Zane Grey

by Thomas H. Pauly

  Shortly after this incident, Grey’s father abruptly left Zanesville and relocated to Columbus. Existing records reveal that Lewis Gray sold his residence on McIntire Terrace on October 24, 1889, and a 153-acre parcel of undeveloped land on December 4, 1889.25 “The Living Past” reports that Lewis took a trip to Washington, D.C., that same fall and was there either cheated or robbed of a large sum of money (7, 5). Ida Gray’s brief family history mentions this same disastrous loss in Washington, but claims that her father “got in with some women who fleeced him out of most of his money.”26 While this alternative explanation opens the possibility that Zane’s attraction to women was inherited,27 both explanations were almost certainly cover-ups for worse humiliation: Lewis probably lost his money in a way that compelled him to leave Zanesville. The Washington disaster that Lewis claimed is too simple and leaves too many questions unanswered. Why was he traveling with so much cash? If he was exploring a possible relocation to Washington, why did he not assess the prospects and then arrange any purchase through banks? Presumably his lost funds were from the sale of the home and land parcel. If so, what prompted him to sell both his nest and his nest egg? Even more baffling, why did he decide to give up his thriving dental practice? In short, Ida and Zane were probably presented their father’s excuse for his misfortune without explanation. Following an observation that his father was uncharacteristically happy and making “lots of money” during most of his high school years, Grey mentions that he suddenly began to look worried and dejected (6, 10). He attributes this change to the desertion of his brother Ellsworth from the navy and his own brothel arrest, but Lewis undoubtedly had worries of his own. The humiliation caused by his sons could have harmed his practice, but probably would not have destroyed a livelihood that had been built up over so many years. A more likely explanation, one Lewis may have been hiding with his contrived story, is a disastrous investment or ruinous bout of gambling that devoured his assets, decimated his reputation, and forced him to relocate.28 This would explain the related facts that Lewis left Zanesville with little money from the sales of his property and that he immediately changed the spelling of his name from “Gray” to “Grey.”29 Previous explanations have attributed this name change to dates and events long after it actually occurred.30

  Zane cried as he looked at Zanesville from the window of the train that carried him and his family to Columbus (7, 5). Uppermost in his mind was his parting with Muddy Miser, Licking Creek, Joe’s Run, and Dillon’s Falls. Into these poignant memories intruded the shame of his poor performance in school, his anguish over the girlfriends who did not understand him, and the humiliation of his arrest. Now without even a home, he felt more alone and displaced than ever.

  2

  Quest for Direction: 1890–1905

  I made up my mind today. I didn’t load myself with too much. This is how wise I was. I did not say I shall never look into another woman’s eyes again, or run from any pretty girl, or tease you any more. But I did say I would study and read all that I could … [and] write literature, not thoughtless, careless books, but throbbing, red-blooded histories of life.

  —September 27, 1904, to Lina Roth

  By the precocious age of fifteen, Pearl was already “very expert in extracting teeth” (5, 8). Rural Ohio was so sufficiently free of regulation that he was able to practice dentistry even before his relocation to Columbus. In Zanesville, Lewis employed cocaine, but this sedative still necessitated a deft removal of the tooth to prevent pain. From his baseball and fishing, Pearl had developed a powerful grip and sure hand that made him a valuable assistant. One Saturday as Pearl was cleaning the office, Lewis enlisted his help with an extraction and was so pleased with the result that he began using him regularly and increased his pay to seventy-five cents (5, 8). Shortly after the move to Columbus, Pearl sought to convert his limited training into a necessary source of income.

  The first six months in Columbus were very trying, and Lewis had so little money that he needed help from relatives to rent a house. His new practice fared poorly. Though he hated promotion and considered it unethical, the emptiness of his office forced him to run newspaper ads and to circulate handbills. R. C. started eighth grade, but quit after only three days to drive a delivery wagon. Meanwhile, Pearl worked as an usher in a large theater. During this difficult period, Lewis received a letter from Frazeysburg, a small country town outside Columbus. An elderly woman in pain from bad teeth requested that he come to treat her and assured him additional business. Reluctant to pursue this long-shot opportunity but also unwilling to lose it, Lewis sent his son, even though the boy had so far done only extractions. When he arrived, Pearl learned that the woman wanted all her teeth removed, and every one of them was decayed or broken off to the gums. With open mouth and no questions, she had absolute confidence in his competence. He, on the other hand, quaked at the challenge before him. After administering a stout dose of cocaine that turned her gums white, he groped with his forceps for a promising nub. With a silent prayer, he pulled hard. When the first tooth came out cleanly and his patient felt nothing, he proceeded to extract the remaining twenty-six “without breaking one” (7, 6).

  This success impressed the locals, and they invited Pearl back to Frazeys-burg. He quickly initiated once-a-week visits and was soon traveling to other towns nearby. These trips yielded several memorable experiences. On a visit to Warsaw, Grey’s first customer requested that he extract his only tooth, which was enormous and felt “like a solid nail in hard oak.” When he gave it a powerful twist and vigorous pull, “there came a sound like a pistol shot, the forceps were knocked out of my hand, and the big tooth flew across the room like a bullet and cracked the window pane” (8, 6). This experience was undoubtedly on his mind when a village blacksmith with a massive square jaw insisted that he remove a perfectly sound tooth and would not be dissuaded. After a futile struggle that broke his largest instrument, Grey sheepishly admitted defeat and learned that he was the fourth tooth-puller to fail (8, 6). Another time he disregarded his father’s warning against the use of cocaine on frail people because his elderly patient appeared to be in good health. When he administered the sedative, the old man suddenly went limp, slid to the floor from his seat, and appeared dead. When he determined that the man’s heart was still beating, Grey sent for a doctor and hastily left town (8, 6).

  Over the course of these experiences, Grey learned that dentistry without certification was illegal and worried that his lucrative practice could land him in jail. His father reassured him that other dentists would have to report him, and since he was not competition, they were unlikely to do so. Nonetheless, in late fall an official from the Ohio State Dental Association contacted Lewis and Zane and explained that no action would be taken if the young man stopped practicing or entered a program for qualification.1 By this point, professionalized dental schools, many associated with universities, had supplanted the apprentice system under which Lewis was trained. Unfortunately, Lewis’s financial problems placed this education beyond reach.

  Whether he was ushering or pulling teeth, Zane’s mind was on the baseball diamond. The numerous stone-throwing episodes in his autobiography were meant to establish that he had a strong arm and natural talent for pitching long before he tried the game. Pick-up games at the Madden Hill playground in Zanesville honed his talent and gave him a repertoire of pitches. At fourteen, he was the only boy who could throw a curve ball. The summer before the move to Columbus, he pitched for a Terrace team that lost a close game to a team of older boys from the Eighth Ward, but the experience bolstered his confidence in his pitching skill.

  Zane and R. C. were so committed to baseball that they immediately sought opportunities to play in Columbus. Their performance in pick-up games led to an association with the team for the Town Street School.2 This team’s nine victories and several Zane shutouts qualified him and R. C. for the Capitals, a strong team in the semiprofessional City League of Columbus that were league champions that year (7–11).3r />
  Zane’s success with the Capitals led to a memorable game during a dental trip to an outlying area. To salvage a day of slow business in Baltimore (Ohio), he contacted the local team, cited his association with the Capitals, and offered to pitch its upcoming game against a formidable, undefeated Jacktown team. In his autobiography, Grey awarded this contest the fullest description of all his games—by far. Part of this was due to the quaint setting and dramatic outcome. With hundreds of wagons parked around the infield and a towering crop of corn as a fence for the outfield, he and the star for Jacktown staged a tense pitching duel through seven scoreless innings. The two teams were helpless against Zane’s curves and the fastballs of the other pitcher until Grey advised his fellow players to bunt. This strategy produced two runs, loaded the bases, and brought him an opportunity to blast a grand slam into the cornfield. As he prepared to mow down the six remaining batters, the gaudily attired umpire, partial to Jacktown, suddenly stopped the game; he declared Grey a “ringer” and forfeited the game. During the uproar that ensued, Zane grabbed his clothes and fled into the corn to hide his escape (8, 7–8).

  Grey in Penn baseball uniform, ca. 1895. (Courtesy of Loren Grey.)

  Grey originally told this charming story in an earlier account entitled “Breaking Through,” but he deleted this rationale from his autobiography. “Now the point of this baseball narrative,” he explains, “is that a University of Pennsylvania man saw me pitch this game, hunted me up in Columbus, and assured me that Pennsylvania was the college for me to pick. So that very fall I found myself enrolled as a student there.”4 Grey dropped this explanation from “The Living Past” in order to tell about a talented local team with which he played in Columbus. After initial victories over Capitol University and the Panhandlers, this presumptuous group of amateurs with no college affiliation was able to schedule a game with the Ohio State team and won by a lopsided score. This victory included a grand slam by R. C. and earned the team games with other colleges, including Ohio Wesleyan, Oberlin, and Kenyon. The team’s many victories earned it a season finale against Dennison that was attended by several college scouts, and Zane’s best pitching effort produced a close 3–2 victory. Over the weeks that followed, he was contacted by representatives from Ohio Wesleyan, Vanderbilt, the University of Michigan, and the University of Pennsylvania (8, 7–8).

  In “The Living Past,” Grey says little about the summer baseball that he played while he deliberated which college to attend. In early May, Zane, R. C., and George Kihm, a mute who was a better hitter than the Greys, journeyed to northwest Ohio to play for the Delphos Reds. The opponents of this semi-professional team presented Zane his stiffest competition and brought him more success. The Reds lost three of their first four games. In the fifth game against Finlay, the team broke out on a 35–8 romp and followed with twenty-one victories in the next twenty-three games. A game against the Toledo Auburndales drew the greatest crowd of the season. In a 23–0 blowout, Zane allowed only four hits, struck out ten, hit three doubles, and added a final home run. At least twice more, large crowds gathered with anticipation for close contests that the Reds turned into routs; the team went on to win the regional championship. Although Zane did not remain for the entire season, he compiled an impressive .419 batting average and an 8–0 pitching record.5 The Delphos Herald reported that Grey went back to Columbus early in order “to resume his studies,”6 but this partial truth glossed a more problematic reason. Grey pitched a Sunday game for the Reds that violated city ordinances, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. Realizing that an arrest would not look good on his college application, he hopped a freight train and fled (8, 8–9).

  Following a brief stay in Columbus, Zane departed for dental school at the University of Pennsylvania. A reader of Grey’s autobiography is rather surprised by this decision, given his previously expressed hatred for his father, his office, and his profession. Early in “The Living Past,” while discussing his boyhood, Grey claims to have sworn that he “would rather be a tramp fisherman than the best dentist in the world” (3, 5). Actually, this conviction and animus came years later and misrepresented his thinking at the time.

  When he left for Philadelphia, his opinion of dentistry was more complicated and less negative. As a prestigious Ivy League school, Penn offered a welcome escape from his stern father and his family’s humiliating drop in status. For Zane, these advantages were overshadowed by the golden opportunity of its baseball team. With its winning record against the country’s best collegiate teams, its metropolitan exposure, and the National League Phillies across town, Penn was a far more promising gateway to professional baseball than any of the small-town Ohio teams on which he had played (even though Cy Young rose to fame from them several years later).

  Dentistry was something Zane needed more than wanted. His decision to attend the dental school was influenced by uneasiness over his failure to finish high school. The two and a half years he completed in Zanesville were a sorry record of dismal grades.7 Though both he and R. C. played on the Town Street School team in Columbus, neither actually attended the school. Lewis’s decimated finances had prevented Zane from resuming high school and compelled him to work. Even though his baseball skills opened the way for college acceptance and funding, he still had to pass demanding courses in conventional academic disciplines. Dentistry was an attractive field of study because it was a practical subject in which he had a solid grounding. Conversely, the other colleges that had recruited him had mediocre teams and an intimidating array of traditional courses.8

  Grey’s three years in Columbus made him twenty-one when he entered Penn. Although the dental school accepted older students as well as entering freshmen, he was so uneasy over the hiatus in his education that he presented his birth date as 1875 rather than 1872 (and retained this amended date for years). Ironically, Grey’s acceptance did not compromise the school’s entrance requirements. The “Conditions for Admission” in the university catalogue for 1893–94 required an applicant to write an essay attesting to his competence in orthography and grammar and to pass an examination on arithmetic, history, and geography. But it added: “A candidate who has received a collegiate degree, or passed the matriculate examination of a recognized college, or who has a certificate from a normal, high or grammar school, or a teacher’s certificate, properly attested, may enter without examination.”9 In other words, Grey’s graduation from grammar school was sufficient. At the time, Penn’s dental school was only fifteen years old.10 In providing the standardized, verifiable education promoted by boards of certification, Penn was sensitive to its intrusion upon the traditional apprenticeship system and required that an entering student have a sponsoring “preceptor,” the conventional term for an apprentice’s mentor. Zane’s preceptor was “L. M. Grey.”11

  Zane’s dental experience was strong support for his application, but it was his athletic prowess and Penn’s desire for winning teams that got him accepted. By the 1890s, college athletics were big-time sports and vital to a school’s reputation. The Ivy League had the best teams, the largest crowds, and the greatest alumni support. The year that Grey enrolled, Penn’s Board of Trustees approved plans for building a $100,000 stadium at Franklin Field. Conceived as “the most complete athletic facility in the country,” this structure was for football, baseball, and track, and it was designed to provide covered seating for 10,000 spectators, open seating for 10,000 more, and temporary stands for another 25,000.12

  When he stepped off the train in Philadelphia, Zane immediately faced a formidable gauntlet of tests. Unlike today’s ball players, he did not arrive with a guaranteed commitment from either Penn or its baseball team. The representatives from Penn who saw him play against Jacktown and Dennison were impressed and encouraging, but they only arranged for the baseball team to expect him: his scholarship was contingent upon his performance at a tryout. Thus he was told to report for a baseball game that weekend against a strong Riverton club of college graduates that had beaten Penn’s
varsity team the year before. At the end of the fifth inning of a close contest with Penn down 4–2, Grey was tapped to pitch. This decision dismayed the veterans, who did not want a greenhorn ruining their chances to win. With “great speed, perfect control, [and] a wonderful curve ball,” Grey held Riverton hitless for three innings. After his team tied the score and sent the game into a tenth inning, Grey yielded a hit but not a score. When Penn came to bat, he rapped a double that scored the winning run (8, 10–11). Confident that he had passed his trial, he purchased his bat and started his collection of memorabilia that in later years outgrew the storage space of his mansion.