The Glory of Their Times

by Lawrence S. Ritter

  Rube Bressler in 1914

  You know, baseball is a matter of razor-edge precision. It’s not a game of inches, like you hear people say. It’s a game of hundredths of inches. Any time you have a bat only that big around, and a ball that small, traveling at such tremendous rates of speed, an inch is way too large a margin for error.

  Chief Bender: “One of the kindest and finest men who ever lived”

  Bender and Plank, the old war-horses! When I got there in 1914, a nineteen-year-old kid, Bender had been with the A’s for 11 years and Plank for 13. Hell, I’d been reading about those guys since I was in the third grade. And how do you think they treated me? Well, I’ll tell you: wonderful. Just wonderful. Two of the finest guys who ever lived.

  I used to try to get near them and listen to what they were talking about, and every question I’d ask they’d pay attention and tell me what they thought. I used to put sticks behind my ears so they’d stand out further. Boy, I wanted to hear what those guys had to say. (Today, they tell me, the rookies put cotton in their ears.)

  I roomed with Bender that first year. One of the kindest and finest men who ever lived. See, Connie roomed a youngster with a veteran. He didn’t room two youngsters together, where they could cry on each other’s shoulders and commiserate with each other. (“Oh, you’ll do better, dear, tomorrow.”) No, sir. He had an old pitcher in there with a young one.

  You never could tell whether Bender won or lost. One day in Washington Walter Johnson beat me, 1—0, and as Bender and I went up to the room that evening I said, “Gee, that sure was a tough one to lose.”

  “Are you talking about today’s game?” Bender asked me.

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Did you hear the boys yelling when we came into the hotel?”

  “What boys?”

  “The newsboys,” he said.

  “Oh, I guess so.”

  “What were they saying?”

  “They were saying ‘Washington Wins, 1—0,’ ” I said.

  “That’s right,” he said. “It’s a matter of record now. Forget about that game. Win the next one.” That’s all he said.

  Well, after I beat Ray Collins I started in the regular rotation, and, as I said, I had a terrific season. Earned-run average was about 1.76 and all. But I pitched so much the second half of the season that I hurt my arm. It never ever really came back the way it had been.

  The next year, 1915, I won 4 games and lost 17. Yeah, that’s right, 4 and 17. Of course, that wasn’t too bad. The real battle was between Tom Sheehan and Jack Nabors the year after that. Nabors won. He won 1 game all season and lost 21. Sheehan also won 1, but he was only able to lose 15.

  Well, you know what happened. It wasn’t just my arm went bad. After losing the 1914 World Series, Connie broke up the whole team. Eddie Collins was sold to the White Sox for $50,000, Jack Barry and Herb Pennock were sold to the Red Sox, Home Run Baker and Bob Shawkey to the Yankees, Jack Coombs to the Dodgers, and so on. Bender and Plank both jumped over to the Federal League. The whole team was scattered to the four winds, and the A’s ended last seven years in a row after that.

  As for me, after that great 4 and 17 year in 1915, I found myself with Newark in the International League on May 15, 1916. I was no world-beater there, either, and by June I was pitching for New Haven in the Eastern League. So there I was, struggling along in the Eastern League, less than two years after beating Ray Collins and winning 14 games with the World’s Champions. I forget who was my roommate in New Haven, but I’ll tell you one thing: it wasn’t Chief Bender.

  Well, there was only one way to go from there, and that was up. After all, I was still only twenty-one years old. Although, to tell the truth, I wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad. Anyway, the next year I wound up in the Southern Association, with Atlanta, and wouldn’t you know it, I snapped back and won 25 games. We won the pennant, and before the 1917 season was over I was back in the Big Leagues, this time with the Cincinnati Reds—with Eddie Roush, Heinie Groh, Ivy Wingo, Larry Kopf (my brother-in-law), Jake Daubert, Greasy Neale—a good team. Christy Mathewson was the manager, then later it was Pat Moran. And, believe it or not, two years later we won the National League pennant and the 1919 World Series, and I was playing on a World’s Champion once again. Yessiree, life’s a pretty funny proposition, after all.

  This time, though, I was up there to stay. Until 1932, anyway, when I was thirty-seven years old. It required a bit of doing, however, because in 1920 my arm gave out again, this time for good as far as pitching was concerned. What happened was that I fractured my ankle in 1920, and instead of quitting and never touching a ball the rest of the season I tried to pitch a little bit late in September. By favoring my leg I pitched unnaturally, and that did it. That was the end of my pitching days.

  So I was up that familiar creek again, without a paddle. This time I decided the thing to do was give up the pitching business and take up the hitting business. Why not? Other guys could hit. Why not me?

  Whereupon I became an outfielder and a first baseman. In the outfield I played alongside Eddie Roush. Oh, what a beautiful and graceful outfielder that man was! The more I played next to him the more I realized his greatness. Well, he’s in the Hall of Fame, right? And he got there on his hitting and his fielding both. The first thing I did was go to him and tell him my problem.

  “If I can help you in any way, Rube,” he said, “I’ll be tickled to death.”

  Hah! The understatement of the century. The greatest center fielder in the game saying to me “if I can help you.” Terrific!

  So he taught me: how to play hitters, how to judge line drives, how to yell for the ball, how to shift on different hitters and even on the same hitter, how to run out after a fly instead of backing up, where to throw in different situations. He taught me and I listened and I practiced and I learned. I know I learned, because I still remember the first ball I ever caught as an outfielder. I tried to back up and I tripped and caught the darn thing while lying flat on my back. If I hadn’t caught it, it would have landed on my nose. Now I know that in subsequent years some improvement was clearly evident.

  At first base, Jake Daubert taught me how to make the plays. Another wonderful fielder. As good a fielding first baseman as Chase or Sisler. In those days, of course, we didn’t have the gloves at first base like they have today. Our gloves were much smaller, so we had to use our hands and our fingers when we caught the ball. Today the first baseman doesn’t catch the ball. The glove catches it. That thing just reaches out and wraps itself around the ball and swallows it, in one huge gulp. Flap! And the ball disappears.

  And I made myself into a hitter. I changed my whole style of batting. Went into a deep crouch. High fast balls inside were my weakness, so I adopted this crouch, leaning way over the plate, and when I’d straighten up that ball would be out there and I could whack it. It wasn’t in close any more, see.

  Many a time the ball would shoot in over the inside corner and I’d drop my bat and fall back, and the umpire would shout, “Ball.” The catcher would grumble and fume.

  “Jeez,” he’d say to the umpire, “can’t you see? That damn ball got three inches of the plate.” And he’d look at me and say, “That was a good strike, Rube. What more do you want?”

  I never said a word. It was a strike. I knew it. I could see it. But that was the one pitch I didn’t like, and the way I crouched it looked like it was too close to me to be a strike. Well, 19 years in the Big Leagues and a lifetime .302 batting average. I hit .357 in 1926—highest batting average in the National League—and .351 for the three-year period, 1924–26. Not bad for a reformed pitcher, huh?

  Of course, I didn’t try to hit the long ball. I held the bat like Cobb, with my hands apart, and hit the ball where it was pitched. I tried to control the bat, swing in a short arc, not get fooled. It was a matter of manipulation, see, not power. You don’t have to swing with all your might every time you get up at bat. All your great artists of the old days ma
neuvered. It was manipulation then; today it’s power. Manipulation and power, two entirely different things.

  Take Ty Cobb, for instance. He did everything—except steal first base. And I think he did that in the dead of night. He’d be in his glory today, wouldn’t he? I think he’d steal first base every night, because that’s when they play now, at night.

  Cobb could hit the long ball—when he wanted to. Of course, that dead ball…we didn’t have a baseball to hit in those days. We had a squash. Sounded about like hitting a squash. Plunk. Still, Cobb could hit them a distance when he wanted to. But he didn’t. He manipulated. Drove infielders crazy. I think Eddie Collins was the smartest ballplayer who ever lived, but Cobb was right next to him. Infielders didn’t know what the hell he’d do next, and neither did he until the last split second. You couldn’t figure Cobb. It was impossible.

  And Cobb had that terrific fire, that unbelievable drive. He wasn’t too well liked, but he didn’t care about that. He roomed alone. They made it pretty tough on him when he first came up, but he showed them. His determination was fantastic. I never saw anybody like him. It was his base. It was his game. Everything was his. The most feared man in the history of baseball.

  Ruth was great too, but he was different. Totally different—easygoing, friendly. There was only one Babe Ruth. He went on the ball field like he was playing in a cow pasture, with cows for an audience. He never knew what fear or nervousness was. He played by instinct, sheer instinct. He wasn’t smart, he didn’t have any education, but he never made a wrong move on a baseball field.

  Ty Cobb with his new Owen in 1910

  One of the greatest pitchers of all time, and then he became a great judge of a fly ball, never threw to the wrong base when he was playing the outfield, terrific arm, good base runner, could hit the ball twice as far as any other human being. He was like a damn animal. He had that instinct. They know when it’s going to rain, things like that. Nature, that was Ruth!

  Anyway, I played the outfield and first base with Cincinnati through 1927, and then I went to the Brooklyn Dodgers for four years. Talk about pretty fair country hitters: in 1929 and ’30 I batted about .310, Johnny Frederick about .330, and Babe Herman about .385. All of us in the same outfield.

  And even with that we wound up in sixth place in 1929, and I think maybe fourth the next year. No pitching. Plenty of hitting, but no pitching. Well, not really no pitching at all, because one of the best was right there all the while, namely Clarence Arthur Vance—who preferred the name Arthur Charles Vance, but who was nevertheless known to the world at large as Dazzy.

  Oh, what a witty man he was, what fun to be with! I roomed with Dazzy Vance for four years, all the time I was with Brooklyn, and I loved every minute of it. He was one of the great storytellers of all time.

  Do you remember the three men on third? The time three Dodgers wound up on third base? It started out with Babe Herman up at bat with none out and the bases loaded. Hank DeBerry was on third, Vance on second, and Chick Fewster on first. Babe hit a ball out to right field and it was hard to say whether it would be caught or would hit the wall. Turned out it hit the wall, and DeBerry came home from third easily. Vance held up so long on second, waiting to see if the ball would be caught, that he could only make it halfway to home—so at the last minute he decided to play it safe and scampered back to third. Chick Fewster kept on going from first and made it to third, so that as Vance came back to third Fewster was already there, standing on the base. And Babe Herman just kept on going as fast as he could, without looking up at anything. So as Vance slid back to third, and Fewster stood on the base, Babe slid into third from the second-base side!

  It’s a wonder Fewster didn’t get spiked. Anyway, there was a rather substantial amount of dust and confusion at third base. The third baseman didn’t know what to do, so he tagged all three of them. And the umpire hesitated, trying to decide which two of these guys are out and which one is safe. Rather an unusual situation, doesn’t exactly come up every day, and they started arguing about who’s what.

  Well, while all this discussion is going on, Daz is still lying there flat on his back, feet on third and head toward home. Then he lifts up his head.

  “Mr. Umpire, Fellow Teammates, and Members of the Opposition,” he intones, “if you carefully peruse the rules of our National Pastime you will find that there is one and only one protagonist in rightful occupancy of this hassock—namely yours truly, Arthur C. Vance.”

  Impromptu speech. And he was right. The base always belongs to the advance runner, which, in this case, was him. The umpire finally declared Fewster and Herman out.

  You might say that the reason I left Cincinnati and went to Brooklyn in the first place was because Vance was there. If you can’t hit ’em, join ’em! Every morning I’d wake up and see him there, and know damn well I didn’t have to hit against him that day.

  Vance was by far the roughest guy I ever hit against. Even worse than Walter Johnson. I mean, he was wicked. Oh, he had a curve, it started here and broke right around your knees, and on account of the contour you couldn’t see it. It was like an apple rolling off a crooked table. You couldn’t hit him on a Monday. On a clear day on a Monday the batter never had a chance.

  Dazzy Vance: “You couldn’t hit him on a Monday”

  He’d cut the sleeve of his undershirt to the elbow, you know, and on that part of it he’d use lye on to make it white, and the rest he didn’t care how dirty it was. Then he’d pitch overhand, out of the apartment houses in the background at Ebbets Field. Between the bleached sleeve of his undershirt waving and the Monday wash hanging out to dry—the diapers and undies and sheets flapping on the clotheslines—you lost the ball entirely. He threw balls by me I never even saw.

  Of course, there are two kinds of pitchers, power pitchers—like Dazzy, Walter Johnson, Lefty Grove, Bob Feller—and manipulators—like Eddie Plank, Herb Pennock, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Eppa Rixey. The power pitchers are the toughest all the way through, for the simple reason that you’re always hitting at terrific stuff. They overpower you. They can make a mistake and get away with it.

  But the manipulators, oh brother! Rixey got behind a hitter deliberately, so he could throw him the change of pace. I roomed with Rixey six years at Cincinnati. (I only roomed with the best—Bender, Rixey, Vance. If I couldn’t hit, at least I’d find out why.)

  “How dumb can the hitters in this league get?” Rixey used to say to me. “I’ve been doing this for fifteen years. When they’re batting with the count two balls and no strikes, or three and one, they’re always looking for the fast ball. And they never get it. They get the change of pace every time—and they’re always just as surprised to see it as they were the last time.”

  Rixey and I always felt that perhaps Grover Cleveland Alexander was the greatest of them all, because of the conditions under which he pitched. Sixteen shutouts in 1916 pitching in Baker Bowl, where there was practically only a running track between first base and the right field wall. Only a giant could do a thing like that.

  Somebody said if Alex didn’t drink he’d probably have won more games. I don’t see how he could have been any better. My God, he won over 30 three years in a row. How much better can you get? Maybe drinking helped him. Maybe it let him relax.

  And quick! An hour and a half, an hour and three-quarters, and the game would be over. Game after game he’d pitch in an hour and a half. No fussing around out there, no stalling, no waste motion, no catchers and infielders always running out to the mound to tell him he’s in trouble, and just making matters all the worse.

  Those conferences out there on the mound really get me. The pitcher knows he’s in a jam. What can they say to him? They just remind him of it, that’s all. Having pitched and played first base both, I know what they do. The catcher and the infielders run over to you and pick up your rosin bag, like they never saw one in their life before, and all they say is, “Bear down, buddy, you’ll get out of this. Just bear down and work hard. You
can do it.” Then they give you a quick pat on the rear end and run back as far as they can get out of the line of fire.

  Now just what do you learn from that? You already had a vague feeling that things weren’t going just right. To tell the truth, you knew darned well that you were in a heck of a jam. And you’ve been bearing down, and you’ve been working hard. All it does is make you even more worried than you already were, which was plenty. There are mighty few pitchers who can survive those conferences on the mound, take it from me.

  I remember one day I was playing first base for Cincinnati, and we were ahead by one run. We had a young rookie pitching for us that day, I can’t recall his name. In the last of the eighth he got in a bit of trouble, two out and then men got on second and third. I saw the shortstop and second baseman start in to give him their usual inspirational message, so I ran over real quick, to get there ahead of them.

  “Listen,” I said, “after you get this guy out, be sure to take a good look at that blonde behind our dugout.”

  Well, you could just see this fellow’s face brighten up. You know—relaxing—as if to say, “What the heck, I can’t be in a very tough jam if this guy’s talking about a blonde.”

  The batter popped a little foul to the catcher, and we’re out of the inning. That’s the last of the eighth. I went over to the water cooler in the dugout, and as I did I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was the pitcher.

  “Yeah, she sure is good-looking,” he says to me.

  “What? Who’s good-looking? What are you talking about?”

  “The blonde!” he says.

  “Oh,” I said. I’d forgotten all about it.

  So when I went out to my position in the ninth inning I took a look. And wouldn’t you know it, there was one of the most gorgeous blondes I’d ever seen in my whole life! Well, I guess it’s true: life is a pretty funny proposition…after all.

  15 Babe Herman