Ghost Runner On 2nd

Posted On December 2, 2025

A Simple Coincidence?

Or a Legendary Baseball Great’s Ghostly From Beyond the Grave Greeting?

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October, 1920

A Baseball Legend Retires

After a career spanning 14 illustrious Major League seasons, 3 National League Pennants, the 1912 Chalmers Award as the Senior Circuit’s best player, the 1915 NL batting title, 1887 career hits, 299 doubles, 123 triples, 74 dead ball era home runs, 794 career RBIs, 298 stolen bases, 17 of them of home plate, amassing a .290 career batting average in the process, the NY Giants esteemed 2nd baseman knew it was time.

He’d won an automobile he couldn’t drive, for which he hired a chauffeur. He’d filled in for John J. McGraw as NY Giant’s on field manager whenever his fiery skipper got ejected or suspended.

He gained fame for the line – “It’s great to be young and a New York Giant.”

Having long since earned widespread respect and recognition amongst managment, fellow players and fans as one of baseball’s most beloved and accomplished players, New York Giants’ veteran on-field leader, at the conclusion of 1920’s season, 2nd baseman “Laughing Larry” Doyle finally hung up his spikes.

“That’s it Skip. I’m done.”

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Flash Forward

The year was 1942. Two outs. Ghost Runner on 2nd. Bottom of the 9th. A long since retired major league veteran awoke in a coughing fit, spitting up blood. He found himself suddenly caught in a rundown. He knew his life’s season was in grave peril, his MLB roommate, best friend and Hall of Fame teammate, Christy Mathewson, “Big Six”, “The Christian Gentleman”, “The Gentleman Hurler”, Matty” having already succumbed to tuberculosis in 1925. He went to the doctor. He underwent tests. A medical diagnosis soon followed. His worst fears were confirmed. “Laughing Larry” Doyle had contracted TB.

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Rally Caps On

Larry Doyle’s Hall of Fame baseball teammate’s widow quickly got wind of his plight. She reached out to his Hall of Fame manager’s widow, Minnie McGraw. They worked with National League President Ford Frick to come up with a plan. Not long thereafter, Larry Doyle followed Christy Mathewson’s path and relocated to Saranac Lake’s Trudeau Institute to breathe in the Adirondack sanitorium’s fresh mountain air, rest, recover & recuperate.

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Spring, 1943

A NY Giants Fan Reaches Out

The year was 1943. In the town of Nutley, New Jersey, a young baseball fan’s life was in turmoil. His beloved NY Giants were struggling under manager Mel Ott. He’d just heard the news that one of his team’s most famous players had recently been diagnosed with TB and moved to Saranac Lake to battle the illness and attempt to recuperate. As he watched his heroes struggle, the boy asked his mother for help. The boy’s mom penned a letter. In short order, Larry Doyle received it, a fan mail letter & autograph request, written on behalf of a young boy by his mother.

Laughing Larry smiled quietly to himself from his Trudeau Sanitorium home as he penned his response.

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Spring, 2025

Ghost Runner on 2nd

It was early spring, 2025. My brother Ray, who still lives with his family in my boyhood hometown village of Saranac Lake, called. Major League Baseball’s spring training season was well underway. Saranac Lake’s baseball diamonds were all still snow covered.

“Hey! Do you have any interest in looking at some baseball cards? TJ (my nephew) was out in a pub chatting with a friend last night, who told him his father had just passed away. Apparently his father had quite the collection of comic books & baseball cards, & now TJ’s friend is attempting to sort through and make appropriate arrangements for all of it.”

The whole thing seemed somehow coincidentally appropriate. Or was it fate? My brother Ray collects comic books. I’ve collected baseball cards since I was a lad growing up in Saranac Lake. I’m that one kid whose mom never threw his cards out. So, of course I was interested. My brother made the arrangements, and, not knowing where it might lead, I hopped in my truck & made a road trip home to find out.

As a lifetime baseball card collector, I’ve purchased a number sports card collections at other points in time through the years. So I have some experience in such matters. Usually they appear before me as a disorganized jumble, in various conditions & states, often not much more than massed messes of all sorts, sports & styles of varied sports memorbilia & cards thrown together in tote bins. It usually takes days, weeks, even months to properly sort, identify, assess, organize and go through them, with me being lucky to find a few cards or items to add to my own collection. The remainder then become a disposal challenge for me, often occupying most of the living room or den until I can figure or find them an appropriate home.

Such was more or less the case when I reached my brother Ray’s house & my nephew’s friend arrived. He had a carload of card albums, boxes and bins. Some held memorabilia, some contained comic books, others were filled with a widely varied assortment of baseball cards. It would have taken me weeks to in any adequate detail go through, inventory & assess all of them.

However, my nephew’s friend did not at that point in time appear particularly interested in that. He had an entire estate to deal with & was looking to as quickly as possible lighten his load. So I obliged him as best as I could. I did a quick assessment, pointed out to him several items that I knew likely had the most value & recommended he keep them to dispose of at auction. As we went through some of the memorabilia, autographed bats, balls, signed photographs and such, I could see that he had some sentimental atachment to some of it, as he remembered being at the games with his father when he acquired them. I set them aside too, suggesting he might want to keep them. The remaining boxes and albums, I hemmed & hawed before making a lump sum on the spot cash offer on. He accepted immediately, seeming relieved, at least in some small way, to have lightened his load.

So, as my brother Ray negotiated his own acquisition of a big box of old comic books, I piled everything in my truck and made the trek home.

Once home, I spent the next week or so methodically sorting through and organizing the cards I had just bought. As is generally the case in such matters, I had to work hard to find the few cards that I did not already have in my collection. I did find a few. I was also able to upgrade several others. I slowly whittled down the jumble to the final one or two baseball card albums. One of which held nothing but autographs.

Now, as an experienced collector, I can attest that collecting autographs is a tricky proposition at best. It’s actually something that, on any formal level, I most generally avoid. Any autograph without a “Certificate of Authenticity” is akin to junk mail, and even the COA’s themselves often need authenticating. Autographs are just a quagmire nightmare I’ve never had a great deal of interest in getting formally involved with. Still, almost as a matter of default, as I’ve built my personal card collection through the years, I’ve amassed a goodly number of them, which I do my best to keep organized, with COA’s where possible, in an autograph album, for whatever they’re worth.

So, as part of my due diligence, as with everything else, I slowly worked my way through the album of autographs, some coming with Certificates of Authenticity, others not. A few for one reason or another looked highly suspect to me. Those I threw out. There were also several recognizeably noteworthy autographs in the bunch: Joe Dimaggio, Willie Mays, Sadahura Oh. Rod Carew & Ken Griffey Jr. each had signed rookie cards. As I integrated everything into my existing autograph assortment, buried deep in my newly acquired album’s pages, one simple signed postcard stood out.

July 12 – 1943

Dear Richard: Rec’d your mother (sic) letter. Am only to (sic) glad to send augtograph. Hoping you will get plenty more. I have been up here one year thru 20th of this month with T.B. am getting along very nicely. If I ever get around Nutley, will call to see you. Wishing you the best of health.

Larry Doyle

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When I saw the signature, I did a double take. I re-read the note several times. And, through crosschecking the date with Larry Doyle’s known Saranac Lake TB timeline history, as well as determining that “Nutley” must refer to Nutley, New Jersey, where it would have been perfectly logical for a young baseball fan to follow the NY Giants, for his mom to write Larry Doyle a letter on behalf of her son seeking his autograph, that the note & signature were both authentic, with or without a certificate verifying it as such.

My 1st name is Richard. As a boy growing up in Saranac Lake in the ’70’s, our primary pastime, besides fishing & riding bikes, was playing baseball. We never had enough players to field anything approaching two full teams. So we played 3 on 3, “call your field”, left field or right. Hit to the wrong field & you were automatically out. If we only had five guys, one would be designated pitcher and we’d play two on two, with one guy playing deep shortstop & the other 1st base. If we couldn’t scrounge up five players, we would play wiffle ball, or stuff a sock with newspaper, wrap it in pilfered electrical tape from Dad’s tool box, & play Stevenson Lane “street ball”. On those days we could only come up with 3 players, we’d satsify our baseball needs with skill development games such as “Hot Box”.

Every vacant village lot & field was fair game for use as a baseball field. Every section of town had a team. There were the Moody Pond boys, the Helen Hill crew, there was even a Lake Colby gang manning the little Lake Colby school playground field. Our Pine Street Gang took on all comers, playing games on two primary fields; Carpenter’s field, which Mrs. Gilpin owned & allowed us to keep clear of tall grass & brush for that purpose. We also played games in Denny Park, where a ball hit over the concrete wall on the far side of Pine Street into the Reilly’s yard was a home run. Most of the time teams never had more than three or four or players. So when a player on base’s turn at bat came back around, he’d leave his base stating emphatically:

“Ghost Runner on 2nd!”

Kids raised in Saranac Lake in the ’70’s didn’t play Little League or Babe Ruth league baseball. Younger kids started out playing Matty League, named after Saranac Lake’s hall of Fame TB resident, Christy Mathewson. Older kids play in a baseball league named after his NY Giants teammate and fellow Saranac Lake TB resident, Larry Doyle. So, one might imagine the slight chill my spine felt as I discovered his signature at the bottom of a 1943 postal note adressed to “Richard”.

As I gave his signed note a special place in my personal baseball card collection. I couldn’t help but think that from his ghostly 2nd baseman’s position, “Laughing Larry” was looking down on me, smiling.

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Until Our Trails Cross Again:

ADKO