The Glory of Their Times

by Lawrence S. Ritter

  Doggone it, though, when game time came, darned if Rube wasn’t out there ready to pitch. I’ll never forget it as long as I live. He went along all right for three innings, but in the fourth we got two men on base and then Rube grooved one to me, which I promptly hit over the fence. As I’m trotting around the bases Rube is watching me all the way, and as he kept turning around on top of the mound he got dizzy, and by golly he fell over right on his rear end. Fell over right flat on his can!

  Oh, that started everybody to laughing so hard we could hardly play. Some guys laughed so much they practically had a fit. All except the St. Louis manager, Jack O’Connor. He came running out and yelled, “Come on out of there. You didn’t want to pitch anyhow.” Somehow that made everybody laugh all the more. Good old Rube. In his life he gave a lot of people a lot of enjoyment.

  So did Babe Ruth, too. The Babe was always friendly, a real nice guy who’d go out of his way any time to do you a favor. I guess when you talk about the greatest baseball player who ever lived it has to be either the Babe, Ty Cobb, or Honus Wagner. I didn’t see much of Wagner, ’cause he was in the National League, but I played for years against both Cobb and Ruth, and I’d hate to have to choose between them. Golly, both of those guys could beat you in so many ways it wasn’t funny.

  Ty could get real nasty on the field, you know. Off the field, though, he was a pretty good guy. See that picture? It’s a famous picture. It’s Cobb sliding into third, and the other guy is me, being knocked sprawling. He took my left foot with his shoulder as he came in, and down I went. See the ball near my right knee? Look at Cobb’s face. That guy wanted to win in the worst way.

  Ty was fair enough on the bases, though, He nicked me a couple of times, but it was my fault. I don’t blame him. I remember one day Ty was on first base and Sam Crawford hit a single out to right field, on which Ty comes all the way around to third. I just stood there, nonchalant, as though nothing’s happening. At the last minute here comes the ball as Ty is sliding in, and I grabbed it real quick and in the same motion pushed his foot off the bag as I tagged him.

  “It’s Ty Cobb sliding in to third, and the other guy is me”

  Well, the umpire called Ty out. Ty didn’t move a muscle. Just lay there on the ground. Then he looked up at me, and in that Southern brogue of his he said, very slowly, “Mister, don’t you ever dare do that no more.”

  When Cobb was out there on that ball field, look out. He wasn’t anybody’s friend then. He was out to win, regardless. But I got along with him all right off the field. He was a better guy off the field than he was on.

  Now Babe Ruth, he was different. What a warmhearted, generous soul he was. Always friendly, always time for a laugh or a wisecrack. The Babe always had a twinkle in his eye, and when he’d hit a homer against us he’d never trot past third without giving me a wink.

  The Babe would give you the shirt off his back. All you had to do was ask him. The big fellow wasn’t perfect. Everybody knows that. But that guy had a heart. He really did. A heart as big as a watermelon, and made out of pure gold.

  7 Fred Snodgrass

  Often I have been asked to tell what I did to Fred Snodgrass after he dropped that fly ball in the World Series of 1912, eleven years ago. Well, I will tell you exactly what I did: I raised his salary $1,000.

  —JOHN J. MCGRAW, My Thirty Years in Baseball

  I LOOK BACK at my years in baseball with a tremendous amount of pleasure. Yes, I’d love to do it all over again, and that in spite of the fact that I had what might be called a rather stormy career in baseball.

  For over half a century I’ve had to live with the fact that I dropped a ball in a World Series—“Oh yes, you’re the guy that dropped that fly ball, aren’t you?”—and for years and years, whenever I’d be introduced to somebody, they’d start to say something and then stop, you know, afraid of hurting my feelings. But nevertheless, those were wonderful years, and if I had the chance I’d gladly do it all over again, every bit of it.

  Of course, playing baseball was more than just fun. For a youngster, it was quite an education, too. Especially it was an education to play under John J. McGraw. He was a great man, really a wonderful fellow, and a great manager to play for.

  Naturally, McGraw and I didn’t always see things alike. I was a headstrong, quick-tempered, twenty-year-old kid when I joined the Giants in 1908. And sometimes Mr. McGraw would bawl the dickens out of me, as he did everybody else. Any mental error, any failure to think, and McGraw would be all over you. And I do believe he had the most vicious tongue of any man who ever lived. Absolutely! Sometimes that wasn’t very easy to take, you know.

  However, he’d never get on you for a mechanical mistake, a fielding error or failure to get a hit. He was a very fair man, and it was only when you really had it coming to you that you got it. And once he’d bawled you out good and proper, and I do mean proper, then he’d forget it. He wouldn’t ever mention it again, and in public he would always stand up for his players. It was really a lot of fun to play for McGraw.

  As a matter of fact, it was because Mr. McGraw’s favorite form of relaxation was watching the ponies that I became a professional ballplayer in the first place. He loved to follow the horses, you know, and in February of 1908 he came out here to Los Angeles to attend the races. He didn’t bring his team, he was out here by himself. While he was here, he’d put on a uniform and work out to get himself in shape before spring training began, so he could sort of get the jump on all those old-timers who were on the Giants then.

  At the time, the only contact I had with baseball was playing Sundays on a semipro team called the Hoegee Flags. (We were sponsored by a sporting-goods house, and on our backs we had flags of all nations.) We played teams all over southern California, and I still remember the one that was toughest. It was a team down by Santa Ana, for which Walter Johnson pitched. If people think Walter was fast later on, they should have seen him then. Whew! Most of the time you couldn’t even see the ball!

  Anyway, one of my friends was helping Mr. McGraw work out at the ball park, shagging flies for him and things like that. McGraw asked a question about me, remembering I guess that the year before the Giants had played three exhibition games against St. Vincent’s College in Los Angeles and that as a student there I had caught for St. Vincent’s. Mr. McGraw had been the umpire, and we had argued and quarreled constantly all through those three games.

  “Oh, Snodgrass is the best catcher in semipro around here,” my friend said.

  “Well,” McGraw said, “if you see him, tell him I would like to talk to him.”

  Word got to me, and I discussed it with my parents. There didn’t seem to be any harm in talking to him, so I called him up at his hotel. He asked me to meet him in the lobby the next day, which I did.

  “Are you thinking about playing baseball?” McGraw asked me.

  “A little bit,” I said, “but not too seriously. Although I did have an offer from Peoria in the Three-I League.”

  He reached into his pocket and said, “Here’s a contract. Take it home and talk it over with your father and mother. If they think you ought to try baseball, our train leaves for spring training in four days. Let me know what you decide, will you?”

  Well, as you can well imagine, I was on that train four days later, going to Marlin, Texas. That’s the way I got started in baseball. Of course, my contract only called for $150 a month. And, to tell the truth, at the time I couldn’t even name all the clubs in the two Big Leagues. But suddenly there I was, at spring training with the New York Giants.

  You see, in those days they didn’t have an army of coaches and scouts and things of that kind. The way they got young players was by direct observation themselves. Or some friend of the club would tip off John McGraw, or other managers, that here was a likely kid, and they would bring him up and look him over.

  The Giants at Marlin, Texas, in the spring of 1913: “…every day, twice a day…we walked from the hotel to the ball park along some railroad tra
cks that ran close by.” This picture was taken by Christy Mathewson.

  The Giants had bought a piece of property in Marlin, Texas, a town of about 4,000 or 5,000 people, and had constructed a ball park there for spring-training purposes. They thought that in a little town like that they could keep the fellows under control better. The ball park was about two miles from our hotel, and every day twice a day, morning and afternoon, we walked from the hotel to the ball park along some railroad tracks that ran close by. We trained there every spring I was with the Giants, which was until 1915.

  Of course, spring training was very different in those days, compared to today. It was simpler, and it was tougher. Today you have specialized teachers and coaches and schools and blackboards, and all that sort of thing. You have mass calisthenics and mechanical pitchers and moving pictures to look at to see what you’re doing wrong, and a host of other things. Maybe it’s helpful and maybe it isn’t. I guess it must be.

  But we didn’t have any of those things. We didn’t have ten coaches, each a professional teacher in some aspect of baseball. We had one old-timer, Arlie Latham, who had been a first-rate ballplayer and who was a fine fellow, but who was probably the worst third-base coach who ever lived. They didn’t make a specialty of such things then. In those days, you see, it was strictly up to the individual to improve himself and to get himself into condition. If he was intelligent, and if he was a man who wanted to make that team and become a first-class baseball player, he himself had to have it in his heart to work at it. He wasn’t made to do things. In fact, he wasn’t even encouraged very much.

  Of course, we trotted to and from the park every day, and McGraw insisted that we run so many times around the park, and naturally we’d have batting and fielding practice. However, it was practically impossible for a youngster, a rookie, to get up to the plate in batting practice. A youngster was an outsider, and those old veterans weren’t about to make it easy for him to take away one of their jobs. The Giants then had mostly rough and tough old characters, men who had been around quite a while—men like Mike Donlin, Joe McGinnity, Cy Seymour, Spike Shannon, and a lot of others. When I came up in 1908 it was mostly a team of veterans, a lot of them nearing the end of their baseball careers. But that didn’t mean they accepted that fact.

  And yet, when I look back, I realize that I owe a great deal to one of those veterans. I was assigned to room with Spike Shannon. He was about thirty years old and had been an outfielder in the Big Leagues for about five years. He took me under his wing, helped me, encouraged me, and told me what to do and what not to do. I doubt if I’d have made the club that year if it hadn’t been for Shannon.

  But I did make it. I was the third-string catcher in 1908, behind Roger Bresnahan and Tom Needham. I sat on the bench all through that season. That was the year of the famous Merkle incident, when we should have won the pennant but didn’t. In 1909 I was still the third-string catcher until the last month of the season, when McGraw put me in the outfield for about 20 games. In 1910 I was a catcher again in spring training, and when the season opened I was once more spending most of my time sitting on the bench. By then Bresnahan had left and Chief Meyers was doing most of the catching.

  Then on the first road trip of the 1910 season McGraw came to me in the hotel in Cincinnati.

  “Snow,” he said, “how would you like to play center field?”

  Well, I had been very unhappy sitting on the bench, and I immediately thought he was going to send me out to some minor league club. So I said, “With what club?”

  “Why, this club, of course.”

  “You mean you’re going to take Cy Seymour out of center field?”

  “Yes,” he said, “would you like to try it?’

  So from then on I was the regular center fielder for the Giants. I never went back to catching. I was also the substitute first baseman for Fred Merkle whenever something happened and Merkle couldn’t play. As a matter of fact, I preferred playing first base. I didn’t particularly like the outfield. You can be out there all day without a chance, or maybe just backing up some play. I like to be in the middle of things and fight a little bit.

  That was quite a team we had in those days, you know. We won the pennant in ’11, ’12, and ’13. Fred Merkle was at first base, Larry Doyle at second, Al Bridwell and then Art Fletcher at short, and Art Devlin or Buck Herzog at third. In the outfield Red Murray was on one side of me, and Josh Devore or George Burns on the other. The battery was Chief Meyers behind the plate and Mathewson, Rube Marquard, Jeff Tesreau, Leon Ames, Hooks Wiltse, Otis Crandall, or Bugs Raymond pitching. What a club that was!

  Marquard! What a great record Rube had. In 1912 he won 19 straight games, almost every one a complete game. And I still remember that wonderful 21-inning game he pitched against Pittsburgh—I think it was in 1914. We won that game, 3–1, in 21 innings, and Rube pitched the whole game. As a matter of fact, I think Babe Adams pitched all 21 innings for Pittsburgh, too. You know, in those days pitchers were expected to pitch the whole game. Today it’s entirely different. Five or six pitchers a game isn’t at all unusual now. But then it was a disgrace if a pitcher didn’t finish what he started.

  And Mathewson! The great pitcher that he was! He pitched a complete game almost every time he went out there. Matty was the greatest pitcher who ever lived, in my opinion. He was a wonderful, wonderful man, too, a reserved sort of fellow, a little hard to get close to. But once you got to know him, he was a truly good friend.

  Matty could do everything well. He was checker champion of half a dozen states—he’d play several opponents simultaneously and beat them all—a good billiard player, a pretty fair golfer, and a terrific poker player. He made a good part of his expenses every year playing poker. He was a good bridge player, too.

  And did you know that he never pitched on Sunday, or even dressed in uniform? Of course, in those days we never played Sunday ball in the East—in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, or Pittsburgh—although we did in Chicago, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. But Matty never would. I’m not saying that he was a very religious man, but he got started that way, I guess because of some belief he had, and he continued it throughout his career.

  For contrast, we also had Bugs Raymond. Bugs drank too much and came to an early tragic end, but when he was sober, and sometimes when he wasn’t, he was one of the greatest spitball pitchers who ever lived. McGraw tried to help him, but he didn’t succeed. He tried fining him when he’d break training, but fining Bugs didn’t have any effect. Bugs would go into any bar, pull a baseball out of his pocket and autograph it, and he’d get all the free drinks he wanted. Actually, McGraw didn’t keep the fines; he would send the money to Bugs’ wife, although he never let Bugs know this.

  Even when he wasn’t drinking, Bugs did the strangest things. I remember once, in spring training, we all went to a fish fry on the final day before leaving camp. Somebody brought along a couple of target guns, and we were all shooting at targets. Bugs said, “Here, hit this.” And he took out his pocket watch, a very good watch that had been given to him in the minor leagues. I remember Al Bridwell was shooting at the time. Bugs threw the watch up in the air, and Al put a bullet right through the middle of it!

  On the way back to New York that same spring, we stopped for three days at the Belvedere Hotel in Baltimore. The Belvedere was one of the finest hotels in the East, and they just about tripled our eating allowance there, because it was so expensive. Bugs was never seen by anybody all three days we were there. On the morning we were to leave for New York we were all down in the lobby, reading the newspapers and waiting to go, when somebody saw two waiters and two bus boys going into the elevators, all with loaded trays. It turned out to be Bugs Raymond’s breakfast. Bugs hadn’t eaten at the hotel for the three days, and sure enough he had taken the menu and figured out exactly the amount that he could spend, item by item. He spent the whole three days’ meal allowance for that breakfast. And, of course, he was too much under the weather to eat any part of it
!

  Bugs had a good sense of humor and was a lot of fun. But he couldn’t stay away from drinking, and as a result you never could be sure he’d show up. McGraw tried bringing his wife and children along with the team, both at home and on the road, so they could be with him all the time. It worked pretty well for a while, but then that flew all to pieces, too. Bugs and McGraw finally had it out one night on the train, and Bugs was told that the next time he didn’t show up would mean the end of his career.

  The next day we were playing in St. Louis. We were supposed to be at the park at noon, and by two o’clock Bugs still hadn’t shown up. Finally, we saw Bugs, in civilian clothes, walking across the field toward the clubhouse out beyond center field. McGraw met him at the door.

  “Bugs,” he said, “you’re through in baseball. Here’s your uniform [that was the year we had to buy our own uniforms]. See Mr. Foster, and he’ll give you a ticket back to New York. You’re through with the Giants.”

  When we finally got back to New York ourselves, hanging in the window of the nearest saloon to the Polo Grounds was Bugs Raymond’s uniform, with a sign on it that said “Bugs Raymond Tending Bar Here.” That was in 1911, and Bugs never pitched another game in professional baseball. He was an outcast, and the next year, at the age of thirty, he died.

  But when I think of my teammates on the Giants, other than Bugs Raymond, I can’t name a single player that I ever saw under the influence of liquor. A lot of those boys were rough and tough, but they weren’t heavy drinkers. A few beers now and then, that was about it.

  Bugs Raymond

  I will tell you something about those players, though, that I think is usually overlooked. They were rough and tough, all right, but they were good thinkers, too. Players in my day played baseball with their brains as much as their brawn. They were intelligent, smart ballplayers. Why, you had to be! You didn’t stay in the Big Leagues very long in those days unless you used your head every second of every game.