“Like in the first place,” I said, “you broke your promise and got $1,800 for my worn-out carcass three years ago. Second, you didn’t pay me my salary for August and September that year. I know I went home in August, but that’s on account of you didn’t keep your word.”
“All right,” he says, “I’ll give you that $1,800 I got from McGraw and pay you your salary for August and September, too. What do you say?”
Well, naturally, I said yes. As you know, I’d already gotten both the $1,800 and the back pay from John McGraw. But Barney Dreyfuss didn’t know that, and as far as I was concerned he owed it to me anyway for breaking his promise.
So I became the first Canadian-born Big League manager. Still the only one, I think, to this day. I managed the Pirates on and off for about 15 years, and then retired and came back home. Didn’t win any pennants but we came close a few times. Always seemed to fade in the stretch. I have a sneaking suspicion we’d have won those pennants if I only could have gotten my pitchers into a little better shape.
6 Jimmy Austin
The ball once struck off,
Away flies the boy
To the next destined post,
And then home with joy.
—Anonymous, 1774
I GUESS MOST PEOPLE must have thought I was crazy. Twenty-four years old and leaving a good job to go off and play a boys’ game. After just finishing four years of apprenticeship, too, and finally getting to be a full-fledged machinist.
In a way, I guess it did look like I was off my rocker. But it all depends on how you look at it. Me, I was always crazy about baseball. See, I was born in Swansea, Wales, and I didn’t come to this country until I was eight years old. So I had to make up for a lot of baseball I’d missed up to then. I never could get enough of it. Even now, eighty-five years old, my Christmas present from my wife is always The Sporting News, and I still read that thing from beginning to end the same day it gets here.
So I knew it was the right thing to do. It’s true that I didn’t get to the Big Leagues until I was almost thirty. But I was still playing regular when I was past forty, and then I stayed on another 20 years as a coach. Golly, if I had it to do all over the only thing I’d do different would be to start sooner and stop later. It was great.
Heck, I even played in a Big League game when I was fifty years old. It was near the end of the 1929 season, and I was coaching for the old St. Louis Browns. Dan Howley was the manager that year. It was late in the game and we were way ahead, and some of the fellows were kidding me about how good a player I’d been. Well, darned if Dan didn’t haul off and put me right in there at third base. Fifty years old I was. I had two chances and handled them both clean, and got up to bat once. Boy, I wish I’d gotten a hit.
My Dad was a shipbuilder in Wales. He came over here in 1885 and settled in Cleveland, where he went to work doing the same sort of thing. A couple of years later he brought the rest of the family over. After I finished school I went to work at Westinghouse, where I wound up becoming a machinist-apprentice. Well, a month after my four years of apprenticeship had ended—that would be 1903—the union went out on strike, and of course I had to go out with the rest of the boys.
I was puttering around the house one day, when a fellow came to the front door. My mother had died, and my sister—I was the oldest of eight children—was keeping house. I was in the back yard doing something, and she came back and said, “Jim, you’re wanted. Some gentleman would like to see you.”
I went out front, and it was a guy from Warren, Ohio. He says, “You’re Jim Austin? I’ve heard of you. You play ball around here with the Franklin Athletic Club, don’t you?”
“Yes I do,” I said.
“Well,” he says, “how would you like to come to Warren and play independent ball? We have a pretty good little league, all factory teams, and we can pay you $40 a month plus a job.”
“All right,” I said. It didn’t take me long to make up my mind. Hell, I’d always wanted to be a ballplayer. Ed Delahanty and Bill Bradley and Tommy Leach had all come from Cleveland and made it. Why not me? Besides, we were out on strike, so I didn’t have any money coming in, anyway.
“That’s fine,” he says. “Now do you know where I might be able to get a good outfielder?”
“Why sure,” I said. “I can get you the best outfielder in town.” So I went to Dode Paskert’s house and told him about it, and he went with me to Warren.
Well, we played in that little independent league that summer, and then I went back to work at Westinghouse in the fall. The next spring, though, I got a letter from the Dayton club in the Central League. That was in organized ball. Somebody had recommended both Dode and me to Dayton, and they made offers to both of us. So off we went to Dayton.
We played together there for three years, and then in 1907 they sold Dode to Atlanta in the Southern League and me to Omaha in the Western League. I stole 97 bases with Omaha in 1908, and at the end of the season I was sold to the New York Yankees. I played for 14 years in the American League. Dode wound up with Cincinnati and played for 15 years in the National League. So I guess you might say we both made good.
The Dayton club in the Central League in 1904. Jimmy Austin is on the far right in the middle row (with his glove on his knee), and Dode Paskert is on the far right, top row.
Of course, they weren’t called the Yankees then. We were called the New York Highlanders, because we played in a little park—it only seated about 15,000—located at 168th Street and Broadway, which was on pretty high ground. You could look from the stands and see all the way down the Hudson River. Sometimes we were called the Hilltoppers.
The Highlanders had a pretty good team when I joined them in 1909. We ended fifth in 1909, and second behind the Athletics in 1910. Three real old-timers were on that club when I got there: Willie Keeler, Kid Elberfeld, and Jack Chesbro. Gee, they were great fellows. They were all close to forty by then, and they didn’t play much longer, but I got a thrill just being on the same team with them.
You know, you hear all that stuff about the old-timers being so rough on rookies in those days. Well, you can’t prove it by me. Those guys were swell to me.
Wee Willie Keeler was still a pretty good ballplayer, even then. He could loop ’em over the infield better than anybody I ever saw. Wonderful fellow. I was too shy to say anything to him, but he came to me one day and said, “Jim, you’ve got a great career ahead of you. If I can help you in any way, you just say the word.” How about that?
And Kid Elberfeld. Golly, I was out after the Kid’s third-base job, but he always treated me fine. One day the Kid got in a hassle with Tim Hurst, the tough old umpire, and got suspended for five days and was fined 50 bucks. The Kid slid into second base, safe on a double, sure as could be, and Tim, who was umpiring behind the plate, called it a foul ball. Well, the Kid started arguing with Tim, and while he’s talking he’s all the while jabbing Tim in the belly with his finger. Finally, Tim took his mask off and whammo! He whacked it right across the Kid’s nose. After they separated them, they were both suspended.
Anyway, the point of all this is that George Stallings, who was our manager then, put me in at third base while the Kid was out. And do you know that Elberfeld insisted on me sleeping in a lower berth on the train. The lower berths were for the regulars. Us second-stringers slept in the uppers. I was climbing into my upper one night, after I’d been in there at third base a few days, and the Kid saw me. He grabbed me by the ankles and said, “Where do you think you’re going?”
“This is my berth,” I said.
“The hell it is,” he said.
“The hell it ain’t,” I said. “I’ve had it ever since I’ve been with the club.”
“Well, you’re not going to have it anymore,” he says. He marched me over to the club secretary and says, “Put the youngster down in a lower berth. Take mine if you have to. He’s playing every day, hustling like the devil out there, and he needs his rest.” That’s the way the old-timers
treated a rookie in those days. At least that’s the way they treated me.
Stallings was a fine manager. One of the best. Like I said, we finished in second place in 1910, and you’ve got to say he deserved a lot of the credit for that. Talk about cussing! Golly, he had ’em all beat. He cussed something awful. Once, in a game, he gave me a real going over. Later that night he called me in and said, “Jim, I’m sorry about this afternoon. Don’t pay any attention to me when I say those things. Just forget it. It’s only because I get so excited and want to win so bad.”
Late in the 1910 season we had just finished a series in Cleveland and were on the boat going over to play Detroit. Nobody could find Hal Chase. Hal had been the Highlanders’ first baseman for years. Well, he’d just disappeared. The next day we found out what had happened. When we had gotten on the boat for Detroit, he had taken the train to New York. He’d gone to Mr. Farrell, the president of the club, and complained about Stallings and a lot of other things. Mr. Farrell supported Chase, so Stallings quit, and Chase was made the new manager. God, what a way to run a ball club!
Well, you know how good a manager Hal Chase was: so good that he took over a club that finished second in 1910 and took them straight to sixth place in 1911. And the year after that they wound up last. And you know what Stallings did a few years later with the Boston Braves: he managed them from last place on the fourth of July to win the pennant, and then beat the Athletics in the World Series.
Anyway, one of the first things Chase did after he was made manager was trade me and Frank LaPorte to the St. Louis Browns. Stallings always liked Frank and me. He liked us because we hustled. “The Pepper Kid,” Stallings always used to call me. And because Stallings liked us, Hal traded us. Boy, that Chase was something. He finally left baseball when he got mixed up in gambling and that sort of stuff. He was always like that.
I remember in 1910 we had a utility infielder on the Highlanders by the name of Jack Knight. Somebody gave Jack a new bat, and it just suited him. Boy, he hit like a fool with it. Hal Chase had a thousand bats himself, but he always wanted the other guy’s, especially if it was somebody’s who was hitting good. So Hal says, “You don’t mind if I use your bat, do you Jack?”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” Jack said, “because it’s the only one I’ve got.”
Well, by gosh, Chase got so mad that he took Jack’s bat and slammed it up against the dugout wall as hard as he could. That’s the kind of guy he was. So they made him the manager!
It turned out, though, that it was a big break for me, him trading me to the Browns like that. Because I stayed there for over 20 years, as a player until 1922 and as a coach for 10 more years after that. When I went to St. Louis in 1911 the Browns were the team in that town, you know. It wasn’t until the late twenties and the thirties that the Cardinals became the big team in St. Louis.
When I got to St. Louis, Bobby Wallace was the manager. One of the greatest fielding shortstops who ever lived, you know. It was a delight to play third base next to that fellow. Bobby played most of his career with the Browns. He was their regular shortstop from 1902 to about 1914 or so. Anyway, they made Bobby a playing manager in 1911, but he wasn’t very happy as a manager, and in the middle of the 1912 season they got George Stovall to replace him. Bobby stayed at shortstop, though, for a few more years. George was a playing manager, too. He managed and played first base.
However, George spit himself out of a job the next year. Yeah, that’s right, he expectorated himself right out of a job. He got into an argument with an umpire by the name of Charlie Ferguson. It was an awful rumpus. They were hollering at each other and one thing and another, and finally Ferguson threw George out of the game.
Well, before he left, George had to go back to first base to get his glove. Our dugout was on the third-base side. So Stovall walked, as slow as he could, all the way around behind the umpire and to first base, picked up his glove, and then started back the same way, maybe even slower. Well, the longer he walked the madder he got. And the longer he took, the madder the umpire got.
As George came around behind Ferguson on the way back to our dugout, the umpire told George to hurry it up. I guess that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, because George let fly with a big glob of tobacco juice—p–tooey!—that just spattered all over Ferguson’s face and coat and everywhere else. Ugh, it was an awful mess. It was terrible. George always did chew an uncommonly large wad, you know.
Jimmy Austin
Well, they suspended George for that. In fact, they went and threw him clear out of the League. I don’t believe he ever played another game in the American League, although I think that George did manage the Kansas City club in the Federal League later on.
So there we were in the middle of the season—that was 1913—without a manager. So who did Mr. Hedges, the president of the club, ask to be temporary manager until they got a new one? Of all people, me.
Mr. Hedges called me in after Stovall was suspended and said, “Jim, will you come out to my apartment tonight?”
“Sure,” I said. “Where is it?” How was I supposed to know where the devil he lived?
He told me, so I went out there, and when I got there here’s this Branch Rickey fellow. He’d been a second-string catcher years before with St. Louis, but since then he’d become a lawyer and was at the University of Michigan as a teacher or a baseball coach or something.
“Jim, I want you to meet Mr. Rickey,” said Mr. Hedges. “Mr. Rickey is going to be the manager next year, but we’d like you to finish out as manager for the rest of this season.” Which, of course, I did.
So that’s how I met Branch Rickey. A year or two later Branch brought George Sisler to the Browns. Branch had been his coach at the University of Michigan. And you know the tremendous ballplayer Sis became. One of the very greatest who ever lived. Golly, he hit like blazes: .407 one year and .420 another. He was unbelievable with that bat. Really, you had to see it to believe it.
You know what happened last December? The phone rang and some guy with a real rough voice says, “Are you going to be home tomorrow?”
“Yeah, I’ll be home tomorrow,” I said.
“Well, I expect to be there about lunchtime.”
“Who the hell is this?” I said.
“It’s Branch Rickey,” he says.
So old Branch showed up and we spent hours talking about old friends and replaying old ball games. It was great.
I was Branch’s Sunday manager, you know. He’d promised his mother and father he’d never go near a ballpark on Sunday, so I managed the team for him every Sunday all the time he was with the Browns.
Just think of me, a third baseman, playing most of my years throwing over to either Hal Chase or George Sisler at first base. Why, that’s heaven for a third baseman. There’s no doubt that they were the two greatest-fielding first basemen who ever lived, and that’s in anybody’s book.
Of the two, I guess I’d have to say that Chase was the better fielder. In a way I hate to say that, but you have to give the devil his due. Sis was a better all-around ballplayer. He started with us as a pitcher, you know. I was at third base one day in 1915 when he outpitched Walter Johnson and beat him, 2–1. And, of course, Sis was a better hitter, one of the best of all time. But just on fielding alone, I’m afraid I’d have to pick Chase.
And pitchers—boy, did we ever have ’em. Lefty Grove was fast, and Sandy Koufax is, too. But you should have seen Walter Johnson. On a cloudy day you couldn’t see the ball half the time, it came in so fast. That’s the honest-to-goodness truth. But I’d rather bat against Walter than some of those other fast-ball pitchers, because Walter was so damned careful. He was too good a guy, scared stiff he’d hit somebody. A lot of the others didn’t care—the hell with you, you know.
I remember one day Walter had us beat, 10–2 or something like that, and he yells in to me, “Here’s one right in there. Let’s see you hit it.”
Well, he threw a medium fast one in, letter-hi
gh, and I hit it clear over the right-field fence. Laugh? I don’t know which one of us was laughing harder as I was going around the bases. But of course that was the exception. Usually I couldn’t come close to hitting Walter, and neither could anyone else. I was playing against him that day in 1913 when he pitched his 54th consecutive scoreless inning, to beat Jack Coombs’ record of 53 in a row. He reached 56 straight scoreless innings of pitching before we finally got a run off of him. I guess that record still stands even today, over half a century later.
And old Rube Waddell. What a card that big guy was. You know, when I first came to the Big Leagues they didn’t have clubhouses in most parks, especially not for the visiting team. We’d get into uniform at the hotel and ride out to the ball park in a bus drawn by four horses. They used to call it a tally-ho in those days. We’d sit on seats along the sides and ride, in uniform, to the ballpark and back.
That ride was always a lot of fun. Kids running alongside as we went past, and rotten tomatoes once in a while. Always lots of excitement when the ball club rode by, you know, with plenty of yelling back and forth, as you can well imagine.
But what I started to tell you about was Rube Waddell. When I was with the Highlanders, Rube was with the St. Louis Browns. He’d left Connie Mack by then and was near the end of his career. This day I’m thinking about we were riding to the ball park in the tally-ho to play the Browns, knowing Rube was going to pitch against us. As we got near the park somebody yelled “Hey look, there’s Rube.”
A 1906 advertisement
And darned if it wasn’t. He was scheduled to pitch that day, but there he was, standing out in front of the swinging doors of a saloon with a mug of beer that big. He’s waving and yelling to us, and while we’re yelling and laughing back and forth he holds up the beer, like as to say “Skoal,” and downs the whole thing, chug-a-lug, right like that. And as the tally-ho continued on, we saw Rube go back into the saloon.
The Glory of Their Times Page 10
