Trap Shooting and Baseball

Trap Shooting was a sport that many major league ballplayers took up. Trap shooting is a competitive sport involving the shooting of clay pigeons. It possibly became popular with ballplayers because a leading newspaper for baseball, Sporting Life, for many years chose to feature primarily baseball and trap shooting as its two main sports.

An article in the St. Charles Herald of Hahnville, LA, Feb. 14, 1920, named many prominent players who practiced trap shooting. Christy Mathewson, Chief Bender, Harry Davis and Doc Crandall even did a tour of the country giving exhibitions. The article said that Ty Cobb, Joe Jackson and Tris Speaker were all "high class shooters", although the article sometimes veered from talking about trap shooting into a discussion of shooting for game. Frank Baker, Buck Herzog, Jack Dunn and Eddie Collins were all shooters, although the article may have meant game shooters in their cases. Other trap shooters mentioned in the article included Walter Johnson, Gavvy Cravath, Clyde Milan, Carl Mays, Burt Shotton, Hube "Dutch" Leonard, Jake Daubert, Jack Coombs and Pat Moran.

Tournament shooters included Fred Clarke, averaging .8070, Nig Cuppy, averaging .9226, Herman Bronkie, averaging .7083, and Sam Leever and Deacon Phillippe, "high class shots" whose percentages were not mentioned.

Source: [1]

Baseball Magazine also did a couple articles about major leaguers and trap shooting. Source: [2] This source also contains a number of advertisements wherein ballplayers were said to do trap shooting - including Honus Wagner and Ty Cobb.

An article [3] stated that Babe Ruth sometimes did trap shooting in Millerton, NY.

Further Reading

• Robert D. Warrington: "Chief Bender: A Marksman at the Traps and on the Mound", The Baseball Research Journal, SABR, Volume 45, Number 2 (Fall 2016), pp. 84-94.