Roxie Lawson

Alfred Voyle Lawson
(Roxie)

• Bats Right, Throws Right
• Height 6' 0", Weight 170 lb.
• School Iowa Wesleyan College
• High School Stockport High School
• Debut August 3, 1930
• Final Game September 28, 1940
• Born April 13, 1906 in Donnellson, IA USA
• Died April 9, 1977 in Stockport, IA USA

BR page

Biographical Information

Roxie Lawson pitched 15 seasons from 1925 to 1942, one in college (1925), nine in the major leagues (1930-1940), and nine in the minors (1929-1942). He pitched for Iowa Wesleyan College in 1925. Sometime before the 1929 season, he was signed as a free agent for the Cleveland Indians by Cy Slapnicka. He married Blanche Klise on February 6, 1932. He pitched for the Indians (1930 and 1931), the Detroit Tigers (1933 to 1939) and the St. Louis Browns (1939 and 1940). His minor league stops included six years at AA (now AAA) and one year at A (now AA) and his lifetime won-lost record in the minors was 93-84. He served in the United States Navy during World War II (BN) and never pitched again.

After three Major League trials with ERAs over 6.00, Lawson had three wins for the 1935 World Champion Tigers, including a shutout over Lefty Grove, but he was not used in the post-season. In 1937 he managed 18 wins in spite of a whopping 5.26 ERA and walking 115 batters while striking out on 68. (JK) .

He was involved in one of the biggest trades of the 1930s on May 13, 1939 when he was traded by the Tigers with Mark Christman, George Gill, Bob Harris, Vern Kennedy and Chet Laabs to the Browns for Beau Bell, Bobo Newsom, Red Kress and Jim Walkup. Later, on April 3, 1941, he was purchased by the Brooklyn Dodgers from the Browns but he never played in Flatbush.

After retiring as a player, Lawson managed minor league teams and umpired in the Three-I League. He had brown hair and grey eyes and his ancestry was Danish-English-Irish. His principal hobby was hunting. He died at age 71 at his home in Stockport, IA and is buried at Dibble Cemetery in Stockport.

Sources

Principal sources for Roxie Lawson include newspaper obituaries (OB), government Veteran records (VA,CM,CW), Stars & Stripes (S&S), Sporting Life (SL), The Sporting News (TSN), The Sports Encyclopedia:Baseball 2006 by David Neft & Richard Cohen (N&C), old Who's Who in Baseballs {{{WW}}} (WW), old Baseball Registers {{{BR}}} (BR) , old Daguerreotypes by TSN {{{DAG}}} (DAG), Stars&Stripes (S&S), The Baseball Necrology by Bill Lee (BN), Pat Doyle's Professional Ballplayer DataBase (PD), The Baseball Library (BL), Baseball in World War II Europe by Gary Bedingfield (GB) {{{MORE}}} and independent research by Walter Kephart (WK) and Frank Russo (FR) and others.

Notable Achievements

• 15 Wins Seasons: 1 (1937)
• 200 Innings Pitched Seasons: 1 (1937)
• Won a World Series with the Detroit Tigers in 1935 (he did not play in the World Series)

Further Reading

• Alan Cohen: "Roxie Lawson", in Scott Ferkovich, ed.: Detroit the Unconquerable: the 1935 World Champion Tigers, SABR, Phoenix, AZ, 2014, pp. 88-92. ISBN 978-1-933599-78-6

Related Sites

• Roxie Lawson at the SABR Bio Project