The Cincinnati Red Stalkings (12 page)

I
had dinner ready and on the table when Margie came home from the zoo Tuesday night.

Her eyes showed a mixture of delight that she wouldn’t have to cook and fear that I might have.

“It’s safe,” I reassured her. “I didn’t make any of it myself.” I’d only reheated some of Margie’s latest batch of burgoo and picked up sandwiches from Kroger’s to go along with the stew.

“That was sweet of you,” she said, and gave me a kiss. “Oh, and I have a surprise for you. ” Margie went to the parlor stand near the front door, where she’d put her handbag. She came back with the afternoon edition of the
Cincinnati Post.

I thanked her, but was a bit puzzled. Why was a newspaper a surprise?

“Page three,” she said.

I turned to that page, and there was Dick Hurley. An article about him, anyway.

Described by the
Post
reporter as “the missing sock” of the old Red Stockings, Hurley had arrived in the Queen City last night. According to the article, he was to be a guest at the opening of the exhibit honoring his old team, and Lloyd Tinsley would be hosting a dinner for him on Wednesday night.

By Wednesday evening, I was hoping that meeting the old Red Stocking would redeem what had been a miserable day.

I couldn’t get to see Hurley earlier in the day because Pat Moran had called a morning practice. The Reds had lost three straight games, each defeat worse than the one before, so the manager ordered an extra workout session. Such practices generally accomplish little; no major leaguer is going to improve his fielding by catching fungoes or sharpen his hitting by teeing off on batting-practice tosses. About the most those exercises can accomplish is bolster a player’s confidence. At least they couldn’t hurt—except for today. A foul line drive during batting practice nailed Hod Eller in the eye, and a collision between Greasy Neale and Rube Bressler in the outfield left Bressler with a broken thumb.

The afternoon was worse, at least for me. Spittin’ Bill Doak, the ace of the St. Louis Cardinals and one of only seventeen pitchers who would be allowed to use the spitball until their careers were over, struck me out the first three times I faced him. Since the Saturday doubleheader against Pittsburgh, I’d gone 0-for-14 at the plate.

At least after the game, I did wangle an invitation to the dinner from Lloyd Tinsley. He thought it would be a good publicity angle to stage a meeting between me and baseball’s first professional utility player.

Evening finally came, and I walked into the plush lobby of the Sinton Hotel, dressed in my best suit and with a hundred questions that I wanted to ask Dick Hurley.

I spotted Lloyd Tinsley and Fred Hewitt, a sportswriter for the Post, standing near a gaunt, elderly man seated in a leather wing chair. His dark eyes blinked and darted like a pigeon’s. His hair was no longer the black that I’d seen in the team portraits. Sparse strands of white hair were combed over a scalp blotched with liver spots; a trim fringe of snowy beard covered his chin, and a mustache, twisted and waxed at the tips, lined his upper lip. The mustache was the only elegant feature about him. He was wearing a winter suit of brown tweed that was at least a decade out of style; for him to be wearing it this time of year meant it was probably the best he had—and the jacket was fraying at the cuffs. Recent years had not been kind to him, I thought.

As I approached, I heard him say to Hewitt, “Disappear? I don’t know why anyone would say that. I played for the Washington Olympics in ’72, I’ll have you know, along with my old Cincinnati teammates Asa Brainard and Fred Waterman. If the Olympics hadn’t folded by the end of May, who knows what I might have gone on to.”

“Where
did
you go on to?” the reporter asked, scribbling in a notepad.

“Played a little here and there,” Hurley answered. “Then I went back home to Pennsylvania. Worked as a cooper, making barrels. Later moved to Indiana.”

Tinsley interrupted to introduce me to the former Red Stocking, and Hewitt went to find the
Post
photographer. Now I was nervous about meeting Hurley—and hoping that he hadn’t heard about my performances on the field the past few days. It turned out I needn’t have worried; he hadn’t heard of me at all, although he graciously—and unconvincingly—pretended that he had.

We didn’t get a chance to talk before the photographer came and put Hurley and me in a pose shaking hands. I felt like a big shot; this time I was one of those who’d be getting his name in the paper for going to an event. I’d even get my picture in it!

Nathaniel Bonner and a few others who liked to have their names published arrived, then Tinsley ushered all of us into the dining room; Garry Herrmann, unable to attend, would pick up the tab, he said.

To my surprise, I was seated next to Hurley, and the reporter was on the other side of him. I expected Tinsley or Bonner would want the choice seats, but as the dinner proceeded, I realized that they weren’t interested in talking with the man; to Tinsley, Hurley’s function was merely to garner some publicity.

During the first course, Hewitt asked a few more questions, mostly about famous contemporaries of Hurley’s. When you’re a utility player, many of the questions you get are about other, more famous, players you might have met.

Hurley kept saying, “Oh yes, I remember them well”—but in the same doubtful tone as when he’d met me in the lobby.

Hewitt then asked, “Tell me about that tie against Troy.”

The old Red Stocking dutifully recounted the story of the infamous game with the Haymakers in Troy, New York. Gamblers had bet heavily on Troy to break the Red Stockings winning streak. When the score was tied 17-17 in the sixth inning, and the gamblers began to fear a loss, the Haymakers withdrew from the field in order to protect the wagers. Troy claimed a tie, but the game was officially awarded to Cincinnati. There were a couple of things I noticed about Hurley’s tale. One was that there was no personal perspective to his account; it sounded like something he’d read. The other was that he claimed to have witnessed the game—although from reading the score books I knew that the match had been played in August, a month after he’d vanished.

The story appeared to satisfy Fred Hewitt, though. He scribbled a little more, then closed his notebook and concentrated on the meal.

“Did you get in the game?” I asked Hurley.

“No, no. Harry went with the regular nine. But I was ready and willing.”

I was starting to have doubts about Mr. Hurley’s memory. “Why did you leave the team before the end of the season?”

He stammered, then said he’d had a better offer to play elsewhere.

“I’ve been interested in the homecoming celebration that was given the team in ’69,” I said. “Can you tell me what it was like?”

“Homecoming ...” He absorbed himself in his baked potato for a moment.

“Yes, it was the beginning of July, after the Eastern tour. There was an exhibition game and a banquet ...”

“Oh yes, of course! Wonderful time. Great fans in Cincinnati. No place else like it.”

I gave up, and followed Hurley’s example in paying attention to the food. I was feeling some of the same disappointment as when Ollie Perriman told me about the “1869” baseball being a fake. Then I tried again. “A few years later, you were with Washington, I heard you say?”

Hurley then talked in detail about his brief tenure with the ’72 Washington Olympics of the National Association, baseball’s first major league. His recollections of this team sounded authentic.

“You’ve really been a part of history,” I said. “The first professional team and the first professional league.”

He sat up a little straighter. “That’s right!” It didn’t seem that the thought had occurred to him before.

I tried once more to ask him about early July of 1869, but he deflected the question and talked instead about his later days as a cooper.

As he spoke, I thought of the stories I’d read in
Photoplay
magazine about secretaries who would sometimes go to Hollywood claiming to be royalty; they’d often be lavished with attention from the stars until they were found to be frauds. I had the feeling that’s what we had here. I looked across the table at Lloyd Tinsley talking with Bonner and wondered if he’d questioned the man sitting next to me to determine if he really was the missing Red Stocking. Then I realized it didn’t matter to Tinsley—all he needed was a name and photograph for the newspaper.

Suddenly I felt relaxed, not minding the deception. The old man next to me was doing no more than a million men have done in saloons and barbershops, telling stories about things they’d never really done.

Hurley and I soon fell into a comfortable discussion about the making of barrels.

By the time dessert came, I was quite content. The hunt for Dick Hurley hadn’t been a success, but it was now over for me. I would put 1869 behind me and concentrate on helping the 1921 Reds to finish higher than seventh place in the National League.

G
arry Herrmann pushed a sandwich across his desk to me. “Have a little something,” he said.

The “little something” was two thick slabs of black bread with about an inch of cheese between them. I didn’t think I could fit it into my mouth if I’d wanted to—which I didn’t. The cheese smelled like a cross between Limburger and a locker room full of sweaty ballplayers. “No, thank you,” I said. It was probably bad manners to decline Herrmann’s hospitality, but vomiting on his desk would be worse.

“It’s Liederkranz,” he said. “Very good. Go ahead.”

I declined the sandwich as well as the subsequent offers of liver sausage, Thuringian blood pudding, and a stein of foaming beer. He left them all on my side of the desk anyway.

Herrmann’s office on the top floor of the administrative wing of Redland Field was more like a beer garden than the headquarters of a baseball-club president. Sideboards abutted either side of his desk. One table held a variety of sausages, breads, pickles, potato salads, radishes, coleslaw, and a boiled ham. The other supported an even greater quantity of beverages—bottles of wine, buckets of beer, and amber liquids in crystal decanters. Under the table was an entire keg, and on a credenza behind Herrmann were glasses and steins of various shapes and sizes. All that was missing from the room was a singing waiter and an oompah band.

I remembered what Detective Forsch had said about the Reds’ president being part of the corrupt Boss Cox machine. To me, Garry Herrmann didn’t resemble a politician any more than his office looked like a place of business. His smiling florid face radiated what in Over-the-Rhine was called
“Gemütlichkeit,”
and his appearance was that of a dapper, middle-aged saloonkeeper: neat little mustache, hair slicked down and parted in the middle, and flashy clothes. Today he was wearing an emerald green suit with bright yellow crosshatching; a diamond stickpin was in his paisley tie and a pink carnation in the buttonhole of his lapel.

Herrmann took a long swallow from his stein, foam sticking to his mustache. The Eighteenth Amendment had never become law as far as Garry Herrmann was concerned; he had the wherewithal to obtain the very best of what Prohibition had outlawed and enough influence to avoid being arrested for it. “A glass of beer never hurt anybody,” he said. “And two glasses are bound to be a big help.” It was his motto, and he said it often.

“Can’t,” I insisted. “Game starts in an hour.”

He put the stein down, and his smile disappeared. “You won’t be playing.”

It wasn’t exactly unusual for me not to play, but if I was informed at all, it was typically the manager who told me, not the team president. Unless ... was I being traded? Sold? “Is something wrong?” I asked. Please don’t tell me I’m being released.

Herrmann squirmed in his seat and tugged at the sparkling rings on his fingers. Something was definitely wrong. He reached in a drawer, and I wondered what menu item he was going to pull out next. “It’s the photograph. And who’s in it with you.”

“Huh?” I assumed he meant the photo of Dick Hurley and me that appeared in this morning’s Post. “What’s wrong with having my picture taken with Dick Hurley?” I asked. “Mr. Tinsley arranged it.”

Herrmann pulled two black-and-white prints from the drawer and slid one of them over to me. “That gentleman with you is Rufus Yates,” he said.

I studied the photo. It showed me shaking hands with a man in front of the ballpark. I had no idea ... Then I recalled the fellow with the funny ear. “Oh! That’s a guy who stopped me a few days ago and asked for my autograph.”

“It was Sunday,” Herrmann said. “I looked at the newspaper headline.” In the photo, Yates and I were standing near a newsboy, but I couldn’t make out the headline of the paper the boy was holding up. Herrmann apparently noticed my puzzled look; from another drawer he pulled a large magnifying glass and handed it to me.

I checked, and saw that the newspaper was indeed the Sunday edition of the
Cincinnati Times-Star.
Its banner headline announced the peace agreement that had been signed between the Irish Republican Army and the commander of British forces in Ireland:

“But I don’t understand,” I said. “What difference does it make?”

Herrmann handed me the second photo, this one of the man handing me an envelope. “What was in the envelope, Mickey?” His eyes narrowed as he studied my response.

“I don’t know. The fellow didn’t have anything else for me to sign, so he handed me the envelope. Said it was for his boy.” I still didn’t understand. “What is this about?”

“Rufus Yates is well-known in this city. He is a petty crook—and a gambler.”

Jeez. Don’t tell me—

“I will have to pass this on to Judge Landis,” Herrmann said. There was a note of regret in his voice, which I thought was genuine. “You understand with the way things are right now, any possible”—he struggled to find a word—“
indiscretion
must be reported.”

“There
wasn’t
any indiscretion,” I said. “I had no idea who the guy was. He came up to me, told me to have a good game, and asked me to sign something for his boy.”

“Yes, well, about ‘having a good game’—you have not gotten a base hit since he gave you that envelope. It might appear that your meeting with this fellow had some effect on your play.”

How could I explain a slump? A four-game hitless streak wasn’t all that unusual for me. I wasn’t Ty Cobb or Edd Roush. Is that my defense, I thought, that I’m a lousy hitter? “He
didn’t
give me the envelope,” I said. “I signed it and gave it back to him.”

Herrmann paused to pour himself a small glass of schnapps. “I’m no Charles Comiskey,” he said finally. “If you’re an honest player, I’ll stick with you—as far as I can.” He leaned forward. “So tell me the truth: is there anything going on here with you and Rufus Yates?”

“No.
”

“Very well. I spoke with Pat Moran, and he hasn’t seen anything funny in your play. It simply hasn’t been very good of late.”

“I know, but I—”

“These photos will be on a train tonight to Landis. Until he decides what to do, you won’t be playing.”

“What about innocent till proven guilty?”

“Not in baseball. Judge Landis is in power now.” He sighed. For eighteen years, since the American League and National League made peace in 1903, Garry Herrmann had been head of the National Commission that ruled baseball. Since November, though, Judge Landis was the absolute boss of the game—a “czar,” the newspapers called him. “We have to cover ourselves,” Herrmann explained. “If we have any evidence of fraternizing with gamblers, we cannot allow you to play until we get approval from Landis.”

“What about the road trip Friday?” We were to head East for games in Philadelphia, New York, Brooklyn, and Boston.

“Better if you stay here,” Herrmann said, shaking his head. “The Judge will probably want to speak to you in person.”

“And until then?”

“We—you—wait.”

“Do I suit up for today’s game?”

“No. Go ahead home.”

What would people—my teammates—think? “What will you tell people?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Can we keep quiet about why I’m not playing—say I’m injured or something? Landis is gonna clear me. He has to—a picture of me shaking a fellow’s hand isn’t evidence of anything. But if it gets out that I’m under investigation, some folks will think I’m not on the square.”

“The handshake isn’t the problem. The envelope—and your poor performance afterward—is.” He downed the rest of the schnapps. “However, I see your point about being discreet. I think it’s only fair to keep this a private matter for now.”

We agreed that the public reason for my absence would be that I was seeing a doctor for headaches and vision problems. Then Herrmann repeated his offer of beer and his slogan about one glass and two.

I settled for one.