The Glory of Their Times

by Lawrence S. Ritter

  So that’s it. It’s been a lot of fun, beginning to end. As I told you. I played in my first professional ball game with Des Moines in the Western League in 1917. I was twenty years old then. I played in my last game forty years later, Vancouver in the Pacific Coast League, 1956. Was fifty-nine then. I was the manager and put myself in to pinch-hit. Mostly a gag, you know. But I hit a ball between the outfielders and staggered all the way around to third.

  A triple. Fifty-nine years old. How about that? Right there—forty years too late—I learned the secret of successful hitting. It consists of two things. The first is clean living, and the second is to bat against a pitcher who’s laughing so hard he can hardly throw the ball.

  22 Goose Goslin

  More than a quarter of a century has elapsed since Goose Goslin retired, but one question remains persistently unanswered.

  That question does not deal with Leon Allen Goslin’s playing career. For that is plainly stated in the record books for all to see:

  18 years in the major leagues with a lifetime batting average of .316 (higher than Fred Clarke’s or Bill Dickey’s)

  Over 2700 hits (more than Lou Gehrig or Joe DiMaggio)

  Over 900 extra-base hits, 12th on the all time list (ahead of Napoleon Lajoie and Charlie Gehringer)

  500 doubles (more than Jimmy Foxx or Mel Ott)

  Over 170 triples (more than Harry Heilmann or Al Simmons)

  A slugging percentage of .500 (better than that of Honus Wagner or Heinie Manush)

  Over 1600 runs batted in, 10th on the all-time list (ahead of Tris Speaker and Rogers Hornsby)

  No, the unanswered question does not deal with Goose Goslin’s playing career. It relates to the fact that 14 names are mentioned above, in addition to Leon Allen Goslin, and all 14 of them are in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

  The question is, very simply: Why not the Goose?

  HECK, LET’S FACE IT, I was just a big ol’ country boy havin’ the time of his life. It was all a lark to me, just a joy ride. Never feared a thing, never got nervous, just a big country kid from South Jersey, too dumb to know better. In those days I’d go out and fight a bull without a sword and never know the difference.

  Why, I never even realized it was supposed to be big doin’s. It was just a game, that’s all it was. They didn’t have to pay me. I’d have paid them to let me play. Listen, the truth is it was more than fun. It was heaven.

  Of course, finally, after about 20 years, I figured I’d had it. Forty years old, it starts to get a little too much like work. The old bones stiffen up and get a little frickle, you know, and then it’s about time to stop. Anyway, you can’t live out of a grip forever…hotel…taxi…train…taxi…hotel…train…and then all over again. Could just about fit into those pullmans in the first place. Poor Schoolboy Rowe, six foot four, how he ever slept in them I’ll never know. Myself, I never was prone to trains to begin with.

  So finally I up and said, “Goose, ol’ boy, it’s time to go fishin’.” And that’s pure and simple what I did, and been doing ever since. I used to have a big billboard down there at the fork in the road: GOOSE GOSLIN—FISHING—BOATS AND TACKLE FOR RENT.

  But they bothered me so much about it I took the darn thing down. Sent me letters every week telling me I had to pay a tax on it. Well, when the bill finally came it turned out to be for sixty cents. Oh, boy! Five dollars, OK, but sixty cents! How the devil do you make out a check for sixty cents? Made me so mad I took the billboard down and just put my name up there on a little stick. Did you see it? Hard to, ’cause the weeds have grown higher than the stick by now. Who cares? No more billboards for me. Sixty cents! Think of it.

  Everybody knows me here, anyway. I was born and raised near Salem, 18 miles from here. I always played ball around the sandlots here when I was a kid. I’d ride 10 miles on my bike to play ball, play all day long, and then get a spanking when I got back ’cause I’d get home too late to milk the cows. And without anything to eat all day! Then I got in semipro ball around here and one day this umpire saw me. Bill McGowan it was, later he became an American League umpire for about 20 years.

  “I can get you a professional job with Rochester, kid,” he says.

  “Great,” I said, “I’m ready to go.”

  Well, turned out he couldn’t. Rochester had all the pitchers they needed that season. I was a pitcher then, see.

  So then he says, “Well, I can get you a job down in Columbia, South Carolina, in the Sally League. How about that?”

  “Great,” I said, “I’m ready to go.” Didn’t matter to me. I’d have played anywhere!

  And that’s where I went. To Columbia, South Carolina. That was 1920 and I was twenty years old. Well, it turned out that professional ball was a little different from sandlot ball. Around here I used to be quite a pitcher. That’s what I thought, anyway. Used to strike ’em out one after the other. But down there it seemed like the harder I threw the ball the harder they hit it.

  One of the first games I pitched at Columbia our manager, Zinn Beck, came over to me from third base, where he was playing.

  “Listen, young man,” he says, “I’ve been in baseball a long time, but the fact is I’m not thirty-one yet. Won’t be till the season ends. If you keep this up I’ll never make it, ’cause the way they’re hitting you I’ll get killed out here for sure.”

  Goose Goslin in February: “I never could wait for spring to come so I could get out there and swat those baseballs”

  I guess he wasn’t kidding, because a little later he made me into an outfielder. The next year I hit .390 and before the season was over Clark Griffith, the owner of the Washington Senators, bought me.

  “My-oh-my,” I thought, “isn’t this something. Me in the Big Leagues!” I couldn’t wait to get there.

  You know, baseball always came so easy to me. I was lucky, being raised on a farm, I guess. Always worked hard, hefty work, and it made me pretty strong. I could always swing that bat real quick, just natural. Never had to train or practice a whole lot. Good eyes, quick reflexes, strong arms—oh, did I ever love to get up there and hit! And most of all I truly loved those fast balls. They were right down my alley. Zip they’d come in, and whack—right back out they’d go. I never could wait for spring to come so I could get out there and swat those baseballs!

  Of course, I had my bad days, too. Like April 28, 1934. How can I ever forget that day? I got up to bat four times, hit the ball good each time, and hit into four consecutive double plays. Think of that! I mowed those guys off the bases like shooting blackbirds off a bush. After the fourth time I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. That’s still a record. What makes me mad, though, it was tied by a boy name of Mike Kreevich. He did the same thing about five years later. Tied my record. I didn’t like that one bit. I wanted to be undisputed double-play champ!

  One year I was hitting way out in front of everybody else in the league by 20 or 30 points all season. That was 1928. But in September Heinie Manush kept gaining and gaining and gaining on me, and by the last day of the season he was only a fraction of a point behind me. We played the St. Louis Browns on that last day, and Heinie played left field for the Browns. I was in left field for the Senators. So Heinie and I were playing against each other, with the batting title on the line.

  Well, do you know that battle went right down to my very last time at bat. It came to my turn at bat in the ninth inning of last game of the season, and if I make an out I lose the batting championship, and if I get a hit I win it—his average is .378 and mine is .378 and a fraction. If I get up and don’t get a hit I’ll drop below him. I had that information before I went to bat. One of the sportswriters sent it down to me, with a note that said: “If you go to bat and make an out Manush will win the batting title. Best thing to do is don’t get up to bat at all, and then you’ve got it made.”

  Gee, I didn’t know what to do. Bucky Harris left it up to me. He was the manager.

  “What do you want to do, Goose?” he asked me. “It’s up t
o you. I’ll send in a pinch hitter if you want me to.”

  “Well,” I said, ‘I’ve never won a batting title and I sure would love to, just for once in my life. So I think I’ll stay right here on the bench, if it’s OK with you.”

  Of course, everybody gathered around, wanting to be in on what’s going on.

  “You better watch out,” Joe Judge says, “or they’ll call you yellow.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Well,” he says, “there’s Manush right out there in left field. What do you think he’ll figure if you win the title by sitting on the bench?”

  So this starts a big argument in the dugout: should I go up or shouldn’t I? Finally, I got disgusted with the whole thing. “All right, all right,” I said, “stop all this noise. I’m going up there.”

  And doggone if that pitcher didn’t get two quick strikes on me before I could even get set in the batter’s box. I never took my bat off my shoulder, and already the count was two strikes and no balls. So I turned around and stepped out of the box and sort of had a discussion with myself, while I put some dirt on my hands. I wasn’t too much afraid of striking out, but a pop-up or a roller to the infield and I was a dead duck. Or a gone Goose, you might say.

  Well, I didn’t know what to do. And then it came to me—get thrown out of the ball game! That way I wouldn’t be charged with a time at bat, and it was in the bag. The umpire was a big-necked guy by the name of Bill Guthrie, so I turned on him.

  “Why, those pitches weren’t even close,” I said.

  “Listen, wise guy,” he says, “there’s no such thing as close or not close. It’s either dis or dat”

  Oh, did that ever get me mad (I acted like). I called him every name in the book, I stepped on his toes, I pushed him, I did everything.

  “OK,” he said, after about five minutes of this, “are you ready to bat now? You’re not going to get thrown out of this ball game no matter what you do, so you might as well get up to that plate. If I wanted to throw you out, I’d throw you clear over to Oshkosh. But you’re going to bat, and you better be in there swinging too. No bases on balls, you hear me?”

  I heard him. And gee, you know—I got a lucky hit. Saved me. I guess that hit was the biggest thrill I ever got. Even bigger than that single that won the World Series in 1935. Another lucky hit.

  Well, it was a great honor to win a batting title in those days. It wasn’t an easy thing to do. I hit .344 in 1924 and didn’t even come close; Babe Ruth won it with .378. In 1926 I hit .354, but that year Manush hit .378. The next year Harry Heilmann hit .398. The first year I came up George Sisler hit .420. Jeez, you had to be a wizard to come anywhere close to the top in those days. A guy who hit .350 was considered just an average hitter. These days he’d lead both leagues by 20 points every year.

  Funny thing, two years after that, in 1930, I was traded to the St. Louis Browns for, of all people, Heinie Manush. Heinie went to Washington and I went to the Browns. That wasn’t a very happy day for me. First time I ever got traded. I’d been with the Senators for ten years, and it came as a mighty unpleasant surprise. Happened while we were in St. Louis, too.

  We’d played in Chicago the day before, and got into St. Louis about eight o’clock in the morning. We went to the hotel and had breakfast, and then I had a few hours with nothing to do. So I thought I’d go over to the zoo. They had a nice zoo in St. Louis, not far from the hotel. Had bears over there, and monkeys, and I’d give them peanuts and things like that. So I spent a couple of hours at the zoo, and when I got back to the hotel there’s Sam Rice, my roomate, sitting there in the lobby waiting for me.

  “Hey, you’re in the wrong hotel,” he says, as soon as he sees me.

  I didn’t get it.

  “I tell you, you’re in the wrong hotel,” he says again.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Well,” he says, “you’ll find out.”

  I smelled a mouse somewhere.

  “Don’t you know that they traded you to the St. Louis Browns?” he says.

  “No!” I said. “Did they really?”

  Well, it broke my heart. It really did. That afternoon I had to go to the other clubhouse, and I played that day against all my old teammates, all my best friends.

  A couple of years later, though, the Browns traded me back to Washington, and then Manush and I played together in the same outfield for one season. That was 1933, and we won the pennant in Washington that year. The Senators have won only three pennants—1924, ’25, and ’33—and I was there each time. Come to think of it, they’ve never played a World Series game I didn’t play every single inning of.

  Talk about excitement, that 1924 World Series beats them all. In the seventh game of the Series—each of us had won three games—we were two runs behind the Giants going into the bottom of the eighth inning, and it looked like the end was awfully close. But in the last of the eighth we got the bases loaded and then, with two out, Buck Harris hit a grounder down to Freddy Lindstrom that hit a pebble and bounced over his head and tied the score.

  Walter Johnson then went in to pitch for us, with the score tied 3–3, and two more breaks gave us the Series a few innings later. In the twelfth, Hank Gowdy, who was catching for the Giants, tripped over his own mask trying to catch a foul pop-up by Muddy Ruel, and then Ruel went and doubled to left field. After that, Earl McNeely hit another grounder to Lindstrom at third which also hit a pebble and bounced over his head, just like in the eighth inning, and Muddy Ruel scored and won the Series for us.

  A flukey win. Clark Griffith said, “That mask up and bit Gowdy. He was going to catch that pop foul and it grabbed him away from it.” Griff always said God was on our side in that one. Else how did those pebbles get in front of Lindstrom not once, but twice?

  Well, if so, the good Lord took it back the next year. We were ahead of Pittsburgh three games to one in the ’25 Series, and we never did win that fourth game. We were ahead in the seventh game, too, 4–0, as late as the third inning. Oh, that was ridiculous. That seventh game of the 1925 World Series was played in a terrific rainstorm. I’m not kidding, it was pouring like mad from the third inning on, and by the seventh inning the fog was so thick I could just about make out what was going on in the infield from out there in the outfield.

  In the bottom of the eighth we were still ahead, 7–6, when Kiki Cuyler hit a ball down the right-field line that they called fair, and that won the game for Pittsburgh. It wasn’t fair at all. It was foul by two feet. I know it was foul because the ball hit in the mud and stuck there. The umpires couldn’t see it. It was too dark and foggy.

  Well, what the heck—I guess it all evens out in the long run. Too late to do anything about it now, anyway. I never saw an umpire change a decision he made 40 seconds ago, much less 40 years ago. Might as well leave it stand, huh? Maybe if we raise these matters they’ll take away some of my hits, too. I got 19 hits in those two Series, six of them home runs, and drove in 13 runs. In the 1924 Series I got six hits in a row. Still a record, I reckon.

  Roger Peckinpaugh made eight errors in that Series. In the ’25 one, I mean. Eight errors. He was jinxed. Before the Series started he was named the Most Valuable Player in the American League. He was a great shortstop. Made miraculous plays for us all season, hit about .300, and then they put the old hex on him by giving him that award before the Series instead of after it.

  We won the pennant again in 1933, but it was bad times that year. The banks were shut down that year, you know. Bad depression. After the season was over, Clark Griffith told me he couldn’t afford to keep me. We won the pennant, all right, but we didn’t make any money. So he sold me to Detroit, and I walked right into two more pennants there, in ’34 and ’35. The ’35 Series was where I got that single in the ninth inning of the last game to win it for Detroit. First time the Tigers had ever won a World Series.

  Goose Goslin: “I truly loved those fast balls. Zip they’d come in, and whack—right armband Goose is wear
ing is in memory of Christy Mathewson, who had died a few back out they’d go.” (This picture was taken during the 1925 World Series. The black days before.)

  Lucky hit, that’s all it was. I mean at least you’re lucky to get up to bat at just the right time. I hadn’t had a hit all day in that game, and when I came up to bat there in the ninth, with the score tied, two out, and Mickey Cochrane on second, I said to the umpire, “If they pitch that ball over this plate, you can go take that monkey suit off.”

  And sure enough, the first ball Larry French threw in there—zoom! Oh, did those Tiger fans ever go wild. I’ll never forget it. You know, I played with the Senators for 12 years, the Browns for two, and the Tigers for four, and the best baseball town I ever played in and for was Detroit. The fans there were great.

  I always had a rooting section behind me in those left-field stands in Detroit. Mostly school kids, they’d have whole sections of the upper stands roped off for them. When I came up they’d all yell, “Yeah, Goose!” I loved it. We weren’t allowed to throw balls into the stands, you know, but I’d always take four balls out with me, in my back pockets, when I went out for fielding practice. And just before I went back in, after I’d taken my throws, I’d sail them up to the kids.

  Yeah, I always got a big kick out of the fans. Gee, I used to love to play in Philadelphia. Real close to home, you know, and would they ever razz me.

  “Hey, farm boy! Get back to that Jersey farm where you belong!” Oh, I used to love that. I ate it up.

  They used to razz me a lot in St. Louis, too. One day there in St. Louis—I think it was in 1930—I had hit two consecutive home runs, and when I came up the next time they really gave it to me. And darned if I didn’t hit a third one, right over that right-field fence. I laughed all the way around the bases, and by golly they stopped booing and gave me a big hand as I went around.