by Darryl Brock
Sweasy dropped the ball!
He scrambled, picked it up, threw desperately to Allison. Too late. Ferguson crossed the plate and was carried from the field by his teammates. Brooklyn went crazy. And an eighty-four-game win streak came to an end.
Eleven innings. 7—8.
Sweasy, you son of a bitch, I thought. But then I felt sorry, knowing how wretched he must have felt. I was sorry for all of them.
Champion sent a telegram home: “Our boys did nobly, but fortune was against us. Though beaten, not disgraced.” The newspaper said that he cried in his room that night.
It wasn’t the same afterward. George hurt his leg and the Stockings dropped more games—including narrow losses to Chicago’s new White Stockings and our old hungry rivals, the Rockford Forest Citys—and ended at 68—6.
A sensational record for anybody else. But not the Stockings. At the end of the season there was mention of discord among the players and even instances of open drinking—it wasn’t hard to figure who—and an alleged conspiracy by the Wrights to force salaries higher. In the end the club decided it was all too wearying and expensive; they voted to return to amateur status. Harry and George went on to Boston with Mac and Gould and, later, Andy. The others played for Washington in the first year of the new Professional Association.
And so it all came apart.
In late May of 1870, the front pages of the Enquirer were filled with the Fenians’ invasion of Canada. Troop movements were reported from dozens of American cities. General O’Neill personally led the assault. I read every syllable of the Cincinnati coverage, praying I wouldn’t see Cait’s name among those killed, assuring myself that a woman wouldn’t have been permitted near the fighting. I wondered what she and Timmy had done . . . were doing.
The unlikely invasion had a comic-opera end. O’Neill’s advance force ran into withering fire from thirteen thousand alerted Canadian militiamen. Grant, disappointing the Fenians’ hopes as he had the gold bulls’, issued a proclamation forbidding American citizens to violate the neutrality laws. When O’Neill regrouped his men and moved back to his own lines, a United States marshal calmly entered his quarters and ordered him at gunpoint into a waiting carriage. O’Neill was driven ignobly through his own army to prison. Within a few days the operation collapsed.
In Leslie’s an engraving depicted the capture. There was O’Neill as I remembered him in Cait’s parlor: round-faced and black-browed, with a drooping mustache; he wore his officer’s tunic, IRA visible on his belt buckle, gleaming spurs fixed to his high boots. All dressed for war—and gazing forlornly into the barrel of his captor’s gun. In several histories I read that the debacle had exhausted the Fenians’ remaining credibility; the organization faded away. Poor Cait, I thought.
“Oh, Daddy,” complained Hope as we crossed Portsmouth Square. “Do we have to go to that old church again?”
“Not for long.” I squeezed her hand and tried to steady Susy, bucking like a pony on my shoulders. Around us Asians gambled and winos sprawled on the grass. A couple in matching polyesters studied a tourist map. I pictured the rows of saloons, the horses at the hitching rings, the old city hall frequented by portly, top-hatted, cigar-smoking men.
“Daddy, I’m talking,” Hope said.
“It’s a good place to go,” I said.
“But we see the same things every week—that mint building near where you work, then here, then the church—”
“Old St. Mary’s!” interjected Susy.
“That’s good, Suse,” I said, bouncing her.
“—then to ride the horse ‘n’ buggy,” Hope finished.“Oh, boy!” Susy bucked vigorously. “Horsey!”
“Why don’t you take us to Great America like other daddies?” Hope said.
“I will, honey.” Only five, I thought, and already she knew how to twist the knife. “But see, there’s this other kind of great America—how things used to be, how people used to live.”
“We know, Daddy,” she responded. “You tell us all the time.”
I bought ice cream cones as we walked along Grant through Chinatown. We ate them sitting on the grass in St. Mary’s Square. Across the street rose the cathedral, once the highest, most massive structure in the city. I told the girls that. They didn’t look impressed.
“What are those words?” asked Susy, pointing up at the inscription below the bell-tower clock.
“‘Son, observe the time and fly from evil,’” I read.
“What does it mean?”
“Sort of a warning,” I said. “For boys.” A row of whorehouses had stood where we were sitting. The Barbary Coast had been only a stone’s throw away.
“See all the bricks?” I said. “They came from New England. And the stones were cut in China and shipped all the way here. Those big crosses—see up on top? They weren’t put there till the church was rebuilt after the earthquake.”
“You know lots about everything, Daddy,” said Susy, her words muffled as I wiped ice cream from her chin.
“How about Marine World?” asked Hope.
“Another day,” I said. “It’s a long way out of town. Right now, let’s wait to hear the bells strike three. Did I tell you how the old bell was so loud that people all over the city told the time by it? And how the neighbors complained? How they switched to this sweet-sounding one after the earthquake?”
Both girls nodded. In a few minutes the bell chimed. I closed my eyes for a moment.
“Okay,” I said briskly. “Now, what say we hit the aquarium in Golden Gate Park. Then a coach ride. Who knows, maybe you’ll be handling one someday. Have you noticed all the drivers are women?”
“Okay, Daddy,” said Hope, resigned.
Later, as sunlight filtered through the trees near the Japanese Tea Garden, another fringe-topped surrey clopped past ours. I caught a momentary glimpse of its driver’s profile and my heart stopped: a pale cheek and a mass of jet hair partially caught up over a high lace collar.
Cait!
I may have yelled it. For an instant I was inside the milky radiance. Then I saw our driver swiveling in the front seat, smiling expectantly at me—she in Victorian costume, standard for the park’s carriages—as I held the girls tightly.
“Did you want something?” she said.
“That driver we just passed—do you know her?”
She leaned out and peered behind. “Sure, my friend Rosie Renard going in for her last fare.”
“Please,” I said, “would you mind . . .?”
“Following her?” The smile was less friendly.
“Yes, I think she looks—”
“Familiar?”
“More than that. Please?”
With visible reluctance she reversed direction in a turnout. The other coach had halted before the tea garden. I saw the driver step down, her booted foot reaching to the pavement from a long skirt. The jet hair was Cait’s, I was certain. She was slender, her movements graceful. Cait . . .
“Daddy, what’s the matter?” said Hope.
The woman turned as our driver called to her. With a plummeting heart I saw that her eyes were blue, her mouth too thin, her face . . . not Cait’s. I couldn’t speak. I waved our driver on.
“Are you acting funny, Daddy?” said Susy.
“Shh,” Hope told her sternly.
“What?” I said.
“Mommy says we must tell her if you start acting funny,” Susy said.
“It’s okay,” I said to Hope, who looked mortified. Disappointment burned in me, but I was surprised that the milkiness had been so close. So attainable. “That would certainly be a very good thing to tell Mommy.”
“Well, are you?” Susy persisted.
I gave her a squeeze. “Daddy’s fine.”
“Not funny?”
“No, not funny.”
I found a history of theater that included early burlesque performers. In a chapter dealing with the British Blondes I found a stagy photo of Elise Holt. She didn’t look nearly so sexy as in person.
Maybe my taste had already modernized. What shocked and saddened me were the parenthesized dates beneath her picture: 1847-1873. Twenty-two when I had known her. She died only four years after. No cause was given.
The account mentioned Holt’s feud with the Advertiser. I smiled as I remembered her encounter with Marriott.
On an impulse I looked for material on the Avitor. A thick history of California aviation offered the information that it had made the first lighter-than-air flight in the western hemisphere on July 2, 1869. Despite setbacks with creditors, Marriott and his backers had raised enough money by 1875 to push ahead with plans for an “aeroplane.” Eventually a company was formed to produce a triplane to be called the Leland Stanford. But a crushing blow fell in ’83, when the Patent Office rejected it as an impossibility. Profoundly hurt and discouraged, Marriott died the next year.
I closed the book, depressed. For the first time I realized—emotionally—that they were all dead. They had been dead for a long time. Longer than my grandparents.
Dead.
I phoned the National Baseball Library at Cooperstown and learned that they had biographical files on thousands of ball players.
“What about the early ones?” I said.
“How early?”
“The ’sixty-nine Red Stockings.”
“Oh, well, that’s a famous bunch, you know. I imagine we have more on them than most others from that era. You weren’t kidding, were you? Those are real old-timers.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” I pictured Andy, George, Mac, Allison—young, fresh-faced, exuberant, loving their music and laughter and horseplay. I felt infinitely older than all of them.
“You want copies of anything in particular sent out to you?”
“No,” I said. “I want to come and see it all myself.”
One starlit night I lay with the quilt pulled up around me, looking out my window at the Transamerica pyramid glowing even larger than usual. I remembered the Mongomery Block which had stood there. And I thought of Cait, imagining her arms around me, recalling details of our night at Gasthaus zur Rose. Mustn’t let the sense-memories slip away, I thought. They might have to last a long time.
For the first time I seriously considered writing to Hamilton County. Had a marriage certificate been issued to Caitlin Leonard? Perhaps a death certificate, if she’d remained in Cincinnati. If not, then maybe Newark. And there was Timmy, too. Not to mention the possibility of descendants still living.
I started to cry.
I knew I could never write to those places.
But a month later, taking some earned vacation time, I flew to Cooperstown. It is reputedly a charming village, but I didn’t pay much attention. I headed straight for the Baseball Hall of Fame. And my first disappointments.
The plaques of Harry and George aren’t bad—if you can believe that somebody in bronze bas-relief ever actually lived—and it was nice to discover that they were the first brothers in the Hall of Fame.
But so little remained. A single trophy ball, filthy, naturally, from 1869. Another ball—a sad relic, to me—from the Stockings’ loss to the Atlantics in 70. A few faded club ribbons that players wore on their uniform sleeves. A scattering of ornaments and badges; an Eckford banner that brought to mind the hot June afternoon we’d faced them in Williamsburg.
And that was about it. No bats, no uniforms, no trophies. What had happened to Harry’s cups and medals and plaques? To George’s already-impressive collection of silver inlaid bats and victory cups that must have grown enormous over his career?
All gone, I was told. Dispersed to relatives. Lost in fires. Gone.
I spent only one morning in the library. Apart from Harry’s and George’s files, not much existed in the individual Stockings’ folders. What I did find was more than enough.
I skipped over their baseball careers. Only George and Mac played on into the National League era to any extent, after they, with Andy and Spalding and Ross Barnes—the latter two recruited from the Rockfords—had powered Harry’s Boston Red Stockings to four consecutive Professional Association pennants.
Instead I hunted for clues as to how their lives had gone. The fragmentary information I found held few surprises. George founded a sporting-goods company, grew rich, married well, played tennis and golf and cricket, the perennial sportsman. Andy worked for him in his Boston factory.
Mac migrated west and settled in San Francisco—back home again I would phone every McVey in the book but find none related—where he played ball and married; in the ’06 quake his wife was badly injured; there is a touching 1914 letter in his file, written by Allison, then living in Washington, appealing to the National League for aid and medical care on Mac’s behalf, saying a mine accident had left the former star “down and out.”
Waterman and Brainard each married Cincinnati women and eventually deserted them. Sweasy got into trouble on several ball clubs, developed rheumatism that ended his career, and became a huckster in Newark. Gould and Waterman spent their later days in Cincinnati’s West End, scene of their greatest glory, holding menial jobs for the most part. Hurley—how glad I was to find a clipping about him!—played briefly with the Washington Olympics, then drifted home to Honesdale, Pennsylvania, after “getting in dutch” in pro ball, according to hometown sources, who admitted him to be “quite a boozer.” He taught school for a while, captained the Honesdale ball club, and held down second base for years. He was still alive in 1903, the last mention of him.
My old nemesis, Will Craver, was kicked out of baseball permanently for crooked dealings. I couldn’t muster much sympathy.
In 1919, exactly half a century after the establishment of professional baseball, the Cincinnati Reds hosted the World Series opener at Redland Field. Matched against them were Chicago’s White Sox—soon the infamous Black Sox. Guests of honor were George Wright, Cal McVey, and Oak Taylor: the only surviving Stockings. I thought I could imagine some of what they must have felt that day, proud relics of another time.
And even then, fifty years later, the crowd had stood and roared for Captain Harry’s boys. . . .
Reading of their deaths devastated me.
Brainard went first, of pneumonia, in Denver, where he was a saloon keeper. He died in 1888—year of the Great Blizzard—only forty-seven.
Harry went in 1895, at age sixty, after a long illness; beloved and respected to the end, his passing prompted “Harry Wright Day” in ballparks across the nation.
Champion died within a month of Harry.
Waterman went in ’99.
And then Andy, in 1903, in Roxbury. I held a copy of his death certificate with trembling fingers. Gastric ulcer. Fifty-seven. A Boston Herald obit said he was survived by his wife and several grown children. There was a picture: I stared at a much older Andy, with full mustache, fleshy cheeks, receding hairline. My God.
Sweasy went in 1908.Allison in 1916.
Gould in 1917.
Mac in 1926.
George was the last, passing peacefully in Boston, August 21,1937. Ninety years old. In baseball, Joe DiMaggio was already in his sophomore season. My grandparents were still fairly young, my parents only teenagers. And George had still been living.
I rose and moved blindly toward the door.
“Something wrong?” asked the young assistant who had helped me find what I wanted.
“They’re all dead,” I blurted.
As I pushed through the door she said, “I’m sorry.”
For a long time I was bummed, preoccupied with death and dying. It got so bad that I went back to see Sjoberg. I really thought I was going off the deep end. He told me my morbid period was actually a sign of growing health. Grief represented a stage of acceptance and accommodation following disbelief and anger. I was getting in touch with myself.
And just what was I coming to accept? My friends’ deaths? No, he said, the distinction between that reality and this. His meaning was clear: I was finally distinguishing the here and now as opposed to my time-travel d
elusion.
What about Cait, then? Why hadn’t I chased down every trace of her?
Still protecting in some areas, he said. To be expected.
Protecting what?
Innocence, ideals, he suggested. The cherished idea of a pure and blameless mother. One I (conveniently) had not known and therefore found easier to love and protect. At a distance. As with Cait.
What the hell was I accepting, then, my father?
Yes, perhaps. Coming to terms with an indifferent universe in which innocents suffered neglect and abandonment—sometimes even violent death.
I told him I thought it was a crock of shit.
He may have been partly right, though. My perception was changing, but not the way he thought. With the passage of time I began to realize that, from this perspective, of course they would all have to be dead now. But it wasn’t from here that I had known them or existed with them. A simple realization. But it felt profound.
And something more dramatic was happening too. On several more occasions I mistook women for Cait. Each time the whitish light broke around me, and each time it seemed more accessible. Discovering it wasn’t Cait became less agonizing with the awareness that the line between that reality and this was blurring, becoming somehow navigable. I didn’t understand the process, but I felt that I was slowly gaining control of it.
What made me surer was seeing Clara Antonia. Not mistaking somebody for her. Seeing her. I was entering the Chronicle building one evening when I heard my name called. I turned and saw her waving to me from in front of the Old Mint. I recognized her instantly, even in conservative wool business suit and running shoes. She looked a bit thinner, though her face was still on the pudgy side and fringed with little ringlets. I grinned and returned her wave. When I took a step toward her she turned and walked around the corner. I didn’t try to follow.
A validation, I thought. And a promise.
As for baseball, I occasionally watched games on TV till I got too bored. Once I went out to Candlestick with guys from work, but the amplified sound bothered me. So did the slow pace, the players’ stylized posturings, the elaborate equipment, the succession of specialists. The professionalization of the sport—a process refined by Harry and Champion—had come too far in my view. Give me teams who sing as they ride to the ballpark in horse-drawn, pennant-bedecked wagons. Who play with spirit and sit down to banquets with opponents afterward.