweep it away — the next time there is a close call at home.

Photo 1: 

Cy Young, Jake Stahl, Bill Carrigan and Michael T. McGreevey, Boston Red Sox Spring Training, 1912.

Photo 2: 

Babe Ruth, Jack Barry, Bill Carrigan, and Del Gainer of the Boston Red Sox.

Photo 3:

1916 Monument Championship baseball team: Left to right, Roy Guant, Jack Roser, Wilber Fulker, unknown, unknown, George Hagedorn, the three Connell brothers, and Iven Fulker, Manager.