THE SUMMER
OF BEER
AND WHISKEY
THE SUMMER
OF BEER
AND WHISKEY
How Brewers, Barkeeps, Rowdies,
Immigrants, and a Wild Pennant Fight
Made Baseball America’s Game
EDWARD ACHORN
PUBLICAFFAIRS
NEW YORK
Copyright © 2013 by Edward Achorn
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Book design by Linda Mark
Library of Congress cataloguing-in-publication data are available.
ISBN 978-1-61039-261-7 (e-book)
First Edition
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my children, Jean, Matt, and Josh
CONTENTS
Preface: The Love Affair
CHAPTER 1 In the Big Inning
CHAPTER 2 The Beer and Whiskey Circuit
CHAPTER 3 The Minstrel Star
CHAPTER 4 The Moses of St. Louis
CHAPTER 5 The Shrimp
CHAPTER 6 Who’s in Charge?
CHAPTER 7 The $300 Special
CHAPTER 8 Base Ball Mad
CHAPTER 9 First-Class Drunkards
CHAPTER 10 Cap Anson’s Nightmare
CHAPTER 11 Flinging the Watch
CHAPTER 12 Jumping Jack
CHAPTER 13 Hurricane in St. Louis
CHAPTER 14 Limping Home
CHAPTER 15 A Great Boom for Base Ball
Epilogue: When They Slide Home
Acknowledgments
Appendix: American Association, 1883
Notes
Sources
Index
[Chris Von der Ahe] did as much for baseball in St. Louis and the country at large as any man ever associated with the game.
—AL SPINK,
THE NATIONAL GAME, 1910
In the next century, when baseball will be in the hands of posterity, and the present votaries and exponents gone to their long sleep, the Bancroft of the national game will place Chris Von der Ahe where he rightfully belongs.
—TED SULLIVAN,
HUMOROUS STORIES OF THE BALL FIELD, 1903
PREFACE:
THE LOVE AFFAIR
AT 10:22 P.M. ON THE NIGHT OF OCTOBER 28, 2011, A MUSCULAR, six-foot-four left-handed batter and devout Christian, David Murphy of the Texas Rangers, took a swift hack at a 97-mile-per-hour fastball and launched a long fly ball to left field. Red-jacketed fans in the St. Louis crowd of 47,399 were already on their feet yelling, waving white “Rally Squirrel” towels in honor of the American gray squirrel whose repeated dashes across the field had prophesied the Cardinals’ improbable upset of the Philadelphia Phillies in the Division Series playoffs three weeks earlier. As the ball soared into the night, Cardinals left fielder Allen Craig sprinted hard, turned around, and, backpedaling, thrust up his left arm, framed by the wall’s giant picture of the Cards’ legendary pitcher and showman Dizzy Dean, star of the Depression-era champions known as the Gashouse Gang. Fans fixed their eyes on the dying arc, bracing to bellow ear-splitting screams. When Craig’s glove swallowed the ball, they jumped up and down, slapped backs, shook hands, hugged, laughed, wept. Ecstatic young athletes in white and red uniforms swarmed over the field, forming a mound atop closer Jason Motte. Fireworks boomed over the stadium, splashing piercing colors into the sky that were reflected beyond center field on the Gateway Arch, symbol of the city’s critical role in America’s bold westward expansion. Another splendid page in St. Louis history had been written.
It was one of those unthinkable finishes that make baseball so magical. On August 27, the St. Louis Cardinals had languished in third place in the wildcard race, ten and a half games behind, written off by everyone but themselves. They fought back frantically and, with a win on the last day of the regular season, actually snuck into the playoffs. They then pushed aside the highly touted Phillies and the hard-hitting Milwaukee Brewers to make it all the way to the World Series, where they would be up against the heavily favored Texas Rangers. Twice in Game Six, they had been on the brink of elimination, down to their last strike, but the stars spectacularly aligned in their favor, and they survived, somehow, to triumph in the eleventh inning. And now they were World Champions, sending millions of Cardinals fans across America into paroxysms of joy. Gushing with pride, General Manager John Mozeliak declared: “We have the greatest fans in the world.”
The people of St. Louis seemed determined to prove it. Two days later they filled Busch Stadium and lined downtown streets for a parade celebrating their baseball miracle. A team of eight massive Clydesdale steeds pulled a scarlet red Budweiser beer wagon, symbol of Anheuser-Busch’s longtime association with the team and St. Louis’s love for the amber beverage that had been made internationally famous by the city’s German immigrant brewers. Manager Tony La Russa smiled and waved from the seat of honor atop the wagon, alongside green-clad liverymen.
But few, if any, of the hundreds of thousands celebrating that afternoon paused to reflect on the founder of their beloved team, the shrewd and amusing man to whom they owed a good deal of their joy this day. Most in the crowd had never even heard the name of Chris Von der Ahe, let alone his story. This immigrant grocer and saloonkeeper dived into baseball even before he thoroughly mastered the English language. With cheap tickets, Sunday ball, and beer, he grabbed control of the dying game in St. Louis and, in a turnaround at least as improbable and dramatic as the one engineered by the 2011 Cardinals, infused it with new life and popularity—while perhaps saving all of professional baseball in the bargain. Von der Ahe also played a role in founding a flamboyant new major league, whose influence echoes loudly through Major League Baseball to this day.
Von der Ahe did not act alone, of course. He was one of a gang of owners and players who revived the game by creating a dazzlingly colorful professional sports league known as the American Association. This book tells their tale—the tale of how baseball, under their guidance, extended its reach to fans of all classes and became more truly America’s game. It tells of the extraordinary passion for baseball they helped to ignite in cities such as St. Louis, Philadelphia, New York, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Baltimore, Louisville, and Columbus. Our vehicle to reconnect with this fascinating world will be the cycle that is the essence of baseball—a single season, from April’s soaring expectations to September’s aching sorrows.
To be sure, the American Association’s summer of 1883 has been utterly foreign to all but the most intrepid baseball historians. But in many ways it transformed and even saved the game, dramatically increasing its popularity and demonstrating that, however unpredictable professional baseball might be, it could be played honestly. It was the year America went baseball mad—a season of struggle and passions featuring a wild pennant race. It was filled with memorable characters—and often hilarious twists and turns, so wonderful that only baseball could have invented them. It is a season that marvelously opens a window, as baseball always does, into the culture of America
of its time—the harsh struggle, the cruel and mocking racism, the heavy drinking, and the triumphant, glorious spirit of individual achievement of the day.
To get oriented, it might be helpful to know something about the American Association, the major league that functioned alongside the National League from 1882 through 1891. It was not the progenitor of today’s American League, which became a major league in 1901, though it did demonstrate that there was good money to be made in a competing league. Formally in existence for just nine years, the American Association might seem short-lived—long gone and long forgotten. But in a very real sense, it is still thriving today. In 1892, the Association merged with the National League, which had been founded in 1876, much as the upstart American Football League merged with the more venerable National Football League in 1970. Four former American Association teams became keystone National League franchises: Pittsburgh (today’s Pirates), St. Louis (today’s Cardinals), Cincinnati (today’s Reds), and Brooklyn (today’s Los Angeles Dodgers). The newly merged league was called the National League and American Association of Professional Base Ball Clubs—a real mouthful, understandably shortened in common usage to National League, though perhaps unfortunately so, since the Association and its great contribution to baseball were thereby largely forgotten.
The franchise that became known as the Cardinals—and plays one of the starring roles in this book—was originally called the St. Louis Browns. This club is not to be confused with the St. Louis Browns of the American League, 1901–1953, who moved to Baltimore and became today’s Orioles. Those Browns simply borrowed the name, by then no longer in use, of the storied franchise founded by Von der Ahe.
Big-league baseball imported much more than ball clubs from the American Association. The Association powerfully transformed baseball, making it more open and accessible. Decades before Jackie Robinson, it featured two black ballplayers, breaking the color line for a time in Jim Crow America. The big leagues also eventually adopted the Association’s Sunday ball, ballpark beer, and spirit of reckless fun that was at the heart of the organization from the beginning—qualities that, to one degree or another, live on to this day, just like the St. Louis Cardinals.
And it began, as so much of baseball does, with a most improbable character. . . .
1
IN THE BIG INNING
EVERYBODY WHO KNEW CHRIS VON DER AHE, IT SEEMS, HAD A story about him—about his colossal pomposity; his wonderful generosity; his red-faced rages that inevitably recoiled catastrophically on himself; his thick German accent and wobbly use of the English language; and his insatiable appetite for beer, beautiful young women, song, and life. As a baseball owner, he was George Steinbrenner, Charlie Finley, and Bill Veeck rolled into one—haughty, temperamental, driven to win, wildly experimental, and madly in love with a dazzling show. He had a splash of Yogi Berra in him, too, which surfaced in his expression of Zen-like axioms.
He struck some observers as the quintessential cartoon of a German immigrant: moon-faced and strawberry-nosed, with twinkling eyes, a bushy mustache, and an emerging pot belly that pushed on the vest of his loud checkered three-piece suit. One contemporary reporter observed: “His taste was given to trombone tailory. He liked hilarious habiliments. Large checks in light hues were his favorite colors. He adored tan shoes and pearl-gray hats.” Describing Von der Ahe’s appearance at one owners’ meeting, an admiring reporter noted that the German “wore a flashy suit of clothes and a smile that would stretch across the Ohio River.” Sportswriter and former ballplayer Tim Murnane compared him to Cyrano de Bergerac, the joyful, flamboyant lover of women and life cursed with a comical appearance. Chris was fond of “large things. He wears a No. 8 hat, No. 10 shoes and sports a 48-carat diamond on his shirt front.”
Many stories suggest that Von der Ahe’s knowledge of the game was less than encyclopedic. We hear in one 1885 article that he bragged to his off-and-on press secretary, David L. Reid, when the two were meeting at his ballpark:
“Dave, dis vas de piggest diamond in de country.”
“No, Chris,” replied Dave, “all diamonds are the same size.”
“Vell,” replied Chris, “it vas de piggest infield, anyhow.”
Chris Von der Ahe
(Library of Congress)
Since Von der Ahe traveled with his team frequently and made complicated deals to obtain very good ballplayers, such colossal ignorance seems beyond belief. Yet many contemporary accounts, including from people who admired him, attest that he never quite seemed to grasp the intricacies of baseball. “Often after his team lost a game,” his longtime manager, Charlie Comiskey, recalled, “Chris would dash into the club’s dressing room, single out a certain player and shout, ‘Vy did you drop dat ball, eh?’ He took every muff as a personal affront and seemed to think the poor players could explain in well chosen words why they happened to muff.” On other occasions, he tried to inspire players with clubhouse addresses characterized by his memorable flair for language. One reporter claimed he once delivered this warning about “lushing,” or excessive drinking: “See here now; I don’t vant some foolishness from you fellows. I vant you to stop dis slushing and play ball. Of you vin de scampinship I gif you all a suit of clothes and a benefit-game extra and of you don’t you vill haf to eat snowballs all vinter.”
His use of English made even his friends laugh. Longtime Baltimore Orioles manager Billy Barnie recalled introducing a couple of traveling reporters to the St. Louis owner one day, back when it was rare for sports-writers to accompany teams on road trips. “Poys, I am awful glad to see you and velcome you to St. Lewis,” Von der Ahe declared. “Ofer there is my pox. It is at your exposal.” Admonished once for letting some good players go, Von der Ahe wrung his hands and moaned, “Vy, oh vy, didn’t I take mine own advice?”
A man of immense pride in his achievements, he once gathered his friends to show off his flashy new horse and light buggy, parked outside of his Grand Avenue beer garden. Chris dramatically climbed in, drove nearly all the way to National Bridge Road, turned around, and began a wild half-mile gallop down the wide avenue toward his associates. To his friends’ horror, the horse sped past the café in a frenzy, collided with a telephone pole, catapulted Von der Ahe into the mire, “and galloped wildly up the hill, dragging the remnants of the rig behind it.” Von der Ahe was lugged back inside, had the mud and grime washed off of him, and downed a couple of stiff drinks to revive his spirits. He then barked to an assistant, “Take dot blanked blanked horse back to der barn unt starve him to deat. Don’t give him noddings to eat but hay und oats.”
He was an insatiable womanizer, a failing that made him a figure of ridicule in the papers and virtually ruined his life. On a roasting hot Sunday night in St. Louis in August 1885, while his wife, Emma, was sitting on the steps in front of their home at 3613 St. Louis Avenue, he came careening around the corner, crashing his carriage. Out spilled a pretty young blonde named Miss Kittey Dewey, who escaped serious injury but not a tongue-lashing from Mrs. Von der Ahe. When Miss Dewey had the nerve to show up at Von der Ahe’s Sportsman’s Park a month later, Emma crept up on her, pulled a soda bottle from the folds of her dress, and brought it crashing down on the young woman’s head. On another occasion, a man showed up at Emma’s front door to complain that Von der Ahe was sleeping with his wife. Emma eventually divorced Von der Ahe, charging that he stayed “out late at night in the company of women of ill-repute” and “violated his marital vows not only in St. Louis, but traveled with women of bad character from place to place.” But Von der Ahe didn’t learn. At the age of forty-six, he took up with a gold-digging twenty-one-year-old named Della Wells. After he married Della in 1896, one Miss Annie Kaiser came forward, a “handsome young woman” who had worked for Von der Ahe and his first wife as a servant before the couple got divorced. Miss Kaiser claimed he had promised to marry her, and that they had been planning to set a date. Von der Ahe and Della soon divorced, and Chris, having resolved the breach-of-promise lawsuit, marr
ied the servant girl who brought it against him. All this proved enormously costly.
A portable theater of the absurd seemed to follow Von der Ahe around all his days. But how many of these tales were true? Nineteenth-century newspaper reporters, handed the priceless gift of this oversized personality, transformed him into something approaching a pure ethnic stereotype: the German immigrant as a bombastic rube, known as a “Dutchman,” who must be constantly corrected by his smarter, American-born associates. Yet the historical record reveals a much more complex character than the one constantly lampooned in the papers. His contemporaries knew him as a brilliant showman and risk-taker, a man who, though he often wore his heart on his sleeve, worked harder and had a keener vision of baseball’s potential than almost all of his contemporaries. “He is shrewd, cunning and pugnacious,” observed one reporter who knew him well. “His methods are drive, drive, drive and keep on driving.” Another reporter, studying an “irregular” face that smiled more than it frowned, formed a strong impression of his willpower: “Base ball vicissitudes have not turned his hair gray. He looks like a man who could strike out vigorously when the sea becomes troublesome and who could keep his head well above the waves when other powerful swimmers begin to think of sinking.”
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