At the Old Ballgame Page 3

In 1886 Frank Grant joined Buffalo, of the International League.

  In 1887 no less than twenty colored ball players scattered among the different smaller leagues of the country.

  With Walker, Grant, Stovy, Fowler, Higgins and Renfro in the International League, White, W. Walker, N. Higgins and R. Johnson in the Ohio League, and others in the West, made 1887 a banner year for colored talent in the white leagues. But this year marked the beginning of the elimination of colored players from white clubs. All the leagues, during the Winter of 1887 and 1888, drew the color line, or had a clause inserted in their constitutions limiting the number of colored players to be employed by each club.

  This color line has been agitated by A. C. Anson, Captain of the Chicago National League team for years. As far back as 1883, Anson, with his team, landed in Toledo, O., to play an exhibition game with the American Association team. Walker, the colored catcher, was a member of the Toledos at the time. Anson at first absolutely refused to play his nine against Walker, the colored man, until he was told he could either play with Walker on this team or take his nine off the field. Anson in 1887 again refused to play the Newark Eastern League with Stovey, the colored pitcher, in the box. Were it not for this same man Anson, there would have been a colored player in the National League in 1887. John M. Ward, of the New York club, was anxious to secure Geo. Stovey and arrangements were about completed for his transfer from the Newark club, when a brawl was heard from Chicago to New York. The same Anson, with all the venom of hate which would be worthy of a Tillman or a Vardaman of the present day, made strenuous and fruitful opposition to any proposition looking to the admittance of a colored man into the National League. Just why Adrian C. Anson, manager and captain of the Chicago National League Club, was so strongly opposed to colored players on white teams cannot be explained. His repugnant feeling, shown at every opportunity, toward colored ball players, was a source of comment through every league in the country, and his opposition, with his great popularity and power in base ball circles, hastened the exclusion to the black man from the white leagues.

  The colored players are not only barred from playing on white clubs, but at times games are canceled for no other reason than objections being raised by a Southern ball player, who refuses to play against a colored ball club. These men from the South who object to playing are, as a rule, fine ball players, and rather than lose their services, the managers will not book a colored team.

  The colored ball player suffers great inconvenience, at times, while traveling. All hotels are generally filled from the cellar to the garret when they strike a town. It is a common occurrence for them to arrive in a city late at night and walk around for several hours before getting a place to lodge.

  The situation is far different to-day in this respect than it was years ago. At one time the colored teams were accommodated in some of the best hotels in the country, as the entertainment in 1887 of the Cuban Giants at the McClure House in Wheeling, W. Va., will show.

  The cause of this change is no doubt due to the condition of things from a racial standpoint. With the color question upper-most in the minds of the people at the present time, such proceedings on the part of hotel-keepers may be expected and will be difficult to remedy.

  It is said on good authority that one of the leading players and a manager of the National League is advocating the entrance of colored players in the National League with a view of signing “Matthews,” the colored man, late of Harvard. It is not expected that he will succeed in this advocacy of such a move, but when such actions come to notice there are grounds for hoping that some day the bar will drop and some good man will be chosen from out of the colored profession that will be a credit to all, and pave the way for others to follow.

  This article would not be complete did we not mention the effort of John McGraw, manager of the New York National League, to sign a colored man for his Baltimore American League team.

  While Manager McGraw was in Hot Springs, Ark., preparing to enter the season of 1901, he was attracted toward Chas. Grant, second baseman of the Columbia Giants of Chicago, who was also at Hot Springs, playing on a colored team. McGraw, whose knowledge of and capacity for base ball is surpassed by none, thought he saw in Grant a ball player and a card. With the color line so rigidly enforced in the American League, McGraw was at a loss as to how he could get Grant for his Baltimore bunch. The little Napoleon of base ball with a brain for solving intricate circumstances in base ball transactions, conceived the idea of introducing Grant in the league as an Indian. Had it not been for friends of Grant being so eager to show their esteem while the Baltimores were playing in Chicago, McGraw’s little scheme would have worked nicely. As it was the bouquet tendered to Grant, which was meant as a gift for the colored man, was really his undoing. McGraw was immediately notified to release Grant at once, as colored players would not be tolerated in the league. This shows what a base ball man will do to get a winner and also shows why McGraw has been called by many, the greatest of all base ball managers.

  The following open letter was sent to President McDermit, of the Tri-State (formerly Ohio) League, by Weldy Walker, a member of the Akron, O., team of 1887, which speaks for itself.

  The letter was dated March 5th, 1888. The law prohibiting the employment of colored players in the league was rescinded a few weeks later.

  Steubenville, O.,

  March 5—Mr. McDermit, President Tri-State League—Sir:

  I take the liberty of addressing you because noticing in The Sporting Life that the “law,” permitting colored men to sign was repealed, etc., at the special meeting held at Columbus, February 22, of the above-named League of which you are the president. I ascertaining the reason of such an action I have grievances, it is a question with me whether individual loss subserves the public good in this case. This is the only question to be considered—both morally and financially—in this, as it is, or ought to be, in all cases that convinced beyond doubt that you all, as a body of men, have not been impartial and unprejudiced in your consideration of the great and important question—the success of the “National game.”

  The reason I say this is because you have shown partiality by making an exception with a member of the Zanesville Club, and from this one would infer that he is the only one of the three colored players—Dick Johnson, alias Dick Neale, alias Dick Noyle, as the Sporting Life correspondent from Columbus has it; Sol White, of the Wheelings, whom I must compliment by saying was one, if not the surest hitter in the Ohio League last year, and your humble servant, who was unfortunate enough to join the Akron just ten days before they busted.

  It is not because I was reserved and have been denied making my bread and butter with some clubs that I speak; but it is in hopes that the action taken at your last meeting will be called up for reconsideration at your next.

  The law is a disgrace to the present age, and reflect very much upon the intelligence of your last meeting, and casts derision at the laws of Ohio—the voice of the people—that says all men are equal. I would suggest that your honorable body, in case that black law is not repealed, pass one making it criminal for a colored man or woman to be found in a ball ground.

  There is now the same accommodation made for the colored patron of the game as the white, and the same provision and dispensation is made for the money of them both that finds its way into the coffers of the various clubs.

  There should be some broader cause—such as lack of ability, behavior and intelligence—for barring a player, rather than his color. It is for these reasons and because I think ability and intelligence should be recognized first and last—at all times and by everyone—I ask the question again why was the “law permitting colored men to sign repealed, etc.?”

  Yours truly,

  Weldy W. Walker

  A Whale of a Pastime

  Brig. Gen. Frederick Funston

  On the 29th day of March, 1894, a party of eleven Tinneh
Indians and myself, after a twenty days’ snowshoe journey across the bleak tundras and mountain ranges of Northeastern Alaska, reached Herschel Island, in the Arctic Ocean, sixty miles west of the mouth of the Mackenzie River. Here, in a little cove, locked fast in the ice, were the steam whalers Balæna, Grampus, Mary D. Hume, Newport, Narwhal, Jeanette and Karluck, all of San Francisco. Some of these vessels had been out from their home port three years. The preceding October, after one of the most successful seasons in the history of Arctic whaling, all had sought shelter in the only harbor afforded by this desolate coast to lie up for the winter. The ice-packs coming down from the North had frozen in all about Herschel Island, so that as far as the eye could reach was a jumble of bergs and solid floe, but behind the island where the ships lay the salt water had frozen as level as a floor. The nine months that the whalemen were compelled to lie in idleness, while not enlivened by social gayeties, were far from monotonous. With lumber brought up from San Francisco there had been built on shore a commodious one-room house, whose most conspicuous articles of furniture were a big stove that roared day and night, a billiard table and a number of benches and chairs. This was the clubroom of the sixty or seventy officers of the fleet, and here they congregated to play billiards and whist or sit about through the long Arctic evenings, while the wind howled outside, smoking and spinning yarns of many seas, or of boyhood days at New Bedford, New London and Martha’s Vineyard. There were veterans who had whaled on every ocean, and had been in nearly every port on the globe; men who recollected well the raid of the cruiser Shenandoah when she burned the fleet on the coast of Siberia thirty years before, and who had been in the Point Barrow disaster, when nearly a score of ships were crushed in the ice floe. The sailors and firemen of the fleet did not have the privileges of this house, but contented themselves with games and amusements of their own. They had an orchestra that played long and vociferously, and there was an amateur dramatic troupe that gave entertainments during the winter. But it was on the great national game of Base Ball that officers and men most depended to break the tedium of their long imprisonment and furnish needed exercise.

  A large number of bats and balls had been brought up from San Francisco by one of last summer’s arrivals, and as soon as the ships had gone into quarters seven clubs were organized and formed into a league to play for the “Arctic Whalemen’s Pennant,” which was a strip of drilling nailed to a broom-handle. One nine was composed entirely of officers, another of seamen, a third of firemen, a fourth of cooks and waiters, and so on—the seven nines constituting the “Herschel Island League.” A set of written rules provided that the series of games should begin after a month’s practice and continue throughout the winter, and that all must be played on schedule time regardless of weather. Another provision was that on the diamond all ship rank was obliterated, and a sailor could “boss” even venerable Capt. Murray without fear of reproof. No sooner had the harbor frozen over than the diamond was laid out and practice begun. Salt water ice is not quite so slippery as that from fresh water, but great care had to be used by the players.

  After a season of practice, during which there was much speculation as to the merits of the various nines and no end of chaff and banter, the first game of the series was played, and in the brief twilight of an arctic December day, with the mercury 38˚ below zero, the “Roaring Gimlets” vanquished the “Pig-Stickers” by a score of 62 to 49. All winter, regardless of blizzards and of bitter cold, the games went on, three or four each week, until the schedule was exhausted, and by this time the rivalry was so intense that playing was continued, the clubs challenging each other indiscriminately. The provision in the by-laws that a club refusing to play on account of weather forfeited its position caused one game to be played at 47˚ below zero, and often during blizzards the air was so full of flying snow that the outfielders could not be seen from the home-plate. Even after the sun had disappeared for the last time and the long arctic night had begun, games were played in the few hours of twilight at midday, but were usually limited to four innings, as by 2 o’clock it would be too dark to see the ball.

  All the whalemen were dressed in the Esquimau fur costume, only the face being exposed, and on their hands wore heavy fur mittens. These clumsy mittens, together with the fact that one was apt to fall on the ice unless he gave a large part of his attention to keeping his feet underneath him, made good catching practically impossible. “Muffs” were the rule, and the man who caught and held the ball received an ovation, not only from the whalers, but from the hundreds of Esquimaux who were always crowded about the rope. With the ball frozen as hard as a rock, no one was apt to repeat an experiment of catching with bare hands. One of the center fielders was a corpulent Orkney Islander, whose favorite method of stopping a hot grounder was to lie down in front of it. The Esquimaux considered him the star player of the fleet. Sliding was the only thing done to perfection, the ice offering excellent facilities for distinction in that line; and there was always a wild cheer when a runner, getting too much headway, knocked the baseman off his feet and both came down together. The scores were ridiculously large, seldom less than fifty on a side, and sometimes twice that. On the smooth ice a good hit meant a home run.

  A most amusing feature of the games was the interest shown by the Esquimaux. With the fleet there were nearly a hundred of these people from Behring Strait and Point Barrow, and there were several villages in the vicinity of Herschel Island. These latter were Kogmulliks, the largest Esquimaux in existence, and the presence of the fleet had drawn them from all along the coast. Men, women and children became typical Base Ball cranks, and there was never a game without a large attendance of Esquimaux, who stood about, eyes and mouths wide open, and yelled frantically whenever there was a brilliant catch or a successful slide. At first dozens of them would break over the line and try to hold a runner until the baseman could get the ball, and it was only by vigorous cuffings that they were taught that the spectators’ duties are limited to cheering and betting. They borrowed the paraphernalia and tried a few games of their own, but rarely got beyond the first inning, usually winding up in a genteel mêlée and hair-pulling. One of their umpires, who insisted on allowing a nine to bat after it had three men out in order to even up the score, was dragged off the diamond by his heels. They are naturally great gamblers and bet among themselves on the results of the whalers’ games.

  A fact that impressed me very much at one of the games that I saw was that the crowd of several hundred people watching our national sport at this faraway corner of the earth, only twenty degrees from the pole, and thousands of miles from railroads or steamship lines, was more widely cosmopolitan than could have been found at any other place on the globe. From the ships were Americans, a hundred or more, men from every seafaring nationality of Europe—Chinese, Japanese and Malays from Tahiti and Hawaii. The colored brother, too, was there, a dozen of him, and several of the players were negroes. Esquimaux of all ages were everywhere, while the red men were represented by the eleven wiry fellows who had snowshoed with me from their home in the valley of the Yukon. One day I noticed that in a little group of eleven, sitting on an overturned sled watching a game, there were representatives of all the five great divisions of the human race.

  There are no men on earth who are more hospitable and more thoroughly good fellows than these whalers of the Arctic Ocean, and it was hard to leave them; but we finally got away and started on the long tramp over the snowy wastes toward the Yukon. Just before we left a notice was posted in the clubhouse which, with many “whereases,” “aforesaids,” and other legal formula, recited that the “Auroras” thought they knew something about ball, and hereby challenged the “Herschels” to meet them on the diamond within three days.

  The Rube’s Honeymoon

  Zane Grey

  “He’s got a new manager. Watch him pitch now!” That was what Nan Brown said to me about Rube Hurtle, my great pitcher, and I took it as her way of announcing her engageme
nt.

  My baseball career held some proud moments, but this one, wherein I realized the success of my matchmaking plans, was certainly the proudest one. So, entirely outside of the honest pleasure I got out of the Rube’s happiness, there was reason for me to congratulate myself. He was a transformed man, so absolutely renewed, so wild with joy, that on the strength of it, I decided the pennant for Worcester was a foregone conclusion, and, sure of the money promised me by the directors, Milly and I began to make plans for the cottage upon the hill.

  The Rube insisted on pitching Monday’s game against the Torontos, and although poor fielding gave them a couple of runs, they never had a chance. They could not see the ball. The Rube wrapped it around their necks and between their wrists and straight over the plate with such incredible speed that they might just as well have tried to bat rifle bullets.

  That night I was happy. Spears, my veteran captain, was one huge smile; Radbourne quietly assured me that all was over now but the shouting; all the boys were happy.

  And the Rube was the happiest of all. At the hotel he burst out with his exceeding good fortune. He and Nan were to be married upon the Fourth of July!

  After the noisy congratulations were over and the Rube had gone, Spears looked at me and I looked at him.

  “Con,” said he soberly, “we just can’t let him get married on the Fourth.”

  “Why not? Sure we can. We’ll help him get married. I tell you it’ll save the pennant for us. Look how he pitched today! Nan Brown is our salvation!”

  “See here, Con, you’ve got softenin’ of the brain, too. Where’s your baseball sense? We’ve got a pennant to win. By July Fourth we’ll be close to the lead again, an’ there’s that three weeks’ trip on the road, the longest an’ hardest of the season. We’ve just got to break even on that trip. You know what that means. If the Rube marries Nan—what are we goin’ to do? We can’t leave him behind. If he takes Nan with us—why it’ll be a honeymoon! An’ half the gang is stuck on Nan Brown! An’ Nan Brown would flirt in her bridal veil! Why Con, we’re up against a worse proposition than ever.”