Any baseball historians on board?

[HudsonHawk]

That certainly sounds like a company team -- especially in areas where industrial league sports was popular, companies would hire men solely for their ballplaying skills and find some make-work job for them to do in the plant to justify it. A talented player could make a good living playing industrial ball in the Era.

I don't have a copy of the 1939 Base Ball Guide, but I suspect it would yield a more complete statistical line for the 1938 season.

I wonder what would happen if the Rath Blackhawks took on the Nippon Ham Fighters?

One of my great disappointments in life was when I learned that they were the Nippon Ham “Fighters”, not the Nippon “Ham Fighters”.

 

[HudsonHawk]

The more I look at this, the more I think he may be "Lee Cornell." Cornell played for both the Waterloo Hawks and the Cedar Rapids Raiders in 1938, didn't play for anyone in 1939, and played for Waterloo again in 1940.

Cedar Rapids was an affiliate of the Cleveland Indians in 1938, and included for a time that season future Hall of Famer Lou Boudreau.