The T210 catcher shown with Norfolk is Gerald Oscar MacConachie, who went by his initials "G.O." The 1911 baseball guides listed the player as "McConachie", which is where Baseball-Reference got that name. His name in the Winston-Salem newspaper boxscores was MacConachie, however.
Gerald Oscar MacConachie, thought he was born on April 15, 1888 in Detroit, MI, but Michigan birth records show he came a month earlier, on March 15.
He was a catcher on the Detroit Athletic Club team in 1909, with teammates Fred Blanding, Chick Lathers, Bert Lerchen, and Nemo Leibold, who all went on to play in the Major Leagues. In 1910 he signed with the Norfolk club in the Virginia League, then played with Winston-Salem and Greensboro in the Carolina Association, but the heat persuaded him to return to Michigan.
He took a job as an assistant in the Detroit Free Press’ sports department, where he worked under sports editor E.A. Batchelor. As well as writing, he also spent much of his time as a cartoonist for the paper. In 1912, he signed to play with the Detroit franchise in the newly formed Columbian Baseball League, which evidently never got off the ground. In 1917, he was named as one of the officials for the annual Decoration Day auto race at the Michigan State Fair.
G.O left Detroit and moved to Wilmington, DE, where he became editor of the Harlan News, a weekly newspaper for employees of the Harlan shipyard. He also got married during his three years in Wilmington. In 1922, MacConachie was appointed a member of the United States Shipping Board, under the Federal Personnel Board, appointed by President Warren G. Harding. From there, he moved to Buffalo, then Philadelphia, and then to New York City to take jobs in the advertising business.
In 1931, G.O. was the US business manager for Sir Malcolm Campbell, champion British race car driver, when Campbell set several land speed records at the Daytona Beach Race Course. His last known job, during World War II, was with the U.S. Navy Bureau of Ships, but in 1946 he and Len D. Hollister obtained a copyright for “Secret Witness, a modern melodrama in three acts.”
G.O. died in Queens, NY in January 1957.
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07-02-2018, 09:50 PM
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