The Glory of Their Times

by Lawrence S. Ritter

  ACTUALLY, when I was in high school I was more interested in playing football than baseball. I got into baseball by sheer accident, and I mean that more literally than figuratively.

  Gus Gleichman, you see, was the playing manager and first baseman of the Edmonton club in the Western Canada League. That was a Class B minor league, pretty fast company in those days. Gus was down here in southern California in the off-season, it must have been March or April of 1921, when he got into a pretty bad automobile accident. He was driving to Ventura when his car skidded and flipped over, as a result of which Gus wound up with a broken leg. So instead of enjoying a vacation, Gus found himself searching for a first baseman.

  As far as I was concerned, I was looking forward to finishing school at Glendale High and then going on to the University of California at Berkeley that fall on a football scholarship. About fifteen colleges had contacted me about playing football, but I had my heart set on Berkeley.

  A few days after Gus Gleichman’s accident, though, I was in a local sporting-goods store and the owner, Joe Rafferty, says to me, “Hey, do you want to play professional baseball?”

  “Gee, I don’t know,” I said. “What are you talking about?” I had something of a reputation as a first baseman because I played that position on a lot of semipro teams in the area.

  So Joe Rafferty told me about Gus Gleichman needing a first baseman and how he’d recommended me to Gus. Pretty soon in came Gus himself, on crutches, and after we talked a while he offered me $175 a month to play for Edmonton that season. That was an awful lot of money to me. I hadn’t reached my eighteenth birthday yet. Before I really knew what I was doing, I took the contract and signed my name on the dotted line.

  Now I had to go home and tell Dad, which wasn’t such an easy thing to do. But that evening I braced myself and said, “Dad, I’m going to Canada to play ball. They’ll pay me $175 a month and I’ll get a chance to see how good I really am.”

  “Humph,” Dad says, “they don’t pay you to play in this world. You stay with me and work and some day you’ll have something.” Dad was a building contractor.

  “Well,” I said, “I’d sure like to give it a try.”

  “I won’t stop you,” he said, “but you watch, pretty soon you’ll be wiring me for money to come home.”

  “No,” I said, “if I have to, I’ll come home riding the rails in a box-car.”

  So off I went. I hit .330 at Edmonton, led the league in triples and batting average, and after the season was over was sold to the Detroit Tigers. Detroit sent me to Omaha in the Western League in 1922, where I hit .416. In those days, though, you had to pay your dues, put in four or five years in the minors before they figured you were ready for the Big Leagues. So it was 1926 before I got a real chance and then it wasn’t with Detroit but with the Brooklyn Dodgers, who’d acquired my contract.

  I made it as a regular with the Dodgers the first year I was with them, 1926. Wilbert Robinson was the Dodger manager then, had been for many years. Robbie had been a catcher with the old Baltimore Orioles in the 1890’s, along with McGraw, Willie Keeler, Hughie Jennings, and that crew. After that he’d been John McGraw’s coach and right-hand man with the New York Giants, and then he became manager of the Dodgers in 1914. In fact, most of the time I was there, we weren’t called the Dodgers; we were called the Brooklyn Robins, after Uncle Robbie.

  Despite what you might have read, Uncle Robbie wasn’t a clown. He was a sound baseball man and a good manager, especially when it came to handling pitchers. Of course, he had his idiosyncracies, but who doesn’t? He liked to reminisce on the bench and talk about the good old days and about fishing and hunting. In the off-season he used to go to Dover Hall, a fishing and hunting place near Brunswick, Georgia, and sometimes he’d get so involved talking about the old Baltimore Orioles or about Dover Hall that he’d forget all about the ball game and forget to give his signs to the third-base coach.

  Babe Herman in 1927

  Not that it mattered all that much. For a while we had old Joe Kelley as our third-base coach. A real nice fellow, Joe had been a teammate of Robbie’s on the old Baltimore Orioles and was a great outfielder in his day, but obviously the only reason he was with us was because Robbie wanted to take care of a long-time friend. For instance, one day I hit a line drive over first base. The ball caromed into the Brooklyn bullpen and got tangled up under the benches there. As I was coming into second, I saw Joe Kelley, coaching at third base, motioning for me to hold up, so I put on the brakes and stopped at second. But then I saw that the right fielder was still scrambling around under the benches for the ball, so I headed for third. Coming into third, he stopped me again, or I could have scored.

  “Gee, Joe,” I said, when I got to third base, “what’s going on? You stopped me at second while the outfielder was still trying to get to the ball.”

  He put his arm around my shoulder and whispered to me. “Babe,” he says, “I want to tell you something. Without my glasses, I can’t even see who’s pitching. But I won’t wear glasses on a ball field.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Pride,” he says!

  We had a catcher named Val Picinich, came to us from the Cincinnati Reds in 1929. The first time Robbie decided to use him in a game, he told Val he’s catching, so Val goes and puts his gear on. Meanwhile, Robbie’s making out the lineup card and he turns to me and says, “Hey, Babe, how do you spell that new guy’s last name?”

  “Don’t you know how to spell it, Robbie?” I said.

  Robbie thought a minute and then he mumbled, “Aw, the hell with it, I’ll put DeBerry in to catch.”

  So now he’s told two guys they’re catching, and when the game starts Picinich and DeBerry both walk up to home plate with their gear on. When they get to the plate, they stop and look at each other, a little bit confused. They finally got it straightened out, though.

  I wasn’t the world’s greatest fielder, as a lot of stories will attest, but I was always a pretty fair country hitter: .340 in 1928, .381 in 1929, and .393 with 35 homers and 130 runs batted in in 1930. The year I hit .393 I came into the last day of the season hitting .397. If I could have gotten three straight hits, it would have put me at .400. But we played a double-header, and I only went one for nine and dropped from .397 to .393. Didn’t even lead the league because that’s the year Bill Terry hit .401.

  My salary was $19,000 in 1930, the year I hit .393. I tried to get a $1,000 raise that winter, but without success. They finally agreed to $800 “expense money”—whatever that meant—but they never gave it to me anyway.

  Ruth was the highest paid at that time, at $80,000. That seemed like an enormous figure, but nobody begrudged him because we all knew he deserved it, and the more he got the more we would get. I think Al Simmons was the next highest; he had a three-year $100,000 contract with the White Sox. We always used to ask Al which year he’d get the extra cent in—because if they gave him $33,333.33 a year for three years, they’d still owe him a penny.

  Speaking of Ruth, by the way, reminds me of a story that I was called “Babe” because when I came up to the Big Leagues with Brooklyn, I was supposed to have said that I was going to hit like Babe Ruth. As with so many stories that sound good, it’s just not so. The fact is, I got the nickname “Babe” way back when I was playing with Edmonton in the Western Canada League, my very first year in organized baseball. There was a popular champion flyweight prize fighter at that time named Babe Herman, and a fog-horn lady fan at Edmonton started calling me “Babe” after Babe Herman the fighter, not after Babe Ruth. She’d yell, “Go get ’em, Babe,” or “Get a hit, Babe” so loud you could hear her all over the ball park, and somehow the name stuck.

  Oh, before I forget, there’s one more story I’ve got to tell you about Uncle Robbie. It’s about the time he agreed to catch a baseball dropped from an airplane as a publicity stunt. See, Gabby Street had just caught a baseball dropped from the top of the Washington Monument. So they were going to top that
in Florida, in spring training, by having someone catch a ball dropped from an airplane flying over the ball park. With some reluctance, Robbie agreed to put on a mask and chest protector and be the hero of the hour. Heck, anything Gabby Street could do Robbie figured the catcher of the old Baltimore Orioles could do even better.

  The first two times the plane flew over the ball park, Dan Comerford, the clubhouse man, dropped a baseball and both times he completely missed the field. The ball didn’t come within half a mile of the ball park. Unfortunately, Dan had taken only two baseballs up with him, so he either had to come back down and get more or forget the whole thing. However, while he was trying to decide what to do, he noticed a sack of Florida grapefruit in the plane. In the early days in Florida, everybody had a sack of grapefruit. So the pilot circled around and made another approach, only this time Dan dropped a grapefruit instead of a baseball!

  Uncle Robbie

  Well, down in the ball park, out near second base, Robbie is also circling around, getting a bead on this thing as it falls. As far as he knows—as far as anybody besides Dan knows—it’s a baseball that’s falling, not a grapefruit, and Robbie is determined to catch it.

  “Get away, get away,” Robbie yells, “I got it, I got it.” And then squash, it smacks right into Robbie’s mitt and literally explodes, juice and pulp splashing into Robbie’s face and all over him. The force of the thing was so great that it knocked Robbie down, and all he knew was that he had all this liquid and stuff all over him.

  “Help, help,” he shouted, “I’m bleeding to death. Help me!”

  Some players called him “Grapefruit” forever after. It was a nickname he never lost.

  I was traded from Brooklyn after the 1931 season, partly because Uncle Robbie was let go at that time and partly because I was still feuding with the front office over the $800 “expense money” they’d promised me but never delivered, as well as over a proposed cut in salary. I played with the Reds and the Cubs for a few years, and then returned home here and played with the Hollywood Stars in the Pacific Coast League from 1939 through 1944. In 1945, near the end of World War II, I even came back to Brooklyn as a pinch-hitter for a few months at the age of 42.

  The first time I came up as a pinch-hitter at Ebbets Field in 1945 the bases were loaded, and I hit one off the right-field screen to drive in two runs. However, I slipped rounding first, and wouldn’t you believe the headline in the paper the next day never said a thing about the two runs I drove in. Instead, it read: SAME OLD HERMAN, TRIPS OVER FIRST BASE.

  I guess the three men on third inspired more hilarity than anything else during those years. You know the old taxi-driver story, don’t you? A cab is driving by Ebbets Field, and the cab driver sticks his head out of the window and yells up at a spectator, “How’s the game going?”

  “The Dodgers have three men on base,” the spectator shouts back.

  “Which base?” the cabbie asks.

  Everybody blames me for three men winding up on third base, but it wasn’t my fault. Actually, it was Dazzy Vance who caused the whole mess. We were playing the Boston Braves in 1926 and the score was tied, 1–1, in the bottom of the seventh inning. I came up to bat with the bases loaded: Hank DeBerry was on third, Vance on second, and Chick Fewster on first. Well, I hit a line drive to right field and slid safely into second with a double. But while I’m on the ground, I looked up and saw a run-down between third and home. Naturally, I figured Chick Fewster is caught in a run-down, so I get up and sprint for third, like I’m supposed to. That way we’ll have a man on third even if Chick is tagged out.

  But when I got to third, Fewster was already there, which surprised me. And then here comes Vance into third from the other side. That really surprised me, ’cause I thought he’d scored long ago. After all, he was on second, and even if you’re slow as a turtle you should be able to score from second on a double! Especially when the first throw was to second base on me.

  Anyway, there we were all on third at one and the same time. Vance was declared safe and Fewster and I were both out. If there was any justice, Vance would have been the one declared out because he’s the one caused the traffic jam in the first place. But down through history, for some strange reason, it’s all been blamed on me.

  Ironic, isn’t it, when you realize that I drove in the winning run with that hit. We won the game, 4–1, and that double scored DeBerry with the go-ahead run. Only time I can think of when a fellow drives in the winning run and the press makes him a goat instead of a hero!

  Babe Herman and son Bobby at the 1933 All-Star Game in Chicago

  16 Edd Roush

  YES, I KNEW AT THE TIME that some finagling was going on. At least that’s what I’d heard. Rumors were flying all over the place that gamblers had got to the Chicago White Sox, that they’d agreed to throw the World Series. But nobody knew anything for sure until Eddie Cicotte spilled the beans a year later.

  We beat them in the first two games, 9–1 and 4–2, and it was after the second game that I first got wind of it. We played those first two games in Cincinnati, and the next day we were to play in Chicago. So the evening after the second game we were all gathered at the hotel in Cincinnati, standing around waiting for cabs to take us to the train station, when this fellow came over to me. I didn’t know who he was, but I’d seen him around before.

  “Roush,” he says, “I want to tell you something. Did you hear about the squabble the White Sox got into after the game this afternoon?” And he told me some story about Ray Schalk accusing Lefty Williams of throwing the game, and something about some of the White Sox beating up a gambler for not giving them the money he’d promised them.

  “They didn’t get the payoff,” he said, “so from here on they’re going to try to win.”

  I didn’t know whether this guy made it all up or not. But it did start me thinking. Later on in the Series the same guy came over to me again.

  “Roush,” he says, “you remember what I told you about gamblers getting to the White Sox? Well, now they’ve also got to some of the players on your own ball club.”

  That’s all he said. Wouldn’t tell me any more. I didn’t say anything to anybody until we were getting dressed in the clubhouse the next day. Then I got hold of the manager, Pat Moran, just before the pregame meeting.

  “Before you start this meeting, Pat,” I said, “there’s something I want to talk to you about.”

  “OK,” he says, “what is it?”

  “I’ve been told that gamblers have got to some of the players on this club,” I said. “Maybe it’s true and maybe it isn’t. I don’t know. But you sure better do some finding out. I’ll be damned if I’m going to knock myself out trying to win this Series if somebody else is trying to throw the game.”

  Pat got all excited and called Jake Daubert over, who was the team captain. It was all news to both of them. So at the meeting, after we’d gone over the White Sox lineup, Moran looked at Hod Eller, who was going to pitch for us that day.

  “Hod,” he said, “I’ve been hearing rumors about sellouts. Not about you, not about anybody in particular, just rumors. I want to ask you a straight question and I want a straight answer.”

  “Shoot,” says Hod.

  “Has anybody offered you anything to throw this game?”

  “Yep,” Hod said. Lord, you could have heard a pin drop.

  “After breakfast this morning a guy got on the elevator with me, and got off at the same floor I did. He showed me five thousand-dollar bills, and said they were mine if I’d lose the game today.”

  “What did you say?” Moran asked him.

  “I said if he didn’t get damn far away from me real quick he wouldn’t know what hit him. And the same went if I ever saw him again.”

  Moran looked at Eller a long time. Finally, he said, “OK, you’re pitching. But one wrong move and you’re out of the game.”

  Evidently there weren’t any wrong moves. Because ol’ Hod went out there and pitched a swell game. He won two o
f the games in that Series.

  A large crowd in Times Square follows the progress of the 1919 World Series on a mechanical diamond

  I don’t know whether the whole truth of what went on there among the White Sox will ever come out. Even today nobody really knows exactly what took place. Whatever it was, though, it was a dirty rotten shame. One thing that’s always overlooked in the whole mess is that we could have beat them no matter what the circumstances!

  Sure, the 1919 White Sox were good. But the 1919 Cincinnati Reds were better. I’ll believe that till my dying day. I don’t care how good Chicago’s Joe Jackson and Buck Weaver and Eddie Cicotte were. We had Heinie Groh, Jake Daubert, Greasy Neale, Rube Bressler, Larry Kopf, myself, and the best pitching staff in both leagues. We were a very underrated ball club.

  I played center field for that Cincinnati club for 11 straight years, 1916 through 1926. I came to Cincinnati from the Giants in the middle of 1916, along with Christy Mathewson and Bill McKechnie.

  Of course I started playing ball long before that, around 1909 or so, right here in Oakland City, Indiana. In those days every little town had an amateur club, and so did Oakland City. Never will forget it. I was only about sixteen at the time. Oakland City had a game scheduled with a neighboring town this day, and one of Oakland City’s outfielders hadn’t shown up. Everybody was standing around right on the main street of town—only a small town, you know—wondering what to do, when one of the town officials says, “Why not put that Roush kid in?”

  I was kind of a shy kid, and I backed away. But the manager says, “Well, that’s just what we’ll do if he don’t show up in five more minutes.”

  We waited for five minutes and the outfielder never did show, so they gave me a uniform and put me in right field. Turned out I got a couple of hits that day, and I became Oakland City’s regular right fielder for the rest of the season.

  The next year, of course, I was right in the middle of it. We reorganized the team—the Oakland City Walk-Overs, that’s what we called ourselves—and had a pretty good club. In those days, you know, I used to throw with either hand. I’m a natural lefty, see, but when I was a kid I never could find a lefty’s glove. So I just used a regular glove and learned to throw righty. Batted lefty, but got so I could throw with my right arm almost as well as with my left.