The Original Curse (17 page)

The ship sinkings were not part of a German invasion. There was no air assault, and there were no Mauser rifles. The attacks of late May and early June were the work of just one very efficient sub, the U-151, which was sent to America to lay mines off the coast and, when it was finished, went on a three-week rampage that hit 20 ships. But the heightened reaction to U-151 was revealing—rational Americans were afraid that the war “over there” would open a front over here. There was much to drive that fear. Americans had been spooked the previous year by the Zimmerman telegram, in which Germany recruited Mexico as an ally in war on America. German saboteurs and propagandists had been found to be working in the country (though not to the degree many claimed). After leaving his ambassadorship in Germany in 1917, American statesman James Gerard became a great force for fear in the nation. His story was adapted into a movie,
My Four Years
in Germany
, and in a speech he gave all around the country Gerard said, “The foreign minister of Germany once said to me, ‘Your country does not dare do anything against Germany, because we have in your country 500,000 German reservists who will rise in arms against your government if you dare make a move against Germany.’”

There were not 500,000 German reservists in the United States, but Gerard didn’t let facts muddle a rousing speech. Gerard continued: “I told him that that might be so, but that we had 500,001 lamp posts in this country, and that that was where the reservists would be hanging the day after they tried to rise. If there are any German-Americans here who are so ungrateful for all the benefits they have received that they are still for the Kaiser, there is only one thing to do with them. And that is to hog-tie them, give them back the wooden shoes and rags they landed in and ship them back to the Fatherland.”
⁵

Gerard’s speech was titled “Loyalty,” and it was emblematic of the mood of the nation. Legitimate fear of German invasion became distorted into rabid hatred of all things German. This was driven in part by domestic propaganda efforts, which were so successful that overzealous Americans were inspired to acts ranging from silly to bone-chilling, under the guise of loyalty. Schools dropped German from the curriculum, the Bismarck School in Chicago was renamed “Funston School,” sauerkraut was renamed “liberty cabbage,” and even German measles were called “liberty measles.” The statue of the writer Friedrich von Schiller in Chicago was painted yellow by vandals, and a statue of Goethe was put into storage for its own protection. One congressman from Michigan introduced a bill eliminating all American town names containing the word
Berlin
or
Germany
and replacing them with the word
victory
or
liberty
.
⁶
Books by German writers were burned publicly, and recordings of Beethoven and Bach were smashed.

Some expressions of loyalty went further. In May, Wilson had pushed the Sedition Act through Congress, making it illegal to “willfully utter, print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the government. Criticism became a crime. Everywhere Americans squealed on fellow citizens for making disloyal comments. John Anderson, of Quincy, Massachusetts, was riding on a train near Boston when he was overheard saying that the war in Europe was a family affair in which the United States should not be involved. Enraged fellow passengers “were at the point of throwing
[him] from the train.”
⁷
Instead, they turned him over to police at the next stop. When children trying to sell thrift stamps to Dr. Ruth Lighthall of Chicago were turned away, they told authorities that she said the war was one for capitalists. Lighthall confirmed that sentiment, added that she thought President Wilson a traitor—and she was sentenced to jail for 10 years for it.
⁸
Millionaire Rose Pastor Stokes was sent to jail for 10 years after making an antiwar speech in Kansas City. Respected film producer Robert Goldstein had his movie
The Spirit of ’76
seized because it showed British soldiers committing war atrocities—which should be expected in a patriotic movie set in the American Revolution. But the British were American allies now. Goldstein was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
⁹

Before the war, German-Americans were one of the proudest, most assimilated ethnic groups in the nation, especially in Chicago. History professor Melvin Holli notes that, before the war, “No ethnic group was so numerous in Chicago or the nation or had made such rapid and solid economic progress, dominating and monopolizing in many cases the middle rungs of the occupational ladder.”
¹⁰
But the spasm of patriotism that accompanied the war erased that. German-Americans became targets. Early in the morning of April 5, Robert Prager, a 29-year-old unemployed baker, was lynched by a mob of 350 in Collinsville, Illinois. Prager allegedly made a “disloyal” comment while seeking work at a local mine. A growing mob menaced him throughout the day and evening, finally tracking down Prager after midnight. Originally, the plan was to tar and feather him, but with no tar or feathers handy at that hour, the mob hanged Prager instead. Five men brought to trial for the lynching were found not guilty after the jury deliberated for just 45 minutes.
¹¹
The incident was a national disgrace. But, then, hadn’t Gerard promised the German foreign secretary that his countrymen would hang from American lampposts?

In the midst of the U-151 raids, Red Sox first baseman Dick Hoblitzell—himself partly of German descent—finally left the team to join the army’s Dental Corps as a lieutenant, to be trained at Fort Ogle-thorpe in Georgia. Attached to Fort Oglethorpe, Hoblitzell would have found an internment camp, one of three across the country that held Germans who had been living peacefully but were now held as enemy aliens. In that camp was another famous Bostonian, 58-year-old Dr. Karl Muck, the conductor of the Boston Symphony. Or ex-conductor.
Muck had been arrested in late March on the charge of being German (though Muck had Swiss citizenship). Muck allegedly refused to lead “The Star-Spangled Banner” at a concert in Providence and had been criticized across the country for it—though witnesses confirmed that Muck did play it. But Muck was German, he was suspect, and he was sent to Fort Oglethorpe.

If Hoblitzell had listened carefully when he arrived in Georgia, he might have heard the sounds of Beethoven’s Fifth coming from the jail. That’s because Muck wasn’t alone. Many of the nation’s orchestras were stocked with Germans, and Muck found so many musicians among his fellow prisoners that he started a Fort Oglethorpe orchestra.
¹²

The Red Sox started June in first place and headed on a long western trip, with stops in Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, and St. Louis. The team Hoblitzell left was not in bad shape. Ruth was out of the infirmary, healthy again. Hobby was the captain, but he had been injured and slumped under the mental strain of his impending army service. Stuffy McInnis had been playing out of position at third base, and when Hoblitzell left he slid over to his natural first-base spot. Fred Thomas, Class 1A and waiting for the call to war, took over at third. Hoblitzell’s captaincy went to Harry Hooper, who was batting .330, was popular with teammates and fans, had a good relationship with Barrow, and was suited for the job. Hoblitzell had already yielded his spot in the lineup—cleanup hitter—to Ruth, and his departure cemented Ruth’s place as the team’s top run producer.

Ruth’s stay in the infirmary did have a benefit. It forced Barrow to use one of the young pitchers he trusted so little—Sam Jones, who had gone just 0–2 in two big-league seasons. But without Ruth, Barrow was so desperate as to insert Jones on May 23, and Jones responded by allowing just one run in a complete-game loss to Cleveland. It was a good enough showing to warrant another start, and Jones beat Washington great Walter Johnson, 3–0, on May 29. This was quite a turn in Jones’s young career. He had been so deep on the Boston bench that, when the team reported for spring training that March, few noticed Jones hadn’t shown up. The Red Sox assumed Jones had been drafted by the army. He hadn’t, and, according to
The Sporting News
, “The team was at Hot Springs when owner Harry Frazee received a message from Sam which expressed itself thusly: ‘Forgotten
me altogether? Not worth a contract of any sort? If I am through, let me in on it.’”
¹³

Barrow’s confidence in Jones grew, and for a short time the Red Sox had pitching depth, a rare commodity in 1918. On June 6, Jones took the mound at Cleveland. Seated in the press box was 51-year-old Cy Young, baseball’s lifetime leader in pitching wins. As Young watched Jones, he lamented the lack of pitching around the league. When told the Senators resorted to giving some starts to Nick Altrock, their noodle-armed 41-year-old coach, Young “declared that if his arm were a little stronger, he would come back and try to pitch again himself.”
¹⁴
He probably could have. An inordinate number of pitchers were in the service of Uncle Sam. In his syndicated column, Reds manager Christy Mathewson wrote, “If the other big-league managers are having the same trouble I am, and I guess most of them are in the same boat, they must go to bed at night praying for some young hurler to rise up over night as a Moses to lead them out of their difficulty.”
¹⁵
For Barrow and the Red Sox, that Moses was Sam Jones. In that game against Cleveland, Cy Young himself watched Jones hurl a five-hit shutout.

The rise of Jones provided an opening for Ruth, who had become fond enough of hitting that he did not want to pitch anymore. After returning from the tonsil problem, he kept himself off the mound by complaining about arm injuries of dubious legitimacy. Even with Jones pitching well, the Red Sox slumped to a 3–5 start on their June trip—one of those wins was Dutch Leonard’s no-hitter in Detroit—and the surprising Yankees moved into a tie for the top spot in the AL. That’s when Boston rolled into Chicago’s South Side for a four-game series against the defending champions, a series that should have been of the same magnitude as Cubs–Giants. But the White Sox were engulfed in turmoil. Jackson was gone to the shipyard, Byrd Lynn and Lefty Williams were preparing to follow, and Red Faber enlisted in the navy. It was an opportunity for the Red Sox. Joe Bush opened the series with his best performance of the year, yielding two hits in a 1–0 win. In the second game, Faber—making one last start—shut down Boston, 4–1. But Carl Mays and Leonard dominated the last two games with shutout wins, and over the four games Boston outscored Chicago, 15–4. The South Siders were booed by their home fans. It was so windy on the final day of the series that the 1917 AL pennant the White Sox had hung in the outfield ripped and had to
be taken down for repairs. “The Red Sox are putting bigger holes in it than the wind did,” the
Globe
noted.
¹⁶

Boston split four games in St. Louis to wrap the trip 9–8, good enough to keep them slightly ahead of the Yankees. Leonard was a tough-luck loser, 2–1, on June 16, in what would be his last appearance for the Red Sox—he bolted from the trip early and suited up for the Fore River shipyard team. So much for pitching depth. And, perhaps, so much for Babe Ruth’s brief career as a hitter. Ruth had pitched just one game since his silver nitrate incident. Leonard’s departure, though, meant Ruth would head back to the mound. “No longer will [Ruth] be called upon to fill utility roles,” the
Boston American
stated, “playing first base one day and the outfield the next.”
¹⁷
Well, maybe.

For players, the work-or-fight order could be seen as a loyalty issue. The patriotic mania that surged through the nation made conditions such that adequately supporting the war was almost impossible, especially for public figures. Being behind the U.S. cause wasn’t enough; buying Liberty Bonds wasn’t enough; donating to the Red Cross wasn’t enough. You had to be doing something to show not only that you supported the war but that you truly
hated
Germany. You had to burn something—effigies, books, anything. You had to deface statues. You had to kick a dachshund and contract liberty measles. You had to spy on your neighbors and scream in terror or throw someone off a train should you overhear a disloyal utterance.

Ballplayers weren’t doing these kinds of things. They were just playing the game, which didn’t seem very patriotic. Baseball’s leaders floated the argument that players and magnates had made great investments in Liberty Bonds and that the war tax collected from fans at the gates helped fatten the nation’s coffers. But that was a difficult sell. Though no ruling had been made on baseball’s usefulness in the war effort, the sight of healthy young players frolicking on ball fields while American soldiers were being pressed to war and workers in other occupations were forced into war industries didn’t sit well. Nor did the publicity that cropped up as more and more players took shipyard jobs.

Attendance began to flag—in part because the draft and work-orfight order had sapped the fan base, but also because the charge of baseball slackerism had begun to stick. Good teams and holidays (such as July 4) still were big draws, but in many cities enthusiasm for the game vanished. Over the course of the Red Sox’s trip through the AL’s western locales, some crowds were pitiful. One game in Detroit drew 2,500. A game in Cleveland drew 1,800. When Comiskey ordered Lynn and Williams out of his park after learning of their plans to join a shipyard team, the South Side fan base was so disgusted that only 1,000 turned up the next day to watch the champs.