If I Never Get Back

by Darryl Brock

“The ladies are some for our uniform,” he said, grinning. “It’s a rouser.”

  Except for the heavy material and the jersey’s pointed lapels and long cuffed sleeves, it looked pretty standard to me.

  “What about it gets to the ladies?” I said.

  “Why, the new knickers and stockings.” He pointed to his legs. “Up to last year nobody’d seen the like. Harry says they used to call him the ‘Bearded Boy in Bloomers’ and ‘Captain of the Bloody Calves.’ But this year the Cleveland club’s already out in blue stockings, and I hear the Mutuals might switch over. You’re travelin’ with the Beau Brummells of baseball!”

  I smiled as he cracked up at his own wit. “Let me get this straight,” I said. “You guys are the first to wear baseball pants and colored sox?”

  “That’s what I’m saying—what everybody knows.” He shook his head. “Sometimes you’re way out of touch, Sam.”

  I couldn’t deny it. “Are you in a league? With a regular schedule?”

  “No, Harry and the other captains jaw about it, but right now there’s just the association—the National Association of Base Ball Players. It meets every winter to set the rules. This is the first year it’s allowed all-professional clubs.”

  “And you’re one,” I said.

  “We’re the only! The rest split up their gates and pretend they’re still amateurs. Shoot, everybody’s known for years that the top stars—like George Wright, or Al Reach of the Athletics—got paid on the sly. Ask George, he’ll tell you he’s never worked a lick outside of ball.”

  I thought I heard a note of envy. “So you’re all under contract?”

  “That’s right, signed on back before the season begun. All out in the open. Harry and George get the most, of course. Acey and Fred make out pretty good, and so on down to Mac, Hurley, Sweaze, and me—the new ones.”

  “Who’s Mac?”

  “Cal McVey, our kid right fielder. You’ll meet him. Anyhow, Mrs. Leonard’s boy Andrew ain’t chuckleheaded. I signed on for seven hundred dollars, and I’m happy as pie. Without this, I’d be sweating in some factory.”

  I had a troubling thought. “How long’s your season?”

  “April fifteenth to November fifteenth. Why?”

  Seven months. He earned only twenty-five dollars a week. My suits cost half a month’s wages. Good grief.

  “Nobody’s kicking about my play either.” Andy looked at me defiantly, his voice rising. “I may be small, but I cover my field good as any man, and if it’s pluck that—”

  A knock came, then Harry Wright’s calm voice. “Coaches are here.”

  “I’m for it!” Andy yelled, springing for the door.

  Six small carriages drawn by pairs of matched horses were lined in front. Liveried drivers perched on tiny seats above upholstered passenger benches. The tops were folded down, leaving the shallow compartments open to the sky, which showed dark cloud masses building in the west.

  I wanted to ride with Andy, but Millar guided me to the rear carriage where Champion waited with the Alerts’ officials—bewhiskered burghers who stared at my clothes—and we set off clopping and bumping and rattling up State Street.

  The ride was rougher than any auto’s. A sense of unreality overcame me again as I looked out at vendors pushing carts and shopkeepers staring from doorways and a welter of bell-ringing claxon-sounding vehicles—including several odd-looking wooden bicycles—that swarmed around us in no pattern I could discern. People were waving gaily to us. The cheery atmosphere put me in mind of a sailing regatta—and then I was seized by the wonder of it all: it was Friday, June 4, 1869! I was riding by open carriage through Rochester, going to see America’s first pro ball players!

  Shouts went up: “The Cincinnatis! The Red Stockings!” People thronged the sidewalks. The players waved to them, their uniforms bright splashes of color in the gray afternoon; they grinned at the shouts and taunts of boys in ragged knickers who chased them barefoot through the streets.

  I felt a little like a boy myself as we passed the white-foaming falls in the Genesee and angled left past Brown’s Race. As the river’s noise faded I thought I heard singing.

  “Team song,” said Millar. “Each player has a verse. Listen, they’re starting Harry’s.”

  “Our captain is a goodly man,

  And ‘Harry’ is his name.

  Whate’er he does is always ‘Wright’

  So says the voice of fame.

  And as the leader of our nine

  We think he can’t be beat,

  For in many a fight old Harry Wright

  Has saved us from defeat.”

  They broke into a booming chorus:

  “Hurrah, hurrah,

  For the noble game hurrah!

  Red Stockings all will toss the ball

  And shout our loud hurrah!”

  “Singing on their way to play ball,” I said. “Amazing!”

  “No more so,” Champion said defensively, “than men singing on their way to battle.”

  He had a point. It wasn’t more amazing than that.

  Our passage slowed as we entered Jones Square, a block-long public park lined with elms, and crowds pressed around us. I craned my neck to see the diamond.

  “How many?” Champion said suddenly.

  Millar said he guessed about three thousand.

  Champion glanced nervously at the storm clouds. “Another Yellow Springs and we’re in deep.”

  Millar explained that the tour’s opener against Antioch College, four days earlier, had been rained out—posing a problem since gate receipts had to meet travel costs.

  “You don’t have enough to cover rainouts?” I said.

  “The truth is we’re vastly in debt,” Champion replied. “We’ve borrowed against future receipts to pay the ballists while they trained. We plunged thousands into erecting a new clubhouse and stands. If this tour fails, it will spell disaster.”

  “Our grounds are the finest in the country,” Millar asserted.

  “And doubtless the most expensive,” Champion said. “The lease alone costs two thousand a year.”

  I nodded gravely; newsman on his job.

  “But beyond those concerns, Mr. Fowler, is the larger issue of whether the national game can succeed as a profession.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” I said.

  “That phrase is unfamiliar,” Champion said, a bit huffily. “As you may know, baseball with standard rules was developed by gentlemen’s sporting clubs only several decades ago. The old amateurs did all they could to keep control of their game. But its popularity during the war weakened their control, and a newer element—sharps and their ilk—brought drunkenness, brawling, and wagering to contests, the very things the old clubs feared. Of late, matches have been deliberately thrown off by players in the hold of gamblers. The game’s integrity is in grave question.”

  “Where do the Red Stockings fit in?” I asked.

  Champion smiled wanly. “So far, it appears that we threaten both amateurs and gamblers—the latter because salaried ballists are harder to bribe.”

  I nodded, wondering how much he was overdramatizing..

  “We are a novel experiment, Mr. Fowler. People, some of them unscrupulous, are watching us carefully to see whether the national game can be put on an honest business footing. That is why our men must give their very noblest performance at all times. They must be incorruptible—”

  He looked at me.

  “—and sober.”

  I got the point.

  “Don’t worry, baseball will survive,” I told him, mindful of my era’s enormous stadia, fawning media coverage, and millionaire players.

  “Your assurance is gratifying,” he said tartly.

  On a field still wet from the early downpour the Alerts warmed up, moving crisply in white uniforms with long pants bearing navy stripes that matched their flat Civil War-style caps; each tunic was emblazoned with a red A. Using both hands, they seemed to catch the ball as effortlessly and pain
lessly as if they wore gloves. How could they do that?

  “They look good,” I said to Millar. “What are our chances?”

  “Our?” He gave me a pained look. “We’ve won all six of our matches so far—three at home and three on tour—and should take this one. The Alerts are veterans, but this is only their opening game. Still, they’ll want to be the first eastern club to topple us.”

  We had been surrounded by working-class males of all ages in shapeless pants and collarless shirts. I’d seen no women among them. Closer to the diamond, things began to change. On the arms of men dressed more or less like Brainard—“swells,” Millar called them—women glided demurely, faces blurred by veils on tiny hats, torsos encased in rich, heavy, elaborate, bustled dresses; scarves fluttered about their necks, and their gloved hands brandished parasols with practiced ease.

  I stared at them, fascinated. They looked formidable, mysterious, utterly unapproachable—and desirable. Were Victorian women as repressed as they’d been made out? A fact-finding mission seemed called for. My brain concocted erotic fantasies. Even though I was still disoriented, I was undeniably horny.

  The ladies took seats with their escorts in a covered stand behind home plate. Officials herded other spectators toward what Millar called the “bull pens,” roped-off sections behind the foul lines where men stood shoulder to shoulder. Ringing the outfield behind a low fence were horse-drawn vehicles ranging from carts to omnibuses.

  I sat between Millar and Hurley at a long table outside the first-base line. Hurley, the team’s sole substitute and keeper of the score book, looked a bit healthier than he had that morning at breakfast.

  A crescendo of admiring oohs began to rise from the crowd. In the center of the diamond, four Stockings—Andy, Sweasy, Waterman, and George Wright—stood tossing a ball rapidly among themselves. It reminded me of a Harlem Globetrotter warm-up routine. The ball blurred behind their backs, around their heads, over their shoulders, under their legs, the four of them feinting, stretching, diving, laughing at their own sleight of hand, urged on by the crowd’s response: applause, delighted cries, and finally full-throated roars as George Wright capped the exhibition by hurling the ball straight overhead, higher than it seemed a ball could be thrown. He stood nonchalantly under it until the last possible instant, when, with no other movement, he cupped his bare hands and made a basket catch, waved the ball aloft with a flourish, and, joined by the others, followed it downward in a sweeping bow.

  The crowd ate it up. So did I.

  “Not bad, I’m thinkin’, for country-club lads,” said a loud voice edged with Irish brogue. “Sure an’ it’s a fact, two of the four tricksters sprang from the very soil of the Emerald Isle!”

  I looked around and saw a tall, hatless, smooth-shaven man approaching. He was almost handsome in a bluff way, with thinning red hair and the beginning of a paunch.

  “Uh-oh,” muttered Millar.

  “Who’s he?” I asked.

  “Red Jim McDermott,” said Millar. “A sharp, one of Morrissey’s crowd.”

  I pondered that as I scrutinized him. A pair of calculating baby-blue eyes belied the jovial smile.

  “. . . the same country lads that just thrashed the poor Niagras sevenfold, forty-two to six, in but seven innings!” McDermott guffawed to the Rochester reporters at the other end of the table. His style seemed to lie in delivering pronouncements at top volume, then looking around shrewdly to check reactions. His tone suggested that we were brothers in a fraternity of greed. “Worst drubbing in Buffalo ever—and by these same western eclectics, for the love of Jaysus and Mary.” His glance swept over us.

  “Our boys play a lively fielding game,” a Rochester reporter argued. “They won’t drub us.”

  “Well, now,” said McDermott, “the pool-selling lads appear to agree. They’ve set the scoring at only three to two, Reds.”

  “That so?” said the reporter, rising and starting for the third-base side. “Then I’m getting in now.”

  “And what d’ya Ohio lads think?” McDermott faced Millar. A diamond pin twinkled on his shirtfront. “You set for a tussle?”

  “We’ll play our hardest,” Millar said shortly.

  McDermott smirked. “There’s some think one or two might throw off a little today.”

  Millar stiffened. “By Jupiter, we’ll give a square account. Our boys aren’t corruptible . . . like some.”

  “Sure, an’ I’m a wee angel meself to believe it.” McDermott guffawed and looked around for support. “You’re tellin’ me Acey Brainard’s not placed a wager in his life? Nor taken a man’s honest earnings in a billiard parlor?”

  “Go ahead and bet your money,” Millar said. “It’s not our concern.”

  “Well, it’s a blunt thing to be saying.” McDermott’s smile faded as he leaned down and stared into Millar’s eyes. “But that’s exactly what I intend—and my money sure as hell won’t be on you.”

  He straightened and moved away slowly.

  “What was all that about?” I asked.

  Millar let his breath out. “Last year I wrote about McDermott and his ilk’s control of sporting events. The Clipper reprinted it in New York. I’m not his favorite.”

  “What was that three-to-two stuff?”

  “He’s betting we won’t outscore the Alerts by a ratio of three runs to two.” Millar’s pudgy jaw tightened. “I hope we lay all over ’em. I hope that loudmouthed mick loses his shirt!”

  I regarded him with new interest. I was about to ask how gamblers could operate so openly when the crowd stirred. Harry Wright and the Alert captain had selected an umpire, a respected local player. The contest was about to begin.

  I was surprised to learn that the visiting club didn’t automatically bat first. Instead, the winner of a coin toss decided. But, since nobody had thought to bring a coin, the umpire finally spat on a flat stone, flipped it in the air, and pointed to Harry. “Dry!” called Harry. It landed wet side up. The Alerts chose the field.

  I’ve watched hundreds of baseball games, but I’d never seen anything like what followed. I suppose I’d thought of old-timers as smaller, less-skilled, even comical versions of their twentieth-century counterparts. I began to get a different impression as the first inning unfolded.

  George Wright marched up to home plate—an actual iron plate, painted white—and grinned cockily at the Alerts’ pitcher. He dug in, waved his bat (“grasped the ash,” Millar would write later), and called, “Low!”

  “What’s he saying?” I asked.

  “George wants it between his knees and belt.”

  “You mean he calls his pitch?”

  “Of course. ‘High’ would mean belt to shoulders.” He explained that if the ball didn’t pass through the designated zone, the umpire would warn the pitcher and begin calling balls. The batter (Millar said “striker”) took first after three called balls, or four in all. Strikes worked the same way, with the hitter first warned, then allowed three more.

  There was no pitcher’s mound. The Rochester hurler, his sleeve rolled to reveal a brawny pitching arm, stood poised inside a four-by-six chalked box only forty-five feet from home, instead of the sixty feet six inches I was used to. He wound up elaborately, holding the ball over his head statuelike, then dipping into a submarine delivery much like a Softball pitcher’s. The new ball flashed in a barely discernible blur over the short distance. George swung and lofted a foul. The catcher, without shin guards, chest protector, mask, or mitt, was stationed a good forty feet back. The ball hit the turf far beyond his reach, but he hurled himself in a futile dive.

  “Hustle’s fine,” I said. “But that’s ridiculous.”

  Hurley turned and gave me a funny look. He said dryly, “Foul bounds are out.” Which turned out to mean any foul caught on the first bounce. Crazy rules, I thought.

  “What’s the story on their pitcher?” I asked Hurley.

  “He’s some swift,” Hurley said appreciatively. “But we fatten on swift tossing.”

>   “No, I mean why doesn’t he come in overhand?”

  Again he looked at me oddly. “That’s throwing, not pitching.”

  Millar explained that according to the rules, a pitcher’s hand couldn’t rise above his waist during the delivery, with no twists of wrist or fingers allowed.

  Which would mean no breaking balls. It didn’t take a genius to see that with those restrictions, plus hitters getting four strikes and calling their pitches, this was a wildly offensive version of the game.

  There was a sharp whack! as George lined a ball into the left-center gap.

  “He’ll make his third,” Millar said, as George rounded first with impressive speed. But the Alerts played the ball promptly and held him to a double.

  “They’re pretty quick out there,” I said.

  “The wet grass slowed the ball,” Hurley said. “Wait’ll you see Andy run, if it’s quick you want.”

  George, still grinning, stole third on the next pitch with a dirt-spilling hook slide as smoothly modern as any I’d ever seen. He scored moments later on a sacrifice fly that the center fielder juggled and nearly dropped.

  “Aren’t there a lot of errors using just your bare hands?” I asked Hurley.

  “What else’d we use?” he said. “George stunts with his cap sometimes, that what you have in mind?” He gave me the look again. “I thought Andy said you’d played.”

  “Muffs are a natural element of the game,” Millar said pontifically. “Even Harry makes a few.”

  At that moment, as if to demonstrate the point, the Alerts’ left fielder dropped Waterman’s lazy fly. The stocky Red Stocking then stole second and third, his bowed legs churning with surprising quickness, and scored on a fly before Harry grounded into the third out.

  I tracked the Stockings I knew as they took their positions: Andy sprinting to left as if he feared being late; Harry jogging to center with casual grace; Waterman straddling third, hands on hips, cheek bulging and mustache tilted by an enormous chaw; George tossing pebbles at shortstop; Sweasy crouching near second, making shrill sounds and spitting through the gap in his teeth.

  Brainard sauntered to the pitching box with a toothpick dangling from his lip and made a single warm-up toss to the Stocking catcher. He used a corkscrew motion in which his left leg twisted in front of his right, rocked back, and then came forward as his arm whipped from behind his back with impressive velocity. His follow-through, a series of dancing steps, took him to the very front of the box. The ball blurred to the plate even faster than the Rochester hurler’s had.