Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Monte Irvin's High School

Monte Irvin slipped from this earth this week.  He was a great ball player and will be missed.

While doing some research about his early years I found his high school yearbook.  It is his senior year at Orange High School in Orange, New Jersey.

1938 Orange Peel - Orange HS, Orange, NJ
image from Ancestry.com

In my joy of finding this I sent it out over social media, mistakenly adding that it was from East Orange HS.

Now, why did I do that?  Because Baseball-Reference, Seamheads, and even the SABR BioProject entry for Monte Irvin have that info.  I had it in my head and that's what I wrote.  But I was wrong.

This clipping from the Trenton Evening Times says that "One of the newcomers is Monte Irvin, former Orange High School and Lincoln University athlete."

Trenton Evening Times - May 12, 1939
image from GenealogyBank.com

Here's another photo of Monte from his yearbook.  He was a member of the Student Patrol.

1938 Orange Peel - Orange HS, Orange, NJ
image from Ancestry.com
He's mentioned in the yearbook as being ill for track season.    On the basketball page it is mentioned that "Midway during the season Orange was dealt a severe blow when Monford Irvin was forced to the hospital with a streptococcus infection."

Here are the baseball, basketball, football, and track teams from that same yearbook.  Individual players aren't named and I am not good at identifying people in photographs.  I assume that he's included in these photos.

1938 Orange Peel - Orange HS, Orange, NJ
image from Ancestry.com

1938 Orange Peel - Orange HS, Orange, NJ
image from Ancestry.com

1938 Orange Peel - Orange HS, Orange, NJ
image from Ancestry.com

1938 Orange Peel - Orange HS, Orange, NJ
image from Ancestry.com

So, I think that Monte Irvin attended Orange High School, in Orange, New Jersey.  How does one request change at other sites that have different information?

2 comments:

  1. Great work, Mark. I can change it at Seamheads and, I suppose, Wikipedia. Where did the East Orange HS info come from? I wonder if he transferred?

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  2. I may be the culprit for BB-REF's erroneous data. I submitted a lot of the early High School attended data and I had East Orange HS. I do have in my notes from meeting w/Monte on one of his visits to Denver a dozen years ago or so that he had played (somewhere, I don't know where) under an assumed name - Jimmy Nelson - from East Orange, NJ. This was presumably to protect his college eligibility when he attended Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. I have a faint memory that he took the name of a friend, perhaps a former teammate or rival player from EAST Orange HS, I believe. I had hoped to dig around for a boxscore, but never came up with any hits.. I figure if anyone can find it, it would be either of you two guys. Good luck. I'll submit this link to bugs@bbref and I suspect you'll see that Hans or Sean will change it pronto. Rod Nelson

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