Moxie!
An Unsolved Mystery from the 1925 Negro National League
On June 7, 1925, the Western Cuban Stars took on the semipro Cheviot team at the latter team’s park in Cincinnati. A 3-run outburst in the 7th gave the game to Cheviot (8-4 was the final score); the first of the Cubans’ two relief pitchers was somebody who was listed in the box score simply as “Moxie.”
Although they were members of the Negro National League, the Cubans were in Cincinnati for a six-game series against clubs from the semipro KIO (Kentucky-Indiana-Ohio) League. “Moxie” would appear at least twice more in the series, in left field for a 15-0 demolition of the Ludlow Club on June 11 (Moxie hit 2 for 4) and as a left fielder and relief pitcher in an 8-5 win over the Cheviots on June 12.
“Moxie” played for the Cuban Stars over the next few weeks, stretching into early July, through five series, four of them against NNL teams. He got into four of the Cubans’ five games against the Stars in St. Louis from June 13 through June 17, playing first base and both corner outfield positions and pinch-hitting once. He did not appear in a four-game series against the American Giants. The Cubans then travelled north to Racine, Wisconsin, for two games against the white semipro Racine Athletics. Moxie pinch-hit in the first game on June 25. Then the next day he started on the mound. He went three innings, leaving the game (for reasons not explained) with his team in the lead, 4 to 2, but his replacement (an otherwise unknown named Higby, perhaps a local player) went on to lose 9 to 8.
He appears as Moxie in the vast majority of the game stories and box scores available to us, with a few variations: “Moxer” twice, “Marqux” once, and both “Moxley” and “Mosley” in coverage of the second game in Racine (played on June 26). But he’s “Moxie” in every other instance.
The Cubans made it all the way to Kansas City in one day for their next series, five games against the Monarchs. Moxie was only used twice, both times as a pinch-hitter, and went 0 for 2. His last appearance for the Cuban Stars, as far as I can tell, was as the starting pitcher in game 2 of a July 4 doubleheaders against the A.B.C.’s in Indianapolis. He was knocked out early in the game, though the Cubans went on to win 15 to 7.
And that’s it. That’s Moxie’s career, as far as we can tell. The high point was perhaps his 8th-inning, pinch-hit double against the St. Louis Stars on June 14. He was replaced by a pinch-runner, and the Cubans’ attempted late-inning comeback fell short:
The big problem, of course, is that we don’t know who he was. “Moxie” does not sound much like a Latin American surname, garbled or not. As mentioned, he did appear once as “Marqux,” which looks like it could be a mistake for “Márquez,” but that seems to have been a one-time error.
Moxie does not appear among the Western Cuban Stars on the passenger list showing them travelling from Cuba to Key West, Florida, in April 1925:
During his month-long Cuban Stars career, Moxie played alongside every one of the players on this passenger list at least once, so there’s no possibility “Moxie” is a nickname for one of them.
Moxie could be a surname. It could also be a nickname—in fact it was a pretty common nickname in the early part of the 20th century, due to the popularity of the Moxie soft drink and the consequent rise of “moxie” as a slang term (meaning nerve, spirit, spunk). Although he could be a Cuban player who was handed an Anglo nickname, or whose surname was badly but consistently garbled, I tend to think it’s a little more likely that he was a U.S. player. Tinti Molina, the Cuban Stars’ longtime manager, had a history of hiring U.S. players when he needed to—and in fact when Moxie pitched in Racine, he was relieved by someone named Higby (who didn’t appear in any other Cuban Stars games, and remains otherwise completely unknown). The Cubans also used a third baseman named Dixon in a couple of games against semipros in early June.
One intriguing possibility did arise in my research. On June 3, four days before Moxie’s first appearance in their lineup, the Cuban Stars played the General Tires team of Akron. The General Tires featured a ringer from the semipro Tellings Cream Tops of Cleveland: an outfielder named Edgar “Moxie” Divis.
Divis was a well-known slugger in the Cleveland semipro scene of the late 1910s and 1920s, famous for getting a brief tryout (three games) for Connie Mack’s Philadelphia A’s in August 1916. He hit 1 for 6 and headed back to Cleveland. There he settled into life as a local hero over the next decade and a half, eventually getting into the newspaper business and becoming the head of circulation for the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Moxie Divis played left field and batted cleanup for the General Tires in that June 3 game against the Cubans. He got one single and scored one run, but that wasn’t nearly enough to stop the Cubans from winning 8 to 4.
It was certainly very suggestive that former big leaguer Moxie Divis played against the Cuban Stars in Akron on June 3, then “Moxie” showed up in the Cubans’ lineup in Cincinnati on June 7. If Tinti Molina signed this semipro star for his Negro National League team, it would in fact represent the only case ever documented of a non-Cuban white major leaguer playing in the Negro leagues.
Sometimes you get quite attached to pet theories, only to see them fall apart when subjected to scrutiny. Unfortunately it turned out that Moxie Divis continued playing for the Cleveland Tellings throughout the month of June, even as the other Moxie was travelling through the Midwest with the Cuban Stars.
So it was back to square one, which is where we still are as of this writing. Moxie emerged out of nowhere into the Cuban Stars’ lineup, stayed for a month, then vanished into the sunset, leaving no trace. Let’s hope the future brings some real evidence of his identity.
