Al Nichols

Al Nichols was one of four Louisville players who were implicated in a betting scandal in 1877 and banned from baseball for life.  Nichols’s identity, however, remained a vexatious mystery.  We knew that he was from New York City and that he returned there after his ballplaying career ended.  He also tried to earn reinstatement and sometimes tried to play for New York teams under the name of Williams.  As late as 1892 there were reports that, “Nichols is still playing Sunday games about New York under a fictitious name.” (Philadelphia Press, October 1, 1892)  Other notes had him alive and still living in the area as late as 1901.  But there was no Al Nichols who seemed to match what we knew.

Matters got much worse when I came across an article in which Henry Chadwick insisted that Nichols was an alias, but gave no indication of the ballplayer’s real name. Obviously trying to finding someone without knowing his name is a futile endeavor.

Then a new book came out about the Louisville scandal that stated that Nichols died in Ohio in 1937.  Unfortunately, the writer hadn’t done his homework, as this was the death of a different player named Sammy Nichols.  Shortly after reading this I was at a baseball conference in Maryland and mentioned the error to one of the editors at McFarland, the book’s publishers.  To my amazement, he replied that they had received a letter from the ballplayer’s great-great-granddaughter pointing out the mistake.