The Cincinnati Red Stalkings (11 page)

She jabbed her fork into the fish. “The job is fine. I love performing again, and talking with the children. It’s the cats. I don’t think they’re as healthy as they should be.”

“What’s wrong with them?” I didn’t like the idea of her working with lions or tigers that might be sick or injured; that’s when those animals could be most dangerous.

“They’re too skinny. I don’t think they’re eating right.”

“Did you tell the keeper?”

“I sure did, and that was a
big
mistake.” She rolled her eyes. “He told me that just because I was capable of standing next to an animal and looking pretty didn’t mean I knew anything about them.”

“How hard did you slap him?”

She let out a small giggle. “Wish I’d thought of that.”

I could see that she was imagining taking a swing at the man, and she looked to be feeling better just at the notion of it.

“Or you could feed him to the lions,” I said. “That should help fatten them up.”

Margie’s eyes showed that she liked that suggestion even better.

We finished eating quickly, then headed downtown to dance to jazz and try to get the opera out of our ears.

A
lmost two hours before game time, I hopped off the Liberty Street trolley and walked the three blocks up Dalton. Redland Field came into view directly ahead, and it struck me how well the park fit into the working-class neighborhood. Its plain redbrick walls matched those of the Findlay Street row houses and the factories on Western Avenue.

I was coming to realize that a ball club is part of a community; their fortunes are intertwined. I used to think it was simple: fans who supported the team bought tickets and those gate receipts paid the players’ salaries. But there’s more to a professional baseball franchise than what transpires between the foul lines. It was apparent here: the newsboys hawking papers to early; arrivals, the vendors setting up peanut and lemonade carts, the trolley conductors—they all depended on the games for their own livelihoods. We were in business together.

Automobiles darted around the trolleys and pedestrians, heading for the tiny parking lot next to the railroad tracks west of the park. Anyone arriving by car had to come early to get parking. When Herrmann built the park in 1912, he’d neglected to take into account that more people would soon be driving automobiles. Some enterprising residents near the field rented their front yards and driveways for parking—another venture benefiting from the games.

At the corner of Dalton and Findlay, some fans turned east to buy bleacher tickets at the Western Avenue office. Most of the others turned left toward the main ticket office, which was the direction I also went.

The administrative wing of the ballpark, on the southwest corner, housed the offices, ticket windows, and clubhouse. This was of a more elegant construction, with white-stone inlays among the bricks, arches over the second- and third-floor windows, and ticket windows that looked like castle turrets.

I was half a block from the entrance when a bareheaded man in a pumpkin-colored suit stepped toward me. “Rawlings! Mickey Rawlings!” He was of medium build and average appearance in every respect but his ears: one lay flush with his head, while the other stuck out at a right angle, giving him the look of an inquisitive terrier.

I stopped. “Yes?”

He offered his hand. “Helluva game you played yesterday!”

“Thanks,” I said, returning his grip. There was always close contact between fans and players in Cincinnati; we even had to go through the concession area filled with fans to get from the clubhouse to the field. But most of them didn’t stop me; they went for Roush or Groh or Rixey. This was new—and flattering.

He continued pumping my arm. “You gonna be in the lineup today?”

“Sure am.” I hoped.

“Well, you go get ’em.” He finally broke off the grip. “Say, can I bother you for an autograph? For my kid. He’d sure be thrilled.”

“Be happy to. Is he here?”

“No, home with the measles.” He dug into his coat pockets. “Damn. Nothing to write on.” Then he pulled a plain brown envelope from an inside pocket. “This’ll have to do I guess.” He handed it to me along with a pencil stub. “Could you sign this?”

I signed the blank envelope and gave it back.

“Thanks!”

“My pleasure.”

He shook my hand once more, then again wished me a good game.

As I suited up for the game, I was thinking that Cincinnati would be a nice place to live and hoping that I’d get to stay here for a while. I’d always moved around so much that I never got to feel part of a community. But the notion of settling down was becoming more and more appealing to me. Maybe I’d even make things a little more formal with Margie.

On the other hand, I could see one big plus to being on a different team: I’d get the chance to play
against
Curt Stram. His youthful pride had been wounded yesterday by the difference in our game performances, and he was now trying to salvage some of it. Throughout the pregame pepper, he kept riding me, pointing out that I was dependent on the starters getting hurt in order to have a shot at making the lineup. I didn’t let him get to me, though, and didn’t bother responding. For one thing, the odds were that someday we’d be playing on opposing teams; at some point he’d have to face me as I came sliding into second base—and he was going to lose that showdown. The other reason I let him chatter on was because what he said was true.

And it got me thinking. Dick Hurley had been in the same situation as me, but with far greater assurance of getting into games. Hurley had been the only paid substitute on the Cincinnati roster in ’69. Without gloves or other protective equipment, the starters must have suffered frequent injuries. So he couldn’t have left the team because he was no longer needed. In fact, three other names appeared in the score book for that year: Fowler, Bradford, and Taylor. All three played their first games in July, the same month that Hurley vanished.

Hurley had played in the exhibition game and attended the banquet on July 1, and that’s where the written record of him came to an end. The next day, according to the note I’d found, a girl named Sarah was murdered. The timing could have been mere coincidence, but I couldn’t ignore the possibility, however slim, of a connection.

After infield practice, I looked around and spotted Dave Claxton hitting fungoes to the outfielders. He’d been the only one to tell me anything at all about Hurley, so I thought I’d see if I could milk his memory a little more.

I walked past Dolf Luque warming up with Bubbles Hargrave, and out to Claxton. “Want me to hit a few?” I asked.

He handed me the bat and I knocked a fly to Edd Roush. “Couple weeks ago,” I said, “I asked you about Dick Hurley from the old Red Stockings. You said you thought him leaving the team had something to do with a girl. You remember what it was about a girl exactly?”

He let out a long breath. “Hell, that was ages ago. And whatever I heard was second- or third-hand.”

“But what
did
you hear?” I hit a towering fly that Greasy Neale had to go back on the terrace to catch.

“Well, one version was that him and the girl eloped; other version had it that he got run off by the girl’s daddy. Most of the stories favored elopement, as I recall. Him and some rich local girl ran off together.” A grin cracked Claxton’s face. “Decent folk didn’t approve of ballplayers in those days, but, same as now, the young ladies sure liked them.”

I hit the next one to Pat Duncan. So maybe there was no murder. Maybe Hurley and Sarah simply eloped. They could still be alive now, fawning over their grandchildren somewhere.

“But I wouldn’t lay no stock in them stories,” Claxton cautioned. “Like I say, I don’t know nothing about him for a fact, just what I heard.”

It was more than I’d gotten from any other source. “Thanks, Clax.” I handed him back the fungo bat.

It might have been better if I’d let the old coach bat for me in the game, too. I went 0-for-4 against Babe Adams, striking out three times. To make it worse, I also made three errors at second, the last one allowing the winning run to score for the Pirates.

On the way out of the park after the game, I wondered if the man I’d met earlier was still going to give my autograph to his son. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the envelope I’d signed was now in shreds, scattered on the ground with the ticket stubs and the peanut shells.

T
he smell of fresh-cut lumber reminded me of when I used to operate a lathe in a furniture factory, forming chair and table legs of oak and pine. Here at the Queen City Lumber Company, the scent of raw wood mingled with other aromas of the production process: a faint burning odor from the sawmill, where circular blades ripped through rough timber, smoke from the kilns, where finished boards were dried, and exhaust fumes from the trucks that hauled the wood from one area to the next.

The lumber company, in Camp Washington, about a mile north of Redland Field, was a sprawling complex of simple frame buildings and open-fronted shacks. Logs and cut lumber were stacked around the yard in no discernible order. Railroad sidings were west of the yard, with Mill Creek on the other side of the tracks; to the east, was the barren trench where the Miami Canal used to flow.

At ten-thirty Monday morning, I made my way to what looked like the main office, a long, two-story building off Spring Grove Avenue. It had fresher white paint than any of the other structures, and elaborate trim around the door and windows. I expected this would be my final attempt to find out what might have happened on July 2, 1869. If I got nowhere today, I would try to forget about it and concentrate on playing baseball for the current Reds.

Inside the office, I asked to speak with Nathaniel Bonner. A secretary checked, and relayed that Mr. Bonner would see me “momentarily.” Half an hour later, with still no sight of Bonner, I was thinking that in the future I should call ahead and make appointments. While I waited, I prowled the lobby, looking over the pictures displayed on the walls. Many were photographs of the company grounds, showing its growth over time, with larger buildings and higher piles of lumber in the later views. Others were portraits, made by both camera and paintbrush, of Josiah Bonner and Nathaniel, recording their changes through the years. In the early ones, Josiah was pictured as a dashing dark-haired figure with a fashionable mustache gracing his upper lip; Nathaniel, even as a young man, had the same general features as his father but in a less handsome package. One photograph, obviously posed, showed the younger Bonner wielding a double-headed ax as he chopped at a tree that was already felled; he resembled a young Abe Lincoln splitting rails. In a prominent place on the wall, framed behind glass, was a
Harper’s Weekly
woodcut of the great bat presentation in 1869. I was trying to identify the players in the drawing when I heard a door open and Nathaniel Bonner tell his secretary, “I’ll be at the north warehouse for a while.”

I checked my watch—quarter past eleven.

“Terribly sorry to keep you waiting,” Bonner said as he came up to me. “Having a shipment problem.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “I appreciate you taking the time to see me.”

He started toward the door, his tall figure hunched in a charcoal gray suit that hung loose on his frame. “Wish we could meet in my office, but I have to go over to one of the warehouses. Mind if we talk on the way?”

“Not at all.” He motioned for me to go first, and we both went outside. In the daylight, I noticed the scars that pitted Bonner’s hollow cheeks. “Actually,” I said, “I was wondering if I could speak to your father.”

“You could
speak
to him,” he answered, “but I’m afraid you wouldn’t get much of a response.”

We began to tread carefully over the bare-earth road, stepping over scraps of wood and kicking up the sawdust that coated everything like fallen snow.

“Why’s that?” I asked. During the ceremony at Redland Field, Bonner had said his father wasn’t feeling well, so I assumed the elder Bonner was still alive. But perhaps that was no longer the case.

“He’s ill. Been confined to Parkman Sanitarium in Bond Hill for more than a year now.”

“Hope he gets better.”

“Thank you, but I’m afraid it’s not likely. He’s suffering from dementia, and at seventy-five years old there’s not much chance of improvement.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“At least he’s not in any pain. It’s my mother that’s suffering the most. They’ve been married more than forty years—happy years—and now when she goes to see him, sometimes he doesn’t even recognize her. She’s been taking it hard; seems completely lost without him.” Bonner shrugged. “Sorry. I’m sure you didn’t come here to listen to me go on about family problems. What did you want to see my father about?”

“I’ve been interested in the 1869 Red Stockings. Ever since I met Ollie Perriman. At the ceremony for him, you mentioned it was your father who presented that original big bat to the team.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“He was also at the homecoming banquet for the team—”

Bonner interrupted. “How do you know that?”

“The newspapers published the guest list. Anyway, I wanted to ask him about that night.”

“You’re curious about a dinner half a century ago?”

“Not the dinner, a player: Dick Hurley. It’s the last time he was with the team. Never played for them again and seems to have disappeared. I was wondering if something happened at the banquet.”

“I wouldn’t know. I didn’t even know there was a ‘Hurley’ on that team. But then, I couldn’t name half a dozen players now on the Reds.” He flashed me an apologetic smile. “No offense. I just don’t follow the game. My mother is the baseball fan in the family.”

“That’s okay.” I was used to being unknown anyway. “Dick Hurley was the team’s substitute.”

An open truck rumbled past us hauling a load of window frames. It occurred to me that it was one of the few signs of activity I’d seen in the yard. I also noticed that the piles of lumber were smaller than they appeared in the photos from years past, and some of the sheds were empty.

“Well, I’d be happy to tell you what I do know about the banquet,” Bonner said. “My father spoke of that day often—it was one of the most important in his life.”

“How so?”

“It marked his entry into the most elite level of the Cincinnati business community. Some very influential men were members of that club.”

“I heard it was more of a gentleman’s club than a sports team,” I said.

“Indeed it was. William Procter and James Gamble were members. So was Andrew Erkenbrecher, who founded the zoo. And John Shillito, who had the biggest dry goods store west of the Alleghenies. The club was a wonderful means for the city’s young men to make business connections. And that’s what my father did. It was his idea to present the bat. He was only a young clerk with this company back then, but he managed to convince the owners that the donation would be good for business. And he was proven right. Got wonderful publicity for the company, and great contacts for himself. Company let him make the presentation, and he told me many of the city leaders congratulated him at the banquet that night. Soon after, my father was promoted. He worked his way up quickly, and eventually became president.”

“So he got involved with the club only because of business,” I said. “He didn’t like baseball?”

A look of distaste darkened Bonner’s features. “The game itself was dreadful. Played mostly by ruffians in those days. It was the glory that could be gained for a city that counted.”

“Or for a company.”

“That’s right.”

We stopped at a rickety warehouse. Bonner excused himself and went inside. I looked around the largely empty yard, thinking that maybe the younger Bonner was hoping to do what his father had—that by getting involved with the exhibit at Redland Field, he would give his business a boost.

Bonner came out a few minutes later, and said, “By the way, Mr. Tinsley told me about your comment regarding the bats we’ll be giving out. They
will
have ‘Queen City Lumber’ printed on them, and I’m proud of it. This company is part of the community, always has been. And I have a fondness for the baseball team, if only because of what it did for my father in the past. But you’re wrong about one thing: they will be good quality ash—wouldn’t look good to have kids breaking bats that we made.”

I wasn’t going to argue with him. I couldn’t. Business
was
part of baseball. Hell, it was industries that had given me my start, paying me to work easy jobs while playing for the company baseball teams.

I returned to my original interest. “Do you remember your father ever saying
anything
about Dick Hurley?”

“No. I doubt that he even spoke to the players. Like I said, he was there to make business contacts.”

At the main office I thanked Nathaniel Bonner for his time and left to go to the park. I couldn’t think of anything more to try. My quest to discover what had happened to Dick Hurley, or to a sixteen-year-old girl named Sarah from Corryville, was as likely to bear fruit as a pile of sawdust.