The Summer of Beer and Whiskey

by Edward Achorn

  Bill Gleason, a .287 hitter that season, then came to the plate. An extra-base hit would give his Browns the victory. Gleason hammered the ball, scorching a grounder down the third-base line. Grin Bradley reached out reflexively, gripped the spinning ball, and tagged third for the force out, ending a magnificent, emotionally draining game. Jumping Jack, frazzled and exhausted, had delivered two crucial victories for the Athletics.

  On Thursday, after three successive sellouts, the biggest crowd of the week stormed Athletic Park. Lew Simmons, personally collecting tickets, “estimated that his hands passed over no less than 13,500 pasteboards [tickets] at the entrance to the grounds.” With season tickets and other admissions, that made for about 15,000 spectators, and a stunning 50,000 for the series. Much again was at stake: when the day was done, St. Louis would either be a mere half-game behind, or two and a half back, a serious deficit with only three weeks left in the season. Pennant-crazed Philadelphians were at the park hours before game time, and they swarmed onto the field when the stands were full. Police strung a rope down the foul lines and in the outfield to keep the mob away from the players. Several hundred boys and men hoisted themselves over the fence at the unattended corner of Twenty-sixth and Master streets, dropping down into the grounds without paying the twenty-five-cent admission.

  Jumping Jack needed a rest. Matthews, unnervingly, was still too hobbled to pitch, so the duty fell by default to Bradley. The Athletics built him a 3–1 lead, but St. Louis battled back to tie it. As the game entered the late innings, the tension became excruciating. When the Athletics’ Fred Corey led off the seventh inning, promisingly, with a double, the Browns fought desperately to hold him to second. A pop fly sent second baseman Joe Quest on a sharp run into right field to grab the first out. Another ball soared to right field, but the Browns’ Hugh Nicol caught and returned the ball “so perfectly that Corey dared not move from second.” Then, with two out, Cub Stricker slapped a grounder past third base to score Corey with the go-ahead run. The Athletics led, 4–3.

  St. Louis entered the bottom of the ninth needing a run to tie, two to win. Quest, the first man up, hit a sharp ball to third baseman Corey, who made a great stop and gunned him out at first base. The next Browns hitter, Pat Deasley, got things going with a single. He quickly moved to second base when a pitch scooted past catcher John O’Brien. Now the tying run was in scoring position. The Athletics should have been able to breathe easier after Tony Mullane hit a weak fly ball to left field, but Jud Birchall, a twenty-four-year-old Philadelphia native in the middle of an undistinguished three-year major-league career, “muffed” it “most ingloriously.” Fortunately for the Athletics, Deasley held to second, fearing he would have been doubled off or thrown out. Now, with only one out, there were two runners on base. “With one accord,” the Record said, “every heart in the audience came up into its owner’s throat as it all at once became evident that a good long hit by Strief, who was next at bat, would surely bring in one run, which would tie the game, and possibly two, which would win it.”

  The crowd fell silent as ball one was called. Bradley’s second pitch flew right over the plate, and Strief walloped it, just as Athletics fanatics had feared. As “the ball sailed out over right field,” Deasley tore for third base with every intention of scoring the tying run. Right fielder Lon Knight, recognizing immediately that the line drive was screaming his way, “turned and ran with the ball a few steps, and then turning, sprang up and caught it with both hands as it was passing over his head.”

  Before the crowd had time even to register what was happening, Knight threw a bullet to first baseman Harry Stovey. Base runner Tony Mullane, who had halted between first and second to see whether Knight would catch the ball, barely managed to get back to first in time. But Stovey fired the ball to Cub Stricker, catching Deasley dead at second base, to complete the double play, ending the game in stunning fashion. “The shout raised was instantaneous and deafening,” the Record reported. The mob instantly plowed through the ropes, and two to three thousand people swarmed over the field. Knight was surrounded, and “nearly smothered in enthusiasm,” while other players were “badly jostled” as they fought their way to the dressing room amid an “excited throng waving hats and cheering lustily.” The captain’s extraordinary catch had saved the game, the series, and, quite possibly, the season. It was an amazing turn of events: the Athletics—thanks to Jumping Jack and their own perseverance—had beaten the Browns in three straight, taking a daunting two-and-a-half-game lead in the standings with fourteen left to play. “ST. LOUIS SURRENDERS,” the Philadelphia Press declared in a lead headline, adding: “St. Louis has gone Westward in sackcloth and ashes.” But Dave Reid of the Missouri Republican thought that there was little for Philadelphia to crow about: “Nothing but the sheerest hard luck kept St. Louis from winning three out of the four games, and the superiority of the Western team was patent to everyone who saw the games,” he wrote.

  KNIGHT’S CELEBRATED CATCH MARKED THE END OF THE ATHLETICS’ home season for 1883, at least according to the official schedule. But the resourceful Lew Simmons had managed to tack on two more home games by persuading the Columbus Buckeyes to move two contests from its park to Philadelphia. There, the gate take would be much bigger (and there, of course, the Athletics would have the home-field advantage). Cincinnati and St. Louis wasted no time filing formal protests with Association headquarters, bitterly complaining that the Chicago White Stockings had used the same ploy to steal the National League pennant from the Providence Grays in 1882 by shifting a crucial series from Buffalo to the Windy City.

  Von der Ahe was naturally livid, and he threatened to overturn the championship at the Association’s annual meeting in December, should the Athletics end up winning the pennant by a game or two. “Playing games away from the cities in which they are scheduled is not right, and takes away the interest in the game,” he complained, with great justice—but to no avail.

  Jumping Jack Jones, who got the assignment to pitch the first of the two games against the Columbus club, chose to take it easy. Hampered by muscle cramps, he had stopped performing his celebrated jump, and “the crowd began to call out to him requesting an exhibition.” The Yale man obliged, striking out a Columbus batter with the help of his leap, “to the intense satisfaction of the spectators.” He pitched the Athletics to an easy 5–2 victory. His record in four days with the Athletics was three wins, zero defeats.

  Bradley worked the second Columbus game at Philadelphia. In the fourth inning, with the score still 0–0, he fired a ball that Columbus second baseman Pop Smith fouled straight back. It glanced off the mask of catcher Ed Rowen and struck umpire Mike Walsh flush in the face, dropping him to the ground “as if shot.” For a second, Walsh, who had been foolishly umpiring without a mask, lay motionless, “as one dead,” while a doctor who had dashed down from the stands tried to bring him back to consciousness with water and then liquor. Walsh “was soon seized with convulsions, and his unconscious struggles were piteous to see.” Finally, the prostrate umpire had to be hauled off the field comatose to his room at the Bingham House hotel.

  The two teams, bereft of an official umpire, agreed to play the rest of the game as an exhibition that would not count in the standings. Lon Knight, careful to spare Bradley’s arm, moved second baseman Cub Stricker to the pitcher’s box. From that point on, the New York Clipper reported, “the game was of the burlesque order.” Stricker whipped up the crowd by imitating Jones’s absurd jumping jacks. Columbus won, and the Athletics’ regular season in Philadelphia was over. The makeup game would be played in Columbus, where it should have been played in the first place. Later that night, when Walsh came to, he found he had suffered a broken nose—the price for failing to wear a mask, a mistake fewer umpires would make as time went on. That night, in a state akin to shock, he caught a train with the Athletic and Columbus clubs for Columbus.

  Lew Simmons and

  Chris Von der Ahe,

  Philadelphia Item,
>
  September 9, 1883

  (Library of Congress)

  Though the Athletics held the lead, they now faced as severe a challenge as they had seen all season: winning the pennant while finishing up with thirteen straight games on the road. The Athletics would pass through Columbus, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Louisville before returning home either as champions or failures. Jumping Jack, who had passed his audition in dramatic fashion, packed his bags and traveled with his new teammates for the first time. He was going to miss the first couple of weeks of his senior year at Yale.

  Philadelphia buzzed with triumphant chatter about the Athletics and their quirky new hero. The Item sent off the first-place club with a couple of celebratory cartoons. One showed the balding Lew Simmons, standing in his three-piece suit, pulling on the string of a jumping jack toy. “This is what beat you, Von der Ahe,” read the caption. A scrunched, gnomish figure, with a curly mustache and a monocle, labeled Von der Ahe, is seated below on the edge of his chair, shaking his fist. “Vas dot so?” the figure asks. “Vell, by tam, I gets me two shumping Jack pitchers when I get me mit Cent Louis!”

  13

  HURRICANE IN ST. LOUIS

  CHARLIE MASON, LULLED BY THE RHYTHMIC CLICK OF THE wheels over the tracks, stared vacantly at the little towns and telegraph poles that leapt by his coach window. Leaving behind the cigar store and “Athletics headquarters” he had just opened at 139 North Eighth Street with some of the money that had poured into his pockets this year, the thirty-year-old co-owner of the Philadelphia Athletics was on something of a rescue mission, taking a fast train from Philly to Columbus so he could watch over the boys as they finished up there. Then he would accompany them to Cincinnati and, finally, to St. Louis, for the series that would, in all likelihood, decide the 1883 American Association pennant.

  Winning this thing wouldn’t be easy. Those Browns, even without the help of the manager who had brought them so far, would surely be terrors in their yard—unless Von der Ahe suspended more of their stars. Fortunate enough to spend their last fourteen games at home, they would be sleeping each night in the comfort of their own beds and waking refreshed, while Mason’s Athletics would be on the move, eating bad food, racing to catch trains, breathing ash and getting singed by cinder through the open windows of the cars, grabbing rest in sleeper berths and strange hotel rooms, and playing every day before hostile fans.

  Sportswriter Al Spink remembered these Athletics as “a happy-go-lucky crowd, both owners and players,” who “did pretty much as they liked both on and off the field.” It might have seemed that way to someone used to Von der Ahe’s slightly more heavy-handed approach, but Mason applied discipline in his own way. A former professional player who was only slightly older than the boys, Mason forged a bond with them. He knew how to take care of problems, steady the young men’s nerves, and enforce a curfew, keeping them away from their habitual diversions of hard liquor and painted ladies. As one reporter noted, Mason “watched their movements as steadily as an old hen would watch her brood of chickens” and instructed the men to postpone their nocturnal “sightseeing” until November. “By this system every player retired bright and early, and all arose feeling refreshed and in perfect health.” With all the chips riding on these last several games, he didn’t need any exhausted, distracted, or hungover men on his hands.

  The team had enough problems. They were still in first place, having just beaten the Columbus Buckeyes 10–3 in their road opener on September 9. But Columbus was Columbus—one of the worst teams in the Association, an expansion franchise that depended on a mediocre pitcher from the local school for the deaf and mute, the crudely nicknamed “Dummy” Dundon, who had lost his hearing at the age of five after suffering typhoid fever. The teams that were next up, Cincinnati and St. Louis, were much tougher adversaries. And Philadelphia still had a serious problem with pitching. Bobby Mathews had become little more than a physical wreck, and George Bradley was just about played out as well. He had managed to beat Columbus, and would be a gritty competitor to the last, but his glory days as a top pitcher were long over. That left the new kid, “Jumping Jack” Jones, the Glee Club whistler and lady dentist’s son. Not even a week after his brilliant debut, unfortunately, there were already signs that the twenty-two-year-old was not going to be as strong as Lew Simmons had hoped. American Association batters were quickly adjusting to his ridiculous leap. What’s more, after a full season at Yale University, twelve games for Detroit, and now several for the Athletics, Jones seemed tired and edgy.

  That was another reason Mason had made this emergency trip. Sitting next to him in the swaying railroad car was Jones’s college catcher, Captain Allie Hubbard. Though Hubbard was not really a major-league-caliber player, Mason hoped the former classmate and buddy would steady the young pitcher, the way a friendly old horse in the stall might calm a skittish Kentucky thoroughbred. With Mason’s connivance, the Massachusetts-born catcher was traveling under the pseudonym of Benjamin West, hoping his foray into the degrading world of pro baseball could be kept a secret from his parents. They did not savor the idea of their Yale-educated son spending his September with hardened drunks and womanizers. But reporters quickly saw through the ruse and identified poor Hubbard.

  The pair arrived in Columbus in time for the Wednesday, September 12, game. “West” sat on the bench, getting a feel for the professional game and watching his college pal take the field without him. As expected, Jumping Jack “greatly amused the spectators by his peculiar movements.” But the joke had worn thin for his teammates, who could plainly see that enemy batters were starting to whack Jones hard. Columbus jumped out to a 5–3 lead, and seemed to be coasting toward victory, until the irrepressible Harry Stovey blasted a home run to tie the game in the eighth inning, helping to push it to extra innings. In the top of the tenth, Stovey came through again, slapping a single and dashing all the way home on a triple by Lon Knight. Columbus threatened again in the tenth, and though Jones shut the Buckeyes down to win, 7–5, it was clear he was no longer dominant.

  Behind Bradley, the Athletics swept the series with an 11–5 win the next day. Stovey was brilliant yet again, making a one-handed stab of a line shot that might have been good for a triple, saving at least two runs. But the Athletics knew their next Ohio foe would be much tougher. Although the Reds were out of the pennant race by now—seven games behind with nine to play—they had a splendid winning percentage of .618; a pitcher, in Will White, who was one of the best in the game; the most powerful offense in the Association; and a keen desire to play spoiler. Certainly, they were capable of quickly wiping out the three-game lead that the Athletics had smuggled through Columbus.

  Jumping Jack got the nod for the opener at Cincinnati’s Bank Street Grounds, and 2,200 people paid their way in to see the famous leaping twirler. For the first time, the Athletics teamed Jones with his college catcher, hoping Hubbard might coax a better performance out of him. “They are without doubt the strongest college battery ever turned out,” O. P. Caylor enthused. But would the college battery be a strong professional one? Not in Cincinnati, where the Yale pitcher seemed more like a sideshow freak than a serious competitor. Each time he went to his “peculiar delivery,” he won “cheers and laughter” from the Cincinnati crowd. “It was really amusing and was in exact imitation of a jumping jack,” Caylor reported. “He jumps fully two feet from the ground, throws his heels up as he jumps, and delivers the ball as he alights.” Reds first baseman John Reilly promptly sat down and sketched a hilarious caricature of Jones in motion, which was published a few days later in the paper.

  But Jones’s jumping utterly failed to deceive the strong Reds hitters. “Though the Cincinnati nine had never faced him before or saw him pitch,” Caylor observed, “they sized him up from the first and thumped him” for thirteen hits. The Athletics, by contrast, could manage only four scattered singles against the Reds’ incomparable hurler. “Will White is not a jumping jack,” Caylor remarked wryly, “but he manages to pi
tch a good, steady game standing still.” Cincinnati ended up slaughtering Philadelphia, 11–0. It was a “Waterloo” for the Athletics, a shockingly inept performance for a first-place club this late in the season, and a warning sign that Philadelphia might not make it to the finish line in first place, with the Browns close behind them.

  “Jumping Jack” Jones,

  by John Reilly, Cincinnati Commercial Gazette,

  September 19, 1883 (Library of Congress)

  Having lost faith in Jones and fearful of overworking the weak Bradley, Mason saw little choice in the second Cincinnati game but to start the Athletics’ crippled ace, Bobby Mathews. Taking advantage of a stiff September wind, the Reds proceeded to pound poor Bobby. This time, though, Will White was no better, finding that “his arm was as unruly as a colt” after his shutout performance three days earlier. The Athletics built a 10–4 lead before the weakening Mathews surrendered eight runs in the seventh inning. Philadelphia fought back to tie the game, 12–12, sending it into extra innings. In the bottom of the tenth, the ubiquitous Harry Stovey dug in at the plate. Earlier that afternoon, he had clubbed a double, and then his fourteenth home run—the most that had ever been hit in a single season of big-league baseball. (Ned Williamson beat Stovey’s record one year later; and a man named Babe Ruth later beat Williamson’s, with twenty-nine home runs in 1919.) This time, Stovey snuck an infield single past White, dashed to second on a wild pitch, and got to third on an out. When a pitch ticked off the hands of catcher Pop Snyder, Stovey daringly broke for home as the catcher frantically raced for the ball. Harry outsprinted Pop to the plate with the winning run.