Joe
Hyde

JOSEPH F. HYDE JR. was an all around athlete, was well known in Camden as a a professional basketball player and also played minor league ball. He also worked as a bartender in his father's saloon, and ran the place himself in his later years. Hyde's Saloon at 1600 South 6th Street was a open for business as early as 1906, and was still trading under that name as late as 1947.

Joseph Hyde Sr. appears in the Camden NJ City Directories as early as 1887. He lived at 904 Walnut Street in the late 1880s and early 1890s. This is where he lived with wife Eliza when Joe Jr. was born, in October of 1889. Another son, John Francis, came about five years later. By 1910 the family had moved to 1600 Fillmore Street, around the corner from the saloon Joe Sr. owned at 1600 South 6th street. By 1910 Joe Jr. was working there as a bartender. He was still following that trade in 1915, when the New Jersey State Census was enumerated. 

By 1920 World War I had ended and Prohibition was the law of the land. The Hyde family moved to 1600 South 6th Street, over the family bar. Joseph Hyde Jr. worked as a plumber. When the census was taken in January of 1920, younger brother John Francis was studying to be a dentist. Joe Hyde continued to follow the plumbers trade through the 1920s and 1930s. He was partners in a plumbers business in April of 1930, when the census was again taken. Married by this time, he owned a home at 1131 Whitman Avenue with his wife Tillie M. Hyde.

By 1947 he had returned to South 6th Street. Mr. and Mrs. ran the bar and made their home at that address. Joseph Hyde had passed away by the are listed in the 1956 New Jersey Bell Telephone Directory.

Joe Hyde made his professional basketball debut came during the 1919-1920 season, with the Camden Crusaders of the Eastern Basketball League. The Crusaders were owned by Camden veterinarian Dr. Charles B. Helm and former Camden Counnty Sheriff W. Penn Corson. Other team members included brother Neil Deighan, Eddie Ferat, Sam Lennox, Jimmy "Soup" Campbell, Roy Steele, and another rookie, Rich Deighan. The Crusaders were the 1919-1920 Eastern Basketball League champions. He stayed in the game, although not at that level, then the pinnacle of pro hoops. 

Joe Hyde returned to the pro ranks with the Camden franchise of the 1928-29 Eastern Basketball league. The EBL was then a shadow of its former self, and must be considered a semi-pro league at best. The Camden roster as known included Joe Hyde, Rich Deighan, Sam Lennox, and two other players named Leach and Mulligan. The team lost all ten of the games it played before folding.

Joe Hyde also played professional and semi-pro baseball in the late 1910s and throughout the 1920s. A catcher, He played with Jersey City of the International League in 1919 and again in 1920. He left the team after getting into a dispute with manager "Wild Bill" Donovan. Suspended from organized baseball, Joe Hyde played with the Lebanon Steel team of the Bethlehem Steel League, where he was the teammate of former major leaguers Eggie Lennox, Norman Plitt, and Earl Potteiger, who would go on to coach the New York Giants of the National Football league in the 1920s.

Joe Hyde played for a series of semi-pro teams until 1928, when he was reinstated into the pro game at the behest of George Stallings, who also had managed at the major league level, taking the 1914 Boston Braves to the World Series, and sweeping Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics in four ganes. Joe Hyde caught for Montreal of the International League that summer. 

Camden Crusaders
1919-1920 Eastern Basketball League Champs

Front row, left to right:  Jimmy “Soup” Campbell and Joe Hyde.
Second row, left to right: Dr. Charles B. Helm, Neil Deighan, Roy Steele,
Eddie Dolin, Dave Kerr and Sheriff W. Penn Corson.
Back row, left to right: Bill Mitchell, trainer; Sam Lennox,
Manager Bill Kennedy, Richie Deighan and Timekeeper Jim Kane.

Click on Image to Enlarge

January 26, 1928