The Original Curse (5 page)

That’s because Alexander was, by far, the best pitcher in baseball. Off the mound, he looked like a typical Nebraska farm boy, with a slow, loping gait and a cap that never quite fit his head. But on the mound, he was devastating, with a fastball that zipped in from his three-quarters delivery and pinpoint control with his breaking ball. He was still only 30 and had been incredibly durable, leading the league in innings pitched and complete games for the previous four years straight. Those four years—leading up to the trade to the Cubs—might be the greatest four-season span any pitcher has ever had. Alexander led the NL in wins (121 total) and strikeouts all four seasons and won the ERA title three of the four years.

Killefer, Alexander’s best friend and batterymate, wasn’t bad either. Though not a great hitter, he was considered the best in the league at working with pitchers and calling a game. That Charley was willing to trade for him shows just how determined he was to build a winner. In 1914, Killefer had signed a contract to jump to Weeghman’s Federal
League Whales but jumped back to Philadelphia when Baker upped his contract offer. Charley sued Killefer (challenging baseball’s treasured reserve clause) and lost, but still, the judge in the case scolded Killefer, calling him, “a person upon whose pledged word little or no reliance can be placed.”
¹⁰

The Cubs needed players, though, and this was no time for Charley to hold a grudge. The deal for Alexander and Killefer was set, and if all went well, Charley would add a third feather to the Cubs’ cap. Mitchell had been pushing the team to buy the best young infielder in the game, Rogers Hornsby, from St. Louis. That would be trickier, because the Cardinals’ new executive, Branch Rickey, already had been giving the Cubs pains on a Hornsby deal. Charley wasn’t sure how to handle Rickey, who was different from most of the game’s magnates because he could not be plied with good scotch or a bawdy story about some dancing girl. To Charley, Rickey must have seemed so strict a Methodist that he felt a tall glass of lemonade was a sin. But still, Charley had an endless supply of cash, and surely Rickey could not turn down cash.

Aboard the 20th Century, Charley and Craighead could daydream about the 1918 Cubs roster, complete with Alexander, Killefer, and, maybe, Hornsby on board. Mad Spendthrift, indeed.

By 5:00
P.M
. on Tuesday, the second day of the NL meetings, word of the Killefer-Alexander deal spread through the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, the site of the meetings. Weeghman stepped into the lobby to a pack of reporters and well-wishers. (Today’s baseball scribes who chase general managers around hotel lobbies at league meetings can take comfort: it’s an old tradition.) Weeghman ratcheted up the charm. He claimed he had paid Baker $80,000 for Killefer and Alexander, plus two players—Pickles Dillhoefer and Mike Prendergast. Weeghman said the total value going to the Phillies was $100,000. The
Chicago Daily News
took Weeghman at his word, and the headline in that evening’s paper read, in large type: “CUBS PAY $100,000 FOR ALEXANDER AND KILLEFER.”
¹¹
That wasn’t quite true. The Cubs paid closer to $55,000, and whatever creative math Weeghman used to value Dillhoefer and Prendergast remains a mystery. But bigger numbers made for a bigger splash. In an aw-shucks style befitting his rags-to-riches, former-waiter persona, Weeghman claimed that his heart nearly stopped beating when he signed the check. “This
is the biggest transaction ever completed in the history of baseball,” he declared.
¹²

Things were less joyful for Baker and the Phillies. In selling two stars, Baker had ensured 1918 would be a disaster, but he was betting that, with the war, it would be a less expensive disaster this way. Baker knew, too, that Alexander, as an unmarried man with no dependents, was a prime target to be drafted. Still, the deal was not well received. Baker hadn’t even told manager Pat Moran. “It was pathetic to see Moran after the announcement,” the
Daily News
reported. “He actually wept when asked to discuss the deal and what it meant to him. He looked as if he had lost his entire family.”
¹³
Baker called local beat writers into his room for a quiet dinner at the Waldorf and explained his side of things. One
Philadelphia Inquirer
reporter wrote: “President Baker … has deliberately chased the Quaker city off the baseball map. In parting with Alexander and Killefer, he has not only obliterated any chance the Phillies had of coming back next season, but he has given to Chicago the players who will doubtless make the Cubs the only rival of the Giants.”
¹⁴

There was more behind the deal, which Baker apparently kept to himself. According to excerpts from Harry Grabiner’s diary, Baker thought Killefer and Alexander were involved with gamblers. Grabiner’s private investigator later reported, “Baker said Killefer and Alexander [were] traded after they were crooked.”
¹⁵
On the day after the deal with the Cubs was announced, an article in the
Philadelphia Inquirer
reported, “In justifying the trade, Mr. Baker said today that if one-half the things about the Philadelphia club were known to the fans, he would not be blamed for practically breaking up his team.”
¹⁶
It is not difficult to piece together what Baker meant. If fans knew Alexander and Killefer were “crooked,” he would not be blamed for trading them. It’s likely that Baker, a former New York police commissioner, would have had a pretty good sense of when someone was being less than honest with him. It’s also important to note that, if Baker really did think Alexander and Killefer were crooked, he did not try to bring them to justice. Instead he simply traded them. That pattern—moving players suspected of gambling rather than exposing them—seems to have repeated itself endlessly in the 1910s.

Even after the big buy from Philadelphia, Weeghman had plenty of kale (that’s 1918-speak for money) remaining, and Hornsby was next. Alexander gave the Cubs the pitching staff of a contender. But the
team was far too light on hitting, and though there were high hopes for young second baseman Pete Kilduff and even younger shortstop Charley Hollocher, the Cubs needed an infielder who could hit in the middle of the lineup. They wanted Hornsby, who had just finished his third season. He was a talented but very cocky 21-year-old Texan whose attitude didn’t play well in St. Louis, especially not with Rickey. After 1917, Hornsby demanded a salary of $10,000, a ridiculous amount for a player of such little experience. (Alexander, by way of example, was being paid $12,000 per year and had been in the majors for seven years.) The cash-strapped Cardinals offered $5,400, and the irascible Hornsby threatened to retire rather than sign—a threat that, with no system of free agency, was commonly made by players but rarely acted on. Still, Hornsby’s threat created a window for the Cubs. Hornsby would later become the greatest right-handed hitter in history, winner of seven batting championships and two triple crowns. But, as of that winter, no one knew Hornsby would be
that
good. He was just a young player with big potential and a bigger ego.

Weeghman and Rickey had been dueling publicly over Hornsby. Without being quoted directly, Weeghman showed a letter to
Daily News
reporter Oscar Reichow in which he wrote, “What are you going to do about players? The offer for Rogers Hornsby still goes. There is $50,000 in the bank, you can take it or leave it.”
¹⁷
The letter was addressed to Rickey. Two days later, Rickey blasted Weeghman, denying that any offer had been made and asserting that Hornsby could not be bought. Weeghman responded with feigned surprise. He was shocked—
shocked!—
by Rickey’s accusation, apparently forgetting the letter he’d shown Reichow. “In my talk about players needed I have not mentioned St. Louis or any other club by name,” he said. “As for Horsnby, I have not tried to get him.”
¹⁸

This is how the Hornsby negotiations went all winter. Weeghman and Rickey poked each other publicly and made angry statements but continually held secret talks. Weeghman and Rickey met during the NL meetings and again later that week. On December 21, the
Daily News
reported that Weeghman “padded his feet and tiptoed out of town last night to attempt to close a deal” in St. Louis for Hornsby, estimating that Weeghman would offer $75,000.
¹⁹
But Rickey put out word that he would not give up Hornsby for cash alone. At another meeting in Cincinnati in January, Weeghman was so confident he’d land Hornsby that he brought a contingent of Chicago writers. The
Tribune
reported, “Diligent scribes had Hornsby sold to the Cubs today. In exchange, they allowed the Cards pitchers [Claude] Hendrix, [Paul] Carter and [Vic] Aldridge, shortstop [Chuck] Wortman and a bale of cash.”
²⁰
But the Hornsby deal—discussed into March—never happened, and the scribes’ diligence was misplaced.

Missing out on Hornsby was a personal defeat for Charley, on two fronts. First, by focusing so intently on Hornsby, the Cubs missed other opportunities to upgrade their offense, by adding either a different infielder or an outfielder. The Cubs did get 36-year-old Dode Paskert from Philadelphia, swapping talented hitter Cy Williams. They also landed pitcher Lefty Tyler, a protégé of Mitchell’s when he was coaching for the Braves, for two players and $15,000. But, as the winter went on, it became clear that other owners were embittered toward Weeghman. He was too public about his $250,000 bankroll, and his offers for Hornsby only further swelled Hornsby’s ego and made him firmer in his contract negotiation with St. Louis. Rickey made a strong anti-Weeghman speech at one NL meeting, and Pittsburgh owner Barney Dreyfuss accused Weeghman of tampering.

That bitter cold of December was a harbinger of one of the worst Chicago winters on record. By the middle of January, Chicago was brought to a standstill by snow, keeping residents homebound for much of the month—in all, a record 42.5 inches of snow fell that January, which did not help Weeghman’s restaurants. Nor his mood. Charley was, according to
The Sporting News
, “somewhat depressed and out of humor.”
²¹
He’d already indicated a desire to get out of the Cubs presidency, which probably had more to do with his sliding financial condition than with a desire to leave. But the Rickey mess further soured him. The Alexander-Killefer trade was great, but Weeghman had been foiled and humiliated in his attempt to decorate the Cubs roster with star players. The Mad Spendthrift hadn’t come close to using all of his $250,000, and the Cubs eventually saved face by putting $100,000 of the bankroll into a Liberty Bond.

Weeghman had been suckered. “There is good reason to believe that Branch Rickey of the St. Louis Cardinals did rather encourage Weeghman in the idea that the Cubs could land Rogers Hornsby,”
The Sporting News
reported, “but when it came to a showdown, Rickey changed front.”
²²

The Cubs would enter the 1918 season with a revamped pitching staff but with a questionable offense. It seemed to Weeghman
that there was a conspiracy against him on the part of other owners. Maybe it was payback for his Federal League involvement or, more likely, payback for his parading about with an enormous bankroll. Or maybe the conspiracy was all in Weeghman’s head. Maybe, for once, he was just unlucky.

The 1918 season was the last time anyone would, without irony, call Charley Weeghman “Lucky Charley.” By December, Weeghman had sold all his stock to Wrigley and was out of baseball. Just over a year later his wife, Bessie, filed for divorce, citing infidelity—she was awarded $400 per month, a good indication that Charley was no millionaire. On August 9, 1920, Charley’s business interests were placed in receivership for failure to pay bills. As Wrigley put it, Charley had tried to “butter his bread too thin.”
²³

Weeghman left Chicago but failed in three separate efforts to start restaurants in Manhattan. Far from matching his former wealth (real or imaginary), Lucky Charley was employed as an associate manager at the Riviera club and restaurant at the Palisades in New Jersey when he died in 1938.

It should have been a momentous announcement, a decision made after much wrangling, after interviews, after careful consideration of a parade of candidates. But Ed was not going to argue. He wasn’t going to sneeze at a job like this one—not in these times. His resignation was official, to no one’s surprise—his near fistfight with Buffalo owner Joseph Lannin had been the talk of baseball back in December, and there was no way he was coming back after that. Now he was no longer Ed Barrow, president of the International League. The whole thing could go to smash for all he cared, and it probably would with the war on. He had worked hard for the IL. It was an exhausting job. His reward: they cut his salary from $7,500 to $2,500. Ed was through with minor-league ball. For more than two months, Barrow had been advising Red Sox owner Harry Frazee on transactions, and now he officially would be given a job with Boston.

The job itself was a surprise. Manager. It had been 14 years since Barrow had been a field man in the big leagues, those two miserable years with the Tigers in 1903 and ’04. Ed knew he was not the first choice. Frazee had hoped that the previous year’s manager, Jack Barry, might get exempted from the war, or that Bill Carrigan, hero of Red Sox champs past, might be sweet-talked out of the Maine banking
game into a return. Barrow, in that case, would have gone to Boston as team secretary. But now it was manager. Ed was not well versed on inside strategy, but he’d get help with that. If there was one thing Ed was sure he could do, it was keep the boys in line, get ’em to bed early, and keep ’em in condition. Barrow had been cast aside by the major leagues after his poor showing in Detroit, which wasn’t particularly fair. A bunch of pikers, that Tigers team. But the Red Sox were not pikers. Ed thought he might do something big with Boston.