Dan McGarvey

Daniel John McGarvey

• Bats Unknown, Throws Unknown
• Height 5' 8½"

• Debut May 18, 1912
• Final Game May 18, 1912
• Born December 2, 1887 in Philadelphia, PA USA
• Died August 18, 1945 in Kecoughtan, VA USA

BR page

Biographical Information

Dan McGarvey was one of the replacement players in the famous game occasioned by the suspension of Ty Cobb for an altercation with a fan in 1912. McGarvey played left field and batted clean-up. That game was played in Philadelphia, PA, and the players quickly rounded up to make up a team to stand in for the Detroit Tigers and play the Philadelphia Athletics on May 18th were all from Philadelphia.

The SABR biography of Allan Travers says that McGarvey had played at Georgetown College (although it's not clear if that means Georgetown in D.C. or the college in Kentucky).

McGarvey was traditionally assigned a birth date of 1887, but further research by SABR researcher Peter Morris indicated that this belonged to a different person. He was eventually identified in 2018, when a note mentioned a D.J. McGarvey who was managing the Baldwin Amateur Association baseball club in Philadelphia. That was the amateur club associated with the Baldwin Locomotive Works for which another of the replacement players, Jim McGarr, was active. This clue enabled researchers to trace him in the 1910 census (ironically, the real player was also born in 1887).

Further Reading

• Kevin W. Barwin: "Paper Tigers: How a Player Strike Put a Team of 'Misfits' on a Major League Field for a Day", Baseball Research Journal, SABR, Vol. 52 Number 1 (Spring 2023), pp. 5-13.
• "Dan McGarvey", in Bill Carle, ed. Biographical Research Committee Report, SABR, January/February 2015, p. 1.
• "Daniel McGarvey Found", in Bill Carle, ed. Biographical Research Committee Report, SABR, January/February 2018, p. 1.