Who is Roy Castleton and why is his Autograph So RARE

[Tom Hufford]

I actually tracked down the biographical info that is listed for Castleton in the various baseball encyclopedias.

The Turkin-Thompson encyclopedias of the 1950s-60s, as well as the 1969 and later editions of the Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia simply listed him as "Roy J. Castleton b. 1886 Salt Lake City, UT", with no exact birth date, and no death info.

When the 1969 Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia was published, it contained far more detailed birth and death data than any other previous work. The fact that there was no death info for Castleton wasn't particularly surprising, since he could quite possibly still be living, at the age of 83. If he were still living, though, no researcher had been able to locate him (if anyone was even trying). He was listed as "Among the Missing" in a listing put together by one of the other founding members of SABR, Bill Gustafson, in the early 1970's.

In November 1976, I had occasion to spend a few days in Salt Lake City, and had always wanted to visit the LDS genealogy library there, to work on my own family history. I quickly found out, though, that the vast majority of books they had on the section of Virginia where I grew up were ones that I had already seen, and I really ended up doing very little research on my own family. I decided to work instead on some of the "Missing Ballplayers."

I was able to find a book of cemetery records from Texas that gave the full name, birth and death info of the 1915 player who had been listed as Reeves H. McKay (actually Reeve Stewart McKay) - who is included in the T210 Texas League card set, and got a bit of data on some other players. I also did some work on Roy Castleton. I didn't find any birth or death info for him at the LDS library, but I did find a marriage record, with the name of his wife (probably in a published book of Salt Lake City marriage records!).

Since I was in Salt Lake City, it only seemed logical to see what else I could find on him there. But, I knew that HOF Historian Lee Allen had started his player questionnaire project in 1959, and if Castleton could be easily found in SLC, Lee would probably have found him long ago. Anyway, that night in the motel I thought I'd just call all the Castletons in the phone book and see what I could find. After several calls and talks with people who had never heard of Roy, I hit pay dirt - I found Roy's wife! I don't remember how she was listed in the phone book - it must not have been under Roy or Esther, maybe it was listed with her initials. Anyway, she was living in a nursing/retirement home. We had a nice talk, she told me about moving to the Los Angeles area, and how she came back to SLC after Roy died. She provided me with his full name - Royal Eugene Castleton (rather than the Roy J. listed in baseball sources), and the dates and places of his birth and death. I passed that info on to Cliff Kachline, who was the HOF Historian at the time, and that's what's been listed in the Baseball Encyclopedias ever since.

And yes, I did ask her about the possibility of getting something that Roy had signed. They didn't have any children that might have saved something, and she said that in moving from LA back to SLC after Roy died, and then moving into the nursing home, she had gotten rid of pretty much everything she had except some clothes, and items that you might expect, like a couple of photos and decorative items in the room. Certainly there was no room in the nursing home for old business papers, letters, etc. So, no, she wasn't sitting on a hoard of autographs, contracts, scrapbooks, uniforms, or anything like that. She did seem to enjoy our conversation, and was somewhat surprised that someone would be interested in those few years from her husband's life. I've often wondered if anyone after me ever talked with her about her husband and baseball.

Roy Castleton didn't hide - he simply went on with his life after baseball, moved away from his hometown. Maybe some people ran across him in LA who remembered him from his PCL days, who knows. If researchers in the 1950s and 60s had had the same internet resources that we have today - telephone directories, real estate records, vital records indexes, the Social Security Death Index, etc. - Roy certainly wouldn't have remained "Among the Missing" for so long - and might have signed an autograph for everyone who asked him!