African Dodgers

[Garson O'Toole]

In 1906 a product under the variant name "Artful Dodger" was marketed.
The accompanying illustration showed children using the product.

Cite: 1906 October 13, The American Stationer, Artful Dodger, Page 18,
New York and Chicago. (Google Books full view)
http://books.google.com/books?id=DWNYAAAAYAAJ&q=dodger#v=snippet&

<Begin excerpt>
The American News Company is showing a new game which has numerous
attractions for old and young. The accompanying illustration gives a
good idea of the game and the way it is played. It consists of a
canvas 36 x 84 inches, with brass eyelets in the upper corners to
fasten it up with. In the center is a sunflower finished in natural
colors. The canvas is hung in a doorway, or some other convenient
place; a person puts his face through an opening in the picture of the
sunflower, and the rest attempt to hit the face with one of the balls.
Five balls are supplied with each game, and the whole is packed in an
attractive box. The game goes to the trade at $18 per dozen.
<End excerpt>


In 1908 the variant name "artful dodger" was used to describe an
activity that MIT alumni engaged in with one another. Each former
student "poked his head through a hole in the canvas" and was the
target of fellow classmates.

Cite: 1908 July, The Technology Review, "News from the Classes: 1893:
Frederic H. Fay, Sec. 60 City Hall, Boston, Mass.", Page 352-353
Volume 10, Number 3, Alumni Association of the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology.
http://books.google.com/books?id=i1cZAAAAYAAJ&q=artful#v=snippet&

<Begin Excerpt>
Later on in the evening there was an "artful dodger" contest in the
Bungalow to test the marksmanship of the party. Each man successively
poked his head through a hole in the canvas, and the next man on the
list had the opportunity of bombarding him with some very soft balls.
Breed won the pool making the best score with a total of three hits
out of a possible eight, which was very creditable for that hour of
the evening.
<End excerpt>

A book by Tommy Lasorda, the Major League baseball player and manager
with the Dodgers, is called "The Artful Dodger".

The "Artful Dodger" character appeared in Oliver Twist which was
published by Charles Dickens in 1838. That probably provides a
lower-bound year for the use of this variant name. It is difficult to
search for instances of the game/activity because of false matches to
the character name.

On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 8:53 PM, George Thompson
<george.thompson at nyu.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
> Subject:      African Dodgers
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> A few days ago, Merritt Clifton posted some notes to the SABR-L site
> (Society of American BAseball REsearch)  that will be of interest here.
>  This edited version is sent with his permission.
>
>
>
> Date:    Sun, 25 Sep 2011 13:58:56 -0700
>
> From:    Merritt Clifton <anmlpepl at WHIDBEY.COM>
>
> Subject: African Dodgers
>
>
>
>       John Donaldson was a black guy,  whose opportunities to pitch
>
> professionally were circumscribed mainly by the color barrier.
>
> ***
>
>       John Donaldson's career overlapped the careers of Rube Foster
>
> and Satchel Paige,  but Foster peaked a bit earlier and Paige a bit
>
> later,  and both Foster and Paige appear to have spent much more of
>
> the overlapping parts of their careers in the largely black parts of
>
> big cities.  Their milieu was segregated,  but not nearly as actively
>
> hostile as Donaldson's situation,  in which he was often the only
>
> black player in the game,  and performed primarily before white
>
> audiences in the rural Midwest,  right when the Ku Klux Klan was
>
> strongest in that region.
>
>       Perhaps even more significant,  Donaldson performed in the
>
> heyday of the African Dodger carnival sideshows,  in many of the
>
> places where they were most popular.
>
>       The African Dodger was a black guy who would stick his head
>
> through a hole in a canvas drape.  For a nickel,  people would get
>
> three baseballs to pitch at him.  He was allowed to pull his head out
>
> of the hole & duck,  but not until the ball was already flying.  If
>
> he got hit,  the pitcher won a prize.
>
>       One of the early Mickey Mouse & Horace Horsecollar comic
>
> books featured an African Dodger who tricked Mickey into paying him a
>
> nickel to see what the African Dodger was watching through a hole in
>
> a circus tent.  Mickey took the African Dodger's place at the hole
>
> and promptly got hit by a barrage of baseballs.
>
>       After I mentioned this recently to fellow members of the
>
> Society of Environmental Journalists,  Long Island journalism prof
>
> Dan Fagin found another Walt Disney reference to African Dodgers,  a
>
> description of African Dodger shows in Popular Mechanics,  and a
>
> Spencer Tracy film called "The African Dodger" at these links:
>
>
>
>>http://robcatview.blogspot.com/2009/03/african-dodger.html
>
>>http://bit.ly/nSKMHR
>
>>http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0214442/
>
>
>
>       The 1938 Walt Disney link was more recent than any of my own
>
> file information on African Dodgers,  so I searched
>
> NewspaperArchive.com to find out when exactly the African Dodger
>
> carnival sideshows appeared & disappeared.
>
>       The earliest references at NewspaperArchive were mostly from
>
> the Boston area in 1889,  but there was also one from Fort Wayne in
>
> 1889,  and all of the entries made clear that this was already a
>
> familiar carnival attraction.
>
>       The last mention of an African Dodger as a contemporary
>
> carnival act came in the Fitchburg Sentinel of February 3,  1959,  in
>
> Fitchburg,  Massachusetts -- where it was mentioned as a "new booth."
>
>       The last mentions of African Dodger after that were almost
>
> entirely in the recollections of old ballplayers,  notably Ty Cobb
>
> and Leo Durocher,  who both recalled having been purportedly "the
>
> original African dodger,"  because they ducked pitches thrown at
>
> their heads so often.
>
>       I thought that Jackie Robinson might inevitably have been
>
> described as "The African Dodger,"  not least because he was thrown
>
> at approximately as often as Cobb and Durocher,  if not more,  but in
>
> repeatedly searches I was unable to find even one reference to Jackie
>
> Robinson as an "African Dodger,"  even though African Dodger
>
> sideshows remained common until after the end of his career,  when
>
> they relatively rapidly faded out.
>
>       Incidentally,  some of the earliest mentions of African
>
> Dodgers were in connection with them being badly injured.  There were
>
> efforts made to ban African Dodger sideshows as early as 1916,  and
>
> perhaps even before that,  but itinerant carnivals were known for
>
> offering quite a lot of things  including bootleg liquor and
>
> prostitution,  which were also nominally illegal.
>
>        ***.  I found 703 mentions of African Dodgers altogether,  and
> spot-checked the entries rather than taking the time to read them all, to
> pull together their whole
>
> sordid  history.
>
> --
>
> Merritt Clifton
>
> Editor,  ANIMAL PEOPLE
>
> P.O. Box 960
>
> Clinton,  WA  98236
>
>
>
> E-mail:  anmlpepl at whidbey.com
>
> Web:  www.animalpeoplenews.org
>
>
>
> Addenda by GAT:
>
>
>
> The Dover Observer says: The Bangor fellow, who run the "African Dodger"
> sold liquor and had to pay a $30 fine and costs, thinks that he didn't make
> a very big pile at the Piscataquis Central Fair.
>
> Bangor Daily Whig & Courier, Saturday, October 24, 1885, p. ?, col. 4 , from
> 19th Century American Newspapers.
>
>
>
> Closing Day at the Fair.  ***
>
> ***  Quite a number of the refreshment booths were is full operation, and
> the artless "African Dodger" drew a great crowd during the afternoon.  ***
>
> Bangor Daily Whig & Courier, Monday, September 6, 1885, p. ?, col. 5 , from
> 19th Century American Newspapers.
>
>
>
> ***  Just at the west of Floral Hall was a small tent.  On one side was
> painted a large sunflower with a hole in the centre.  Above the hole was the
> inscription, "The African Dodger," and below, "The Patagonian Baby."  Through
> the hole appeared the grinning countenance of the negro whose head was the
> target for the hardest of baseballs.  The show was not new, but the negro
> had had a political education.  As business grew dull he shouted: "Come, all
> you good people.  Try your luck.  I've been in the business seven years, and
> have as thick a skull as Henry George.  [he makes a political wisecrack]"
> ***
>
> The Sun (N. Y.), September 29, 1887, p. 2, col. 4, from L. C.'s Chronicling
> America
>
>
>
> Danbury Day at Danbury Fair.  ***
>
> Danbury, Conn.  ***  The Coney Island fakirs are here in force, from the
> photographer who . . . will provide . . . a portrait of their future life
> partner, to the African dodger who sticks his head through a round hole in a
> sheet of canvas and defies the boys to hit him at short range with tennis
> balls.  All are here, the merry-go-round, the juggler, the contortionist,
> the sword-swallower, the "devil child". . . .
>
> New - York Tribune,  October 6, 1888: p. 3, col. 3 (from Proquest's
> Historical Newspapers)
>
>
>
> On the last day of State Fair week we hear a beautiful and accomplished
> maiden from Bangor lamenting that although she had gone over the fair pretty
> thoroughly she had missed "the African dodger!"  She felt real sorry about
> it.
>
> Maine Farmer,  vol. 56, no. 48 (Oct 11, 1888): p. 1, col. 2, quoting the
> Lewiston Saturday Journal. (from Proquest's Historical Newspapers)
>
>
> It's not surprising that "African Dodger" isn't in the OED, since the basis
> of that section was compiled in the 1880s; but neither is it in HDAS or
> Jonathon Green's new dictionary.
>
>
>
> GAT
>
> --
> George A. Thompson
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ.
> Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.
>
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