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As a Native American playing in the Deadball
Era, Jack Meyers couldn't avoid being saddled with the nickname
"Chief," but he did as much as any Native American of his
generation to shatter the stereotypical image of the dumb Indian. Meyers
was far more sophisticated than most of his fellow players. "A
strong love of justice, a lightning sense of humor, a fund of general
information that runs from politics to Plato, a quick, logical mind, and
the self-contained, dignified poise that is the hallmark of good
breeding-he is easily the most remarkable player in the big
leagues," wrote one reporter. On the field, the strong but
slow-footed Meyers was almost certainly the best offensive catcher of the
Deadball Era, retiring with a .291 average for
his nine-year career.
A member of the Cahuilla tribe, also called the Mission Indians, John
Tortes Meyers was born on July 29, 1880, in Riverside, California.
Because Jack's father died when he was only seven years old, his mother, Felicite, became the most important influence in his
early life. Meyers attended Riverside
High School and
played semipro baseball throughout the Southwest. During the summer of
1905 he was catching in a tournament in Albuquerque when he caught the
attention of a rival player named Ralph Glaze. A baseball and football
standout at Dartmouth
College who later
made the majors as a pitcher with the 1906-08 Boston Americans, Glaze
thought the 5'11", 194-pound catcher could
help his college team on both the gridiron and the diamond. Pointing out
that the school's charter provided for the education of Native Americans,
Glaze convinced Dartmouth alumni in his
hometown of Denver
to equip Meyers with cash, railroad tickets, and even an altered diploma
because Meyers hadn't completed high school.
With the assistance of a tutor, Meyers attended classes at Dartmouth during
the 1905-06 school year and enjoyed his time
there immensely, but college administrators discovered that his
high-school diploma was false. They offered to admit him if he completed
a preparatory program, but when school let out the 25-year-old catcher
instead signed a contract with Harrisburg
of the independent Tri-State League. The Harrisburg team "certainly laid
themselves to make me a happy Indian," Jack told a reporter in 1909.
"I went to the clubhouse and nobody paid more attention to me than
they did to the bat bag." Finally getting into a game on
Independence Day, Meyers was assigned to catch a spitballer
named Frank Leary who pitched a couple games for the Cincinnati Reds the
following season. "I was getting it everywhere but my glove,"
he recalled. "I had five passed balls in two innings." Leary
was intentionally crossing up Meyers, who finally stopped putting down
signs. "Do you know, that did me more good
than anything that ever happened to me?" Chief recalled. "It
made me mad. I had been timid and now I was mad enough to be brave."
Meyers' career took off after he found the courage to stand up to those
who derided him. After spending 1907 in the Northwestern League with Butte and 1908 with St. Paul
of the American Association, Chief found himself in New York City as a 28-year-old rookie
with the Giants at the end of the tumultuous 1908 season. He failed to
appear in a single game, but that winter the Giants traded Roger Bresnahan to the St. Louis Cardinals. The following
year Meyers shared the catching duties with Admiral Schlei,
and in 1910 he became a regular, batting .285 to establish himself as one of the best-hitting catchers in the
game.
The press, in New York
and elsewhere, took an immediate liking to Meyers because he made more
interesting copy than his teammates. During rainouts or off-days, while
the other players holed up playing cards or billiards, newspapers
reported that Meyers would go out to do some historical sightseeing or
watch a local college football team practice. In Boston, wrote Bozeman Bulger, Meyers made a point of visiting the art
museums where he spent hours touring the exhibits. Several writers noted
that his favorite painting was "Quest for the Holy Grail," the
mural by Edwin Austin Abbey that hangs in the Boston Public Library.
After only two years in the majors, Meyers was popular enough for the vaudeville
circuit. At Hammerstein's Victoria
Theatre on October
23, 1910, Meyers teamed up with Christy Mathewson in a vaudeville sketch
entitled "Curves." Written by Bulger
and produced by actress May Tully, the half-hour sketch featured the
battery in a scene set at the Polo Grounds, with Tully playing an ardent
spectator. The players, in their home uniforms, demonstrated for Tully
and the audience how to throw various pitches, and Meyers explained the
workings of the catcher. Tully then returned the favor by convincing
Mathewson and Meyers to join her in vaudeville and by teaching them to
act, which, according to Variety, "brings out a travesty
drama with Meyers as the 'bad Indian.' Mathewson is the cowboy who comes
to the rescue of the forlorn maiden and overcomes the 'bad Indian' by
hitting him in the head with a baseball." Today it sounds as
improper as a blackface minstrel show, but at the time Variety called it
a "most satisfactory vehicle." The act toured the vaudeville
circuit for several weeks.
From 1911 to 1913 Meyers finished in the Top 10 each year in Chalmers
Award voting for the NL's most valuable player. In 1911 he led the Giants
in batting for the first of three consecutive seasons with a .332
average, third highest in the National League. "Meyers has become
the deepest student of batting on the team," wrote a New York Times
reporter after watching him correctly predict the type of pitches thrown
by Pirates phenom Marty O'Toole. The next year
Chief hit for the cycle on June 10 en route to a career-high six home
runs and a .358 average, second in the NL behind only Heinie
Zimmerman's .372. His hot hitting continued in the 1912 World Series,
when he started all eight games and batted .357. Meyers remained one of
the Giants' best hitters through the 1914 season, when he batted .286 in
a career-high 134 games.
Playing in over 100 games for the sixth consecutive season, the
35-year-old Meyers batted just .232 in 1915, and the Giants placed him on
waivers. Both Brooklyn and Boston
claimed him, and the Robins won his rights on a coin flip. In Brooklyn
Meyers was reunited with ex-Giants Rube Marquard,
Fred Merkle, and his mentor, Wilbert Robinson,
the former Baltimore Orioles catcher. He remembered the 1916 Robins as
"just outsmarting the whole National League" on their way to
the pennant, but he batted just .247 in 80 games and knew that he was
nearing the end. "I cheated a little on my age so they always
thought I was a few years younger," Chief recalled, "but when
the years started to creep up on me I knew how old I was, even if nobody
else did." He split the 1917 season between Brooklyn and Boston, on the
latter club replacing Hank Gowdy, the first
active major leaguer to enlist for service in World War I, before joining
the U.S. Marine Corps himself.
After receiving his discharge in 1918, Meyers joined the Buffalo Bisons, managed by his former Giants teammate Hooks Wiltse, and batted .328 in 65 games. He started the
following year as player-manager for New Haven in the Eastern League but was
replaced in midseason by Danny Murphy, whom he had played against in the
1911 World Series. Meyers was catching for a semipro team in San Diego in 1920
when the crowd booed him and he decided to quit baseball altogether. He
returned to the Riverside area and
became a police chief for the Mission Indian Agency. Meyers also worked
for the Department of the Interior as an Indian supervisor. His nephew,
Jack Meyers, remembered his namesake performing "Casey at the
Bat" for children's groups around the Santa Rosa reservation. "He could
be very theatrical and entertaining," recalled his nephew. Meyers
was a favorite at old-timers games for both the Dodgers and the Giants
for many years, especially after those teams moved to California. Meyers passed away on July
25, 1971, in San Bernardino,
California.
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