The Glory of Their Times

by Lawrence S. Ritter

  But instead of bringing in the book, he brought in my Dad. And we were both delighted to see one another.

  “Boy, you sure are a hardhead,” he said to me. “You know I didn’t mean what I said ten years ago.”

  “What about you, Dad?” I said. “You’re as stubborn as I am. I thought you never wanted to see me again. I thought you meant it.”

  “Of course I didn’t,” he said.

  After we talked a while, I said, “Did you see the game today?”

  “Yes, I did,” he said.

  “Where were you sitting?” I asked him.

  “Well, you know the man who wears that funny thing on his face?”

  “You mean the mask? The catcher?”

  “I guess so. Well, anyway, I was halfway between him and the number one—you know, where they run right after they hit the ball.”

  “You mean first baser?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what they call it. I was sitting in the middle there.”

  “How many ball games have you seen since I became a ballplayer, Dad?”

  “This is the first one,” he said.

  Well, he stayed in New York with me for a few weeks, and we had a great time. Finally, he had to go back to Cleveland. After he’d left, the newspapers heard about my Dad and they wanted to know his address back home. So I gave it to them, and doggone if they didn’t send reporters and photographers to Cleveland to interview him.

  They took his picture and asked him a lot of questions. One of the things they asked him was whether he had ever played very much baseball himself.

  “Oh, of course I did, when I was younger,” he told them. “I used to love to play baseball. I used to be a pitcher, just like my son Richard—I mean like my son Rube.”

  “Are you proud of your son?” they asked him.

  “I certainly am,” Dad said. “Why shouldn’t I be? He’s a great baseball player, isn’t he?”

  2 Tommy Leach

  We used no mattress on our hands,

  No cage upon our face;

  We stood right up and caught the ball,

  With courage and with grace.

  —GEORGE ELLARD, 1880’s

  LISTEN, when you say the name Wagner to me, you better say Honus Wagner. Anybody else, you mention Wagner to them and they know right off who you’re talking about. But not me. That very confusion resulted in me almost pulling one of the biggest boners of my whole life.

  It happened in 1898. I was a skinny twenty-year-old kid, only 135 pounds, playing third base for the Auburn Club of the New York State League. About a month before the end of the season the owner of the club sent down word that he wanted me to come in and see him. “Uh-oh,” I thought, “what the dickens is coming now?”

  “I told you I was going to sell you to a Big League club before the season was over,” he said, “and I’ve got a chance to do just that. Two National League clubs want you, and I’m going to let you make the choice. Where would you rather go, Washington or Louisville?”

  “Well,” I said, “I’d like to talk to the manager first, before I make a decision, if you’re really going to let me make it. I don’t know anything about those clubs, and I’d like to go where I have the best chance.”

  “That’s all right,” he said. “You won’t go until our season is over, anyway. And then you’ll report to whichever club you pick.”

  So I went to the manager. He was a real old-timer. I don’t know whatever became of him. He was a drinking man, and they let him go soon after.

  I put it to him: “I just want you to tell me where I’ll have the opportunity to show what I can do,” I said. “I’d like to go where I’ll have the best chance to play third base, because I know that’s my best position.”

  “I’ll tell you,” he said, “knowing what I know, I’d say take Louisville. If you go to Washington, they have a man there who’s a darned good third baseman. His name is Wagner.”

  Well, I didn’t know Wagner from beans. So, naturally, I chose Louisville. Our season at Auburn ended a month before the Big League season was over, so in late August of 1898 I reported to the Louisville club.

  I hardly had time to get settled before it hit me that this guy the Louisville club had at third base was practically doing the impossible. I’m sitting on the bench the first day I reported, and along about the third inning an opposing batter smacks a line drive down the third-base line that looked like at least a sure double. Well, this big Louisville third baseman jumped over after it like he was on steel springs, slapped it down with his bare hand, scrambled after it at least ten feet, and fired a bullet over to first base. The runner was out by two or three steps.

  I’m sitting on the bench and my eyes are popping out. So I poked the guy sitting next to me, and asked him who the devil that big fellow was on third base.

  “Why, that’s Wagner,” he says. “He’s the best third baseman in the league.”

  And when I heard that, did I ever groan. I’m sure it was loud enough to be heard the whole length of the bench. “What chance does a tiny guy like me have here, anyway?” I thought to myself. “Wagner isn’t with Washington, he’s here.”

  Do you know what happened? There was a Wagner with Washington, all right. But it was Al Wagner, Honus’ brother. Honus himself was right there in Louisville.

  Well, it all turned out for the best, of course, but until it did you can bet I was pretty sore at that Auburn manager for giving me the benefit of his wisdom. It turned out for the best because I wound up in Pittsburgh on one of the greatest teams that ever played. We won the pennant four times in the next ten years or so, and beat Ty Cobb and the Tigers in the World Series the last time.

  You see, after the 1899 season the National League cut back from twelve to eight clubs. Louisville was one of the four clubs cut out, but Barney Dreyfuss, who owned the Louisville club, bought the Pittsburgh Pirates and transferred a dozen of us who were with Louisville over to Pittsburgh. So the Pittsburgh club that started the season in 1900 was mostly the same team as the Louisville club that had ended the 1899 season.

  Honus Wagner: “He isn’t with Washington, he’s here”

  And it also turned out that while Honus was the best third baseman in the league, he was also the best first baseman, the best second baseman, the best shortstop, and the best outfielder. That was in fielding. And since he led the league in batting eight times between 1900 and 1911, you know that he was the best hitter, too. As well as the best base runner.

  But to get back to that day in 1898 when I first reported to Louisville. I got into uniform and the manager, Fred Clarke, told me to go up and take some batting practice. My own bat hadn’t arrived yet, so I just went over and picked out one I liked and went up to hit. After I was through, I hardly had time to lay the bat down before somebody grabbed me and I heard this strange voice say something like, “What are you doing with my bat?” Scared the dickens out of me.

  I looked up, and it was a deaf mute. We had a deaf mute playing center field, Dummy Hoy. His real name was Bill Hoy. You probably read of his living to be ninety-nine years old.

  I roomed with Dummy in 1899, and we got to be good friends. He was a real fine ballplayer. When you played with him in the outfield, the thing was that you never called for a ball. You listened for him, and if he made this little squeaky sound, that meant he was going to take it.

  He married a deaf-and-dumb girl named Anna Maria, who was a teacher at a deaf-and-dumb school in Cincinnati, which is where they both came from. They could read lips so well they never had any trouble understanding anything I said. They could answer you back, too, in a little squeaky voice that usually you could understand once you got used to it. We hardly ever had to use our fingers to talk, although most of the fellows did learn the sign language, so that when we got confused or something we could straighten it out with our hands.

  I was just a utility player with the Louisville club for what remained of that ’98 season. In those days, they didn�
�t take extra players on the road, so when the team went on a trip they left me behind in Louisville. I was supposed to keep in condition in case something happened and they sent for me.

  Well, I was the only utility player, so I had to try to keep in shape all by myself. What I’d do was every day I’d go out to the ball park and take the ball and bounce it up against the grandstand and run back and forth, back and forth, playing catch with myself. I did that for hours every day. Of course, I got no hitting practice. But I did keep in condition.

  When the team came back home, Fred Clarke said, “How about you? Would you like to get in?”

  “Sure,” I said, “I’d like to see what I can do.”

  So Fred put me in at third base, with Honus moving over to first. That reminds me, did you know that when Honus played third he played it with a first baseman’s mitt? I don’t know why, but he did. Anyway, I got two hits in that game, which surprised me as much as anybody.

  I only weighed about 135 pounds then. I never weighed over 150 in my life, and I’m only 5 feet 6 inches tall, so it took me a long time before I learned how to be a decent hitter. In Pittsburgh later on, you know, I was Wee Tommy Leach, like Willie was Wee Willie Keeler.

  I still remember in 1896 when I was playing semipro ball with Hanover, Pennsylvania, in the Cumberland Valley League. I couldn’t hit a lick on earth. One day I struck out four straight times. Some fellow got a piece of wood about half a foot wide and four or five feet long from someplace—that’s when they used to have those rail fences—and when I came up for the fifth time he presented it to me at home plate. I didn’t even have enough sense to laugh. I never dreamed that day that I’d wind up playing nineteen years in the Big Leagues and get over 2,000 hits. The odds against it looked pretty big. Way bigger than me.

  So after I got those two hits in that first game I felt pretty good. I went home that night sitting on top of the world. The next day I didn’t know whether or not I’d play again, but as I got dressed in uniform that afternoon I really had my hopes up.

  While I was dressing, I went over to the end of the clubhouse and, doggone it, there was my bat, sawed into three pieces. Boy, was I ever sore. That was my only bat, and nobody would ever let you borrow theirs. Besides, my bat was something special: a kid had made it in school for me and given it to me as a present. I challenged that whole ball club. All 135 pounds of me. I swore I’d rip whoever did a thing like that into a thousand pieces. And while I was jumping up and down I happened to look over at the manager, and there he was, Fred Clarke, laughing his head off!

  I never did find out for sure who did that, but on the basis of the way he acted I still suspect it was Fred himself. He never admitted it. though.

  Do you know who joined us on that Louisville club in 1899? Rube Waddell! He came up from Grand Rapids in the Western League late in 1899 and spent the rest of that season with us in Louisville, and then part of the 1900 season with us in Pittsburgh. But he jumped the team in 1900 and went home to a place called Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. I still remember that name. Connie Mack finally got him to leave there and made him into the terrific pitcher he later became with the Athletics.

  I roomed with that crazy character for a while. If they thought he was nutty later, they should have seen him then. He was just an overgrown boy. It was a riot. I remember one time he called the outfield in and pitched an inning without any outfielders. It happened in an exhibition game during spring training, coming up from the South. It was an Easter Sunday, and somebody in the stands threw an egg at him and hit him right on top of the head. You couldn’t faze that guy, though. He’s the only guy I know who appreciated a thing like that. So he showed them how good he was by calling in the outfield and striking out the side.

  I used to stand there at third base and watch him throw. I wasn’t playing, I was watching! “How can a man throw that hard?” I used to wonder to myself. He had a terrific curve ball, too, and great control.

  Anyway, when the 1899 season opened I was still that extra utility man. Pretty soon after the season began, though, the shortstop got hurt and they put me in there. Well, in my very first game I made five errors. So right after that they sent me back to the minors—they loaned me to Wooster—with the understanding that I’d play shortstop. Third base was where I belonged; I knew that all the time. But who was I to argue about it?

  I’d been playing at Wooster for about two weeks, when about ten o’clock one night I got a wire to report back to Louisville. Well, I didn’t have any money, so I went to show the wire to the manager of the Wooster club. It took me an hour or so before I could find him.

  “How much money have you got?” he says.

  “I don’t have any,” I said.

  “Well, then,” he says, “you’re not going to Louisville. If you come to me thinking the club is going to pay your railway fare, you’re wrong. You’re going to stay here. I need you.”

  “But I have to report back there,” I said. “I’m just here on loan, and they want me back.”

  “That’s too bad,” he says.

  “Well,” I said, “I guess there isn’t anything I can do about it, so I might as well go home and go to bed.” And that’s exactly what I did.

  The next morning, though, he came around and handed me the ticket. “It might be your big chance,” he said, “so I’m not going to stand in your way. Good luck.”

  And back I went to Louisville. Pretty soon after that I became the regular third baseman, and I got in over 100 games that year. Hit a respectable .290, too, if I remember correctly. My salary that year was $5 a day—$150 a month, for the season.

  The next year—that would be 1900—we moved from Louisville to Pittsburgh. We had a little trouble getting started that year, and in June we were in last place. Then we started playing the way we should, and we almost won the pennant. Brooklyn beat us out by only a couple of games, even after our bad start.

  But we did win it the next three years, in 1901, 1902, and 1903. In 1902 we won the National League pennant by 27½ games over the second-place team. Even in all the years that have passed since then no club in either major league has ever finished that far out in front. That was the year, believe it or not, that I led the league in home runs. I really did. I had six. The next year I did even better: I hit seven. But Jimmy Sheckard beat me out with nine.

  Of course, I wasn’t a home-run hitter like you see today. The fields were big then, and if you hit a ball between the outfielders and were fast enough, you had a home run. None of those I hit went over the fence.

  In 1902, like I said, we won the pennant by 27½ games, and do you know that our starting pitcher pitched the complete game in something like 130 out of the 140 games we played that season? Just think of that, and compare it with today. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? We had four pitchers, and they just took their regular turn, day after day, and went the distance almost every time: Jack Chesbro, Deacon Phillippe, Sam Leever, and Jesse Tannehill. Four of the best pitchers in baseball!

  In 1903 we won the pennant again, the third year in a row, and that was the year we were in the first World Series ever played. The very first there ever was. The American League had started in 1901, but the two leagues couldn’t get together to play each other until 1903. I hit four triples in that Series, but it didn’t help, because the Boston Red Sox beat us anyway. I think they were called the Boston Pilgrims then, by the way.

  That was probably the wildest World Series ever played. Arguing all the time between the teams, between the players and the umpires, and especially between the players and the fans. That’s the truth. The fans were part of the game in those days. They’d pour right out onto the field and argue with the players and the umpires. Was sort of hard to keep the game going sometimes, to say the least.

  I think those Boston fans actually won that Series for the Red Sox. We beat them three out of the first four games, and then they started singing that damn Tessie song, the Red Sox fans did. They called themselves the Royal Rooters and
their leader was some Boston character named Mike McGreevey. He was known as “Nuf Sed” McGreevey, because any time there was an argument about anything to do with baseball he was the ultimate authority. Once McGreevey gave his opinion that ended the argument: nuf sed!

  Anyway, in the fifth game of the Series the Royal Rooters started singing Tessie for no particular reason at all, and the Red Sox won. They must have figured it was a good-luck charm, because from then on you could hardly play ball they were singing Tessie so damn loud.

  Tessie was a real big popular song in those days. You remember it, don’t you?

  Tessie, you make me feel so badly,

  Why don’t you turn around.

  Tessie, you know I love you madly,

  Babe, my heart weighs about a pound.

  Yeah, that was a real humdinger in those days. Like The Music Goes Round and Round in the ’thirties. Now you surely remember that one?

  Only instead of singing “Tessie, you know I love you madly,” they’d sing special lyrics to each of the Red Sox players: like “Jimmy, you know I love you madly.” And for us Pirates they’d change it a little. Like when Honus Wagner came up to bat they’d sing:

  Honus, why do you hit so badly,

  Take a back seat and sit down.

  Honus, at bat you look so sadly,

  Hey, why don’t you get out of town.

  Sort of got on your nerves after a while. And before we knew what happened, we’d lost the World Series.

  That year, 1903, was also the year Honus became a full-time shortstop. Up until 1903 he played almost every position on the team, one day at short, the next day in the outfield, the day after at first base. He didn’t look like a shortstop, you know. He had those huge shoulders and those bowed legs, and he didn’t seem to field balls the way we did. He just ate the ball up with his big hands, like a scoop shovel, and when he threw it to first base you’d see pebbles and dirt and everything else flying over there along with the ball. It was quite a sight! The greatest shortstop ever. The greatest everything ever.