The frightfully narrow 13–12 victory halted an Athletics collapse, but it also laid bare the woeful state of Philadelphia’s pitching. Jones couldn’t get the job done. Mathews was a ruin. Bradley would have to do the best he could in the third and rubber game of the series, on Wednesday, September 19. As usual, he found himself treated to Cincinnati spectators’ frowns, boos, and catcalls—the price he paid for his fierce competitiveness, marked by his nasty habit of hitting batters. “Probably no man in the profession is so disliked here as he,” Caylor noted. “It does not follow, however, that he deserves it, for in many ways George is a good sort of fellow. He plays for his side with all his soul every time, and never ceases to work to win, all of which should go to any ball-player’s credit.”
He earned the spectators’ ill will that day, though, pounding two Cincinnati batters with pitches and trying his best to intimidate others. But he could not scare off the Reds, who feasted on his delivery for seventeen hits, including three triples and two home runs, to the joy of the assembled Bradley-bashers. “The grin which had adorned the face of ‘George Washington’ left him in the ninth, and was succeeded by a look most ghastly as the red-legged lads jumped onto him,” the Enquirer reported. “Oh! how he suffered,” Caylor exulted. “The crowd of sixteen hundred spectators greeted his terrific thumping with volume after volume of glorified yells and shouts.” Though Bradley himself hit a home run, Cincinnati humbled Philadelphia, 12–3. It marked the third straight time an Athletics starter had surrendered eleven or more runs, and the second loss in three games against a good club. The pennant that had seemed to be Philadelphia’s was rapidly unraveling. And now, in this pitiful condition, the Athletics had to climb aboard a train and make the 300-mile trip west to St. Louis, where they would face their most talented rivals.
CHRIS VON DER AHE AND THE BROWNS CAUGHT THE 10 P.M. TRAIN out of Philadelphia on Thursday night, September 6. After a “long and tedious journey” on the Ohio & Mississippi Railroad, they chugged into St. Louis on Saturday at 6 P.M. Giving the owner no chance to rest, reporter Dave Reid knocked at Von der Ahe’s door at the corner of St. Louis and Grand that evening. Once he was welcomed inside, he began peppering Der Boss President with questions. Despite the trip’s disastrous ending, Von der Ahe seemed to be in high spirits, speaking of the “pleasure it afforded him, of meeting old Eastern friends, in both social and business life.” He was terse about parting ways with Ted Sullivan, stating that he had fired the manager, thus denying Ted the dignity of his claim that he had quit. “At one of the games McGinnis started to pitch, and was hit hard. I told him to put in Mullane, who was playing in that game. He disregarded my orders and I released him.”
But Von der Ahe was more effusive about boisterous Philadelphia crowds—telling Reid with amusement about their habit of whistling the “Dead March” in the eighth inning, whichever team was trailing—then going into the details of the games. The 11–1 defeat at the hands of Jumping Jack Jones was “a fair and square routing,” he said, but it was the only real beating the Browns had suffered that week. The following day, the Browns lost by one run only because of uncharacteristically poor base running. “Just when the boys ought to have kept a cool head, they became over anxious,” Von der Ahe said. “We outplayed the Athletics at every point and the game should have been ours.” He attributed the final 4–3 defeat to wretched fortune and bad umpiring by Charlie Daniels. “We again outplayed them everywhere but they managed to work in their bull-headed luck and capture a game, which in every respect was rightfully ours. Daniels gave us the worst of it on close decisions.” So, in his view, the Browns had been anything but overmatched in Philadelphia, and remained in a great position to beat out the Athletics for the pennant. “I wouldn’t give our position for theirs. We have no more Cincinnati and Eclipse games, and they play both of these clubs away from home,” he said.
For all his reputed ignorance of the sport, there was something to his analysis. The Browns began their home stand against the cellar-dwelling Baltimore Orioles, whose most useful acquisition over the long season may have been new road uniforms. “The old and trampish-looking gray uniforms” that had been “a genuine eye sore” had been junked, said the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, and replaced by “white flannel suits, blue caps and penitentiary-striped stockings.” Thirteen thousand spectators filled Sportsman’s Park on Sunday, September 9, to welcome their beloved Browns home. Shortly after the Orioles appeared on the field, “a gong sounded and then the well-known forms of the six-week absentees were seen filing from the dressing-room,” according to the Missouri Republican. “A loud shout went up, which grew in volume, and was maintained until the men reached the diamond and broke for their positions. It was evident that the public were of the opinion that the lads were still in a good position for the championship.” During the Browns’ absence, Grounds Superintendent Solari had gotten the field into lovely shape and spruced up the grandstand, painting the top scrollwork blue, the middle of the stands white, and the wainscoting a dark red. It made “the grounds look brighter and prettier than they ever did before,” as the St. Louis Globe-Democrat put it. The one disappointment was Tom Mansell’s gashed leg, which had finally “straightened out” but was still stiff, forcing him to sit out more games. But the boys looked good without him, hammering Baltimore, 10–2, behind a five-hitter by Tony Mullane. Joe Quest, the club’s newest star, “was especially applauded for his quick pick-ups and throws and sharp stealing of bases.”
Von der Ahe’s men were even more impressive the next day. They won 15–4 and made no errors in the field, a noteworthy achievement in those days of bare hands, bumpy infields, and baseballs that became lopsided as the game went on. Right fielder Hugh Nicol, the favorite of the small boys in the bleachers, was at the peak of his game. In six trips to the plate, “he made five corking hits and as many runs. These latter were made by as daring and reckless base running as was ever witnessed,” said the Globe-Democrat. Twice the diminutive player dove face-first into home plate, touching it with his hand just ahead of the ball. The next day the Browns made it three straight against Baltimore with a 6–2 victory, to remain two and a half games behind the Athletics.
One more win would have made for a four-game sweep, slicing a game off Philadelphia’s lead. But Orioles rookie Bob Emslie stunned almost everyone by holding the Browns to only three hits in a 3–0 shutout, embarrassing the Browns’ batters before a large Thursday afternoon crowd, adorned by pretty women in lavish hats who had turned out for Ladies’ Day. “Why is it that the Browns can not play ball, even a little bit, on ‘ladies’ day’?” one letter writer to the Globe-Democrat asked in anguish. Back in Philadelphia, a crowd milling outside Mason’s new cigar store bellowed with joy when the news came over the telegraph wire. “About 100 persons shouted in unison: ‘That settles it!’” Not quite—but the Browns were now three games behind the Athletics with only nine left to play. “Nothing short of a miracle will save the pennant to the Mound City,” Dave Reid lamented. “There is a chance, but a slender one.”
Owner Chris Von der Ahe, to no one’s surprise, was livid over the defeat, and he complained bitterly to Captain Charlie Comiskey, according to the Philadelphia Item.
“See here, Sharley, I brodest [protest] dot game,” Von der Ahe fumed.
“On what ground?” Comiskey asked.
“Oh, vell, I brodest it. Dot umpire vas no goot. You go dell him, Sharley, dot I vas looking at him.”
Sportswriters in those days often made up such discussions, poking fun at the German magnate. But Von der Ahe’s actual response to the Thursday defeat was almost as outlandish as that apparently fictional one. On Friday night, after an off-day, Von der Ahe gathered his men for a meeting in his home. The session was mainly to discuss 1884 contracts, but he also informed them that he had been forced to perform “a very unpleasant duty”—that of expelling slugger Fred Lewis, the Browns’ only .300 hitter (besides the hobbled Mansell), leaving the club bereft of the veteran’s services du
ring the season’s last, desperate days. “Lewis was intoxicated yesterday and the night previous and behaved very badly,” Von der Ahe explained. “For his erratic conduct and drunkenness he received the full penalty of the rules—expulsion.” The owner was particularly miffed that a drunken Lewis, that very morning, had “called to me in a loud tone of voice and asked for his release, using some rude language in connection with the demand.” Though the New York Metropolitans were willing to buy his contract for $500, the enraged Von der Ahe preferred to swallow the loss and teach Lewis a lesson by expelling him. It was hard to imagine the Browns winning the pennant now, without Lewis’s big gun, but St. Louis sportswriters applauded the owner for sending a stern message to his good-for-nothing players. “Lewis was a fine fielder and a good batter, but the curse of drunkenness has brought him this disgrace and he has no one to blame but himself for his downfall,” the Globe-Democrat declared.
On the heels of their defeat by the Orioles, and bereft of their best hitter, the Browns suffered a “terrific thrashing” by the New York Metropolitans, losing 12–6 on “military day” at the park in the opener of the crucial three-game set. Instead of picking up ground on the floundering Athletics, St. Louis stalled at three games out, with only eight left to play. “It was a game that St. Louis could not afford to lose,” the Globe-Democrat keened. “The results realized were unlooked for and disastrous, leaving the St. Louis Club a most discouraging prospect for the championship, which can now only be attained by extraordinary playing and good luck.”
Still, on the following afternoon, a Sunday, some twelve thousand fanatics showed up, demonstrating that they harbored hopes for the Browns yet. The Mets took an unnervingly quick lead in the first inning on an RBI single by center fielder Chief Roseman. He had earned his nickname for his blood-curdling war whoops, but he was no Indian; the Chief was a New Yorker through and through, with the accent and brashness to prove it. As Roseman danced off first base, Browns hurler George McGinnis spun around to watch him. “How’s that for a balk, Chawley?” Roseman shouted at umpire Charlie Daniels, in a voice that could be heard in the stands. From then on, the crowd seemed part of the game. Roseman endured its jeers for a while, then burst for second base in an attempted steal. As Chief went into his slide, second baseman Joe Quest caught the throw and slapped on the tag. Umpire Daniels bellowed “out at second!” and beckoned Roseman to return to the bench. St. Louis fanatics “vented their delight in a thundering cheer.”
Later in the game, Mets second baseman Sam Crane took first, while his teammate Dude Esterbrook, coaching the runners, hoarsely yelled at him to “Go on! Go on!”—perhaps to rattle pitcher George McGinnis as much as anything. When Crane did take off, Comiskey caught a foul ball and whipped it to McGinnis covering first for a double play, prompting the crowd to mockingly chant, “Go on! Go on!” It was not a great day for Crane on the base paths. The game’s most striking play unfolded in the seventh inning, when he lashed a ball into center field, where Tony Mullane picked it up with his left hand. As Crane tore for second base, the ambidextrous Mullane realized he did not have time to shift the ball, so he “tried a left-handed throw,” according to the Globe-Democrat. “The ball went straight to Quest, Crane was caught, and the crowd cheered loudly and at length.” The cheering rarely let up all afternoon, and St. Louis won handily, 7–1.
One game remained against the Metropolitans and their magnificent pitcher Tim Keefe. Owner Von der Ahe, having expelled Fred Lewis for life four days earlier, now decided, after only two games without him, that Fred deserved another chance. Since Von der Ahe had not yet telegraphed notice of the player’s expulsion to Association headquarters, Lewis was still technically a member of the Browns. The owner’s rage had passed, and it had been replaced by an equally characteristic impulse of forgiveness. He reinstated his slugger.
Four thousand fans flowed in that Tuesday, September 18, “and from first to last all were kept on the tip-toe of expectations,” as the Missouri Republican put it. In a tense, see-saw match, St. Louis held a 3–2 lead going into the ninth inning. The first Mets batter that inning, Chief Roseman, cracked a ball deep to center field that “should have gone to the bulletin board.” It didn’t, for one reason: Von der Ahe had rescinded the expulsion of Fred Lewis. Running hard, Lewis flung his hand up and grabbed the ball, making “one of the best catches of the year.” The out was critical, because the next batter, Dude Esterbrook, drove a ball all the way to the left-field fence for a double, which doubtless would have scored Roseman with the tying run. In sliding into second, the Dude injured himself, forcing rookie Dave Orr to take his place. Orr quickly captured third when Browns catcher Pat Deasley dropped a pitch.
The tying run now stood ninety feet away, with one man out. Mets manager Jim Mutrie, desperate to get the runner home, ordered batter Bill Holbert to try a kind of suicide squeeze. Orr was instructed to take a big lead off of third, then break for home the moment Holbert tapped the ball. Pitcher Tony Mullane, though, picked up on what was happening and threw hard fastballs. Holbert swung at one pitch, then a second. When he missed a third, striking out, catcher Deasley fired the ball to third baseman Arlie Latham, who tagged the rookie Orr and “scooted away over the field towards the dressing room,” the Globe-Democrat noted. For a moment the crowd reacted with stunned silence. Then it sank in: the Browns had pulled off a crisp game-ending double play. “When the truth did dawn upon them there was a great shouting,” and for good reason—instead of being knocked out of the pennant race, St. Louis had shaved a game off the Athletics’ lead. And the upcoming contests of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday against the reeling, pitching-starved Athletics—games the Browns could, and perhaps should, win—could decide the pennant.
With two victories over the excellent Mets, the mood in St. Louis changed perceptibly. “Something like a ray of hope” was “creeping through the darkness and it has spread into something like a sunbeam,” Dave Reid wrote in the Missouri Republican. In their conversations in the saloons and clubs of St. Louis, men noted that the momentum of the pennant race had shifted. “The excitement last night was up to fever heat and there was an increased feeling of confidence in the nine,” wrote Reid. With a sweep, the Browns would leap into first place. “This week will be a great one in baseball history,” he promised. Von der Ahe seemed nervous but hopeful, observing, to the Globe-Democrat, “Thank God there is no ladies’ day this week.”
ON THE MORNING OF SEPTEMBER 21, AS THE TIRED ATHLETICS ROSE at St. Louis’s Laclede Hotel and prepared for that afternoon’s battle, the American Association standings showed that the Browns still had a chance:
This final showdown between the clubs would be a “tug of war,” the Missouri Republican promised, “and d—d be the club that cries ‘Crushed! Enuf!’” It began with a magnificent Friday afternoon turnout of eleven thousand fans. Sitting in Von der Ahe’s private box was Missouri Governor Thomas T. Crittenden, who had caught a special train the previous afternoon from the capital in Jefferson City. He joked that, “as an added inducement to the St. Louis nine,” he planned to award patronage jobs as police commissioners in the capital to whichever two Browns players performed best in the series.
The governor, a fleshy, thin-nosed man with a thick mustache, was obviously in high spirits, still glowing from his recent victory over a reign of terror in the state. He had vanquished the notorious and vicious James Gang, former Confederate guerrillas and now train robbers who had generated headlines across America that painted Missouri as an outlaw place, dangerous for business or travel. By offering a $50,000 reward, Crittenden had coaxed two members of the gang, Robert and Charlie Ford, to visit Jesse James at his home in St. Joseph, Missouri, where Bob Ford shot Jesse James through the back of his head. In time, a court convicted Robert Ford of cold-blooded murder, only to have the governor issue a pardon two hours after the verdict, then send Ford $10,000, his share of the reward. The governor’s critics—and there were surely many at Sportsman’s Park—believed that the chief ex
ecutive had behaved like a wanton criminal himself. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch called Crittenden’s hiring “of two scoundrels to cowardly assassinate” Jesse James, instead of according him due process by apprehending him and putting him on trial, “a shame and disgrace to the State of Missouri.” As a Union veteran long steeped in Missouri’s bitter and grisly internecine feuds, Crittenden didn’t care. He had broken the back of the gang and rescued the state’s reputation.
The afternoon was a glorious one, “the sky blue and clear, and the cool breeze well tempered by the warm September sun,” the Philadelphia Press reported. Because the stands were full, latecomers went onto the lush grass to watch from the deep outfield, necessitating an agreement that balls hit into the crowd would be ground-rule doubles. The parking lot outside the ballpark was full, “and those along Grand Avenue were soon overflowing, so that the thoroughfare was lined on either side with carriages, buggies, drays, huckster and express wagons and every species of vehicle,” said the Missouri Republican. At 3:13 P.M., the captains of the two teams strolled out for the coin flip by umpire Charlie Daniels. Charlie Comiskey won. He elected to take the field, sending the Athletics to the bat. The Athletics had to face Browns pitcher Tony Mullane, whose motion was “clearly illegal,” in their view, his arm regularly rising above his shoulder, giving extra power to his sinking fastball. “An umpire ought to be able to see it,” the Philadelphia Item groused. “Somehow or other they have, so far, with the exception of Kelly, closed their eyes to it.” The atmosphere was tense and tingly, promising a tight, well-played game by these talented rivals.
The Summer of Beer and Whiskey Page 23
