The Kansas City Cowboys

by The Kansas City Cowboys (retail

  Pebbly Jack Glasscock didn’t bother to request a high or low pitch. Instead, he said, “I can hit anything you can throw me, boy.”

  He didn’t.

  I walked him on seven consecutive pitches.

  But I struck out Emmett Seery, and then Alex McKinnon dribbled my fifth pitch. The ball went past me, but second baseman Al Myers scooped it up, touched the bag with his right foot, and, leaping over a sliding, cursing Pebbly Jack Glasscock, fired the ball to Mox McQuery at first base. McQuery caught the ball a good two steps ahead of McKinnon, and the Kansas City Cowboys had won their first National League ball game.

  My teammates were all professionals, veterans for the most part, but they acted as if we had just won the championship, or beaten the American Association’s St. Louis Browns and not the National League’s lowly Maroons. Screaming, tossing gloves and caps into the air, they raced toward me—me!—and carted me off the field on their shoulders. After depositing me by the bench, they ripped off my cap, and sauced my curly hair with St. Louis beer, which several players had sneaked into the stadium.

  “Welcome to the National League, kid,” McKinnon said.

  They pushed Pete Conway off the bench, pounded my back, and someone thrust a bottle of beer into my right hand.

  “You got the makin’s, boy,” Fatty Briody said.

  “We need to celebrate,” Al Myers said.

  “At Dixie Lee’s in the West Bottoms,” Mox McQuery said.

  Dave Rowe cut our celebration short by firing a pistol shot that shattered one of the beer bottles along the first-base line.

  “First,” he said, “maybe we ought to think about carting Grasshopper Jim off to a doctor.”

  Chapter Two

  “You were born to play baseball,” Mother frequently told me. “It was meant to be.”

  You see, I was born on May 4, 1869, the day the Cincinnati Red Stockings, the world’s first professional baseball squad, defeated Cincinnati’s Great Westerns, 45 to 9.

  No spinning tops or lead soldiers or a—sigh—pony for me. I grew up with a baseball in my hand, and likely gummed the end of a bat while teething.

  For the record, my parents met in 1867, married the following year, after which they departed western Missouri for St. Louis, where I was born. When I turned eight, we headed back across Missouri, back to Kansas City, where Papa went back to work for the Armour Packing Company, one of our city’s seven packing houses, when he was not laying bricks. To be closer to Mother’s folks. They didn’t slaughter beef at Armour or work as brick masons—Mother’s folks, that is—but lived in nearby Independence.

  My parents never truly explained why they left Kansas City in the first place, although my gut tells me that such a move was ordained once the Antelopes baseball club folded. St. Louis had provided Papa with a job and plenty of baseball. In 1875, professional baseball arrived in St. Louis. My father sold lemonade at Brown Stockings’ games when he wasn’t butchering beef, pigs, and sheep at Fischer & Kronenburger, or slapping mortar on bricks. Indeed, I might have come of age rooting for the Brown Stockings, but in 1877, authorities linked the Brown Stockings to a gambling scandal. Players on St. Louis’ first professional baseball team, and one other from Louisville, Kentucky, were charged with fixing games, and both the Brown Stockings and the Grays went out of business. Of course, St. Louis had a lousy team and record in 1877, which might have had more to do with the team’s bankruptcy and expulsion from the National League than gambling. Anyway, we moved back to Kansas City, where there wasn’t a professional club, but one could find a lot of baseball.

  Did I mention that the Armour Packing Company had its own baseball team? Fischer & Kronenburger never fielded even a muffin squad.

  Papa wasn’t good enough to make the Armour’s first nine, but he occasionally landed on the muffin squad, usually in right field, and Mother always cheered him on. Once, he even tried to coach me about how to swing a bat. I happened to be holding the bat at the time and swung it as he instructed me to do. The meat of the bat landed in his ribs. After that, Papa left the coaching to Mother.

  For a lady who hadn’t attended a ball game until she turned nineteen, you see, Mother developed a keen grasp of the game, and kept up with the ever-changing rules. She could quote Henry Chadwick verbatim.

  As an infant and toddler in St. Louis, I have been told, I would sit on her lap as we watched amateur teams play. By the time the Brown Stockings were formed, I’d sit beside her while Papa sold lemonade. Once we had returned to Kansas City, I’d still sit beside her, or take part in games with other children.

  As we watched Papa’s team play (and usually lose) against teams fielded by firemen, or constables, or saloon keepers, or other muffins, she would tell me about strategy and position and how to play the game. I always paid attention. Especially when she would say, “You were born to play baseball, Silver.”

  Born to play baseball? I don’t know about that. I liked the game well enough, loved spending time tossing the ball with Mother, or hitting with Papa, yet, at that time, I didn’t want to be a baseball player. I wanted to be a cowboy.

  Now, Kansas City never became wild and woolly like those true cattle towns to our west such as Dodge City, Abilene, Caldwell, Wichita, or Ellsworth, but it had certain elements. The stockyards, rail yards, and packing houses brought in cowboys and cattlemen, not to mention butchers, skinners, horse traders, muleskinners, and hog merchants. Lewd women, too.

  When you couldn’t find me practicing baseball with Mother, or with my nose stuck in a McGuffey’s Eclectic Reader at the subscription school, or helping Papa lay bricks, everyone knew I’d be around the Armour Packing Company—and not just waiting for Papa’s shift to end. For me, I couldn’t think of a better area of town that I’d rather visit than the packing houses.

  More than one hundred thousand people lived in Kansas City, but the city brought in more than five times as many cattle each year—and roughly two million hogs. I didn’t care about pigs and, truthfully, didn’t hold much interest in beef.

  But how I loved watching cowboys herd the doomed cattle, voices sounding musical though hardly human as they chided the beeves, popping them with the ends of hemp ropes or slapping their dusty chaps with even dustier hats. Granted, they usually worked afoot, but every now and then you’d find a man horseback.

  One of those men was Daniel E. Dugdale.

  I was fifteen years old in the autumn of 1884 when Dan entered my life. He stood better than six-foot-two in high-heeled boots that were adorned with spurs whose jinglebobs chimed when he walked. Long arms, broad shoulders, a Roman nose and a sun-bronzed face, a well-groomed mustache and sandy hair upon which rested a Boss of the Plains that appeared to have been trampled by a thousand buffalo. A striped pillow-ticking shirt, crimson britches, and a tan vest with a pocket stuffed with a Bull Durham sack and the makings, he had cowboy written over every part of his body.

  He saw me staring at him as the last longhorn disappeared, then eased his dun gelding over toward the fence where I sat. Swinging one leg over the saddle horn, he fished out tobacco, rolled a smoke, stuck it between pencil-thin lips, and struck a Lucifer on his thumb.

  “You a real cowboy?” I asked.

  Smoke blew out of his nostrils as he looked down. He fingered the cigarette, flicked ash, and said, “You think a real cowhand would be working at a packing house?”

  I ignored the question.

  “Could you teach me how to rope?”

  His laugh held no mirth. “You’re a forward one, ain’t you?”

  “I just want to learn how to rope.”

  “That’s some hair you got, boy.”

  I flushed. Even when you’ve sported a mane of white hair since practically your birth, you never quite get used to folks commenting on it. My hair wasn’t blonde. It was white. Gleaming white. Mother and Papa had named me Charles, but I’d never been called that
as long as I can remember.

  “My name’s Silver,” I told him.

  “I see why.”

  After pushing back his hat, he studied me a bit more carefully, and his face changed from irritation to interest. “That’s a baseball you’re holding, ain’t it?”

  Glancing at the ball I had carried with me, I nodded. “My father works for Armour,” I said. “We play toss when I meet him before we walk back to our house.”

  Sort of.

  “What time does your pa quit work?”

  “Eight o’clock.”

  He snorted, and took another long drag on the cigarette, looking up at the sky. “I’d say it’s … oh, three o’clock or thereabouts. You planning on waiting here five more hours?”

  I shrugged.

  “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

  “It’s Saturday.”

  “I see.”

  “How about teaching me how to rope?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he asked, “What was the name of that professional baseball team that played here this past season?”

  “The Kaycees.” Now it became my turn to look at him with a certain amount of curiosity. I was relieved when the conversation had moved away from my silver hair. “Some people called them the Unions,” I explained. “The newspaper often called them the Onions.” I laughed at that, and the cowboy snorted again, grinning this time.

  “Played in the Union Association, didn’t they?”

  I tried to mimic his snort. “Not very well.”

  Still smiling, he drew on the smoke again.

  Kaycees, Unions, Onions, or “lousy muffins” or “consistent losers,” they had been Kansas City’s first professional team. They had joined the league after the Altoona Mountain City’s team folded in Pennsylvania. Kansas City didn’t play well that year, winning only sixteen games and finishing last in the Union Association—sixty-one games behind the St. Louis Maroons. Even the Philadelphia Keystones finished ahead of Kansas City. Still, the team sure drew a crowd, and I don’t mean just Mother, Papa, and me.

  “You like baseball?” he asked.

  I nodded. “But I’d rather be a cowboy.”

  He shook his head. Dust flew off the brim and crown of his hat. “You ain’t never cowboyed. What position you play?”

  “I started out in center field,” I said. “But when they changed the rules, started letting pitchers throw overhanded, I moved to pitcher. Mostly. Moth- … uh, some folks say I have a gift for pitching.”

  “Pitcher, eh? Well, you got the hands for it. Arms, too.”

  Now, I have always been self-conscious about these hams I have for hands. And my long arms. Way too big for someone my size, way too big for anyone who wasn’t a gorilla. But Papa had that side job laying bricks, and when I came of age, I went to work with him. Brick masons don’t have hands but calloused giant mitts. Whenever I carried bricks or mortar in a “hod,” Papa joked that hauling those heavy loads had stretched my shoulders so much that my arms and hands grew abnormally—which made me a better pitcher.

  This cowboy, however, didn’t seem to be saying this to me, but to himself, and he ran his tongue over his dried, cracked lips, and flicked more ash. The horse began peeing, and the cowboy unhooked his leg, stood in the stirrups, stretching, and pretty much ignoring me. I thought, This is the rudest man I’ve ever met.

  Finally, after another drag, he said, “Tell you what, kid. Here’s a deal for you. We toss that ball around some. Then I’ll try to teach you about roping. That suit you?”

  My wide grin answered. He smiled back, opened the gate while still sitting in the saddle, and eased the dun through the opening, closed the gate, and dismounted, wrapping the reins around one of the fence posts. He flicked the cigarette’s remnants over the top rail and into the dust and dung inside the corral.

  We walked away from the horse to a spot where he drew a line in the dirt. Next, he started walking toward the walls of the Armour Packing Company, counting his steps. When he reached fifty, he stopped, turned, and held out his hands.

  Idiot that I was, I told him, “If I’m pitching, you need to squat.”

  “Not until we loosen our muscles, kid.”

  So for ten minutes, we threw the ball. Softly at first. Then a bit harder. Finally, he threw the ball to me, then pushed back the brim of his hat. “I’d say that’s enough.” He squatted, held out his arms, and said, “Let me see what you got, kid.”

  I showed him.

  “Criminy!” The cowhand rose, leaving the ball between his spurs, shaking his hands, biting his bottom lip. Tears welled in his eyes. He rubbed his palms against his chaps, and stared at me for the longest while.

  “Who taught you to throw so hard, Silver?” he asked.

  I almost answered “Mother,” but thought better of it. Instead, I shrugged.

  He picked up the ball again, threw it back to me, and fished a pair of gloves out of the pocket on his chaps. Shaking his head as he pulled on the gloves, he looked into the cloudless blue skies, and said, “Lord, don’t let any ballist I know see me using these.” He squatted again.

  For more than an hour, I pitched and he caught.

  By my final pitch to him, we had both worked up a sweat. Jutting his jaw toward his horse, he said, “That’s enough of that, I warrant.” Then he strode bowlegged toward his mount, where he fetched the coiled hemp rope dangling from the saddle horn.

  “Not much of a ball game, was it, Danny boy?” someone behind me said.

  I hadn’t noticed how our throwing session had drawn a few spectators. Three dusty cowboys sat on the top rail of the fence. In front of the gate stood a woman with disheveled hair and wearing only a camisole that barely contained her ample breasts. Two more men—one in a bowler hat and patched britches, the other holding a rake—leaned against the fence on either side of the brown-haired woman.

  I stopped and stared. At the woman, of course. And not because she had been the one speaking. No, she was smiling at my catcher, a cigar in her mouth. My mouth dropped open. I’d never seen a woman smoke before, especially not a foul-smelling cigar.

  That got the cowboys sitting on the top rail to laugh, and spit, and point at me.

  The woman laughed, too, once she had noticed me. She removed the cigar, saying, “Why, ain’t you a big, strong boy.”

  I could barely swallow.

  “You do everything as hard as you throw that little ball?”

  My face flushed crimson.

  My catching partner ignored the laughing men, when he returned with the rope.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off the woman.

  “Boy. Hey, boy!” My pard’s words finally reached me, and I turned. “You want to learn about roping, or you want to spend time with Molly? My lesson’s free. Molly charges six bits.”

  I wet my lips, bobbed my head, staring at the rope in his hands.

  “That’s a big rope,” I said, just to see if I could still speak.

  “It ain’t a rope. It’s a lariat.”

  “Lariat.” I tested the word.

  “Hold the loop lightly,” he explained. “About a foot or so from the honda.”

  “What’s the honda?”

  He shook his head and rolled his eyes. He pointed at the finger gripping the rope near the coil toward the eye the rope was pushed through. Stepping away from me, he turned and started swinging the rope over his head. “Think of the loop as a wheel,” he instructed. “And your wrist as the axle. Swing the loop toward the target. Let your palm open … and let ’er fly.” He did that.

  The loop flew gracefully, and fell over Molly, who had stepped a few rods away from the fence toward us.

  My pard then stepped back quickly, pulled the rope, and the loop tightened around the woman’s waist. Again, the men chuckled. Molly cursed as she was jerked to her knees.

  Sud
denly, the rope—lariat, I mean—rested in my hands.

  “Now you try it,” my partner said. “First, you gotta free Molly.”

  “Or use a piggin’ string on her!” shouted the leanest of the cowboys, who sat next to a black cowhand wearing the biggest cowboy hat I’d ever seen.

  I didn’t need to free Molly, who was already on her feet. Still, I walked over to her as she stepped out of the loop. She handed me the lariat, but wasn’t looking at me. Her eyes glared at my partner as she said, “Dug Dugdale, I’ll whip your arse.”

  Me? I dropped the rope so I could pick up the cigar she had dropped. Before handing it to her, I tried to blow off the grime and dust that coated it. That got her attention, and she smiled at me, revealing crooked, stained teeth, and not too many, at that.

  I looked away, but found my eyes coming back to stare at her breasts. Couldn’t help it.

  Anyway, that’s what I was doing when Mother called out my name in a shrieking voice.

  Chapter Three

  No point in boring you with the details of the scene that transpired, and no sense in embarrassing myself. Suffice to say that my roping lesson ended abruptly, the cowhands, bums, and harlot vanished, while Dan “Dug” Dugdale tipped his hat back and watched with this smirk on his face, which I would have dearly loved to have made him lose. By the time I got back home, my left ear, having been pinched and twisted by my mother, was inflamed, aching, and redder than my face had been after Molly had spoken to me.

  Mother instructed me never to tell Papa what I had seen, or what might have come to pass had she not come along when she had, and that I was never, ever, to go to the corrals of the Armour Packing Company again.

  Naturally I returned the next afternoon. After church. And after helping my father on a brick job for a neighbor.

  I found no one there, however, just unfortunate cows. So I drifted back to the front yard of our ramshackle house, and began tossing the ball with Papa, while, inside, Mother and her parents fixed chicken and dumplings for supper.