Zane Grey

by Thomas H. Pauly

  Grey’s performance against Riverton exempted him from the dental school’s entrance exams, got him accepted, and earned him a $100 scholarship for tuition, but he was responsible for housing and food. He located a cheap rooming house, ushered at football games, and ate as little as possible. His ordained slate of courses was more of a problem. His background experience made the classes on operative dentistry and mechanical dentistry relatively easy, but the other courses demanded academic skills and discipline that he sorely lacked.13

  Despite fervent vows, Zane had difficulty making class and spent more time at a nearby poolroom. There he picked up games and side bets that earned him badly needed rent and food money. He passed long hours in the library—not reading or preparing for exams, but savoring the tranquility and relief from academic pressure. “I seldom read anything,” he once recollected, “there I seemed to escape from the turmoil of college, and from myself.”14 When he made class, his attention usually did not. The classes he liked were ones that matched his expectations. His lifelong aversion to alcohol caused him never to forget Professor Wormley’s pouring it upon an egg that curdled and illustrated its chemical effects upon the human brain. He liked Formad’s class best because he complimented Grey’s sketches (9, 5–6).

  A significant amount of Grey’s difficulty came from fellow students who were “beyond my understanding” (9, 1). These well-to-do Easterners were prepared for mores and traditions that were meaningless to him. During the first week of classes, he unwittingly sat in a section of a lecture hall reserved for upper classmen. When they hooted his mistake, he defiantly refused to budge. An uproar ensued and he was branded a rebel. In order to avoid more confrontations, he stayed away from class (9, 5–6).

  The day of reckoning for this dereliction was delayed until the second semester, but came sooner than he expected. Two months before finals, he learned about a new university rule that required freshmen to pass all courses in order to be eligible for spring baseball, thereby forcing him to contact his professors and take his finals early. This sudden preemption of badly needed study time proved to be a stroke of good fortune. Several professors perceived him as a promising athlete and unfortunate victim of circumstances beyond his control and awarded him a passing grade, either without testing or in spite of deficient work. These acts of generosity left him still shy of the requisite grade point average of sixty. “In a state of mind that anyone could readily see was little short of desperation,” he explained his quandary to Professor Formad—who smiled, granted him a 99, and wished him well (9, 7).

  Much to his surprise, his hardest test awaited him. He won his scholarship to Penn as a pitcher. When spring practice began, he learned that home plate would be ten feet further away. On March 7, 1893, the National League decreed that henceforth, pitchers would have to position themselves at a fixed 12″ × 4″ rubber 60′ 6″ from the plate instead of within a 6′ × 6′ box whose forward edge was 50′ 10″ away, almost ten feet further away.15 When Grey arrived at Penn, the old rule still governed collegiate play, but the new one was adopted for the 1894 season. The Penn coach, Arthur Irwin, was not present for Grey’s initial tryout, but happened to observe him hurling potatoes in a student melee, and was so impressed that he invited him to spring practice for the varsity. However, the new distance deprived Zane of the drop curve that was his favorite pitch. Fortunately, his batting was impressive enough that Irwin repositioned him in the outfield and kept him on the team.

  Penn had a wealth of talent for the 1894 season. The team was one of Penn’s finest; Grey was lucky to be a substitute and played very little. It won eighteen of its twenty-seven games and outscored its opponents 430 runs to 190.16 The team’s star, Danny Coogan, went on to play professional baseball for the Washington Nationals and Arthur Irwin was tapped to replace the popular Harry Wright as manager for the Phillies.17

  Following his first year at Penn, Grey returned to Columbus to work for his father and to play for local teams. In late May, the Columbus Dispatch listed “Grey, lf and p” on the roster of the Barracks team.18 By July, “Pearl Zane” was playing for the Defiance, and for the remainder of the summer he used this name to evade a college mandate against “summer nines.” Following the Defiance’s loss to Delaware (Ohio), he defected to that team for its upcoming game against Finlay, which had a twenty-eight-game winning streak. Having already been Finlay’s nemesis once before, “Zane” hit a grand slam in the fourth inning of a scoreless contest that was the difference in Delaware’s 5–3 victory. Nine games later, his batting average stood at an impressive .482.19

  At a moment when he appeared to have moved beyond the disappointments and upheavals of the past few years, everything went haywire. On August 8, the Delphos Herald reported, “Pearl Grey of Columbus, who has been playing left field with the Delaware team under the name of Zane, was quietly arrested after to-day’s game on a telegraph from Delphos, Ohio stating that a warrant was issued there for his arrest on a paternity charge.”20 In “The Living Past,” Grey acknowledges his involvement with a “belle of Delphos” during his previous summer with the Reds. He even mentions how R. C. “broke rudely into my romance” one morning to inform him about the arrest warrant that had been issued for playing baseball on Sunday (8, 8). While it may have been coincidental that his unfinished autobiography stopped just before this paternity suit, it is also possible that he wanted to avoid the episode. In any case, this paternity suit posed a formidable problem. Up to this point, Grey had been exceptionally open and honest for an author of fiction, and he had even admitted his brothel arrest. Most of the discrepancies in the account of his early years were understandable lapses of memory or were warranted by his narrative. On the other hand, a paternity suit on top of his brothel arrest bespoke a worrisome pattern of behavior. If he chose to drop it, how many more excisions would he make, and would these liberties not transform the account of his life into another one of his stories?

  Following his arrest, Zane thought immediately about the dire consequences should Penn officials learn of it. Initially, he claimed that the charge was blackmail, but later agreed to settle with the girl for $100. His father followed Zane to Delphos and posted $133.40 to cover the full cost of the case. Upon his release, Zane returned to Delaware.21

  On the same page of the Delphos Herald that announced this settlement, an entry in another column informed readers, “Pearl Grey will probably be signed on the local team and the fans are glad, as he is not only a great ball player, but a gentlemanly one.”22 Days later he rejoined the Delphos team, and he performed so well over the next month that scorecards sold at the games carried his photograph. Still, neither he nor the team was as successful as the year before. The team record of 17–13 did not approach its previous 33–12.23 In mid-September when he left for school, Grey sought to hide evidence of his summer play by informing the Herald that he was returning to Ohio Wesleyan University.24

  That fall a group from Penn’s athletic teams organized a new chapter of Sigma Nu and invited Zane to join. Though he had been only a substitute, varsity players knew him, and this invitation altered his outsider status. Game programs from the era listed him at 5' 9" and 150 pounds, which increased his actual size by more than an inch and ten pounds. (During a later period of illness, Zane wrote to Dolly that his weight had dropped to 120 pounds, and on his 1907 visit to the Grand Canyon, he reported that he was down to 116 pounds.) By either measure, he was only average in size and smaller than his athlete friends; he gained their respect with his competitive intensity and brash confidence. His dental classes were now more practical and less intimidating. He ceased to worry about passing and trusted that his baseball play would compensate for his academic mediocrity.

  After Irwin left for the Phillies, the baseball team had difficulty finding a new manager. The players and university officials decided that the current team captain, John Blakeley, should handle these responsibilities, and he picked Grey to start in right field. The loss of so many players from the year
before dimmed the team’s prospects. The season was scheduled to open against the Giants at the polo grounds in New York, and Grey eagerly awaited this opportunity to compete against professionals. Unfortunately, Penn lost 21–4 and he went hitless. Next, rain forced the cancellation of games against strong teams from Wesleyan, State College (Penn State), and Georgetown, and Princeton and Yale had already been dropped from that year’s schedule. Franklin Field opened on April 10 for the Penn Relays according to plan, but the field was so muddied by persistent rain that the baseball team was unable to play there until its May 4 game against Columbia. “It is very seldom,” an editorial in the university newspaper reflected, “that any base-ball team meets with as much discouragement as has Pennsylvania’s team this year.”25

  Over May, the weather improved, and so did the team’s fortunes. After a close 7–6 loss to powerful Georgetown, Penn had impressive victories against Virginia, Harvard, and Lehigh. But Zane went into a slump. After four hits and four runs against Columbia, he went hitless against Georgetown, Harvard, and Cornell and had only single hits against Virginia and Lehigh. For the Lehigh game, he was dropped to the bottom of the batting order. Following losses to Lehigh and Harvard, both Grey and Penn finished strong. The team’s record of seventeen victories and four losses approximated that of the year before, even though everyone acknowledged that the team was inferior. Grey, however, was pleased with his overall batting average of .292.26

  That summer, Zane stopped working for his father and concentrated on baseball. The upcoming year would be his last at Penn, and he wanted it to be his best. Both he and R. C. started with the Finlay team that they had repeatedly beaten in the past. R. C. had already played thirty games by June 15 when Zane joined the team, and he arrived just in time to see his brother blast a game-winning slam at the bottom of the ninth. Over the next twenty-one games, as “Pearl Zane,” he hit .295. By mid-August, the town of Jackson, Michigan, was so demoralized over a mid-season disbanding of its team that it enticed the Finlay team into replacing it. During the twenty-seven games he played there, Zane increased his batting average to .398.27

  Since he had survived the paternity scare and improved his hitting, Grey started his final year at Penn in high spirits. His years of loneliness and anonymity were behind him, and he had performed well enough the previous season that he was expected to be the star of the baseball team. Early hopes that the 1896 team might surpass that of 1894 were suddenly dashed by a ruling of the faculty athletic committee. At a meeting on January 25, 1896, the committee announced that all players who had participated in “summer nines” would be ineligible and banished all returning members of the 1895 team except Grey and Blakeley.28 Grey’s modification of his name successfully hid his own summer play, but he was really saved by having played in distant Ohio; the ineligible players had remained nearby in Pennsylvania or New Jersey, where their illegal play got noticed. Grey was lucky to escape this harsh judgment, but his team was ruined and its hopes were dashed. The athletic committee also canceled two early season games against the Phillies and eliminated Grey’s last chance to play against major leaguers.29

  Grey at the time of his graduation from Penn, 1896. (Courtesy of Loren Grey.)

  Contrary to expectations, the first six games of the season were lopsided Penn victories that exhilarated fans. Georgetown and Brown then routed Penn and exposed the team’s vulnerability. Grey’s five hits against Georgetown included a home run, a triple, and three singles and were impressive enough that the Philadelphia Inquirer turned the team’s humiliating 19–7 loss into a story of achievement that included a woodcut drawing of him and a headline proclaiming “Grey was the hero.”30 His three hits against Brown validated his improvement and established him as the team’s best player. In an 11–7 victory over Lehigh, he made “two sensational catches” and batted in two runs. During the rematch with Georgetown, he had two hits and again scored two runs in a tough 14–13 loss. He figured prominently in Penn’s two victories over a strong Cornell team. The Pennsylvanian’s account of the second victory observed, “At the bat Grey carried off the honors making five singles in six times at the bat.”31 Local newspapers agreed that Penn’s 3–2 win over Virginia was its best game and that Grey’s hits were the margin of difference.32 One portrayed his second hit as the stuff of legend:

  Two men were put out and one University of Pennsylvania man was on second base when Pearl Grey went to bat for the last time. As Pearl picked up his bat to try his luck, Dr. White, one of the leading professors of the institution called Grey to him and said; “Grey, the honor of the University of Pennsylvania rests with you.”

  Virginia’s pitcher had been too much for the Keystone boys, and the latter had not been hitting the ball, but young Grey was equal to the occasion and sent the ball out of reach, making a home run and letting in the man on second base. Two thousand students and 500 beautiful girls jumped to their feet and rent the skies with their wild yells. Pearl Grey was a hero. The crowds yelled his name, [and] carried him all over the field.33

  Ensuing losses to Harvard, Brown, and Chicago disappointed everyone. In his final game, which Lehigh won 7–6, Grey went hitless and dropped a ninth-inning fly that allowed Lehigh to tie the score and sent the game into extra innings.34

  On June 11, 1896, “Pearl Zane Grey” graduated from Penn’s School of Dentistry.35 He left Philadelphia immediately and played summer baseball for the Orange Athletic Club in Orange, New Jersey. The previous season, Penn had played the OAC because its roster included several of its graduates; the team’s best player was Roy Thomas, a teammate of Grey’s from two years before. Local newspapers hailed Grey as “the most valuable accession to the field this year” and “one of the best players the club has ever had,” and he quickly justified this advance billing. After seventeen games, he had six homers, two triples, seven doubles, and twenty singles; he went hitless only once. The newspaper that tallied these achievements concluded, “It is perhaps no exaggeration to say that this is the best OAC team ever, with Grey in left field.”36

  Grey continued to play for the OAC through the 1897 and 1898 seasons. For him, this team was an alternative route to the big leagues and not merely an opportunity for more baseball. Though he received a modest stipend, the Orange Athletic Club was not a professional team, but it did have close connections to several nearby teams with salaried players. The same year that Zane graduated, R. C. broke into professional baseball with a team in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and from 1897 to 1903, played with pro teams in the Eastern League.

  Grey’s other activities during these years are less clear and harder to track. Although baseball was his priority, he did practice dentistry. An undated, unidentified clipping in his baseball scrapbook reported him as “engaged in dentistry in New York.” However, another reported that he had closed his office in Newark, New Jersey, and was now associated with Dr. R. M. Sanger in East Orange.37 Whether he practiced dentistry in New Jersey only during baseball season or throughout the year as well, he always planned to practice in New York City when his baseball days were over. Prior to his graduation from Penn, the dental board for the State of New York established procedures for certification that required education, experience, and examination.38 The work he did in New Jersey gained him both necessary experience and a location near the OAC. Until he obtained his license, he could not afford to live in New York City, and he was not certified until October 14, 1897, almost a year and a half after graduation.39

  Grey performed even better during his second season with the OAC, and he came very close to the break for which he had been hoping. Midway through the season, reports surfaced that a Newark team had signed him. The manager confirmed that the team had offered Grey “a handsome salary” and compensated the OAC. Several days later, Grey informed the press that he opposed Newark’s Sunday games and preferred to remain with the Orange team, which did not play on Sundays.40 That he would have rejected this opportunity for such a reason is highly unlikely, since he had already played
on Sundays in Delphos. The actual reason was probably money. Since Grey was currently the OAC’s best hitter (with a batting average just shy of .400), an accomplished outfielder, and a major factor in the team’s success, the syndicate in control of the OAC may have decided to match Newark’s offer in order to keep him with the team. Frank Gruber has stated that Grey was making more money at this time from baseball than dentistry; this estimate cannot be verified, but it is probably true.41 Later that season, a local newspaper reported: “It can be stated on very good authority that the following players will be declared professionals, and consequently will be ineligible to compete in amateur sports: Nichols, Grey, Smith, Grissinger, Horner, and Murphy.”42 These claims were never substantiated and nothing came of them.

  During the off-season, Grey did sign with Newark. He played on its team through the April preseason and started at right field when the regular season began on April 27.43 Newark’s grueling schedule of more than four games a week in locations like Norfolk, Richmond, Allentown, Hartford, and Lancaster left Grey no time for dentistry. On June 14, after thirty-eight games, he and the team parted ways. Though he may have been cut, it is more likely that he quit due to Newark’s financial troubles. Three weeks after his departure, several players publicly complained about not being paid and the whole team quit.44 Scant funding may indeed have influenced his rejection of the team’s original offer. Whatever the reason, Grey’s batting average with Newark was more than a hundred points below that of his previous season with OAC, and this decline snuffed his fading hopes for a professional career.45 On June 25, he rejoined the OAC team for the remainder of the season.46

  Although he continued to play for OAC the next season, Grey shifted his priority to dentistry. He moved to New York City and opened a cramped office at 117 W. Twenty-first Street. This was an impoverished area of the city heavily populated with immigrants who came to him with acute dental problems and little money. Because their income was meager, his was too. During this period, he was so destitute that he once went four days without eating. He withdrew into his office to avoid the congestion and squalor outside, and he went out only when necessary.47 For the first time in years, he became an avid reader.48 To alleviate his acute loneliness, he attended several reunions with fraternity brothers, but he found these gatherings crude and offensive and decided his bleak office was preferable.