During an eight-year career spent in the California and Pacific Coast Leagues, Robert Joseph “Bobby” Eager was never a star but was very popular with West Coast baseball fans. Years after he played his final game for the San Jose Prune Pickers in 1909 he began writing occasional columns about the game for The San Jose News.
Bobby Eager
Eager backed up starting catcher Henry “Heine” Spies with the Los Angeles Angels:
“(O)ne of the best backstops the Coast has ever had. Spies was known as the best foul ball chaser that ever put on a glove, barring none. It seemed as though he really knew just where to go when a batter hit a long foul, he was right on the job. I have played with him for five years and have never seen him misjudge a fly ball. It got so that every time a foul ball went up, no matter where it went, the crowd would yell ‘Heine would have got it,’ even though the ball went out of the lot. Well, to make a long story short, Los Angeles was playing and Heine was catching, Charlie Baum was pitching. A foul ball went up and Heine chased the ball up against the grandstand and made a most wonderful catch, but it seemed as though the ball must have touched the stand in some way and Umpire (Jack) Huston ruled that it didn’t go.”
Henry “Heine” Spies
Eager said Spies argued Huston’s call, and as a result, the umpire—who had been a teammate of Spies in 1891 with the Sacramento Senators—fined the catcher $5.
“The next day was pay day and when Spies went to get his dough he was 5 short. He immediately hunted up Huston at Morley’s pool rooms, where most of the ball players hung out (in addition to owning the billiard hall, Jim Morley managed the Los Angeles Angels for four seasons). He immediately demanded that Huston either give him the $5 back or they go to the mat, which Huston refused to do, of course. There was trouble, and poor Heine was fined $50 by the president of the league for beating up an umpire. I never will forget how hard Spies took it to heart. He and I were going down Market Street, San Francisco, and we were looking in the different windows and we came across a big furniture store with a swell bedroom set for $50. Heine looked at it for a long time. I looked up to see the tears rolling down his cheeks, and turning to me he said: ‘See—see, Bobby, there, see what Huston robbed me out of. I could have had that swell bedroom set if he hadn’t gone and fined me that $5. I never did trust an umpire no how. They all seem to be a bunch of burglars.”
In addition to his occasional work for the newspaper, Eager coached several local baseball teams and worked for the Standard Oil company until his death on February 2, 1926.
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