Shirley Johnson, longtime archivist and librarian for the Moline Greens, died January 8, 2007, in Biloxi, Mississippi, while traveling with a contingent of Greens players and personnel. The coroners from Gulfport assured the vacationing entourage that the woman had been dead for at least a couple hours before the animals had arrived. The autoposy declared rimylotta as the cause of death, a condition aggravated, no doubt, by the copious amounts of water the deceased had consumed in the hours before her death. And she had lived a life, had avid hydrophile Shirley E. Johnson. A year before, she had been slowed by the collapse of a vertical file that pinned her for a full day in the archives before help arrived. But, gamer that she was, she had recovered quickly and at age 77 had planned to work another two or three years, according to a profile in the fall issue of Minor-League Librarian. Shirley had never before joined the Greens for any of their off-season excursions, preferring to go her own way and frequent button conventions and flower shows, maybe visit her niece in Springfield.
But the package put together in November by Greens� cultural liaison Dineen Grow proved too tempting for Jackson to pass up, even granting the potential embarrassment of a limp, a vestige of her assault by the vertical file.
Archivist Shirley E. Johnson joined the Greens' organization in 1994, after a long and illustrious career as librarian of the University of Wisconsin-Extension, which closed its doors at last in 1992. Her hoarding skills, honed for years, allowed her to fill numerous vertical files with information on the players in the organization and on the history of the league. Johnson had perhaps the largest collection of materials in the state on indoor baseball. The Greens Archive also has the complete holdings of the Rock Island Argus from 1970 to date, separated into thirty odd piles. Although full access to the Archives is restricted to team personnel, the library continutes to honor research requests from interested parties.
Shirley compiled bibliographies on
a number of topics related to the Greens, including the etymologies of player names and the
geological history of the Rock River, which meanders past Moline Park. Johnson enjoyed researching the early history of the Middle West Baseball League, particularly the legendary Des
Moines Grangers, who moved from Des Moines to the Quad Cities in 1939, the last year of that
league. Shirley recalled a visit to her Iowa cousins in 1930, when she got to see Granger ace Luke
Michaelson shut down a rival team on two hits. Visiting her aunt in La Crosse, Wisconsin 30 years later, Shirley was part of a brawl at Traders' Park during a Big River Alliance contest. "My elbow was never the same after that."
An avid fan of the arts, Shirley belonged to the Quad Cities Music Guild and frequently attended local plays, concerts, and tractor pulls. She was a seven-time winner of the ladies division of the Bart Giamati lookalike contest, held each June in Chicago, and was elected to the Baseball Executive Lookalike Hall of Fame in 2005. She gardened avidly, preferring flowers to fruits and vegetables, and she collected vintage postcards and buttons. "I've been working on a history of buttons," she explained. "It's really quite fascinating once you look into it."
You may the Greens Archives Monday through Friday from 8:00 to 4:30. The Archives are located in the subcellar of the Greens Annex, just outside the main gates of Moline Park. Press SB on the Annex elevator.