The Kansas City Cowboys

by The Kansas City Cowboys (retail) (epub)

  Straightening in my seat, I stared into Dave Rowe’s cold eyes and told him, “Sitting on a bench from May to August is a grind, too.” I tried to mock his accent. “Wears on a fellow.”

  He stopped fooling with his mustache, and studied me the longest while. At length, he pushed himself to his feet, keeping, to my relief, one hand on my seat while his right hand gripped the back of the seat across the aisle. That meant he couldn’t draw that Smith & Wesson without risking losing his balance. The WSL&P’s engineer had to be making up for lost time, for our train rocked and rolled down the iron rails faster than Shorty Radford could steal second base.

  “I warrant it is, boy,” Rowe said. “Maybe we’ll see if we can’t rectify that a little once we reach St. Louis.”

  He nodded at me, a farewell or a goodnight, before he turned to make his way across the car and to the smoking car.

  My mouth dropped open.

  As soon as the door to our car closed, Charley Bassett sat up. He had been feigning sleep.

  “Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and Cap Anson,” he said. “Rowe must be on his way to Bedlam. You smell rye on his breath?”

  “No.”

  “Opium?”

  I shook the cobwebs out of my brain.

  “Rowe,” Charley said, “acted practically … human.”

  “Yeah.” It hit me then, what Dave Rowe had suggested. That I might actually get a chance to play baseball again when we took on the Maroons. I said as much to Charley.

  “Makes sense,” Charley said. “I mean, you beat St. Louis back in May. And not just with your hurling. You hit that ball plumb over the fence. Rowe’s only hit three long balls, and I haven’t hit a one.”

  My head nodded in befuddled acknowledgment. Maybe I would get to play baseball. Like Charley Bassett said, it made sense.

  * * * * *

  The Kansas City Cowboys rode into St. Louis on August 19th riding a seven-game losing streak. We had been on the road since July 22nd, and during that time we had been swept in a three-game series at Chicago and Philadelphia, losing by a combined fifty runs. That misery had been eased, though, when we won three from the Washington Senators—the one team in the National League that made us look great. Yet the New York Giants ended that winning streak with 14 to 4 and 5 to 4 victories, before we pulled out the last game of the series, 4 to 3. We lost in Boston, 4 to 1, came back to beat the Beaneaters, 6 to 5, and then proceeded to embark on our latest run of misfortune—or just bad baseball. Anyway, we arrived in St. Louis with a record of nineteen victories and fifty-nine losses.

  The Maroons hammered us, 10 to 2, on a vilely hot and humid Friday afternoon.

  “Don’t fret none, boys,” Fatty Briody said as we packed up our gear after the loss. “It’s a hard thing to win the first game on the road.”

  “Fatty,” Mox McQuery said, “we’ve been on the road for thirty days.”

  “That ain’t nothin’.” Briody’s sweat reeked like bacon and beer. “When I was playin’ team ball in Lansingburgh, we didn’t have no ball park to play at. Spent that whole summer movin’ from town to town. Schaghticoke. Clifton Park. Guilderland.” He snorted and spit tobacco juice between his shoes. “Dutchmen. Hell. Them Lutherans didn’t know nothin’ about baseball. Schenectady. Albany. Even as far away as Poughkeepsie and Londonderry Township.”

  “Shut your trap, Fatty,” Dave Rowe said. “Let’s get back to the hotel and find some whores. Remember, I do my drinking at Dunn’s grog shop on the river. And I do my whoring at Sue’s. Don’t let me see you bastards there.”

  So we left the Union Grounds, dodging the occasional beer bottle—empty, of course—hurled in our general direction, boarded an omnibus, and finally disembarked at the hotel. Although I did not partake in any horizontal refreshments, that did not help us in Saturday’s doubleheader.

  Not much had changed during the long, tortuous season. Playing at home or playing on the road, we lost games. I sat the bench. I might drink one beer with the boys when we did win, which proved rare, for I still remembered Mike King Kelly and that awful night in Chicago.

  I remembered Cindy McKim, too. I would find a letter waiting for me at every hotel during that miserable month of travel. The boys mocked me as a hen-pecked teen, but I didn’t mind. No one wrote them on the road, not their wives, not their concubines. Mother still resented Cindy, but when we were playing in Kansas City, I would find a way to meet her, sneaking off to find some apple cider or ice cream.

  St. Louis was the last leg of our long trip.

  We arrived home in Kansas City early Sunday morning, our most recent losses now numbering ten consecutive games. And despite Dave Rowe’s comment that night on the train, I had yet to leave the bench. It didn’t matter that much to me. We were home now, and I could not wait to see Cindy.

  * * * * *

  After that ten-hour train trip from St. Louis to Kansas City, I found myself excused from attending church, and, since Papa had no brick-laying jobs that afternoon, I had the afternoon and evening free. Telling my parents that some of the Cowboys had elected to practice anyway, I grabbed a bag of baseballs and my bat and made my way toward the Hole—but discretely changed directions.

  Cindy McKim waited for me at Barrett & Barrett’s. Since Mother had become prone to pass by on the off chance—actually, a really good chance—of finding me there with Cindy, we had been forced to find a new place for apple cider. The Barretts favored a style called “York State.” We actually liked Bayersdörfer’s better, but liked keeping company with each other, and not Mother, more.

  That Sunday afternoon changed the direction of our season, and my life. After leaving the Barrett place, we stopped by the window at Charles Pringle’s shop on Main Street. Mr. Pringle, who always sat behind our bench at the Hole, supplied Kansas City with “the Van Orden Shoulder & Skirt Supporting Corsets,” and something about that display in the window came over me.

  “What are you thinking?” Cindy asked.

  “That I want to kiss you.” Now, you’ve read enough of this account by now to know that I do not say such things, ever. Yet those words came right out of my mouth, and the next thing I knew Cindy was in my arms and I tasted the strawberries of her lips and breathed in the fragrance of summer all over her. It was a long kiss, and the only way we separated came from a genteel woman’s comment, as she passed by us with her husband.

  “I tell you, Bill, the police should run Pringle out of this town on a rail. I’m sick of seeing such licentious displays on Main Street!”

  “Yes’m, Martha,” Bill said, but as he hurried his wife past. He kept glancing back at Cindy and me … or maybe the unmentionables in the window.

  Cindy laughed, took my massive hand in her dainty one, and led us away from that impious store and into the much more refined Palace Drug Store, where we splurged on ice cream and soda. Things might have continued on a more pious path had we not met Fatty Briody when we stepped back onto Main.

  His breath reeked of rye, almost rendering me intoxicated. He wrapped those massive arms around our shoulders and nearly carried us downtown, saying, “You kids gotta see this. You just gotta see this. Ain’t never seen nothin’ like it before. You ain’t. I have. It’s absolutely fantastic. Saw it last night with Hofmann. Gotta see it to believe it.”

  Hofmann, a liquor wholesaler next to the Palace Restaurant on 12th Street, came to our games, and usually escorted Stump, Fatty, and Mox—our most serious drinkers and gamblers—to the Turf Exchange on Delaware Street, a pool hall and gambling den notorious for running the gambling concessions at the Hole, which our team officials, the National League brass, and our city police conveniently overlooked. Even Dave Rowe occasionally showed up at the Turf Exchange, forgetting his rule that players and the manager should not drink in the same establishment.

  When I saw the Turf Exchange and the crowd outside the door, I tried to pull away from Fatty but had as much c
hance as a prairie dog escaping a hawk’s talons. “Fatty …” I begged.

  “Hush, kid,” he said, and squeezed me tighter. “It ain’t what you think.”

  It wasn’t, and, most certainly, I found it more stimulating than any Van Orden Shoulder & Skirt Supporting Corset.

  * * * * *

  “First seen that done by a couple of Italian wenches,” Fatty said as he staggered out of the Turf Exchange two hours later. “Couldn’t been no more’n ten or twelve. Had to sneak in, which wasn’t hard to do.” He fell against the brick wall, and grinned. “Morlacchi and Baretta. That was their names. God, they was debauched. But tonight …”

  “… was wonderful,” Cindy cut him off.

  Have you ever seen the can-can? Done by a line of eight buxomly, leggy lasses? Hell, Cindy and I had not even sipped any of Fatty’s rye, and we were stunned by it all. I imagine Leopoldina Baretta and Giuseppina Morlacchi must have made that high-leg-kicking dance seem much more refined, more fitting for our Walnut Street Theatre & Coliseum, than watching a bunch of, well, soiled doves show their moves at the Turf Exchange.

  “I think I can do that,” Cindy said. Let me make it clear that she and I were sober. Lifting the hems of her skirt, she did it. Kick … laugh … kick … laugh, revealing the whiteness of her limbs and a glimpse here and there of bloomers—which the Exchange’s can-canners had not been wearing.

  I held my breath. Fatty laughed. And Cindy danced herself right into my arms. I wanted to kiss her, but did not—not in front of Fatty Briody.

  Fatty said, “Can you do that, Silver?”

  I tried.

  It wasn’t exactly the way the prostitutes had been doing it. Certainly not like Cindy McKim, and I don’t think either signoras, Morlacchi or Baretta, would have recognized it as the can-can.

  First I twisted on my left leg, then lightly sprinted to my right, back again, flip-flopping on my toes and bouncing more like a rubber ball than a dancer. Finally, I just stopped and swung my right arm hard, because, being a pitcher, that’s sort of what I did. I didn’t mean to punch Fatty Briody in the chest, but it happened, and he staggered away from the wall, laughing, and then, suddenly, he was lying on the boardwalk.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Criminy.”

  I lifted Fatty’s head. He blinked.

  Kneeling next to that kind, fat ballist, Cindy McKim asked, “Are you all right, Mister Briody?”

  People kept walking by, some from the Turf Exchange escorting the can-can dancers out for the evening. No one stopped, but most stared as they stepped around us or over Fatty’s spread-eagled legs.

  “Nobody calls me mister, honey,” Fatty said. He pushed himself up as a gambler in a bowler passed by, smirking.

  “Wipe that off your face, boy, or I’ll mop up this street with your face,” Fatty snapped as the man picked up his pace, disappearing into the darkness. Then, looking at me, he said, “You ought to pitch like that, kid.” He shook the cobwebs out of his head, laughing, before he continued, “Hell of a delivery. Damned near busted my ribs.”

  Knowing him to be a prankster, and feeling relief that I had not really hurt him, I lightly offered, “I have a bag of baseballs with me.”

  Which I did. I’d been carrying them with me all night. The bat, I had left underneath a rosebush two streets from home. Had I any brains, I would have left the bag of baseballs there as company for the bat, but as Dave Rowe constantly reminded anyone slinging ink for a newspaper or The Sporting News or playing baseball for the Cowboys or another National League team, “Pitchers are stupid.”

  Fatty sat up, then stood up, and said, “Fetch one, kid.”

  He stepped across the street, pacing the fifty feet and squatted in front of Hofmann’s office.

  By that time, everyone had departed the Turf Exchange, and the street and boardwalks had emptied except for the three of us.

  “How many balls you got?” Fatty asked. “And don’t tell me two.”

  I cringed. Fatty laughed. Feeling the heat on my face, I chanced a glance at Cindy. The yellow light from a street lamp shined down on her, revealing that wonderful face and a devilishly cute smile.

  “Three,” she answered, reaching into the bag and tossing me the first baseball.

  Feeling like a fool, but not wanting this evening with Cindy to end, I took the ball in my left hand and with my shoes drew makeshift pitcher’s lines in the street. I twisted on my left leg, bounced to my right, back and forth, and, recreating my version of the can-can, I finally slung the ball to the shady figure across the street. I lost sight of the ball in the darkness, but I heard almost immediately the solid slap of the catch, followed by Fatty’s curses. A window rose a block away, and a German accent shouted, “Halt die Klappe!”

  “Are you all right, Mister … Fatty?” Cindy asked.

  “Yeah. Give the kid another ball.”

  The next one produced another string of curses from Fatty, but no German response.

  “Last one, kid!” Fatty called out.

  Cindy underhanded the baseball to me, and once again I did my silly little dance and cut loose with the ball. There was no loud slap of flesh, no curses from Fatty, just what sounded like the splintering of wood. I could barely make out Fatty as he waddled to the far boardwalk. After exchanging glances with Cindy, we hurried across the street.

  “Lost the ball in the dark,” Fatty said.

  We found it … well, not quite. What we saw was the hole the baseball had left in the door to Hofmann’s office, and I don’t need to tell you that a door that led to a liquor wholesaler’s office in this part of town was the heaviest, sturdiest, toughest anyone would find in Kansas City.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Fatty yelled, and we followed him like proverbial schoolchildren who had just broken a window of a neighbor’s house while playing ball.

  A few blocks down the street, Fatty entered a dram shop, while Cindy and I boarded a Corrigan Company streetcar. I helped Cindy on, and she leaned her head against my shoulder and ran her fingers through my silver hair. The night, for August, had turned cool, but we felt warm. Hot. We kissed softly, then hungrily as we had the streetcar to ourselves, except for the thin cadaver of a driver, and he and his mules minded their own business.

  Which you, dear reader, should also be so inclined.

  * * * * *

  That Monday afternoon, we played the New York Giants in our first game at the Hole in better than a month. Fatty begged Dave Rowe to let me pitch, told him that I had this move that would confuse even the best ballists—which filled the Giants’ roster. New York came to Kansas City with fifty-eight wins, twenty-eight losses, and two ties.

  Rowe looked hungover. He spit, wiped his mouth, and said, “Show me, boy.”

  “Fatty …” I pleaded.

  “No,” he snapped. “You do it, kid. Show Skip. Just like you done last night.”

  Reluctantly, I did, and Fatty was prepared, sporting that monstrous glove Dan Dugdale had given him. The leather still popped, but Fatty didn’t curse. “That’s heat, Skip!” he beamed.

  Rolling his eyes, Dave Rowe turned toward Grasshopper Jim, only, at that point, Mr. Joseph Heim came up to us, followed by a small Negro boy who could not have been older than eight years.

  “Rowe,” Mr. Heim said, “meet Leviticus.”

  Dave Rowe glared at the boy, before turning to give our team president a murderous look.

  “He’s our mascot.” Mr. Heim stood straighter, as if he had just ended poverty and hunger.

  “Our what?” Rowe asked.

  “Mascot. Grin for Dave Rowe, Leviticus.”

  Puffing out his chest, the black kid grinned.

  Dave Rowe did not. His cold eyes flashed with hatred as he stared harder at Mr. Heim.

  “Don’t you see,” Mr. Heim said, “this nut-colored son-of-ham has a double row of teeth. Parent
s swear it’ll bring us luck.” He patted the boy’s back like he was tapping a keg of beer. “We could use some luck.”

  That caused Dave Rowe to start with “Jesus” and end with “Christ,” and in between include every bit of profanity Leviticus, no doubt, had ever heard. But the boy kept smiling. The poor child must have been deaf.

  “Hell,” Rowe said. “A darky mascot and a fool pitcher. All right. You’re starting, King, and you …” He spit tobacco juice between the boy’s bare feet, but apparently could not think of anything else to say, except a few more curses.

  I don’t know what sickened me more, Dave Rowe, Mr. Heim, the abuse of that little boy, or the fact that I would take to the field and pitch with a movement that would lead to hoots from everyone at this baseball game.

  We won the coin toss, and elected to be the home team, so I jogged out to the pitcher’s spot and, feeling nauseated, watched as third baseman Dude Esterbrook came up to bat.

  After Esterbrook called out, “Low!” I shunned the fancy footwork and fired a fast ball that the umpire called a ball.

  “You show a rank lack of judgment!” Mr. McKim shouted, which reminded me that Cindy would likely be in those stands, too. So would Mother, but Papa was working at the packing house. Mr. McKim directed that shout at the umpire, but Fatty Briody, my catcher, seemed to think he was yelling at me.

  He stepped out and threw the ball back to me. “Like you done the other night, kid,” he told me.

  When my next pitch missed inside, Fatty rose and threw the ball back to me so hard it almost broke my hand. “If you don’t pitch the way I tell you, bucko, I’m gonna mop up every bit of dirt on the field with your face. And if you ain’t noticed, we gots lots and lots of dirt here.”

  “Come on, Silver!” That was Cindy’s voice.