~ EUGENE MILLARD PHILLIPS ~

Son of John Ward Phillips & Duvernez Reniff
GGGrandson of Philip Phillips and Mercy Phillips

Eugene Millard Phillips born July 6, 1883 in Buckland, Massachusetts.  He married July 29, 1907, Minnie L. Buck fo Buckland in Conway Massachusetts.  He spent some of his life in Conway for this is where he apparently met a life time friend John "Happy Jack" Dwight Chesbro.

Eugene went by the name of Millard and this is what he was known as by his family and friends.  Although deaf from childhood he was an active man and participated in varying sports.  A news clipping from Conway newspaper relates the following.

"The wrestling match in the Town Hall, Wednesday evening between R. L. Evans and M. E. Phillips resulted in a victory for Evans"

Source: News clipping Conway, Ma.

His grandson, Walter Chase Phillips, recalls the folowing.

"...as for millard, he was deaf from infancy, attended the famed perkins school, I believe, was essentially a mute.  Said to have been a very intelligent and
teasing figure, with a glint of play often in his eyes. he was a very strong  man, I was told, and could have great flashes of temper, which led to some  corporal punishment of at least my father to some degree.  Millard was a fine baseball player I was told and used to catch.  In off seasons he played catch with and for the greatest all-time baseball pitcher, one Jack Chesbro, who to this day has the most winnings in a single season of professional baseball, 42 in a season with the New York highlanders, the forerunners of the New York Yankees.  Long ago I had a ball autographed by Chesbro, given to my father.  My father, Walter L. Phillips, was a marvelous semipro baseball player, known for his knuckleball--- taught to him by Chesbro--- and for his hitting.  He is in baseball records and histories and archives I believe, as a remarkable semipro player, in days when they often defeated big leaguers in off-season and other confrontations.

My mother, Mildred Dorothy Chase Phillips, used to listen to Boston Red Sox baseball games on the radio and sign them to Millard.  He thought the world of her and I can remember her grief the evening when word came from the hospital that Millard had died at 65.  He loved the outdoors, was quite close to my father in later years and was a fun and playful grandfather to us kids. He was a good man, I believe, who suffered immense frustrations from his condition."

"Anyway, millard, to my way of thinking, was hampered and abused by life but still managed to be kind and decent in general and much loved and missed by a pretty fair-sized family, including cousins and so on, and many townspeople who seemed to adore him.  He came up, as they say, in
difficult times, with odds surely against him, and proved worth having in this dubious world."

Walter Chase Phillips.........

As for his friend, Happy Jack Chesbro........... he did reach the Baseball Hall of Fame

From The National Hall of Fame Site, the following is recorded:

"Happy Jack Chesbro" was an early spitball ace whose 1904 performance with the New York Highlanders still rates among the games most remarkable season.s.  He started 51 games , completed 48 and was the victor in 41 while hurling 454 innings.  From 1901 to 1906 hewon 154 games  - an average of 25 per season.Hurling for pennant winners in Pittsburg and New York, Chesbro was a league winning percentage three times ; twice in wins, appearances and games, innings and shutouts.

From the Baseball Library.com

After Chesbro's pitching skills had dried up and he left the major leagues, he began a prosperous career as a merchant in New England, running a saw mill and lumber yard in North Adams, MA. He continued to pitch, appearing with semi-pro teams, traveling to take on mill town teams who found the pitching of the former major league superstar easy to hit.

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