Harry Danning

The Man Behind the Mask 

 

In his fine biography of John McGraw, Frank Graham overlooked one baseball phase of the pugnacious manager's career. Nowhere did he mention McGraw's desperate search for a Jewish ball player to attract the vast New York Jewish population to the Polo Grounds. If McGraw was anything, he was an outstanding showman. He signed up the great Indian Jim Thorpe, even when that versatile athlete proved unable to solve major league pitching. The Giant manager knew that Thorpe would draw the crowds, and so he was willing to go along with the Indian.

In much the same spirit, McGraw looked far and wide for an outstanding Jewish baseball star. The story of Andy Cohen, his brilliant beginning, the hysteria surrounding his career and his rapid decline, is told elsewhere in these pages. This is the story of one of the best Jewish players who wore a Giant uniform, and it is ironic that McGraw never really saw his potentialities and that Harry Danning of Los Angeles became a star catcher under the leadership of the sometimes hardbitten Bill Terry who succeeded John McGraw as manager of the New York Giants.

Oddly, one of the greatest of all Jewish baseball players was also a catcher, Johnny Kling of the Chicago Cubs, when the team boasted of Tinker and Evers and Chance.