Great Uncle Mike

[Dave]

And elsewhere on the net I ran into discussions about whether Mike should be inducted into the HOFame. Some feel he should, others don't.

If interested, google "baseball Mike Griffin hall of fame."

[keith]

The case could be made that he is more deserving than many other Famers.

[Dave]

It is tough to compare players from a century ago to today's baseball stars, I guess. From what I remember of the forum writer's nixing of Uncle Mike for the HOF, he felt that compared to other players in the 1890's , some of Mike's exploits were exemplary, but some were not all that unusual.

Or something like that. I don't follow baseball so I can't judge.

[Dave]

I'm trying to fill in more of the details from Great Uncle Mike's life.

I have this labeled in my files as coming from the 1867 Utica Directory. That date is too early for Great Uncle Mike to be making cigars (moulder.) He would have been about 2 years old. His father, Patrick, my great grandfather, was in business with his brother John making and selling cigars on Bleecker St.

Toward the center of the page you'll see John, Patrick and Michael Griffin. Michael is listed here as a moulder, that is a maker of cigars. Michael's listed home address of 142 Bleecker and the Griffin Brothers business was listed at 45 Bleecker St.

Current numbering of buildings on Bleecker St. begins at Genesee St. with (evidently) 100, so I can't tell where the business and Michael's home was, but they must have been close together in that year.

Much of the area around the Busy Corner was originally fine housing while the business area of the city was down by Baggs Square and over Broad, but I don't know how long this was so. Certainly, many of the post cards depicted what we now call the Busy Corner as a business hub by the 1890's and the area was probably devoted to business earlier. (Is there an historian in the house?)

John and Patrick were brothers (my father was named after his great uncle John). John's home address on Jay sounds right for the time (1867), and Patrick's home address ("h 43 Third") is an early address for him.

Patrick let his son get away from the moulder's bench and go play what amounted to professional baseball in the summer when the seasons were certainly not as long as today.

Also, Patrick is listed as Utica's Overseer of The Poor, a position he held for some time. It evidently stemmed from his devotion to the Irish immigrants who daily came to Utica, although one would presume he helped more than the Irish. Patrick's father, Ancestor Michael as we call him, came from Ireland, probably through Canada, landing in Utica in 1824.

Another thing that surprises me are the number of Griffiths on this Directory page. I didn't think the Welsh began to come into Utica until around 1900, but I guess I was wrong.

Firefox users click the graphic below twice.





By the way, above where an "h" precedes an address indicates it is the home of the person named. If the person boards (gets room and board, a common arrangement for single men and women at the time) the designation "bds" precedes his or her address.

City directories indicated whether a person was employed and showed where they lived. As such, it gave banks and others who might issue credit a minimal amount of information on which to make their decision. If you were not in the city directory, you would not get credit.



I'll be showing frames from Utica's 1883 City Directory. Here is the url on google books, before I forget to note it.

books.google.com/books?id=kOoCAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=city+directory&as_brr=1#v=onepage&q=city%20directory&f=false



Here's the 1883 Utica City Directory.






Here's the preface, an interesting look at their efforts.





One of the ads contained is from The Daily Press. Spicy news!
Firefox users click twice to enlarge. Notice that in 1883 they are still on Broad St. THE business wholesale and trades street.






And ... AHAH! .... for those of you reading the sequel to Monk in the Cellar, called Monk On The Journey. As I suspected, Mucky Run Road in Frankfort was NOT named for a muddy, mucky creek, but for a man named Muckey. You'll find Warner Muckey listed as an advertiser from Frankfort, below.






This is interesting, here are the Griffin listings in the 1883 Utica City Directory. Note the addresses, especially for Griffin Brothers.






Remember the address of 45 Bleecker Street in the directory mentioned earlier? That directory must be after this one from 1883. Check out the address in this ad from 1883.






So, John and Patrick Griffin probably moved their business from 57 Bleecker Street and possilby took over George Young's business, or a part of it, at 45 Bleecker Street, where they are later listed as making cigars and selling tobacco. Great Uncle Mike is during this time upstairs working as a Moulder, making cigars and dreaming of spring and green grass and hitting one out of the park!



45 Bleecker St. may have been where 145 Bleecker is today ... or was ... (approximately), on the south side of Bleecker near the intersection of Charlotte St.




LATER: April 9, 2014:

Following is from the Utica 1883 Map, a copy of which I hadn't seen when I wrote the above post.



In regard to the locations on Bleecker Street, given a street number, and specifically regarding the Griffin business at either 45 or 57 Bleecker Street. You can see in the map that the Bleecker street numbers run up as one goes east from the Busy Corner (Genesee St.) All the addresses along the south side, which ends at No. 56 at the corner of Bleecker and Burnet Streets, are even numbered. Across the street, the numbers are indeed oddd numbers, but in that same stretch from Genesee to Burnet they appear to all be in the seventies. There is no numbering for St. John's Church or the following bock to the east which held the Academy (forerunner to UFA) and Assumption Academy, as well as the "City" Court House. Nor is there street numbering on this map for most of the large commercial buildings, although they must have had numbers.

[Dave]

Found this in a great deal of data sent to me by my nephew, Steven.


Mike Griffin

Biographical Data

Nickname: Mike
Born On: 03-20-1865
Born In: Utica, New York
Zodiac: Pisces
Died On: 04-10-1908
Died In: Utica, New York
Cemetery: St. Agnes Cemetery, Utica, New York
College: None Attended
Bats: Left
Throws: Right
Height: 5-07
Weight: 160
First Game: 04-16-1887 (Age 22)
Last Game: 10-15-1898
Draft: Not Applicable




The MoreStories and Utica History Forum has a number of threads about Utica history.



To Leave This Thread and Go To The Front Page of MoreStories and Utica History Forum, click the following url:

morestories.proboards.com

[Dave]

Found the following. Don't know the author. The first few paragraphs are interesting to me, later paragraphs of interest to fans.

Los Angeles Dodgers History

Brooklyn's debut into the National League in 1890 began on a positive note as the team nicknamed the "Bridegrooms" won the championship with an 86-43 record. It was the first of 21 National League pennants that the Dodgers would win during the next 100 years.

The moniker "Bridegrooms" was attached to Manager William "Gunner" McGunnigle's 1890 ballclub because seven of the players got married around the same time in 1888. Despite the success of the Bridegrooms, McGunnigle didn't last past the initial year and the team paraded through six different managers before the end of the decade. The skippers included John Montgomery Ward (1891-92), Dave Foutz (1893-96), William Barnie (1897-98), Mike Griffin (1898), Charles H. Ebbets (1898) and Ned Hanlon (1899-1905).

The term "Trolley Dodgers" was attached to the Brooklyn ballclub due to the complex maze of trolley cars that weaved its way through the borough of Brooklyn. The name was then shortened to just "Dodgers." During the 1890s, other popular nicknames were Ward's Wonders, Foutz's Fillies and Hanlon's Superbas.
Baseball was not new to Brooklyn, which had fielded a team as early as 1849. Charles Byrne, president of the Brooklyn club which started in the Interstate League and moved into the American Association, built Washington Park on the approximate site where George Washington's Continental Army had fought the battle of Long Island. The Dodgers of 1890 transferred to the National League from the American Association, where they had won the 1889 pennant.

Under Hanlon, who joined the Dodgers from Baltimore, the team brought stars to Brooklyn including "Wee" Willie Keeler, Hughie Jennings and Joe Kelley. Sportswriters dubbed the team "Hanlon's Superbas" because of a popular Broadway troupe of the same name. Brooklyn won the 1899 title under Hanlon, the first of two consecutive pennant winners.

Brooklyn-born Keeler, famous for saying "I hit 'em where they ain't," had great bat control and was an adroit bunter. He compiled a .345 career batting average, fifth best all-time in baseball. The 5-foot-4 Hall of Famer had a league-leading 140 runs scored in 1899. First decade stars also included pitcher William "Brickyard" Kennedy, who won 176 games; pitcher Tom Lovett, who won 30 games in 1890 (the only Dodger pitcher to record 30 wins in one season); outfielder Tommy "Oyster" Burns, who batted .300 from 1890-95 and led the league with 128 RBI in 1890; Mike Griffin, who batted over .300 in an eight-year period (1891-98) before managing; first baseman Dan Brouthers, who was the club's first batting champion with a .335 average in 1892; shortstop Tommy Corcoran, who batted .300 with 173 hits in 1894; and first baseman Candy LaChance, who hit .290 for six seasons (1893-98).

1890 - April 19, 1890: Brooklyn plays its first game in the National League, a 15-9 loss to the Boston Beaneaters, and went on to capture the National League pennant.

April 28, 1890: The Bridegrooms beat Boston, 5-2, in front of 1,222 fans at Washington Park, the first National League game in Brooklyn.

May 1, 1890: Third baseman George Pinckney brought his streak of 570 consecutive games-played streak with him to the National League, but it ended with an injury in a game that rain prevented from even making it to the books. Pinckney had played every inning since Sept. 21, 1885, a record that would last nearly a century.
May 3, 1890: The Bridegrooms win the first National League contest between Brooklyn and the Giants, 7-3.
June 12, 1890: Brooklyn beats the Giants, 12-6, at Washington Park in the first game to feature a passionate dispute between the two clubs in the National League, ignited by Brooklyn third-base coach Darby O'Brien, who pretended to be a baserunner and drew a throw over to third.

June 14, 1890: Tom Lovett tosses the first Brooklyn shutout over the Giants, a whopping 16-0 victory.
Aug. 1, 1890: Oyster Burns is the first player in franchise history to hit for the cycle.
Sept. 1, 1890: Let's play three? Brooklyn dispatches Pittsburgh three times in one day.


1891 - April 27, 1891: The Bridegrooms play their first game at Eastern Park, dropping the contest, 6-5, to the Giants.
June 22, 1891: Thomas Lovett issues three walks, but no-hits the Giants for a 4-0 win.

1892 - May 29, 1892: Eight days after losing 28-year-old outfielder George "Hub" Collins to typhoid fever, the Bridegrooms and St. Louis Browns put on a benefit All-Star Game to raise money for his widow.
Nov. 1, 1982: Dan Brouthers' .335 batting average is good enough for the title.

1893 - May 30, 1893: William "Brickyard" Kennedy beats Louisville, 3-0 and 6-2, in both games of a twin bill, allowing just eight hits all day. He's the first Major Leaguer to pitch and win two games on the same day since the mound was moved to 60 feet, six inches from the plate.

1894 - June 2, 1894: Ed Stein tosses a 1-0 no-hitter over the Cubs in a six-inning game.

1896 - May 20, 1896: Brooklyn sets a franchise record by scoring more than a score in a 25-6 win over Pittsburgh.

1897 - May 29, 1897: Mike Griffin starts a triple play in a 9-7 loss to Pittsburgh.
Sept. 21, 1897: Twelve Brooklyn runners cross the plate in the opening frame of a 22-5 win in Boston.


1898 - Jan. 4, 1898: Owner Charles Byrne dies and Charles Ebbets later becomes president of the ballclub.
April 30, 1898: "New" Washington Park opens.
May 3, 1898: Jimmy Sheckard racks up 11 total bases, including a homer, two triples and a single.

1899 - Feb. 7, 1899: After the Bridegrooms and Orioles merge, with Baltimore owner Harry Von der Horst and Ned Hanlon taking a stake in the Brooklyn franchise, "Wee" Willie Keeler, Joe Kelley, Hughie Jennings and other players head to Brooklyn which will take on the name "Superbas."
May 15, 1899: "Wee" Willie Keeler smacks an inside-the-park grand slam to get past the Phillies, 8-5.
Oct. 7, 1899: Jim Hughes and the Superbas beat the Giants, 13-2, to capture the National League pennant.

[Dave]

So it was summers home in Utica for Great Uncle Mike. He had his pride after all. A deal is a deal. And when the team that inherited him would not pay the agreed upon $3500, he no doubt said, "to hell with ya!"

[Dave]

By this time, Mike, my great uncle, was ready to settle down and start his own family. He was allied with his father and uncle in the tobacco business on Bleecker and was a qualified cigar maker. He had bigger plans of course. And there is probably a limit to how long a father and son can work with each other. I guess I should say some fathers and sons.

Mike's father, Patrick, was known far and wide for his pleasant personality, generosity and way with people. By this stage in life he had become a successful businessman, the "go to" person for business advice in Utica, a NY State legislator (from whence the "Honorable" in his address), Utica's City Treasurer for a term, the IRS agent in Utica (there needed to be only one) and Utica's Overseer of the Poor. Though few today know of it, Patrick while in the State Assembly introduced a law calling for the use of Utica's old Erie Canal weighlock as the foundation stone of the Oriskany Battle Monument.

But at home I imagine Patrick could be a bear, or so thought my grandfather, his dispossessed son, William.

[Dave]

Great Uncle Mike's brother, William, was my grandfather. He died before I was born and I never met him. He sired 5 sons and two daughters by my grandmother, Mary Lynch Griffin, who died before William.

I don't know the cause of Patrick and William's estrangement. I suspect my grandfather may have been a disappointment to his father. I don't even know for sure that they were angry with each other, but I never heard anything about these people when growing up, except that I had a great uncle who played baseball in the (then) last century and his photo hung in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Of course, that part of the family was all dead by the time I was born. Great Uncle Mike left three children and one became a dentist in Utica. We knew very little about that side of the family until an impromptu family reunion about 5 or 6 years ago that I was unable to attend because of obligations in my own family.

From what I can tell in old newspapers (Utica's Daily Press and Observer Dispatch) in retirement Dr. Robert Griffin was a part time dentist for the Utica Health Department by the early 1960's. He was never mentioned in my memory. My father was not a resentful or vindictive man ... far from it. It may be the case that he simply did not know that part of his family and had nothing to say about them.

[Dave]

As far as I know, there is no record of Mike's thoughts about posing for a photo as he jumps down on a blanket spread before a painted canvas backdrop (of what, it's hard to tell,) as though pursuing a ball dropping into center field. I presume that in one way or another he received some compensation from the Old Judge Tobacco Company, baseball card division.

[Dave]

Note the length and narrow girth of the bat. This is Mike playing for Baltimore in 1888, before he joined the Brooklyn team.

[Dave]

As mentioned earlier, my cousin's son, Steven Griffin of Utica did the bulk of research on Great Uncle Mike. Here's another article on Mike .... this written in 2004 and appearing in the Utica Observer Dispatch ... that also chronicles Steven's tireless efforts to promote the memory of one great baseball player.


www.uticaod.net/site_html/SPECIAL_CONTENT/halloffame/sports/griffin_mike.htm


Here's another article. You can enlarge it and with a little difficulty you should be able to read it. Written in 2008, Steven tells the reporter about his work on behalf of Uncle Mike.

[Dave]

One can see Mike beginning to look "mature" in this photo of the 1896 Brooklyn team. By that I mean he took on a little weight. This is one of the few team pictures where the players appear in business attire.

[Dave]

Here's the Utica ball club in 1884.

[Dave]

These photos show Mike in the field, center field evidently, but location is unknown.

Click to enlarge, twice for Firefox.