The Old Ball Game Page 5

  A few years later, just as Mathewson entered the majors, the pitchers were thrown a bone to even things up more, when it was decided that, before two strikes, foul balls must count as strikes. Home plate itself was changed to its current configuration—rectangle at the top, triangle at the bottom—and enlarged, so that, at seventeen inches across, it presented a target one inch wider than it had been. In a very real way, Mathewson came to play at exactly the right time for a pitcher, just as, two decades later, Babe Ruth would profit as a slugger when the spitball was outlawed and the balls themselves were juiced up. Baseball statistics are not quite as pure as the mandarins of the game would have you believe. The various eras are distinctly different from one another. The 1890s, without foul strikes, equates very nicely to the recent years, with steroids.

  But at least as radical as the rules changes was what happened to the very structure of the game. First, after the 1899 season, the National League—which had been the only major league for some time—rid itself of three of its weakest sisters: Louisville, Washington, and Cleveland. A fourth franchise had to go, and clearly it could not be New York, even if the Giants had been at the bottom of the standings along with the artless Colonels, Senators, and Spiders. Instead, even though Baltimore had finished quite respectfully in fourth place and succeeded at the box office, and was, too, barely removed from its legendary epoch, the Orioles got the death card.

  The reason was that Baltimore, always a branch town, had sold out its franchise to Brooklyn ownership before the start of the ’99 season. Such was syndicate baseball. The Bridegrooms, after finishing a dismal tenth in ’98, then simply plucked Ned Hanlon from Baltimore as its new manager, plus snared three twenty-game winners as well as Kelley, Keeler, Jennings, and “Big Dan” McGann, a slugging first baseman. Renamed the Superbas, Brooklyn then promptly jumped nine positions to win the ’99 pennant. Among other things, this positively infuriated Andrew Freedman, who didn’t think Brooklyn should even be allowed in the league any longer because, when Brooklyn lost its status as a city and was folded into New York as a borough in 1898, this meant that New York had two teams, and National League rules stipulated only one per city. But nobody took Freedman’s whining seriously, and he began to scheme for the ultimate in syndicate baseball, wherein all the teams in the league would be owned by one cartel. Unable to pull that off, he became even more penurious, so that the team young Christy Mathewson would soon join grew all the more bereft of talent and unloved by the populace.

  On the other hand, given what scraps their Brooklyn owners had left them, the Orioles’ fourth-place finish in ’99 was extraordinary. Specifically, it was a spectacular achievement by the rookie twenty-six-year-old manager McGraw, whom Hanlon had tapped to succeed him. The Orioles actually gave the Superbas a run for their money right into August, even as McGraw’s team was called The Leftovers, The Castoffs, or The Orphans. Tom Murphy, the groundskeeper, formed the name MCGRAW in white posies over by the Oriole bench, and Baltimore fans so took to McGraw’s minions that the team actually made a slight profit in ’99. Not only that, but such attractive scrappers were the Birds that they led the league in road attendance. But never mind. Even though Baltimore was the sixth-largest city in the nation, the syndicate folded the franchise so that the National League could be reduced to a more manageable eight clubs. So off went McGraw to St. Louis for the 1900 season, to pick up his ten thousand dollars in mad money and consider his long-term prospects.

  And sure enough, soon enough, Ban Johnson came calling. He was ready to bring large eastern seaboard cities into his Western League, christen it the American League, and make it not only a big league challenge to the National, but decency’s darling. Johnson’s teams raided the established National League, and about seventy-five players jumped—or, rather, in the argot of the time, they “kangarooed out.” Cleverly, Johnson had his invading troops steer pretty clear of Pittsburgh. That was the smallest city in the National League, so by allowing the strength of the league to flower by the Monongahela, it diminished interest in the franchises in the larger cities. Johnson was a smart cookie. The Pirates dominated the National League until McGraw was able to build up the Giants.

  The ideal managerial model for the new league was the strait-laced Connie Mack, who took over the Philadelphia franchise. Mack looked to a relatively new source to stock his Athletics— colleges. Most particularly, he signed a farmer who had graduated from Gettysburg College, Eddie Plank, a left-handed pitcher who would become the mainstay of his staff. He also offered that fifteen hundred dollars to young Christy Mathewson, whom Freedman had dumped back into the tidewater, at Norfolk, and when Mathewson accepted the fifty-dollar advance, he tacitly became a Philadelphia Athletic.

  Meanwhile, Ban Johnson was after McGraw to manage the new American League team that he wished to place in Baltimore. Obviously the profane McGraw did not fit into Johnson’s template for a civil, upstanding, rather Victorian American League, but Johnson needed Baltimore, so Muggsy became a necessary evil. On November 12,1900, Johnson arrived in Baltimore, dining there on considerable amounts of champagne and pheasant with McGraw and Wilbert Robinson, who were then duly awarded pieces of the franchise. The Baltimore Orioles were back in business, with John J. McGraw as manager. When the season opened with a parade, the Baltimore Shooting Association carried complementary banners that read: FAREWELL, NATIONAL LEAGUE SYNDICATE BASEBALL AND MERCENARY METHODS and WELCOME, AMERICAN LEAGUE, HONEST BALL, AND SPORTSMANLIKE METHODS.

  Perhaps never before or since would Muggsy be so on the side of the angels. Ban Johnson himself threw out the first ball, McGraw was presented with a huge basket of roses, and, when he came to bat the first time, the grateful throng gave him a three-minute standing ovation. They knew it was Muggsy who had gotten Baltimore back into the bigs. He responded by belting a double off the right-field fence. Moreover, the whole American League was an instant success, drawing 1,683,000, only a couple hundred thousand less than the established National League—which has, ever since, been known in sports-writer argot as the “senior circuit.”

  Part of the reason for the American League’s immediate success was that it seemed, well, more American. That is, the league’s franchise antecedents were in the Middle West—where four of its teams were still located: Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Cleveland—and its players tended to appear to be more wholesome heartland Protestant farmboys compared with the National League’s Irish Roman roustabouts. This genealogy played into Ban Johnson’s claims of more genteel play.

  Germans were by far the largest non-English-speaking group of immigrants in the U.S. at that time. They tended to move to the west and, notwithstanding the Teutonic warlike images we are all used to by now, the German-Americans were not fond of boxing. Rather, they took first to bowling, where their camaraderie, gemütlichkeit, and love of beer were best served together. Indeed, the way German immigrants bowled was to have three teams compete against each other. This way, on a rotating basis, while two bowled, one was always available to step up to the bar and guzzle suds.

  But, like the Irish, the Germans also quickly took to the American national sport. St. Patrick’s Day club games between German and Irish immigrants were common in many cities in the latter part of the nineteenth century. To the ire of the Irish, too, the Germans were much more graciously accepted by the established English-Americans. The German newcomers were not nearly so denigrated, even though a German accent was long a staple for vaudeville comics—the most famous being the Dr. Kronkheit character of Smith & Dale.

  Baltimore itself was an eastern seaboard outpost for German immigrants, with two score breweries. (One of its main downtown thoroughfares was, in fact, German Street, although this would be changed to Redwood Street when the U.S. went to war with the Hun in 1917.) So the town was more than a good demographic match for the new American League. The Orioles drew 141,000 that inaugural season, which was no great shakes, but the franchise lost only a little money. But then, the Orioles were a fairly ord
inary team, and they were bedeviled by injuries. McGraw, in fact, was credited with a superb job in guiding such a nondescript crew home to a slightly better than .500 finish. His personal reputation as a manager only grew. He also batted .349 himself, even though he was effectively finished as a regular ballplayer in August when he reinjured a bad knee. He would come to bat only 195 more times in his career.

  Worse, though, Muggsy began to butt heads with Ban Johnson on a regular basis. His best hitter was a handsome devil named “Turkey Mike” Donlin, who had kangarooed out of St. Louis, where he had been a teammate of McGraw’s the year before. Turkey Mike—so called because, it was said, he could strut even while sitting down—was simply irremedial, and was in the middle of a melee on August 21 that escalated into a full-scale riot in a game against Detroit. Although McGraw, who was nearly lame at the time, stayed at the side of the umpire, Tommy Connolly, protecting him from the marauding crowd that Donlin had incited, Muggsy’s star pitcher, “Iron Man” McGinnity, had already stomped on Connolly’s feet and twice unleashed great rivers of tobacco juice into the ump’s face. Connolly forfeited the game to Detroit, and then Johnson barred McGinnity for life.

  McGraw, overruling his own doctors, who had told him to keep his knee immobilized, went to Chicago, petitioning Johnson personally, and the two men momentarily buried the hatchet. McGinnity apologized and was reinstated, but if it was a brief lifetime suspension for him, it was also no more than a temporary armistice between Johnson and McGraw. President Johnson had surely already decided that the American League would profit with both McGraw and Baltimore jettisoned. It was only a matter of time.

  In this lawless interlude for baseball, Mathewson, meanwhile, had found his way back to the Giants. When Freedman discovered that the collegian had kangarooed out to the Athletics, he threatened Mathewson with banishment from the game, and the kid, unsure of his position, even as several all-stars jumped to the new league, decided he better stick with New York. He felt terrible about taking Connie Mack’s fifty bucks bonus, though, and made Freedman promise he would repay the Philadelphia manager. Only years later did Mathewson discover that Freedman had reneged, so then he sent Mr. Mack the money.

  Freedman, of course, had no idea what a prize he had salvaged. Mathewson’s return to the Giants in ’01 was a complete turnaround. The debutante who had been hit hard in every appearance the year before was suddenly the ace of the staff. He won his first game against the Superbas 5–3, allowing only four hits and two walks while striking out eight. It was a tough setting for young Mathewson, too, for it was the home opener, with a huge turnout of ninety-eight hundred. “It was the same old baseball crowd,” the Times reported, “never behind with its advice and always ready to applaud a good play.” The Catholic prefectory band played, and the fire commissioner threw out the first ball. The Superbas were sure they could rattle the college boy, but midway through the game, Ned Hanlon told his troops to put a cork in it. It was obvious that rather than upsetting him, Mathewson was feeding off the razzing. Somehow, Matty had tamed his freak pitch and grown up, both, overnight.

  At this time the favored verb to describe what pitchers did was “officiate.” Well, this day Christy Mathewson really officiated for the first time. He won his next seven decisions, too, and on July 15 he officiated a no-hitter against St. Louis. No-hitters were so rare that their unique quality really wasn’t yet appreciated. “The collegian let Donovan’s men down without a hit,” was how the Sun summed things up, blandly. The Times didn’t even get it, merely referring to his “excellent pitching.”

  Mathewson was so much better than anybody could have imagined that Andrew Freedman actually gave him two suits in mid-season as a bonus. Mathewson’s record tailed off somewhat as the dismal Giant season wore along, but that was more a function of the failures of the whole rotten team than it was of him, officiating. He finished all but two of the thirty-eight games he started, throwing five shutouts and posting a 2.41 earned run average. On a team that won a mere fifty-two games, Mathewson won twenty (losing seventeen).

  Meanwhile, in Baltimore, as this season of 1901 wore down and McGraw limped around on his bum leg, he heard plenty about the Giants’ young star in the other league. Maybe he even remembered getting a hit off him in St. Louis the previous year. Muggsy didn’t forget much, and he especially liked tall pitchers and college men.

  At this time, the nation suffered a great tragedy, though. President William McKinley was assassinated in Buffalo, and on September 14, 1901 (September ’01s are ominous months for the U.S.), Theodore Roosevelt, the only president ever born in New York City, was inaugurated. It was barely three years since he had had his uniform custom-made at Brooks Brothers and gaily gone off to charge up San Juan Hill in Cuba. Now there were already genial reports of the soldiers halfway round the world, in the Philippines, teaching naked natives how to play the American national sport.

  The United States had become something of an empire despite itself, and New York was surely the hub of this strange new indefinable international conglomerate. The buildings kept flying up, higher, and the immigrants kept pouring in. And, whatever his affection for Baltimore, it was apparent that Muggsy had outgrown the Monumental City and the Diamond Café. In fact, in many respects he was more the Little Teddy than he was the Little Napoleon. Among other things, they had both lost a young wife. But the tragedies in Muggsy’s life were, finally, mostly behind him.

  By contrast, Matty’s all lay ahead.

  SIX

  One of the few loyal Giant fans was a long-faced thespian named DeWolf Hopper. He loved baseball no less than marriage, for he was a regular at the Polo Grounds and five times entered into the estate of holy matrimony—on the last occasion with a struggling young actress less than half his age who took his name. That was Hedda Hopper, who became more famous as a Hollywood gossip columnist. Anyway, long before that development, DeWolf Hopper had begun reciting a poem. He started almost immediately after it had originally appeared in print, in the San Francisco Examiner of June 3, 1888. He orated it first at Wallack’s Theatre in New York and never stopped, wherever he was. “How many times can best be numbered by the stars in the Milky Way,” he opined in 1924.

  The poem, of course, was “Casey at the Bat,” which, most appropriately, was subtitled “A Ballad of the Republic.” It was written by a young Harvard man named Ernest Thayer, who never wrote anything else of any consequence in his life. “Casey at the Bat” is generally considered to be the best-known American poem, ahead of Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees.”

  Unlike Thayer, who was a genuine crank, Jack Norworth, author of “Harvest Moon” and “Meet Me at Apple Blossom Time,” had never so much as seen a baseball game when, one fine day in 1908, while riding on a train into New York, he glanced out the window and saw a sign that read: BASE BALL TODAY—POLO GROUNDS.

  Immediately, Norworth dashed off four stanzas of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” and carried them down to Tin Pan Alley, where he found a musician, Albert Von Tilzer, who had likewise never seen a baseball game, and had him scribble out a tune. After the National Anthem, other patriotic hymns, and “Happy Birthday,” “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” is probably the most familiar American song that there is.

  Curiously, the great American baseball poem and the great American baseball song share two things. First, both feature a Casey. There is mighty Casey (he was given no first name) who strode to the plate (and to his sad, tragic destiny) with ease in his manner, and then there is Katie Casey, who is identified as the young lady who wishes to be escorted to the park, there to enjoy the crowd and partake of peanuts and Cracker Jack. Second, the poem and the song both have a negative ending. Not a home run, not even, mind you, a scratch single. But no: the worst. Mighty Casey strikes out, just as Katie Casey, who is baseball mad, knows that there are “one, two, three strikes you’re out at the old ball game.”

  Perhaps this is not so odd. As baseball apostles are forever fond of pointing out, even the best hitters make
out two out of every three times. For all the sappy references about how perfect a game baseball was for America, maybe the fact that it was simply so hard to succeed at was its most salient appeal. Following that, perhaps it has always been easier for the pitchers, even the worst of whom get most batters out, to see the game more benignly than the batters.

  Anyway, Christy Mathewson said: “Baseball is always played out in the sunshine, where the air is pure and the grass is green, and there is something about the game . . . which teaches one to win or lose as a gentleman should, and that is a very fine thing to learn.”

  While John McGraw said: “In playing or managing, the game of ball is only fun for me when I’m out front and winning. I don’t give a hill of beans for the rest of the game. The man who loses gracefully loses easily. Sportsmanship and easygoing methods are all right, but . . . once a team of mine is on the diamond, I want it to fight. Namby-pamby methods don’t get much in results.”

  In any event, as 1902 began, both McGraw and Mathewson were caught up in wretched seasons that would, soon enough, bring these two opposite characters together. First: poor young Matty. Impossible as it might seem, the Giants descended to yet another lower rung, posting the very worst record in either league. Manager George Davis had escaped Freedman, jumping to the Chicago White Stockings. In his stead, Freedman chose a former Philadelphia sportswriter, Horace Fogel, but the second baseman, Heinie Smith, had the ear of many of his teammates. It was chaos, and the newspapers were merciless. The Giants were now called “positively the rankest apology for a first-class ballclub that was ever imposed upon any major city.”

  The team itself was riven along Protestant-Catholic lines, which was then closer to a Sunni-Shiite breach than what passes for division in Christianity today. Fueled by an organization known as the American Protective Association, there remained a great deal of anti-Roman Catholic sentiment in the land, and the Irish on the team were naturally defensive about prejudice, real or perceived. It reveals a lot about religious feelings at that time to know that after his success in Manila Bay—“You may fire when ready, Gridley!”—Adm. George Dewey was the most admired man in America; however, when he, a widower, married a woman who had been raised Protestant but turned Catholic, then did he instantly fall out of favor with much of mainstream America.