Howard Drew: The first Olympic baseball “Dream Team”
LEGEND HAS IT that the first-time baseball was played during the Olympics was at the third iteration of the Games in 1904. Though the 1904 St. Louis Olympics are officially recognized as a continuum of the modern Olympics that began in 1896, the ‘04 Games were a bizarre six month long sideshow to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition being held concurrently in St. Louis. Because most amateur athletes found traveling to St. Louis too difficult and costly, only around 70 of the 600 competitors were from outside North America.
Besides the traditional Olympic events, the 1904 Games included demonstration sports such as American and Gaelic versions of football, women’s boxing, croquet, Irish hurling, and baseball.
Besides North America, by 1912 the game had gained wide spread popularity in Japan, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and several South and Central American countries. However, since the majority of those nations fielded teams that were paid to play the sport, this excluded their best players from participating in the Olympic Games, which, unlike today, were still open only to “amateur” athletes. Japan had a vibrant amateur college baseball scene, but they had never participated in the Olympics before, and in 1912 would only send two runners to represent the country. Sending a whole team to the other side of the world to play in a demonstration game was out of the question.
Thus, fielding experienced teams of ballplayers left only the United States, baseball’s country of origin, and one other unlikely nation: Sweden.
Though it might not seem like it on the surface, Sweden was the ideal place for baseball to make an appearance. In the seven decades leading up to the 1912 Games, over a million Swedes had immigrated to the United States. And, just like every other immigrant group, Swedes learned to play baseball. Many chose to work in the United States long enough to save a nice nest egg and return to Sweden – and with them they brought the game of baseball.
According to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the original plan was for two teams of U.S. track and field athletes to play a game on July 10, 1912. The winners were to then play Västerås’ Basebollklubb, Sweden‘s first baseball club.
But before the games could be played, the American Olympic Committee decided that no athlete could play in the baseball exhibition until they had finished competing in their primary events. The baseball exhibition was changed to a single game on July 15 featuring Västerås’ Basebollklubb against the American track and field athletes collectively called the “Olympics.” A second unoffical game featuring two teams entirely manned by Americans was scheduled for the following day. Both ballgames would be played on the Ostermalm Athletic Ground where the equestrian events were held.
Whether it be sandlot, high school, or college, most of the Americans had extensive baseball experience, so three of their pitchers and a catcher were lent to the Swedish team to keep the game competitive. The first game lasted six innings with the United States “Olympics” beating Sweden, 13-3. To underline the exhibition nature of the game, the “Olympics” did not bat in the sixth and Sweden was allowed to have six outs in their half of the inning.
The sparsely attended event had mostly attracted Americans and Swedes who had lived in the States and who were already familiar with the sport. The light crowd might have been because the “Olympics” scheduled right fielder and runaway sensation of the 1912 Games, Jim Thorpe, did not play. Thorpe was still competing in events that would net him two Gold medals. In his place was the “Olympics” sole Black ballplayer, Howard Drew.
While Jim Thorpe’s name would be well known after his success at the 1912 Olympics, Howard Drew was already famous.
HOWARD PORTER DREW was born in Lexington, Virginia in 1890. According to an article in Track & Field News, his father David, a Baptist minister, and his mother May, “impressed upon him that he could do and be anything he wanted to be if he would just put his mind to it.” As encouraging as they were, David and May realized that the Jim Crow South would always limit their son’s opportunities, so the Drews moved north. In 1900 they were living in Saratoga Springs, New York and four years later they settled in Springfield, Massachusetts where David became pastor of his own church.
Drew was extraordinarily talented at any sport he took up: baseball, basketball, football – and especially running. He entered Springfield High in 1905 (one account says 1906) but left while still a freshman in order to help support his family. In the meantime, Drew continued to play sports in his spare time.
He had his first taste of serious athletic victory when he entered The Springfield City Games on Independence Day, 1905. Realizing before the games that he was severely handicapped due to his lack of running shoes, Drew attempted to fashion his own. Gathering a handful of roofing nails, Drew poked them through the soles of his tennis shoes. Wearing these makeshift cleats, Drew won the 100-yard dash with a time of 10.8 seconds. However, the roofing nails had hurt his feet so much he had to ditch his homemade cleats. Running barefoot on the cinder track, Drew proceeded to win the 440-yard dash in 61 seconds. “I went home with sore feet but very proud of my two medals,” Drew later said.
AT THE AGE of 17, Howard Drew married Ethel Hawkins, a Massachusetts-born woman four years his senior. It’s not known where the couple met, but a son named David was born two months after their wedding, followed by a daughter Barbara a year later.
Now married with two toddlers, Howard Drew resumed his freshman year at Springfield High in 1910. Drew played varsity football, baseball, and track. He was elected the track and field team’s captain and was soon known as the fastest sprinter in New England, setting records in the 50-, 100- and 220-yard dash.
Though technically still a high school junior, the 22-year-old was invited to compete against the best adult college and club runners on the East coast at the 1912 U.S. Olympic Qualifiers at Harvard. He advanced to the US Olympic Trials at the University of Michigan, but because he was not backed by a university or athletic club, Drew needed funds for travel and lodging. A groundswell of newspaper coverage in Springfield elicited enough donations for Drew to make the trip and he did not disappoint.
In the 100-metres race, Drew not only beat out Ralph Craig, the fastest American runner of the time, but he also tied the current world record. Already well known in the East for his high school feats, Drew’s performance at the Olympic Trials made him a national sensation and favorite to win some Gold in Stockholm. The publicity around his performance in Michigan brought in another round of donations that enabled Drew to join the other U.S. Olympians as they set sail for Stockholm.
ALL EYES were on the American sprinter when the time trials began for the 100-metres dash. Drew was unofficially clocked by three different watches as running 10.2, 10.3, and 10.4 seconds – all better than the world record at the time. The trial heats for the 100-metres began on July 6. Howard Drew easily won his heat and advanced to the semi-final.
With his time now being officially clocked, Drew decided to run full-out and try to set a new record. As told a Springfield newspaper after the Games, “I went out of my holes strong and soon had a lead of six yards. About half the distance I struck a piece of soft track and all of a sudden I felt my muscles in the fleshy part of my left leg give way and I finished the heat hopping. I had such a big lead that the others in the race could not pass me.”
Team trainers tried everything they could to treat Drew’s injury, including baking the leg in salt water. When the 100-metres finals began the following day, Drew gamely reached the starting line but realized he could go no further. He had to be helped off the track and then watched from the sideline as Ralph Craig won the Gold.
Drew was still slated to compete in the 200-metres, and again the trainers pulled out all the stops to get his leg working. When artificially numbing the leg didn’t get results, Drew later told his hometown paper, “it was thought cocain [sic] might be tried with success, but this was given up.”
Finally, Drew was informed that he risked permanent injury if he attempted to compete in the 200-metres. Again, he sat on the sidelines as Ralph Craig won a Gold. Though Drew was finished competing as a runner in the Games, there was still baseball to be played.
ON THE MORNING of July 15, a week after his injury, Howard Drew donned the uniform of the United States “Olympics” and took Jim Thorpe’s place in right field.
Though not noted at the time, the “Olympics” were quite a cosmopolitan team for 1912. Among the predominantly Anglo-Saxon players were Abel Kiviat, a Jew; Jim Thorpe, a Native American; and Howard Drew, a Black man. While Kiviat and Thorpe would have been begrudgingly allowed to play in the White organized baseball leagues back in the United States, Drew would not. Thus, the 1912 “Olympics” was a rare early example of an American integrated ballclub.
The box score from the game shows that Drew batted leadoff and recorded a single while also scoring the first of the “Olympics” 13 runs. Whether due to his leg injury or not, Drew was replaced later in the game by Larry Whitney. Meanwhile, over in the Olympic Stadium, Jim Thorpe was in the process of winning the decathlon for his second Gold medal of the Games.
The next day, the second baseball demonstration game was played. Despite the two teams being called “Finland” and “Olympics,” both were made-up entirely of American Olympic athletes who divided themselves by their place of origin. “Finland” had players from the Western states while athletes from the east suited up for the “Olympics.” Unlike the previous day, the July 16 game attracted a much larger crowd, probably since Jim Thorpe, by now known around the world for winning the Gold in both the pentathlon and decathlon, was expected to take part. However, when the ballgame began it was Howard Drew in right field, not Jim Thorpe.
This time the competition was much more even between the two teams. Drew hit a single and scored a run in three turns at the plate before he was replaced by Jim Thorpe. The newly christened “Greatest Athlete in the World” rapped a double in his two tries at bat as the “Olympics” defeated “Finland” by the more modest score of 6-3.
Baseball didn’t make that big of an impression on the International Olympic Committee, and the game would not be featured again until the Berlin Games in 1936.
HOWARD DREW returned home to Springfield. 22-years-old, married with a couple kids, and a well-known U.S. Olympian, he entered his senior year at Springfield High. Upon graduation, Drew briefly enrolled at Lincoln University before transferring to the University of Southern California. He continued his winning ways at USC, becoming the national AAU champion in the 100- and 200-metres dash. He also set world records in the 100- and 220-yard dash, and the 70- and 90-yard sprint.
In January 1916, Howard Drew competed in the Millrose Games, an invitational event held in New York City’s Madison Square Garden. Drew tied his own record of 7.2 seconds in the 70-yard sprint, after which the New York Times called him “the leader in his class.” Popular Science magazine went one step further, calling his 9.6 second world record in the 100-yard dash was “the greatest speed attained by any man.” Although the more succinct mantle of “World’s Fastest Human” wouldn’t be coined until Charley Paddock trimmed a couple of Drew’s records in the early 1920s, one can consider Howard Drew the first “World’s Fastest Human.”
Drew didn’t spend all his time at USC on the track – he was an all-A pre-law student and became the first Black student to write for the university’s campus newspaper. Drew had his own bylined column in which he espoused on civil rights, education, and athletics and did the same as a featured writer with two columns a week for the Los Angeles Examiner newspaper. When he returned from a long trip back East in the Spring of 1916, the Los Angeles Times dedicated nine paragraphs to Drew’s in-depth baseball analysis of the New York Giants and Yankees.
His national fame was such that in July 1915 he was cover star of the NAACP’s The Crisis magazine. In 1916, he drew national attention by vowing to never compete at Boston Athletic Association sponsored track meets because of a posted notice in the club that read, “no negro shall ever represent it in any way.” As the premier sprinter in the country, Drew refused to be a money-drawing attraction that would benefit an association that would not admit him because of his skin color.
While Howard Drew’s public life was one of respect and success, his private life was anything but. Around 1914 his marriage hit the rocks. It appears that when Drew relocated to Los Angeles to attend USC, Ethel remained in Springfield with David and Barbara.
According to newspaper reports, Ethel said that her husband sent her $4 a week but that stopped after August 1915 and she did not even know where he was residing. She got by with some help from her husband’s family, but even that eventually stopped. In March of 1916 Ethel took Drew to court for support payments and a judge ordered Drew to pay his abandoned family $7 a week. Ethel was also granted full custody of the two children.
Even though branded a “Wife Deserter” in the headlines, Howard Drew remained one of the most popular sprinters in the world. All the while his broken marriage was making the news, Drew was racing almost non-stop, competing and winning at all the big New York City and New England track meets. A May 5, 1916, Los Angeles Times piece remarked, “When Drew was in the East all he did was run and dodge alimony.” The marriage eventually ended two years later when Howard Drew filed for divorce, charging Ethel with, “infidelity, cruel and inhuman treatment and desertion.”
INEVITABLY, Drew’s personal problems and heavy schedule of races took its toll on his body. The tendon injury suffered in Stockholm back in 1912 continued to causd Drew problems over the years and his participating in football, baseball, and other sports further taxed his 26 year-old body. In the spring of 1915, it was reported that Drew suffered a spinal injury while competing at an indoor meet in New York City. A few months later at the Far Western Track and Field Meet in San Diego, Drew had what one newspaper described as “a complete breakdown” and finished way below what was expected.
Though he more than made up for this bad showing at subsequent meets that season, Drew was determined to redeem himself at the 1916 Far Western meet. On August 20, 1916, Drew was competing in the 100-yard dash. As the Bakersfield Californian described it, Drew “put on extra speed in order to overtake a competitor” and suffered “a dislocation of the four lumbar vertebrae, which produced pressure on the sciatic nerve.”
Two days later Drew was at his home in Los Angeles when he suffered paralysis of his left side. Doctors proclaimed that even if he regained the use of his legs, he would never race again. Newspapers around the world covered the injury, and two widely syndicated articles carried the obituary-like headlines, “Howard Drew’s Record Short But Brilliant” and “Howard Drew Has Run His Last.”
Against all odds, Howard Drew not only recovered, but began working himself back to competition level. At the same time, he enrolled in Drake University School of Law and took a position writing for a Des Moines newspaper. By October he was a member of the Drake University football team and was telling the press that he looked forward to running in some of the winter track meets back east.
With all the sprinting records he had set, broken, or tied, Howard Drew looked to be a shoo-in for the 1916 Olympic Games. However, the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 threw Europe into a whirlwind of destruction that left no place for the peaceful Olympic Games. The war would soon spread to America, and Howard Drew took leave from Drake University and volunteered for the U.S. Army.
FIRST SERGEANT DREW went to France in 1918 with the all-Black 809th Pioneer Infantry Regiment and served behind the lines with a supply unit. After the Armistice in November, Drew remained in France where he helped recruit and train the U.S. Army track and field team that competed in the 1919 Inter-Allied Games, a sort of ersatz Olympic Games featuring soldier-athletes from 22 Allied Nations. Though Howard Drew was promoted as one of the marquee athletes competing, he kept to a training role on the American team and did not race.
Drew returned to law school at Drake and continued to run track and play football for the university. After graduating, he gave the Olympics one last try by competing for a place on the U.S. team in 1920. Now 30 years-old with a litany of injuries behind him, Drew unsurprisingly fell short of making the team.
He now embarked on an entirely different life trajectory than his athletic career. After passing the Ohio and Connecticut bar exams, Howard Drew relocated to Harford in 1920 and became one of only six Black lawyers in the entire state.
Through countless speeches and newspaper articles, Drew fought to end racial inequality and improve life for the Black residents of Hartford. He became a leader in the Republican Party, rising to become GOP chairman of Hartford’s 5th Ward in 1929. He served as acting judge of the Hartford police court and was appointed to assistant clerk of the City Court, both racial firsts for Connecticut.
At a testimonial dinner held in his honor shortly after the appointment, Drew told the audience, “We are advancing slowly, to be sure, but we are going forward” and that “his main ambition in life was to improve the relationships between the various races.”
Howard Drew remained physically active, coaching, officiating at track meets, and serving as president of the Hartford Tennis Club. He had remarried shortly after he moved to Hartford and he and his wife Dora had two children, Howard, Jr. and Jean.
Howard Porter Drew passed away on February 19, 1957. Shortly after his funeral the Hartford Courant published a tribute to Drew. In it was this quote attributed to him, which remains relevant to this day:
There is need for a better understanding, which can only come through contacts and group discussions; a broader education among whites as well as blacks; a wide conception of real American citizenship, and last, a true realization that we are, indeed, our brother’s keeper.
* * *
The starting place for this article was Pete Cava’s “Baseball in the Olympics” in The National Pastime. Cava did a fantastic job uncovering the origins of Olympic exhibition baseball before WWII. My interest in Howard Drew was piqued by the 2021 article “Olympic Athletes at Hilltop Park and Baseball at the 1912 Olympics” written by Tom Shieber on his excellent website, baseballresearcher.blogspot.com. The website howarddrew.com maintained by Coach Larry Libow is a great starting point for learning about the sprinter and the recent efforts to bring local attention to his life and career. I was able to learn about Drew’s teammates on the “Olympics” at olympedia.com. And then, of course, there are the multitude of contemporary newspapers that covered every detail of Howard Drew’s life and career when he was “The World’s Fastest Human.”
* * *
A LINEUP FULL OF MEDALISTS
They might not have been the “Dream Team” of Mark McGwire, Barry Larkin, and Will Clark who played at the 1984 LA Games, but the first U.S. Olympic Baseball Team in 1912 featured no less than 13 players who won medals in their events.
Ben Adams Won Silver in the standing high jump and Bronze in standing long jump. His brother won the Gold in the standing high jump and remains the only time in Olympic history brothers finished 1-2 in an event. Pitched for Sweden in first game (1-3 and credited with the loss) and played center field for East (1-2) in the second game.
Platt Adams Older brother of Ben Adams. Competed in the 1908 Games but did not medal. In 1912, he won Gold in standing high jump and Silver in standing long jump. Pitched for East in second game (0-4, 1 stolen base). He later was elected to the New Jersey State Assembly and became the state boxing inspector.
George Bonhag Competed in the 1904 and 1908 Games and won Silver in the latter. Was the flagbearer for the U.S. at the 1912 Opening Ceremonies. Won Gold in 3000-metres team. Played 1st base in both games; first game (0-2) and (0-4) in second game.
Dick Byrd Won Silver in discus throw. Pitched in first game (0-0) and pitched for West in second game (0-3). Adrian College. Later represented the U.S. Marine Corps and won the discus event at the Inter-Allied Games in 1919.
Ira Davenport Won Bronze in 800-metres. Caught in first game (2-3 with 2 stolen bases) and played lf for West in second game (1-4). Quarterback for University of Chicago and later was head football coach at Columbia College (now Lora College).
George Horine Won Bronze in high jump. Credited with originating the “western roll” method of clearing the high jump. Played left field in first game (0-1) and center field for West in second game (1-4).
Frank Irons Won Gold in high jump at 1908 Olympics, competed in long jump in 1912 but did not medal. Played left field in first game (1-2) and played 2nd base for West in second game (1-4 with a stolen base).
Fred Kelly Won Gold in 110-metres hurdles. Played center field in first game (1-3 and hit by a pitch) and played 3rd base for West in second game (2-3 with a double and 2 stolen bases). Later became a pioneering air mail and commercial airline pilot.
Abel Kiviat Won Silver in 1500-metres. A talented sandlot ballplayer on Staten Island, he played shortstop in both first game (2-4 with a triple and stolen base) and for East in second game (2-3 with a double and stolen base). Spent the rest of his life promoting races around New York City.
Ed Lindberg Won Gold in 400-metres relay that set a new world record and Bronze in 400-metres. Caught for West in second game (0-4).
Frank Nelson Won Silver in pole vault. Pitched for Sweden in first game (0-1 and struck out 3).
Jim Thorpe Won Gold in decathlon and pentathlon. Played right field for East in second game (1-2 with a double). Later played professional football and baseball and was first President of the NFL.
Larry Whitney Won Bronze in shotput. Played right field in the first game (0-1). Captain of the Dartmouth football team and later coached at Penn State.
* * *
This story is Number 72 in a series of collectible booklets
Each of the hand-numbered and signed 4 ¼” x 5 1/2″ booklets feature an 8 to 24 page story along with a colored art card attached to the inside back cover. These mini-books can be bought individually, thematically or collected as a never-ending set. In addition to the individual booklets, I envision there being themed sets, such as the series I did on Minor League Home Run Champions. You can order a Subscription to Season 6 as well. A year subscription includes a guaranteed regular 12 issues at a discounted price, plus at least one extra Subscriber Special Issue. Each subscription will begin with Booklet Number 066 and will be active through December of 2024. Booklets 1-65 can be purchased as a group, too.
