Grave Story: Leo Moon (1899-1970)

Lefty Leo Moon was one of the most successful minor-league pitchers of his era, with nearly 200 wins in a 17-year career. But the only action he ever saw in the majors came in a single relief outing in 1932 with the Cleveland Indians.

Leo Moon – he had no middle name – was born on June 22, 1899, in Bellemont, NC, an unincorporated community in Alamance County. He was the youngest son of William and Cammie Moon. William Moon was a farmer and a cotton mill worker, and Leo worked at a mill as well, per the 1920 U.S. Census. When he was a boy, his left hand got caught in a steel roller and was badly mangled. It eventually healed, though two of the fingers on his left hand grew together, and he eventually needed a surgery to separate them. Moon played semipro ball in North Carolina, and if any area team needed a ringer for a big game, it would go get him. The first occurrence I could find of Moon playing organized ball was when he joined a team called the Greensboro Patriots of the amateur Piedmont League in 1923. He apparently pitched well for the Patriots but received little offensive support. A later story related that Moon got the job when the team’s other pitcher, a brother of Shoeless Joe Jackson, was injured in a fight and couldn’t play.

Moon turned pro in 1924 and signed with Washington, though not without some setbacks. The pitcher, who was described as having a “zippy” fastball, left North Carolina on the Senators team train, but his suitcase, handbag and overcoat were all stolen at the Wilson station. Washington pitcher Al Schacht asked how such a thing could have happened and was then told that Moon was a lefty. “That explains everything,” Schacht said. Once he started working out with the Senators, Moon had a hard time finding the plate in batting practice, hit a couple of his would-be teammates, and then took a line drive from Chick Gagnon off his left wrist. The Senators sent Moon and a couple of other pitchers to the Minneapolis Millers, but Mike Kelley, Millers skipper, had never heard of them and didn’t want them, so he shipped Moon to Beaumont of the Texas League. The flurry of transactions was apparently against baseball’s rules, as Commissioner Kenesaw Landis notified Kelley that the Millers were being stripped of the rights to Moon and another pitcher, Ray Joyce. Kelley evidently appealed the verdict successfully, because future news articles that reference Moon indicated he was still Millers property.

Moon started 1924 pitching for the Beaumont Exporters but had his contract sold to another Texas League team, the Galveston Sand Crabs, partway through the season. He won 11 games and lost 19 between the two teams. Baseball Reference has incomplete stats for essentially Moon’s entire career, but he walked about 4.5 batters per 9 innings. He seems to have pitched better than an 11-19 record would indicate, however. On May 7, while still with Beaumont, Moon pitched a 5-hitter against the Wichita Falls Spudders, and only one hit left the infield. The Wichita Falls Times raved about how Moon “has been pitching phenomenal baseball for the Exporters.”

Moon moved to the Western League’s Des Moines Demons in 1925 and had a 22-13 record in 53 games and 302 innings pitched. The Des Moines Register reported that Moon allowed 296 hits and 153 runs, walked 125 batters, struck out 127, hit 7 and threw 7 wild pitches. He threw his eighth shutout of the year on September 15 by blanking Lincoln 3-0. He pitched in relief quite a bit between starts and got a measure of revenge against Kelley and the Millers early in the year. He pitched the final 4 innings of a 10-inning game between the Millers and Demons, shutting down Minneapolis and allowing Des Moines to get a 6-4 win. The Millers added Moon to their Opening Day roster in 1926, but he only threw 10 innings in 6 games. He was transferred back to the Demons in the middle of May and won 24 games against 8 defeats. He also hit .262 and homered 5 times for the Demons. The consensus from the Minnesota press was that he just wasn’t ready for the American Association hitters yet. “Just a young fellow, Leo has plenty of stuff,” wrote The Minneapolis Star on April 2. “He hasn’t had much experience and isn’t any too smart but sometimes a surplus of foolers will overcome these two handicaps.”

Minneapolis again tried Moon on the pitching staff in 1927, and this time he stuck around the entire year. He appeared in 55 games as a starter and reliever and had a 16-22 record and a 4.36 ERA. He threw 260 innings, which was second most on the team behind Pat Malone’s 319 innings. On May 21, Moon threw a complete game win over Kansas City 9-6 and helped his own cause by socking a 3-run homer. It was such a long home run that the pitcher who gave it up, Tom Sheehan, took himself out of the game in disgust. The amount of work he did in 1927 may have affected Moon the following season. After pitching ineffectively for Minneapolis, he was sent to the Nashville Vols of the Southern Association in early June. The Millers were supposed to send southpaw Guy Williams to Nashville, but then Williams pitched one of Minneapolis’ best games. Kelley, figuring one lefty is as good as another, kept Williams and sent Moon instead. After 16 appearances with the Vols, he was sent back to Des Moines, finishing his year with an 11-12 record in 44 appearances.

Source: *The Birmingham News*, April 10, 1932.

Moon’s contract was transferred to the Little Rock Travelers of the Southern Association, and he found some stability for the first time in his career. He spent three full seasons with the Travelers, averaging 15 wins a year and topping 235 innings pitched twice. Now 30 years old, time was slipping away from Moon if he was hoping for a major-league career, but circumstances never seemed to be in his favor. He had a 16-13 record for Little Rock in 1929 and a fine 2.85 ERA, but one of his worst games of the year happened to come on a day when the scouts showed up. Travelers boss Bob Allen let it be known that he’d be willing to give up Moon for a paltry $15,000. Three teams, including the Cubs and Reds, sent scouts to watch the left-hander get drilled by the Vols. He allowed 15 hits in a 9-1 loss, and that outing seemed to kill any interest in Moon. So he remained in Arkansas, piling up wins in relative anonymity. Halsey Hall, the legendary Minneapolis sportswriter, thought it a shame that he couldn’t have pitched as consistently when he was with the Millers.

“The scouts looked him over when he was here and he would follow good work with bad, to the extent that the boy with the flaming fast ball never could get going consistently and finally fell into a losing rut from which he could not extricate himself,” Hall wrote in a 1931 column. “For three years now Leo had been a good hurler with the Travelers. His fast ball is as good as ever, his control is left-handedly perfect and his change of pace finds him pulling the string with skill and finesse. What a pity that he could not right himself here, that he could not shake off the associations which do no ballplayer any good.”

Another writer, Ralph McGill of The Atlanta Constitution, chalked Moon’s lack of an extensive major-league career to his own habits. “He is very left-handed, and had he chosen to pay strict attention to his chores and not go about seeking a gay and gaudy time, he would have gone up to the majors and stayed there,” McGill wrote.

There was still some hope for Moon, however. He was sent to the New Orleans Pelicans, his third team in the Southern Association, in 1932. While he didn’t exactly dominate there as he had in Little Rock, the Cleveland Indians purchased his contract that summer. Cleveland was a middling team that was willing to take a chance on a 33-year-old rookie. However, Moon made just one appearance for the Indians, and it wasn’t that memorable.

Cleveland was playing in Washington for a game against the Nationals (aka Senators) on July 9, 1932. Starting pitcher Sarge Connally got lit up, allowing 6 earned runs through 2-1/3 innings of work. After Sam West had singled and Ossie Bluege had doubled with one out in the second inning, Cleveland manager Roger Peckinpaugh brought in Moon. As the UPI put it, “with the Senators on the warpath it was a poor day for Moon to live up to the high expectations the Cleveland club had of him.”

Source: The Atlanta Journal, June 30, 1937.

Moon started his outing by intentionally walking Roy Spencer, loading the bases and bringing up pitcher Monte Weaver. Weaver singled to bring home both of the inherited runners, and Joe Kuhel walked to re-load the bases. Buddy Meyer hit into a run-scoring force out and Heinie Manush hit an RBI single, sending Meyer to third. Meyer and Manush executed a double steal, bringing home the fifth run of the inning. Moon walked Joe Cronin before retiring Dave Harris on a fly ball to center field, ending the inning. In the next 5 innings, things didn’t really improve. Moon never had a 1-2-3 inning, allowing 8 runs (7 earned) on 11 hits and 7 walks. Weaver, a lifetime .209 hitter who batted .287 in 1932, did the most damage off Moon, with a 2-run double in the fourth inning and a single in the sixth that led to another run. Moon struck out 1 batter – Meyer, in the fourth inning. At the plate, he hit an RBI single in the fourth inning for his only major-league hit.

Moon stayed with the Indians for another month, never getting into another game. On August 16, Cleveland recalled outfielder Mike Powers and pitcher Ralph Winegarner from the Toledo Mud Hens and sent them Moon. He was left with an 11.12 ERA in 5-2/3 innings pitched in his only major-league game, as well as a .500 batting average.

Moon lost his only 3 decisions with Toledo to close out the 1932 season. The following year, he was back with New Orleans, but he pitched in just 2 games, winning once and losing once. He cracked a 2-run homer to beat Knoxville for his only win, on April 17. Just days later, Moon broke his left arm in what the Pelicans called an “accident” and was released by the team. What really happened, Moon later explained, was more than an accident. After winning his game against Knoxville, Moon was going back to his hotel room in New Orleans when he was accosted by six drunken men from the room next door. They started getting aggressive, and Moon couldn’t reason with them before a fight broke out. During the brawl, one of the men stepped on Moon’s left wrist, snapping it. New Orleans manager Larry Gilbert and Pelicans management tried to find the men, but they had checked out and vanished. Things got stranger later that summer when Moon was named in a divorce between coal dealer Henry M. Poole and actress Eleanor Brent Poole, both of Des Moines. Henry Poole attempted to get out of alimony payments by testifying that Eleanor had been having an affair with Moon while he was pitching for Des Moines – during the last week of August, 1928, in the family house, according to paragraph 73 of the court opinion. There was even testimony from a bellboy who said he saw the two alone in a hotel room, and sometimes they “pushed and knocked each other around and cursed each other.” Eleanor said that Moon was a friend of one of her girlfriends and that the two were never alone. Despite her ex-husband’s allegations, Mrs. Poole walked away with a lifetime alimony payment of $250 a month.

Moon, once his arm had healed, stayed in Louisiana and pitched for an amateur team in Jeanerette. He returned to organized baseball in 1934 with the Knoxville Smokies, his fourth Southern Association team. He was now 34 years old stayed with the Smokies for most of the next four seasons, returning to his former position as one of the league’s better southpaw pitchers. In 1934, he won 17 games against 9 defeats and had a sparkling 2.88 ERA. He chalked up his late-career success to, of all things, his broken arm.

The Felder plot in Greenwood Cemetery, where Leo Moon is interred.

Prior to his injury, Moon had been almost strictly a fastball pitcher, but when his arm healed, his fastball was lacking its usual speed. He had to add a deceptive curveball to his repertoire, as well as a screwball, and he found new success as an offspeed pitcher. “I thought it the toughest break I ever got at the time [of his injury] and things got even darker when New Orleans later gave me my release,” he said. “But it turned out to be a blessing in disguise, which explains why I am going so good for Knoxville this year.”

Moon’s career, and his life, as it turned out, took a turn on February 25, 1935, in New Orleans. He and a couple of companions were out late in the city when they came across three African-American man, who were headed to work at a local dairy. The white men demanded to know where they were going (this was New Orleans in 1935, after all), and chased the men all the way to the dairy. There, a fight broke out and one of the African-American men, Sanders Newell, struck Moon in the head with an iron pipe. Newell said he only threw the pipe after he was struck on the head by something. He was arrested and charged with assault, beating and dangerously wounding, according to syndicated reports. Moon was hospitalized with a possibly fractured skull and fractured jaw. Doctors also felt that he might lose the sight in his left eye, and the optic damage would impact him for the rest of his life.

Moon, evidently a fast healer, was able to pitch in 1935 but struggled to an 11-16 record and an ERA over 4. He returned to form in ’36 and had another 17-9 record with Knoxville; one of those losses came on July 19, when the Smokies held a “Lefty Leo Moon Day” in his honor. He was presented with a pen and pencil set, a travel bag, cash and a $50 watch. Knoxville traded Moon to the Atlanta Crackers – one of the few Southern Association teams he had yet to join – in June 1937 for cash and rookie pitcher Gordon Maltzberger. He won 14 games between the two teams and got to experience something rare – playing for a good team. Moon had typically been one of the best pitchers on a bad team, but the Atlanta Crackers won 84 games and lost to Little Rock in the championship series.

The Crackers were once again a championship contender in 1938, but the 38-year-old Moon was slowing down and acted as a player/coach. Despite plenty of rest between appearances, Moon won 5 and lost 5 with a 4.73 ERA as a swingman. Atlanta got past Nashville to win the Southern Association championship and faced the Beaumont Exporters of the Texas League in the Dixie World Series. Moon took the mound in the final game and tossed a 3-hit shutout, outpitching future major-leaguer Dizzy Trout. Moon baffled Exporters hitters with his slow curves as Atlanta won 7-0.

Like many old cemetery plots that are not in perpetual care, the Felder Plot has fallen into decay. The stones that have the names of the deceased are all toppled and broken.

Moon pitched for Fort Worth and Oklahoma City of the Texas League in 1939 but won just a single game between them. He wrapped up his playing career the following year, in 1940, by pitching for Spartanburg/Charleston of the Sally League. He won the final 9 games of his career, retiring at the age of 41. From the statistics Baseball Reference has available, he had a 183-152 record in a 17-year professional career. He appeared in a total of 498 games, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if there were some missing games, pushing him past 500 games played. Moon also walloped 17 home runs and hit about .217.

In the end, it wasn’t Moon’s age that drove him from baseball, it was the travel. “It was riding those busses in the Sally League that got me down,” he told The Atlanta Journal. “That last year with Spartanburg, we’d get on a bus after a night game and start riding to the next town. The kids would drop right off to sleep, but I’d sit there wide awake. I couldn’t take it. So I pulled out and came home.” Moon took a job at the New Orleans shipyards during World War II – his age and eye injury presumably left him as a 4-F.

Moon lost his vision completely by 1958. He still kept up with baseball by listening to games on the radio, and he knew enough about the modern game to recognize a contemporary. “My wife reads me stories of Bo Belinsky in the newspapers and says she knows who he is like. I can’t tell if she is looking at me, but I guess she is,” he told the Burlington Daily News-Times in 1962.

“I was a poor boy with a lot of money,” Moon said of his hard-living days. “You might say the bright lights sizzled me. My manager at Minneapolis, Mike Kelley, told me that I was leaving my fastball in the night clubs, and perhaps he was right. But baseball was different back then. We were a tougher breed. The night I pitched I would probably night-club it till dawn, but I spent the next three days getting back in shape.

“I loved baseball, and I loved to have a good time,” Moon said. “When you’re young and the money is coming in, you feel like it’s never going to stop. But in baseball, it doesn’t happen that way.”

Moon was married twice. He had three children, Leo Jr., Rainer and Marydean, with his first wife Ruth. He later married the former Edrie Felder of New Orleans. Leo Moon died on August 25, 1970, in New Orleans, after several years of declining health. He was 71 years old. Moon is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in New Orleans, in the Felder plot. The plot, like many that don’t have perpetual care, is in bad shape; the stones that have the names of everyone interred there are all broken. The last time I visited in 2018, I found Leo Moon’s name on one of the pieces, but I don’t know if it’s still the case.