In 1933, sportwriter Harold “Speed” Johnson published his first Who’s Who in Major League Baseball, a directory featuring biographies and statistics of MLB players of the time. “Edward Stephen (Doc) Farrell” appears on page 150. Johnson released an annual edition of his directory through 1955.
I have only the loose page in my collection but here is a cover image of the 1933 directory from an eBay listing.
This post includes select pages from the full program which contain references to Eddie Farrell.
Baseball cards and candy have a long history together.
Like many confectionery companies around the turn of the twentieth century, the Collins-McCarthy Candy Company of San Francisco produced baseball cards to help sell their sweets. From 1911 to 1938, Collins-McCarthy inserted cards in boxes of its Zeenuts, Ruf-Neks and Home Run Kisses candies. (If anyone knows what a Zeenut candy looked like and/or was made of, I’d love to know.)
The Zeenut cards depicted players in the Pacific Coast League (PCL), a competitive minor league featuring teams in California, Oregon and Washington. PCL alums include legends Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams—and to his dismay, Eddie “Doc” Farrell.
The minors are a stepping stone for major league dreamers, but for a six-year veteran like Doc, it wasn’t where he expected to be after a 1930 season in which he hit .292 for the Chicago Cubs in part-time duty. New manager Rogers Hornsby traded Farrell to the Los Angeles Angels of the PCL where he played (almost literally) every day during a 185-game season on the West Coast. In fact, those games were stretched over two consecutive “split-seasons”—a first half and second half—which the PCL was known to play in those days. Despite the workload, Eddie flourished in the sunshine, batting .327 during the stretch. He proved he still had a major league bat, and he would get another shot at the big show with the New York Yankees in 1932.
On his black-and-white 1931 Zeenut card, Farrell swings a bat in his Los Angeles flannels. His cap casts a triangular shadow over his 30-year-old face. It was a sunny day in the City of Angels.
[More about Zeenut cards: All cards were unnumbered and blank backed. Starting with the 1913 set, each card came with a coupon attached to the bottom which could be redeemed at a dealer for a premium. Today, it’s rare to find a card with its coupon intact (example).]
In 1925, Eddie Farrell walked on to a major league baseball field armed with a bat, glove and a degree in dentistry from the University of Pennsylvania.
Just a jock Doc was not.
The rookie infielder debuted with the Giants on June 15, 1925, three days before graduating. Fast-forward ten years and Farrell would hang up his cleats, dust off his diploma, and open shop as a dentist in Newark.
This black-and-white press photo shows the Pennsylvania captain in his baggy grey flannels, glove outstretched to catch an imaginary line drive to shortstop. Taped to the rear on a scrap of light blue paper appears a typewritten description of the image:
15459
COLLEGE BALL CAPTAIN TO JOIN GIANTS
Captain Eddie Farrell, of the University of Pennsylvania baseball team, who will join the N Y Giants on June 23rd after taking his final New York State Dental Board examination. Eddie is considered the hardest-hitting and best fielding shortstop the Red and Blue has ever had.
YOUR CREDIT LINE MUST READ :-(BY UNITED)The picture was supplied by the news agency, United Newspictures, according to a stamp on the back. A second stamp reads “REFERENCE DEPT. JUN 10 1925 N. E. A.”
In 1932, Eddie Farrell was a 30-year-old backup shortstop in pinstripes, playing behind a rookie from San Francisco named Frank Crosetti. They were teammates at opposite ends of their careers. The New York Yankees would go on to win the World Series that fall. Farrell would play parts of two more seasons and then retire. Crosetti would play sixteen more and coach an additional twenty. During that time he pocketed a total of seventeen rings, more than any individual in baseball history.
In the spring of 1996, I was fifteen years old and got the idea that I should write to one of Eddie Farrell’s former teammates. Perhaps I’d get a response and learn a little more about my great-grandfather. There were two surviving members of that ’32 championship team. One was Frank Crosetti. He was 84 years old.
I found the location of Crosetti’s residence in one of those sports address lists autograph collectors could buy on the Internet. I sent off my request and a few weeks later I received a response. The words were handwritten in blue, in all caps, on the same piece of paper below my original note. It was signed, Frank Crosetti.
Dear Mr. Frank Crosetti,
My name is Matt Raymond, I am 15 year old. Eddie “Doc” Farrell was my great-grandfather. He died before I was born, so I was unable to talk to him about his career and experiences playing professional baseball. I know you played with him on the 1932 Yankees. I was hoping that you could tell me a little about playing with him, and what we was like as a person. I have enclosed a self-addressed enveloped to aid in your response. Thank you very much!
Sincerely,
Matt Raymond
EDDIE WAS A GREAT PERSON, WE ROOMED TOGETHER ON THE ROAD - HE WAS VERY INTELLIGENT AND HE ADVISED ME IN A LOT OF THINGS - WE WERE FRIENDS UNTIL THE DAY HE PASSED AWAY. HIS WIFE IS STILL LIVING IN ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA.
Frank Crosetti
Mr. Crosetti passed away in 2002 at the age of 91. You can read an excellent article on Frank Crosetti's career by the Society for American Baseball Research.
When I visited my grandparents’ house as a boy, I was intrigued by a framed photo of a baseball player in their den. The room was large and filled with mementos and artwork collected over a lifetime. Watercolors, family snapshots, sports memorabilia from my grandfather’s amateur football playing days and those of his four sons who followed in his cleat prints decades later.
But it was this small photo that caught my eye.
In the image a man held a blond baseball bat to his right shoulder, his steely gaze reaching out beyond the paper on which it was printed. He wore a blank, baggy white jersey with blue trim and a matching hat. The jersey sleeves reached down to his forearms and strong hands protruded from them, clutching the barrel. Over his left shoulder was printed the name, EDDIE FARRELL.
Upon closer inspection I realized it wasn’t a photo but a baseball card. One unlike any I had ever seen. At the time, collecting baseball cards was an obsession of mine. I opened my first pack when I was five (1986 Topps) and soon after tore through the basement of my father’s childhood home, excavating treasures from his childhood which survived laundry pins and bicycle spokes. By the time I was ten, I had thousands of cards stored in long cardboard boxes in my bedroom closet. Stacked two by two, the tower reached my eyes. But this card was different. The image was more like a painting than a photograph. It had an old-timey look to it.
Who’s in that picture, I asked my mother.
That’s your great-grandfather. Grandpa Eddie was a ballplayer…and a dentist.
I would learn more about Eddie Farrell from the back of that baseball card, but not until I tracked down one of my own years later from an ad in Sports Collectors Digest. Before the internet, a sixty-year-old card of a common player wasn’t easy to find. Every week I would comb the listings of SCD for dealers who sold any 1933 Goudey cards, and my father would pick up the phone to inquire whether they had any Eddie Farrells. We struck out on most calls but every blue moon we’d get a hit and pay upward of $100 per card to get these rare treasures in our possession. Then each year around my birthday we’d attend a card collectors show and my eagle eyes would prowl row after row of display cases in the local Marriott convention hall for old cards.
“Got any Goudeys?”
“Nah."
But once or twice there was a 1933 Goudey #148 in a box of commons stacked deep behind the dealer’s folding chair, far from the high-priced all-star rookie cards that gleamed in his plexiglass case. The condition or price of the card did not matter. I handed over the cash and held my breath as it was placed in my hands. Those blue eyes stared at me again through the hard plastic sleeve which I cradled until I could show my mother another of her grandfather’s cards. The one I found.
—
Eddie Farrell’s bio on the back of his 1933 Goudey card reads:
EDDIE FARRELL
NEW YORK YANKEES
Eddie is a registered dentist, besides being a high grade major league baseball player. He was graduated in 1925 from the University of Pennsylvania, where he captained the baseball team for two years.
Eddie is a handy man to have on a ball club, as he can play three different infield positions.
He has served with the Giants, Braves, Cardinals and Cubs in the National League, and is now with the New York Yankees.
Eddie was born in Johnson City, N.Y. 1902, is 5 feet, 8 inches tall and weighs 160 lbs., batting and throwing right handed.
By far, eBay has been the most effective tool in building my Eddie Farrell collection and I monitor the marketplace frequently. Every day you can find copies of his 1933 Goudey baseball card. I have dozens. Every day you can find copies of team photos in which he appeared. I have them all. But it’s rare that I’ll find something truly unique. Something that gives me any kind of insight into Grandpa Eddie. But then one day, there was a letter.
Handwritten in blue on paper toned with decades of age, it read:
2228 So. 10th St
Ironton, Ohio
Dear Larry:
Sorry not to have returned your cards sooner.
Have been out of town the past ten days due to sickness in the family.
Vic Aldridge and I write to one another once a year. (Xmas)
I hope you will be able to get the autographs of the old timers.
Sincerely,
Eddie
My great-grandfather’s personal reply to a TTM (through the mail) autograph request. In a second eBay listing there was a signed index card, one of the “cards” referenced in the note. I was the winning bidder on both lots. There was no other outcome possible.
It is the only Eddie Farrell autograph I have. It means more to me than anything else in my collection. And I purchased it on eBay.
The official fan site for Eddie "Doc" Farrell, 1932 World Series Champion and Major League Baseball player (1925 - 1935) for the New York Giants, Boston Braves, St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago Cubs, New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox.
1932 World Series Champion
(New York Yankees)
9-year Major League Baseball veteran (1925-1930, 1932-1933, 1935)
New York Giants
Boston Braves
St. Louis Cardinals
Chicago Cubs
New York Yankees
Boston Red Sox
Career stats and info at
Baseball-Reference.com
This site is run by Eddie Farrell's great-grandson, Matt Raymond.
Connect with Matt on Instagram: @mattraymond
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