by Troy Soos
The papers had lately been playing up the rivalry, reminding fans that this was the tenth anniversary of the contentious 1908 pennant race that had ended with the Cubs beating the Giants in a play-off game to take the championship.
What the papers didn’t say was anything more about Willie Kaiser’s death. They’d reported nothing at all after that initial nonsense about the gunshot being an accident.
As I gave the second base bag a kick, I looked beyond the right field bleachers to the row houses on Sheffield Avenue, then at the spot on the outfield grass where Willie had last stood. It occurred to me that since the bullet had passed through his body, it might still be on the field someplace.
I picked one of the second-floor windows near the middle of the row and mentally drew a line from the window to where Willie’s chest would have been. Extending the line to the ground, I assumed that to be the most likely spot for the bullet to have landed.
Between the pitcher’s mound and first base, I began sweeping my right foot over the grass. I combed several square yards with my cleats, unearthing nothing but somebody’s front tooth, probably from a pitcher who’d caught a line drive with his mouth.
Stopping to take another look at the houses, I realized the shot could have come from any of them. That meant the angle could have been wider. And what if the bullet had ricocheted off a bone in Willie’s body and changed direction on exiting? I had enough trouble with arithmetic, never mind geometry.
I revised my estimate of where the slug had landed to somewhere in the infield and methodically resumed sweeping my spikes along the grass.
“Whatcha doin’?” a high voice behind me asked.
I turned around, surprised. It was still too early for other players to be out. But here he was: the baby-faced new kid, Wally Dillard, a ballplayer badly in need of a nickname. “Checkin’ out the field,” I answered.
“For what?” He apparently didn’t know that rookies aren’t supposed to pester veterans. Lucky for him, I wasn’t a stickler about that particular custom. I liked to share what I knew with other players. Maybe it was team spirit, maybe it was that I enjoyed a chance to demonstrate that I did indeed know something.
Of course I didn’t give him the exact truth. “You have to check out the field to see how to play a ground ball,” I said. “Got to see if it’s hard or soft or rocky, how thick the grass is, all that. You know how an outfielder plays a fly ball, judging the wind and how heavy or dry the air is?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, he’s got it easy compared to us. He can feel the air and the wind without trying. Playing infield, you gotta take the time to check out the ground and map it out in your head beforehand. Once the ball’s hit, it’s too late.”
“Huh. Makes sense.”
“Why don’t you go check out the field around short? Maybe Mitchell will put you in the game.”
“You think so?” he said eagerly.
Not a chance, I thought. “Never know. You always got to be ready.”
“Okay, thanks!” He trotted off to follow my example on the left side of the infield. I wished I could have asked him to let me know if he found any bullets.
I went back to searching for the slug on my side of the field. While I scratched the turf, I tried to think of a nickname for Wally Dillard.
Neither effort produced results.
It was a good game. A crowd of at least fifteen thousand saw us beat the Giants 5–1 to sweep the series. I went three-for-four with a stolen base and two RBIs. Shufflin’ Phil Douglas easily slipped his spirituous spitballs past the New York bats to ring up a dozen strikeouts. Wicket Greene booted two easy grounders at shortstop and made one throwing error. Wally Dillard maintained a steady stream of encouraging chatter from the dugout bench.
After showering and changing, I left the clubhouse with Fred Merkle. “I was talking to Larry Doyle before the game,” Merkle said. “How about the three of us get together for dinner tonight?”
“Sure, sounds good.” Doyle, Merkle, and I had been teammates on McGraw’s 1914 Giants. Last year, the three of us had all been playing for the Cubs. Now Doyle was back with the Giants.
A few fans stood at the exit gate waiting for autographs. We stopped while Merkle obliged them and I held his bag. I was thinking that baseball’s a strange business: your teammate one year can be your enemy the next. Then I tried to imagine what would happen if countries could do that— maybe France trades a lieutenant to Germany for a sergeant and two privates to be named later...
When Merkle finished giving out his signature, he said, “Gimme a call. I’ll set it up with Larry.”
We split up and I started walking west on Addison. I’d turned south on Racine, heading for home, when a sniffily voice behind me said, “Good to see they’re letting you wear the home uniform again.”
Slowly, I turned around. “I know they’re desperate to sell tickets, but I can’t believe they let you in.”
Karl Landfors grinned. “They made me pay extra for the privilege.”
I dropped my bag on the ground. We shook hands hard and long. The best I was hoping for was that his name would appear in the newspaper again; I never expected him to show up at a Cubs game. “Jeez, Karl. Where the hell you been?” Before he could answer, I gave him a playful punch to the shoulder and said, “You’re looking good.” Another thing I never expected of Karl Landfors. He used to resemble a skeleton, in both color and physique. Now his angular face was tanned, he’d put on a few pounds of muscle, and he’d abandoned his customary black undertaker’s suit and stiff black derby for a casual khaki sack suit and an oversized brown driving cap.
“Hey, I got a place not far from here,” I said. “Come on over.”
“Sure.”
During the walk to my house, Landfors gave me a cursory rundown on his three and a half years in Europe. He’d covered the war for the New York Press during most of it, then quit the paper to drive an ambulance. And he’d gotten married to a Belgian girl, who’d died of the influenza this spring.
When he related that last part, I glanced at him from the side of my eye. He didn’t look quite as good as he had on first appearance. Behind the horn-rimmed glasses on his long bony nose, I could see his eyes looked weary, as if they’d seen everything and would prefer to forget most of it.
In answer to his question about what I’d been up to, my report was less remarkable. Not getting into the World Series was what I’d been doing. I’d spent three years with McGraw’s Giants and we’d lost the pennant every year, to the unlikeliest teams: Boston Braves, Phillies, and the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Dodgers—that one really hurt. I left New York for the Cubs in 1917, and the Giants won the pennant that year.
By the time we walked through my front door, I was thinking that Landfors had certainly had the more interesting time of it. And that I was probably never going to get to play in a World Series.
Once inside, Landfors removed his cap to reveal a head that had gone almost completely bald. “Not bad at all,” he said approvingly, as he ran a finger over the same oak sideboard where Charles Weeghman had sat.
I headed off the joke I was sure would follow. “I know, almost as nice as some of the trenches you been in.”
He smiled. “No. This is a really nice place.”
Maybe Landfors had changed.
“You know,” he said. “Baseball’s really big with the doughboys. I impressed quite a few of them by telling them I knew a big league ballplayer.”
“Me?” I was flattered.
“Well, no. I told them I knew Ty Cobb and Casey Stengel. I figured you knew them and I knew you, so that was close enough.”
“You haven’t changed a bit,” I said.
Landfors walked around, inspecting the place. I thought he might be needing a place to stay. “Say, Karl. I got plenty of room here. You can stay if you want. Uh, no hot water though. Somebody stole the tank.”
“Huh?”
“Somebody stole my water tank. But other than that, it’s
okay. Good location, nice neighbors. And quiet. There’s a cop who keeps the kids away.”
“Thanks,” he said. “But I’m staying with a fellow I met in the ambulance corps. Another writer. Got a place down in Roseland.”
“How long you been in town?”
“Not long. A couple weeks.” Spotting the issues of the New York Press stacked next to my chair, he picked one of them up. “What are you doing getting the Press?”
“Is that what that is? Hell, to me a paper’s a paper. As long as they print the box scores right, I don’t care where they’re from.”
Landfors chuckled. I don’t think he was entirely sure I was pulling his leg.
I pointed him to the sofa. He sat down on the edge of the couch while I took the armchair.
Landfors leaned over and picked up a ten-day-old Chicago paper from the coffee table. It was opened to the story about Willie’s death. Frowning, he proceeded to spread out the other papers on the table; they were from the same date, also opened to that story. “I heard about this,” he said. “You knew the guy?”
“Of course I knew him. He was my teammate. Roommate when we traveled.”
“Huh.”
I gave him a few more minutes to read before saying, “You been reporting on battles a little too long, Karl.”
“What do you mean?”
“A major league ballplayer getting shot and killed in Cubs Park on the Fourth of July should be a pretty big story. Look at what page it’s on.”
He quickly shuffled through the papers. “They buried it,” he said.
“Exactly. Why do you think they would do that?”
“Don’t know.”
“I thought it might be the censors.”
“Could be.” Landfors pondered a minute. “Willie Kaiser.... There could be a lot of angles to something like that. A German baseball ptayer—”
“American, ” I corrected.
Landfors nodded and continued, “A baseball player of German heritage, named Kaiser, playing America’s national game, marching in a military drill, killed on the Fourth of July.” He thought some more. “The government censors wouldn’t know how to present something like that to the public—hell, either side could have wanted to kill him. So they bury the story. The Committee for Public Information likes to manufacture propaganda, but sometimes they don’t know how to handle reality.”
Either side could have wanted to kill him? That was crazy. Nobody should have wanted to kill him.
“Hey, look,” I said. “It’s been years. Let’s not talk about this stuff. How about dinner? There’s a place in the Loop I been wanting to try.”
“Great. I’m famished.”
We walked out the door, then I ran back in as I remembered to call Fred Merkle and tell him I couldn’t make the reunion with Larry Doyle.
“Whaddaya gonna have?” demanded the sullen-faced waiter.
“A couple of your best steaks,” Landfors promptly answered.
The waiter frowned at him.
“No beef on Saturdays,” I explained to Landfors. To the waiter, I said, “Anything but whale meat.”
He nodded. “An’ to drink?”
“Ginger ale,” I ordered.
“Oh, wine, I think,” said Landfors. “Red. Burgundy, if you have it.”
He earned an angry glare from the waiter.
“Prohibition, Karl,” I said. “Hell, I’d have ordered a beer if I could.” I turned to the waiter. “He’s been in the war the last few years. Just got back.”
The waiter nodded approvingly. “Army?” he grunted.
“Ambulance corps,” Landfors said. “Make mine ginger ale, too.”
“Comin’ right up.”
As the waiter lumbered away, Landfors looked around the place. “Nice,” he said. He seemed to think everything was “nice” today—maybe I should introduce him to Edna Chapman.
T.J.’s, wedged between a pawn shop and a music store on South State, wasn’t an elegant establishment, but poor lighting helped conceal its true dinginess. The joint was cramped, with the dining tables packed closely together to leave space in front of the bandstand for dancers. There were no tablecloths on the tables, and the straight-backed chairs were uncomfortable enough to encourage you to eat quickly and either leave or dance. People didn’t come for the decor but for the food and the music. In fact, that’s all the signs outside the restaurant mentioned: FOOD and JAZZ. The place had no official name; it was known only through word-of-mouth as “T.J.’s.”
“Hey,” I suddenly blurted. “You said it was ‘good to see they’re letting me wear the home uniform again.’ So you must have seen me when I played in my road suit. Why didn’t you tell me before today you were in town?”
He stammered, “Well, it’s been a long time. I didn’t know what you’d be up to. It just... took a while for me to feel up to it, I guess.”
I tried to rest my elbows on the table, but it was too small and too round. “Why Chicago?” I asked. “Why didn’t you go back to New York?”
“I did. Just long enough to clear out my things from the Press office. They weren’t happy to see me again.” He laughed. “I left them without a war correspondent.”
“Why’d you leave them?”
“How many ways can you describe kids dying?” He shook his head and his whole body shuddered. “And they didn’t even print all of it. When the rains came, the trenches turned to quicksand. You be surprised how many soldiers drowned in the mud, but you won’t read about that here, doesn’t sound like a glorious enough death. You won’t read about the rats that live in the trenches, either, and how they grow fat eating the corpses of the doughboys.”
He was right. I hadn’t read any of that. “Sounds like hell,” I said.
“Exactly what it was. So I decided to do something to help those kids instead of writing for the newspaper and joined the ambulance corps. A lot of writers did. Met one named John Dos Passos who’s from here. He told me Chicago’s a good city for socialists. If anything will make you a socialist, it’s war.” Landfors had already been a member of that party long before the war. “Industrialists make money by selling the weapons. Politicians and generals get the headlines and the glory. And the kids, they go into the trenches and come out on stretchers—if they come out at all.” It sounded like he was already composing a pamphlet. “So I decided to come back and work for the socialist cause.”
“Things have really changed here while you been gone, Karl. It’s crazy. This might not be the best time to be a socialist. Not openly. You can go to jail for it. Eugene Debs did, under the Espionage Act, just for giving a speech.” Debs was the Socialists’ perennial candidate for president and something of a hero to Landfors.
“Then this is the time I should be speaking up. You can’t let other people decide when you can or can’t exercise your rights.”
The waiter arrived. “Your coffee,” he announced, putting a large white mug in front of each of us.
I started to protest, “But we ordered—” Then I looked into my mug. Coffee doesn’t have a head on it. Neither does ginger ale.
When I looked back up, the waiter was gone.
“Cheers,” said Karl. He took a sip from his mug. It left a purple smudge on his lip.
Oh well, no sense letting it go flat. I took a sip of the beer, my first in many months. It was as good—better—than I remembered.
I tried again to warn Landfors about what was happening in the country. I repeated some of the things Hans Fohl had told me about books and music being banned and a symphony conductor being imprisoned.
“Land of the free,” Landfors said derisively.
“Even pretzels can get you in trouble.”
“You got to be kidding.”
“No. Somebody put pretzels in the concession stands at Cubs Park. The papers crucified Charles Weeghman for it.”
The waiter whisked up to us again, almost throwing our dinners in front of us. “Today’s specialty: whale steak.” He winked and hurried away.
The T-bones were still sizzling and had sliced potatoes heaped around them.
We started cutting into our steaks. “Actually,” I said. “Weeghman is convinced that somebody’s trying to put him out of business.”
“Really?” Landfors sounded no more than mildly interested.
“Yeah. And he wants me to investigate.”
“You going to?”
“Just enough to keep him off my back. He thinks one of the other Cub owners, William Wrigley, is trying to take over the club.”
“And you don’t.” Landfors had caught the skepticism in my tone.
“No.”
“You talk to Wrigley?”
I swallowed a piece of steak. “Uh-uh. No need to. There might be somebody trying to hurt the club but not one of the other owners. If fans don’t come to the park, they all lose money. No, if one of them wanted to hurt Weeghman, they’d go after his restaurants.”
“He has restaurants?”
“About twenty of them, a whole chain. ‘Weeghman’s Cafes’ is the name. That’s where he made his money. You remember the Federal League?”
“Sure. Outlaw league. Nineteen-fourteen, right?”
“And ‘fifteen, but you were in Europe by then. Anyway, Weeghman was one of the big shots behind the league. Helped finance the operation with money from his cafes. The sporting papers called the Federal League ‘the flapjack circuit’ because of it. He owned the Chicago Whales in the new league, got Joe Tinker to manage and play shortstop, Three Finger Brown to pitch.” In answer to Landfors’ blank look, I explained that Tinker and Brown were star players. “And he built Cubs Park—it was Weeghman Park then—for the new club.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So, anyway, if somebody wanted to take over the Cubs, they’d sabotage his cafe business, not the team. The restaurants aren’t doing well anyway. Not many people can afford to go out to eat anymore.”
