Amos Rusie’s return to the Seattle area to purchase a farm in 1929 made his briefly as interesting to West Coast baseball writers and his arrival at the Polo Grounds eight years earlier had briefly made his reminiscences of great interest to the New York scribes.
There is some disagreement about whether Rusie enjoyed his time in New York. What’s certain is his eight years caused him to retract his opinion from 1921 that the game had not substantially changed.
Rusie
When he arrived in Washington, The Associated Press asked the former pitcher/ballpark superintendent turned farmer for his views on the game and to select his all-time team.
Rusie said he couldn’t understand how modern pitchers “don’t pitch to sluggers,” enough:
“None of the pitchers in my day were afraid to pitch to the best of them. You didn’t find us walking the slugger almost every time he came to bat, as they do nowadays. We figured we would either make him hit the ball or sit down. That’s what he was up there for.”
Rusie said “brain counts more than slugging,” and selected an all-time team that included just one (barely) active player:
Pitchers: Christy Mathewson, Kid Nichols, Cy Young
Catchers: Buck Ewing, Roger Bresnahan, John Kling
First base: Dan Brouthers, Fred Tenney
Second base: Napoleon Lajoie, Eddie Collins
Third base: Jimmy Collins, John McGraw
Shortstop: Honus Wagner, Hughie Jennings
Left field: Ed Delahanty, Joe Kelley
Center field: Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker
Right Field: Willie Keeler, Fred Clarke
Eddie Collins appeared in just nine games in 1929 and three in 1930 while coaching for the Athletics. Babe Ruth, who made such an impression on Rusie when eight years earlier he watched major league baseball for the first time in two decades, didn’t make the cut.
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.”
Edward F. Ballinger of The Pittsburgh Post described Bill Byron thusly:
“(He) is looked upon among the players as the man who rendered more peculiar decisions than any other official in diamond history.”
Honus Wagner singled out Byron for rendering “the worst decision I ever saw.”
Wagner included the incident in his 1924 series of articles about his career for The North American Newspaper Alliance. He said he was stealing third in a game against the Giants:
“The catcher threw the ball into my feet making it impossible for Devlin—I think it was Devlin— [Note: It was Milt Stock] to pick it up. We both got in a tangle as I slid through a cloud of dust. The ball was bound under my arm where nobody could find it.”
Byron
While the Giants looked for the ball, Wagner headed towards the plate:
“About ten feet from home the ball dropped on the baseline. Now here’s where McGraw got in his fine work. He rushed up to umpire Byron, who had run down to third base to make the decision and told him I carried the ball to the bench in my hand.
“’If you don’t believe it, go to the bench and make them give it to you,’ he urged Byron.
“About this time McGraw’s attention was called to the ball lying on the base path.”
McGraw then told Byron, “That proves it. See! Wagner just rolled it out.”
Wagner said a confused Byron called him out for, “Carrying the ball to the bench with your hand.”
Wagner’s recollection was a bit faulty, in addition to forgetting who was playing third base. The incident happened on July 17, 1914, during the sixth inning of what would turn out to be a 21-inning 3 to 1 victory for the Giants. The game was, to that point, baseball’s longest game and both pitchers, Babe Adams and Rube Marquard pitched complete games.
As for the play, Wagner was not attempting to steal; he was advancing to third from first on a hit by Jim Viox and the throw came from center fielder Bob Bescher.
Contemporaneous accounts in The Pittsburgh Press, The Dispatch, and The Post all said that when the ball fell from Wagner’s uniform, it was immediately picked up by Marquard who threw to third trying to retire Viox who was called safe, rather than Wagner’s version where McGraw called Byron’s attention to the ball.
McGraw, said The Press, came out on the field at that point, “and told Byron Wagner was out.” The umpire agreed and also sent Viox back to second The Post said:
“The Pirates gathered around the umpire and raised a hubbub. (Fred) Clarke read the riot act and was motioned off the lot by umpire Byron.”
Pittsburgh protested the game, but Byron’s ruling was upheld.
Fred Mitchell, manager of the Cubs, was also not a Byron fan, and told Billy Evans in 1920:
“He hasn’t improved much since the summer (1917) he gave a decision that cost me $100 and the game. We were playing in St. Louis and big Mule (Milt) Watson was on the rubber. Art Wilson was at the plate. Watson, as he started to pitch, stubbed his toe and in trying to hold back on the ball threw it wildly and hit Wilson in the back of the neck. Byron would not let him take his base, saying it was a slow ball. I protested and consequently was chased and later fined $100.”
Mitchell’s details of the September 3 game were all correct, except for the outcome of the game. The Cubs beat the Cardinals and Watson 6 to 5. Mitchell had also, “had a mix-up” with Byron the previous day, according to The Chicago Tribune, when the umpire had initially called Tom Long of St. Louis out on a play at the plate, “then called him safe, although (catcher Rowdy) Elliott held the ball.”
Cardinals owner John C. Jones held the same opinion Mitchell did off Byron. Earlier that same season, Byron made another questionable call on another play involving Tom Long. The Cardinals outfielder hit a ball off Eppa Rixey that appeared to be fair for a double. Byron, despite “the fact that a gap in the whitewash marked the spot,” where the ball hit called it foul.
Long was called out on strikes on the next pitch The Cardinals lost 3 to 2 to the Phillies.
So incensed was Jones at the umpire, whom The St. Louis Star called, “a good plumber’s helper but an inferior umpire,” that he wrote an open letter to fans that appeared in St. Louis papers. He told fans who were present, “The good of the game demands,” that they wire league president John Tener about “Byron’s judgment.”
Jones’ message resulted in bottles and other items being thrown at Byron the following day. Two fans were injured. Cardinal President Branch Rickey disavowed Jones’ comments:
“I strongly advised against it. In fact, both (manager) Miller Huggins and myself wired President Tener that the message did not officially express the club’s sentiments.”
Despite his comment that he did not support the club owners’ position, Rickey was more critical of the umpire in his telegram to Tener than Jones had been in his message to the fans:
“(His) attitude and manners generally were extremely antagonistic to the crowd…If Byron will keep his face to the filed and not parade about in front of the stands, he will have no trouble.”
The previous season, Byron “wrote” an article for The Pittsburgh Press. He said he became an umpire in 1896 only because he couldn’t find enough work in his “first love, steamfitting.” Over two decades he worked his way from the Michigan State League to the National League.
Before steamfitting and umpiring, Byron had briefly played minor league ball:
“As for myself, I am frank to admit that I was the worst ball player that ever broke into the Texas League. I managed to hold my job with the Dallas club for a while, but the race was too fast. It nearly ruined a good steamfitter. Afterward I played semi-professional ball occasionally in Michigan but gave up the game—and what was baseball’s loss was the plumbing trade’s game.”
After four seasons in the Michigan State League, he worked his way up to South Atlantic League, then the Virgina League, followed by International League and finally the Eastern League before his big-league career began.
He became well known—and versions of the story were told for the next two decades—for a call he made on August 31, 1909. In an Eastern League pitchers duel between the second place Newark Indians, with manager Joe McGinnity on the mound and Big Jeff Pfeffer pitching for the fourth place Toronto Maple Leafs.
The game was scoreless in the sixth inning with Newark batting:
The Detroit News said:
“Two were out and the batter (Joe Crisp) raised a high foul within the easy reach of both the Toronto catcher and third baseman.”
Toronto Third baseman Jimmy Frick and catcher Fred Mitchell both stopped when Newark “coacher” Benny Meyer yelled “I’ll take it.”
“The catcher backed away and the ball fell on the Dominion of Canada. Great glee broke out among the Newark contingent, who seemed apparently to conclude that the strategy of the coacher had won the batsman another chance to connect. But they reckoned without Mr. Byron.
“’Batter out!’ yelled the ump.”
McGinnity and “his entire team” came out on the field.:
Byron told the Newark manager:
“’He’s out on interference.’
“This set McGinnity fairly crazy and he frothed at the mouth, ‘But there wasn’t a man within 10 feet of Mitchell when he backed away,’ he screamed.
‘”He’s out on vocal interference; get into the field and finish the game.’ And Byron pulled his watch.”
Pfeffer and McGinnity both went the distance in a 13-inning game won by Toronto 1 to 0. McGinnity filed a protest with the league, but Byron’s decision was upheld.
Byron said the “secret of umpiring” was that “The umpire must keep his head and let the other man lose his.”
The umpire retired before the 1920 season saying he could make more money at his first love. Evans said of his seven seasons in the National League:
“Like the rest of the umpires, he had his faults. No umpire is infallible, so Bill made mistakes like the rest of us, but they were always honest mistakes.”
He said Byron “always looked trouble in the eye,” and “no gamer fellow” ever wore a mask.
Despite his contentious relationship with McGraw, Evans told a story about a game in New York. The previous day while making a ruling on a play involving fan interference, “the umpires were criticized” by reporters for their long deliberation. The following day:
“At an amusement park near the Polo Grounds, it was customary for an aviator to do a series of stunts. Usually the aviator paid the Polo Grounds a visit before landing. On this occasion, he flew unusually low over the grounds, so that it was easily possible to see him greet the big crowd with a wave of the hand. Evidently Bill Byron had given some thought of the criticism of the day previous unjustly heaped on the arbitrators for what was called a needless delay.
“Calling time and turning toward the New York bench, he addressed manager McGraw of the Giants thusly.
“If the ball hits the airplane, John, while it is flying over fair territory, it is good for two bases. If it lands in some part of the machine and stays there while flying over fait territory, the runners shall stop at the base last touched when such thing occurs. If the ball lands in some part of the machine while the machine is outside playing territory, it will be good for a home run. Play.”
Evans said McGraw “was shaking with laughter.
The press box was as well:
“Byron’s retort courteous to their slam had not gone over their heads.”
L. C. Davis of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch said of Byron’s retirement:
“It will always be a moot question whether Lord Byron was greater as a singer or an umpire. But whether singing or umpiring the fans agree that he displayed all the earmarks of a good plumber.”
After spending years as one of the loudest voices for the integration of professional baseball, Wendell Smith broke his own color barriers. He was the second African American member of the Baseball Writers Association of America–after Sam Lacy– and the first to have a byline in a big city white daily paper leaving The Pittsburgh Courier and joining the Hearst owned Chicago Herald-American in 1948.
Smith
Years later, William Rhoden quoted Smith’s widow Wyonella in his column in The New York Times regarding smith’s move:
“When he came to Chicago to write, he told the Hearst people. ‘I will not be your black writer. I’m not going to just write about blacks in sports. If you want me to be a sportswriter here, I’m going to right about all sports, and I’m going to do it fairly.’”
In 1963 he became a sports anchor, first at WGN-TV and later WBBM-TV in Chicago. He also began writing a weekly column for The Chicago Sun-Times; but never gave up his new crusade for the recognition of Negro League stars; in 1971 he made the case for Josh Gibson’s enshrinement in Cooperstown:
“He hit home runs higher and farther than any batter of his time, including George Herman (Babe) Ruth, whose feats are immortalized in the Hall of Fame.
“He was a big, strong, intelligent catcher. He was as magnificent behind the plate as any of his major league contemporaries, including Bill Dickey, Mickey Cochrane, and Gabby Hartnett, all of whom have been enshrined in the Hall of Fame.
“He played someplace summer and winter, spring and fall over a span of 16 years. He had the endurance and stamina of Lou Gehrig, who played in 2130 consecutive games from 1925 to 1939, a major league record. Gehrig is in the Hall of Fame. He is not.”
Gibson
Smith said of Gibson’s presence in the batter’s box:
“When he planted his immense, flat feet in the batter’s box, bent his knees slightly and cocked his bat with the most muscular arms and hands in baseball, apprehension invariably seized the defenders in the field.”
Because, said Smith, ”There are no authentic records, unfortunately to substantiate the thunder in Josh Gibson’s bat, nor his skills behind the plate,” he turned to “reliable former teammates who were there with him,” and other contemporaries to tell his story:
Roy Campanella told Smith about the night Gibson hit three home runs off Andy Porter in Wheeling, West Virginia. Campanella told a slightly different version of the story than he had 12 years earlier in his book “It’s Good to be Alive:”
“’He hit three home runs that night,’ Campanella recently recalled, with a note of awe and excitement in his highly pitched voice. ‘Each one was farther than the other.’
“’There was a mountain there, a good distance behind the left field fence…His first drive landed at the bottom of the mountain. The next one landed dead center, and the next almost cleared the mountain. When he came to bat the fourth time, I said to Porter, ‘what are you going to do with him this time?’ He said, ‘I’m going to walk him. ‘And we did.’”
In the book, Campanella said Gibson hit four runs in four at-bats, with each being longer until the fourth cleared the hill.
Bill Yancey told Smith about another Gibson three-home run performance, this one in New York:
“He walloped three that day and one of them was the quickest home run I ever saw. It was out of the park before the outfielders could turn their heads to watch it. It landed behind the Yankee Stadium bullpen, some 500 feet away. He didn’t loft it, he shot it out of there.”
Alex Pompez the one-time owner of the Cuban Stars and the New York Cubans, then a scout for the Giants, and had just joined Smith as a charter member of the Hall of Fame’s Special Committee on the Negro Leagues, told a story about a game at the Polo Grounds:
“Dave Barnhill was pitching for the Cubans. There were two on in the ninth and we were leading 3 to 2. Showboat Wright [sic, Dave “Showboat” Thomas] our first baseman, called time and walked to the mound. ‘Let’s walk him’ he said to Barnhill.
“Barnhill as a cocky pitcher. He refused (the) suggestion and insisted on pitching to Josh. He threw Gibson a curve ball and Josh hit it in the top tier of the left field stands. The last we saw the ball was when it went through an open door up there and disappeared.”
Pompez
After Pat Scantlebury gave up three home runs to Gibson in another game, he told Pompez:
“I pitched him high the first time and he hit it out of the park. So, the next time I pitched him low and he hit that one out, too. The third time, I pitched him tight and it followed the others out. When he batted the fourth time, I started to roll it to him, but instead I walked him.”
Smith also sought out Gibson’s sister, Annie Mahaffey and Ted Page who was “closer to Josh than any other player.”
Smith visited Mahaffey in her home in the Pleasant Valley neighborhood on Pittsburgh’s Northside. He noted “Strangely, there are no pictures of Josh Gibson,” in her home:
“The resemblance between Annie Mahaffey and her brother, Josh, is striking indeed. She has the same round, brown face. Her gentle smile is contagious.
“’He’d come here whenever he was in town,’ Annie recalls with a note of pride in her voice, ‘and he’d have us laughing about the funny things that happened on the road. He would sit here and talk, have a sandwich maybe, and just keep us amused with his stories. He loved life, Josh did.’”
Page said:
“He’d never talk about himself. I never heard him say one thing about himself that was intended to impress someone.
“He was extremely modest. I roomed with him in this country and South America and got to know him well. If he hit four home runs in a game—which he did many times—you’d never know anything about it if you were getting your news of the game from him. He’d never walk up to you and say, ‘Well, I hit four of ‘em today.’”
Page
Page said Gibson was the opposite of Satchel Paige:
“When Satch pitched a no hitter, he told the whole world about it. We got little or no space in the daily papers, so he’d sit around and those third-rate hotels we lived in, and in taverns and restaurants, and tell everybody about his achievements. Everyone would gather round Satch and he’d spin tall tales for them, and they’d go away laughing and talking about him. Josh would never do that.”
Sportswriters, Page said, “always complained that he wouldn’t open up and talk about himself.”
Gibson’s sister said “he talked baseball all the time at home. He talked about other players and how good they were, and how many games were won or lost on certain types of strategy…Josh used to laugh so hard when telling a story he’d shake all over.”
Page said Gibson “loved baseball, never got bored with the game nor the terrible conditions we had to tolerate at times.”
Gibson also did not join his teammates “playing cards or meeting girls,” Page said:
“Josh was seldom with them. We’d go to an ice cream parlor or some other harmless place and talk baseball.”
Gibson’s sister and Page saw his reaction to baseball segregation differently.
Mahaffy said:
“There were all kinds of racial problems in those days, but Josh never let them get him down. If they ever bothered him, he never said so. He never once mentioned the fact that the color bar in the majors was a terrible injustice. He laughed off most of the things that happened to him.”
Page said:
“Josh never talked about the organized baseball ban against us. But he was always aware of it and it finally killed him. He kept things to himself, but if you knew him you could feel his resentment. We went to see a lot of big-league games and when he saw players who were inferior to him, he became sullen and the bitterness seemed to just ooze from him.”
Both agreed that Gibson didn’t drink until his final years.
After Jackie Robinson signed, his sister said:
“This was just about the time he started having dizzy spells and blackouts. He also became a heavy drinker.”
The dizzy spells, said Page, caused him to “stagger and stumble, whenever he looked up,” and “Josh’s drinking was a symptom of his affliction. He knew his time was short and that he’d never get a break in the majors…He tried to submerge his misfortune in drink.”
Smith closed:
:”The deadly curse that had been upon Josh Gibson all his life finally claimed him…Eighty days later Jackie Robinson became the first Negro player in modern big league history.
“That was 23 years ago.
“Josh Gibson should be immortalized in Cooperstown.
“What price, Hall of Fame?”
Less than a year later, Gibson was enshrined along with Buck Leonard; Smith died nine months later, he was 58. He was awarded the JG Taylor Spink Award 21 years after his death.
Oliver Perry “O. P.” Caylor’s death from tuberculosis in October of 1897 at age 47 took one of the most important chroniclers of 19th Century baseball.
The New York Herald, his last paper, said:
“Mr. Caylor’s fight for life was pathetic in its boldness.”
Caylor
Caylor, who had left the paper a month before his death to go to Winona, Minnesota to seek treatment from a “throat and lung specialist” in a sanitarium, engaged in a “one-sided” struggle, “but on his part it was heroic.”
The paper recounted Caylor’s final visit to the Polo Grounds before he departed for Minnesota:
“(Arriving in) a carriage, accompanied by his wife, and though scarcely able to reach his old seat in the stand, his courage never faltered.”
Caylor had been ill for several years. William “Billy” Norr, the sports editor of The New York World had a morbid wager with Caylor, Sporting Life said:
“(Norr) had made a bet with Caylor every New Year’s Day for seven years that he (Caylor) would die in twelve months.”
The 33-year-old Norr died seven weeks before Caylor after contracting Typhoid Fever:
“Caylor chuckles between hemorrhages, tickled with the idea that he has outlived Norr and is $35 ahead of the game.”
The tragedy of Norr’s early death was compounded when, just a week after the New York Giants and Brooklyn Bridegrooms played a benefit game for his family, his widow, Olga Norr, took her own life, The World said:
“So generous and so greatly beloved had her husband been that it was intended she should never need. She took her life because her heart was broken.”
Caylor’s friends and family were briefly optimistic about Caylor’s chance for recovery:
“He reached (Minnesota) as he predicted he would, and lighthearted letters were returned. He advised that he had gained in both strength and flesh…buoyed with the hope as he was that his fight for life might after all be successful.”
In a letter to friend in St. Louis, Caylor said the specialist he was seeing , “speaks confidently of pulling me through.”
The illness had robbed Caylor of his voice in the last months of his time in New York, but “he wrote column after column in his old-time forcible style, clearly defined, and then smiled at his friend who were astonished with the determination shown and the strength he displayed.”
Of Caylor’s legacy, The Herald said:
“Mr. Caylor was never rugged, but his blows for the welfare of the national game were those of a giant. Delinquent players were never given any quarter. Pitiless sarcasm in the face of abuse and threats of bodily harm were showered upon them, and reformation alone caused his suspension. He deemed it criminal to disappoint the public, and when the lapse of a player was due to his own folly his pointed allusions to the offending cut as a two-edged sword.”
He was, a, “Master of humor, he made giants appear as pygmies, but was quite as ready with words of praise and encouragement as he found them deserved.”
Al Spink of The Sporting News agreed with the assessment, and said that Caylor was unpopular among many players because of his style, but:
“The base ball world will sincerely mourn him, and he will be missed by all newspaper men, for he was a newspaper man in the truest sense. He was sincere in his though, he was above caprice or prejudice in his judgment, he was beyond the reach of corruption in all things. He made base ball more dignified, honorable, and more commendable to honest men by his thirty ears of labor in the legitimate field of sport.”
Francis Richter, the founder and editor of Sporting Life said:
“Hurlburt [sic, Hulbert] and Mills have no successors. There will never be another Harry Wright in our day, nor a successor to Anson when he, too, shall retire. No player is in sight to take up the mantle of the inimitable Latham; no magnates to duplicate the brilliance of Spalding, Reach, Young, Soden, and Byrne, all grown gray in the service of the king of sports; no writer to equal the brilliance of our dead brother Caylor.”
On June 4, 1913, Joe Jackson hit a home run in the second inning of a game at the Polo Grounds with the New York Highlanders.
The New York Tribune said the blast, off a Russel Ford Spitball that cleared the roof of the rightfield grandstand was:
“(S)et down immediately as the longest hit on record at the grounds.”
Jackson
The ball ended up in Manhattan Field—the previous Polo Grounds which was sold and renamed when the new stadium was opened in 1890
The New York Sun said it was “the longest hit ever made in New York.”
The New York Times was more measured:
“The hit, while perhaps not the longest ever made at the field, has not been approached in this section of the Polo Grounds since the new stands were built.”
The discussion of the longest home runs hit was taken up by infielder turned sportswriter Sam Crane in The New York Journal, who declared Jackson’s:
“(The) longest hit ever secured in a ball game.”
He also reported that the “small boy” who retrieved the ball from Manhattan Field was rewarded with a “$10 bill.”
The Baltimore Sun and a previous generation of fans and players were not going to accept Jackson’s homerun as the longest:
“(T)he present generation, cocksure that everything exceptional happening on the diamond nowadays could not have been eclipsed in the good old days, is wrong again.”
The paper said the longest hit ever made, “happened in 1894” off the bat of Dan Brouthers and lined up five witnesses; Brouthers, his Baltimore Orioles teammates John McGraw and Hughie Jennings, Tom Murphy, the groundskeeper at Oriole Park, and “Abe Marks, scorecard man.”
Brouthers said of his home run:
“I remember distinctly hitting a ball over the right field fence at Baltimore…This hit was a line drive clearing the fence by about 15 feet…I have talked to groundskeeper Murphy regarding this matter, and he says the fence was fully 500 feet from the home plate.”
Brouthers
Brouthers also said he had, “made several other hits that I know equaled the one made by Jackson, particularly one in Boston, one in Columbus, one in Springfield, and one in Raleigh.”
And while Brouthers insisted he did not “wish to detract in any way from the credit due Jackson,” he said he was present at the Polo Grounds when Jackson hit his home run and told an entirely different story about where the ball landed–and who recovered it:
“I saw the hit, and the ball did not go entirely over the grandstand but landed on the top. I had a man go up and get the ball and bring it to Jackson, who gave him 50 cents for it.”
McGraw conceded that he didn’t see Jackson’s hit, but said:
“I have never seen a hit to equal the one made by Brouthers in Baltimore.”
Jennings said, “Jackson’s (hit) isn’t in it at all,” compared to Brouthers.
Jennings also said the Baltimore home run was not Brouthers’ longest; he said the one Brouthers mentioned in Raleigh—also in 1894 on the Orioles “training trip.”
The Sun’s comparison of Brouthers’ homerun versus Jackson’s–also shown is the landing spot of Frank Baker’s homerun in the 1911 World Series
The scorecard vendor, Abe Marks, declared Brouthers’ hit “has never been equaled.” He claimed the ball, after clearing the right field fence, “never stopped until it hit something sticking up in Guilford Avenue.”
All agreed that the ball rolled a long way after it landed and ended up resting from 1300 to 1500 feet from home plate.
While Jackson received his home run ball (or two of them) on the day he hit his long drive, it took Brouthers more than a decade to get his.
When a reunion was held for the 1894 National League Champion Orioles in Baltimore in 1907,
The Sun said the ball had been in the possession of “S.C. Appleby…who is one of the hottest of Oriole fans,” Appleby gave a speech at the reunion held at the Eutaw House, one of Baltimore’s finest hotels, and “toss(ed) it back to Dan Brouthers across the dining table.”
Brouthers said of the presentation:
“This ball went so far that I never expected to see it again. Now that it has been given to me, I shall ever keep it as a memento of my connection with the champion Orioles.”
Hugh Fullerton wrote about pregame “jockeying…that count(s) for much in a championship race” for The Chicago Herald Examiner in 1919.
Fullerton
Both stories Fullerton told in the column were likely apocryphal—at least in terms of the participants mentioned—but like many Fullerton tales, worth the retelling.
The first involved two Fullerton story favorites, John McGraw and Rube Waddell:
“I remember one day getting to the Polo Grounds early. The Giants were to play, and Rube Waddell was expected to pitch against them.”
The two could not be the participants if the story is based on an actual incident given that Waddell pitched in the American League from 1902 until his final game in 1910 while McGraw was managing the Giants.
“A batter was at the plate driving out flies and in right center John McGraw was prancing around catching flies and throwing the ball back to the catcher, it is not fun to watch a fat man who has retired from active survive shag flies in the outfield.”
Rube
Fullerton said McGraw’s long throws to the plate “were not fun” to watch, but “McGraw kept it up patiently and gamely.”
At this point in Fullerton’s story, Rube Waddell walked towards McGraw in the outfield.
“Rube looked interested, stopped and talked.
“’I’ll bet you five you can’t outthrow me,’ snarled McGraw in response to Rubes ‘kidding.’
“Rube grabbed the ball and threw it to the plate. For ten minutes they hurled the pill, then McGraw reluctantly admitted that the Rube could outthrow him and paid over the five dollars.
“Rube went to the slab and lasted the greater part of the first inning. McGraw had laid the trap, had kidded Waddell into making six or seven long distance throws and had won a ballgame thereby.”
The second story was about another Fullerton favorite, Bugs Raymond:
“There was a bunch of petty larceny gamblers who hung out around the West Side park in Chicago for years looking for the best of it, who got caught in one of their own traps once.
“The St. Louis club was playing in Chicago and poor Arthur Raymond, better known as ‘Bugs,’ was to pitch a game. The gamblers knew Bugs and knew his weakness.
“Just across the street from the park was a bar kept by a fine little Italian, as grand a little sportsman and a square a man as ever lived. In some way he overheard the plot of the cheap sports, which was to waylay Raymond and invite him to drink. If he started drinking, they were to lay their bets.”
Fullerton said the plan unfolded:
“Raymond was greeted by a bunch of admiring ‘friends,’ who led him to the bar more than an hour before game time. The ‘friends’ invited him to have a drink, and the proprietor winked at Raymond. Bugs was not as foolish as many believed. Without a minute of hesitation, he grabbed the cue as the bartender reached for a bottle a bottle labeled gin. The crowd drank. Bugs invited them to join in, but they insisted he was the guest of honor.
“In the next half hour, he swallowed more than half the contents of the bottle. The plotters exchanged winks and an agent was rushed out to place the bets, Meantime, the others remained to buy more for the Bug. He swallowed three or four more doses and finally said:
“’Say, fellows, I’ve got to break away. I’m pitching today.’
“With that, he lifted the gin bottle, poured all the contents into a tumbler, drained it off at one gulp and walked out on them.”
Bugs
Of course, said Fullerton
“Raymond beat the Cubs in a hard game. It was all over before the pikers realized that the little saloon man had given Raymond a bottle of plain water instead of gin and that Arthur had gone through with the play.”
Like the Waddell story, the facts don’t square with Fullerton’s story; Raymond never beat the cubs during the Cubs in Chicago during his two seasons with the Browns.
When King Kelly Jumped from the Boston Reds to the Boston Beaneaters in 1891, The Baltimore World was not pleased:
King Kelly
“Kelly, in his jump from the Association to the League, has but proven conclusively that he is just as contemptible as the people had about decided him to be. He may be a great ballplayer, but his record this season doesn’t show it. He is a loud-mouthed, conceited ass. That’s about the build of Kelly, and the Association will not die over the loss of him.”
Annoying Vendors, 1891
After spending five seasons in the major leagues from 1881 to 1885, Dasher Troy was a fixture at the Polo Grounds—he had a liquor concession on and off from 1891 through 1900. During his first season at the ballpark, The New York Sun did not approve:
Dasher Troy
“The refreshment privilege at the Polo Grounds is held by John Troy, an ex-ballplayer. He maintains a bar under the grandstand and also one in the rear of the men’s stand. The only part of the grounds in which waiters are permitted to peddle beer is on the bleachers. Some weeks ago one of the directors of the club compelled Troy to close the bar in the men’s stand and cease peddling beer in the bleachers.
“By some means he managed to resume and is now working in full blast. In the covered stands, a score of sandwich, peanut, and soft drink men are constantly at work, and annoying spectators by their continuous bawling. It is strongly asserted that the management can not afford to maintain these nuisances to the annoyance of its patrons.”
Clarkson’s Scouting Report, 1887
A reporter for The Detroit Free Press briefly eavesdropped on John Clarkson providing fellow pitcher Mark Baldwin with a scouting report on the Wolverines while the White Stockings were in Detroit for three game series in July of 1887:
“Clarkson was overheard giving Baldwin some private lessons: ‘Now,’ said Clarkson, ‘there’s Hardy Richardson. Just send ‘em shoulder high at the outside corner of the plate, or a little beyond, and he’ll go after ‘em every time.’ Baldwin made a careful note of this. ‘Then there’s Dan Brouthers,’ continued the craft instructor: ‘Never give him a low ball.’ ‘Will he hit a low one?’ inquired Baldwin. ‘Will he hit it?’ said Clarkson: he’ll kill it.’
“This way of foreshadowing the fate of a regulation league ball unwisely delivered to the bat seemed to impress Baldwin powerfully, and he then and there resolved never to give big Dan any low ones. At this point the teacher and his pupil carried on the lesson in softer tomes, and the remainder of the interesting kindergarten session was lost to the world.”
Idah McGlone Gibson was the most famous female journalist of the early 20th Century; in addition to publishing several books, she wrote for the syndicated Newspaper Enterprise Association, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Evening Herald, and The Toledo Blade.
Idah McGlone Gibson
She also interviewed New York Giants Manager John McGraw twice, five years apart.
Their first meeting took place in New York shortly before the end of the Giants’ pennant-winning 1912 season. McGlone told her readers:
“McGraw is surrounded by more ‘buffers’ to keep the public from him that Maude Adams (a notoriously press-shy actress), who is never interviewed, and that’s going some.
Gibson and McGraw in 1912
“Neither his telephone number nor his home address is obtainable unless you reach one of his close friends, and at the Polo Grounds. he is never on view until you have passed all the police force and plain-clothes men.”
McGlone said former Giant turned New York attorney, John Montgomery Ward provided her with an introduction to McGraw.
“It was after the game that I saw the Giants’ manager, well-groomed, well-dressed, well-mannered. McGraw was evidently at peace with himself and the world…He is the most serious ballplayer I ever talked to. He seldom smiles, and told me that he put one on to order when he had his picture taken with me.”
Gibson asked how McGraw thought the Giants would fare in the World Series against the Boston Red Sox:
“Of course, we are going into the game to win, not because of any glory attached to it, but because it is our business. However, I feel that I shall be able to live through the winter if we lose the world’s championship. I am not able to get up that high-water mark enthusiasm which exhilarates the fans to whom the game is a pleasure and not a business.”
She also asked McGraw about the biggest source of gossip surrounding his ballclub; the relationship between Rube Marquard, his 26-game winning pitcher and vaudeville star Shirley Kellogg—during August and September several newspapers published erroneous reports from Marquard’s mother that the couple had married:
“’Indeed, I don’t know whether he is married or not,’ he answered suavely, but his brown eyes narrowed and his lips came together firmly. ‘You know I have nothing to do with the private lives of my men.’
“Marquard’s name and love affairs, however, did not bring a rosy glow to the manager’s face, and I imagine McGraw has helped make the course of true love run a little crooked, as ‘the Rube’ has lost the jump to his fast ball since his reported marriage.”
Rube Marquard
McGraw touted his other pitchers, telling Gibson that the greatest pitching performance “he had ever seen was in training camp last spring” when Jeff Tesreau and Al Demaree faced each other for 12 scoreless innings in an intersquad game in Texas.
Despite her fondness for McGraw, Gibson told her readers they “may trust a women’s intuition” and correctly predicted the Red Sox would win the World Series.
Gibson met McGraw five years later during a September series in Cincinnati, with the Giants on their way to another National League pennant. She said:
“I hope I have changed as little as he has in that time.
“His hair, the Irish hair that turns white early, has grown just a bit more optimistic—that is all.
“’Twenty-nine years is a long time to be in the game,’ he said as his eyes wandered over the field—‘longer than most of those boys can count their entire lives.’”
Gibson asked about temperamental players:
“In my nearly three decades of baseball I have learned one thing thoroughly—a good ballplayer must be temperamental, just as an artist, a musician, or a writer must have temperament.”
Gibson asked how he makes “a man’s temperament,” benefit the team:
“’By ignoring it,’ he answered. ‘I must make every man think he has no temperament, even while making him use that most desirable quality in a ballplayer to its fullest capacity.’”
McGraw refused to say which player on the team was the most temperamental, but offered to tell who was the least. Gibson said:
“’Yes, Mathewson is always to be depended upon. When he knows a thing is to be done he just does it. Some men play best when a team is winning and some play best when spurred by defeat. A baseball manager must not only be a good picker, but he must study each man individually and handle all differently.’
“’At the end of a season with a winning team you have to be more than ever on your guard. Every man is a bundle of nerves, drawn taut. At this time every little prejudice, every little idiosyncrasy, every little vein of superstition is laid bare and raw. You get to know your men better then than at any other time during the season.’”
McGraw and Mathewson
Gibson asked if the best ballplayers came from a particular nationality. McGraw said:
“’I cannot answer that. I think perhaps the Irish are the quickest thinkers and the readiest to take a fighting chance, but I would not like a team made up entirely of Irish. You must have temperaments like the German to ballast the Irish. Truly I think a winning ball team must be a melting pot of all nationalities. This year there are more Germans among the Giants than any other nationality and they are just as temperamental as any other but they don’t show it in just the same way.’”
Gibson did not make a prediction about the World Series as she had done five years before; McGraw’s temperamental Giants were beaten four games to two by the Chicago White Sox.
In August of 1918 Harry “Moose” McCormick returned to the United States from the front lines in France—he served in the 42nd Infantry, The Rainbow Division, and according to The Washington Herald “has been in the front line trenches for nearly six months.”
Moose McCormick
The former outfielder-pinch hitter, who played his final big league game with the New York Giants in 1913, was at the Polo Grounds to watch the Giants sweep a doubleheader from the Boston Braves, and he came to deliver a message; one that had come repeatedly from the general public, but not yet from someone within baseball.
McCormick told reporters that while baseball was hugely popular among the troops in Europe, the major leagues were not. The Washington Times said, under the headline:
Soldiers ‘Over There’ Sore on Baseball Players
“It may surprise the professional ball players of the United States to know that the American soldiers now fighting in France do not hold them in high esteem; that they do not scramble for news of how the big league races are going, and that they do not care whether (Ty) Cobb, and (Tris) Speaker, and (Frank) Baker are hitting .300 or 3,000.
“The fact that the ball players aren’t hitting in the big, big game across the water is the reason for this feeling.”
The Washington Times said McCormick, then a Lieutenant, “who had just returned from the shell-swept front,” and was in the states “under orders, the nature of which is secret.”
There were various reports as to why McCormick had returned.
The New York Globe said he had come home with “Wound Chevrons on his arm,” having received the badge after being “Mussed up considerably by a German shell.” The New York Tribune said he had been “Invalided home” suffering from “Shell shock.” The New York World said he returned with “A hacking cough caused by gas.”
McCormick told reporters:
“The feeling among the boys over there seems generally to be that the ball players haven’t acted on the level. The soldiers feel that there has been too much evasion, too much hanging back, too much side stepping by the ball players when other men, just as good, have given up paying places and gone into the big game. That seems to them the ONLY thing for real men just now.
“The boys are generally incensed over the statements they read to the effect that ball players have sought work in munitions plants and shipyards, where they can keep playing ball. They regard that as ducking, as a sort of dodging of the issue.”
McCormick said, so complete was the disgust with baseball that “Stars and Stripes, the soldiers’ paper, has stopped printing the big league scores and standings. That, it seems to me, ought to make baseball men, both players and owners, wake up.”
He said the men at the front were still “interested in baseball,” and “like to play ball,” but were having trouble getting enough baseballs:
US Soldiers play in France
“Governor (John) Tener sent me two every week, and they were worth their weight in gold. The soldiers get plenty of chance to play it themselves. They don’t take any interest in men playing it here anymore.”
McCormick, who would be promoted to the rank of captain by the war’s end, concluded that the consensus at the front was that America’s game had failed the country:
“The talk of the soldiers is that the ball players should have volunteered in a body and made up one big organization and gone into the country’s service to fight right at the start. That would have been a great thing to do.”
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