The Glory of Their Times

by Lawrence S. Ritter

  Yes, Joe Cantillon was a kidder, but he wasn’t kidding that day. That Walter was fast! I batted against him hundreds of times after that, of course, and he never lost that speed. He was the fastest I ever saw, by far.

  Did you ever see those pitching machines they have? That’s what Walter Johnson always reminded me of, one of those compressed-air pitching machines. It’s a peculiar thing, a lot of batters are afraid of those machines, because they can gear them up so that ball comes in there just like a bullet. It comes in so fast that when it goes by it swooshes. You hardly see the ball at all. But you hear it. Swoosh, and it smacks into the catcher’s mitt. Well, that was the kind of ball Walter Johnson pitched. He had such an easy motion it looked like he was just playing catch. That’s what threw you off. He threw so nice and easy—and then swoosh, and it was by you!

  Walter was a wonderful person, too, you know. He was always afraid he might hit somebody with that fast ball. A wonderful man, in every way. Warm, and friendly, and wouldn’t hurt a soul. Easily the greatest pitcher I ever saw. Of course, I never saw Grover Cleveland Alexander very much, or Christy Mathewson. They were in the National League, and from 1903 on I was with Detroit in the American League.

  I must say, though, that the greatest all-around ballplayer I ever saw was in the National League. I played against him for four years, from 1899 through 1902, when I was with Cincinnati and he was first with Louisville and then with Pittsburgh. People always ask me about Ty Cobb, you know: “You played in the outfield next to Cobb for all those years. Don’t you agree that he was the greatest player who ever lived?”

  Ed Walsh: “Great big, strong, good-looking fellow”

  Cobb was great, there’s no doubt about that; one of the greatest. But not the greatest. In my opinion, the greatest all-around player who ever lived was Honus Wagner.

  Cobb could only play the outfield, and even there his arm wasn’t anything extra special. But Honus Wagner could play any position. He could do everything. In fact, when I first played against him he was an outfielder, and then he became a third baseman, and later the greatest shortstop of them all. Honus could play any position except pitcher and be easily the best in the league at it. He was a wonderful fielder, terrific arm, very quick, all over the place grabbing sure hits and turning them into outs. And, of course, you know he led the league in batting eight times.

  You’d never think it to look at him, of course. He looked so awkward, bowlegged, barrel-chested, about 200 pounds, a big man. And yet he could run like a scared rabbit. He had enormous hands, and when he scooped up the ball at shortstop he’d grab half the infield with it. But boy, Honus made those plays! He looked awkward doing it, not graceful like Larry Lajoie, but he could make every play Lajoie could make and more. Talk about speed. That bowlegged guy stole over 700 bases in the 21 years he played in the Big Leagues. A good team man, too, and the sweetest disposition in the world. The greatest ballplayer who ever lived, in my book.

  Cobb and Wagner met head on in the 1909 World Series, you know, Detroit against Pittsburgh. We lost in seven games, the first time the Series went the full seven games. Wagner stole six bases in that Series, as many as our whole team, and Cobb stole only two. Honus was one of those natural ballplayers, you know what I mean? Like Babe Ruth and Willie Mays. Those fellows do everything by pure instinct. Mays is one of the few modern players who are just as good as the best of the old-timers. Although I guess the best center fielder of them all was Tris Speaker. He played in real close and could go back and get those balls better than anyone I ever saw.

  Don’t get me wrong. I’m not running Cobb down. He was terrific, no doubt about it. After all, he stole almost 900 bases and had a batting average of .367 over 24 years in the Big Leagues. You can’t knock that. I remember one year I hit .378—in 1911, I think it was—and I didn’t come anywhere close to leading the league: Joe Jackson hit .408 and Cobb hit .420. I mean, that’s mighty rugged competition!

  I played in the same outfield with Cobb for 13 years, from 1905 through 1917. I was usually in right, Cobb in center, and Davy Jones and then Bobby Veach in left. Davy Jones, he was the best lead-off man in the league. I’ve seen a lot of lead-off men, but I never saw one who came close to being Davy’s equal. The lineup usually was Davy Jones, Donie Bush, Cobb, and Crawford, although sometimes I batted third and Cobb fourth. That Donie Bush was a superb shortstop, absolutely superb. I think he still holds a lot of records for assists and putouts.

  They always talk about Cobb playing dirty, trying to spike guys and all. Cobb never tried to spike anybody. The base line belongs to the runner. If the infielders get in the way, that’s their lookout. Infielders are supposed to watch out and take care of themselves. In those days, if they got in the way and got nicked they’d never say anything. They’d just take a chew of tobacco out of their mouth, slap it on the spike wound, wrap a handkerchief around it, and go right on playing. Never thought any more about it.

  We had a trainer, but all he ever did was give you a rubdown with something we called “Go Fast.” He’d take a jar of Vaseline and a bottle of Tabasco sauce—you know how hot that is—mix them together, and rub you down with that. Boy, it made you feel like you were on fire! That would really start you sweating. Now they have medical doctors and whirlpool baths and who knows what else.

  But Ty was dynamite on the base paths. He really was. Talk about strategy and playing with your head, that was Cobb all the way. It wasn’t that he was so fast on his feet, although he was fast enough. There were others who were faster, though, like Clyde Milan, for instance. It was that Cobb was so fast in his thinking. He didn’t outhit the opposition and he didn’t outrun them. He outthought them!

  A lot of times Cobb would be on third base and I’d draw a base on balls, and as I started to go down to first I’d sort of half glance at Cobb, at third. He’d make a slight move that told me he wanted me to keep going—not to stop at first, but to keep on going to second. Well, I’d trot two-thirds of the way to first and then suddenly, without warning, I’d speed up and go across first as fast as I could and tear out for second. He’s on third, see. They’re watching him, and suddenly there I go, and they don’t know what the devil to do.

  If they try to stop me, Cobb’ll take off for home. Sometimes they’d catch him, and sometimes they’d catch me, and sometimes they wouldn’t get either of us. But most of the time they were too paralyzed to do anything, and I’d wind up at second on a base on balls. Boy, did that ever create excitement. For the crowd, you know; the fans were always wondering what might happen next.

  Cobb was a great ballplayer, no doubt about it. But he sure wasn’t easy to get along with. He wasn’t a friendly, good-natured guy, like Wagner was, or Walter Johnson, or Babe Ruth. Did you ever read Cobb’s book? He wrote an autobiography, you know, and he spends a lot of time in there telling how terrible he was treated when he first came up to Detroit, as a rookie, in 1905. About how we weren’t fair to him, and how we tried to “get” him.

  Ty Cobb: “He was dynamite on the base paths”

  But you have to look at the other side, too. We weren’t cannibals or heathens. We were all ballplayers together, trying to get along. Every rookie gets a little hazing, but most of them just take it and laugh. Cobb took it the wrong way. He came up with an antagonistic attitude, which in his mind turned any little razzing into a life-or-death struggle. He always figured everybody was ganging up against him. He came up from the South, you know, and he was still fighting the Civil War. As far as he was concerned, we were all damn Yankees before he even met us. Well, who knows, maybe if he hadn’t had that persecution complex he never would have been the great ballplayer he was. He was always trying to prove he was the best, on the field and off. And maybe he was, at that.

  One thing that really used to get Ty’s goat was when I’d have a good day and he didn’t. Oh, would he ever moan then. Walter Johnson and I were very good friends, and once in a while Walter would sort of “give” me a hit or two, just for old-tim
e’s sake. But when Ty came up there, Walter always bore down all the harder. There was nothing he enjoyed more than fanning Ty Cobb.

  You see, Walter always liked my model bat. Somehow he got the idea that my bats were lucky for him. So very often when the Senators came to Detroit Walter would come into our clubhouse and quietly ask me if I could spare a bat for him.

  “Sure, Walter,” I’d say, “go take any one you want.”

  He’d go over to my locker, look them over, pick one out, and quietly leave. Well, whenever the occasion arose when it wouldn’t affect a game, Walter would let up a bit on me and I’d have a picnic at the plate—like, if Washington had a good lead and it was late in the game. I’d come up to bat and Gabby Street, Walter’s catcher, would whisper, “Walter likes you today, Sam.”

  That was the cue that the next pitch would be a nice half-speed fast ball. So I’d dig in and belt it. Of course, if it was a close game all that was out the window. The friendship deal was off then. Cobb never did figure out why I did so well against Walter, while he couldn’t hit him with a ten-foot pole.

  Well, this is more than I’ve talked in years, and it’s good. I don’t see many people, and even when I do I don’t talk about baseball too much. I read a lot. My favorite writer is Balzac. A wonderful writer. But I rarely talk about baseball. There are very few people around, you know, who remember those old days. Once in a while I meet some elderly man who says, “I can remember seeing you play. My father took me to see you when I was a kid.” But very seldom.

  It’s like when I got elected to the Hall of Fame, back in 1957. I was living in a little cabin at the edge of the Mojave Desert, near a little town called Pearblossom. Nobody around there even knew I’d been a ball player. I never talked about it. So there I was, sitting there in that cabin, with snow all around—it was February—and all of a sudden the place is surrounded with photographers and newspapermen and radio-TV reporters and all. I didn’t know what in the world was going on.

  “You’ve just been elected to the Hall of Fame,” one of them said to me.

  The people living around there—what few of them there were—were all excited. They couldn’t figure out what was happening. And when they found out what it was all about, they couldn’t believe it. “Gee, you mean old Sam? He used to be a ballplayer? We didn’t even know it. Gee!”

  From then on, of course, I’ve gotten thousands of letters. I still get a lot. Mostly from kids, wanting autographs. Sometimes they send a stamped envelope, and sometimes they don’t. But I’ve answered every one by hand. In 1957, when I was elected to the Hall, I also went back to Detroit. It was the fiftieth anniversary of all the players who were still alive who had been on that 1907 pennant-winning team. I enjoyed that, but I wouldn’t put on a uniform. I went out in civilian clothes and waved to the fans, but I refused to put on a uniform. I want to be remembered the way I used to be. When they think of Sam Crawford in a Detroit uniform I want them to think of me the way I was way back then, and no other way.

  Yes, those were days I’ll never forget. There were always a lot of laughs playing ball back then. I guess it must still be that way today. A lot of sadness and disappointment, too, like losing three straight World Series and never winning a pennant after 1909. But always a lot of laughs. Like ballplayers and their superstitions. I’m only a little superstitious. I won’t walk under a ladder, that’s all. But a lot of them were obsessed with that stuff. For instance, butterflies flying across the field. A white butterfly meant something, and a red one meant something else. Paticularly those big red ones—monarchs, they called them—they really meant something special. The manager would look out and say, “Boy, oh boy, oh boy, there goes a red one.” They really believed that stuff, you know.

  Walter Johnson and teammate Clyde Milan

  Before Hughie Jennings became the manager at Detroit—that was in 1907—Bill Armour was our manager. He had managed Cleveland before that, and in 1905 he became the Detroit manager. He’d go nuts if he saw a cross-eyed bat boy. Bill would take one look at him and get an expression on his face like he was about to die.

  “Get rid of him, get rid of him,” he’d yell. “Or leave him stay, but get him out of my sight. I don’t want to see him.”

  Naturally, we spent half our time searching for cross-eyed kids, so we could sneak them in as bat boys!

  Everything wasn’t gay and carefree, of course. In lots of ways it wasn’t the easiest life in the world. We had to travel a lot, you know, and travel conditions were pretty rugged then. We had sleeper trains in the Big Leagues in 1899 and 1900, when I broke in, but the sleepers had gaslights in them, not electric lights. They used to go around and light them up at night. We spent a lot of our lives living out of our grips, on trains and in hotels. The hotels weren’t the best in the world, and the trains had coal-burning engines. So you’d wake up in the morning covered with cinders. They had fine little screens on the train windows, but the cinders would still come through.

  And there were tragedies, you know, like the death of Big Ed Delahanty in the middle of the 1903 season. Ed was only in his mid-thirties and was still going strong as an outfielder with Washington when he died. I think Ed was the best right-handed hitter I ever saw, really a great hitter. It’s hard to choose between him and Honus. He was the second man in history to hit four home runs in a game. Bobby Lowe did it in 1894, and Ed a couple of years later, and then nobody did it again for 40 or 50 years. Twice he got six hits in one game. Quite a hitter. I think his lifetime batting average was close to .350.

  Ed was born and raised in Cleveland, the oldest of six brothers. And five of them became Big League ballplayers. We had one of them with the Tigers—Jimmy, a second baseman. Ed’s death was tragic. The Washington club was coming back from somewhere—I don’t remember where—and their train had come to the suspension bridge there at Niagara Falls. It stopped before it went across, and Ed got off for a minute. But the train started up without him, and Ed began to walk across the bridge. The watchman, the guard at the bridge, tried to stop him, and they had a fight or something. Nobody knows just what happened. Anyway, Ed fell off the bridge and was killed. They found his body a couple of miles below the Falls. It was too bad. He was a nice guy.

  How did I get started in baseball? Well, I played ball all the time as a kid, you know. I always loved it. I grew up in Wahoo, Nebraska. “Wahoo Sam.” I insisted they put that on my plaque at the Hall of Fame. That’s my home town, and I’m proud of it. Darryl Zanuck came from Wahoo, did you know that? Also Howard Hanson, of the Eastman Conservatory of Music. I remember when Darryl Zanuck was a little towheaded kid running around the streets. His mother and father owned the hotel there in Wahoo. That was a long time ago. My dad ran a general store, just a little country store where they sold everything.

  In those days baseball was a big thing in those little towns. The kids would be playing ball all the time. Nowadays basketball and football seem to be as popular among kids as baseball, maybe more so, but not then. And we didn’t have radio, you know, or television, or automobiles. I guess, when you come to think of it, we spent most of our childhood playing ball.

  Heck, we used to make our own baseballs. All the kids would gather string and yarn and we’d get hold of a little rubber ball for the center. Then we’d get our mothers to sew a cover on the ball to hold it all together. We didn’t use tape to tape up the outside, like kids did 10 or 20 years later. We didn’t see much tape in those days, about 1890 or so. Of course, they had tape then, electrical tape, but not much.

  I can remember very well the first electric lights in Wahoo, on the street corner. Just one loop of wire, kind of reddish. We used to go down to the corner and watch this light go on. That was a big deal. Then we’d go over to the powerhouse, where the dynamos were, and see where they made the electricity. After that came the arc lights, with two carbons coming together. That was the next step. But the first ones were just one loop of wire in the bulb, and they gave kind of a reddish glow.

 
Of course, there were regular baseballs made back then. We’d call them league balls. But we couldn’t afford to buy them, not us kids. That was for the men to play with. For bats we’d find some broken bat and nail it up, or sometimes even make our own.

  Every town had its own town team in those days. I remember when I made my first baseball trip. A bunch of us from around Wahoo, all between sixteen and eighteen years old, made a trip overland in a wagon drawn by a team of horses. One of the boys got his father to let us take the wagon. It was a lumber wagon, with four wheels, the kind they used to haul the grain to the elevator, and was pulled by a team of two horses. It had room to seat all of us—I think there were 11 or 12 of us—and we just started out and went from town to town, playing their teams.

  One of the boys was a cornet player, and when we’d come to a town he’d whip out that cornet and sound off. People would all come out to see what was going on, and we’d announce that we were the Wahoo team and were ready for a ball game. Every little town out there on the prairie had its own ball team and ball grounds, and we challenged them all. We didn’t have any uniforms or anything, just baseball shoes maybe, but we had a manager. I pitched and played the outfield both.

  It wasn’t easy to win those games, as you can imagine. Each of those towns had its own umpire, so you really had to go some to win. We played Freemont, and Dodge, and West Point, and lots of others in and around Nebraska. Challenged them all. Did pretty well, too.