The Glory of Their Times

by Lawrence S. Ritter

  You see, it was a different game then compared to today. Now they’re all trying to hit the ball over the fence. It’s mostly brute strength. They’re always trying to get a flock of runs at once. But in my day a home run was a rarity. You couldn’t hit balls over the fence in most parks in those days, because the ball was too dead! So we were always playing for small scores, for one run or two.

  As a result, there was a premium on intelligence in those days, on the ability to outwit and outthink the other team. And on speed and strategy. We used heavier, thicker bats and choked up on them so we could bunt more effectively and place our hits. Very few held the bat all the way down at the end, the way they do today. The only one I can remember was Frank Schulte, with the Cubs in the famous days of Tinker to Evers to Chance. Schulte held the bat down at the end. But most of us were choke hitters who punched at the ball trying to get singles and doubles, not home runs.

  For example, take a simple thing like the art of getting hit with the ball when you’re at bat. To get up there and deliberately attempt to get hit by a pitched ball. It’s a lost art today; just not done anymore. I used to lead the league in that. I had baggy uniforms, a baggy shirt, baggy pants—any ball thrown close inside, why I turned with it and half the time I wasn’t really hit, just my uniform was nicked. Or the ball might hit your bat close to your hands and you’d fall down on your belly, and while you were down you’d try to make a red spot by squeezing your hand or something. If you had a good red spot there, the umpire might believe it hit you rather than the bat. And off you’d go to first base.

  Of course, in those days baseball was a pitcher’s game much more than it is today. Not only did we have a dead ball, but pitchers were allowed to use such deliveries as the spitball, the emery ball, and what have you. And we hardly ever saw a new baseball, a clean one. If the ball went into the stands and the ushers couldn’t get it back from the spectators, only then would the umpire throw out a new one.

  He’d throw the ball out to the pitcher, who would promptly sidestep it. It would go around the infield once or twice and come back to the pitcher as black as the ace of spades. All the infielders were chewing tobacco or licorice, and spitting into their gloves, and they’d give that ball a good going over before it ever got to the pitcher. Believe me, that dark ball was hard to see coming out of the shadows of the stands.

  Also, there were a lot of pitchers in those days who were quick-delivery artists. You didn’t dare step into the batter’s box without being ready, because somebody with a quick delivery would have that ball by you before you knew what happened. That was part of the game. The instant you stepped into that batter’s box you had to be ready. If you were looking at your feet or something, the way they do today to get just the right position and all, well, by that time the ball would already be in the catcher’s mitt. Particularly I remember Pat Flaherty, of the Boston Braves, and Joe McGinnity of the Giants was another—both quick-return artists. The catcher would throw them the ball and bang, right back it would come!

  But to get back to this matter of intelligence and thinking in baseball. You know, a lot of what I read in newspapers and books about baseball in the old days is absolutely 100 per cent wrong. For instance, they seem to think that John McGraw directed every move we made on the field, that he was an absolute dictator who told us when to do this and when to do that, down to the last detail. Well, that’s just not so, and it wasn’t so for most other managers, either.

  The fact of the matter is that thinking and alertness were crucial aspects of baseball then. Most of the time we were on our own. We used our own judgment. Nowadays they look at the manager or the coach for directions on almost everything. They aren’t permitted to use their own judgment. They are told what to do on every darn pitch. But in our time we were supposed to know how to play baseball, and were expected to do the right thing at the right time.

  McGraw allowed initiative to his men. We stole when we thought we had the jump and when the situation demanded it. We played hit-and-run when we felt that was what was called for. We bunted when we thought it was appropriate. Every player on the team was expected to know how to play baseball, and that was the kind of a game baseball was in those days. How many games do you see lost today just because they don’t know how to bunt? That’s a lost art, too. There was a lot of strategy in baseball then, and there isn’t very much today. We played a game in which the two key words were “think” and “anticipate.”

  Of course, McGraw took charge sometimes. At certain points in a game he’d give instructions. But most of the time, as I say, the initiative was ours. The player of my day was allowed to think for himself, instead of having somebody do his thinking for him.

  Why, do you know that we hardly ever had a pregame meeting on the Giants the whole eight years I was there? Hardly ever! Today they always have a meeting before the game to discuss what they’re going to do. We didn’t need any meetings. Most of us spent all our waking hours talking baseball anyway, so it would have been silly to have a meeting. Just about the only meetings we ever had on the Giants while I was there were to divide up the World Series money.

  And signs! McGraw hardly ever used signs. The belief that he signaled what was to be done on every play is ridiculous. We were supposed to do things on our own. For instance, we had a base-running club. In 1911, ’12, and ’13 we had six or seven men who would each average 40 or so stolen bases a season. In 1911 we stole 347 bases. Just the New York Giants—347 stolen bases in one season! Look it up, if you don’t believe it. And most of the time we ran on our own. We had signs among ourselves, so we could tell each other what we were planning to do. Signs between the batter and a man on base, for instance. But those were our signs, not McGraw’s.

  On rare occasions, McGraw would indeed tell us to steal. Do you know how he’d do it? On his fingers, with the deaf-and-dumb sign language. A deaf mute, Dummy Taylor, was a pitcher on the club, so all of us knew the sign language. McGraw would sit there on the bench and spell out S-T-E-A-L so plain that anyone in the park who could read deaf-and-dumb language would know what was happening. We had no complicated signals. A nod of the head, or something in sign language; he might just as well have said “go on,” like that, and off you’d go.

  We could all read and speak the deaf-and-dumb sign language, because Dummy Taylor took it as an affront if you didn’t learn to converse with him. He wanted to be one of us, to be a full-fledged member of the team. If we went to the vaudeville show, he wanted to know what the joke was, and somebody had to tell him. So we all learned. We practiced all the time. We’d go by elevated train from the hotel to the Polo Grounds, and all during the ride we’d be spelling out the advertising signs. Not talking to one another, but sitting there spelling out the advertising messages. Even today, when I pass a billboard I find myself doing it.

  Intelligent as they were, most ballplayers were also superstitious in those days. Just as they are today, for that matter. There’s an interesting true story about that. Hard to believe, but true. Early in the 1911 season we were playing in St. Louis, and in those days neither team had a dugout in that park. We had a bench under an awning, about halfway between the grandstand and the foul line. We—the Giants—were having batting practice, when out of the grandstand walked a tall, lanky individual in a dark suit, wearing a black derby hat. He walked across the grass from the grandstand to the bench, and said he wanted to talk to Mr. McGraw. So some of us pointed McGraw out, and he went over to him.

  Manager John J. McGraw on the third base coaching lines (about 1908)

  “Mr. McGraw,” he said, “my name is Charles Victory Faust. I live over in Kansas, and a few weeks ago I went to a fortune-teller who told me that if I would join the New York Giants and pitch for them that they would win the pennant.”

  McGraw looked at him, being superstitious, as most ballplayers were—and are. “Well, that’s interesting,” he said. “Take off your hat and coat, and here’s a glove. I’ll get a catcher’s mitt and warm you
up, and we’ll see what you have.”

  They got up in front of the bench and tossed a few balls back and forth. “I’d better give you my signals,” Charles Victory Faust said. So they got their heads together, and he gave McGraw five or six signals. Mr. McGraw would give him a signal, and he would proceed to wind up. His windup was like a windmill. Both arms went around in circles for quite a little while, before Charlie finally let go of the ball. Well, regardless of the sign that McGraw would give, the ball would come up just the same. There was no difference in his pitches whatsoever. And there was no speed—probably enough to break a pane of glass, but that was about all. So McGraw finally threw his glove away and caught him bare-handed, thinking to himself that this guy must be a nut and he’d have a little fun with him.

  “How’s your hitting?” McGraw asked him.

  “Oh,” he said, “pretty good.”

  “Well,” McGraw said, “we’re having batting practice now, so get a bat and go up there. I want to see you run, too, so run it out and see if you can score.”

  Word was quickly passed around to the fellows who were shagging balls in the infield. Charlie Faust dribbled one down to the shortstop, who juggled it a minute as Charlie was turning first, and then they deliberately slid him into second, slid him into third, and slid him into home, all in his best Sunday suit—to the obvious enjoyment of everyone.

  Well, that night we left for Chicago, and when we got down to the train and into our private Pullman car, who was there but Charles Victory Faust. Everybody looked at him in amazement.

  “We’re taking Charlie along to help us win the pennant,” the superstitious Mr. McGraw announced.

  So, believe it or not, every day from that day on, Charles Victory Faust was in uniform and he warmed up sincerely to pitch that game. He thought he was going to pitch that particular game. Every day this happened. To make a long story shorter, this was 1911, and although Charlie Faust warmed up every day to pitch, he never pitched a game.

  He wasn’t signed to a contract, but John J. McGraw gave him all the money that was necessary. He went to the barbershop almost every day for a massage and a haircut, he had plenty of money to tip the waiters—in the small amounts that we tipped in those days—and we did win the pennant.

  Charles Victory Faust: “His windup was like a windmill.” Notice that Charlie does not have a baseball.

  Spring came around the next year and Charles Victory Faust appeared in the training camp. He warmed up every day in 1912, and again we won the pennant.

  In 1913 he was again in the spring-training camp, and during the season he continued to warm up every day to pitch. By that time he had become a tremendous drawing card with the fans, who would clamor for McGraw to actually put him in to pitch. Finally, one day against Cincinnati they clamored so hard and so loud for McGraw to put him in to pitch that in a late inning McGraw did send him to the mound. He pitched one full inning, without being under contract to the Giants, and he didn’t have enough stuff to hit. They didn’t score on him. One of those nothing-ball pitchers, you know.

  Well, it was Charlie Faust’s turn to come to bat when three outs were made, but the Cincinnati team stayed in the field for the fourth out to let Charlie come to bat. And the same thing happened then that happened the very first time that Charlie ever came on the field in St. Louis in his Sunday clothes: they slid him into second, third, and home.

  He was such a drawing card at this point that a theatrical firm gave him a contract on Broadway in one of those six-a-day shows, starting in the afternoon and running through the evening, and he got four hundred dollars a week for it. He dressed in a baseball uniform and imitated Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, and Honus Wagner. In a very ridiculous way, of course, but seriously as far as Charlie was concerned. And the fans loved it and went to see Charlie on the stage. He was gone four days, and we lost four ball games!

  The fifth day Charlie showed up in the dressing room at the Polo Grounds, and we all said to him, “Charlie, what are you doing here? What about your theatrical contract?”

  “Oh,” he said, “I’ve got to pitch today. You fellows need me.”

  So he went out there and warmed up, with that windmill warm-up he had that just tickled the fans so, and we won the game. And in 1913 we won the pennant again.

  That fall I joined a group of Big Leaguers and we made a barnstorming trip, starting in Chicago and going through the Northwest and down the Coast and over to Honolulu. In Seattle, who came down to the hotel to see me but Charlie Faust.

  “Snow,” he said to me, “I’m not very well. But I think if you could prevail on Mr. McGraw to send me to Hot Springs a month before spring training, I could get into shape and help the Giants win another pennant.”

  But, unfortunately, that never came to pass. Because Charlie Faust died that winter, and we did not win the pennant the next year. Believe it or not, that’s the way it happened. It’s a true story, from beginning to end.

  Which reminds me of that other pennant we did not win, which as I said before we should have won. That was in 1908, the year of the famous Merkle incident. For almost 60 years poor Fred Merkle has been unfairly blamed for losing the pennant for us in 1908. What actually happened was quite understandable, and anyone who puts all the blame on Merkle has to be blind to a lot of other things that happened that season, things which contributed just as much, if not more, to our losing the pennant.

  Fred Merkle had joined the Giants in the fall of 1907, at the age of eighteen, before I joined the following spring. So in 1908, when I met him, and when the so-called Merkle “bonehead” occurred, he was a kid only nineteen years old. As a result of what happened he took more abuse and vituperation than any other nineteen-year-old I’ve ever heard of.

  There were six of us youngsters who made the club that year: Fred Merkle, Larry Doyle, Art Fletcher, Buck Herzog, Otis Crandall, and me. Mostly we were bench warmers. I was a substitute catcher behind the great Roger Bresnahan, so you know I didn’t play much. And Fred Merkle was the substitute first baseman behind Fred Tenney. He was nineteen and I was twenty, and we were both amazed that we were even on the Giants. I doubt if either of us got to play in as many as 25 games that season.

  Anyway, as soon as a game was over at the Polo Grounds, any game, all of us fellows who were sitting on the bench were in the habit, when the last out was made, of jumping up and running like the dickens for our clubhouse, which was out beyond right center field. We wanted to get there before the crowd could get on the field.

  In those days, as soon as a game ended at the Polo Grounds the ushers would open the gates from the stands to the field, and the people would all pour out and rush at you. Of course, all they wanted to do was touch you, or congratulate you, or maybe cuss you out a bit. But, because of that, as soon as a game was over we bench warmers all made it a practice to sprint from the bench to the clubhouse as fast as we could. And that was precisely the reason why Fred Merkle got into that awful jam. He was so used to sitting on the bench all during the game, and then at the end of the game jumping up with the rest of us and taking off as fast as he could for the clubhouse, that on this particular day he did it by force of habit and never gave it a second thought.

  The famous game in which it all happened took place in New York in late September of 1908. The Giants were playing the Chicago Cubs and we were both about tied for the league lead, with only a week or two of the season remaining. Merkle was playing first base for us. I think Fred Tenney, the regular first baseman, was injured or something, and that this was the very first game Merkle had been put in the starting lineup all season.

  Mathewson was pitching for us, against Jack Pfiester for the Cubs. The game went down to the last half of the ninth inning, with the score tied 1–1. And then, in the last of the ninth, with two out and Moose McCormick on first, Merkle hit a long single to right and McCormick went to third. Men were on first and third, with two out. The next man up was Al Bridwell, our shortstop. Al hit a line single into center field
. McCormick, of course, scored easily from third—he could have walked in—with what appeared to be the winning run.

  Merkle started for second base, naturally. But the minute he saw the ball was a safe hit, rolling toward the fence out in right center, with McCormick across the plate and the game presumably over and won, he turned and lit out for the clubhouse, exactly as he had been doing all season long. And that was Merkle’s downfall. Because technically the rules of baseball are that to formally complete the play he had to touch second base, since Bridwell now occupied first.

  As soon as McCormick crossed the plate, everyone thought the game was over. Everyone except Johnny Evers, anyway. The crowd began to come on the field, we bench sitters sprinted out through right center field for our clubhouse, as usual, along with Merkle and everybody else, and the two umpires walked toward their dressing room, which was behind the press box in back of home plate. So neither of the umpires saw what happened after that, because they were both going directly opposite from where the ball went.

  Well, of course, what happened was that the great infield of Steinfeldt, Tinker, Evers, and Chance were playing for Chicago, and Johnny Evers, an old-timer at the game, saw that Merkle hadn’t touched second base. Evers began to call to the Cub’s center fielder, Artie Hofman, to go and get the ball. Hofman hadn’t even chased it, because the game was over as far as he was concerned. But Evers made so much noise about getting the ball and throwing it in to second base, that Hofman finally retrieved it and threw it in.

  However, Joe McGinnity, another old-timer, was coaching at third base for us, and he sensed what was going on. He ran out, intercepted the ball, and threw it up into the left field bleachers. He threw it clear out of the park. They say Evers got another ball from somewhere else and touched second with it, but I don’t think so. I never saw that.