by Rick Wilber
My Kingdom for Jones
Wilbur Schramm
THE FIRST DAY JONES played third base for Brooklyn was like the day Galileo turned his telescope on the planets or Columbus sailed back to Spain. First, people said it couldn’t be true; then they said things will never be the same.
Timothy McGuire, of the Brooklyn Eagle, told me how he felt the first time he saw Jones. He said that if a bird had stepped out of a cuckoo clock that day and asked him what time it was, he wouldn’t have been surprised enough to blink an Irish eye. And still he knew that the whole future of baseball hung that day by a cotton thread.
Don’t ask Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis about this. He has never yet admitted publicly that Jones ever played for Brooklyn. He has good reason not to. But ask an old-time sports writer. Ask Tim McGuire.
It happened so long ago it was even before Mr. Roosevelt became President. It was a lazy Georgia spring afternoon, the first time McGuire and I saw Jones. There was a light-footed little breeze and just enough haze to keep the sun from burning The air was full of fresh-cut grass, wisteria, fruit blossoms, and the ping of baseballs on well-oiled mitts. Everyone in Georgia knows that the only sensible thing to do on an afternoon like that is sleep. If you can’t do that, if you are a baseball writer down from New York to cover Brooklyn’s spring-training camp, you can stretch out on the grass and raise yourself every hour or so on one elbow to steal a glance at fielding practice. That was what we were doing— meanwhile amusing ourselves halfheartedly with a game involving small cubes and numbers—when we first saw Jones.
The Times wasn’t there. Even in those days they were keeping their sports staff at home to study for Information Please. But four of us were down from the New York papers—the World, the Herald, Tim, and I. I can even remember what we were talking about.
I was asking the World, “How do they look to you?”
“Pitchers and no punch,” the World said. “No big bats. No great fielders. No Honus Wagner. No Hal Chase. No Ty Cobb.”
“No Tinker to Evers to Chance,” said the Herald. “Seven come to Susy,” he added soothingly, blowing on his hands.
“What’s your angle today?” the World asked Tim.
Tim doesn’t remember exactly how he answered. To the best of my knowledge, he merely said, “Ulk.” It occurred to me that the Brooklyn Eagle was usually more eloquent than that, but the Southern weather must have slowed up my reaction.
The World said, “What?”
“There’s a sorsh,” Tim said in a weak, strangled sort of voice—“a horse . . . on third . . . base.”
“Why don’t they chase it off?” said the Herald impatiently. “Your dice.”
“They don’t. . . want to,” Tim said in that funny voice.
I glanced up at Tim then. Now Tim, as you probably remember, was built from the same blueprints as a truck, with a magnificent red nose for a headlight. But when I looked at him, all the color was draining out of that nose slowly, from top to bottom, like turning off a gas mantle. I should estimate Tim was, at the moment, the whitest McGuire in four generations.
Then I looked over my shoulder to see where Tim was staring. He was the only one of us facing the ball diamond. I looked for some time. Then I tapped the World on the back.
“Pardon me,” I asked politely, “do you notice anything unusual?”
“If you refer to my luck,” said the World, “it’s the same pitiful kind I’ve had since Christmas.”
“Look at the infield,” I suggested.
“Hey,” said the Herald, “if you don’t want the dice, give them to me.”
“I know this can’t be true,” mused the World, “but I could swear I see a horse on third base.”
The Herald climbed to his feet with some effort. He was built in the days when there was no shortage of materials.
“If the only way to get you guys to put your minds on this game is to chase that horse off the field,” he said testily, “I’ll do it myself.”
He started toward the infield, rubbed his eyes, and fainted dead away.
“I had the queerest dream,” he said, when we revived him. “I dreamed there was a horse playing third base. My God!” he shouted, glancing toward the diamond. “I’m still asleep!”
That is, word for word, what happened the first day Jones played third base for Brooklyn. Ask McGuire.
When we felt able, we hunted up the Brooklyn manager, who was a chunky, red-haired individual with a whisper like a foghorn. A foghorn with a Brooklyn accent. His name was Pop O’Donnell.
“I see you’ve noticed,” Pop boomed defensively.
“What do you mean,” the Herald said severely, “by not notifying us you had a horse playing third base?”
“I didn’t guess you’d believe it,” Pop said.
Pop was still a little bewildered himself. He said the horse had wandered on the field that morning during practice. Someone tried to chase it off by hitting a baseball toward it. The horse calmly opened its mouth and caught the ball. Nothing could be neater.
While they were still marveling over that, the horse galloped 30 yards and took a ball almost out of the hands of an outfielder who was poised for the catch. They said Willie Keeler couldn’t have done it better. So they spent an hour hitting fungo flies—or, as some wit called them, horse flies—to the horse. Short ones, long ones, high ones, grass cutters, line drivers—it made no difference; the animal covered Dixie like the dew.
They tried the horse at second and short, but he was a little slow on the pivot when compared with men like Napoleon Lajoie. Then they tried him at third base and knew that was the right, the inevitable, place. He was a Great Wall of China. He was a flash of brown lightning. In fact, he covered half the shortstop’s territory and two-thirds of left field, and even came behind the plate to help the catcher with foul tips. The catcher got pretty sore about it. He said that anybody who was going to steal his easy putouts would have to wear an umpire’s uniform like the other thieves.
“Can he hit?” asked the World.
“See for yourself,” Pop O’Donnell invited.
The Superbas—they hadn’t begun calling them the Dodgers yet—were just starting batting practice. Nap Rucker was tossing them in with that beautiful, smooth motion of his, and the horse was at bat. He met the first ball on the nose and smashed it into left field. He laid down a bunt that waddled like a turtle along the base line. He sizzled a liner over second like a clothesline.
“What a story!” said the World.
“I wonder” said the Herald. “I wonder how good it is.”
We stared at him.
“I wouldn’t say it is quite as good as the sinking of the Maine, if you mean that,” said Tim.
“I wonder how many people are going to believe it,” said the Herald.
“I’ll race you to the phone,” Tim said.
Tim won. He admits he had a long start. Twenty minutes later he came back, walking slowly.
“I wish to announce,” he said, “that I have been insulted by my editor and am no longer connected with the Brooklyn Eagle. If I can prove that I am sober tomorrow, they may hire me back,” he added.
“You see what I mean,” said the Herald.
We all filed telegraph stories about the horse. We swore that every word was true. We said it was a turning point in baseball. Two of us mentioned Columbus; and one, Galileo. In return, we got advice.
THESE TROUBLED TIMES, NEWSPAPERS NO SPACE FOR FICTION. EXPENSE ACCOUNT NO PROVISION DRUNKEN LEVITY, the Heralds wire read. The World read, ACCURACY, ACCURACY, ACCURACY, followed by three exclamation points, and signed “Joseph Pulitzer.” CHARGING YOUR TELEGRAM RE BROOKLYN HORSE TO YOUR SALARY, my wire said. THAT’S A HORSE ON YOU!
Have you ever thought what you would do with a purple cow if you had one? I know. You would paint it over. We had a horse that could play third base, and all we could do was sit in the middle of Georgia and cuss our editors. I blame the editors. It is their fault that for the last 30 years you h
ave had to go to smoking rooms or Pullman cars to hear about Jones.
But I don’t blame them entirely, either. My first question would have been: How on earth can a horse possibly bat and throw? That’s what the editors wondered. It’s hard to explain. It’s something you have to see to believe—like dogfish and political conventions.
And I’ve got to admit that the next morning we sat around and asked one another whether we really had seen a horse playing third base. Pop O’Donnell confessed that when he woke up he said to himself, “It must be shrimp that makes me dream about horses.” Then all of us went down to the park, not really knowing whether we would see a horse there or not.
We asked Pop was he going to use the horse in games.
“I don’t know,” he thundered musingly. “I wonder. There are many angles. I don’t know,” he said, pulling at his chin.
That afternoon the Cubs, the world champs, came for an exhibition game. A chap from Pennsylvania—I forget his name—played third base for Brooklyn, and the horse grazed quietly beside the dugout. Going into the eighth, the Cubs were ahead, 2—0, and Three-Finger Brown was tying Brooklyn in knots. A curve would come over, then a fast one inside, and then the drop, and the Superbas would beat the air or hit puny little rollers to the infield, which Tinker or Evers would grab up and toss like a beanbag to Frank Chance. It was sickening. But in the eighth, Maloney got on base on an error, and Jordan walked. Then Lumley went down swinging, and Lewis watched perfect ones sail past him. The horse still was grazing over by the Brooklyn dugout.
“Put in the horse!” Frank Chance yelled. The Cubs laughed themselves sick.
Pop O’Donnell looked at Chance, and then at the horse, and back at Chance, as though he had made up his mind about something. “Go in there, son, and get a hit,” he said. “Watch out for the curve.” “Coive,” Pop said.
The horse picked up a bat and cantered out to the plate.
“Pinch hitting for Batch,” announced the umpire dreamily, “this horse.” A second later he shook himself violently. “What am I saying?” he shouted.
On the Cubs’ bench, every jaw had dropped somewhere around the owner’s waist. Chance jumped to his feet, his face muscles worked like a coffee grinder, but nothing came out. It was the only time in baseball history, so far as I can find out, that Frank Chance was ever without words.
When he finally pulled himself together he argued, with a good deal of punctuation, that there was no rule saying you could play a horse in the big leagues. Pop roared quietly that there was no rule saying you couldn’t, either. They stood there nose to nose, Pop firing methodically like a cannon and Chance crackling like a machine gun. Chance gave up too easily. He was probably a little stunned. He said that he was used to seeing queer things in Brooklyn, anyway. Pop O’Donnell just smiled grimly.
Well, that was Jones’ first game for Brooklyn. It could have been a reel out of a movie. There was that great infield—Steinfeldt, Tinker, Evers, and Chance—so precise, so much a machine that any ball hit on the ground was like an apple into a sorter. The infield was so famous that not many people remember Sheckard. Slagle, and Schulte in the outfield, but the teams of that day knew them. Behind the plate was Johnny Kling, who could rifle a ball to second like an 88-mm cannon. And on the mound stood Three-Finger Brown, whose drop faded away as though someone were pulling it back with a string.
Brown took a long time getting ready. His hand shook a little, and the first one he threw was 10 feet over Kling’s head into the grandstand. Maloney and Jordan advanced to second and third. Brown threw the next one in the dirt. Then he calmed down, grooved one, and whistled a curve in around the withers.
“The glue works for you, Dobbin!” yelled Chance, feeling more like himself. Pop O’Donnell was mopping his forehead.
The next pitch came in fast, over the outside corner. The horse was waiting. He leaned into it. The ball whined all the way to the fence, Ted Williams was the only player I ever saw hit one like it. When Slagle finally got to the ball, the two runners had scored and the horse was on third. Brown’s next pitch got a few yards away from Kling, and the horse stole home in a cloud of dust, all four feet flying. He got up, dusted himself off, looked at Chance, and gave a horselaugh.
If this sounds queer, remember that queerer things happen in Brooklyn every
day.
“How do we write this one up?” asked the Herald. “We can’t put just ‘a horse’ in the box score.”
That was when the horse got his name. We named him Jones, after Jones, the caretaker who had left the gate open so he could wander onto the field. We wrote about “Horse” Jones.
Next day we all chuckled at a banner headline in one of the metropolitan papers. It read: JONES PUTS NEW KICK IN BROOKLYN.
Look in the old box scores. Jones got two hits off Rube Waddell of Philadelphia and three off Cy Young of Boston. He pounded Eddie Plank and Iron Man McGinnity and Wild Bill Donovan. He robbed Honus Wagner of a hit that would have been a double against any other third baseman in the league. On the base paths he was a bullet.
Our papers began to wire us, WHERE DOES JONES COME FROM? SEND BACKGROUND, HUMAN INTEREST, INTERVIEW That was a harder assignment than New York knew. We decided by a gentlemen’s agreement that Jones must have come from Kentucky and got his first experience in a Blue Grass league. That sounded reasonable enough. We said he was long-faced, long-legged, dark, a vegetarian, and a nonsmoker. That was true. We said he was a horse for work and ate like a horse. That was self-evident. Interviewing was a little harder.
Poor Pop O’Donnell for 10 years had wanted a third baseman who could hit hard enough to dent a cream puff. Now that he had one, he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. Purple-cow trouble. “Poiple,” Pop would have said.
One of his first worries was paying for Jones. A strapping big farmer appeared at the clubhouse, saying he wanted either his horse or $50,000.
Pop excused himself, checked the team’s bank balance, and then came back.
“What color is your horse?” he asked.
The farmer thought a minute. “Dapple gray,” he said.
“Good afternoon, my man,” Pop boomed unctuously, holding open the door. “That’s a horse of another color.” Jones was brown.
There were some audience incidents, too. Jonathan Daniels of Raleigh, North Carolina, told me that as a small boy that season he saw a whole row of elderly ladies bustle into their box seats, take one look toward third base, look questioningly at one another, twitter about the sun being hot, and walk out. Georgia police records show at least five people, cold sober, came to the ballpark and were afraid to drive their own cars home. The American medical journals of that year discovered a new psychoneurosis that they said was doubtless caused by a feeling of insecurity resulting from the replacement of the horse by the horseless carriage. It usually took the form of hallucination—the sensation of seeing a horse sitting in a baseball players’ bench.
Perhaps that was the reason a famous pitcher, who shall here go nameless, came to town with his team, took one incredulous look at the Brooklyn fielding practice, and went to his manager, offering to pay a fine.
But the real trouble was about whether horses should be allowed to play baseball. After the first shock, teams were generally amused at the idea of playing against a horse. But after Jones had batted their star pitchers out of the box, they said the Humane Society ought to protect the poor Brooklyn horse.
The storm that brewed in the South that spring was like nothing except the storm that gathered in 1860. Every hotel that housed baseball players housed a potential civil war. The better orators argued that the right to play baseball should not be separated from the righ t to vote or the responsibility of fighting for one’s country. The more practical ones said a few more horses like Jones and they wouldn’t have any jobs left. Still others said that this was probably just another bureaucratic trick on the part of the Administration.
Even the Brooklyn players protested. A committee of them
came to see ol’ Pop O’Donnell. They said wasn’t baseball a game for human beings? Pop said he had always had doubts as to whether some major-league players were human or not. They said touche, and this is all right so long as it is a one-horse business, so to speak. But if it goes on, before long won’t a man have to grow two more legs and a tail before he can get in? They asked Pop how he would like to manage the Brooklyn Percherons, instead of the Brooklyn Superbas? They said, what would happen to baseball if it became a game for animals—say giraffes on one team, trained seals on a second, and monkeys on a third? They pointed out that monkeys had already got a foot in the door by being used to dodge baseballs in carnivals. How would Pop like to manage a team of monkeys called the Brooklyn Dodgers, they asked.
Pop said heaven help anyone who has to manage a team called the Brooklyn Dodgers. Then he pointed out that Brooklyn hadn’t lost an exhibition game and that the horse was leading the league in batting with a solid .516. He asked whether they would rather have a World Series or a two-legged third baseman. They went on muttering.
But his chief worry was Jones himself.
“That horse hasn’t got his mind on the game,” he told us one night on the hotel veranda.
“Ah, Pop, it’s just horseplay,” said the World, winking.
“Nope, he hasn’t got his heart in it,” said Pop, his voice echoing lightly off the distant mountains. “He comes just in time for practice and runs the minute it’s over. There’s something on that horse’s mind.”
