Rookie Gets His Picture in the Paper

The second installment of our special history focus this week, we look at how one player and a single game changed the way the local media handled the way it reported baseball!

Baseball has been a standard item in the news since the early days, offering information about players and teams of the area. While canvassing news reports of local games, the writings of Montgomery newsmen has been incredibly valuable.

The blunt and honest candor of reporters like Max Mosely, Stuart X. Stephenson, Sam Adams, Fuzzy Woodruff and others lay out the history as it happens. Their familiarity with Montgomery's baseball history - its players, coaches, executives and fans offers a view into the past of the city and its love affair with the game.

Another way the newspaper offers a view of the past is with its images. Finding a picture in the paper of a team or player wearing the Montgomery uniform is a treat for fans, then and now. However the printing techniques of the era were less than optimum for visual media so they tended to use few pictures.

 1904
Sometimes readers were offered an image of the league president or a team executive, in a format similar to this article in The Sporting Life about ownership of the Montgomery team.

Sporting Life Feb 1904

When Montgomery entered the Southern Association in 1904, the papers were happy to include the teams exploits in its columns. The Montgomery Advertiser, Alabama Journal and Montgomery Times had used their pages to cover the subject of base ball in print for over forty years. However excitement generated by a new ball club prompted typesetters to break their long standing print-only sports page format, offering an April image of the Montgomery infielders.

 That's it. No team photo appears in our local papers but there was one found in the Reach Base Ball Guide, which annually lists every team that can get nine guys to stand together long enough to take a picture.

Your 1904 Montgomery Senators aka Stickney's Pretzels

 This club started off badly and got worse as it went on. To say this was a bad year for the team would be a drastic understatement. It began even before the first game, as two groups wrangled for the Montgomery franchise, per the Sporting News article above.

Long time blog readers will recall some of the stories and players from this team, such as pitcher Duke Carter sleepwalking out of a third story hotel window and landing on the disabled list for the rest of the season.

Dropping quickly to the league cellar while playing at Highland Avenue Park, the best overall player on the Montgomery roster was Frank Delahanty. One of five brothers to play baseball at high levels, Frank Delahanty moved up to the major leagues after his oh-four Pretzels season. Three other of these Montgomery players either would get, or had already gotten, major league experience.

However it didn't help the Montgomery team in the standings and while games are well reported on in print no more photos of the team or its players appear on the sports pages in April or May.


So it was a surprise to everyone when, in June of 1904, an image appeared in the center of the sports page.

Gardner, Montgomery's new pitcher.

The new hurler, Gardner, shows up as the club is limping through its first pro season in five years. The youngster pitches an excellent debut, offering hope to the beleaguered Pretzels rotation. Three full columns are devoted to the rookie pitcher Gardner's first Pretzels game, a shutout, and much about how he can turn the team around for the second half.


And I'm thinkin "Who is this guy?"



RUBE GARDNER

Gardner with Oakland 1915

Luther Gardner hails from Tennessee, throws lefthanded and is listed as twenty years old in the lengthy article on the young hurlers debut contest.

Hailed by the local press as the savior of the team, the sportswriters missed the mark. This Rube notches just three more wins and loses fourteen games in the second half of the season. When not surrendering hits from the hillock, Gardner took a spot in the corner outfield so his .200 batting average could get into the lineup more often.

After Montgomery, Luther Gardner went on to play for a total of fourteen seasons, managing for short time in Seattle. Yet Luther "Rube" Gardner never pitched again after 1904. His ERA isn't recorded on baseball reference for that season, thankfully, and I won't reveal it either.

By the time Gardner's season in Montgomery closes, he is referred to as "utility outfielder Gardner". Luther Gardner opened the following year in Montgomery's outfield, then was dealt to Birmingham midseason where fans were frightened by talk of letting him pitch, which did not happen.

Luther went on to play with other teams, mostly on the west coast, but appears to have stayed off the center berm for good. Luther C Gardner passed away in March of 1953.

As it appears, Luther Gardner is the first Montgomery player to get his picture in the paper for his sparkling in-game efforts, changing forever the way media handles baseball news in Montgomery. And then he lost fourteen games and was never allowed back on a pitching mound again.