The Summer of Beer and Whiskey

by Edward Achorn

  Thanks in part to Sullivan’s wise decision to rest Mullane, the Browns beat the Mets in the next two games, then took the short train ride to Philadelphia for a four-game September showdown against their last serious pennant rival. The Athletics had won 55 games and lost 25. The Browns, at 55 and 26, trailed by half a game.

  When Sullivan returned to St. Louis to gather his belongings before returning to Dubuque, a reporter was waiting to get his side of the blowup. Sullivan chose to respond with dignified discretion. “There were some warm words which ended in my throwing up the management. That is the whole story,” he said. But he felt the sting, much as he tried to hide it. He had worked hard to build this superb club, train it, and make it the best-coached and most aggressive team in the American Association, only to be compelled to leave before he could harvest his pennant. The worst part was that he still cared about his Browns, in spite of all he had been through. “I’m with the boys yet,” he told the reporter, “and I am just as anxious to see them get there as ever.”

  And then he climbed aboard a railroad car, sat down, and went home.

  12

  JUMPING JACK

  ANYBODY WHO FOLLOWED PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL KNEW HOW much Bobby Mathews meant to the Philadelphia Athletics. Though the pitcher weighed only “a little over 100 pounds”—140, actually—“his importance is equal to the figure of a ton avoirdupois,” the Missouri Republican had observed in early July, using a highfalutin word for weight. “Taken out of the Athletic team, he leaves that force a very ordinary one, and one which would win but few games. If he lasts through the excessive work he is being put to, he will probably win the pennant for the Philadelphias. If he does not, then there are chances for a very hot race.”

  He had not, in fact, lasted through the excessive work, and the race had indeed turned very hot. By the start of September, his dead arm hurt. His ankle was so sore he could barely walk, much less push off of it to get power behind his pitches. He had wrenched his back, and pains shot up his body when he moved the wrong way. If Philadelphians had truly known how he felt, they would have been deeply depressed about the Athletics’ pennant chances, despite the team’s half-game lead heading into the climactic home series of the 1883 season.

  Instead, fanatics were smiling and chattering as they poured into Athletic Park on September 3, 1883, for the first of three against the St. Louis Browns. Months of struggling between the teams representing two of America’s most baseball-crazed cities—the classy, hard-driving A’s and the coarse, hard-bitten Browns—had come down to a series of vital importance to both. The people of Philadelphia knew it, and they began crowding the park early, even though Mondays were traditionally light for turnout. As a crowd grew into a mob, the Athletics crew nervously opened the front gate. The surging mass of men, eager for good seats, snapped it right off its hinges in a frenzy to get inside. This was the biggest crowd since the mob scene on Memorial Day. Half an hour before game time, every seat was filled. Ushers pointed latecomers onto the field, where they stood ten deep along the foul lines and the outfield fences. Boys had propped themselves up on every part of the fence where they could gain a precarious foothold, “with doubtful chances of holding on until the game was done.” So many people were drifting across the field that pregame practice had to be canceled. The game was then delayed for fifteen minutes as police strained to push the crowd behind the foul lines. The captains huddled over ground rules, just as they had on Memorial Day, deciding that any fair balls hit into the crowd would be doubles. Von der Ahe, suddenly deprived of his manager, took his seat. If he was worried about the loss of Ted Sullivan, he was not letting on.

  Philadelphia second baseman Cub Stricker was ready to play, having shaken off a dental disaster on August 30, two days before, when a ball smashed him in the face during practice, dislodging some of his teeth. But now Mathews, who had gamely struggled to an 11–5 victory over the New York Metropolitans on Saturday, was simply too weak and in too much pain to work. George Bradley, another crusty veteran who was just about finished as a major-league pitcher, got the nod. He took a 5–3 lead into the sixth inning, when the Browns struck back, their trademark aggressive base running flustering the Athletics into bobbling the ball. “The great strength of the St. Louis Club is the dashing manner in which they run bases and the manner in which their runners are coached,” the Philadelphia Inquirer conceded. “They are by no means heavy hitters, but they manage to make every hit count.” Four Browns runners crossed the plate in the waning innings, driving the Athletics down to defeat, 7–5, right out of first place.

  Von der Ahe was ecstatic. “The Banner in Sight,” the Missouri Republican headlined its analysis. “St. Louis has at last gained the position to which her magnificent work of late has certainly entitled her—first place,” the paper crowed. “Their victory shows a diamond in a cluster of brilliant emeralds, and shows their magnificent quality of ball playing at this supreme moment. . . . Our chances for the championship are now better than those of any club in the association. Cincinnati concedes the banner to St. Louis.”

  That wasn’t the worst of the trouble for the Athletics. The team was out of pitching now. Manager Lew Simmons couldn’t hand the ball back to his ace for game two on Tuesday, because Mathews was still incapacitated, pathetically sore, and hobbled from his Saturday start. With the pennant slipping away, and with Bradley and Mathews spent forces, Simmons had little choice: he would have to gamble, giving the ball to a college kid, a rookie who had become a national buffoon, the butt of bad jokes in baseball circles. For weeks, Simmons had searched frantically for a pitcher who might fill the breach during the final four weeks of the season. In early September, just as the Browns headed for town, the Philadelphia Record passed along some important intelligence to local fanatics. Simmons had found someone. An unlikely twenty-two-year-old would be given a try-out. “If he is effective he will be retained for the remainder of the season,” the Record said. It was an act of desperation, but at this point, a desperate chance was better than none at all.

  His name was Daniel Albion Jones Jr. His late father, also named Daniel Albion Jones, was a Connecticut dentist, revered in the community as a public speaker and philanthropist. The ballplayer’s mother, Emeline Roberts Jones, had married the dentist at the age of eighteen. For some reason, she had quickly become “intensely interested” in her husband’s line of work—to the elder Daniel’s apparent shock and discomfort, since well-bred women simply weren’t supposed to have anything to do with such work, other than to cower from it. After watching him toil—and nineteenth-century dentistry could be awfully grisly—she began experimenting with teeth that her husband had extracted from patients, secretly practicing at filling them until she had a two-quart jar’s worth of her work to show him. Reluctantly, he took her into his practice in May 1855. Four years later, he made her his full partner—the first woman in America to establish herself in a regular dental practice. By then, this odd couple of dentists had a daughter, and young Dan followed. Hard times struck the family in June 1864 when the elder Daniel died, leaving Emeline to fend for herself with a three-year-old son and a six-year-old daughter. The widow carried on her work, traveling with a portable dentist’s chair through eastern Connecticut and Rhode Island, while bravely providing for the children and giving them every advantage. In 1876, she began a lucrative practice in New Haven, and the son she doted on prepared for college at the Hopkins Grammar School before entering Yale with the class of 1883. By then, young Dan had mastered the art of throwing a baseball, and he quickly became the college’s star pitcher, leading Yale to successive Ivy League titles—in effect, making his team national champion. He had also mastered the arts of singing and whistling, skills he put to good use with Yale’s glee club. He joined the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, whose members have included five U.S. presidents.

  Yale baseball team, 1883; Daniel Jones is standing at center.

  Al Hubbard is seated next to him with catcher’s mask

 
(Transcendental Graphics/theruckerarchive.com; reprinted with permission)

  Jones was pondering a career as a lawyer, but he needed money if he was to attend law school after his undergraduate studies. The obvious answer, given the great talent with which he had been blessed, was professional baseball. Even before his spring semester was over, pitching-starved professional clubs entered into a fierce bidding war for his services. The Athletics, Orioles, and Phillies offered him fabulous amounts, bigger money, even, than was made by some of the game’s established stars. In the end, the National League’s Detroit club—having dumped Tom Mansell’s contract to help free up the money—outbid the others, reportedly paying the college kid a whopping $625 per month, at a time when a $400-a-month baseball salary was considered lavish. Jones made clear that making money for the summer was his top priority. “He can only play ball until Sept. 15, when he resumes his studies,” the Detroit Evening News reported.

  Thus, without a day’s experience in the professional ranks, Dan Jones jumped straight to baseball’s top league. There, he won six of eleven decisions, letting up ten hits for every nine innings he pitched—fair work for a rookie, though not much to cheer about, given the fevered anticipation he stirred and the enormous salary he commanded. The National Police Gazette considered the Jones hiring, all in all, little short of a disaster. “The Detroits slung out big money, took chances in a lottery, and got badly left,” the paper observed. “Again and again they tried to make a pitcher out of this big soap-bubble, but they might just as well have tried training a pet poodle dog.” Still, Jones’s paycheck was not the thing that sparked the most talk. The thing that had people buzzing, if not laughing out loud, was the absurd way he threw.

  The twenty-two-year-old hurled a fastball with a motion unlike any ever before used by a major-league pitcher: He leapt up into the air as he released the ball, flinging his arms and legs out in a manner that reminded reporters of a child’s jumping jack. It was a ludicrous sight, a college boy’s silly stunt that seemed completely out of place at baseball’s top level. “Towards the close of the game, when performing his particular jumping act, he was the laughing stock of players and spectators,” the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser reported. “Even some of the Detroiters mimicked his clownish actions, and Galvin at the bat laughed in his face.” The sports-writer obviously found this young hotshot more than a bit annoying. Though Jones was a “handsome fellow, and fresh as a daisy,” he was clearly not as wonderful as he and his press clippings had led the public to believe, he observed. “If the blush of modesty ever mantled his cheek, it is not within our knowledge. He may be a ‘great pitcher’ in the estimation of some critics, but if so, then the standard by which he is judged good must be a low one.”

  By September, Detroit agreed. Far out of first place, it unceremoniously dumped the outlandish pitcher and his enormous salary. By then, the desperate manager of the ailing Athletics, Lew Simmons, was there to swoop in and grab him, regardless of the pitcher’s obvious limitations. Simmons reportedly made the young man a handsome offer of $500 for one month’s work (pending his try-out)—less than Detroit had given him, but still enough to make Jones one of the game’s best-paid players on a per-month basis. Yes, people would laugh at the lad’s freakish pitching motion, and they might well mock Simmons for spending so much money on such a bizarre player. But there were simply no strong professional pitchers to be had. If Jones, now bearing the nickname of “Jumping Jack,” could somehow help the hobbled Athletics stay in the hunt during the final month of the season, Simmons would consider him a bargain.

  PUFFING ON A FAT CIGAR, THE POT-BELLIED VON DER AHE WAS A conspicuous sight in his checkered three-piece suit and derby. He traded quips in a thick German accent, shook hands boisterously, and thwacked the backs of well-wishers, before settling, with a sigh of happiness, into his grandstand seat at Philadelphia’s Athletic Park to watch his Browns do battle in the second match of this four-game series against the Athletics. He had reason to feel good. The Browns were in first place, on the brink of the pennant. Tom Mansell was back in left field, though the slugger’s knee was still stiff after his plunge into the elevator shaft. And the owner surely felt that the big crowd that day was a testament to his wisdom in helping to found the American Association. The critics might scoff, but Americans loved the Beer and Whiskey League. Now it was time to enjoy. With a weakened Bobby Mathews, the Athletics did not look so indomitable anymore. No one could seriously think that a college kid would fill the breach, even one as heavily hyped as this Yale boy. Von der Ahe sat back to see what all the fuss was about.

  Dan Jones strode to the pitcher’s box in front of the biggest crowd that had ever watched him play. The fanatics seemed more subdued than they had been on Monday, perhaps sensing the implications of this game. This strange young man with a cocky demeanor, dark mustache, and sparkling eyes held the fate of the 1883 season in his hands that day. “There was perfect silence when he took his position,” the Philadelphia Times reported. Bill Gleason, the brawny volunteer fireman, decidedly no college man, took his place in the batter’s box and glared at the rookie. Jones nervously pitched three balls wide of the plate. He got the ball back and held it in his hands for a while, staring in at his catcher. Jones knew what he had to do. “Then he jumped two feet in the air, and while Gleason gazed at him in astonishment the ball traveled squarely over the center of the plate and one strike was called,” the Times said. “‘Jumping Jack’ jumped again, and Gleason aimed at a ball two feet from the end of his bat. He jumped again on the next ball and Gleason was called out on strikes.”

  Von der Ahe and the Philadelphia crowd could barely believe it. It was ridiculous, ludicrous. Spectators looked at each other, laughed, and pointed in amazement as Jones made his celebrated leap three or four times per inning, usually when there were two strikes on the batter. “No one else can get it. It is taught exclusively at Yale,” the Philadelphia Press informed its readers. “His antics in the pitcher’s box, by jumping up and cracking his heels on every other ball pitched, was very amusing to the crowd.” It was less so to the Browns hitters, who had trouble adapting. “You don’t know whether Jones or the ball is coming for you,” one player explained in frustration. Through five innings, Jumping Jack led 6–1. Then he poured it on, retiring the last twelve men in succession. In the eighth inning, with the Athletics leading 11–1, the deliriously happy crowd began taunting the Browns by whistling the “Dead March” in unison. When Jones struck out the last batter to end the game, recapturing first place for the Athletics, spectators flung their derby hats in the air and jumped onto the field. They quickly surrounded the pitcher, heaved him up, and bore him on their shoulders to the dressing room. The Yale boy was an instant Philadelphia sports hero—“the most popular man who ever played ball on the Athletic grounds,” the Philadelphia Press declared the next day.

  Von der Ahe, whose tantrums had just cost him a manager, was furious over the thrashing his team had received at the hands of this bizarre specimen. Immediately after the 11–1 debacle, Von der Ahe ordered the men to report to his hotel room. “The boys soon came up,” the New York Times reported. “There was not a smile. They arranged themselves around the room—some on the bed, others on chairs, and still others lounged on the velvet carpet of the wealthy president’s room. Von der Ahe gazed upon the crowd, and the crowd with their still unwashed faces glared back at him.”

  Finally, Von der Ahe spoke. “Vhy did you loose dot game today?”

  There was dead silence. Then Arlie Latham, glancing at his teammates, offered an answer. “Why, you see, boss, we had devilish hard luck.” Yes, nodded his fellow players, hard luck explained it.

  “Von der Ahe gazed upon his nine. His nine glared back. He knew they had often won games for him. He also remembered how many fines he had paid and how many bad bonds he was on. He turned his eyes upon the stolid countenance of Lewis, and then a smile rippled across his Teutonic face as he said: ‘Vell, boys, if it was hard luck dot settles
it. You can’t win a game ven you have hard luck. Dot’s so. Dot vas all right.’” The players, relieved that he had no further destructive stunts in mind, all shook Von der Ahe’s hand, then “fled down to the dining room, where they terrified the colored waiters with their orders for supper.”

  Athletics Captain Lon Knight faced a tough choice in game three: he could either go with one of his struggling pitchers, who were a good bet to lose, or gamble that Jumping Jack had enough pop left to pitch effectively for a second straight day. He went with Jumping Jack. Unfortunately, the tired Jones proved much less intimidating this time, “and his prance showed little of the pristine vigor that reduced the temperature for St. Louis the day before.” Before a third straight sellout crowd, the Athletics jumped to the lead in the first inning, thanks to an error and wild throw by Joe Quest. The Browns struck back in the fourth, when Athletics shortstop Fred Corey fumbled a pop fly with two out, letting the fleet-footed Arlie Latham scoot across the plate with the tying run. A seesaw battle ensued. In the bottom of the ninth, the Browns—who had won the pregame coin flip and were batting last—came up, trailing 5–3. Hugh Nicol led off with a single, sneaking to second and third when Jones’s pitches got away from catcher Jack O’Brien, who was still getting accustomed to the new man. Then Quest looped the ball to short center field, sending second baseman Cub Stricker madly back-peddling. Stricker “tripped and fell as his fingers closed on the ball,” and Nicol, tagging up, narrowed the score to 5–4.

  There was now one man out in the ninth, with nobody on base. The Athletics were two outs away from a victory that would drop the Browns one and a half games behind. But “things began to look shaky once more,” the Philadelphia Record noted. George McGinnis blasted a long drive to deep left field that sent the Athletics’ Jud Birchall sprinting straight to the fence. At the last moment, Birchall turned his face into the blinding glare of the sinking afternoon sun and made the difficult catch for out number two. The Athletics appeared to be home safe when Tom Dolan skied a pop-up in front of home plate. But the new pitcher’s inexperience cost the Athletics. “It was clearly Jones’ ball, but he seemed loath to try for it, motioning for O’Brien to take it,” the Record said. The exhausted catcher made a valiant effort and got his hand on the ball, but it bounced off, and Dolan stood safe on first base. George Strief followed with a single through the pitcher’s box into center field, and suddenly the tying run was on second, the winning run on first.