Baseball's Johnny Appleseed

"Though by no means rich, I am independent and occupy an excellent position in society. I have every reason to be satisfied and grateful, and I am. I have a few spare thousands in Uncle Abraham's bosum (6% Bonds, Gold), my health is excellent and always has been, my children are as good as most, and my wife is too good for me...."

William Edward Cartwright now lives in Missoula, Mont, where he will be host to the world ski-bob championships next year, but at the time of the search for his great-grandfather Alexander he was living 50 miles north of San Francisco, high in the dry, fecund hills above Santa Rosa, with a German-born wife, Anne, charmingly earnest in her hospitality; a daughter, Anna; and 13-year-old Alexander Joy Cartwright IV. Bill Cartwright is a bluff, amiable man with a constant supply of cigars in a sports-shirt pocket. He takes pride in showing his treasures, remarkable heirlooms that speak of his family's unusual past. He has a massive old black walnut buffet that came around the Horn in 1851 with Alexander's family, a minutely detailed ship model that A.J.C. Jr. had in his New York office and a six-generation-old pre-Revolutionary Revere mug that belonged to his great-grandfather's great-grandfather. But most of the pieces are gifts from the Hawaiian queen, Emma, to her most trusted adviser. These include her own marble baptismal font, a candelabra given to her as a wedding present by Napoleon III, a delicately carved ivory chess set and polished bowls made of coconut and coral.

"Great-grandfather was also Peruvian consul in Hawaii, and my father was an envoy to Samoa," Cartwright said, aging through an unpublished account of that adventure. "They made him a chieftain in Samoa. The title is hereditary, but you have to go there to get it. Somehow, I haven't made the trip.

" Captain A. J. Cartwright Sr., Alexander's father, was a merchantman in the grain trade to Portugal who was captured in the War of 1812. His ancestors were sea captains from Nantucket. I've been interested enough to do some research before that and shook all kinds of strange people out of the family tree; Lady Godiva, Mark Antony—not Cleopatra, unfortunately—and a famous pirate who became the first owner of Coney Island."

Bill Cartwright has donated most of his ancestor's papers to the Honolulu Archives, but he does retain some portraits of Alexander, notably one showing him as he was when he left New York. But no one has the original Knickerbocker ball. "My father saw it once," Cartwright remembers, "but when Grandmother died the family lived in a hotel for a time, and the ball was definitely lost."

Young Alexander Joy Cartwright IV, although he likes to play baseball (he is a Giant fan, and Juan Marichal is his favorite player), has other interests, too. "I just thought I'd try butterfly collecting, and the first day I caught 14," he explains, his eyes lighting up as he begins a tour of a bedroom walled with mounted specimens. "This blue one is a Morpho polyphemus, and this is an Ornithoptera—that means birdwing, because it looks like that for protection. Did you know most butterflies have something in their bodies that tastes yickity, and birds know it by instinct? I'd like to be a lepidopterist when I grow up...."

When Alex's lecture tour was finished and it was time to leave, Bill remembered a couple more items of interest. "We have a nugget of gold Great-grandfather picked up in California," he said, displaying an astonishingly large lump of metal. "Right off the ground." The visitor exclaimed over the nugget and remarked what a fine thing it was to hand on to future generations. "Yes," Cartwright said. "I just hope Alex doesn't hock it to buy more butterflies."

"Oddly," he continued, "my grandfather never cared at all for baseball—only horses and women—and I've never played on a team myself. I was more a football player.

"The San Francisco Seals—Lefty O'Doul was their manager then—visited Hawaii in 1949, and when they heard about me they invited me to see them at the Maui Grand Hotel. 'Are you really the great-grandson of the man who laid out the diamond and all?' somebody asked. 'Yes,' I said. 'Have you ever played ball yourself?' somebody else asked. 'Yes,' I said. 'What position?' 'Oh, fullback and quarterback.' Lefty O'Doul just roared. 'Get him out of here!' he said." So all the San Francisco Seals threw Alexander Cartwright's great-grandson bodily out of the room.

With Bill Cartwright's help, the visitor found the only other surviving descendant of Alexander Cartwright Jr., granddaughter Mary Check. A sweet and pungent lady in her 70s living in San Francisco south of Golden Gate Park, Mrs. Check suggests that this scarcity of kin may be another reason Cartwright's contribution was so long unknown: "Two daughters died, one of scarlet fever, and one son was poisoned."