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The Camp Hancock Papers These are renderings* based on two apparently authentic papers from Ordnance Depot Company Number 44 at Camp Hancock, Georgia, in the early days of June, 1918. The company payroll roster on top lists, among others, six future Hall of Fame baseball players -- Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, Max Carey, Frank Chance, Ed Walsh and Frank "Home Run" Baker -- and seven major leaguers in all. The company daybook, or activity log, just below it captures certain events that occurred during that same time period. The daybook is particularly interesting. Not only does it add the name of Christy Mathewson to the distinguished cast of players, but it shows him, not as a Captain, but as a 2nd Lieutenant. It also includes a number of subtle details, anomalies, and inconsistencies which, taken together, may well point toward what actually occurred at Camp Hancock on a June day in 1918, and toward why subsequent events took the direction they did. How could these players have been in Georgia that week in June, when the names of Cobb and others appear in the official major league box scores from the very same days? And why have generations of historians and biographers remained in the dark over the very existence of Ordnance Depot Company Number 44? This Never Happened offers one possible answer to those questions.
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* The renderings of both documents differ from the originals in several small ways, some intentional, some inadvertent. Only the original documents should be relied upon by those seeking to solve the mystery behind the death of Christy Mathewson. A link to those documents is found in the book.
Copyright © 2025 JB Manheim. All rights reserved.

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