Isn’t the start of the baseball season grand?

That wasn’t the case 100 years ago when Doherty Silk Sox star right fielder Bibbs Raymond attempted to leave semipro ball to play in the major leagues … alligators be damned.

October means the World Series.

In 2024, the New York Mets and Yankees are aiming to get there. A century ago, a New York team did make it to the Series – the National League’s New York Giants made it to the 1924 Fall Classic, losing to the American League champion Washington Senators, four games to three.

In the 1945 film, The Naughty Nineties, Bud Abbott and Costello reprised their iconic baseball comedy routine, “Who’s on First?” – an act enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

One hundred years ago, there wasn’t a hotter hitter on the planet than Bibbs Raymond of the Doherty Silk Sox. A hometown hero from Paterson and later Clifton, N.J., Bibbs set a semipro (and possible baseball record) for collecting 15 consecutive hits. After his achievement, the New York Yankees signed him. But family and his hometown Silk Sox proved too hard for Bibbs to leave, and he turned his back on organized ball. In 1934, Ripley’s profiled Bibb’s hit mark in a syndicated cartoon that ran nationally… Believe It or Not!