The Glory of Their Times

by Lawrence S. Ritter

  The year after that we got in quite a hassle. That would be 1911. Seems as though some of the Oakland City boys were getting $5 a game, and I wasn’t one of them. So I started raising Cain about this under-the-table business and treating some different than others.

  Two stars of the Oakland City Walk-Overs in 1910—Edd Roush (l.) and Pete Lowe

  Wound up we had such an argument that I quit the home-town club and went over and played with the Princeton team. Princeton is the closest town to Oakland City, about 12 miles due west. And don’t think that didn’t cause quite a ruckus. Especially when Princeton came over to play Oakland City at Oakland City, with me in the Princeton outfield. A fair amount of hard feelings were stirred up, to say the least. I think there are still one or two around here never have forgiven me to this very day.

  I played with Princeton about a year and a half, and then a fellow connected with the Evansville club in the Kitty League asked me would I like to play for them in professional baseball. Well, Evansville’s only about 30 miles from Oakland City, almost due south, and the idea of getting paid for playing ball sounded real good to me. And Dad thought it was terrific. He’d played semipro ball himself, when he was young. William C. Roush was his name. A darn good ballplayer, too. So I signed with Evansville and finished the 1912 season with them.

  I bought a lefty’s glove when I started playing with Evansville, figuring I might as well go back to the natural throw. From then on I always threw left-handed, ’cause it didn’t carry quite so well when I threw with my right. Wasn’t really a natural throw.

  After that, things moved quick. Evansville sold me to the Chicago White Sox—of all teams, considering what happened later—in the middle of the following season. I stayed with them a month—Cicotte was there then, and Buck Weaver, and Ray Schalk—and then they optioned me to Lincoln, Nebraska, in the Western League.

  The next year the Indianapolis club in the new Federal League got in touch with me and offered me $225 a month, almost twice what I was getting at Lincoln. So I jumped to the Federal League for the next couple of years. That Federal League wasn’t a bad league. Too bad it only lasted two years. Ran into a lot of financial troubles and folded in December of 1915. Of course, it was an outlaw league, you know, raiding the other leagues for its players. The established leagues threatened that anybody who jumped to the Feds would never be allowed back in organized ball, but once the Feds broke up they were glad to get us.

  We had some good players there the two years the Federal League lived. A lot of old-timers jumped over, like Three-Fingered Brown, Chief Bender, Eddie Plank, Davy Jones, Joe Tinker, Jimmy Delahanty, Al Bridwell, and Charlie Carr, the old Indianapolis first baseman. They didn’t care if organized ball never took them back, ’cause they were near the end of the trail anyway.

  But there were also a lot of younger players, like Benny Kauff, Bill McKechnie, and myself. All three of us were sold to the New York Giants when the Federal League collapsed, and that’s where we reported in the spring of 1916.

  Me, I didn’t like New York. I’m a small-town boy. I like the Midwest. Well, it wasn’t exactly that. Not entirely, anyway. It was really McGraw I didn’t like. John J. McGraw. I just didn’t enjoy playing for him, that’s all. If you made a bad play he’d cuss you out, yell at you, call you all sorts of names. That didn’t go with me. So I was glad as I could be when he traded me to Cincinnati in the middle of the ’16 season. I couldn’t have been happier.

  McGraw traded Mathewson, McKechnie, and me to Cincinnati for Wade Killefer and Buck Herzog, who had been the Cincinnati manager. Matty was to replace Herzog as the new manager. I still remember the trip the three of us made as we left the Giants and took the train to join the Reds. McKechnie and I were sitting back on the observation car, talking about how happy we were to be traded. Matty came out and sat down and listened, but he didn’t say anything.

  Finally I turned to him and said, “Well, Matty, aren’t you glad to be getting away from McGraw?”

  “I’ll tell you something, Roush,” he said. “You and Mac have only been on the Giants a couple of months. It’s just another ball club to you fellows. But I was with that team for 16 years. That’s a mighty long time. To me, the Giants are ‘home.’ And leaving them like this, I feel the same as when I leave home in the spring of the year.

  William C. Roush, Edd’s father, as a semipro ballplayer in the 1880’s

  “Of course, I realize I’m through as a pitcher. But I appreciate McGraw making a place for me in baseball and getting me this managing job. He’s doing me a favor, and I thanked him for it. And by the way, the last thing he said to me was that if I put you in center field I’d have a great ballplayer. So starting tomorrow you’re my center fielder.”

  Well, we got to Cincinnati and sure enough, right off Matty puts me in center field. Greasy Neale was the right fielder. It was his first year with the Reds too, but he’d been there since the start of the season and, of course, I was a newcomer. The first game I played there, about three or four fly balls came out that could have been taken by either the center fielder or the right fielder. If I thought I should take it, I’d holler three times: “I got it, I got it, I got it.” I’d holler while I was running for it, see.

  But Greasy never said a word. Sometimes he’d take it, and sometimes he wouldn’t. But in either case he never said a thing. We went along that way for about three weeks. What I finally did was watch both him and the ball. If it looked to me like I could catch the ball and get out of his way, I’d holler and take it. But if it looked like it was going to be a tie, I’d just cut behind him and let him take it. He still never hollered, and didn’t have too much else to say to me, either. So I didn’t have too much to say to him.

  You see, I could watch both him and the ball at the same time because I didn’t really have to watch the ball. As soon as a ball was hit I could tell where it was going to go, and I’d just take off and not look at it any more till I got there. So I’d take a quick glance at him while I was running.

  Finally, one day Greasy came over and sat down beside me on the bench. “I want to end this, Roush,” he says to me. “I guess you know I’ve been trying to run you down ever since you got here. I wanted that center field job for myself, and I didn’t like it when Matty put you out there. But you can go get a ball better than I ever could. I want to shake hands and call it off. From now on, I’ll holler.”

  And from then on Greasy and I got along just fine. Grew to be two of the best friends ever. In fact, I made a lot of good friends those years I played in Cincinnati, still my close friends to this day. I think that Cincinnati club from 1916 to 1926 was one of the nicest bunch of fellows ever gathered together.

  We even had Jim Thorpe there one year, you know. By thunder, there was a man could outrun a deer. Beat anything I ever saw. I used to be pretty fast myself. Stole close to 300 bases in the Big Leagues. And I had a real long stride, for the simple reason that in the outfield if you don’t take a long stride your head bobs up and down too much and makes it hard to follow the flight of the ball. But Jim Thorpe would take only two strides to my three. I’d run just as hard as I could, and he’d keep up with me just trotting along.

  One day I asked him, “Jim, anybody in those Olympic games ever make you really run your best?”

  “I never yet saw the man I couldn’t look back at,” he says to me. I believed him.

  Well, sir, I really hit my own stride those years in Cincinnati. Led the league in batting twice, hit over .350 three years in a row—’21, ’22, and ’23—and generally had a ball. The lowest I ever hit while I was there was .321 in 1919, and that was good enough to lead the league that year. We won the pennant and the World Series in 1919, and finished either first, second, or third in seven of the 11 years I was there. Good teams—very much underrated. Like I say, better than the 1919 White Sox.

  Of course, I hit very different from the way they hit today. I used a 48-ounce bat, heaviest anyone ever used. It was a shorter bat, wit
h a big handle, and I tried to hit to all fields. Didn’t swing my head off, just snapped at the ball. Until 1921, you know, they had a dead ball. Well, the only way you could get a home run was if the outfielder tripped and fell down. The ball wasn’t wrapped tight and lots of times it’d get mashed on one side. I’ve caught many a ball in the outfield that was mashed flat on one side. Come bouncing out there like a jumping bean. They wouldn’t throw it out of the game, though. Only used about three or four balls in a whole game. Now they use 60 or 70.

  Another thing that’s different now is the ball parks. Now they have smooth infields and outfields that aren’t full of rocks, and they keep them nice. Back in the old days there were parks weren’t much better than a cow pasture. Spring training was the worst. Some of those parks they’d want you to play exhibition games in had outfields like sand dunes, and others were hard as a cement sidewalk. The hell with that! I wouldn’t go to spring training, that’s all.

  I used to hold out every year until the week before the season opened. That’s the only time they ever had any trouble with me, contract time. Why should I go down there and fuss around in spring training? Twist an ankle, or break a leg. I did my own spring training, hunting quail and rabbits around Oakland City.

  After 11 years with the Reds, they traded me to the Giants for George Kelly. That was after the 1926 season. Well, I figured that was it. I was around thirty-four, and I wasn’t about to start taking abuse from McGraw that late in life. However, I figured I had one chance: maybe I could get McGraw to trade me.

  So in January of ’27, when the Giants sent me a contract for $19,000, same as I’d been getting with Cincinnati, I sent it right back and wrote them I wouldn’t play in New York. A couple of weeks later another one arrived, calling for $20,000. I figured they hadn’t gotten the point. So I wrote a letter telling them I wouldn’t play with the Giants for any kind of money. And wouldn’t you know it, two weeks after that another contract arrived, calling for $21,000. I didn’t even bother to send that one back.

  Edd Roush in 1916

  Since they didn’t seem to get the point the way I was doing it, I finally wrote and said I wanted $30,000. I figured that would sink in and they’d get the idea. Send me to another club.

  Well, spring training started—and ended—and the team began to move up north, playing exhibition games along the way. I was still busy hunting quail right here around Oakland City. Then one day I got a call from McGraw. Would I meet him in Chattanooga next week? After thinking it over, I decided I might as well.

  I arrived at the hotel in Chattanooga at eight o’clock on a Thursday morning, and when I registered the clerk said to me, “Mr. McGraw left a message for you to come up to his room as soon as you arrive.”

  Well, it was eight o’clock, and I hadn’t had any breakfast. So I went into the dining room and ordered a good meal. About nine o’clock a bellboy comes over and says, “Mr. McGraw would like to see you in room 305.”

  “All right,” I says, “tell him I’ll be there.”

  About that time the ballplayers started to drift in, so I visited with them awhile. One of them gave me a good cigar, so I sat down in a comfortable chair in the lobby and talked to some of the boys while I enjoyed it. About eleven o’clock one of the coaches came over. “McGraw wants to know why you’re not up there yet?”

  Finally, by about 12:30 or so, after I’d finished visiting with the ballplayers, completed a detailed reading of three newspapers, and had a haircut and a shoeshine, I decided to go upstairs and see Mr. John J. McGraw.

  “What the devil’s the matter with you, Roush?” he says, “Don’t you want to play ball for me?”

  “Hell, no,” I said. “I don’t want to play ball for you. Haven’t you figured that out by now?”

  “Why not?”

  “’Cause I don’t like the way you treat your players, that’s why. First time you call me a damn so-and-so, somebody’s going to get hurt.”

  “Listen, we’ll get along fine. Don’t you worry,” he says.

  “Yeah. I’ve heard that one before.”

  “Sit down,” he says, “and listen to me. You know this game as well as I do. You play your own game and I’ll never say anything to you.”

  “That’s another one I’ve heard before.”

  “Well,” he says, “it’s the truth.”

  “The first time something happens out there, and you start on me,” I said, “I’m taking off for Oakland City, Indiana. Why don’t we stop all this horsing around and you just send me to another ball club?”

  “I won’t do it,” he says. “I’ve been trying to get you back ever since I traded you away a long time ago. Now you’re either going to play for me or you’re not going to play ball at all. I’m sure not going to let you go a second time.”

  “OK,” I said, “if that’s the way you feel about it. If you give me my salary, I’ll try it. But I still say I’ll be back in Oakland City, Indiana, in ten days.”

  “How much do you want?”

  “$25,000.”

  “I can’t pay it.”

  Well, I took my hat and started for the door. “Where do you think you’re going?” he says.

  “Back to Oakland City, Indiana. Why?”

  “Now hold on,” he says. “Come back and sit down. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll give you a three-year contract for $70,000.”

  “All right,” I said, “I’ll take it.”

  I signed the contract, went out to the ball park, got into a uniform, and played six innings that afternoon. Got two hits out of three times up, too.

  I played that three-year contract out, and after that I quit, and finally did come back to Oakland City, Indiana. McGraw kept to his word and never bothered me. But it wasn’t like playing in Cincinnati. I missed my teammates, and I missed the Cincinnati fans.

  I’ve read where as far as the Cincinnati fans are concerned I’m the most popular player ever wore a Reds’ uniform. I don’t know about that. It’s not for me to say. But—assuming it’s true—I’ll tell you one thing: the feeling is mutual.

  17 Bill Wambsganss

  The dogs did bark, the children screamed,

  Up flew the windows all,

  And every soul bawled out: “Well Done!”

  As loud as he could bawl.

  —WILLIAM COWPER, The History of John Gilpin

  FUNNY THING, I played in the Big Leagues for thirteen years—1914 through 1926—and the only thing anybody seems to remember is that once I made an unassisted triple play in a World Series. Many don’t even remember the team I was on, or the position I played, or anything. Just Wambsganss—unassisted triple play.

  Actually, more people probably know me as Bill Wamby than as Bill Wambsganss. Wamby fits in a box score easier, so that’s how it usually was reported. But it doesn’t matter. Same thing: Wamby—unassisted triple play. You’d think I was born the day before and died the day after.

  Fact is I was born in 1894, 26 years before that play, and now it’s 45 years after it and—knock on wood—far as I know I’m still bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I was born right here in Cleveland, although I grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana. You see, my Dad was a Lutheran clergyman, and in 1895, when I was only about a year and a half old, he was transferred from Cleveland to a church in Fort Wayne.

  Naturally, it was assumed that I’d follow in his footsteps. That was just taken for granted, that some day I’d be a minister too, same as Dad. I even believed it myself for a long time. In those days, you know, the old-fashioned Lutherans thought that all you had to do was bring your boy up the right way and the Lord would take care of the rest. High Persuasion, you might say. Especially if you were a minister’s son.

  And, of course, I accepted this. Everything seemed like it was all sort of cut and dried as far as my future was concerned. Then it happened: I went to Concordia College in Fort Wayne, and played ball on the college team, and that started me to thinking that maybe I’d better reconsider the whole thing.

&nbs
p; In the first place, once I got to playing on the college team, all I did was sit in the classroom and look out the window, wishing that class was over so I could go out and play ball.

  Then, in the second place, about becoming a minister—well—I just couldn’t figure out how I could possibly do it. The trouble was I just couldn’t talk in front of people, public speaking in front of a group of people I mean. I simply couldn’t do it. I was a pretty bashful youngster and I stuttered a bit, and I still remember one day I got up to make a recitation in class and I couldn’t get a word out, not a single word.

  So I got to worrying about how to get out of the whole situation. There was my father, though, and what he expected of me. I just dreaded telling him I didn’t want to be a minister. Even now, I get nervous when I think about it. So I just kept right on wading through the whole business.

  I finished college, and after that you were supposed to go to the theological seminary down in St. Louis for a couple of years. So that’s what I did, went to divinity school in St. Louis even though I still couldn’t speak in front of people without working up a terrible case of stage fright every single time. Unfortunately, nobody there was willing to take the bull by the horns and say right out that this kid just wouldn’t make a good minister. So I went on through. It’s a joke, but I did.

  What happened while I was there, though, was a pure stroke of luck. The good Lord must have really taken pity on me. One of the other seminary students had played some professional baseball, and by sheer chance the manager of the Cedar Rapids club wrote to him and asked him if he knew a good shortstop he could recommend. Well, he recommended me! So during the summer vacation from the seminary I went and played ball. That’s how I got my start: 1913, Cedar Rapids, Central Association, professional baseball.