Even if it’s just one incident, it’s always fun to find exceptions to prevailing images of historical figures.  Writing of Hall of Fame shortstop John Henry Lloyd, the Negro League historian John Holway says this: “In an era of rough-neck baseball, Lloyd’s strongest oath was ‘Dad gum it!’ or, if he were particularly angry, ‘Gosh bob it!’” (Blackball Stars, p. 36).  James Riley’s Biographical Encyclopedia says, more cautiously if vaguely, that Lloyd “seldom used coarse language.”

A few years ago I ran across this passage, from a Pittsburgh Courier (June 2, 1928) story on a tight game between Lloyd’s Lincoln Giants and the Hilldales:

Lincoln tied the score in the eighth amid wild disorder.  [Charles] Spearman, batting for [Julio] Rojo, singled to right.  Lloyd up.  Spearman stole on a hit and run signal.  [Porter] Charleston pitched wide and Lloyd could not reach the ball, but no one was covering second to take the throw.  Lloyd’s third swing was a sharp-breaking foul which [Biz] Mackey caught—or trapped—close to the ground.  The umps waved him away [called Lloyd out] and J. Hennery, in an excess of rage, shoved him [the umpire]. The arbiter ordered him from the game.

The May 31 Philadelphia Tribune, in a slightly different account, says it was Lloyd’s “undesirable language” (probably something a little stronger than “Gosh bob it”) that led the umpire (named Clark) to toss him.  Either way, this small crack in the façade of the mild, gentlemanly “Pop” Lloyd of Negro League myth, this complication in his character, makes Lloyd the actual man that much more interesting.

The pitcher Connie Rector had to come in to replace Lloyd at second.  Hilldale won, 3 to 1, when they scored two in their half of the eighth on a triple by Oscar Charleston, an intentional walk to Mackey, and a double by Walter Cannady.