Jim Toy (baseball)

Career

Born in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, Jim began his professional baseball career in the International League for the Utica, New York team. He showed his versatility by playing many different positions, as well as having a well known good throwing arm. He helped lead the Utica team to the International League championship in 1886.

This showing earned him a spot on the Cleveland Blues for the 1887 season, where he played in 109 games, batted .222, and played mainly at first base, but again showed his ability at other positions, including catcher, and all three outfield positions.

Toy played minor league baseball in Brooklyn, New York for the 1889 and 1890 seasons, mainly as a catcher. He joined the Gladiators later that season, playing in 44 games, batting .181, and gathering only seven RBI. His career ended after suffering an injury when he was hit with a foul tip in the groin. Because of the lack of modern medical attention, the injury plagued him throughout the rest of his life along with cutting his career short.

First Native American player?

According to writer Ed Rice, Louis Sockalexis was the first American Indian player in major league baseball. In 1963, baseball writer Lee Allen claimed that Toy, an early American Association catcher, had a Lakota (Sioux) father. This claim was disputed by Rice, who located Toy's death certificate listing his race as "white." Controversy still remains on this subject, due to the inaccuracy of many birth records during that time period.

Modern historians have become less worried about whether the player is a "full-blooded" Native American, but rather if the player identified and aligned himself socially and culturally with his native people. Sockalexis fits this view of history, unlike Toy, who did not.

Jim died at the age of 61 in Cresson, Pennsylvania, and is interred at Beaver Cemetery in Beaver, Pennsylvania.