Erskine Mayer

Twenty-Game Winner

Of the vast numbers of men who have played major league baseball, few have had more experiences than Erskine Mayer, the ace righthanded hurler of the Philadelphia Phillies during the second decade of the 1900's. During the course of his career, he became a star on a pennant-winning team with the legendary Grover Cleveland Alexander, moved on to a second team where he was involved in one of the great marathon pitcher's duels in history, and while with a third team became an innocent participant in one of the greatest scandals in the history of sports.

From the very beginning, "Erk" had a most unusual background. In an interview with the authors of the encyclopedia of JEWS in Sports, Erskine's brother, Mark, said, "My mother's mother converted to the Jewish religion. She traced her ancestry back to the Mayflower. That branch of the family was given tracts of land in what was then Virginia Territory and is Kentucky today. My grandmother's brother, Captain James Allen, ran a boat from Hannibal, Missouri, to New Orleans. Samuel Clemens received his name of `Mark Twain' from marking twain on Captain Allen's boat.

"My grandparents on my father's side came from Germany. They were musicians. My father, Morris Mayer, wrote an opera in Hebrew. Grandmother's father was a