The Summer of Beer and Whiskey

by Edward Achorn

  It didn’t work out that way. The Athletics jumped quickly to a 1–0 lead. Then, still in the first inning, it was time for one of the craziest plays anyone in the park had ever seen. With runners on first and second, Athletics catcher Jack O’Brien hit a sharp grounder to shortstop Bill Gleason, who shuffled the ball to Quest for the start of a double play. But Quest dropped it, and the Athletics’ Lon Knight, rounding third, boldly dashed for home. Quest quickly picked up the ball and fired a strike to catcher Pat Deasley in plenty of time. Meanwhile, Mike Moynahan bolted for third while the throw was coming home. Deasley, seeing this out of the corner of his eye, hastily tagged out Knight and flung the ball to third. It tipped off the fingers of Browns third baseman Arlie Latham, and Moynahan tore for home. Gleason, backing up Latham, relayed the ball to Quest, who fired it to Deasley, who tagged out Moynahan—the second runner put out at home plate on the same play, with the second assist by Quest. The utterly bizarre top half of the first inning was over, and the Athletics had been held to a single run.

  Mason had promised the press that Jumping Jack Jones would start, and the crowd was surprised when little Bobby Mathews took the pitcher’s box instead. The stiff and aching veteran, who had surrendered twelve runs in his last start, had little to offer but savvy and guts, but at this point, that was enough. Though the Browns got on base inning after inning, Bobby held on as the Athletics built up a 6–0 lead by the fourth, threatening to put the game, and the pennant, beyond St. Louis’s reach. Mathews’s luck finally ran out in the fourth, as the Browns hammered him for three runs. Even worse, while racing for a foul ball, Harry Stovey slipped on the turf and sprained his ankle badly. In great pain, he staggered to his feet and, with the help of his teammates, limped off the field, and out of the game, dealing a potentially devastating blow to their hopes of taking the pennant. At the climactic moment of the long season, Philadelphia’s best hitter and runner—the soul of the team, and the difference in many victories—was suddenly shelved. Mathews had to wonder: What else could go wrong?

  Yet Philadelphia kept on scoring, with three more runs in the fifth. For the second time that afternoon, an overanxious Arlie Latham cut in front of shortstop Bill Gleason to field a grounder, only to boot it, “to his own disgust and the displeasure of the spectators, who roundly hissed the performance.” The Browns responded with their own three-run inning, capped by a memorable bomb. The restored Fred Lewis took a mighty swat at a Mathews pitch and sent the ball soaring high over the right-field fence, to the cheers of the thrilled crowd, including Governor Crittenden and the assembled politicians. “The home-run made by Lewis was very greatly admired by his Excellency, and it is commonly believed that if Lewis were a citizen of St. Louis he could have a seat in the Police Board without seeking the position.” The clout pulled St. Louis to within three runs of the Athletics. It was 9–6, and the Philadelphia men could see their lead melting away.

  The Browns kept bearing down on Mathews, who was weary and in pain. In the seventh, pitching carefully this time around the explosive Lewis, Bobby surrendered a walk. Lewis stole second and scooted to third when a pitch got away from Mathews and flew past the catcher. Then Joe Quest, not normally a threat, blasted a weak pitch to left center for a triple, scoring Lewis, as the crowd cheered wildly. But was it really a triple? Mathews immediately protested that Quest should have been held to a ground-rule double. A long wrangle followed as the members of both clubs crowded the umpire, all trying to talk at once. Finally, Daniels ruled that the ground rule did not apply, since the ball had not disappeared into the crowd. It was an important point, because one of Mathews’s next pitches got past the catcher, sending Quest scurrying home. The Athletics’ lead was down to 9–8.

  Mathews was plainly exhausted, and the Browns continued to torture him in the seventh. They had a runner on third with two out when Tony Mullane sent a routine fly ball to left field. In horror, Mathews saw the ball pop out of Jud Birchall’s hands; the left fielder anxiously juggled it before finally securing possession, for the third out. The Browns were that close to tying the game. But three outs were three outs, and Mathews strode off the field.

  The Athletics built the lead back up to 13–8 with four runs in the eighth, when it was the Browns’ turn to suffer a serious loss: catcher Pat Deasley, diving bravely to stop a wild pitch, split the skin of his middle finger wide open and had to leave the game. (A week later, it had come out of splints, but was “still a pretty bad looking object.”) With a five-run lead, the Athletics might have ended the game with ease, had they had a fresh reliever to install in the pitcher’s box. But they did not, and Bobby Mathews kept on struggling, long after it was obvious he had nothing more to give. The Browns scored three runs, narrowing the edge to 13–11. Browns pitcher Tony Mullane got through the ninth without surrendering another run, giving St. Louis a chance, though it was down to its last three outs.

  The delirious crowd sensed that Mathews was ripe to be beaten. “Excitement was at its highest pitch. The crowd was howling and hooting,” the New York Clipper reported. At that moment of fury and passion, as if on cue, darkness descended on the ballpark and the wind whipped up, “creating a panicky feeling among some of the spectators,” the Globe-Democrat said. A sudden and furious breeze scooped up dust from the surrounding streets and swirled it, tornado-like, across the field. “A regular hurricane had possession of the park, and clouds of dust at times hid the players from sight,” the Clipper recounted.

  In the roaring wind, the Athletics players, desperate to escape with a victory before Mathews completely fell apart, surrounded umpire Charlie Daniels and shouted at him to call the game, for the safety of everyone. Daniels seemed inclined to do so, heading back to the bench “as if to get his coat and leave the grounds,” when Chris Von der Ahe jumped up from the Browns’ bench and ordered the umpire to get back to work. Charlie Mason, leaping from the Athletics’ bench, also rushed over to the umpire, “and a regular controversy took place, the managers gesticulating, the players and the crowd yelling with all their might: ‘Go on!’ ‘Play ball!’” according to the Clipper. Mason declared that he would let his men continue in a choking dust storm only under formal protest. Von der Ahe shouted back that he did not care, as long as the Athletics played.

  And so the game went on in the strange Midwestern wind and darkness.

  George Strief was up next. After the exhausted Mathews snuck two strikes past him, Strief blasted the ball to deep right field. Lon Knight dashed for the wind-whipped sphere, but a squall threw dust in his eyes while flinging the ball right into his face. He dropped it, letting Strief take second. Mullane next hit a high fly into the swirling wind, but Mike Moynahan froze to the ball and made the difficult catch. Bill Gleason followed with a tremendous lunge, driving the ball to deep center field. It looked good for a game-tying home run, and the crowd roared. But a powerful gust “blew the ball far back enough to allow Bradley to score a magnificent catch,” the Clipper said—though he was “so far out and the dust was so great that Daniels at first was not able to tell whether a catch or a muff had been made.” In fact, the Browns were certain it was a muff. Gleason initially refused to leave first base (Strief held second), insisting that Bradley had dropped the ball. But Daniels ordered him back to the Browns’ bench, ruling that the catch had been made.

  Charlie Comiskey was now the last hope for St. Louis. He sent a sharp grounder down the line that Jack O’Brien, substituting for Harry Stovey, grabbed. O’Brien hopped on first base for out number three “with the air of a person of wonderful achievements,” as the Globe-Democrat put it. Mathews and his Athletics, their sweat-soaked faces and uniforms powdered with red Missouri dust, had salvaged an exhausting 13–11 victory in a freak storm. “The Goddess of Good Fortune” had “smiled upon the boys from Philadelphia,” reported the Philadelphia Press. St. Louis now trailed by three and a half games, with only five left to play.

  A lesser team would have given up. Yet the Browns, who believed it was their destiny to w
in the Association pennant, refused to surrender. On Saturday, September 22, an even larger crowd came to see the hometown team seek its revenge against Jumping Jack Jones for his two victories over St. Louis in Philadelphia. Having been hammered in recent starts, Jones was beginning to wonder if his famous leap was even worth trying anymore. All it seemed to accomplish was to tip off batters that a fastball was probably coming. And so he retired it. “Everybody expected to see a mirth-provoking delivery, but saw only a very plain one,” the Globe-Democrat noted with disappointment. But plainness proved to be no advantage. After Jones let up six runs in the first three innings, St. Louis walked away with a 9–6 victory, evening the series at one victory apiece. “The Athletics missed Mathews, whose generalship had done so much towards winning the game on the previous day,” the Clipper contended. “Stovey played, but was not able to do himself justice, and in covering the circuit he rather limped than ran.” The miserable Stovey, up at the plate with two outs in the ninth, watched three strikes pass him without even bothering to swing. While “a jubilant crowd filled the field,” he sullenly limped away to a waiting horse-drawn bus that would take the beaten and battered Athletics back to the Laclede Hotel. Charlie Mason and co-owner Billy Sharsig, finding more than Jones’s exhaustion and Stovey’s injury to blame, sent a bitter telegram home to the Philadelphia Item: “We were completely robbed out of the game to-day by the umpire.” After the first game, Von der Ahe had filed a formal complaint about the same man, Charles Daniels. By Saturday night, Daniels was ready to resign and had to be talked out of it.

  What would the Athletics do now? Jones had lost again and was looking weaker than ever. The Item ran a cartoon of Athletics co-owner Lew Simmons, with clenched teeth and an agonized expression, holding the frayed end of a piece of string. “Great Caesar, the string of that ‘Jumping Jack’ broken again!” he says. “I’ll get an iron chain next time.” With one more victory, the Browns would be back in the race. There was nothing to do but pray, and play on.

  PERHAPS THE BIGGEST BASEBALL CROWD ST. LOUIS HAD EVER seen, “a moving, surging dark mass,” the Globe-Democrat said, appeared at Sportsman’s Park on the following afternoon for the season’s final game between the pennant rivals. At 1 P.M., two hours before the game was to begin, “the enthusiasts began arriving, great crowds pouring out of street cars, carriages, omnibuses and express wagons, rigged up for the occasion.” Virtually anything with wheels was being used to transport mobs of baseball fanatics. “Fashionable circles were also represented,” the Philadelphia Press noted, with hundreds of expensive carriages “intermingling with the commoner vehicles” along the streets surrounding Sportsman’s Park. “It reminds me of Derby day; upon my soul it does,” said an Englishman who watched the crowd arrive. As late as 4 P.M., when the game was an hour old and already into the sixth inning, “the great human stream kept steadily pouring in.” When fans were told the game was well under way, they didn’t care. “They were not to be disappointed of at least a glimpse of the big game of the season, and they willingly paid the admission price, taking their chance of securing standing room, for seats were held at a premium, every available one having long since been taken and clung to as tenaciously as though glued to the occupant,” reported the Globe-Democrat.

  Along the outfield fences, “thousands were huddled and squeezed in all sorts of positions—some sitting, some lying at full length, while others in the rear stood on tip toe, straining every nerve to catch a glimpse of some applauded play.” Among the forty police officers on the grounds were five mounted on horses. They were working feverishly to force back fanatics who would have otherwise swamped the outfielders. Even so, players were obliged to leap into the crowd for long fly balls that day. Those seated in the grandstand, surrounded by standing spectators, found the situation little better, many claiming they saw nothing of the game except when the ball was knocked high in the air. A number of fans clambered up on the roofs of the press box and upper deck, “which groaned beneath the unwonted pressure and threatened a calamity at any moment,” the Philadelphia Press noted with alarm. Earlier that season, many people remembered, the upper deck had swayed and almost collapsed, prompting Von der Ahe to have it reinforced. Now, as people climbed on the roof, “many were the anxious glances cast by the ladies and their nervous escorts at the scaffolding and supports of the structure on which they sat.” (It was a reasonable fear. The following spring, when the Cincinnati Reds opened their new ballpark, a portion of the stands did collapse, injuring dozens of people.) The scene outside the park was much the same. “On the tops of the roofs, hanging on the edging and cornices, seated on chimneys of adjacent houses, on the porches, fences, in fact every where from which a view could possibly be obtained could be seen a tired but interested looker-on, who, although unable to use his hands in applause of some good play, satisfied himself with a hoarse, dusty Comanche yell.” The cheering and clapping of the massive crowd “sounded like the rumblings of an approaching thunder-storm.”

  All told, some 16,800 paid their way in, not counting those with season tickets. Von der Ahe had never seen anything like it. The coins collected and flung into a strongbox weighed so much that the strongest member of the Browns could not lift them; the dollar bills filled a large clothes-basket. When all three box offices at the park were overwhelmed, Von der Ahe put bundles of tickets in the hands of park attendants and sent them out into the streets to hawk them as fast as they could. “That it was a red-letter day in the base ball history of St. Louis is acknowledged, and that it will for a long time be spoken of as ‘the big day’ can not be doubted,” the Globe-Democrat said. “The gathering was beyond a doubt the largest ever seen at a professional game of ball, played on any enclosed ground in America,” Dave Reid added. That was not strictly true, but no one could doubt anymore whether baseball would survive; the game that had almost died several years earlier was booming as never before under the mercurial leadership of Chris Von der Ahe.

  Harry Stovey, showing extraordinary grit, was back in the lineup, seemingly a mixed blessing for the Athletics. He was so lame he could barely hobble, and the Browns had denied him permission to use a pinch runner. Many Browns fans were delighted to see Grin Bradley, considered an easy man to beat, take the pitcher’s box for the Athletics. Though Bobby Mathews had been pounded for twenty-three runs in his last two starts, he had also cagily won both games, showing that penchant for victory that made him the Athletics’ most dangerous pitcher. It was up to Bradley, who had surrendered twelve runs and seventeen hits in his previous start, to somehow find a way to win, too. He decided his best approach was to establish his dominance early, in the usual manner. He hit leadoff batter Bill Gleason on the left arm, “causing him to drop his bat and walk around for awhile.” That sort of pain would give these batters something to think about. Bradley won that initial battle, coaxing Gleason to ground out, and his Browns teammates quietly followed him.

  The Athletics, on the other hand, were determined to make some noise, even though they were facing the redoubtable Tony Mullane, who would post thirty-five victories, with a league-leading .700 winning percentage and (applying a modern statistic unknown to him) a sparkling 2.19 earned run average, second best in the Association. Jud Birchall, leading off, “caused the small boys to cheer” when he lunged at a Mullane pitch for strike one. But he silenced them with a single down the line in right, which Comiskey protested was foul. Harry Stovey followed with a blast into the crowd for a ground-rule double, and Birchall scored on a sharp grounder to third. When Mullane uncorked a wild pitch, Stovey followed him home, limping in pain all the way. The Athletics led, 2–0, widened to 5–0 in the fifth, with the help of a run-scoring single by the unstoppable Harry Stovey, who scored himself. And Stovey still wasn’t through. In the seventh, he hit his second ground-rule double of the day, then came around on two wild pitches to give his team a 6–0 lead, expanded to 7–0 the next inning. The Browns were in deep trouble, and Bradley was somehow finding a way to retire them, one
man after another. The Athletics took a 9–1 lead into the ninth inning.

  By that time, many angry, heartbroken Browns fans, especially hundreds who had stood all afternoon on the field, were pushing against those in front of them, and surging into the playing field, eager to get out and go home. Anxious to keep the diamond clear until the ball game was over, mounted police rode around the enclosure, swinging their batons and ordering the crowd to get off the field. The Athletics refused to play the ninth until the fans were pushed back.

  After the crowd got shoved back, and slugger Fred Lewis walked to the plate, applause rippled through the park, then grew louder, in remembrance of Lewis’s titanic shot two days earlier. “Fred smiled and looked as if he really was going to do something,” the Globe-Democrat said. His appearance proved to be “exasperatingly deceptive,” though, because Bradley coaxed him to ground out weakly to second base. Hugh Nicol—who, with a flare-up of malaria, was woozy and exhausted, and getting by only through “pure pluck”—followed with a grounder straight back to the pitcher, for out number two. The crowd got ready to break onto the field and head for the nearest exits.

  But the scrappy Joe Quest refused to go down quietly. He plunked a pitch to center field, then raced to second on a passed ball. Bradley stared in at Arlie Latham, hoping to end the game then and there, before his arm got any weaker. But Latham smashed a sharp grounder down the third-base line that instantly looked good for extra bases. To everyone’s surprise, Athletics third baseman Fred Corey made a “magnificent” diving stop. “Then, standing erect and taking good aim, he threw dead on the line to Stovey.” It was over.