The Cincinnati Red Stalkings (10 page)

The rest of us stayed. Although we were getting wet, the cool spray was refreshing after all the hot weather we’d been suffering through. And it had been getting worse lately. This morning’s papers reported that Midwestern towns were pleading for shipments of ice from other parts of the country, and in Chicago the heat wave had claimed seven lives yesterday alone.

We sat transfixed by nature’s cleansing outburst until Edd Roush broke the silence by saying, “Looks like they ain’t never gonna get that damn trial going.” Jury selection had finally gotten under way in the Black Sox trial, but it was progressing slowly. Only three jurors had been seated in three days, and now the defense was rejecting all Cubs fans from the jury pool, claiming they would have “an inherent prejudice” against White Sox players.

“Wish to hell they’d get it over with and give us back our title,” Neale said. The burly outfielder stomped his foot on the ground for emphasis.

“Get it over with which way?” I asked. “Guilty or innocent?”

Roush turned his gloomy face to me. “Innocent, you sap. If they’re found not guilty, that means we won the championship fair and square.”

“No way they can find them guilty anyway now,” Neale put in. “Not without the confessions.” In one of those peculiarities that occasionally afflict Chicago legal proceedings, the grand jury confessions of Joe Jackson, Ed Cicotte, and Lefty Williams had somehow disappeared from the files of the State’s Attorney.

“Even if they get off, it won’t—” I stopped myself in mid-sentence. Why say what we all knew: the 1919 championship was tainted—
baseball
was tainted—by what had happened. A jury verdict wouldn’t change that.

“We beat ’em ’cause we were better than ’em,” insisted Roush.

“You really don’t think it was fixed?” I asked.

Neale snorted. “Don’t be stupid. Of course it was.”

Roush said, “Hell, everybody
knows
it was fixed. But that ain’t what won it for us. We’d have beaten them anyway ’cause we were the better ball club.”

“Them gamblers sure found that out,” said Neale. “Wouldn’t have tried to get us to ease up otherwise.”

“What do you mean?” As far as I’d heard, the only players approached by gamblers were the White Sox.

“After we whipped the Sox in the first two games,” Neale explained, “the odds went way down. So some sports approached a few of our players, trying to get us to ease up and maybe let the Sox win a game or two.”

“To get the odds back up,” I said.

Neale nodded.

“If them gamblers were as smart as they think they are,” said Roush, “they’d have played it straight and bet on us to win. We’d have taken care of winning the Series without any help from them. Would have saved themselves whatever they paid the Sox, and there wouldn’t be all this trouble now.”

“Who’d they approach on the Reds?” I asked.

Roush’s eyes drilled me like flying spikes. “There’s some things we keep ’tween ourselves. If certain things get out, they might get turned around, and next thing you know, somebody’s accusing one of
us
of taking a dive.”

“He’s part of the team now, Edd,” Neale said.

“Not that team he wasn’t.”

Neale persisted, “Neither was Rixey, and you told him about it.”

“Yeah, well, Eppa don’t get traded every year. Who knows where this boy is gonna be next season and who he might tell.” He spat on the dugout floor, adding to the puddle produced by the rain. “I’m going inside till this lets up.” With that, Roush trotted off to the clubhouse. The team’s star was known for four things: he used a bigger bat than Babe Ruth, he “retired” every year to avoid spring training, he had an uncanny ability to go back on fly balls in center field, and he could be every bit as ornery as Ty Cobb.

I said to Neale, “If you don’t want to tell me, that’s all right. I don’t want you getting in hot water with Roush or any of the others.”

“Never mind Edd,” he answered. “He just got a bug up his ass about that championship. We all do. Nobody gives us credit for
winning
it. They all say the Sox
gave
it to us. Hell, we busted our humps a whole season to take the pennant, then the series against Chicago, and it’s like we didn’t do nothing to earn it.” Neale shook his lowered head. “Anyway, we all knew about the gamblers. Edd himself is the one who brought it out in the open. One of them bastards told him some fellows on our club already sold out, and that Edd might as well go along, too. Edd went to Pat Moran about it, and we had a team meeting before Game Five. Moran asked if anybody else was approached. Hod Eller was scheduled to pitch for us that game, and he said yeah, a guy on an elevator tried to hand him five thousand-dollar bills. Said he told the guy to go to hell. Moran gave Eller the go-ahead to pitch, and Hod threw himself a shutout. He won the last game of the series, too.”

“The gambler who talked to Roush told him some of the Reds were already in his pocket,” I said. “Do you know who they were?”

“I don’t believe there were any at all. Bastard probably made it up—you know, make it sound like everybody’s in on it anyway, so you might as well get your piece of the action.”

“Jeez.” If the gamblers’ efforts had succeeded, there could have been two teams trying to lose the same World Series.

“Well, the way I figure,” said Neale, “is we would have won that series anyway—we were the better ball club, I’ll always believe that—and we
did
end up winning, so everything worked out.”

Yeah, worked out swell. Real fine exhibition of the national pastime.

“By the way,” Neale added. “I hit .357 that series.”

“I know you wouldn’t sell out,” I said. But I also remembered that Shoeless Joe Jackson, who admitted taking the gamblers’ money, hit .375.

I remained in the dugout long after Neale and the pitchers retreated to the clubhouse, just watching the rain and thinking of the news stories I’d read this morning. Two world’s champions: the Cincinnati clubs of 1869 and 1919. But what a difference between the glory of ’69 and the scandal fifty years later.

W
e never did get the game in on Thursday, and continuing rains wiped out Friday’s as well. On Saturday, we had to pay for the respite, plus interest. The heat was back, more searing than it had been all summer, and we had to face the first-place Pirates in a doubleheader to make up one of the washed-out games.

I played every inning of both contests, substituting for the injured Larry Kopf. I got his spot in the batting order, at least; his shortstop position was taken by Curt Stram, who shifted over from second base, and I took Stram’s place at second. The rookie crowed about getting the glamour position, telling me that my arms and legs were too old to cover the ground at short. I pointed out to him that I had a fist exactly the same age as my limbs, and it was quite capable of knocking out his front teeth.

By the end of the opener, a pitching showpiece with Eppa Rixey outdueling Wilbur Cooper 1–0, Stram was no longer gloating. Pittsburgh’s batters had kept him moving, driving ground balls to his left and right. He booted two of them, but neither of the errors caused any damage. My running was done on the basepaths, with three singles in four at bats, plus two stolen bases.

Neither team was in condition to play another game; we were all sapped by the heat, even those who remained on the bench. It was as if the steamy air was leaching energy out of our pores. So, sure enough, we all had to do more running in the second game as both pitchers kept giving up bunches of base hits. Hod Eller, who’d been denied his shine ball when baseball tried to clean up the game last year by banning such pitches, was making his second start of the season for us. No longer permitted to apply talcum powder to the ball, though, he couldn’t get the Pirates batters out; he was tagged for six runs in the first four innings and was relieved by Rube Marquard, who didn’t fare much better. Still, we kept the game close by teeing off on the deliveries of Pittsburgh’s Jimmy Zinn. I contributed three more hits to the barrage, capped by a triple that seemed the longest run of my life. We fell short at the end, the Pirates taking a 9–7 win and a split of the twin bill.

In the locker room afterward, we were finally able to collapse. The clubhouse was almost completely silent; now and then one of the players would curse the heat, guzzle a bottle of soda pop, or peel off a wet uniform, but hardly any of us had the strength left to walk all the way to the showers. I was the first to make the trek, buoyed by my performance on the field. I’d gone 6-for-9 on the day, with no misplays, while Curt Stram went hitless and committed four errors.

After dressing, I shifted my attention from running after baseballs on Redland Field to chasing ghosts from the Union Grounds. I’d had another idea of where I might find information on Dick Hurley.

Inside Redland’s main entrance was the concession area, where construction was under way to remodel a section of it for the exhibit room. Lloyd Tinsley and another man in a business suit were there. The lanky fellow, who looked familiar, stood aside quietly while Tinsley barked orders at several workers in overalls who were tearing out one of the counters.

The Reds’ business manager turned from the construction workers to me. “Ah, Rawlings. Let me introduce you.” He gestured at the other man. “This is Nathaniel Bonner of the Queen City Lumber Company.”

I shook hands with Bonner. “Yes, I remember seeing you at the memorial for Ollie Perriman. How did you ever make a bat that big?”

Bonner was slightly bent at the waist, as if accustomed to having to lean down to talk with people not as tall as he. “Special equipment and skilled craftsmen,” he said proudly.

“No job too big or too unusual for us to handle.” His hair was inky black, maybe dyed, and his cheeks hollow. He looked a little like a young, beardless Abraham Lincoln. And, like Lincoln’s, Bonner’s appearance would have benefited greatly from some facial hair.

“Rawlings is going to be at the grand opening,” Tinsley said to Bonner. I was happy to hear that; according to the papers—which were giving the exhibit more and more publicity—Edd Roush and Heinie Groh had agreed to attend, so I thought I might no longer be wanted.

To me, Tinsley said, “We were just going over how to display that bat. It would look most impressive standing up, but the ceiling’s too low.”

“My preference,” said Bonner, “is to put it on a couple of sawhorses right in the middle of the corridor here. People can walk around it up close; even touch it if they want.”

Make it easier to read
Queen City Lumber Company
on its side, too, I thought.

“Well, I suppose you’re right,” Tinsley said. “But if it’s out in the open, they won’t have to pay to come into the exhibit room to see it.”

“It might get them interested in seeing the rest of the stuff,” I said. “You know, like a free sample.”

“Well, there’s no alternative anyway,” Tinsley decided. “If it won’t fit inside, it will have to be out here.”

With that issue settled, Bonner and Tinsley briefly discussed the arrangements for moving and mounting the bat, then Bonner left for his lumberyard.

Alone with Tinsley, I said, “I came by to ask if I could take a look at the collection again.”

He hesitated. “I suppose that’d be okay. I’ll have to let you in, though—we keep the office locked now.” After giving the workers a few more instructions, Tinsley started toward the stairwell and I followed.

As we walked upstairs, I asked, “Still no date for the opening?”

“No. We’re going to wait until after the trial; wouldn’t want the opening to be overshadowed by what’s going on in Chicago. And that’ll give us time to finish building the exhibit room, and try to arrange for George Wright and Cal McVey to come to the opening—they both came for the 1919 World Series. Don’t know if they’ll be up to making the trip again, though.”

The way the trial was proceeding, Tinsley would have all the time he needed to try to persuade them. In the last three days, only one more juror had been seated.

We’d reached the second floor and started down the hallway. “Mr. Bonner’s going to use the time to have some more bats made up,” Tinsley went on. “His company’s giving free bats to the first thousand kids who come to the exhibit.”

“Bet they all have ‘Queen City Lumber’ printed on them,” I said.

“Something wrong with that?”

“I don’t think Ollie Perriman would have liked it. He was putting together a
shirne
—something about memories and history.” I shrugged. “Now it’s business—charging admission to the exhibit, advertising a lumber company ...” What’s next, I thought, having ballplayers sell autographs? “The bats will probably be made from scrap, and break the first time a kid tries to hit a ball with them.”

Tinsley stopped and gave me a hard look. “Come into my office for a minute.” He led me into a room a few doors from Perriman’s. It was smaller than I would have expected, and plainly furnished.

He sat down behind a desk covered with stacks of paperwork, and pointed me into one of the room’s other two chairs. “You don’t like baseball being ‘tainted’ by financial interests, I take it.”

“No, I don’t. It’s the
game
that matters. Seems whenever it’s treated like a business, things get messed up.”

“Does your salary mess things up?”

“Well, no, fans buy tickets to watch me—the team—play. So that’s a fair deal.”

Tinsley slapped his palm on a stack of papers. “I am tired to death of ballplayers who complain about the
game
becoming a business at the same time they’re drawing salaries bigger than almost anyone else can ever earn.” His mouth was partly agape, and those big teeth of his exposed; for an instant, I had the bizarre fear that he might bite me.

To my relief, he took a deep breath, then patted the papers and eased back in his chair. “Don’t mean you in particular. Edd Roush holds out every spring and refuses to play in exhibition games. Then there was Heinie Groh demanding to be traded to New York. Must be nice to pick when and where you’re going to play while somebody else has to make sure there’s money to pay you, and feed you, and put you up in decent hotels, and arrange for Pullmans. Well,
I’m
the one who takes care of those things.”

“I don’t mean—”

He waved off my interruption. “Let me tell you something. I get the same salary if there’s 5,000 people in the stands or 20,000. I try to make sure we draw good crowds because it’s my job. If I could have been a player, I would have; but I got a head for business not baseball, so I do what I can as well as I can. Same with the vendors who sell the hot dogs and the clerks who sell the tickets. You think there’s one of them who wouldn’t rather be in your shoes, out on the field? But they can’t. So we all do our part; there’s more to a ball club than the nine men on the field.”

“I never thought about—”

“Same with this exhibit,” Tinsley cut me off. “If it draws people into the park, the gate receipts go up and the club benefits.”

“Don’t you get a share of the admission to the exhibit?” I asked.

“Yes, I do.”

That didn’t seem proper, somehow, but I couldn’t think of anything specifically wrong with it.

“Mr. Herrmann knows about the arrangement, and he’s given his approval,” Tinsley said. “It’s not unusual, you know. On some clubs, a coach’s wife might be paid to do the team’s laundry. In Chicago, William Wrigley sells his gum at the ballpark.” He stood up. “Well, like I said, I guess this has been bothering me for a while. Sorry you had to be the one to bear the brunt of it.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “Maybe I needed to hear it.”

When Tinsley unlocked the door to Perriman’s office, he added, “As for the exhibit, I put my own money into helping Ollie buy some of the items he wanted. And I’ll be paying expenses if McVey or Wright come, as well as advertising and the construction downstairs. If the admissions are enough to cover those expenses and earn me a little extra, I won’t apologize for that.”

“No reason you should,” I said. It was foolish of me to insist on the game being kept “pure” because it never had been. Not on the professional level, anyway. As Ambrose Whitaker had told me, there had been a lot of people working hard to make the Red Stockings financially viable, even though the players were the only ones being paid.

Once inside, Tinsley asked, “You looking for anything in particular?”

“No, just thought I’d poke around,” I lied.

He left me alone, and I went directly to the desk. Perriman had mentioned having the Red Stockings score books. In the top drawer, I found them: two books, one dated 1869 and the other 1870.

I sat down and started leafing through the pages, beginning with the first entry for 1869. The names of the players were written in elegant script. They were almost the only thing I could understand, because the scoring system wasn’t like anything I’d seen before. There were records of “muffed balls,” “foul bounds caught,” and “bases on slow handling.”

But it was the players’ names I was interested in anyway. After July 2, the name “Hurley” didn’t appear in another lineup. I even went through the 1870 book to make sure he hadn’t returned to the team that season, and found no mention of him.

The last couple of pages in the 1870 book contained detailed entries of attendance, gate receipts, and expenses. Lloyd Tinsley was right, I thought. As long as there’d been professional baseball, business considerations had been part of the “game.”

Finally, I looked again at the July 1869 entries. Dick Hurley had played with the “picked nine” at the homecoming game on July 1. And he disappeared from the record book the very day that Sarah was supposedly murdered.

It was Margie’s suggestion to have dinner here, and like so many of her ideas it was a good one. The Zoo Clubhouse had a fine restaurant that served full-course turkey, steak, or lake trout dinners for $1.75. The location was convenient—I’d simply taken the trolley to meet her after her final show—and the view from our balcony table overlooking the gardens was splendid.

As we started on the iced consommé, I told Margie all about the doubleheader. One of the few things I regretted about her working now was that she couldn’t see me play at the ballpark. But I recounted every one of my at-bats and most of the fielding plays in enough detail so that she didn’t miss much.

Soon after the main dishes arrived—Margie having ordered the trout while I opted for the turkey—the atmosphere changed, and not for the better. The nightly opera performance began at the nearby band shell. The orchestra wasn’t bad, but the squalling of the vocalists was an awful thing to hear. Zoo animals joined in, adding a chorus of howls and grunts to the din, but unfortunately they weren’t loud enough to drown out the singers.

The tone of our conversation changed, too. “I have a bad feeling about the Carnivora House,” Margie said.

“You don’t like the job?”