In April 1909, New York Highlanders first baseman Hal Chase was hospitalized with smallpox near the team’s spring training site in Georgia. The rest of the squad — which would be renamed the Yankees in 1913 — took an overnight train to Richmond, Virginia, where the Highlanders were scheduled to play an exhibition game against a minor league team before the regular season started.
But first, the players would need to undergo medical examinations to make sure they were not infected with the disease or at risk of spreading it to others. Informed about the Highlanders’ situation, Surgeon General Walter Wyman sent Dr. Joseph Goldberger, a physician from the U.S. Public Health Service, to Richmond “to pass upon the matter for the Government before the party be allowed to cross the Potomac,” as The New York Times reported.
The players, staff and accompanying newspaper reporters had already been vaccinated against smallpox. But the only way to know if a vaccination was effective was by examining the scar that it left. So “each man bared his arm,” the Times noted, “which revealed conditions to the medical experts.” Four players, a trainer and a journalist didn’t have visible scarring, so they were vaccinated again, along with two other players who had gone home and could not be examined by Goldberger.
