|
American Vaudeville Museum |
|
All material © 1998-2008 American Museum of Vaudeville, Inc. Page 13 |
|
|
|
Cap Anson |
|
For more information about Cap Anson send for Volume IX, Issue 3 of
or order Howard W. Rosenberg’s four-volume biography of Anson available through http://www.capanson.com/cap_anson_books.html or www.amazon.com. |
|
1852 — 1922 Adrian Constantine Anson was no name for a Chicago baseball player, especially one who played professionally for 27 years, was the first batter to reach 3,000 hits and later was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. “Cap” earned his nickname because he was the captain and first baseman of the Chicago team with which he played 22 years. He was outspoken in his opposition to playing ball with African Americans, a bad mark against him, not only as a man but as a sportsman. Cap Anson was nearly as well known for his long career on the vaudeville stage. Many ballplayers in the vaudeville era spent a season or two on the stage, mostly trading in on their exploits on the diamond. But Cap developed an act that included recitations, comedy and dance. In the latter years of his vaudeville tours, he often performed with his two singing daughters. Cap Anson spent nearly as much time on the vaudeville stage as he had on the baseball field, performing regularly until a few seasons short of his death in 1922.
|