Of Mud Hens and Swamp Angels

A follow up, just as baseball starts up again all over the country, because there’s always more to the story:

Last summer, I wrote about the 60 or so descendants of my mom’s family, the Cliffords, who had gathered in Crestwood Park for a reunion. That same weekend, the Toledo Mud Hens were playing 430 miles away, significant because our common ancestor, my great-grandfather Thomas Clifford, had been an original Mud Hen.

Or so we always thought. Here’s what we knew: That he had played professional baseball just before the turn of the 20th century, in such cities as Shreveport, Paducah, Peoria and Toledo; and that there existed in the family an old photograph of a handsome young man with a twinkle in his eye and “Toledo” on his jersey.

Thomas Clifford, Toledo Swamp Angels

But this is a story about baseball, where facts are as plentiful as fly balls and not all become legend. Shortly after the reunion, my cousin Mark Meyer, the keeper of the photograph that had been passed down to him from his grandfather, Rich Clifford, emailed the Mud Hens seeking more information.

Mud Hens historian John Husman kindly provided Meyer what stats he had on Clifford and asked for more biographical information. In return, Meyer sent him a digital version (left) of the old picture. And then he forgot about it.

Until last month, when he got this email from Husman: Good Day: We have had the Thomas Clifford image you so kindly gave the Toledo Mud Hens a year ago touched up a bit. A copy is attached for your use. We are displaying it at our ballpark this summer.

Included with the beautifully restored photograph was the text of a didactic to be placed beside it, telling the story of how Clifford, “versatile on defense,” played in 71 games in 1896 batting .271. But he only played the first half of that Toledo season. That July, the club was sold to a man named Charles Strobel, who, according to Husman, would come to be known as “The Father of Toledo Baseball.” Strobel had owned a team in Washington, and brought with him nearly all his players so he cut most of the Toledo players loose — including my great-grandfather Tom Clifford. Then Strobel changed the nickname from Swamp Angels to Mud Hens.

Because of Strobel’s marketing savvy, the club had plenty of photographs of the original Mud Hens. But until my cousin Mark sent his email, it had no pictures of Swamp Angels. Until now.

On Thursday, April 12, the Mud Hens celebrated Opening Day. In a display case at Fifth Third Field in downtown Toledo, amidst baseballs, bats, and Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett on a Wheaties box, now sits a restored replica of a 122-year-old photograph of my great-grandfather, the Mud Hen who never was.

We now know what happened to Tom Clifford. We always thought he was a baseball player who never made it big. But five generations and hundreds of descendants later, we now know that Tom Clifford, Swamp Angel, made it big enough.

A version of this originally appeared in the South County Times on April 6, 2018.