In January of 1938, the 78-year-old future Hall of Famer couldn’t believe Joe DiMaggio was seeking a raise to $35,000 for the coming season.
Current salaries were “scandalous,” he told The Associated Press, and having high-salaried players would be “damaging to team spirit,” by making the lesser players jealous.
“’Most I ever got in my life was $4,000 a year,’ he recalled, ‘and that was right at the end of my career. Believe me, I worked for it too. Days I wasn’t pitching I played center field, and in my first year in the National League (with the Troy Trojans in 1880) I had to be at the park an hour or so ahead of time to mind the ‘stile.’”
Welch
Besides taking tickets before games in Troy, Welch was joined on the team by another 20-year-old rookie who would also end up in Cooperstown. Welch spent his entire career as a teammate of Buck Ewing; the two played together for Welch’s entire career in Troy and New York.
“Buck Ewing was the greatest catcher who ever lived, was the highest paid man on the team at $3200,”
This was after, “the third year,” the were together in New York; before the 1886 season:
“Buck asked (New York manager Jim) Mutrie for #500, pointing out that he was captain and practically field manager of the team. Mutrie didn’t like it much, but he finally agreed to the raise providing Buck would catch 100 games, which he did.”
Ewing caught 73 games in 1886—he caught 103 in 1888, so Welch either got the number of games wrong, the year wrong, or simply exaggerated. The Spalding Guide said Ewing began earning $3500 in 1886, and then made $4500 in 1888.
Mutrie had just died, on January 24, 1938; and Welch said he couldn’t “imagine what would have happened to their friendship” had he ever held out on his “great pal.”
And, as for the Yankees current holdout:
“This DiMaggio, now, he’s no super player. He’s a low-ball hitter and we would have pitched to him in my day. He never would have seen a ball like that one he knocked out of the park on Cliff Melton.”
DiMaggio hit a home run in game five of the 1937 World Series off of Gants pitcher Melton to give the Yankees a 2 to 0 lead in the third inning—they won the game 4 to 2 and won the series.
Welch summed up his opinion of DiMaggio:
“He’s not half the player that Buck Ewing was.”
Ewing
As for Ewing:
“Now all I want to see is Buck Ewing in this baseball Hall of Fame. There’s a man who was 100 years ahead of his time.”
In 1944, Grantland Rice of The New York Herald Tribune lamented the inability of Lou Novikoff to live up expectations well into four seasons in the National League:
“It would have ben a big lift to big league baseball if…’The Mad Russian’ of the Cubs could only have approached his minor league average under the Big Tent.”
Novikoff
The reason was baseball’s need for “color;”
“There has always been a need in baseball for another Rube Waddell, another Bugs Raymond or another Dizzy Dean. They had more than their share of color. But they had something more than color—they were also great ballplayers.”
Novikoff, Rice said had “a gob of color,” but hadn’t come close to putting up the numbers he did the Pacific Coast League and American Association:
“Novikoff on the West Coast looked to be as good a hitter as Ted Williams…But he was no Ted Williams in the major show.”
Both Williams and Novikoff had huge seasons in the American Association after leaving the West Coast—Williams hit .366 in Minneapolis in 1938 and Novikoff hit .370 in Milwaukee in 1941—but as Rice concluded: No one had yet “wipe(d) away the dust from his big-league batting eye.”
The loss of Novikoff to pick up where Dizzy Dean left off “in the headline class, “ was a loss for baseball, Rice said:
“Baseball can use more color than it has known since Dizzy Dean retired to tell St. Luis radio listeners that someone ‘sold into third base.’
“It could use another Rube Waddell, who split his spring and summer days three ways—pitching, tending bar, and going fishing. But it should be remembered Dizzy Dean and Rube Waddell were among the great pitchers of all time.”
There was none he said, as colorful as Babe Ruth. Ping Bodie “was never a great ballplayer, but he was good enough. He was another remembered character. There was the time he bought a parrot and taught the bird to keep repeating— ‘Ping made good.’”
Rive said Bugs Raymond had color and talent—but for too short a time before the color overtook the talent.
Bugs Raymond
“There was the time when Bugs was pitching for Shreveport. He made a bet that he could eat a whole turkey, drink two quarts of Scotch and win a double header. He won his bet tradition says.”
By “tradition” Rice meant Rice. He was the source of the turkey and scotch story as a young reporter covering the Southern League.
Rice’s dream team of colorful players would include:
“Babe Ruth, Rube Waddell, Dizzy Dean, Bugs Raymond, Larry McLean, Tacks Parrott, Arlie Latham, German Schaefer, Al Schacht, Crazy Schmidt [sic Schmit] Rabbit Maranville and one or two more. I wouldn’t however, want to be manager.”
Grantland Rice
While Rice valued color, he said “two of the greatest ballclubs” he ever covered we not at all colorful:
“One was Connie Mack’s Athletics lineup from 1910 through 1914, winners of four pennants in five years. The other was the Yankees after Babe Ruth left, a crushing outfit season after season.
“These two squads were composed of fine ballplayers who were rarely prankish or the lighter side of life—Eddie Collins, Eddie Plank, Stuffy McInnis, Jack Barry, Homerun Baker, Jack Coombs, Chief Bender, to whom baseball was strictly a business matter. The same went for Bill Dickey, Joe Gordon, Lou Gehrig, Charlie Keller, Spud Chandler, Joe DiMaggio and others might have made up a session of bank presidents.”
Novikoff never lived up to his minor league hype. He hit a respectable .282 in five major league seasons but only played 17 games in the big-leagues after the end of World War II.
In 1921, John McGraw secured employment for Amos Rusie at the Polo Grounds; most current biographies of the “Hoosier Thunderbolt” say he first served as a night watchman and later became the superintendent of grounds at the ballpark—contemporaneous accounts said he was hired as assistant to superintendent Arthur Bell.
The suggestion that the job was an act of charity by McGraw was questioned by some of Rusie’s friends. John Crusinberry of The Chicago Tribune said when rumors had circulated in late 1920 that the former pitcher was destitute in Seattle, his former teammate Jack Doyle, then scouting for the Chicago Cubs, sought out his former teammate on a West Coast trip:
“But it wasn’t a tired and worn laborer who called. It was Mr. Amos Rusie, prominent in the business, social, and political life of Seattle.”
Crusinberry told his readers, Rusie owned a car and a home and was not simply a gas fitter, but rather the “superintendent of the municipal gas works of the city.”
His first day on the job in New York was the first time he had seen a major league game since 1900—the Yankees beat the Tigers 7 to 3. William Blythe Hanna of The New York Herald talked to the man with, “speed like Walter Johnson’s and the fastest curve ball extent,” a couple of days later.
Ruse at Polo Grounds, 1921
Miller Huggins, the manager of the Yankees said he handed Rusie a baseball when the former pitcher arrived that first day:
“’So, that’s the lively ball?’ Said Amos. ‘Well, it feels to me exactly like the ball I used to pitch in the nineties. If it’s any livelier I have no means of telling it, so I’ll have to take you work for it.”
Rusie grips the “lively” ball
Rusie said even the ball in the 1890s made it “hard enough then to keep the other fellows from making hits,” and as for his legendary speed:
“My speed?’ added the big fellow, diffidently, ‘Oh, I dunno. They said I had a lot of it.’
“’They also say nobody ever had as fast a curve ball as you.’
“’Yes, they said that when I was pitching, but it isn’t for me to say.”
Back to the difference, or lack thereof from his perspective—between the current ball and ball of the nineties, the 50-year-old said he wouldn’t be able to tell by trying to throw one:
“I couldn’t do anything with a baseball now. It’s been a good while since I could. Arm’s gone.”
Rusie was a rarity among veterans of his era—he didn’t insist that the players and the game of his era was superior:
“I can’t see much difference in the game now and then, either. They’re doing what we did, the hit and run and the bunt and all that. Maybe outfielders play back farther now. You know we didn’t have the foul strike rule, and that made it harder on the pitchers. They had to pitch more balls.”
To a reporter from The Associated Press, Rusie conceded some things had changed:
“In the old days the Polo Ground’s stands were wooden affairs, not nearly so large as the steal ones now. The ‘L’ trains were drawn by steam engines then, and there weren’t any subways. Instead, if taxicabs, the sports used Hansom cabs. But—it’s the same old game.”
“The old-timers. They were better hitters! No question about it.”
Said Ed Barrow after he became president of the New York Yankees in 1939 and Jimmy Powers of The New York Daily News had the 71-year-old pick his all-time team.
Barrow
Powers said of Barrow:
“The beetle-browed executive, one of the few remaining links between the gas-lit, coach-and-four, Wee Willie Keeler era and the moderns, boomed at us across his wide, flat-topped desk in the offices of the New York baseball club.”
Barrow was “a great believer in ‘natural born’ stars,’ telling Powers, “A fellow has it—or he hasn’t it.”
He explained his theory:
“Once in a while a manager will make a few minor corrections in stance, or change something here and there, but if player hasn’t the natural coordination, the God-given physique, the reflexes for rhythm and timing, he’ll never get ‘em. Sometimes one man will get more mileage out of his talents than another because he will work harder. That’s why the old-timers were better hitters. They looked at better pitching, and they practiced and practiced and practiced.”
Barrow said there was one reason in particular for why old-timers were better hitters:
“The tipoff is in the strikeout column. The moderns strikeout oftener—and there’s your answer. The present-day hitter is so homerun crazy that half the time he closes his eyes and swings; four bases or nothing! Usually, it’s nothing.”
Barrow’s told Powers:
“Now, on my All-Star, All-Time team I’d put Cobb, Speaker and Ruth in the outfield. Chase, Lajoie, Wagner, and Jimmy Collins in the infield. Matty, Johnson, Waddell, and McGinnity, pitchers. And Bill Dickey, catcher…I’d put Joe DiMaggio on that team as utility outfielder. I’d put Lou Gehrig as substitute first baseman and pinch hitter. Bill Bradley, Eddie Collins, Swede Risberg, and Buck Weaver would also get contracts on this ‘Dream Team.’ Keeler would be another utility outfielder and Bresnahan would be my second catcher. Ruffing and Gomez would fill out my pitching staff!”
Barrow’s All-Stars
Barrow said he could offer “a million reasons’ for the rationale for each selected player.
“(R)ecords can be misleading…I won’t quote you records of my All-Timers…A man must be in the dugout or in the stands to weigh the merits of a player and not be influenced by a record book.”
He said in choosing his team, he held “no grudges,” which is why he selected Risberg and Weaver, “Black Sox scandal or not.”
He said he would add Joe Jackson to the team, “if I thought he was smart enough. But Jackson, strange to say, was the only dumb one on that whole team. Up until 1938s Yankees—those Black Sox were the best team in baseball!”
As for some of his picks:
“Chase on first base! Nobody near him. He could throw a ball through a knothole, covered the whole infield like a cat, and remember he used a glove that just covered his fingers and seldom had a palm. The ‘peach baskets’ first basemen use today would have been barred years back, Chase could hit behind the runner, bunt, steal, fake a bunt at third and then bunt over the third baseman’s head. He could do all the tricks.”
Chase
He called Napoleon Lajoie “the most graceful second baseman I have ever seen. He had a rifle arm and was as slick as a panther,” and gave him the edge “by a slight margin” over Eddie Collins.
Honus Wagner, who Barrow signed for the Patterson Silk Weavers in 1896, “is my nomination as the greatest individual ballplayer of all time.”
Of his first impression of Wagner, he said:
“He was pretty terrible when I first ran across him, looked awkward as all get-out. But suddenly he would come through with a perfectly dazzling play that had everybody on our bench swallowing his tobacco cud in astonishment.”
Like Lajoie, Barrow said Jimmy Collins just edged out the second choice—Bill Bradley—because:
“Collins could make perfect throws to first from any position. When an infielder makes an off-balance throw today the crowd gives him a big hand. The old timers did it every play because the old ball was slow dribbling out there. Today the lively ball comes out fast in one or two hops, and this gives the third baseman a chance to make his throw from a ‘straightened up’ stance.…Remember, in the old days the ball was dark, wet with slippery elm juice; often it was smudged with grass stains, hard to follow.”
In the outfield, Barrow said, “I don’t think anyone will give you an argument on Cobb-Speaker-Ruth.”
He called Ty Cobb “the greatest hitter of all time,” with “a lightning-quick brain and plenty of gut.”
Babe Ruth, he said was, in addition to the being the “great slugger of all-time,” changed the game because of “His salary, his magnetic personality, and his publicity.”
Tris Speaker “was superb. A good hitter, a great fielder, a brainy man. He was so confident of his ability ‘to go back’ he practically camped on second base.”
Of the pitching staff, he said Christy Mathewson “could do almost everything with a baseball—practically make it talk.”
Of Walter Johnson he said:
“He had awe-inspiring speed. You’d stand up there watching and suddenly—pfffft—pfffft—pfffft. Three phantom bullets whizzed past. Too fast for your eyes to focus ‘em.”
Rube Waddell was “the best lefthander” he had seen.
Joe McGinnity appeared to be a sentimental choice:
“(He) was a work horse, a competent soul who loved the game so much I believe he’d work for nothing.”
Bill Dickey, he said was not “given the credit” he deserved:
“He’s a hitter. A workmanlike receiver. Handles pitchers marvelously. Has a good arm. Is fast. Is always one jump ahead of the opposition. Dickey does everything well.”
The summer before his death in 1932, 73-year-old Dan Brouthers, “Sat in the shade under the Yankee Stadium bleachers where Babe Ruth hits all those home runs.”
Brouthers spoke to Harold Burr of The Brooklyn Eagle:
“(He) admits that baseball has changed quite a bit…’But it hasn’t changed either,’ the old fellow, a giant of a man in shirt sleeves and straw hat contradicted himself. ‘I notice when the boys go out on the field nowadays, they make just as many fumbles as we did, pull just as many bones.”
Dan Brouthers
Brouthers said he didn’t believe players of his generation would have “ever made an error if,” they played on the current fields.
“’Do you know I never saw a groundskeeper until I played in Brooklyn in ’82? He was a curiosity. I used to take a rake myself and clean up around first base just before the game started. Then I’d pass it along to the second baseman, the third baseman.’
“’What about the shortstop?’
“’Oh, you mean Pop Smith?’ questioned Brouthers, the old eyes that were keen enough once upon a time in the past for their owner to lead the big-league batters for five seasons, lit up in admiration: ‘Pop didn’t need any rake.’”
Brouthers told Burr he could not recall how many homeruns he hit but “remembers ever detail” of the 1887 World Series with the St. Louis Browns:
“Charlie Comiskey was on first base for them. Detroit slugged them to death, winning eight of the first 11 games. But the contract called for 15 games and we played it out. (Beginning with game 4) we went to Pittsburgh for a game—Brooklyn –New York—two games in Philadelphia—one in Washington—Baltimore—Boston—back to Brooklyn –Detroit—Chicago—and wound up in St. Louis. We traveled in a special train and were 28 days on the road.
“The crowds were good through all the barnstorming and the traveling World Series played to 15,000 and 20,000 people a day. Regular season prices prevailed—75 cents—in grandstand and 50 and 25 cents in the bleachers.”
Brouthers didn’t mention that he was injured and had just three at bats during the series, won by Detroit 10 games to five.
“No,” said Brouthers in the end, ‘the game hasn’t changed. But I guess there are more good hitters around.”
He said:
“’I see a lot of the Babe’s homers up there,’ pointing through the skeleton scaffolding of the bleachers looming above him. ‘I like to watch (Chuck) Klein and (Lou) Gehrig ride ‘em. Gehrig is strong as a bear. And Babe Herman. The kids are the same too wanting you to sign their books and baseballs. Only it was cigarette pictures we had to autograph.”
Brouthers then asked, “‘When will this story be in the paper, mister?’” Burr said Sunday:
“’I’ll bring you up some copies of it.’
“’Bring me one,’ said the quaint Dan Brouthers, ‘I’ll read it first and let you know if I want anymore.’”
Several Babe Ruth biographies quote the 1924 “Colliers” magazine story “My Friend Babe Ruth” by Arthur Robinson, a New York newspaperman who leveraged the fact that Ruth “has very few secrets from me,” for fodder for the article.
Robinson told readers diverse facts like Ruth’s skin “is not thick,” that he “Made and spent almost a quarter of a million dollars” in 1921, and that he “Does not wear underwear.”
Babe Ruth
The oft quoted “Colliers” piece was preceded by nearly three years by a lesser known article Robinson wrote in The New York American headlined “The Diary of Babe Ruth’s bat,” after game one of the 1921 World Series.
“The Yankees won and I am happy. I have no way of expressing myself outside the typographical confines of the box score and there I find that my batting average for the day, in the first game of New York’s first all New York World Series is .333.
“Not particularly good, but by no means bad. I am content.”
In the first inning:
“(Phil) Douglas sent a fast spitball over the heart of the plate, and I shot it out into center field with the assistance of Mr. Ruth. (Elmer) Miller was on second base at the time and he scored on the hit. So far, so good.”
The “bat” said Ruth walked on three Douglas spitballs, a curve, and a “high, slow floater” on three and one in the fourth inning,
In the sixth, on a 3-2 count, “Douglas threw a fast curve…I though it was a ball, and so did Mr. Ruth but the umpire called Mr. Ruth out on strikes and some odd language passed between the two. I heard it.”
Ruth struck out for the second time in the eighth when he “missed a low spitter, on the outside.”
“Well, today, dear diary, is another day. Perhaps I’ll get a homer. I rather expect I will.”
Not the writing bat, but another Ruth bat
Ruth’s bat did not hit a home run in game two—he was 0-1 with three walks—he hit .313 in the series with one home run and four RBI.
The Giants won the last three games to win New York’s first all New York series” five games to three.
In 1937, Grantland Rice of The New York Herald Tribune met Ty Cobb for a round of golf at Pebble Beach:
Grantland Rice
“His hair was a trifle thinner and he had put on a few pounds in weight since the big years of his career. But he still looked fit—life had given him a better break than any other retired major league star in history…The legs that carried him at a headlong pace around the bases for 24 years still had enough left to take home through the wilds of Montana, Oregon or Wyoming after quail, deer, or mountain lions—day after day on extended hikes.”
Cobb
Rice asked Cobb what he thought about the current state of baseball:
“I haven’t seen much baseball or followed it closely, for two reasons. One is that 24 years of hard competition in more than 3000 ballgames burns away most of the lure. The other is that the introduction of the rabbit ball took away most of the science from the game I knew and loved so well. It has been a different game.
“In those years we had to battle for a run. I used to lay plans days or weeks ahead to use against some club to get that run. They say I ran wild. I did it with a purpose—but only when we had a good lead and I could afford to waste a play. I wanted them to think I was a crazy runner—in order to hurry the play of either infield or outfield—to upset what you might call their mental balance. Today, in the main, they wait around for someone to hit a home run. A single run rarely means anything.”
Cobb said he understood he had a reputation “as a rough rider around the bases,” but:
“I recall only three men I spiked in 24 years. I don’t believe the total would be over six or seven”
He told Rice the famous 1909 spiking of Frank “Hone Run” Baker:
“I barely scratched his arm…The Baker incident gave me a reputation I never deserved.”
Cobb slides into Baker, 1909
Later, Rice asked Cobb about the best pitchers he faced:
“My number one pitcher would be Cy Young. Cy won more than 500 ballgames in two big leagues. He was still a fine pitcher after more than 20 years…Ate the age of 65, in the veterans’ game, old Cy pitched three run less innings. He had a world of stuff—he had a game heart and he had control.
“Next to Cy, I’d name (Walter) Johnson who led them all in shutouts and strikeouts. That’s the main answer”
Cobb called Big Ed Walsh:
“The most valuable five-year pitcher I ever saw. In one season (1908) he worked 66 games, won 40 and saved 12 others [sic, 6]. Right after this he stepped in and pitched almost every game in the Chicago City series. Big Ed was the star workhorse of them all for about five years before the arm gave out.
Cobb told Rice his “Biggest day, I suppose was that afternoon against the Yankees just after a ball pitched by Carl Mays killed Ray Chapman.”
The New York Tribune said the fans were “in an uproar” over comments Cobb had allegedly made to Associated Press (AP) reporters. On the day of Chapman’s death, The AP reported:
“Ty Cobb, the Detroit star asserted that summary measures should be taken against Mays immediately.”
Mays
The AP also said in a separate article:
“After the funeral of Roy Chapman has been held, Ty Cobb will have a few things to say regarding Carl Mays…’I am too upset over the death of Chapman to say anything now,’ he said. Cobb, however, added
That he had his own experiences with Mays’ bean-ball and that he would be willing to give some of his opinions about the Yankees submarine pitcher when he does talk.”
Chapman
It was also reported that Cobb was among a group of players who would refuse to play against Mays.
Describing the scene at the Polo Grounds nearly 17 years late, Cobb told Rice:
“I had been misquoted and when I came into the park there was the loudest chorus of boos and hisses, I ever heard.
“Naturally I felt bitter about this. It isn’t a pleasant feeling to be booed and hissed by 35,000 of your fellow citizens, I went out to show them up I happened to have one of my best days.”
Cobb’s “Biggest game” was actually the second game of the series. During the first game of the series on August 21, The Tribune said:
“(T)he booing and hissing were violent every time Cobb came to bat. This roused Cobb’s belligerency and he exchanged some sharp repartee with the crowd by the Detroit dugout. He was surrounded by a growling mob as he left the field, but Cobb, who rather enjoys being a storm center, walked off the field slowly and deliberately”
Cobb, who went 1 for 4 with a stolen base, told reporters after Detroit’s 10 to 3 win:
“Some Boston people who have a grudge against Carl Mays used me as a smoke screen. I did not say a word against Mays, and I attended no meeting to boycott him.”
The following day, August 22, with 37,000 fans in the Polo Grounds was the “Biggest day,” Cobb was 5 for 6 with a double and three stolen bases and scored two runs in an 11 to 9 victory.
Back to the game at Pebble Beach, Rice said of Cobb:
“Golf is one game that has left him baffled. Once in awhile he breaks 80, but his average score is around 82 or 83. He hits a long ball and he is a first-class putter but is still erratic on the in between shots. Always full of tension…If he could relax more, there would soon be a great improvement in his game. But the mental habit of a lifetime isn’t so easily overcome. The more delicate shots give Ty his greatest trouble. This is where tension nearly always takes its toll. The mental factors that make a great ballplayer or football player may be ruinous for golf.”
In 1927, a News Enterprise Association syndicated series of columns promised readers the secrets to “Fooling the great batters.”
Of Babe Ruth, the article said:
“There is a fault in the armor of the greatest slugger of them all, the man who has inspired more fear in the breasts of more pitchers than any other hitter, present day or past.”
St. Louis Browns pitcher Hub Pruett’s success against Ruth as a rookie in 1921 was noted as the gold standard for shutting him down—in six appearances against the Yankees that season, Pruett struck Ruth out 10 times; overall, Ruth was 2 for 13 with a home run and three walks in his 16 plate appearances against the 21-year-old lefty:
“(Pruett) found that Ruth couldn’t hit a slow curve ball which sank close to the knees…Time and again it came up, slow and twisting, so that you could almost read the Ban Johnson signature, and time out of mind the Great Ball Murderer swung and missed.”
The scouting report on Ruth:
“A curve which sinks towards the batter can be hit by the Babe, but one which sinks away is harder. That was the great Pruett discovery. It is still in the big leagues, but Pruett isn’t”
Pruett, was 14-18 over three seasons for the Browns with a 3.55 ERA, and had less success against Ruth in 1923 and ’24 than he had during his rookie season. He never faced Ruth after 1924. He spent two years in the Pacific Coast League then returned to the major leagues with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1927 and ’28; and in between two stints in the International League, he pitched for the New York Giants in 1930 and the Boston Braves in 1932.
Stanwood Fulton Baumgartner pitched in parts of eight seasons for the Phillies and Athletics, then spent thirty years as a baseball writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Sporting News.
In 1945, he said his former manager Connie Mack:
“(I)s a kindly person. His 62 years in baseball have been marked by few displays of emotion.
“When the Athletics made their famous 10-run rally in the fourth game of the 1929 World Series he merely wigwagged his scorecard a bit faster. Even when Burleigh Grimes thumbed his nose at him in 1931, Connie merely smiled.
“Yet he once shook his fist at Babe Ruth—and that gesture cost him $5,000.”
Baumgartner said the story was about a young pitcher who, 1924 “(H)ad sold himself to Connie Mack,” after a successful minor league season in 1923.
Stanwood Fulton Baumgartner
The pitcher, he said:
“(W)asn’t a success. Every time he stepped out of the dugout fans would shout, ‘Take him out.’”
The pitcher “pleaded for one last chance,” before Philadelphia would have to pay the pitcher’s purchase price of $5000 if he stayed on the roster after May 30.
“That very morning, Mack made up his mind to send the young pitcher back to New Haven. He ordered a train ticket.
“Eddie Rommel was starting (the second game of a double header that day) for the Athletics. As Rommel started to warm up, the young left-hander went to his locker. There he found the ticket for New Haven.
“The young fellow felt a terrific emptiness. But he changed his shirt and went back to the bench.”
Early in the game, Baumgartner said Mack told the young pitcher he would take the mound if Rommel needed to be relieved.
The Yankees scored two runs in the fourth and sixth innings—including a Babe Ruth two-run home run—and Rommel was lifted for pinch hitter Paul Strand in the seventh, with Philadelphia trailing 4 to 1.
The young pitcher came out for the bottom of the seventh inning with the Athletics still trailing by three runs. He retired New York in order for two innings while Philadelphia scored four runs in the eighth on three singles and a Bing Miller home run off Sad Sam Jones.
With a 5 to 4 lead, Mack sent the young pitcher out for the ninth inning:
Connie Mack
“Wally Shang, first Yank at bat in the ninth inning, fanned; then Everett Scott was caught at first for the second out (Baumgartner’s memory was faulty more than twenty years later, the contemporaneous account in The Philadelphia Record said Scott struck out, and Fred Hofmann was retired for the second out). The Athletics breathed a sigh of relief. Only one more man to go! But (pinch hitter) Joe Bush got a one-base hit. Then the left-hander hit Aaron Ward with a pitched ball; and Joe Dugan made first base after an easy grounder took a bad hop against Chick Galloway’s chest.”
Here again, Baumgartner’s memory was faulty. Bush did single, but the next two batters were pinch hitter Wally Shang, who walked, then Dugan, who did not reach on error, but was hit by a pitch—Galloway’s error had come earlier in the game.
In any event, what Baumgartner recalled correctly was that the Yankees had loaded the bases trailing by one run, with Babe Ruth due up.
“As the Babe walked to the plate, a wave of futility engulfed the pitcher. Tomorrow, he knew, he would be back in New Haven—in the minors and oblivion.
With a shrug of despair, he looked at catcher Frank Bruggy for a signal. But Bruggy was looking for a sign from Connie to bring in another pitcher.”
Baumgartner said Mack stood up in the dugout, and the pitcher’s “heart sank,” but then:
“Connie did the most amazing this baseball fans had ever seen. He shook his fist at Babe Ruth. The pitcher watched that fist and a wave of confidence surged up within him. Now he saw only Ruth and his catcher.
“Bruggy signaled for a curve and Ruth swung and missed.
“Bruggy signaled for another curve. Again, Ruth swung; missed.
“The third pitch was a slower curve. Ruth swung with every ounce of his 220 pounds. There was click as the bat met the ball. But it was only the click of a foul ball. Bruggy smothered it in his glove for the third out, and the game was over.
“Hundreds of cushions whirled out of the stands onto the diamond. Connie Mack Draped his arm around the pitcher.
‘”Give me that ticket to New Haven,’ he whispered. ‘You won’t need it now.’
“That night Connie Mack made out a check to the New Haven club for $5000.
“How do I know? I was the pitcher”
Baumgartner
Neither The Record nor The Inquirer mentioned the embellishments of Mack’s fist shake, the “Hundreds of cushions,” nor that Ruth’s strikeout was foul tip in their coverage of the game. He likely overstated his imminent return to New Haven as well—Baumgartner, although used sparingly, had pitched well and won two games in relief before the May 30 game–—but what was true is he had learned to tell a good story in the intervening two decades.
Frank Chance was about to begin his second season managing the New York Yankees, but in the early part of 1914, he had still not let go of his feud with his former boss, Cubs President Charles Webb Murphy.
Frank Chance
Murphy, Chance told a reporter for The Associated Press at his winter home in Los Angeles, was solely responsible for the formation of the Federal League:
“Charley Murphy has done more to hurt baseball than any other man who has been in the game in all the years that the sport has flourished. You can mark my words well, because he is going to continue to be an objectionable figure in the national pastime just so long as he is allowed to have any connection with any club under the jurisdiction of the national commission.”
Chance said many of his friends said he “was crazy two years ago” when he sold his interest in the Cubs. He received $40,000 for his shares.
He said Charles Weeghman, the Chicago restaurant owner who had been trying to buy into a baseball team since 1911, “was for years an ardent Cub rooter. He soured on Murphy, and so did thousands of other patrons of the West Side ballpark.”
Chance wasn’t finished:
“Now, just a few words about the way Murphy handles ballplayers. When (Johnny) Evers was in poor health one spring (1911), Murphy found out that he would not be able to play the entire season. He wired me while the team was in Pittsburgh to that effect. And right there Murphy showed his hand.
“Evers who had been with the team for years and who had played great ball, would not have received a cent of salary that year if Murphy had had his way.
“Murphy, in his message said that he did not believe Evers should draw his pay for the season. I wouldn’t stand for giving Evers a raw deal of that sort, and Johnny got his salary, every dollar of it for the entire year. He played only a few games (46) for us that season.”
Chance went on to say how poorly Murphy treated Mordecai Brown and Joe Tinker, but said he wouldn’t bother to get into the “treatment” he received from Murphy, because:
“(T)hat’s past and gone and life is too short to let things like that embitter one and spoil his life.”
Just more than a month after Chance’s comments, Murphy was “persuaded” by National League President John Tener to sell his shares in the Cubs to Charles Taft—although Murphy disputed that claim, and said he voluntarily sold to Taft.
Damon Runyon, in his syndicated column in the Hearst Newspapers, summed up the Murphy affair:
“We know that when they throw him out, as they doubtless will throw him out, there will be someone else ready to take his place as official bugaboo, for there must be a bugaboo in baseball, else we might have no baseball.”
Baseball History Daily 