Jack Burnett Not Barnett! 1910 Montgomery Climbers Outfielder

The Biscuits exited the playoffs in the first round. Rays also. Just like we teach em in Double-A!

 

Be sure to keep an eye out for next springs Baseball Conference in Montgomery, likely to happen in May. Some big names and interesting exhibits are planned, as well as tours of the ballparks around the city!

In other news.. when can I find a player with a regular history to research??

I picked up a rare card with a Montgomery player - a 1910 T210 Red Border Barnett. 

I knew nothing about the player himself, only that he was one of a handful of Montgomery players to appear in these early tobacco card sets. I quickly learned his first name and is Jack and that Jacks last name is actually Burnett, Though both spellings appear to reference the same ballplayer, he is more often referred to as Jack Burnett.

Barnett, or Burnett if you prefer, is a switch hitting utilityman. Jack was 30 years old when with Montgomery in 1919 and had spent most of his career in the Northwestern League. He appears to have broken in with Tacoma in 1906 and midway through the 1907 season his strong batting skills earned him a big league opportunity. Sold to St. Louis, Barnett batted a pedestrian .238 in sixty games with the Cardinals and found himself back in the NorthWestern League the next spring.

After being told he was to be sold back to Tacoma by the Cardinals, Jack refused his salary offer and threatened to play in the outlaw league. The $750 was upped to $1000 and the contract was signed as Jack headed back to the Northwestern League.

 

 In 1908 Jack signed with the Tacoma Tigers and was moved midseason to Spokane via trade for cash, though he would return to the Tigers in 1909. With Tacoma, Jack played mostly third base and was one of the more dynamic players on the Tigers roster.

Jack joined Montgomery in 1910, just in time to be featured on a tobacco card. In fact the photo the newspaper uses for Jacks bio appears to be the same as was used for his 1910 card.

Burnett was acquired during the 1909 Winter Meetings in a trade between Montgomery and Spokane, with Ike Rockenfeld dealt away in a straight up swap of two players who both would get on Montgomery tobacco cards!

 

Whiteman 1910

The Spokane Indians were also where George Whiteman had signed before being sold to Montgomery. Whiteman would be one of the cities most prolific deadball era sluggers in his 1909 & 1910 seasons with the Climbers.

 

Local area newspapers praise Jack Barnett in the outfield, though he was utilized mostly at second base for Montgomery through the first half of the season. In the second half of the summer, Jack is moved to right field after recovering from an early season ankle injury that slowed him. Jack is also dropped from third in the batting order to fifth or sixth. In 131 games that season Jacks average tails off badly, ending the year with a .209 average.

 
Unfortunately that sprained ankle kept Jack from appearing in the team photos for 1910.

In February of 1911 Jack is traded from Montgomery to the Lawrence Colts club of the New England League for veteran shortstop Otto Kruger, who would not appear with Montgomery.

Barnett, or Burnett as it appears on the card, plays with Saginaw in 1911 and the following season is on the move again in a contract that sends him to Scranton, who deals him midseason to the Binghamton Bingoes.

At this point there is a huge gap in the timeline on Baseball Reference dot com. At the age of 33 Jack is out of baseball. Dr. Jack Barnett opens his dentistry practice in Elmira, New York in 1913.

Then, eight long years later, he pops up again for ten games with the 1920 Springfield Massachusetts low-level Hampdens before apparently hanging up the cleats for good. 

LATER: THE HORROR!!

Later in life, Jack Burnett appears to have spent time as a Game Warden in California, where he died in a tragic hunting accident. Jack, along with two friends, were deer hunting in remote Modoc County when Burnett was mistakenly shot by one of the others in the party. The shooter, who mistook his friend for a deer, was so beside himself he tried to commit suicide on the spot before being disarmed by the other hunting party member.

Leaving the body deep in the woods, the other friend had to help the distraught shooter back to camp, where he then had to inform Jack's wife of the fatal event. The wife fainted and was "prostrate" for hours and the friend then had to learn to drive a stick shift twelve miles over dirt roads to the nearest rangers station. 

The ranger station got word to a coroner, who arrived to make the trek with the friend into the woods, chopping a path through to the body. The friend, the coroner and two others then had to improvise a stretcher to carry the body of the nearly 250-pound deceased through the woods for more than a mile before getting back to the car. They then had to modify the back of the car to hold the stretcher and body for the 96 mile mountainous dirt road drive to the nearest town... where the body was then transferred to a train for the final leg of the trip to Ventura with the friend, the distraught shooter and the disconsolate widow in tow.

So... Happy Halloween!