Connie Coughlin, Baseball Player

When my Grampa, Cornelius ("Connie") Francis Coughlin, died in 1960, old men came to the Flynn-Froelk funeral home (this might have been on Mayfield Road, probably in South Euclid, Ohio), and they spent the hours talking baseball, reminiscing about players and games that took place 40 to 50 years before, when they played ball with my Grampa. Baseball was important in Grampa's life, and he was a very good player.

I've been trying to gather in my mind everything I remember about my Grampa's days as a baseball player, and then supplement those memories with what I can find on the internet and in published sources. My Uncle Bill Coughlin is also a source for some of what follows.

Here are some disconnected memories:

Grampa played shortstop. In the days before the live baseball (before the home-run era), he specialized in "hitting them where they ain't" and in bunting. Grampa was an extremely fast runner, and he made good use of that speed in his game. He told me that in his heydey, he was "the fastest runner in Cleveland" (exact words). He could make it from the batter's box to first base in 3 seconds, and he could circle the bases in 14 seconds. If these numbers are accurate, he was indeed one of the fastest runners around! Grampa played shortstop, so besides being fast he must have had a good arm. In those days ballplayers played with very primitive gloves. In fact, to show how tough they were, ballplayers would sometimes cut out the leather from the glove's pocket and catch the ball barehanded. At one time we had Grampa's glove around the family (maybe somebody still has it--Uncle Bill?) and it was a sight to see. You'd wonder how anyone could catch a ball with it! In Cleveland he played for semi-pro teams and once played in the Brookside ballpark, a natural amphitheatre near the Cleveland Zoo, before over 100,000 people, the largest crowd ever to see a baseball game in America. There is a famous photo of that game, between the Telling Strollers and Hanna Cleaners, dated September 20, 1914. To see this photo, click on this link: www.baseball-fever.com/showthread.php?t=23420

Grampa also played minor league baseball, in the Three-I League [Iowa, Indiana, and Illinois]. My Uncle Bill Coughlin told me that Grampa played for the Rockford, Illinois team, a class B team under contract to the New York Giants baseball team (the team led by Hall-of-Famer John McGraw). The Rockford "Wakes" were managed by Howard Wakefield, a Bucyrus, Ohio boy who had played for the Cleveland Naps. The Wakes only existed for 2 years, 1915 and 1916, so Grampa played there one or both of those years. Grampa said that the travelling in the minor league was murder and that he never got to see his family or friends. He finally got tired of living out of a suitcase and quit, coming back to Cleveland. Shortly after he came back from Rockford, Illinois and the Three-I League, he met and married Cora Bowers, my Grandmother. I believe my Uncle Fran (also known as "Connie"--Francis Cornelius Coughlin) was born in 1917, the first of 5 children. Fran was himself a good ballplayer, a catcher, and around 1940 had a tryout with the Cleveland Indians.

The year my Grampa Coughlin died, 1960, he was still very athletic and limber. He had a party trick of weaving a cane through his legs every which way and finally jumping over it. At age 69 he could still do that. He also tried to teach me to bunt a baseball. He'd toss his cap 10 to 15 feet away from him, and we'd pitch a ball to him. He would then bunt the ball to the exact spot his hat lay. To him bunting was an art (a lost art) . He also taught me to slide (though I don't remember him actually sliding at age 69).

Grampa had a stomach ulcer that bothered him off and on. Now days they can treat ulcers with both antibiotics and acid-reducers. But in 1960, his ulcer was bleeding and he entered Euclid-Glenville Hospital for surgery. We never quite found out what happened, but Grampa never recovered from that surgery and basically bled to death over the following days. It seemed almost surely a case of malpractice, but our family had neither the means nor the desire to pursue a legal case.

A little postscript: My Grampa used to say that he "fired Bob Hope" --from his baseball team. This might be true, but I have no way to prove it. Bob Hope was born in England in 1903 and moved with his family to Cleveland in 1908. He lived on the East Side, not far from my Grampa Coughlin. Bob Hope tried everything before becoming a success in Vaudeville and later in movies and on television. He even tried to be a boxer, fighting under the name of "Packy East." So he might indeed have tried out for a baseball team managed by Connie Coughlin. And he probably got cut (or "fired") from the team, just as he failed as a boxer.