Who, You Ask, is Jocko Flynn?

In 1886, Jocko Flynn was 22 years old and the toast of Chicago. He’d emerged as a formidable starting pitcher on a pennant-winning team. In 1887, Flynn was 23, a forgotten man with a sore arm and a troubling taste for liquor. In 1907, he was dead at age 42. Who was this man?

John A. Flynn was born June 30, 1864, the fifth of eight children for Irish immigrants John and Margaret Flynn. The family lived in Lawrence, Massachusetts, a company-controlled mill town thriving on the burgeoning textile industry. In fact, Lawrence is usually credited as the first ‘planned’ city in the United States. It had gained notoriety through the deadly 1860 collapse of the Pemberton mill, which killed 145 workers. It was later the site of the famous ‘ Bread and Roses’ strike of 1912 , in which factory workers successfully petitioned for higher wages and better working conditions.

Young John, variously known as Jocko, Jack and Jacky, was quick to pick up the national pastime. He started with various youth teams around Lawrence before moving up to the area’s premier squad, the Washingtons, in 1883. The following year, Lawrence had an entry in the Eastern New England League, and 20-year-old Jocko was the star pitcher. His battery-mate was long-time friend George Moolic , with whom he’d played as a teenager. For the remainder of their short careers, and indeed for their entire lives, the two friends steadfastly threw in their lot together, come what may.

Following the 1884 season, the Lawrence team disbanded, and Flynn and Moolic went to play for Meriden, Connecticut in the Southern New England League. Unfortunately, this team was no more solvent than Lawrence- in fact, by September, the entire league had gone under. Flynn and Moolic promptly jumped ship back to the reconstituted Lawrence team, where bitter controversy awaited them.

Lawrence had spent the greater part of the 1885 season in a tight race for first with the team from Brockton, Massachusetts. When Flynn and Moolic left Meriden in mid-September to re-join Lawrence, it was an enormous swing in the balance of power—in the two weeks remaining in the season, Flynn pitched his team to six victories. That left Lawrence a single game back of first place. Brockton, meanwhile, had three games to make up, including a pair against Lawrence. What ensued was a ridiculous game of cat and mouse, perpetuated by the local media on each side, which ended by nearly tearing the league apart.

First, Brockton challenged one of Lawrence’s victories against a third team, claiming that they’d played too many games in the season. Brockton was also reluctant to make up its own games, especially against the revamped Lawrence squad. On the date of the first make-up game, Brockton failed to appear at the park. Shortly after the umpire had declared a forfeit, a telegraph arrived from Brockton’s manager, claiming that his players, whose contracts had expired several days earlier, refused to play. The league secretary awarded the game to Lawrence anyway and ordered the teams to play the following day in Brockton. Lawrence dutifully made the trip, only to find the field too wet to play on. A rainout was announced, but not without controversy—apparently, some of the Lawrence players had ventured under the bleachers, where they’d found a freshly muddied hose sitting in a puddle, evidence to them that Brockton had sabotaged its own field! To add insult to injury, Brockton refused to pay Lawrence’s travel expenses, as was stipulated in the league constitution. For this, Lawrence demanded that Brockton be thrown out of the league entirely.

A league-wide meeting was scheduled, and the days leading up to it saw a furious crossfire of invective, taunts and accusations among the various newspapers covering the spectacle. One important note in the Brockton Gazette was that Jocko Flynn had actually signed a contract with the New York Metropolitans of the American Association on September 16, rendering his contract with Lawrence void. It’s unclear where this rumor arose from, but it was a major sticking point in the conversation at the meeting. It was finally decided that the two teams would play a three game series to determine the champion: the first game in Brockton, the second in Lawrence, the third in Boston, if need be. Both teams agreed to drop all complaints against the league and one another, with the exception that if it was proven that Flynn had signed with the Metropolitans, the title would be awarded to Brockton.

While the lawyers dueled on the contract dispute, the two teams took the field for the deciding games. Lawrence sent out Flynn for the opener, and he carried them to a resounding victory in Brockton. Four days later, they met again in Lawrence. Once more it was Flynn on the mound, and once more he threw a gem, winning the game and the championship for his hometown. Meanwhile, the president of the American Association had wired that Flynn and the Metropolitans had never entered into a contract. This was disputed by New York, but the club was unable to produce any documentation. For Brockton, there was only one possibility remaining—they accused Flynn of breaching his contract with Meriden , the team he’d left in mid-September. They claimed that Meriden had not yet officially disbanded when Flynn (and Moolic) signed with Lawrence. Again, the Eastern New England League directors met for a heated debate. On evidence from the secretary of the Southern New England League, as well as testimony from Flynn himself, it was decided that the pitcher’s contract with Lawrence was indeed legitimate, and that the championship stood. Finally, the case was settled. For Flynn and Moolic, however, things were just starting to get interesting. In November, both of them signed with Cap Anson’s Chicago White Stockings.

In 1885, Chicago had run roughshod over the National League, winning 87 and losing just 25. Only New York had presented a real threat , finishing two games back. The White Stockings’ roster was stocked with legends: George Gore, King Kelly, Fred Pfeffer, and the Captain, Adrian Constantine Anson. The team returned intact in 1886, but was looking for Flynn to take some pressure off 24-year-old ace John Clarkson, who had logged 623 innings pitched the year before . Here, the rookie was more than happy to oblige. He threw 257 innings himself, third-most on the team but a substantial reduction from the workload of Clarkson and Jim McCormick. What is more, his 2.24 ERA was best among the three of them, and he led the N.L. in win percentage at .793 (24-6). Chicago triumphed again during the regular season, this time holding off the Detroit Wolverines for the pennant . The newspapers in Chicago, Lawrence and the rest of the nation carried regular news of his crowning success.

Unfortunately, all was not well for Flynn. Toward the end of the 1886 season, he developed arm problems, which limited his effectiveness down the stretch. Equally seriously, he had cultivated a serious drinking problem. In the book Slide, Kelly, Slide , a biography of King Kelly, it is reported that Flynn started living fast with his older, more experienced teammates. Brief notes in the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times suggest that alcoholism was causing a problem for the entire team (if not for the entire league), and Flynn was generally understood to be among the chief participants.

Jocko spent the off-season in Lawrence, hoping that all his sore arm needed was a few months’ rest. When he got back with the team in spring 1887, however, it became clear that he was not sufficiently recovered. The team stuck with him through spring training, and he managed to make the roster out of camp. Unfortunately, however, he only got into one game, in right field. While charging a ball on May 23, he split open a finger on his right hand, and came out before getting to the plate. It was his last appearance in the major leagues.

The unfortunate young pitcher spent most of the remainder of the season in limbo. The White Stockings, loathe to give up on him, retained his contract for the greater part of the season. At one point he and Moolic (who had not played well in 1886) were sent to Farmington, NH, to play a series with that team. Flynn had short stints with teams in Kansas City, Omaha, and St. John’s, New Brunswick, but it seems as though his arm had failed him for good. Just a few years after his ascendency as a star National League pitcher, Flynn was home in Lawrence and out of baseball.

Jocko spent the next decade bouncing around Lawrence as a clerk, never staying at any job for more than a year or two. He also was married in 1892, and he and his wife ended up having four children. Finally, in 1901, he resorted to what he knew best—alcohol. Perhaps inspired by George Moolic’s successful liquor shop, Flynn and his brother opened up one of his own. During the four years that the business existed, it seems as though Flynn was his own best customer. The store foundered in 1905, and Flynn was set adrift once more.

John Flynn’s death in 1907 was tinged with the bitter tragedy which seemed to surround his life. In December of that year, his wife Elizabeth underwent surgery on “a serious condition,” and came out of it poorly. By Christmas, she was on her deathbed, and when Jocko came down with pneumonia on December 27, the doctors deemed it best not to tell her. The two of them were in the hospital together, though in separate rooms, when Jocko died on New Year’s Eve. The following day, his wife passed away in the early morning, orphaning their four children.

A number of unanswered questions need to be resolved before Jocko Flynn’s enigmatic life can be fully understood. When did he start drinking, and why couldn’t he stop? How was he viewed by his family, his teammates, and his fellow citizens in Lawrence? At his death, several former Chicago teammates said that they hadn’t heard from him for ten years or more.

Flynn’s fast descent from stardom to obscurity is harrowing, and invites further research. With a grant from SABR , I recently traveled to Lawrence to use the resources available there and start putting the puzzle pieces together. In the coming months, I hope to have a lot more answers—and probably a few more questions—to share about this forgotten star.

Resources: part of my motivation for doing this research is that very little had previously been done. The best modern sources are David Nemec’s Great Encyclopedia of 19 ^th Century Major League Baseball and Wilbert Warren’s Rookies Rated, each of which have a short section on Flynn. The archives of various newspapers in Chicago and Massachusetts are also useful, as are the civil records from the city of Lawrence, and the wonderful staff and resources at the Lawrence History Center .