The Summer of Beer and Whiskey

by Edward Achorn

  During the winter, Henry Chadwick, baseball editor of the New York Clipper, took up the cause of his fellow sportswriter. “Very much of the remarkable financial success attained by the Browns last season was due to his executive tact and ability,” Chadwick declared. Since then, Reid had been a “strong and open opponent” of Sullivan, asserting “that the team engaged for 1883 is not nearly as strong as St. Louis could and should have placed in the field.” Finding Sullivan and Von der Ahe deaf to these concerns, Reid severed his formal connection with the Browns in February 1883. But all season long, he maintained a withering flank fire at Sullivan on the pages of the Missouri Republican. He continued to whisper in the ear of an all-too-receptive Von der Ahe about all the things the new manager was supposedly doing wrong. Von der Ahe felt so bad about the writer’s precipitous resignation that he arranged for the club to present Reid “a magnificent walnut and mahogany writing desk” as an expression of gratitude for his services.

  While Reid grumbled, Sullivan continued his brilliant campaign of acquisitions, robbing the American Association’s Louisville Eclipse club of the marvelous pitcher Tony Mullane. A combative Irishman himself who came to America at the age of five, Mullane was nicknamed “The Count” and “The Apollo of the Box” for his good looks and prodigious talent, even if he was on the small and slender side. Paid just $115 a month by Louisville, he won thirty games in 1882, the second most in the league, and threw the Association’s first no-hitter on September 11. But his preening ego and selfishness offended many in Kentucky, and the Louisville Argus insisted that Mullane would not be missed. “Ever since his engagement with the club he has given the management trouble, and with due appreciation of his ability as a pitcher, we do most cheerfully congratulate ourselves upon his decision to go away to St. Louis and to establish himself there as the big boss of all the blusterers,” the paper said.

  Hitters, though, knew that the pitcher had much to be conceited about: a blazing fastball and a perplexing curve, delivered illegally over the shoulder. At the plate, he was a switch hitter. More remarkably, he could throw his pitches with both arms—something he demonstrated in a July 1882 game against Baltimore. When three left-handed batters came to the plate, Mullane “changed his delivery from right hand to left, and puzzled the batters considerably.” He could not keep it up for long, given his conditioning to use his right arm, “but it was very effective while it lasted.” Even more effective was his cold and calculated viciousness; he seemed willing to strike men down—even maim them—if they crowded the plate and made it harder for him to sneak across strikes. “Watch me polish his buttons,” Mullane said about good hitters he faced.

  Tony Mullane

  (Library of Congress)

  Tony was “a great hand at frightening the batters,” Von der Ahe recalled. “He would throw the ball right at the batter sometimes, particularly if he was a strong batter.” He wasn’t playing around: Mullane had a widowed mother, two sisters, and two young brothers back home in Erie, Pennsylvania, who were depending on him for support, and he had to be successful to maximize his earnings. The fiercely competitive pitcher had even overcome a deadly attack of malaria during the winter. He showed up in the spring somewhat weak and thin, and when he saw one tall, robust pitcher, he mused out loud: “If only I had that chap’s heft.” But he rapidly put on weight in April and May. “Tony does not ‘kill’ as easily as some people,” one reporter observed. Sullivan faced the daunting task of turning him into a team player.

  While the manager radically rebuilt the club, Von der Ahe spiffed up the plant. By March, Sportsman’s Park no longer looked much like its 1882 incarnation. The bleachers along the first-base line, “which gave many a one a roasting last year,” were roofed over now, like the grandstand. In left field, the open bleachers had been extended all the way to the outfield fence; these cheap seats would become the new “stamping ground” for St. Louis “hooters.” Dirt walkways, which had often turned soupy with Missouri mud on rainy days, were now attractively covered over with gravel. Four ticket booths had been constructed to help serve crowds “on red-letter days.” The press box was to be enclosed, sparing reporters the constant irritation of visits from various grandstand “experts.” Responding to customer complaints, Von der Ahe banned the sale of refreshments in the park’s small upper deck, ensuring that “the lively waiter will no longer obstruct the view of the spectator in that section.”

  In the outfield, Von der Ahe ordered the construction of “an immense blackboard” that would carry the progress, via telegraph, of the other games taking place in the American Association—a feature sure to attract many customers who bet on baseball and desired instant results from around the league. In the park’s renovated dressing rooms, each player was “provided with a compartment of his own, in which to stow away uniforms, bats, balls, etc.”—lockers, in other words, a novelty at the time. As a finishing touch, Von der Ahe installed some high technology, a rare telephone line to the club’s headquarters at the corner of Sixth and Pine downtown, so that the progress of games could be instantly “bulletined” to baseball lovers there. And now that his struggling neighbor, Augustus Solari, had stopped harassing him, Von der Ahe generously hired him as his groundskeeper, making good use of his expertise in maintaining the old Grand Avenue Park. In mid-March, Solari spent a week running a 4,000-pound roller drawn by four horses over the bumpy field, smoothing out the rough spots. He kept the horses from tearing up the field by wrapping their hooves in old carpet.

  ON ST. PATRICK’S DAY, A REPORTER FOR THE ST. LOUIS GLOBE-Democrat snuck into the renovated park to get a glimpse of Sullivan’s new men. He found catcher Deasley “sending the ball around like a shot from a rifle.” Out in right field, Nicol seemed “very small, but he is quick as a cat, and picks up and throws to the infield with great speed.” Out at first base, “taking everything sent that way,” was fleet-footed Comiskey.

  The left side of the infield was particularly impressive. At shortstop was Bill Gleason, another one of Sullivan’s Dubuque players. A supple, strong St. Louis firefighter, Gleason played baseball without pity for anyone who got in his way. He had caused a furor in 1882 when, attempting to score, he closed his two “brawny fists” across his chest and slammed them into Philadelphia Athletics catcher Jack O’Brien, knocking him senseless. The Philadelphia Item called him a “brute” and urged spectators to “mark him” for their opprobrium when he came to Philadelphia. “If he should some day break a limb or his neck, not a ball player in the American Association would feel the slightest regret,” the Sporting Life contended. In another collision at home plate that season, he snapped the wrist of Cincinnati catcher Phil Powers, forcing him to sit out for six weeks. Gleason was a mighty tough customer, even by the standards of a game filled with them.

  At third base was the “lithe and spry” Arlie Latham. The Globe-Democrat man noted that “he picks up and throws like lightning” and “is a strong batsman and a splendid base-runner.” (In admiring Arlie’s speed, Von der Ahe later observed: “Dot poy Latham . . . can run like a cantelope.”) The infielder, who had just turned twenty-four that week, also had a reputation for savagely mocking and heckling opponents, throwing them off their game. “Latham is the mouth of the St. Louis club, Comiskey the head. Each is valuable in his place,” the Sporting News maintained. Latham took a special pleasure in ridiculing his own employer behind his back, brilliantly mimicking Von der Ahe’s swaggering walk as the Browns paraded from the railroad depot to their hotel. According to one oft-told story, when a street crowd roared at Latham’s act, an annoyed Von der Ahe asked, “Why do they laff at us? Ve ain’t funny. Ve lick der stuffings out of every team in baseball.”

  In time, Latham would be dubbed “The Freshest Man on Earth” after a popular song—fresh, in this sense, meaning rude, audacious, and insolent. He was certainly fresh with the ladies. Carefully parting his slicked hair fashionably down the middle, he engaged in several publicized romances, including one with a “St. Louis bl
onde.” His wife, Emma Latham, back home in Massachusetts with their three-year-old son, Clifford, later complained bitterly that Latham failed to provide any money for their support and that he beat her “because she refused to submit to the gratification of unnatural desires.” In bringing him to St. Louis, Ted Sullivan “little thought what havoc Latham would create. . . . From his first appearance he had the reputation of being the idol of the younger ladies,” the Sporting News laughed. But Sullivan seemed to have little interest in the nocturnal habits of his men, preferring to focus on their efforts on the field. The manager tested his new infield by trying to knock ground balls between Gleason and Latham. The two stopped almost everything.

  On March 20, Von der Ahe gathered the Browns for his first clubhouse speech of the season. He welcomed the new men and “had a good word for the old players,” the few who had survived the manager’s scythe. Then he made it clear that there would be only one leader of the club in 1883: “From that time forward, they were under the sole management of Mr. Sullivan,” who “would hold them responsible for their actions both on and off the field.” To encourage good behavior, the owner offered a handsome bonus of $100 to each man who could get through the season without being fined—not bad money, considering that some players earned that for a full month’s work. “It is a generous offer, but is hardly likely that one man will run the gauntlet with Sullivan manager,” the National Police Gazette observed (rather erroneously, since Von der Ahe was far more liable than Sullivan to punish wayward players). Then Von der Ahe turned the meeting over to Sullivan. The new manager “remarked that he hoped to see the team at the top of the heap and winners of the pennant, but that [in] all events he trusted they would be nearer the top than the bottom.” A new era had begun.

  Arlie Latham,

  Sporting News, June 18, 1887

  (Library of Congress)

  On that cold April 1, Sullivan finally got to show the public what the new Browns looked like. George “Jumbo” McGinnis, a tall, big-chested twenty-nine-year-old from North St. Louis who worked as a glassblower, did the pitching. Surely happy to be teaming up with a first-class veteran catcher in Deasley, McGinnis threw a one-hit shutout, handily beating the Grand Avenues. But it was Latham who charmed the crowd, becoming “an immediate favorite,” said the Missouri Republican. “His neat, rapid style, clean handling and throwing prove him to be a natural ballplayer in all that that means.” Early in the game, the club’s new field captain, Loftus, “commenced to whoop up his men,” admirably performing the duties of his post, which included calling out the name of the player who should take a fly ball as well as telling fielders where to throw the ball.

  The Globe-Democrat was impressed: “He is always on deck coaching his men, and when they are not at bat his voice, calling to this man or that from the out field, sounds clear, and is always obeyed.” In 1882, by contrast, Cuthbert had been “seldom heard above that of the others, and there was always more or less confusion.” That change was significant, the paper explained. “The strength of the Chicago club has always been in their ‘coach.’ [Cap] Anson’s stentorian tones have often rattled the opposing team when defeat seemed assured. . . . If there is any position in the world where a man cannot be too boisterous, it is that which places him in command of a professional base ball nine.”

  The denizens of St. Louis, who had been just about ready to give up on the game four years earlier, were now mad for baseball. One week after the grand opening of the spring exhibition season, eight thousand paying customers showed up, overwhelming even the capacity of the renovated Sportsman’s Park. Every seat was taken, and the crowd was so dense near a low fence surrounding the outfield that it broke it into pieces, “letting the eager sightseers into the field.” Only weeks after renovating his park, Von der Ahe had to send carpenters back to make repairs and construct new open bleachers in front of the deep outfield fences. Sullivan’s men throttled the minor-league Reds from Springfield, Illinois, 12–0. The St. Louis men wore “their new red jackets yesterday and looked gorgeous,” the Globe-Democrat enthused. One Browns supporter suggested they switch from white to red shirts—a rather modern uniform idea—since the jackets looked so good.

  The following Sunday, before a throng of hollering kids taking advantage of specially reduced ten-cent tickets, the Browns drubbed the Northwestern League’s Ft. Wayne Golden Eagles, who were adorned in bright gray uniforms with black stockings and different colored caps. This time, the Browns won with the help of a “decidedly unprofessional” trick. In the second inning, team captain Tom Loftus, filling in at second base, caught a pop fly, walked to the pitcher’s box, and, to all appearances, handed Jumbo McGinnis the ball. When McGinnis started to pitch, the Ft. Wayne runner edged off the bag. Suddenly, Loftus dived at him and tagged him out. For an instant, the crowd did not understand what had happened; then, when it dawned on the spectators that Loftus had pulled off a hidden-ball trick, their laughter filled the park. The Globe-Democrat, striking a moralistic tone, chided Loftus, concluding that “fair-minded spectators do not favor that style of ball-playing.” It was becoming increasingly clear, however, that these Browns did not particularly care about fairness; they came to win.

  St. Louis crowds were being treated to a new brand of baseball, highlighted by the best base-running they had ever seen. “It is bold, dashing[,] and the men are not afraid to slide or dive if there is any chance of making their bases,” said the Missouri Republican. The boys in the stands had already adopted Hugh “Little Nick” Nicol as their hero, offering high-pitched cheers every time he stepped to the plate. “Right field has never been filled in this city as Nick is filling it,” the Republican applauded. One local team even named itself the “Little Nicols.” Hugh’s on-field theatrics, reprised by a later St. Louis star named Ozzie Smith, only boosted his popularity. After scoring during one spring training game, Nicol “tumbled and bounced about, turning somersaults and cart-wheels in a manner which would have done credit to one of Cole’s Arabs,” a popular circus act, the Republican reported. Looking better and better, the Browns won their last three preseason games, all against professional clubs, by a combined score of 47–0.

  Knowing the Browns would face tougher competition in the regular season, Ted Sullivan tried to tamp down raging expectations. “It is not the first or the last installment of games that will win the championship. It is a steady and honest pull that counts,” he stressed. “We will rely on that to land us there, and if we fail of success our campaign will have pleased the people of this city, for I guarantee that it will be an honorable and manly one.” The snarky Dave Reid refused to accept such a watered-down definition of success: “St. Louis calls for something more than ‘honest and manly play,’” he said. “It wants a winning team, and cannot afford to accept anything else.”

  By then, the Browns’ revival had led to the invention of a new word to describe the team’s passionate supporters. According to Sullivan, on off-days that April, the new manager found baseball addicts suddenly hounding him at the club’s headquarters downtown. It was there that players relaxed while men dropped in to purchase tickets, buy a drink, study the schedule, or talk to one of their heroes. One day, Sullivan recalled, a man came in and “commenced to ply me with questions about baseball in general.” The visitor “knew every player in the country with a record of 90 in the shade and 1,000 in the sun. He gave his opinion on all matters pertaining to ball. There was no player but he had a personal acquaintance with.” Finally, someone took pity on Sullivan and called the pompous know-it-all outside. “What name could you apply to such a fiend as that?” Sullivan sighed when the man was gone. “He is a fanatic,” Charlie Comiskey noted. Sullivan, smiling, decided to shorten the word to “fan.” “So, when he was ever seen around headquarters, the boys would say, ‘the fan’ was around again,” Sullivan wrote. (That, at least, was one version of the story Sullivan told of the invention; there were at least three, all of them widely differing in detail, and agreeing only that the c
oinage of the word “fan” was his.) By the turn of the century, the term was in widespread use. In 1883, however, “crank” and “fanatic” continued to be preferred.

  The cranks greatly irritated Sullivan, but their dollars—amounting to thousands per game—made his boss a supremely happy fellow. When Sullivan arrived at work on the sunny Wednesday morning of April 4, Sullivan recalled, “Chris whispered in my ear that he thought there was something in a plush box for me at his office.” The manager hastened to see what it was. “When I opened the box there was a handsome gold watch and a chain contained therein.” Von der Ahe had inscribed the gift with Sullivan’s name and the date. The owner beamed as an astonished Sullivan looked it over.

  At that moment, Sullivan felt a wave of affection for his clumsy boss, who obviously recognized the hard work the Dubuque man had put in for the sake of the team. In spite of all the warnings he had heard about Von der Ahe’s overbearing nature and constant interference, here was a powerful sign of respect. And the owner had promised, in front of all the players, that Sullivan would be the man in charge. As Von der Ahe’s long-awaited Moses, Sullivan just had to remember to keep on winning, leading the Browns ever closer to the land of milk and honey.

  5

  THE SHRIMP

  IT WAS INSANITY. BOBBY MATHEWS, THE VETERAN PITCHER OF the Philadelphia Athletics, already had an aching arm, a sore ear, and a pounding headache after being slammed in the skull by a baseball the day before. Now, he had to fight his way through mobbed streets in downtown Philadelphia on a steamy Memorial Day afternoon to get back into the ballpark and do his job. The whole city, it seemed, had gone crazy.