by Troy Soos
“Uh, thanks,” I said, shaking his hand.
“Are you prepared, Mr. Rawlings?”
“Well, I thought I was. But tonight I’m starting to realize just how unprepared I really am.” I gave him a smile that I hoped would look self-deprecating.
“Well said, Brother Rawlings!” Timmons adopted a jolly tone. He reminded me of a minister who could threaten a man with eternal damnation one minute and the next be glad-handing him in the spirit of brotherhood. “We can certainly provide you with everything you need to protect yourself and your country.”
“Yes, I was just looking at these things. Uh, very, uh, nice.”
“And affordable.” Timmons turned to Curly Neeman. “Fine new man you’ve brought us, Brother Neeman. Well done!”
Waspface beamed at the words of approval, his pincers twisting into a smile.
Facing me again, Timmons lowered his voice. “I understand you play for the Cubs. I imagine you must have known that German boy who got shot.”
I stammered something to the effect that I did know him and tried to guess where this was heading. Had I been brought here so they could find out if Willie had told me anything? Had Willie known something about the Knights they didn’t want him to know?
I was saved by a customer. A well-dressed older man asked Timmons, “How much for the Browning automatic?”
Timmons’s face lit up. “Ah, a man who knows quality!” He dismissed Neeman and me, quickly saying, “You’ll excuse me for a minute.” Before the sentence was finished, he was already huddling with the new customer.
The question about Willie Kaiser really threw me. I’d come to find out about him, not be asked about him. I wasn’t prepared for it and decided to bail out while I had the chance.
“Damn,” I said loudly.
Curly Neeman asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Forgot I have a date tonight,” I lied. “Hate to leave, but.... Well, you know how it is.”
Neeman leered.
“Tell Mr. Timmons I’m sorry I had to go. I’ll come again though.”
“Sure,” he said, still leering. “Have fun. Give her some for me.”
“Uh, yeah, I’ll do that.”
He guffawed. “As long as it’s not Aggie O’Doul you’re seeing!”
“Hell, no,” I said, forcing a laugh at Neeman’s idea of a joke. But I’d have much rather been on a date with Agnes O’Doul than spend another minute with Curly Neeman and the Patriotic Knights of Liberty.
Chapter Twelve
As the Cubs’ train rumbled eastward through Ohio, the news rippled from seat to seat, from car to car. Secretary of War Newton D. Baker had made his decision: baseball was not an essential industry.
My gut reaction was, “Hell yes, it is,” but I knew that in the context of world affairs it very likely wasn’t. Actually, if I had the power to make the ruling, I probably would have rendered a split decision: that the national game was not an industry but was essential.
I sat in an aisle seat, pondering silently the potential impact of the news. Wally Dillard—I really had to come up with a nickname for him—was in the window seat next to me. I’d swapped seats with him while passing through Indiana in the hope that he’d be distracted by the view and quit his jabbering. It turned out that he had the ability to watch scenery and jabber at the same time.
On hearing the news, Dillard shifted topics without pausing for breath. Instead of listing all the things he wanted to see and do in Philadelphia and New York, he began worrying aloud about Secretary Baker’s ruling. “What’s gonna happen, Mickey?” he asked for the fourth time in five minutes.
“Wish I knew.”
He rattled off a succession of questions that paralleled the ones running through my own mind: Is the season now over? Are players going to be drafted? Can we play the World Series first?
I barely listened and didn’t answer him at all. The idea that major league baseball could be shut down had me almost immobilized.
I knew the war was more important than baseball. Deep down, I knew there were probably several things more important than baseball. But not to me. To me, there were four seasons in a year, and each was essential to the annual cycle of life: spring training, with its renewal of hope; the summer games, long and leisurely; the fall classic, to crown the new world’s champions; and the hot stove league in winter, to revisit glories of seasons past. To interrupt that exquisite sequence seemed a violation of nature.
Eager to sustain some hope, I tried to convince myself that the news about Baker might be mere rumor.
Fred Mitchell interrupted my deliberations with a tap on the shoulder. “Mr. Weeghman wants to see you,” the manager said.
I pulled myself up and followed Mitchell to the crowded club car at the rear of the train. With the war-time restrictions on travel, we were lucky to get passage on any kind of train, and Charles Weeghman had to forego his customary private car. Even baseball magnates had to endure some hardships this year.
Weeghman motioned me into an armchair opposite his. He was nervously smoking a long thin cigar and his sunken eyes smoldered. A folded newspaper was in his lap.
Fred Mitchell left us alone and joined Phil Douglas, Hippo Vaughn, and a couple of other Cubs in a poker game. The card players were at a table as far from Weeghman as they could get. I wasn’t sure if it was to accord him some degree of privacy or because nobody liked to sit too close to the boss.
“See the paper?” Weeghman asked the instant my posterior touched down on the seat.
“No. Heard about it. About Baker—”
“Got this at the last water stop,” he interrupted, passing me an EXTRA edition of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Most of the front page was covered by a headline that read Baseball Not Essential Says War Secretary.
So it was true. “Is that it?” I blurted. “Is the season over?”
“Not yet. We’ll appeal. Try to get an extension.” Weeghman sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than me. He paused to peel a shred of tobacco from the tip of his tongue. “That’s what I want to talk to you about,” he went on. “Don’t think you’re off the hook on that matter we discussed. In fact, you better work harder in case the season does end early.” The threat he’d made before was still there, unspoken: get results or I’ll cut you from the team and you’ll be drafted.
“I’ve been working—”
“And have you learned what Wrigley’s up to?”
“No,” I admitted. “Not yet.”
“What have you done to find out?”
“Well, I started with Willie Kaiser, like I told you before. Turns out he did have something going on in secret.”
“What?”
“He was working for Bennett Harrington in his chemical plant.”
“Why didn’t anybody tell me about that?” Weeghman demanded. “It would have been great publicity for us!” Great publicity—same thing Harrington had said. Baseball owners must all go to the same magnate school. “Would have taken the heat off Kaiser, too,” he added.
“He wasn’t doing it for publicity. He just wanted to do his part to help.”
Weeghman thought for a few minutes. I could tell he was thinking by the slow scowl that bloomed on his face. “You sure he was working for our side?”
“What do you mean?” I tried to control my anger. I knew exactly what he meant but was giving him a chance to retract it.
He passed up the opportunity. “Kaiser. That is a German name.”
“And ‘Weeghman,’ that would be?”
“Never you mind,” he roared. “I’m an American!”
The clatter of poker chips ceased and conversations broke off in mid-sentence.
“So was Willie,” I said quietly.
There was one appealing aspect to canceling the baseball season: I wouldn’t have to put up with Weeghman’s crap anymore.
Shufflin’ Phil Douglas broke the silence in the club car. “It was two bits to you, Fred,” he said. The game continued and the ch
atter resumed.
“Okay,” Weeghman finally said. “So your buddy Kaiser was a true blue patriot. What else have you done? You find out about the smoke bombs?”
I shook my head.
“The pretzels?”
“No. But I think I’m getting close,” I lied. “You know, you’re the one who’s holding me back in all this.”
“What do you mean?”
“Stop having me tailed.”
Weeghman shot me a defiant look. I wasn’t the one to be giving orders.
“It’s for your own protection,” I explained. “I might have to go places, see people, that you wouldn’t want any connection with. See?” In reality I couldn’t care less about protecting Weeghman, but it seemed a plausible reason for him to leave me alone.
He paused. “Nobody’s tailing you.”
“What about seeing me go to the church? You said—”
“The church is being watched, not you.”
“Who’s—”
“The Patriotic Knights of Liberty. They keep an eye on any gatherings of Germans, socialists, pacifists, whatever. And they sell—And they offer reports to interested parties such as myself.”
I wondered if there was anything Grand Knight Frank Timmons didn’t sell. “So you’ll let me do things my own way?” I asked.
Weeghman nodded. “Just get results. Soon.”
“You know,” I said. “It could be that Mr. Wrigley has given up. There hasn’t been anything bad happen since Willie was killed.”
“Not yet,” Weeghman sighed.
Eager to see Philadelphia, Wally Dillard went out on the town after our Saturday game with the Phillies. I let him go alone. There weren’t enough temptations in this city for him to get into any trouble.
I sat in the plush lobby of the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, examining the newspapers for more details on the Baker decision. From what I read, seventeen-year-old Wally Dillard would still have a job playing baseball. At thirty-six, so would Wicket Greene. The National League owners had decided to play out the season using only players who were below or above draft age. Along with Fred Merkle, Hippo Vaughn, and most of the other Cubs regulars, I would be going to war.
At least I wouldn’t be missing out on a World Series. American League president Ban Johnson had decreed that today’s games were to be the junior circuit’s last of the year. The 1918 American League season was now over.
This wasn’t the only baseball news in the papers. Workers at Philadelphia shipyards had gone on strike. The reason: baseball players. Ballplayers who were on shipyard payrolls but didn’t work. Instead, they played on industrial league teams while avoiding the draft. No doubt about it, the image of baseball players as heroes was taking a beating this year.
Other articles reported that Shoeless Joe Jackson was coming to Philadelphia tomorrow to speak at a Liberty Bond rally. He was working, really working, at a Delaware shipyard during the week and giving up his Sundays for the war effort. It was reassuring to know there were still some good guys around.
I folded the papers and leaned back in the leather wing chair. Over the past few years, with ballplayers getting to stay at better hotels than in the old days, I’d developed a taste for the leisurely pastime of lobby sitting—watching travelers come and go, swapping stories with other players and the occasional fan, reading the papers to see what was going on in each of the cities we visited. But even this simple pursuit was less enjoyable this season, for gamblers were starting to infest the hotel lobbies. Needing horses for the war, the government had shut down the racetracks a year ago, so the sporting types were turning their attention to baseball. It was only a matter of time, I thought, until there was a fix. A major one, more than the occasional games that Hal Chase had been throwing throughout his notorious career.
There was a crowd of gamblers in the Bellevue-Stratford, at the other end of the lobby. They were dressed in the bright plaids of their trade, the flashy clothes identifying them the way uniforms identify a baseball team. The reason they were here was to try to get inside information from the players; they wanted an edge, something to increase the chances that they’d make money on their bets.
I started thinking about what they did and why. Their objective wasn’t to harm the losing team but to profit from the winning team. Perhaps the motivation for the strange doings at Cubs Park was along the same line: not to hurt Charles Weeghman, as he thought, but because whoever was behind the sabotage had something to gain.
I’d dismissed his partners as possibilities because they would be hurt as much as he. The question I should have asked was: Who would gain if the Cubs went out of business?
There was one obvious choice, obvious but unimaginable. With two major league teams in the city, if one team folded the other would pick up its fans and its gate receipts. The Chicago White Sox. Charles Comiskey.
The crowd at the Liberty Bond rally was large enough to fill Baker Bowl, and if Sunday baseball weren’t illegal in Philadelphia, they might have been there to watch the Cubs play the Phillies. With no ballgame to entertain them, they thronged in front of Independence Hall to see and hear Shoeless Joe Jackson.
Jackson spoke through a hand-held leather megaphone, gently urging people to buy war bonds. His voice was similar to Bennett Harrington’s, soft and slow and southern. The similarity ended there; Joe Jackson didn’t have Harrington’s natural affinity for speaking in front of crowds. He shifted and fidgeted, and at times he was barely audible as he recited what must have been a painfully memorized speech filled with baseball metaphors.
I paid little attention to his words as I elbowed and sidled my way to the front of the mob. As I drew closer to him, I could see that Jackson was dressed in an expensive gray suit of conservative cut. A well-shaped charcoal fedora was on his head, and on his feet were the best wing-tip black oxfords that money could buy. In the minors he’d played one game wearing only socks, and ever since he got to the big leagues he spent a good part of his annual salary trying to live down the “Shoeless Joe” tag.
It sounded as if Jackson was coming to the end of his speech by the time I reached the line of policemen who had the speakers’ platform cordoned off.
I asked one of the officers to give Jackson a note for me.
“Get lost,” he said.
I tried another who offered to bust me over the head with his club. City of Brotherly Love indeed.
Finally one agreed to do it for a dollar. “That’s a long way to walk,” he explained. It was a reminder that prices are high in the East—a Chicago cop would have done it for two bits. I agreed and the cop promptly jacked it up another fifty cents “because I’m gonna have to read it to him, too.” I forked over the money.
It was well spent. After Jackson stepped off the back of the platform, I could see the cop reading the message to him and Jackson nodding.
A minute later, the White Sox slugger approached me. He was tall and handsome, with friendly eyes and an awkward smile. “Mickey Rawlings,” he drawled, holding out his hand. “I reckon we’re just about neighbors, you playing for the Cubs.”
It suddenly hit me that this was Joe Jackson, talking to me. I stammered something about being honored to meet him and returned his grip. No matter how many years I play major league ball, I’m always going to be star-struck by the game’s real champions. After indulging in a minute of silent hero worship, I jerked myself out of it to say, “I was wondering if I could talk to you for a minute... when you’re done here.”
“I’m done,” he said. “How about now?”
“Sure, great.”
The next speaker went into his sales pitch for Liberty Bonds.
“Let’s move out of here,” Jackson suggested.
I followed him as he worked his way to the fringe of the crowd, past admirers who called out his name and reached out to touch him. Although obviously uncomfortable, he accepted the attention graciously.
The two of us turned north on Sixth Street. With fewer people about, Jackson began to w
alk briskly with long strides. I half-trotted to keep up with him. He didn’t slow down until we crossed Market Street. “Never did like this town,” he said quietly.
“Yeah, I know. I came here to see you when you were with the Athletics, in ought-eight.” A decade before, back when they played in Columbia Park, in the aromatic part of Philadelphia known as Brewerytown.
“I only played a couple games that year.”
He’d played in five. After his first game in Philadelphia, he’d gone back home to South Carolina without bothering to tell anyone that he was leaving. After a ten-day absence, Connie Mack had talked him into coming back. He lasted four more games before going home again. But I watched him play in one of them. “Saw you hit against Walter Johnson,” I said.
“I didn’t get any hits,” Jackson said glumly. “Oh-for-four that game.” Most good hitters, most bad ones for that matter, could recall every game in which they’d faced Walter Johnson.
“Yeah, but you swung real good.”
He laughed. “With Johnson, sometimes that’s about as much as you can hope for.”
“Too bad it didn’t work out with the Athletics.”
“I felt bad about letting Mr. Mack down,” Jackson said.
“But I couldn’t live in this here city. And my teammates weren’t exactly what you’d call hospitable to me.” A Southern rookie playing in a Northern city wasn’t going to be treated kindly by his teammates.
“Ever think it might be better playing for Connie Mack than Charlie Comiskey?”
“Hell,” he snorted. “A load of buckshot in the ass is better than playing for Comiskey.”
“Say, I saw today that the American League is going to keep playing, no matter what Ban Johnson says.” The league owners were rebelling against their iron-fisted president, one more example of how the world had gone crazy.
“Comiskey’s probably behind it,” Jackson said. “Him and Johnson hate each other.”
We turned west on Race Street. On a vacant lot, between a warehouse and a boarded-up saloon, a group of boys were playing baseball. Jackson and I automatically drew to a halt to watch them.
