1994 - Baseball - Pawnee
DATE OF BIRTH: January 28, 1898
DATE OF DEATH: April 10, 1964
- BIRTH PLACE: Pawnee, Oklahoma
- TRIBE: Pawnee
- EDUCATION: Pawnee Indian School, Pawnee, Oklahoma
Chilocco Indian School, Chilocco, Oklahoma - SPORTS DATA: Baseball – Amateur/Professional
ACHIEVEMENTS:
- Pitched for Ponca City Oilers at age 17 – 1917
- Pitched for Des Moines Team-League (folded due to WWI) – 1918
- Pitched for Little Rock Arkansas Travelers, helped the team to a pennant and a spot in the first Dixie Series – 1920
- Sold to Pittsburg Pirates – 1921
- Batting Average .315 – 1922
- Was among the best pitchers in Major Leagues listed in Who’s Who in Professional Baseball
- “Purchased by the Pirates in 1921, YellowHorse pitched well, at times exceptionally, over two seasons for a contending team whose roster included the eventual Hall of Famers Rabbit Maranville, Max Carey, and Pie Traynor. Possessed of scintillating heat, his fastball fetched comparison to Walter Johnson's; he was so effective coming out of the bullpen that Bucs fans continued to chant for him years after he'd left the team.”
- “As Fuller notes, Rice's narrative is by far the "most engaging and descriptive" of the three, spiced with such details as Cobb crowding the plate and sputtering racial slurs at YellowHorse; the latter shaking off four signs from his catcher and then plunking Cobb between the eyes; and the Bucs rushing to protect their pitcher when the Tiger bench erupted.”
COMMENTS: Elysian Fields Quarterly
- “But as Fuller knows, a mere recounting of the highlights (and lowlights) of YellowHorse's career is not what makes his saga so compelling. Of the many Native Americans who played in the majors, Mose was neither the first (Louis Sockalexis, Penobscot, starred in the 1890s with the Cleveland Spiders—later called Indians, …..nor the best (Charles "Chief" Bender, Ojibwa, pitched his way to Cooperstown; Allie "Superchief" Reynolds, Muscogee, tossed two no-hitters for the Yankees in 1951; Rudy York, Cherokee, was one of the American League's premiere sluggers in the years just prior to World War II; and a half-dozen others had longer, more productive careers). And yet, when his day in the baseball sun was done, he returned to Pawnee and became a respected elder of his people, a keeper of tribal traditions and a source of pride to young and old. It's in the interviews with those who remember Mose, which Fuller conducted with genuine affection and respect, that we see and feel his real value—not just as a ballplayer but as a person, and not just as any person, but as a Native American beholden to his roots. "According to Stone Road, YellowHorse counseled many young Pawnee men to carry out their lives in a responsible manner, to be true to their Pawnee heritage first, and to pursue personal achievements second," Fuller writes. "Even as YellowHorse recognized the end of his life nearing, he reveled more in the celebration of tribal ceremonies than in his own baseball past."