by Darryl Brock
By four we were ready to play. The contest boiled down to our hitting against the Nats’ fielding. They contained us fairly well but mounted no offensive threat. Not a single Nat reached second base until the fifth inning, and by then we were up 13-0.
It was about then that we began showboating.
Told that a slugger had plunked an omnibus in the street outside the ballpark the previous year, George said that wasn’t so much. He promptly smashed a drive over the fence in left center. That set the tone for the rest of the afternoon, everybody but Andy and Harry muscling up. As a consequence the Nats’ left fielder, one Sy “War-horse” Studley, hauled in fly after fly. But George powered another homer, and we won easily, 24-8.
Saturday dawned cloudy and threatening. The Nats showed up with a coach drawn by six horses draped in robelike ornamental skirts called caparisons, which made them look as if they’d clopped out of a medieval pageant. Our escorts looked a bit smug and secretive as we pulled up at the White House. I assumed we were in for a long-winded tour as a clerk ushered us into a large office. There, to my surprise, behind an oversized desk, smoking a cigar nearly as dark as his wrinkled black suit, sat President. Ulysses S. Grant.
He was smaller and grayer than I expected. The hero of Vicksburg and bludgeoner of Lee’s armies, sworn in as President only three months ago, he was destined to become one of the worst in history—epic achievements all. His washed-out gray-blue eyes regarded us blandly, betraying nothing but a fleeting hint of humor when he said, “I believe you warmed the Washington boys somewhat yesterday.” His thin voice had a heavy smoker’s rasp. All in all, I thought, he’d make a fine wax figure.
Champion introduced us. Grant’s fingers brushed mine and his pale eyes flicked on to Andy, no sign in them that I had registered. It felt strange to tower over a war hero. I noticed that Grant’s movements were awkward and tentative. When Champion invited him to our game, Grant mumbled, “Schedule . . . time.” Still puffing his cigar, he moved vaguely toward the door and nodded as we filed out. I realized that he was enormously popular, like Eisenhower after World War II. But this guy had zero charisma. TV would have stopped him cold. In the Capitol Building we listened to a Congressman from Indiana argue for more western roads. The Library of Congress, lacking a building of its own, was currently housed there also. We visited the Patent Office, located in the Interior Department even though that too was unfinished—a condition that characterized much of the city. There George led the rest in gaping at marvels of steel and steam: engines and boilers and mechanized loaders; telegraphs and steamboats. They were all so hungry for progress, so certain it would come. Had I described electric light and power, radio and TV, phones, cars, jets, and all the rest, they’d probably just nod sagely and tell me their futuristic visions—including space shots. Hadn’t Jules Verne published A Trip to the Moon four years earlier?
Grant did not show up that afternoon, when we led the Olympics only 4-0 after four innings. Their pitcher teased grounders from us which their five-foot-four shortstop, Davy Force, ate up. In the fifth a steady downpour began. To our disgust Champion and Harry agreed to a replay on Monday. That meant two more days before heading home.
On Sunday we took a trip down the Potomac. I was surprised to see Mt. Vernon badly in need of paint and portions of Alexandria still war-damaged. Virginia was technically outside the Union, not yet readmitted under the Radicals’ reconstruction plan. The home state of Jefferson and Washington was subjugated territory, under military rule.
As we powered back upriver I came across Harry, standing alone near the stern, holding several envelopes and looking subdued. “Bad news?” I said.
“No, just reading Carrie’s old letters. Haven’t gotten another since Philadelphia. Touring is hard on a family, and Sabbaths are the worst.”
I nodded, aware that baseball was not played anywhere in America on Sundays. Harry had several children by a previous marriage. I presumed that his first wife had died, but I wasn’t sure; nobody spoke of her. When he’d remarried at the end of the previous season, the Stockings presented him with a hundred-dollar bond wrapped around a gold watch and a medal bearing all their names. According to Allison, Captain Harry had actually been teary-eyed—a dramatic break from his usual stoic persona.
“What’s she like?” I asked.
“Carrie?” He sounded surprised, then spoke slowly. “Why, she’s the truest wife a man could have, a servant in my home and queen in my heart.” His voice throbbed. “To my mind she embodies the noblest elements of the human spirit. She promises the highest I can hope. She purges what is dark within me, strengthens what is failing.”
He meant every syllable. I looked away, embarrassed, thinking that it might have been Twain carrying on about his Livy. Willingly or not, women in this time perched on incredible pedestals.
“And your people, Sam? I understand from Andy that you have family in Frisco.”
“Had,” I said. “I’m on my own now.”
“You didn’t desert them?” he said sharply.“No, circumstances forced a . . . separation.”
It must have sounded forlorn. His brown eyes warmed with sympathy. “You’re welcome to visit our home, Sam. As often as you like. My daughters love to see the nine.” Daughters. The word sliced into me. “I’d like that, Harry, very much.”
He put his hand on my shoulder. The river sparkled around us, radiant and poignant.
Monday, June 28, marked exactly four weeks since I’d come back in time. The Stockings toured Arlington that morning. I didn’t go. I’d heard enough about the glorious military dead. And I didn’t want to be reminded of coming attractions: JFK’s eternal flame, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, fields of white crosses from future slaughters.
That afternoon, again swinging for the fences, we scored sixteen runs on twenty-three hits. George belted another homer and a double. Brainard limited the Olympics to five runs on five hits. But we were victims of the game’s outstanding play. Their left fielder caught Gould’s deep drive going away, then his bullet peg nailed Mac loafing to the plate. George, trying to distract the Olympics by taking off from first, was then gunned down at third. Triple play! Harry looked ready to puke.
The B & 0 run to Wheeling took nearly twenty-four hours. Hurley and I lost forty dollars playing whist—this time real, not imaginary dollars—to Brainard and Waterman. Worse yet, Hurley was broke; I had to cover our losses.
At the Pittsburgh depot Champion bought a stack of the latest Harper’s Weekly. Inside was a full-page engraving of the team, made from the Newark portrait. We debated who’d come out worst. Waterman looked like he’d discovered a turd in his pocket; Hurley was a glowering psychopath, George a propped-up dummy, and Allison, Mac, Andy, and Sweasy a row of moronic moon faces.
We stopped long enough in West Virginia to demolish Wheeling’s hapless Baltics, 44-0. George went eight for eight with two doubles, two triples, and seven steals. Allison, swinging from his heels, smacked two home runs and Andy one. We were on a power binge.
The Ohio was turgid and yellow, a silt-choked current that disappointed my romantic visions. We ferried across and boarded another train at Bellaire for the final run to Cincinnati.
“What’s Sam’s averages?” Andy asked Millar, who was preparing Harry’s stat totals for press distribution.
“Easy to figure,” I said. “I only had the one double in Baltimore. Course, that bunt against the Haymakers should have boosted my batting average to six sixty-seven.”
“Whoa,” said George. “Boosted your what average to what?”
I elaborated the obvious: one hit in three turns, .333.
“Where’d you get that notion?” George demanded.
“That’s not the right way,” Andy said, and explained that a player’s run total was divided by the number of games he played. The result was expressed in terms of “average and over.” “For example,” he said, turning to Millar, “what’re my striking averages?”
The reporter thumbed through t
he sheets. “Three and forty-five,” he said. “Against two and thirty-three. Third highest on the regulars.”
“What’s this against business?” I asked.
“You compare your runs average against your outs, or ‘hands lost’ average,” Andy replied. “I’m averaging three runs and forty-five over —that is, three point forty-five runs against two outs and thirty-three over. Let’s take you; how many times’d you make your run?”
“Just once.”
“So in three games you’re averaging oh and thirty-three runs against oh and sixty-seven outs. Not good, but you ain’t had much chance.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard!”
“Tell him who leads the nine,” said George, grinning.
“You tell him,” Brainard snapped, several seats away. “You puff your figures in your head before a match is even done.”
George looked grim but said nothing. I began to wonder if the club was still big enough for two stars.
Millar said, “George leads the strikers with five and one against two and five. He also leads in making his base at four and twenty.”
“How many times up?” I said, getting out a pencil. “How many hits?”
“One hundred twenty-seven striking opportunities,” Millar said. “Eighty-six safe blows.”
I figured George’s batting average. Jesus, .677. “How many homers?”
Millar counted. “Five on tour, twelve in all.”
Twelve homers in twenty-four games. Against top competition. No other Stocking had half that many. George was a Babe Ruth in his own era, no doubt about it.
“This runs-against-outs business,” I argued, “doesn’t allow for all the times you hit but don’t score, or drive in runs, or score on errors. All it reflects is whether you stepped on the plate.”
“That’s the object,” said Andy. “How many outs it takes to score how many runs. All the rest is trimmings. A ballist’s freezin’ to make his run every time up. Harry’s averages tell how often he did it. But accordin’ to your way, all that’s required is gettin’ to first. Why go any farther?”
Well, he had a point. Sort of. “Another crazy thing,” I said. “You guys count an out against a forced runner instead of the hitter who forced him.”
“But it’s the runner who’s out” said George. “Got to show in his averages.”
“Even when it’s not his fault?”
“Able runners don’t get forced so often—for one thing they’ll steal the base to prevent it. So that shows up in the averages too.”
Stymied, I decided to let it drop.
Later Millar proudly showed me his homecoming article for the Commercial. It began:
God’s noblest work is a perfectly developed man of refinement and education To demonstrate this was one of the designs of the tour.
What tripe, I thought, and scanned the rest. Millar lavished praise on our “wholesomeness”—either he was blind or a hypocrite if he hadn’t noticed behavior incongruous with “wholesomeness” on the part of certain Stockings—and he gushed about the record crowds in the East, the turnout of respectable ladies and gentlemen, the audience with Grant, and finally trumpeted, “A new era has dawned upon baseballdom. . . .”
“Nice work,” I told him. “Very laudatory.”
Glasses glinting in the lamplight, Millar looked quite pleased.
I didn’t sleep much that night. Partly it was the train’s jouncing; partly the knowledge that a new phase of my life would begin the next day. I lay in my berth watching the curtains sway, trying to think about what I wanted to do. Gradually a plan took shape. I decided to broach it to Harry and Champion in hopes of extending what little continuity I knew in this strange existence. As I lay there it seemed that the railway car was like my life—being rushed through the darkness by an engine of fate toward whatever waited ahead.
The hoopla began at Loveland, twenty miles outside the city. A delegation flushed with our victories and their own liquor swarmed aboard. I was ignored until Harry introduced me as the savior of the Haymaker match, then was welcomed as a companion in arms. Cincinnati awaited us in a state of frenzy, they said. One rotund backslap-per confided to me that although he didn’t know much about baseball, “Glory, but you’ve advertised the city—advertised us, sir, and helped our business, sir.” I assured him that it was my pleasure.
We curved into the city along the muddy swell of the Ohio, on which increasing numbers of vessels trailed black plumes of smoke. The air grew thick as we passed through an industrial area. Very thick. I glimpsed people holding handkerchiefs over their noses. Eyes stinging, I felt like I used to when I drove into Los Angeles.
Gesturing with sweeping flourishes at a scow carrying iron scraps below us on the river, Hurley recited sarcastically:
“The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne,
Burnt on the water. The poop was beaten gold,
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them. . . .”
Then he pretended to choke, gagging and clutching at his mouth. Champion was not amused.
“What’s that about?” I asked Andy, who explained that Cincinnati was notorious for burning a soft coal that permeated the air with soot. An hour of walking outside soiled your clothes and lined your eyes, nose, and mouth with grime; people breathed through fabric when winds didn’t ventilate the city.
When we pulled into the Little Miami Station I got a fuller picture. The city filled a bowl-shaped delta cradled between a wide bend in the river and steep encircling hills. Over it rose towers of smoke to a dark ceiling that obscured the sky.
“I didn’t imagine so many factories,” I said. “This is how I’d picture Pittsburgh or Chicago.”
“Oh, we lay all over them,” Andy said cheerfully. “Got more foundries than Pittsburgh, more hog packin’ than Chicago. They’re on the rise, but this is still Queen City, the biggest in the West.”
“I see.” I was less than thrilled by my new home.
The depot was bedlam. Thousands jammed the streets. Signs and banners waved everywhere. Currie’s Zouave Band, in bright red baggy pants, played “Hail to the Chief” as we squeezed into open carriages behind the bandwagon. I rode with Andy and Hurley. We set off through the streets. Men and boys cheered us, women and girls waved red scarves. We turned up Fourth, the city’s fashionable promenade, where crowds were even thicker in front of the expensive stores. The color red flowered everywhere. One store had fashioned an enormous C entirely of scarlet stockings. Crimson streamers floated down on us from upper stories. I’d wondered how ticker-tape parades felt to astronauts or World Series heroes. Now I had a pretty good idea.
“‘Is it not passing brave to be a king,’” Hurley quoted ironically, “‘and ride in triumph through Porkopolis?’”
“Who wrote that?” I said, thinking his tone odd.
“Marlowe,” he answered. “After a fashion.”
“You two can lay off,” Andy said. “It’s plain you’re educated.”
“Aw now, me foine lad.” Hurley’s abrupt brogue was thick as porridge. “It’s ye who’re the best of us, Andy, make no mistake.” A melancholy out of keeping with the occasion edged his voice, puzzling me.
We were deposited at the Gibson House, a newly refurbished six-story luxury hotel on Walnut, where dignitaries awaited us on a second-floor balcony. The street below was a noisy carpet of people. Windy speeches ensued, one boiler-lunged politician bellowing that our march to the sea would have made Sherman proud. Harry, George, and Brainard stepped forward to speak—only George seemed to enjoy it—and then Gould, a popular hometown figure, managed a few words. Finally Champion, at Harry’s urging, told the throng that we needed to rest before the Grand Complimentary Game that afternoon.
Since the contest was only hours away, Harry insisted that we remain at the Gibson. Brainard complained, and others echoed. I wasn’t happy either; I wanted to look around my new city. But Harry held fast, saying he
wouldn’t see his own family until after the exhibition match. Then he surprised me by announcing that Hurley and I would captain the “picked nine” against the first nine that afternoon.
He made it sound like an honor. To me, facing the Stocking starters seemed more an ordeal.
We climbed down from a pennant-bedecked omnibus. The double gates of the Union Grounds closed behind us. The crowd’s clamor was punctuated by a cannon that boomed in the outfield, lifting me six inches off the grass. We marched onto the field in a line, Caesar’s legions returning in triumph. I was coming to like this hero business.
The field was green as malachite in dazzling eighty-five-degree sunshine. It was a gorgeous ballpark, rivaled in my experience only by the Capitoline Grounds in Brooklyn. The grass was thick, the infield a pebble-free mix of dirt and clay, its drainage so good that no trace remained of earlier showers.
A wooden clubhouse rose behind the third-base stands adjoining a ladies’ pavilion known as the Grand Duchess, the two structures forming a high L behind home plate. Carriages moved on a track inside the fence. From a high platform beside the Grand Duchess’s cupola, the Zouave Band floated festive airs over the diamond. Spectator areas were awash in red: scarves and handkerchiefs fluttered; parasols waved; hats flew in the air. At fifty cents a head—not to mention the five-dollar tickets to tonight’s Grand Reception Banquet selling fast—I knew the club’s coffers must be swelling.
At three-thirty, Hurley and I joined Harry at home plate for the toss. Hearing a commotion, we turned to see a flatbed wagon carrying a bat as big as a tree. A gift of the Cincinnati Lumber Company, it proved to be twenty-seven feet long. The names of the starting nine were inscribed on it in red letters—and then: “Substitutes—Hurley and Fowler.”