The Kansas City Cowboys

by The Kansas City Cowboys (retail

  His hands pulled me off the bench, and I gathered my thoughts, pulled a fingerless glove over my aching catching hand, and returned to the field.

  Barney Gilligan seemed small for a catcher, and old for one, too, but he had been playing this game for a long time, mostly with the Providence Grays back when the Grays were tops. Why, he had caught Old Hoss Radbourn and Pud Galvin back in the day. And he swung three No. 4 Spaldings before he came to bat, picking the bat he liked best.

  Fatty Briody grinned, settled into his crouch, and the umpire got set. I tried to drown out the cheers, while at the same time trying to hear Cindy’s voice. One thing I did not do was look into the stands, fearing I would see Mother.

  “High!” Gilligan called.

  With a nod, I fired a fast ball, but without the can-can tomfoolery. I did something else, something I don’t think I even realized. Instead of coming up over my head, I threw the ball from my side—perhaps because I could not lift my arm all the way over my head. I don’t know. I didn’t even remember doing it. The ball did not catch the inside part of the plate. It went outside, and Gilligan did not swing.

  “Strike!” the umpire yelled.

  “He can’t do that,” Barney Gilligan cried.

  “Do what?” the umpire asked.

  “Throw from third base!”

  Fatty Briody had stepped out in front of Gilligan and the umpire and started to yell at me for forgetting to do that stupid move, yet he stopped, spit tobacco juice into the dirt, and returned to his position. I had just thrown a strike to one of the hottest hitters for one of the worst teams in all of baseball.

  Gilligan swung at the next pitch, which I also delivered side-armed. He missed badly.

  Fatty stared at me the longest while, but said nothing. I took the ball, and found my place. But I glanced back toward the bench, and found Mert Hackett. Yawning, he raised his right arm over his head, and brought it down. He grinned at me, and mouthed, “Inside.”

  It hurt like hell, but I made myself throw a fast ball, high, overhanded, and inside. Mert Hackett had been right. Barney Gilligan looked like a five-year-old swinging that big bat at an inside pitch. He fell out of the batsman’s lines and onto his knees near the Washington bench. Yet ever the good sport, he merely ignored the catcalls and laughter from the grandstands, tossed his bat up with his right hand, caught it with his left, and strode calmly back to the bench.

  Phil Baker walked, and again I turned back toward our bench while Jimmy Knowles, playing second base, came to bat.

  This time I saw Mert Hackett raise his left leg slightly, then his right, then his left, at what I took to be a sign for me to go back to the can-can routine. Which I felt ridiculous doing, but, still, I followed Mert Hackett’s instructions. Don’t ask me why. Perhaps he had put me into a trance.

  I shook off any thought, and told myself aloud but in a whisper, “You’re thinking like Mister Heim, Silver. Just pitch.”

  The crowd erupted as I returned to the can-can. Jimmy Knowles grounded into a double-play turned deftly by Charley Bassett, Cod Myers, and Mox McQuery.

  Dave Rowe rocked the Senators’ kid’s first pitch for a triple, scored on Shorty Radford’s infield single, and we went on to post a 5 to 2 victory.

  To be honest, I don’t remember a thing about the second game I pitched. I blame that on heat stroke. We won, I was told, 7 to 0.

  After the game, a doubleheader sweep, we invited the Senators’ players over to our bench to share a keg of Heim lager—just as though we were playing team ball in Denver or somewhere. The kid who had lost to me in the first game came up and said, “How do you pitch that way?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Wish I could do it, but I’m not much for dancing.”

  I held out my hand, and we shook. “My advice doesn’t amount to much,” I said, “but if I were you, I wouldn’t change anything about the way you pitch.”

  He beamed as if I were Cap Anson or Mr. Spalding himself.

  “You think so?”

  “I know so.”

  “Thanks … umm …”

  “Call me Silver.”

  “Thanks, Silver.” We shook again.

  “My name’s Mack,” the kid said. Kid? He was a few years older than me. “Connie Mack.”

  That night, Fatty Briody told me in no uncertain terms that I would not sleep on the bench at the Hole again. He took me to his place in a flea-bag hotel off Delaware. He didn’t even go out drinking.

  * * * * *

  Connie Mack came back to pitch the next day. I watched from the bench, while Mert Hackett worked my arm back into some semblance of shape. The Senators won, 5 to 2, and, no, Connie Mack did not win that game doing can-can routines or side-arm deliveries.

  “Can you pitch tomorrow, King?”

  I looked up to find Dave Rowe staring down at me. Dave Rowe had just asked if I could pitch, and he had called me by my name, not “boy.”

  “Sure, he can, Mister Rowe,” Mert Hackett answered. “I gots his arm all fixed up. Ain’t that right, Mister King?”

  “I didn’t ask you,” Rowe snapped, adding a vile word.

  “I can pitch,” I told him, though I wasn’t sure I could.

  “Good,” Rowe said. “Because when you lose, maybe I can-can your sorry ass.” He must have been waiting to try that can-can shit out. “And get rid of this stupid mascot, too.”

  But we won, 8 to 1, our third victory in four games, and our fourth in seven. I know that’s not quite the same as fourteen-game winning streaks, but for the Kansas City Cowboys it appeared phenomenal.

  And when Mr. Joseph Heim paid Mert Hackett another five-dollar gold piece, Dave Rowe went crazy mad.

  Tomorrow was the 1st of September, and the Philadelphia Phillies were coming to play us.

  “Grasshopper,” Dave Rowe said, “you’re pitching. Every damned game of the series.”

  “Skip,” Fatty said, “you can’t. I mean, use Grasshopper in one game, but you can’t stop this kid. He’s on fire. Nobody can hit him. Not even you, Skip.”

  That’s when something else happened that changed my life, and changed the Kansas City Cowboys’ season.

  Dave Rowe pulled out his Smith & Wesson and shot Fatty Briody in the gut.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The clipping pasted below shows you exactly how James Whitfield recorded that horrific incident in the Kansas City Times.

  * * * * *

  Our valiant Cowboys bounced back to pound the Senators from the Great Capital City, 8 to 1, yesterday afternoon as rookie Silver King dominated the boys from back East with his Western dancing-pitching—or should we call that Western pitching-dancing?

  Yet by the fall of evening, the Kansas City ballists were saddened, disheartened, and numbed by the loss of the great, boastful, friendly, and all-loving catcher, Charles Briody—affectionately called “Fatty” by teammates and opponents alike.

  It seems that one of Silver King’s hard-hurled pitches—we could not ascertain whether it was his “Can-Can” delivery or this new and quite unique side-armed throw—got past that sofa cushion Briody wears when catching the local rookie and nailed Mr. Briody in his ribs.

  The result was that Mr. Briody sustained five broken ribs, but, ever the courageous athlete, so devoted was he to duty and our Cowboys that he finished catching the contest and took part in the celebration with his teammates before collapsing near the Cowboys bench and writhing on the ground in miserable, gut-wrenching agony. Shocked teammates gathered around the supine athlete to administer comfort and soothing words.

  Working quickly, teammates Mox McQuery, Silver King, and team vice president Augustus McKim hailed gallant policemen and a hack to transport the gallant Mr. Briody quickly to St. Joseph Hospital, where those devoted friends turned their groaning teammate over into the capable hands of Mother Celeste O’Reilly
and our young physician, Dr. Jefferson Davis Griffith, who arrived in our fair city back in 1874 from New York. No doubt, Dr. Griffith took great pleasure in rendering medical assistance to a fellow brother of the Empire State. Mr. Briody hails from Lansingburgh, but has been quickly adopted by Kansas Citians, who love good sportsmanship, good spirits, and the greatest game on the face of the earth.

  Dr. Griffith pronounced the broken ribs as serious but unlikely to be life-threatening. Immediately afterward, Mr. Americus McKim departed via train in hopes of finding another catcher to sign to a contract to help fill in for Briody as the solid, eager player mends his ribs under the care of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet. Accompanying Mr. McKim, known for his generosity and his erudite handling of his barley and malt enterprises, was the Cowboys hurler, Master Silver King, who was so overcome with remorse that it was his pitch which felled the mighty giant that he insisted on having a hand in finding a capable replacement for Mr. Briody.

  In the meantime, team President Joseph Heim announced that Mr. Briody will be replaced, for the time being, by Frank Ringo, a cousin of the famed gunman John Ringo who was involved in the scuffles in Arizona Territory with Wyatt Earp, who happens to be a friend of Cowboys shortstop Charley Bassett’s father in Dodge City. We wonder if these two teammates, part of a grand Western vendetta, might be more prone to throwing lead at each other than a friendly game of catch. It should be fun to see, though, especially for our wild-and-woolly baseball fanatics.

  Also, Mox McQuery, who Mr. Heim cited for his baseball knowledge and peacekeeping abilities, will be replacing Dave Rowe on a temporary basis as manager of the Cowboys.

  So stunned by the injury of his favorite catcher and one of his best friends, Dave Rowe fell into a series of apoplectic seizures, and was rushed, escorted by other members of our upstanding city police department, to the new German Hospital, which lies far out of our city proper at the old Henri farm.

  Cheery mail and pleasant cards or flowers would be much appreciated by our felled athletes, but doctors confirm that neither Mr. Briody nor Mr. Rowe will be allowed any visitors for the near future. Watch these pages for any updates.

  Of course, prayers are requested for our great catcher, Mr. Briody, and loving manager / center fielder, Mr. Rowe, and, especially, for our Kansas City Cowboys. May they continue their winning ways.

  The Phillies have arrived from Philadelphia, and the first game of that tilt is scheduled for two o’clock in the afternoon today.

  * * * * *

  Although there were grains of truth in Mr. Whitfield’s article, I do not recall the events after that ball game quite the same. What I remembered was that Dave Rowe would have shot Fatty Briody again had not Mox McQuery dived over the bench, one hand knocking the .32 downward so that the second bullet merely tore into the hard bench, leaving a splintered ditch, and lodged in the center of Cod Myers’ new John Hillerich–designed bat. Which enraged Cod Myers so much that he jumped into the fray.

  During my brief tenure in the National League, I had seen umpires maligned and even shot at. More than once, our police had to escort an umpire out of the Hole under armed escort. Otherwise, Americus McKim might have headed a lynch mob. Patrons at League Park had come close to rioting. Some umpires quit after one game in Kansas City. I remember one telling me, “You expect to be hissed and hooted at. But shot at?”

  Another umpire told a reporter who printed this in the New York Times:

  I have often heard that an umpire’s position was a thankless one, but I have never realized it before. It’s bad enough to be hissed and called a thief, but in the West when the local club loses, an umpire is fortunate if he escapes with his life. Of all the cities in the league Kansas City is the worst.

  I had never seen anything like this, though later I would witness an even more horrific Donnybrook.

  Mind you, Mox McQuery had a great hold on Dave Rowe, and Cod Myers took advantage, pounding Dave with left and right punches. Americus McKim yelled for some of the remaining city policemen, who had been preoccupied with their task of rounding up their typical dozen or so drunks and hooligans they had shackled during the game, to come to our assistance.

  During this time, I lifted Fatty’s head into my lap while our mascot, Mert Hackett, whipped off his bandanna and plugged it against the bloody hole in our catcher’s abdomen.

  “If …” Fatty tried. “If I’m … shot in the liver … I’m a … dead man.”

  “Fatty,” Grasshopper Jim said softly, “if you got shot in your liver, the bullet’s the one that’ll be mortally wounded.”

  That managed to stop Fatty’s tears, and he actually laughed.

  “Thanks, Jim.” Fatty coughed. I held my breath, exhaling only when I saw no blood leave Fatty’s mouth, just saliva.

  His eyes turned to me. “Get my key, kid. It’s in my pocket. You might as well sleep at my place again.”

  “Fatty …”

  “No. Do like I tell you. Or go home … where you belong.”

  My face hardened, and Fatty, groaning, got the key to his rat-infested slum out of his pocket. He placed it in my hand.

  “How is he?” a feminine voice asked.

  My head shot up. Cindy McKim was kneeling down next to me.

  “Cindy,” her father said, “you had best go home.”

  “Yeah,” said Cod Myers, who had given up on punching Dave Rowe any more. Our manager had slumped into unconsciousness on the other side of the gunshot bench. “Ain’t for no lady to see.”

  “Silver,” Mr. McKim said. “Take my daughter home.”

  “No,” Cindy said. “Silver’s place is with Fatty. I’ll go.” She looked around, found Charley Bassett, and said, “Charley, can you take me home?”

  Charley, mouth open, looked quickly at me. “Umm …” then remembering that it was Mr. McKim who signed his paycheck, “well, is that all right with you, Mister McKim?”

  “Yes. See her home. And for God’s sake, don’t talk to any newspaper reporters.”

  I watched our shortstop lead my love away.

  “Blood ain’t dark,” Mert Hackett said.

  My focus turned to our mascot. “That means?” I asked, fearing the worst.

  “It’s a good sign,” Hackett said. “Bullet didn’t hit the liver.”

  “And it’s only a thirty-two caliber,” said Mox McQuery. “He might make it.”

  “Jesus …” Mr. Joseph Heim had joined us, starting off with a fair impression of one of Dave Rowe’s curses, and ending it with, “How in hell are we going to explain this?”

  * * * * *

  How, of course, they left to Mr. James Whitfield and his exaggerated prose with the Times.

  Seeing what had happened, a police sergeant yelled for one of his coppers to fetch the paddy wagon—not a hack—so that Rowe and Fatty could be rushed to a hospital.

  “Two wagons!” Mr. McKim said. “Take Briody to Saint Joseph Hospital.”

  “What about Rowe?” the Irish sergeant asked.

  Whitfield answered, “The German Hospital. No one would look for him there. It’s so far from here. But just in case … tell the doctors and nurses that no one … no one … is to be allowed to see Rowe, except McKim, Heim, or me. No one.” Whitfield nodded at McKim, who promptly found his billfold and slipped the policemen several greenbacks.

  While Mert Hackett continued to work at stopping Fatty’s bleeding, two policemen dragged the unconscious Rowe out of the Hole, put him in the police vehicle, and took him to the hospital. I think, though, for Dave, it was more of a jail. Besides, I wasn’t even sure the German Hospital had opened for business by that time.

  It made sense, though. A couple of Germans named Schoellkopf and Spengler came to many of our baseball games, and they had formed this group that wanted to start this new hospital. The Germans then bought a three-story brick farmhouse well out in the country near Twenty-T
hird Street for ten thousand dollars. The remoteness of the facility might keep admiring fans or curious reporters from checking on Dave Rowe. I learned later that Mr. Whitfield told the staff at the hospital that should anyone come that far out of town to ask about Rowe, they were to speak German only, and pretend they could not understand English. I don’t know if Mr. Whitfield had an alternate plan if the visitor actually spoke fluent German.

  As we waited on the second paddy wagon to rush Fatty to St. Joseph Hospital, our team’s three co-owners had other concerns—I directed all of my thoughts and prayers to my loyal, grievously wounded catcher and friend.

  George Baker had been catcher for a few games for us whenever Fatty wasn’t available, but he had broken his hand in a brawl two weeks ago, so he couldn’t play.

  “Mox?” Mr. Whitfield asked. “Can you catch?”

  “Hell, no,” Mox McQuery responded. “Especially if that son-of-a-bitching kid’s throwing.” He gave me a wink, and added, “I don’t squat so good, Mister Whitfield.”

  “How hard can it be?” Mr. Heim asked. “Surely someone we have on this team can do it.”

  Frank Ringo was Mert Hackett’s idea.

  Mr. McKim and Mr. Heim began discussing the idea of signing someone quickly. Mert Hackett kept quiet, understanding that if he, a Negro, were to suggest a player, he would likely be considered “uppity” and fired on the spot. Besides, five dollars a victory was pretty good pay for a cowboy turned animal slaughterer.

  Likewise, I knew that the team owners would frown upon a suggestion from a rookie pitcher still in his teens, so I whispered to Mox McQuery. Having saved the franchise from a horrible scandal and Fatty Briody’s life, Mox was being held in fine regard at the moment—even if he could not play the catcher’s position. He had also batted four-for-five in our victory that afternoon.

  “Do you remember a local boy named Frank Ringo?” Mox asked after I relayed Mert Hackett’s suggestion to Mox.