The Kansas City Cowboys

by The Kansas City Cowboys (retail

  Pete Conway, only nineteen years old, pitched and played outfield, and instead of packing a .32 Smith & Wesson on the field, he carried a flask filled with rye in his back pocket. “Grasshopper” Jim Whitney, our star twenty-eight-year-old pitcher, had recorded one winning season in five years pitching for the Boston Beaneaters. Stump Wiedman, who also spent time on the pitcher’s line or in the outfield, was twenty-five years old and a veteran of six years in the National League, the previous five with Detroit. Utility player George Baker, a twenty-eight-year-old, had wandered about the American Association, Union Association, and National League. His best trick was polishing off Myers’ gin bottle while Myers and Lillie were fighting.

  Most of them hailed from the North—Connecticut, Illinois, New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island—where baseball had been born. Mox McQuery was the only one who hailed from the South, if you considered Kentucky the South, and George Baker and I were the only Missouri talent, Baker hailing from St. Louis.

  “Cowboys.” Dave Rowe spit tobacco juice between his legs. Practice had ended, and Lillie was straddling Myers, punching him in the head, cursing the gin-stealer. Some of the players circled our brawlers, but most, by that time, had grown bored with the usual after-practice fisticuffs.

  “That’s what we got here, ain’t it?” Rowe said to no one in particular, and shifted the quid from one cheek to the other.

  “How’s that?” I asked, making the mistake of thinking Dave Rowe would actually be speaking to me.

  Rowe didn’t look at me, but rather Fatty Briody. “Cowboys. Outcasts. Misfits. Sure ain’t no baseball team, is it, Fatty?”

  Fatty Briody shrugged. “Season ain’t started yet, Skip.”

  “Bullshit. Damned season’s already over.”

  I sighed, and watched the fight. Mother had told me that a great manager inspired his team to play beyond expectations. Dave Rowe merely bent over, picked up the gin bottle that had started the most recent Lillie-Myers two-round bout, and polished off the gin.

  * * * * *

  There were other players, of course, but some rarely showed up for practice, and if they did, they were too hungover to offer much help. Two of them, pitchers I kept being told, always sat on the bench playing poker.

  James Whitfield showed up on most days, teeth chewing down on the pipe stem as he frowned, his hands deep in the pockets of his frayed, moth-eaten suit. Every now and then he would walk onto the field after practice and chat up a few players, usually Grasshopper Jim or Dave Rowe, but more often he just interviewed Mr. Heim or Mr. McKim about their plans, so I got to read wonderful articles about “hokey-pokeys,” which would replace cigars and peanuts as the staples of baseball games.

  Of course, ever the good son, whenever I went home after practice, before starting my school lessons, I told Mother and Papa how great we were doing, how friendly my teammates were, how much I was learning about professional baseball.

  Then the rains came, and League Park began to revert to its previous form of Ranson’s Pond. The poker-playing pitchers took their cards and their money into the grandstands to find some shelter. Soon, we had to join them because the Hole turned into a quagmire.

  Yet it was on one of those typical rainy afternoons, too humid, too wet for the spring mosquitoes, that Mr. McKim called out my name at the grandstand where we all sat. An angel stood beside him. My mouth dropped open. He waved his arm at me again.

  “If you ain’t going up there, I sure as hell am,” Charley Bassett said, grinning. Through everything, we had become friends. It must have been a rookie bond. I even forgot how jealous I was that he played more than I did. Hell, James Whitfield played more than I did.

  Then Dave Rowe made some vile comment, and, fearing that that foul brute would ascend the steps, I sprang from my seat, and sprinted to Americus McKim, who said the most magical words I had ever heard.

  “Silver, this is Cindy, my daughter. She wanted to meet you.”

  “It’s a pleasure,” she said, curtsying while blushing.

  “Ummm,” said I.

  She wore a jacket of cream-colored French cashmere, with matching skirt, blue lace stripes at the bottom, black velvet shoulder straps and faceted pearls on the collars. Out of my league, I knew, for I was a seventeen-year-old son of a man who slaughtered livestock for a living when he wasn’t laying bricks. Besides, I was playing with a bunch of ruffians and drunks on a National League team.

  Mother had once called baseball players gentlemen and cowboys “nefarious scoundrels.” Ballists sure weren’t gentlemanly when you took the field with them.

  Cindy McKim looked nothing like Mr. McKim. Yet even though I had been staring at plug-uglies like Fatty Briody or Mox McQuery for weeks, I knew she was beautiful.

  Her blue eyes sparkled, her blonde hair had been delicately curled, and her lips reminded me of strawberries—the fruit, not the scrapes on my thighs I had gotten chasing after a Fatty Briody line drive before the rains started washing out practice.

  “I need to chat with Dave and Joe for a minute,” Mr. McKim said. “You two stay here, out of the rain. I’ll be back in ten minutes, no more.”

  I guess he left. I wasn’t certain.

  “Ummm,” I repeated.

  She nodded back in agreement, and I remained uncomfortably silent.

  My brain, of course, kept telling me all sorts of things to say, but my mouth sealed shut and my tongue weighed fifty pounds during the time Cindy and I were alone. I felt certain Mr. McKim had not been gone ten minutes when he came back to where we stood like baseball bats leaning against the railing out of the rain.

  “Come along, Cindy,” Mr. McKim said. “Else we’ll both catch our death out in this weather. Are you faring well, Silver?”

  I said, “Ummm.”

  “Stadium’s looking great, isn’t it?”

  Knowing I had lost all of my vocabulary, I made my head bob. Later, it struck me that he had complimented his stadium. He hadn’t said, “Team’s looking great, isn’t it?” Which would have been a shameless falsehood.

  “Nice talking to you … Silver. Maybe … I’ll see you … again … real soon.”

  The angel, Cindy McKim, had said something … something … wonderful. Then she said something even more remarkable. “I absolutely love your hair. It’s beautiful.”

  “Howdy,” I said.

  She laughed again. So did Mr. McKim, but like that they were gone, and Dave Rowe was screaming at me to come join the rest of the team on the front row. So I descended the steps into hell, but thought I might climb out if Cindy McKim were to return tomorrow.

  Dave Rowe shattered that illusion.

  “The hell with this,” he said. “We can’t do nothing in these turd-floats. We’re going to Denver.”

  Chapter Seven

  “Permanent?” I said.

  Everyone, even the card-playing hurlers, laughed.

  I felt like the green idiot that I was.

  “You dumb oaf,” Dave Rowe said. “Barnstorm a bit. Play a few games against the locals. Then come back before the season starts at the end of the month.”

  “Why Denver?” Donnelly asked.

  “Because I like Denver. Been hanging my hat there when I ain’t been playing. Played some ball there before. We’ll let McKim’s boys finish this stadium … if it don’t sink into the bog … and then we can play baseball.”

  “And drink?” Pete Conway asked.

  “And drink.” Dave Rowe grinned.

  “Gamble?” Stump Wiedman asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Run whores?” George Baker asked.

  “Now you’re talking,” Dave Rowe said.

  * * * * *

  Before we boarded the special train Mr. McKim had leased from the Union Pacific—which had taken over the old Kansas Pacific Railway a few years back—Joseph Heim arrived at the railroad
station in a beer wagon filled with trunks, instead of kegs. As his driver set the brake, Heim, like a man either giddy with excitement or drunk on his own beer, leaped into the bed and motioned us, and two Negro porters, to hurry over.

  “They came!” he shouted. “They came!”

  I looked around, but the only people who had arrived to see us off were Mother and Papa, and a couple of prostitutes from along the East Bottoms, standing in the shadows, who were sad to see some of their best customers disappear for a week.

  They, we learned, were not spectators or baseball enthusiasts. They were uniforms. Pants and collared shirts the color of chocolate, with large tan letters, K and C, on either side of the four-button front. The belts, like our shoes, were black, but our stockings were maroon.

  Then Joseph Heim, who I had found to be the rudest man I’d ever met—before I came into contact with Dave Rowe—pulled out our caps. “McKim,” he cried out, unable to contain his excitement like a boy on Christmas morning, “said we ought to wear cowboy hats, but I knew better! Look like a baseball team, play like a baseball team.”

  He tossed me the first cap out of one of the boxes. A short-visored woolen cap, also maroon like our stockings, that sported four narrow rows of black braid. I took off my straw hat and tried it on. It didn’t fit, too small, for, like my hands, my head was also unnaturally huge. Pete Conway snatched it off my head. It fit him a little snug, also, but he did not complain.

  “We should have another set of uniforms when you get back from Colorado,” Heim said. “Those’ll be white … blue stockings and belts and caps. That’s what McKim wanted. But I figured the dirt won’t show up as much on these brown ones.”

  “Silver’s ma’ll appreciate that,” Fatty Briody said.

  Everyone, even Mother, laughed. Everyone, that is, except Dave Rowe. “Like that snot-nose’ll ever get off my bench,” he whispered in my ear, before he walked to the side of the wagon and hollered at Heim to give him his uniform.

  “Brown and red’ll hide the blood, too,” Mox McQuery said.

  Which prompted a few more good-natured chuckles.

  Mr. McKim arrived as the other players got their uniforms. He frowned at the brown and maroon uniforms, but said nothing as he tipped another porter to take his luggage to one of the Pullmans. I frowned. Cindy McKim wasn’t with him.

  Eventually I got another cap, one that did fit, if barely. By then Mother and Papa had come to my side, my mother smiling with so much pleasure that it pained me. Papa merely nodded, and handed me a greasy sack of food to eat on the long train trip to Colorado. I set the sack down near my grip. Papa shook my greasy hand. Mama got on her tiptoes and kissed my cheek.

  “You look dashing,” she said. “I’m so proud of you. You look just like a ballist.”

  At least I’ll look like a ballist, I told myself, even if I’m not really a player on this team.

  * * * * *

  Never had I left Missouri, and I did not remember much about the train ride we had taken when I was little. I grabbed a seat by the window, excited, forgetting all about my baseball troubles. It wasn’t long before I was watching Kansas fly past me. After a few hours, however, Kansas no longer excited me, so I ate the smelly food Papa had given me. By then, darkness had fallen, and the rocking of the coach was making me sleepy.

  “Where do we sleep?” I asked Fatty Briody.

  He chuckled. “We ain’t McKim, Silver. We sleep right here.”

  I slept well, though on that long train ride west, I would wake at every stop along the U.P. line. I woke up and stared at the pitch blackness that was Dodge City, and wondered what Charley Bassett, the liar, would say if someone asked him to point out the Long Branch Saloon. Charley, of course, kept tossing and turning two rows ahead of me. The only noise coming from our car were snores.

  * * * * *

  When I stepped onto the platform at the Denver depot and saw the mountains, the bright white snow capping their rugged tops like crowns on kings, all I could say was, “Wow!” And see the frost from my breath.

  “Wow’s right,” Mox McQuery said. “It’s colder than a witch’s teat.”

  “The son-of-a-bitching calendar says it’s April, don’t it?” Stump Wiedman lamented.

  “It did,” Cod Myers said, and took a pull from his bottle of gin. “But that was back in Kansas City.”

  “Yeah.” Fatty Briody stretched. “We been on that train since forever.”

  “Quit bellyaching, you bastards,” Dave Rowe said. He pointed. “That’s the trolley. It’ll take you gents to the ball park to practice. See you turds tomorrow for breakfast before the game. And I do my drinking at the Exchange and at Victoria’s Parlor. Remember that.”

  Our manager and center fielder picked up his grip, pulled down his hat, and strode across the platform to meet four men in overcoats. They shook hands, piled into a carriage, and disappeared into the bustling city at the edge of the Rocky Mountains.

  “Remember that, kid,” Fatty told me. “Stay out of the Exchange and Victoria’s.”

  I gave Fatty Briody my dumbest look.

  “Dave’s our manager. Manager’s don’t drink with players.”

  “Oh.” I had no intention of doing any drinking, and no intention of being anywhere around Dave Rowe. That’s all I needed to say, but I kept right on talking. “A cowboy I knew, a good friend of mine, he once told me that trail bosses didn’t like to drink with cowboys, either.”

  “Jesus!” Charley Bassett picked up his grip and walked to the trolley. “You’d rather be a cowboy than a baseball player, wouldn’t you?”

  * * * * *

  The wind felt as raw as Denver looked, so we took our bags and bats and hurried after Charley Bassett to the horse-pulled trolley that had been reserved for us. I knew that by the crudely painted sign hanging from the top.

  WELCOME TO DENVER, KC BALLISTS

  WE’LL KICK THE TAR OUT OF YOU SOBS

  “Should we go to the hotel first?” I asked Fatty Briody, who chuckled.

  “Hotel? Boy, we’re on the road for three games against a Western League team.”

  “Hotels cost money,” Pete Conway said.

  Briody laughed. “Hotels is for sleepin’. We’re here to do some serious gamblin’ and drinkin’.”

  “No sleep?” I asked. “We’re here for two days.” One game Thursday, followed by a doubleheader on Friday.

  “Kid,” Shorty Radford said. “You sleep after the season.”

  But, as professional baseball players, they did want to see the stadium where we would play.

  All right, stadium didn’t quite describe Larimer Street Base Ball Park, but neither did vacant lot. It stretched out between Thirty-Second and Larimer Streets, but the field appeared level and, unlike Kansas City’s League Park, grass covered the outfield. A few blades could be seen poking out of the patches of ice.

  Not that we had reason to complain, for League Field had little going for it, but we quickly stopped looking at the baseball field. The players practicing on it commanded our attention.

  They donned gold uniforms with red lettering on fancy shield-front shirts, stockings, belts, and striped caps—and they not only looked like a baseball team, they played like one, too.

  “I thought this Western League of Professional Baseball Clubs was composed of unprofessionals,” Pete Conway stated.

  “And that we come to play a bunch of hayseeds,” Shorty Radford said. “Miners, you know. Cowboys.”

  “We’re the Cowboys,” whispered Cod Myers.

  “I ain’t afraid of them,” Charley Bassett said.

  “Hell, kid,” McQuery said, “I ain’t afraid of ’em, either. But they sure look like they can kick our ass.”

  One of the Denver players spotted us and ran from right field to greet us. Well, ran isn’t the right word. The boy flew. I mean, his speed made Shorty Radford look more li
ke Mox McQuery or Fatty Briody.

  “Howdy,” he said, and starting pumping our hands. “My name’s George. George Tebeau. Welcome, fellows. I was born in St. Louis, so it’s good to see some Midwestern boys. Yes, sir. We’re sure glad to have you-all come to Denver. What do you think? Lots of big things happening up here in Denver. Big things. I know it’s nothing like those big cities where you-all often go to play baseball. Man … Playing baseball in New York or Boston or Philadelphia. Gosh. That’s just something I’ve always dreamed of. Well, I’m talking too much, but, golly, I’m just so excited I can’t hardly stand it. You probably come here to practice. Well, let me get those fellows off the field. You got a few hours before the sun goes down, then it’ll be too cold to play any baseball till tomorrow. Where are you-all staying? Boy … A real National League baseball team. Man. I’d sure like to be playing at that level someday. Where’s Dave? Dave Rowe? No, don’t tell me. He’s been coming here since ’83, so I know where I’d find him. Ha! Man. A real National League baseball team. Boy, tomorrow’s going to be something.” He turned and yelled, “Clear the field, gents! Let a real team show us how baseball’s played!” And he sprinted to help usher his teammates off the field.

  “Damn,” whispered Fatty Briody. “That bastard talks faster than he even runs.”

  “What’d he say his name was?” Charley Bassett asked.

  “Tebeau,” Shorty Radford answered. “George Tebeau. Don’t look like no Frenchy.”

  “Don’t look like no Missourian, either,” George Baker said. “No Missouri boy ever run like that.”

  Yes, if you know your baseball, you might even recollect the name of George Tebeau. He would help lead the Denver Mountain Lions to the Western League title in 1886. The next year, he would join the beer-and-whiskey league’s Cincinnati club, spend two more years with those Red Stockings, another with Toledo’s American Association team, and join the National League, finishing his career with the great Cleveland Spiders in 1895 before returning to Denver to manage several Western League teams.