The Glory of Their Times

by Lawrence S. Ritter

  Actually, Harry beating the Giants three times in 1908 probably changed my life more than it did his. See, I never played much baseball when I was a kid. How could I? When I was twelve years old I went to work in the coal mines.

  I was born in 1890 in Shamokin, Pennsylvania. That’s anthracite country, about halfway between Scranton and Harrisburg. When I was twelve years old I was working in the mines from seven in the morning to seven at night, six days a week. Which means a 72-hour week, if you care to figure it up. For those 72 hours I got $3.75. About 5¢ an hour. There was nothing strange in those days about a twelve-year-old Polish kid in the mines for 72 hours a week at a nickel an hour.

  What was strange was that I ever got out of there. Like I said, I never played much baseball in those days. I couldn’t. Never saw the sunlight. Most of the year I went to work in the dark and came home in the dark. I would have been a natural for night baseball. Never knew the sun came up any day but Sunday.

  But every evening after I got home I’d throw stones at tin cans. I don’t know why. Just for something to do, I guess. Heck, we didn’t have any television then, or radio, or automobiles, or even a telephone or electric lights. Had to do something. So I threw stones. I’d put a tin can on a log, or tie it to a tree, and stand maybe 40 or 50 feet away and throw stones at it. Did that every night till it was time to go to bed. I did that for so many years I could hit one of those things blindfolded.

  Harry Coveleski, the Phillies’ “Giant Killer,” in 1908

  “He was with Detroit when I was with Cleveland. They always wanted us to pitch against each other, but we refused.”

  Connie Mack and family before the opening of the 1911 World Series

  Well, the semipro team in town heard about me being so good throwing stones at tin cans and they asked me if I’d like to pitch for them. That was in 1908, when I was eighteen. Of course, maybe being Harry’s kid brother had something to do with it, too. Then, before I knew what hit me, I was signed to a contract with Lancaster, and I was out of those damn mines for good.

  Never forget leaving home for the first time to go play with Lancaster. It was the first time I ever rode on a train. Had to get a new suit of clothes to go off to the big city, but was too bashful to buy it. So Mom and Dad went to town, picked one out, and brought it home to fit it on me. Then when I got to Lancaster I was too shy to eat in the hotel with the rest of the team. I’d go to a hot-dog stand and eat by myself instead. Pay for it out of my own pocket. After a couple of weeks some of the players got suspicious, never seeing me around. So one day they followed me and caught me eating my hot dogs. After that they made me go to the hotel dining room with them. I’m glad they did.

  I pitched for Lancaster for a few years, then went up for a trial with the Athletics late in 1912. With Connie Mack. Connie was a good manager. He was a very considerate man. If you did something wrong, he’d never bawl you out on the bench, or in the clubhouse. In the evening he’d ask you to take a walk with him, and on the way he’d tell you what you’d done wrong.

  One day Connie called me in and told me I was to start that day. My first Big League game. I was a little nervous, but not too much. Hell, I’d been around by then. Four years in the Tri-State League. I figured I could do the job. Ben Egan caught me. Remember Big Benny?

  “All you have to do is throw it right to me,” Ben said. “I’ll give you a good target. Just aim for my glove.”

  So that’s what I did. Pitched a three-hitter. I aimed at Big Benny’s glove, and it was just like throwing stones at tin cans. I didn’t know the batters. Hadn’t been there long enough to learn their weaknesses. All I knew was to aim at his glove. But that was enough. I always had good control. From throwing those stones. You know, once—with Cleveland, later on—I pitched seven full innings without throwing a single ball. Every pitch I threw was either a strike or was hit by the batter. Not one pitch in seven innings that wasn’t over the plate.

  I did OK in that trial with the Athletics—won two and lost one. But I couldn’t break into that pitching staff Connie had then. Chief Bender, Eddie Plank, Jack Coombs, Herb Pennock. Don’t know who could have beat them out. So Connie sent me back to the minors, out to the Coast.

  Stanley Coveleski

  I put in two years with Spokane, and then one with Portland in the Pacific Coast League, and I guess that year with Portland—1915—was the turning point. I was twenty-five years old, was in my seventh year in the minors, and was starting to wonder if I’d ever make it to the Big Leagues. I had good control, a good curve, a good fast ball, and a good slow ball. But evidently that wasn’t enough.

  One day I was watching one of the Portland pitchers throwing spitballs. “By Gosh,” I said to myself, “I’m going to try to throw that.”

  I started working on the spitter, and before long I had that thing down pat. Had never thrown it before in my life. But before that season was over it was my main pitch, and the next year I was up with the Cleveland Indians. That pitch—the spitball—kept me up there for 13 years and won me over 200 games.

  I got so I had as good control over the spitball as I did over my other pitches. I could make it break any of three ways: down, out, or down and out. And I always knew which way it would break. Depended on my wrist action. For the spitball, what you do is wet these first two fingers. I used alum, had it in my mouth. Sometimes it would pucker your mouth some, get gummy. I’d go to my mouth on every pitch. Not every pitch would be a spitball. Sometimes I’d go maybe two or three innings without throwing one. But I’d always have them looking for it.

  They outlawed the spitter in December, 1920. Said only certain established spitballers could continue to throw it after that. Me and sixteen others was all. Maybe the great year I had in 1920 had something to do with it. I don’t know. They wanted to shift the odds more in favor of the batter.

  Well, that’s the way it is in baseball. I enjoyed playing ball. But it’s a tough racket. There’s always someone sitting on the bench just itching to get in there in your place. Thinks he can do better. Wants your job in the worst way: back to the coal mines for you, pal!

  The pressure never lets up. Doesn’t matter what you did yesterday. That’s history. It’s tomorrow that counts. So you worry all the time. It never ends. Lord, baseball is a worrying thing.

  9 Al Bridwell

  THERE WERE A LOT of great ballplayers in my day, no doubt about it. But there are a lot of great ballplayers today, too. No doubt about that, either. Take Willie Mays. I’ve seen Speaker, Cobb, Hooper—oh, all the great outfielders—but I’ve never seen anyone who was any better than Willie Mays. Maybe just as good, but not better.

  Mays can throw, field, hit, run, anything. He can work a pitcher into losing a ball game any time he gets on base. Of course, Cobb was a better hitter. But Mays—I don’t know, there’s just something about him.

  A lot of people will tell you that the modern player can’t compare to the old timer. Not even in the same league, they say. Well, maybe they’re right, but I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s ever been a better outfielder than Mays, or a better left-handed pitcher than Sandy Koufax, or a better third baseman than Brooks Robinson, just to name three that are playing today.

  Fellows like Honus Wagner and Three-Fingered Brown were great, and they’d be just as great if they were playing today. I’m not saying the old-timers weren’t good. Sure they were. But the modern players are good, too. In other sports, like basketball and football, everyone admits the modern player is better than the old-timer. And in track it’s obvious. The records prove it. How many four-minute miles were run before 1915? Before 1950, for that matter?

  But in baseball a lot of people seem to think that there hasn’t been a first-rate player since the days of Cobb and Ruth. It just doesn’t stand to reason, does it? I’m not saying they’re all better players today than they used to be. But doesn’t it stand to reason that at least some of them are just as good? That’s the least you can say. After all, Maury Wills did break
Cobb’s record, didn’t he?

  The modern player has it pretty tough in a lot of ways. Of course the gloves are better now, and the fields are smoother, but on the other hand we used to travel by train and make only three trips around the circuit a season. Now they hop all over the place in planes, and I think that’s a lot rougher. Also, now they play at night a lot. Their eating and sleeping habits are always being disrupted, which is something we didn’t have to worry about.

  Actually, I don’t think the greatest man in baseball was Cobb or Ruth or Wagner. I think it was Branch Rickey. I think he’s done more for baseball than any man who ever lived. Fact is, Branch Rickey has been my hero ever since back in the late 1890’s.

  See, he was born in Lucasville, Ohio, just north of Portsmouth here. I was born up in the hills near Friendship, Ohio, which is only a few miles west of Portsmouth. There were twelve in our family, three brothers and seven sisters, and we lived up there in a little hollow. Dad worked in the lumber camps.

  We moved here to Portsmouth when I was a kid, in 1888, and of course I played ball every chance I got. When I was about twelve we had a neighborhood team, and we’d play teams from other parts of town. At that time the Negro kids weren’t allowed to go above 9th Street, or across Chillicothe Street. That’s the way it was. If we’d catch one of them in our territory, or they’d catch one of us in theirs, it’d be just too bad.

  But all the kids in the different parts of town had ball teams and we got together and formed a sort of league. About four or five teams, each from a different section of town. Well, the colored teams and white teams started to challenge each other, and before you know it we were playing each other all the time and not thinking a thing about it. Did away with all that trouble we’d had before, and brought us all together. Before long any kid could go anywhere in town he wanted. I’m not saying baseball did it all. But it helped.

  About 1899, when I was fifteen, I joined an amateur team here called the Victors. We played once a week or so. That’s how I first met Branch Rickey. He was playing with the Lucasville team and they came down here to play us. He was a catcher, and a good one. They beat us, and after the game Branch wanted to wrestle all comers. He got three or four challengers, and had them all in the dust. All in good fun, you know. And from that time on, he was a kind of hero of mine.

  Later on, I played with a semipro team in town, the Navies. Portsmouth’s a big port city, you know. Played shortstop for them for three years. In the fall of 1902 we played an exhibition game with the Columbus club of the American Association, and after the game Bobby Quinn, who was business manager for Columbus, asked me if I would stop by and see him that evening at the hotel where he was staying.

  I hurried home and ate supper, put on my Sunday suit, and rushed down to the hotel. When I got there he asked me straight out, “How would you like to play for the Columbus team?”

  Well, I was flabbergasted. I didn’t know what to say. It was so out of my reach. On the Navies we’d each get maybe $5 a game, sometimes $10 if the crowd was good.

  “How much would I get?” I asked him. I was hoping maybe he’d say $75 a month.

  “How about $150 a month?” he said.

  I almost jumped out of my chair. “I can’t think of anything I’d like better!”

  “OK,” he said, “here’s a contract. You’ll report next spring.”

  See, $150 a month was an awful lot of money to me. It meant $900 a year—we only got paid for the season, which was about six months—and at the time I was making something like $150 a year. Yeah, that’s right, $150 a year.

  Al Bridwell in 1908

  When I was thirteen years old I quit school and went to work in a shoe factory. Ten hours a day, six days a week, and I got $1.25 a week. I took that envelope home to my mother. By 1902, when I was eighteen, I was up to $3 a week. That’s about $150 a year. Even that looked big to me, because the family was having kind of a hard time getting along. That’s why I went to work in the first place. I started off for school one morning and wound up over at the shoe factory. So $150 a month to play baseball looked like a fortune to me.

  I did pretty well with Columbus, but nothing remarkable. One day, about two years later, Garry Herrmann came up from Cincinnati to watch us play. He was the owner of the Cincinnati Reds and was interested in buying our third baseman, Bill Friel. As it happened, that day Bill didn’t have a very good day, but I had a crackerjack of one. So instead of buying him, he bought me. And that’s how I got to the Big Leagues.

  You see, the way it was then it was pretty much of an accident whether you got into professional ball at all, and if you did, there was still a lot of luck involved in getting up to the Big Leagues. Now they have scouts who watch a man for weeks to see what he can really do, but then there were no scouts or anything like that. It was just my good luck that the one day Bobby Quinn saw me I had a good day, and the same for when Garry Herrmann saw me. They both made snap judgments and took a chance on me.

  So I joined the Cincinnati Reds in the spring of 1905, right after my twenty-first birthday. I signed for $2,100, with the understanding that if I made good it would be $2,400 the next year. Joe Kelley was the manager of the Reds at that time, the old Baltimore Oriole outfielder and first baseman. Miller Huggins was the second baseman and Harry Steinfeldt the third baseman. I was the utility man that season, both infield and outfield.

  The veterans didn’t exactly fall all over themselves helping me in spring training. After I’d made the club, though, after the season started, they started to get more friendly. Of course, every once in a while you had to kind of assert yourself a little and let them know you had some guts. They’d try to keep you away from the plate during your turn in batting practice, and sometimes you had to pick up a bat and drive them away. But once the season started it was mostly one big happy family.

  A funny thing happened near the end of that season. We had about a month left to play when Harry Steinfeldt—who was a good friend—came over to me one day and said, “Kid, you’re going to be the regular third baseman pretty soon, maybe starting today.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked him. I knew that some other club in the league was after him, and although I didn’t know which one, I thought it was one of the contenders. The Reds were a second-division ball club at that time.

  “Wait and see,” he says, “something might happen. You never can tell in this game.”

  Well, about the second or third inning that day a foul ball went up off third base, near the railing, and Steiney ran over to catch it. As he did, he tumbled over the railing and hurt himself and had to leave the game. So they sent me out to play third in his place, and I finished the season at that position.

  That winter Steiney was traded to the Chicago Cubs for Hans Lobert, and he became the third baseman in the famous Tinker-Evers-Chance infield. So you can figure what you want to out of that.

  By the way, you know they say that Joe Tinker at shortstop and Johnny Evers at second base played alongside each other for years and never spoke to each other off the field. Didn’t get along. They say the same was true of Ty Cobb and Sam Crawford at Detroit. I don’t know if it’s so, but that’s what they say.

  That winter Garry Herrmann sent me another $2,100 contract. Same as I’d gotten in 1905. I sent it back, reminding him that I’d understood it would be for $2,400 if I made good, which it seemed to me I had. We wrote back and forth, and finally I got mad and wrote him that I absolutely would not sign for $2,100 again. I’d rather go back to semipro ball. So it wound up that they traded me to the Boston Braves for Jim Delahanty, and in the spring of 1906 I reported to the Boston Braves instead of the Cincinnati Reds. They weren’t called the Braves then. I think they were called the Nationals at that time.

  I was the regular shortstop for Boston for the next two years. Fred Tenney was the manager and also played first base. He’d been Boston’s regular first baseman since about 1895 and was very popular there. I think he came from somewhere in Massachuse
tts, too. He’d graduated from Brown University. Very nice guy. Later Fred Tenney also figured in an indirect way in the Merkle incident. I’ll get to that in a minute.

  Anyway, we didn’t have a very good team in Boston when I was there. It was tough, playing shortstop there, too. They had four spitball pitchers on that club, and I had a devil of a time throwing the ball on a straight line from short to first base. The darn thing was always loaded! So I was tickled pink when they traded both me and Fred to the Giants at the start of the 1908 season. That’s right, they traded their manager away. I think Tenney was glad to leave, too, because Boston wasn’t going anywhere and we knew we’d be right up there with the Giants.

  “I was the regular shortstop for Boston for the next two years” —Al Bridwell in 1906

  And, of course, we were both excited about playing for McGraw. At least I was, having heard so much about him. And it proved out, too. He was a wonderful man, a real fighter, that’s what he was. He’d argue with the umpires, the opposing players, the people in the stands. Anybody wanted to argue, he was ready. I got along with him fine. He only suspended me once, for two weeks. It was on account of I socked him.

  Well, I didn’t really sock him. It was more of a push. I pushed him, sort of, and he fell down the dugout steps. Well, maybe it was a sock at that. I’m not sure now. After all, it took place about 60 years ago.

  What happened was that I missed a sign. It wasn’t my fault, it really wasn’t. When I got back to the dugout he called me a lot of names and so I hit him. He suspended me for two weeks without pay, but once it was over he forgot about it completely. Never mentioned it again. He was a fighter, but he was also the kindest, best-hearted fellow you ever saw. I liked him and I liked playing for him.

  The reason McGraw was a great manager—and he was the greatest—was because he knew how to handle men. Some players he rode, and others he didn’t. He got the most out of each man. It wasn’t so much knowing baseball. All of them know that. One manager knows about as much about the fundamentals of baseball as another. What makes the difference is knowing each player and how to handle him. And at that sort of thing nobody came anywhere close to McGraw.