The Cincinnati Red Stalkings

by Troy Soos

  The only thing I didn’t like was having to leave before Margie got home. With no time to go to a florist, I went next door and picked some flowers from the Kellys’ garden. I left them for Margie in a vase, along with a note that I rewrote three times.

  I made it to the station with barely enough time to buy my ticket and grab a few newspapers and magazines to read on the trip.

  Maybe I was tired from the rush to catch the train, or I was just feeling more relaxed than I had in some time about being allowed to rejoin the team, but I fell asleep within fifteen minutes of boarding.

  We were halfway to Pennsylvania by the time I woke up and opened the early evening edition of the Cincinnati Post. A two-column headline on the front page announced that Dick Hurley, the formerly “missing sock” of the old Red Stockings, had been shot.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I arrived late at the Polo Grounds Saturday afternoon. The rest of the team was already on the field for pregame practice.

  Lloyd Tinsley and Pat Moran were talking together outside the locker-room door when I got there. “Glad you could make it,” Tinsley said sourly.

  Pat Moran expressed the same sentiments but sounded more sincere.

  “Came as fast as I could,” I said.

  “You’re playing third,” said Moran. “Suit up.”

  I went into the clubhouse and found a pin-striped road uniform—the Reds were the only team in baseball to wear plain flannels at home and pin stripes on the road. I tried to change quickly, but exhaustion impaired my coordination. My fingers were clumsy and my vision fuzzy.

  I hadn’t been able to fall back asleep after reading the news about Dick Hurley. According to the Post, a woman had shot Hurley as he stepped off an elevator in the lobby of the Sinton Hotel. Hurley had still been alive when he was taken to the hospital, but there were few other details reported—the severity of the wound was unknown, the woman was not identified, and there was no known motive. The lack of information gave me plenty of room to speculate. Maybe the book wasn’t closed on whatever it was that had happened in 1869.

  Finally dressed, and with my mitt in hand, I trotted out of the clubhouse runway onto center field. The view of the Polo Grounds grandstand, with Coogan’s Bluff behind it, brought my mind to focus on the game at hand. Most of the seats in the park were taken; a major part of the attraction for the fans was that Rube Marquard, once a star for New York, was going to pitch for Cincinnati.

  I was too late for batting or fielding practice, so I went directly to the dugout. A few of my teammates asked about my eyes, and I told them the double vision had cleared up. I was relieved that they genuinely appeared to believe that I’d been away from the team for health reasons.

  In the bottom of the first, after the Reds failed to get a runner on base in the top of the inning, Marquard went to the mound and I took my position at third base. Out to the coach’s box came John McGraw. The Giants manager lit into me immediately, trying to distract me with profanity-laced insults. I pretended not to notice; I’d heard the “Little Napoleon” give the same abuse to visiting players for three years, and it sounded like he was still using the same material.

  Instead of being unsettled by the needling, I was determined to play extra hard against my former team. The exhaustion of the long train ride actually helped, calming down whatever jitters McGraw’s epithets and playing before New York fans might have triggered.

  That calm lasted for exactly one batter. The second man up for the Giants, shortstop Dave Bancroft, pulled a blistering line drive up the third-base line. Pure reflex sent me into a dive. The ball drilled into my palm, and I held tight as I skidded on my belly. I ended up with my face inches from McGraw’s feet.

  “Why the hell didn’t you make catches like that for me?” he screamed. One of his shoes went up, and I yanked my bare hand away. A half second later his spikes came down on the spot where my hand had been.

  Picking myself up, I said, “You’re slowin’ down, Mac. Must be all the weight you been puttin’ on.”

  From that point on, I don’t think McGraw was aware that anyone else was on the field. His attention—and vile mouth—were targeted only at me.

  The manager’s rage grew in the top of the third, when I snapped out of my batting slump by hitting an opposite field double off Art Nehf. In my next two at-bats, I reached base twice more—once on a fastball that grazed the top of my head and then by taking another one on the side of my neck. The beanballs were on orders from McGraw, I was sure, so I didn’t go after Nehf. In the top of the ninth, I ducked away from enough pitches to work a 3–0 count, and when Nehf finally put one over the plate I hit a single up the middle.

  We were ahead 5–4 going into the bottom of the ninth. Rube Marquard, still pitching strong, struck out the first two Giants to face him. Then Highpockets Kelly came up to bat. He was New York’s last hope, and the crowd was clamoring for a rally.

  Kelly got all of Marquard’s first pitch, lifting a high fly to deep center field. Edd Roush raced back, but the ball carried over his outstretched glove, and landed near the Eddie Grant Memorial at the base of the wall. As Roush tracked down the caroming baseball, Kelly flew around second base, and I got ready for a throw at third. McGraw was yelling, “Spike him! Spike him!”—the “him” being me. I half expected McGraw to jump me from behind and hold me down. Roush threw to Curt Stram, who relayed the ball to me. Stram’s throw was high, and I had to jump to get it. I came down off-balance, a sitting duck for Kelly’s cleats. He didn’t go for the cheap shot, though. He slid hard, but fair, and before I could tag him. “Safe!” called base ump Cy Rigler.

  Instead of congratulating Kelly on the triple, McGraw berated him for not cutting me.

  I trotted over to Marquard with the ball in my mitt. I held it over his extended glove, but didn’t let go. “Stay off the rubber, Rube.”

  He gave me a small smile and nodded.

  I trotted back to third, with the ball trapped between my mitt and my side. Marquard went to the back of the mound and pretended to scrape dirt from his cleats.

  With McGraw still bawling out Kelly, I took the next step: I gave Cy Rigler a peek at the ball. If you catch the umpire by surprise, he might not see the play and call the runner safe. From the look in Rigler’s eyes, he was going to enjoy this as much as me if it worked. McGraw had no friends among the umpires.

  I went to the bag and gave it a kick as if it had shifted with Kelly’s slide and I was merely trying to put it back on the foul line. Distracted by McGraw’s wrath, Kelly accommodated me by stepping off the base. I immediately tagged him with the ball, and Rigler’s thumb shot up in the air. “Yerrrrrrr out!”

  I kept a firm grip on the ball and ran to center field, my teammates joining me in the race to the clubhouse as they realized the game was over. The jeers of the Polo Grounds crowd grew to an ugly crescendo, but I could swear I heard McGraw screeching louder than the rest. As base coach, it had been his job to watch for the hidden ball trick.

  I could have fallen asleep, I was so tired and content, but I wanted to savor the afterglow of the game a while longer. The boos of the New York partisans still rang in my ears; it was a sound as rewarding to a visiting player as cheers were from fans at home. Beating John McGraw would have been satisfying enough under normal circumstances. Today’s game was a double victory for me, though, because no one who witnessed it—and I was sure Judge Landis would be getting a report on my performance—could doubt that I was giving my best.

  On the diamond, my return to the Reds was certainly off to a good start. Off the field, however, things weren’t looking so positive.

  I was lying on my bed in our hotel room, still dressed, idly rolling the game ball in my fingers. At the washbasin, my new roommate, Curt Stram, was carefully navigating a razor over his cheeks, scraping off the peach fuzz. He paused often to remove excess lather with a towel and to admire his reflection in the mirror.

  Since I’d left Bubbles Hargrave without a roommate when I had t
o stay behind in Cincinnati, Greasy Neale and Hargrave had made a trade: the two of them hooked up as roomies, leaving the unpopular Stram to room by himself. Now that I was back, I was stuck with the rookie.

  “C’mon, Mick,” he urged me again. “What’s the point of being in New York if you’re not going to hit the town? It’s Saturday night!”

  “All I want is sleep tonight,” I told him for the third time.

  Stram continued his preparations at the mirror, carefully placing locks of his dirty blond hair over his forehead. I was amazed at how hard he worked to look carelessly handsome. If only he put as much effort into his baseball, he could become one of best.

  “I hear there’s a couple new girls at Daisy’s,” he said. “And maybe an old one for you,” he added, with a laugh at his idea of a joke.

  Daisy’s was a house of ill-repute on Forty-first Street. I had no interest in going there with or without Stram. “What about Katie Perriman?” I asked.

  His expression was blank. “What about her?”

  “Aren’t you and her ... ?”

  “So what if we were? She’s a thousand miles away. And, as it happens, there’s nothing between us anyhow.”

  “You told me before that there was.” I didn’t care whether he was faithful to her, I just wanted to aggravate him a little.

  He uncorked a bottle of bay rum. “Not no more. I’ve had it with her. Did her a big favor and don’t get no appreciation for it. To hell with her.”

  “What favor?”

  “Just because it don’t go the way she’d like, she gets all het up about it. Ought to be grateful, and all she does is gripe.” He splashed bay rum over his face and neck. “Women! Gimme girls like the ones at Daisy’s any day. You know where you stand with them. Not like—”

  I tried again, “What’s she mad at you for?”

  “Can’t say.” He set the bottle heavily on the washstand. “It’s personal.”

  Must have been real personal, I thought, considering Stram had never before shown a reluctance to run his mouth about private matters.

  As he completed his grooming and donned an expensive suit that was a brighter shade of blue than any sapphire, I was thinking about Ollie Perriman. Because of Rufus Yates, I’d recently been focusing on the notion that Perriman might have been killed over something involving the 1919 World Series. But there remained the possibility that the motive was personal—like somebody wanting Katie Perriman’s husband out of the way.

  Stram asked one more time if I’d join him. I again declined and added a warning that if he woke me when he came in, I’d put soap in his toothpaste. He assured me he wouldn’t be back till morning.

  When he left, I opened the windows wider to let out the smell of the bay rum and went down to the lobby to phone Margie. It was the first chance I’d had to talk to her since leaving Cincinnati.

  I began with a detailed recounting of the day’s game. Then I caught myself, and told her that I missed her and apologized for having to leave for New York so abruptly.

  “I understand,” she said. “It was sweet of you to leave me the lilies.”

  “I thought they were daffodils.”

  “At this time of year? Daffodils don’t bloom in July. ” She sounded like she was telling me something as obvious as that the earth was round.

  I knew if a bat was ash or willow or hickory, but with flowers I pretty much went by color. “Well, they were yellow,” I said. “So I thought they were daffodils.”

  She laughed. “By the way, it’s best to cut the roots off before putting them in a vase. Oh!”—her tone grew serious—“I thought you might be interested: that old Red Stocking Dick Hurley was shot yesterday.”

  “I know. I read about it on the train. Not much detail, though. Did he live?”

  “So far. He’s in Old City Hospital. And they caught the woman.”

  “Any news on why she shot him?”

  “No, just—hold on—” I heard the receiver clatter on the table. When Margie got back on the line, she said, “I have the article here. Her name is Mrs. Charlotte Ashby. She lives in Walnut Hills, and she’s described as ‘elderly.’ There’s no theory about motive.”

  She promised to save the newspapers for me, and we talked for a while longer before grogginess overtook me and I headed up to bed.

  Sundays were no longer a day of rest for major-league ballplayers in New York. A year ago, the state legalized Sunday baseball games, leaving Boston, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia as the only big-league cities that still prohibited them.

  This Sunday, we played the opener of our series against the Dodgers in Ebbets Field. With Eppa Rixey outpitching Brooklyn’s Burleigh Grimes, we took a 2–0 win over the defending league champions. I had another good game, picking up two hits in four at-bats against the spitballer Grimes. I also got my first chance to see one of the former Reds who’d left the club after the 1919 World Series: second baseman Kid Gumbert.

  After showering and changing, I waited for Gumbert outside the players’ gate. When he came out, he was with several of the other Dodgers; all of them appeared glum over the loss. Gumbert’s nickname of “Kid” was about twenty years outdated; he was now a grizzled veteran whose face looked as worn and scarred as an old baseball. He walked with a stiff waddle, his knees probably destroyed by base runners breaking up double plays.

  “Hey, Kid!” I called as he began to pass by.

  Without looking at me, he growled, “No autographs.”

  “Fine, then I won’t give you one.”

  His head jerked and he looked at me quizzically.

  “I’m Mickey Rawlings,” I said. “I just played third base against you.”

  “Oh, sorry. Didn’t recognize you out of uniform.” I was getting used to that; it seemed nobody believed I was a ballplayer unless I was wearing spikes and flannels.

  “I was hoping I could talk to you.”

  He shook his head. “I’m on my way for a beer.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll buy.” I knew that Judge Landis was an ardent Prohibitionist, but I wasn’t worried about being spotted in a speakeasy; if Landis was going to blacklist every player who had an illegal beer, there wouldn’t be enough left to field a team in either league.

  Gumbert readily accepted my offer, and we soon found a gin mill on Empire Boulevard. There was a bare patch on the front of the building where a sign had once hung that identified the saloon.

  We went in and sat down at the bar. Other than the removal of the sign outside, there were no other indications that the proprietors had heard of the Eighteenth Amendment.

  Gumbert raced through the first beer and made a good start on the second, barely acknowledging my presence.

  “This is my first year with the Reds,” I said.

  He belched loudly.

  “You were with the club in 1919,” I went on.

  “Yup.”

  “I been hearing some things, and I was wondering if you could tell me your take on them.” I nodded for the bartender to back him up with a full glass.

  “What kind of things?”

  “That the White Sox weren’t the only team offered money to take a dive in the World Series.”

  Gumbert said firmly, “Nobody on the Cincinnati club did nothing crooked.”

  “That’s what I hear. But there were offers made, right?”

  He drank from the third beer, more slowly. “Wouldn’t know.”

  “How couldn’t you know? There was a team meeting about it before one of the games.”

  “If you know that, what are you talking to me for?” The beer wasn’t mellowing him; he was starting to sound irritated.

  “Were you approached by gamblers?” I asked.

  Gumbert appeared to be debating with himself, before deciding to talk. “Hell, I’m too old to run scared.” He shook his head. “I didn’t do nothin’ wrong.”

  “Run scared from what?”

  “From what that Judge Landis is talking about: ‘guilty knowledge’—if you know somethi
ng and don’t tell about it, he’ll kick you out of the game.”

  “Oh, yeah. Well, whatever you say won’t go no further than me.”

  “All right,” Gumbert said. “There was a team meeting. And some of the fellows admitted they were offered money to blow the series. But every one of them denied going along. I tell you, that was the most pressure of them games—worrying about making an error or swinging at a bad pitch and having the boys think you sold out.”

  “Must have been especially tough on Hod Eller,” I said. “He was offered five grand to blow a game.” I thought if Gumbert knew I had some information, he might be forthcoming with more.

  “Yeah, but he came through fine,” he said with admiration. “You know, if anybody had folded, they’d have been beaten to death in the clubhouse—I guarantee you that. Anyway, there were more fellows approached than admitted it; that ain’t the kind of thing you want people to know—it can leave a stink on you even if you’re on the square.”

  “I know what you mean,” I said. “Been going through something like that myself.”

  He didn’t push me for details, and I wasn’t about to offer any.

  “So nothing ever happened,” I said.

  “Wouldn’t say that. When the gamblers found they couldn’t pay us off, they took a different approach: they tried to get our pitching staff drunk.”

  Jeez. “But it didn’t work?”

  Gumbert laughed. “Hell, Dutch Reuther and the others could outdrink any of them hoods. So they did. And by game time they were just fine.” With that, he polished off the third brew.

  I thought for a few moments, then asked again, “Were you approached?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. And I turned him down cold.”

  “You know who he was?”

  “You think them fellows give their names?”

  “No, guess not. How about what he looked like? Anything stick out about him?”

  “Nah, he didn’t look like nothing. Just average—” Gumbert frowned in thought. “Stuck out ... yeah, matter of fact there was something that stuck out: his ear. One of his ears stuck straight out.”