Baseball Way Back: A brush with greatness

When Yermin Mercedes stormed onto the major league stage with a 5-for-5 2021 debut for the White Sox on April 2 against the Angels, he trailed in his wake an obscure figure from the dim, dark South Side past.

Prior to Mercedes setting a new Sox record for hits by a player in his first career start, two old-timers - Ping Bodie and Art Shires - shared the previous mark of four.

The name Art Shires will likely mean little to baseball fans today. But in his day, Art (the Great) Shires, also known as Art (Whataman) Shires, was one of baseball's notorious bad boys, a Dennis Rodman for the Jazz Age.

A pugnacious narcissist, Shires generated a prodigious amount of newsprint in his day, mostly for what can loosely be called his accomplishments off the field.

In parts of four seasons, almost all of them with the Sox, he hit .291 in 290 games.

But the pop culture phenomenon that was Art the Great transcends numbers and even the game of baseball itself.

The left-handed hitting first-baseman from Italy, Texas garnered attention with the Waco Cubs of the Texas League, batting .305 in 1927.

But his career was already dogged by controversy.

During a May 30, 1928 game in Shreveport, Louisiana, Shires, heckled by Black fans in a segregated section, responded by throwing a baseball into the crowd, The ball hit 53-year-old Walter Lawson in the head, and Lawson died Dec. 19 from a spinal cord injury, involving Shires in litigation that cost him $500, although a grand jury cleared him on March 29, 1929.

The White Sox bought Shires from Waco on July 31, 1928, but Shires jumped the team for the semipro Baytown Oilers. He stood to get a cut of the purchase price and felt the Sox didn't offer enough money.

But after baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis declared him ineligible from organized baseball, he joined the Sox, and against the Boston Red Sox on Aug. 20 at Fenway Park, he made his debut against future Hall of Fame pitcher Red Ruffing. Shires, batting second, hit a standup triple to the flagpole in center field in his first at-bat and went 4-for-5 on the day. The legend of the Great Shires was born.

The 21-year-old was a study in contrasts. On the field, he kept his jaw stuffed with tobacco, while off the field, he wore marcelled hair, carried a cane, wore spats, and owned several suits.

Playing in 33 games in 1928, Shires hit .341 and impressed Sox Manager Russell (Lena) Blackburne enough that he named Shires team captain on March 5, 1929 during spring training in Dallas.

But by April 1, Shires, dubbed the "freshest busher since Ty Cobb broke in," was relieved of his captaincy after Shires arrived at the team's Dallas hotel inebriated after curfew, failed to recognize Blackburne when he walked past him, and then commenced a loud howling in the hotel courtyard.

Shires and Blackburne would mend fences, only to engage in fisticuffs on two occasions, both leaving Blackburne sporting a black eye.

After the second incident at a hotel in Philadelphia in September, Shires' season was cut short and his baseball future cast in doubt.

Throughout that 1929 season, Shires' behavior had grown more outrageous and bizarre, although, writers said, he provided color on a drab team.

In March, Shires said, "A baseball player on the field is like an actor on the stage. He's got to play his part or he won't get anywhere."

In August, Shires himself wrote a newspaper article, in which he said, "Someone has to name the most valuable player in the American League since the league itself has dropped the idea. I want to get the jump on the boys by making my selection. I pick Art Shires, the White Sox' slugging first baseman."

Writers debated over who was the better bench jockey, Shires or the Yankees' Leo Durocher.

One wrote, "There is talk of putting Art Shires, the Great Shires, and Leo Durocher in a locked room and seeing which one can talk the longest."

During the offseason, Shires, $3,000 short as the result of fines, chose to put his pugilistic tendencies to productive use.

Donning a raspberry robe, set off in gold and black and emblazoned with the words "Art The Great Shires," he entered the ring. He fought in five boxing matches, winning four, although one of them was reputed to be fixed.

His one loss came to 220-pound Chicago Bears Center George Trafton, who dropped Shires to the canvas three times and won a five-round decision.

Other athletes displayed interest in fighting Shires, including the Cubs'

Hack Wilson, but Cubs ownership nixed the idea. Before Judge Landis outlawed major leaguers dabbling in the sweet science, Shires had cleaned up, earning $13,000 for slightly more than a half-hour's work.

Still, Shires was able to re-enter the squared circle in 1930, playing a boxer in two episodes of Universal's Leather Pushers movie series.

In 1930, Owen (Donie) Bush replaced Blackburne as manager, but by mid-season Shires was traded to Washington for pitcher Garland Braxton and catcher Bennie Tate.

The Sox had tired of their brush with greatness. Color was one thing. But the Sox needed pitching and catching more.