Of course, first I went home and talked to my father about it. I told him it was just for the summer, so he let me go, and I joined Cedar Rapids at the beginning of July and played there all summer.
Then I went back to the seminary that fall. They often have opportunities for the students to go and get practical experience in the ministry and related fields, you know. Well, it so happened there was an opening in North Dakota for a man to teach school until Easter. This was just exactly what I wanted. So I went up there and taught school in North Dakota until Easter, after which I was free. And since that was just about the time the baseball season started, I went from North Dakota right back to Cedar Rapids to play ball again.
Bill Wambsganss in 1916
I had a very good season at Cedar Rapids in 1914, and before it was over they sold me to the Cleveland club for $1,250. Speaking of money, by the way, my salary with Cedar Rapids was $100 a month. It was more when I joined Cleveland, but not a heck of a lot more. There was no such thing as a minimum salary in the Big Leagues then, like there is now. In those days minimum was minimum, you might say.
Now, being sold to Cleveland, the moment of trial by fire had really arrived. I had to go back and straighten all this out with my father. Which I did. I took a deep breath and told him I did not want to become a minister, that I didn’t think I was equal to the task, that I always had ambitions to become a professional ballplayer, and that I knew I had talent. At least it looked that way, because Cleveland had bought me.
Well, Dad really amazed me. The biggest surprise of my life. He agreed to let me do whatever I thought best, didn’t argue much at all, and said whatever I wanted to do was fine with him. Which was a very big thing, when you think about it. I’ll tell you one thing, it surely took a burden off my mind. I felt as though a thousand-ton load had been taken off my back. (Actually, fact is, I have a sneaking feeling that what really did it was that I was going to play for Cleveland. Dad had always been a Cleveland fan, especially a Larry Lajoie fan. I’m still not sure what he would have said if I’d been sold to the Detroit Tigers!)
A 1906 advertisement
So I joined the Cleveland Indians as a shortstop in August of that year. That would be 1914, my second year in organized ball. Actually, they were known as the Naps then, after Napoleon Lajoie. We became the Indians the next year, after Lajoie left. We didn’t have a very good club that year—I think we ended last, to tell the truth—but we had some awfully good players.
Shoeless Joe Jackson was there—he was traded to the White Sox the next year—and Ray Chapman at shortstop, Jack Graney in left field, Steve O’Neill catching, and Terry Turner at third base. Terry Turner had been playing in the Cleveland infield since 1904. And, of course, Lajoie was still there at second base. That was his last year with Cleveland. As it turned out, I was his successor at second.
As I mentioned, Ray Chapman was the regular shortstop when I got there. A great one, too. Ring Lardner was writing sports in those days, and he must have gotten intrigued by my name—he wasn’t the first, nor the last. I’d hardly joined the team before I read this limerick in the newspaper:
The Naps bought a shortstop named Wambsganss,
Who is slated to fill Ray Chapman’s pants.
But when he saw Ray,
And the way he could play,
He muttered, “I haven’t a clam’s chance!”
It was true enough. Although I’d been a shortstop in the minors, they tried experimenting with me at second and third. One of the first games I got in was at Detroit. I was put in at third base. I hadn’t been on the club more than a week or so, and the Tigers tried to rattle me by yelling insults of one sort or another at me. See, their bench was right next to third base, maybe only 15 or 20 feet away. Well, all those guys yelling at me while I’m in the field, I looked over at them to see what all the excitement was about. And darned if Ty Cobb wasn’t yelling louder than all the rest of them put together.
“Gee,” I thought to myself, “that’s funny. A star like Cobb picking on a raw rookie like me.” So I yelled back at him, something like: “If you think I’m such a busher, you ought to see yourself!”
It’s a peculiar thing, I’d get so nervous I couldn’t even talk in front of people, but I was never a bit nervous out there on the ball field. Not even with 50,000 people in the stands. All those guys did by yelling at me was make me mad.
In the first inning Cobb came up to bat. Well, before the game, Terry Turner, who’d been in the league a long time, had told me what to watch for. He said that Cobb was a very good bunter, and that I better be on the alert for a bunt down the third-base line whenever Cobb was up there at the plate.
“However,” Turner said to me, “I’ll give you a tip. If he’s going to bunt, he’ll grit his teeth. He’ll grit his teeth like he’s going to murder the ball, and that’s when he’ll bunt. He does that to throw you off, see.”
So Cobb came up to bat and I’m watching him real close for this teeth-gritting business. Since he was a left-handed batter, I could see his face real good. By golly, darned if all of a sudden he didn’t start gritting those teeth to beat the band, looking as fierce as Mephistopheles himself.
“Here it comes,” I thought, “a bunt.”
And I started creeping in, even before the pitcher let the ball go. By the time the pitch got to the plate I was halfway in. Crack! Cobb swung with all his might and slammed one down at me a mile a minute, so hard I thought it would take my head right off my shoulders. I threw up my hand to protect myself and by sheer accident the ball stuck right in my glove. Whew! After that I let Terry Turner keep his advice to himself.
Finally, after a lot of scuffling around, they settled on second base as my position. I played second alongside Ray Chapman at shortstop for six years. He was one of my best friends, and we got so we worked together like clockwork in the field. Ray always said he would never play shortstop next to anybody else. And, sadly enough, that was true. He was hit in the head by a pitched ball and killed in 1920.
That was a terrible thing to happen. Chappie was probably the most popular man on the team. As a matter of fact, he’d talked of retiring after that season. His wife was pregnant at the time and his father-in-law, a millionaire, was going to set him up in business. It was an awful tragedy. Such a sweet guy.
We slumped very badly after that. It happened in the middle of August, and we went into a tailspin for a while. But, as you know, we eventually recovered and went on to win the pennant and beat Brooklyn in the World Series. Tris Speaker was our manager and center fielder, Joe Sewell took Chappie’s place, and we had real good pitching—Stan Coveleski, the great spitball pitcher, Jim Bagby, and Ray Caldwell. And, of course, that was the World Series where I made that unassisted triple play.
It happened this way. It was the fifth game of the Series, and we were tied with the Dodgers at two games apiece. The date was Sunday, October 10, 1920. We jumped out to an early lead when Elmer Smith hit the first grand-slam home run ever hit in a World Series, and at the end of the fourth inning we were way ahead, 7–0.
The first man up for Brooklyn in the top of the fifth inning was their second baseman, Pete Kilduff. He singled to left field. Otto Miller, their catcher, singled to center. So there were men on first and second, and none out. Clarence Mitchell, the Brooklyn pitcher, was the next batter. Well, in a situation like that, with them behind by seven runs, we didn’t expect them to bunt or hit-and-run or anything. We figured they’d just hit away. Mitchell was a pretty good hitter. And being a left-handed batter, he generally pulled the ball to right field.
So with all that in mind I figured to play pretty deep for him, not especially caring whether we got a double play or not, not playing close for that. We didn’t need a double play. Just stop the rally, that would be enough. So I played way back on the grass.
Well, Jim Bagby was pitching for us, and he served up a fast ball that Mitchell smacked on a rising line toward center field, a little over to my right—that i
s, to my second-base side. I made an instinctive running leap for the ball, and just barely managed to jump high enough to catch it in my glove hand. One out. The impetus of my run and leap carried me toward second base, and as I continued to second I saw Pete Kilduff still running toward third. He thought it was a sure hit, see, and was on his way. There I was with the ball in my glove, and him with his back to me, so I just kept right on going and touched second with my toe (two out) and looked to my left. Well, Otto Miller, from first base, was just standing there, with his mouth open, no more than a few feet away from me. I simply took a step or two over and touched him lightly on the right shoulder, and that was it. Three out. And I started running in to the dugout.
I knew exactly what had happened. The reason I did is that just a few years before I joined the club another Cleveland player, Neal Ball, had done the same thing in a regular league game against the Red Sox. He had made the first unassisted triple play in Big League history, and many of the fellows on the club knew Neal and talked about the play a lot. So it was familiar to me.
However, it took place so suddenly that most of the fans didn’t know what had happened. They had to stop and figure out just how many were out. So there was dead silence for a few seconds. Then, as I approached the dugout, it began to dawn on them what they had just seen, and the cheering started and quickly got louder and louder and louder. By the time I got to the bench it was bedlam, straw hats flying onto the field, people yelling themselves hoarse, my teammates pounding me on the back.
Wambsganss tags Brooklyn’s Otto Miller—standing a few feet on the first-base side of second base—for the grand finale of the most famous triple play in baseball history. Miller seems to be in a state of shock as Wamby puts the ball on him for the third out. Simultaneously Pete Kilduff, on his way around third base to score a run, looks back in astonishment to discover that he was the second out, and that the inning has ended. Hank O’Day is the second base umpire, starting to call Miller out, Bill Dinneen is the nonchalant third-base umpire, and Larry Gardner is the Cleveland third baseman.
“How did it feel, Bill?” they all wanted to know.
Well, that’s how it felt. Pretty exciting and pretty wonderful. I guess that’s still the only unassisted triple play in World Series history. There have been a few since in regular league games. I think the last one was in 1927. The rarest play in baseball, they say. I’m still very proud of it.
That happened in 1920. But baseball is a game of ups and downs. Three years later, on Christmas Eve, 1923, I was traded to Boston. We had just bought this very house, and my wife was pregnant. We moved in here in December, and had no more than gotten settled before we got the news: traded to the Red Sox. I’d been with the Cleveland Indians for ten years and I liked the town. But you simply have to expect that in baseball, I guess. No choice. That’s the way it is, that’s all.
Being traded was a shock, but not near as much as when I started to realize that I was through. That was almost impossible to accept. My last year in the Big Leagues was 1926. I was only thirty-two. I just couldn’t adjust to not playing ball, so I went back to the minors and played there. Managed some there, too.
My last year in professional ball was 1932. I was thirty-eight years old, it was the middle of the depression, opportunities for scouting and managing just ceased to exist, and other jobs were even scarcer. So I worked around at odds and ends, managed a girls softball team for four years, did this and that, until I finally got straightened out. Having to leave the game is a very difficult adjustment to make, and that goes for every single ballplayer. Don’t let any one of them tell you different.
So there are highs and lows in a baseball career. It has its glories, and it also has its sorrows. You know, one day when I was playing with Cleveland we came to New York to play the Yankees. I was on the elevated train going up to the Polo Grounds—that was before Yankee Stadium was built—and I was reading the paper. On the way, I came across a poem in that paper and before I got to 155th Street I cut it out and put it in my wallet.
That poem stayed there in my wallet until it disintegrated. By then it didn’t matter, because I’d memorized every line of it. I don’t remember who wrote it, and I don’t remember the name of the poem, but I do remember every word in every single line of it. It went like this:
Now summer goes
And tomorrow’s snows
Will soon be deep,
And the sky of blue
Which summer knew
Sees shadows creep.
As the gleam tonight
Which is silver bright
Spans ghostly forms,
The winds rush by
With a warning cry
Of coming storms.
So the laurel fades
In the snow-swept glades
Of flying years,
And the dreams of youth
Find the bitter truth
Of pain and tears.
Through the cheering mass
Let the victors pass
To find fate’s thrust,
As tomorrow’s fame
Writes another name
On drifting dust.
18 Sam Jones
How dear to my heart was the old-fashioned hurler
Who labored all day on the old village green.
He did not resemble the up-to-date twirler
Who pitches four innings and ducks from the scene.
The up-to-date twirler I’m not very strong for;
He has a queer habit of pulling up lame.
And that is the reason I hanker and long for
The pitcher who started and finished the game.
The old-fashioned pitcher,
The iron-armed pitcher,
The stout-hearted pitcher,
Who finished the game.
—GEORGE E. PHAIR
YOU KNOW, I think one reason I pitched so long is that I never wasted my arm throwing over to first to keep runners close to the base. There was a time there, for five years, I never once threw to first base to chase a runner back. Not once in five years. Ripley put that in “Believe It or Not.”
“Take a good lead on Jones,” they all said around the league. “He won’t throw. He never does.”
Well, I never did. Not for five years. And then one day I fooled ’em. I threw. Had the guy out by a mile, but the first baseman dropped the ball. Seems like I fooled him, too. He claimed the shock was too much for him! And me setting the situation up so carefully and all.
You don’t have to throw over to first to keep a runner on. I once heard Eddie Plank say, “There are only so many pitches in this old arm, and I don’t believe in wasting them throwing to first base.” And he rarely did. Made sense to me. I was just a young punk, and I figured if it was good enough for Plank it should be good enough for me. What you do instead of throwing is look at the guy on first. Yeah, that’s all, just stand there on the pitching rubber and look at him. No need to throw.
Sam Jones
If you stand there, like you’re ready to pitch, and just stare at him long enough, it’ll get to be too much for him and he’ll lean back toward the base. Then you pitch. Or else the batter won’t be able to stand it any more and he’ll step out of the box and call time. That’s all you have to do—just stand there and wait. Of course, some of them bear more watching than others. Like Cobb, for example. But all you need is patience.
I broke into the American League in 1914, with Cleveland. I’ll never forget the fellows on that Cleveland club—Joe Jackson, Ray Chapman, Steve O’Neill, Terry Turner, Larry Lajoie, Willie Mitchell. I’ll never, never, never forget how nice those fellows treated me when I first came up. They were just wonderful. Of course, wherever I was I always made friends easy. Every club I was ever on, everybody and me was friends. But this was different, being a rookie and all. Just a big country boy out of the hills here, and they made me feel right at home. You sure do remember that, someone being so nice to you when you’re just starting out.
&n
bsp; In 1916 Cleveland traded me and a fellow named Fred Thomas and $50,000 to Boston, for a fellow named Tris Speaker. I sure did hate to leave that Cleveland club, though. Those guys were like big brothers to me. However, I started moving pretty good with the Red Sox. And it turned out the fellows at Boston were just as nice—Harry Hooper and Babe Ruth and all. Won 16 games and lost only 5 in 1918, and started to figure I was cock-o’-the-walk, you know. Pitchers tend to get a bit that way when they’re going good. Especially young ones. Goes to your head real quick.
I remember one day in 1918, I was playing checkers in the clubhouse before the game. I had pitched (and won) the day before, and was playing with the fellow who had just finished pitching batting practice. Walt Kinney was his name, a left-handed pitcher.
While we were in the middle of the checker game the bat boy comes in and says, “Mr. Barrow would like to see you out on the field. He wants you to have your picture taken.”
“OK,” I said, “I’ll be right out.” Ed Barrow was the manager of the Red Sox then.
About five minutes later the bat boy comes back in. “Mr. Barrow wants you out there right away.”
“OK,” I said, “tell him I’ll be right there.”
About five minutes after that a bit of commotion at the clubhouse entrance, and in comes Mr. Barrow himself. As you might know, he was a pretty rough talker. Huge man, with these fantastic bushy eyebrows. They always fascinated me. Couldn’t take my eyes off them. Well, he gave me a good going over for sitting in the clubhouse playing checkers when he’d asked for me outside.
“And,” he winds up with, “what the hell are you doing in here in the first place?”
“Well,” I said—still sitting at the checkerboard—“I pitched yesterday, and Walt just finished pitching batting practice, so I didn’t reckon either one of us had any business out there just now, necessarily.”
The Glory of Their Times Page 24
