The Glory of Their Times

by Lawrence S. Ritter

  And Lindstrom in that 1924 World Series. Gee, we should have won that one. The seventh game of the Series and all, and not once but twice the ball hits a pebble and bounces over his head. I guess the good Lord just didn’t want us to win that game, that’s all there was to it.

  By that time, you see, I was back on the Giants, where I’d started out in 1912. Well, of course, I didn’t really start out with them. What I mean is that the Giants were the first club I played with in the Big Leagues. I actually began with Oshkosh, which was in the Wisconsin-Illinois League. That was back in 1908, when I was only eighteen years old.

  I was planning to start at the University of Rochester that year. But one day a fellow from this Oshkosh club came along and asked me if I’d like to play ball with them.

  “Well, I believe I will,” I said.

  We didn’t have much money, and this looked like a good way to pay my own way for a change. My father and mother didn’t think too much of the idea, but they didn’t try to stop me. Dad said, “Let him go. He’ll be back.”

  But I didn’t come back; I stayed the whole season with Oshkosh. In fact, I played there three full years. I was a shortstop in those days, and I’ve got to admit that if it hadn’t been for my fielding I’d have been back in Rochester before they’d have even known I was gone. I think—no, I don’t think, I know—I hit .161 that first season, which didn’t exactly lead the league.

  But I kept practicing and practicing at it, and the next year I hit about .285, and the year after that I made it to .300. That was in 1910. Then in 1911, after three years with Oshkosh, the New York Giants bought me and farmed me out to Buffalo in the Eastern League. I did pretty well there, so in 1912 McGraw brought me up the big city.

  That’s how come I was there in 1912 when Snodgrass dropped that fly ball and the Red Sox beat us in that Series. I never got into any of those games, but I was a Giant that season, sitting on the bench most of the time. They had a crackerjack infield, you know, with Fred Merkle, Larry Doyle, Art Fletcher, and Buck Herzog, and I just couldn’t break into that lineup to save my life.

  The next year, though, McGraw traded me to Cincinnati and that’s where I started playing regular, in 1913. I was a second baseman for the first few seasons I was with the Reds, and then they made me into a third baseman. We had a darned good club those years in Cincinnati, during the ’teens and early ’twenties: Hal Chase and then Jake Daubert at first base, Maury Rath at second, Larry Kopf at short, myself at third, and Eddie Roush, Greasy Neale, Rube Bressler, and Pat Duncan in the outfield. With Ivy Wingo catching and a whole slew of terrific pitchers, like Eppa Jeptha Rixey, Dutch Ruether, Dolph Luque, Slim Sallee, Jimmy Ring, and Hod Eller. Old Hod had what we called a shine ball. What it was, he had a file in his belt and every once in a while he’d rub the ball against that file.

  That was a good team, a real good team, and I still don’t see why the White Sox were supposed to be such favorites to beat us in the 1919 World Series. I know how good Joe Jackson and Happy Felsch were in the outfield, but they weren’t any better than Eddie Roush. Why Eddie used to take care of the whole outfield, not just center field. He was far and away the best outfielder I ever saw. And our pitching was just as good as theirs, for sure.

  Well, maybe the White Sox did throw it. I don’t know. Maybe they did and maybe they didn’t. It’s hard to say. I didn’t see anything that looked suspicious. But I think we’d have beaten them either way; that’s what I thought then and I still think so today.

  I played with Cincinnati from 1913 through 1921, and then they traded me back to the Giants, and I stayed there until 1926. So that’s how come I played in so many World Series—in 1919 with Cincinnati, in ’22, ’23, and ’24 with the Giants, and then in 1927—my last year—I caught on with Pittsburgh and got in the Series with them. So between 1919 and 1927 I played in five World Series with three different clubs. And if you count 1912 I was in six World Series altogether.

  I figure that’s probably a record for anybody who never played with the Yankees. You know how they’re so record happy these days: most errors by a left-handed right fielder on Saturdays where the date is an odd number, and all that. Well, there’s one record I hold: most World Series on the most different teams for a right-handed third baseman who didn’t switch-hit and who never played for the Yankees. If I didn’t add that switch-hitting in there I think maybe my old roommate, Frankie Frisch, would take the cake.

  As a matter of fact, though, I think I still do hold the record for the highest season’s fielding average for a third baseman. I got that because I have a strong chest. I’d get in front of that ball one way or the other, and if I couldn’t catch it I’d let it hit me and then I’d grab it on the bounce and throw to first.

  McGraw’s the one who taught me that when I first came up. “Get in front of those balls,” he’d say, “you won’t get hurt. That’s what you’ve got a chest for, young man.”

  McGraw’s also the one who started me using my bottle bat. When I first came up he didn’t like the bat I had, and he told me to try to get one with a larger barrel. But the large-barreled bats had large handles, and my hands were too small to grip a bat like that very well. See, I’m not too big. I’m 5 feet 7, and I weigh about 160. That isn’t real small, but it’s not real big either. So I went to Spalding’s in New York and we went down in the basement and right there we whittled on a bat until it was just what I needed.

  What I wanted was a bat with a big butt end but with a skinny handle, so I could get a good grip and swing it. We whittled down the handle of a standard bat, and then we built up the barrel, and when we were finished it looked like a crazy sort of milk bottle or a round paddle—real wide at one end and then suddenly tapering real quick to a thin handle. The handle part had to be longer than on most bats, because I choked up quite a bit and kept my hands a little apart, too. But I wanted it big starting right above my hands, so if I hit an inside pitch near my hands it would have some power. That bat weighed about 46 ounces, and all the weight was in the barrel, where it counted.

  You couldn’t hold that bottle bat down at the knob end, ’cause the way the weight was distributed the ball would knock it right out of your hands. But I always choked up and chopped at the ball. I didn’t swing from the heels. I’d chop at the ball and drive it over the infield, see.

  I had good luck with that bat, stuck with it from 1912 on and never changed. And for a guy who hit .161 his first season at Oshkosh, you see what it did: I had a lifetime average of over .290 for all the while I was in the Big Leagues, and one period there, 1917 through 1921, I hit about .315. And in the 1922 World Series, you know, when we beat the Yankees four straight, I hit .474. I still carry 474 as my license plate on my car. Have every single year since 1922, as a matter of fact.

  I had the Yankees’ signs in that 1922 World Series. Not their pitching signs, their hitting signs. I knew when they were going to bunt and when they were going to hit away. Which is something it’s very nice for a third baseman to know. I figured them out in the very first game from what Miller Huggins was doing, and had them the whole Series.

  That was also the Series where Babe Ruth crashed into me at third base and almost started a real donnybrook. Whew! The Babe wasn’t doing very well—I think he only got two hits in the whole Series—and the Yankees were getting beat and I was hitting like nobody’s business. So in the third game the Babe got on base, and when the next man up singled, Babe came tearing around into third and as he came in he gave me the shoulder and sent me flying. I didn’t complain. That’s baseball. But the fans really got on him and gave him a terrific going over.

  When I finally got on my feet the Babe said to me, “Kid, you know we’re both entitled to part of that base path.”

  “OK,” I said, “you take your side and I’ll take mine. And if I ever find you on my side, you better watch out!”

  Hell, I couldn’t have budged that big guy if I’d have hit him with a locomotive, and he knew it, too. But you got to let
them know who’s boss, right?

  Babe Ruth was a nice guy, though, there’s no doubt about that. I never held it against him. A ballplayer can’t carry a grudge off the field, anyway. Never! As soon as that gate’s closed out there, it’s all over. You just forget it. Tomorrow’s another day. You can’t take the game home with you every night, or you’ll go crazy before the season’s half over.

  So much of baseball is mental, you know, up there in the old head. You always have to be careful not to let it get you. Do you know that I was scared to death every time I went into a World Series? Every single one, even after I’d been in so many. It’s a terrific strain. But once I’d fielded that first ball, it was just another ball game. Well, almost. Not quite, of course.

  People used to ask me, before a World Series started, “Well, how do you feel?”

  “I’ll let you know after I handle that first ball,” I’d say.

  If you handle that first ball clean, then you relax. It’s when you mess up that first one that things go from bad to worse. You start worrying, and once you do that you’ve had it.

  Didn’t I start to tell you about Freddy Lindstrom’s tough luck in that 1924 Series? Yeah, I thought I did. That was McGraw’s fourth pennant in a row, and as it turned out it was to be his last. He was a fine man, Mr. McGraw was. I really liked him. I was the Giants’ regular third baseman that year, but late in the season I tore my knee and couldn’t play, so Freddy Lindstrom—who was only eighteen years old then—was put in.

  The Series was tied at three games apiece, and in the seventh game we were ahead 3–1 in the eighth inning. Then the Senators loaded the bases with two out. Bucky Harris slammed a sharp grounder to third and, just as Freddy was about to field it, it took a wicked hop right over his head and two runs scored to tie the game. And then in the twelfth inning the exact same thing happened—a grounder to third hit a pebble again, bounced way over the kid’s head, and we lost the game and the Series, 4–3. It wasn’t Freddy’s fault. It could have happened to anybody. He never had a chance to get the ball. It was Fate, that’s all. Fate and a pebble.

  Heinie Groh and his famous bottle bat

  President and Mrs. Coolidge applauding the victorious Washington team as the winning run scores in the twelfth inning of the seventh game of the 1924 World Series. Mrs. Coolidge was a particularly rabid Washington fan.

  I stayed with the Giants two more years, but I didn’t play very much after 1924 because my knee never got well again, and they let me go after the 1926 season. I was thirty-seven then, and you don’t play very much third base at that age, anyway. I was lucky, though, and good old Donie Bush picked me up as a utility infielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1927. So I got to see another World Series for free when Pittsburgh won the pennant that year.

  That was the first year both the Waner boys were in the outfield for Pittsburgh, and it sure was a delight to watch those two play baseball. Criminy sakes, could they ever hit! No bloopers, either. All line drives. And both of them fast as antelopes.

  That was my last season. I knew it would be. So I just sat back on the bench and watched the Waners go to it. Boy, that’s the way for an old guy to pass the time of day. Watching two beautiful ballplayers like Paul and Lloyd starting out on what you just know are going to be real great careers. That was such a treat that I actually enjoyed that last season just as much as I did my first. Maybe even more.

  25 Hank Greenberg

  When Jackie Robinson first broke in with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, a barrage of racial insults was directed at him from fans in the stands and from opposing players. One team even threatened to go on strike rather than play against Brooklyn if Robinson were in the lineup.

  But there were encouraging signs as well. In a game against Pittsburgh early in the season, Jackie and Pittsburgh first baseman Hank Greenberg accidentally collided in a close play at first base. No words were exchanged. A couple of minutes later, though, Greenberg said, “I’m sorry. I should have asked you if you were hurt.”

  “Thanks,” said Jackie. “I’m OK.”

  “Don’t let them get to you,” said Greenberg. “You’re doing fine. Keep it up.”

  Asked about the incident by reporters after the game, Jackie said, “Hank Greenberg has class. It stands out all over him.”

  —Newspaper reports, 1947

  LOTS OF PEOPLE were surprised when they heard I’d signed up to play professional baseball. Most people never considered me that good a ballplayer. A few friends thought I had some talent, but I was generally thought of as a big, awkward, gawky kid who was always stumbling over his own two feet. When I was thirteen, I was already 6 feet 3 inches tall, and by the time I was sixteen I weighed close to 200 pounds. I had flat feet—really flat—so I couldn’t run very fast and I wasn’t too well coordinated, either, to put it mildly.

  Under the circumstances, the chances of me getting to the Big Leagues didn’t look too good; most people who’d seen me play didn’t think I’d make it. For instance in 1928, my last year in high school, when I was seventeen, I was chosen the best high-school first baseman in the New York metropolitan area. Based on that, my Dad asked a friend of his to see if he could get me into the Polo Grounds. Dad was in the textile business—inspecting and shrinking cloth—and one of his customers was close to some people in the New York Giants’ organization.

  The Giants played all afternoon games then, of course, and at ten in the morning, the substitutes would take batting practice. They needed people in the outfield to shag balls—to catch fly balls and grounders and throw them back to the infield—and that’s all I wanted an opportunity to do. We figured it might be a foot in the door.

  Hank Greenberg

  But word came back through my Dad’s friend that the Giants didn’t want me to shag balls; they said they’d seen me play for James Monroe High School and didn’t think I had any future.

  Back then I always thought of myself as a Giant fan. The first major-league game I’d ever gone to had been at the Polo Grounds. My Dad took me to a Sunday double-header between the Giants and the Phillies when I was about thirteen. I still remember that Frankie Frisch, the Fordham Flash, a New York boy, got seven hits for the Giants in the double-header.

  Also John McGraw, the Giants’ manager, had always made a big thing of looking for a Jewish ballplayer. He figured a Jewish player would be a good gate attraction in New York. Well, here I was, and the city’s best high-school first baseman in the bargain—and they wouldn’t even let me into the Polo Grounds to shag balls at ten in the morning!

  Looking back, I have mixed feelings about that rejection by the Giants. It wouldn’t have cost them anything to let me shag balls. On the other hand, I’ve got to admit that they were in the majority—in those days, most people simply didn’t take my baseball talents very seriously. What they didn’t count on, though, was my determination.

  I wasn’t a “natural” ballplayer, like Babe Ruth or Willie Mays. In fact, as a teenager I was better at basketball and soccer than at baseball. I played center on the James Monroe basketball team and fullback on the soccer team. Believe it or not, while I was there we won city championships in all three sports. I also played on the football team my senior year, but I didn’t like it. When I had some free time, I was on the swimming team and threw the shot put. The wonder of it is that I ever graduated, because when I look back on high school I can’t figure out when I ever had any time to study. I used to get up at five in the morning to cram for exams.

  Actually, basketball was my first love and if pro basketball had existed back then, I would probably have chosen it over baseball. But I loved baseball, too, and was determined to make good at it.

  We lived in the East Tremont section of the Bronx on Crotona Park North, which is another name for East 174th Street, just across the street from Crotona Park and only a block from the park’s baseball field. That’s where I spent most of my time, practicing, practicing, practicing. Someone once said I didn’t play ball when I was a kid, I wor
ked at it, and I guess they were right. I’d play pepper by the hour, for example, to improve my fielding. Guys would hit or bunt the ball to me and I’d catch it. Over and over again. I’d count how many balls I’d fielded without an error, and then after I missed one I’d start counting all over again.

  To improve my hitting, I’d get friends and kids hanging around the park to pitch to me and to shag balls for me. Usually there would be three or four of them—one pitching and two or three shagging in the outfield. Sometimes I’d have a couple of infielders, too. There was no backstop in Crotona Park, which meant I had to hit the ball, because if it got past me I was the one who had to chase it. The idea was to hit fly balls to the guys shagging and get a fly ball to each of them often enough so they didn’t get bored and quit. But you couldn’t hit the ball too far away from them so they had to do too much running, because then they’d quit not because they were bored, but because they were tired. You also had to be careful not to hit the ball hard straight back at the pitcher, because if he got hit with a batted ball, he’d quit and go home, too.

  I got so I was able to hit fly balls within 10 or 15 feet of where I wanted in the outfield, or hit ground balls within a few feet of where I was aiming for in the infield, and whenever a bad pitch came in, I could successfully throw my bat at it and stop it from getting by me. You do this all day long, every day, day after day, and sooner or later you’re bound to get pretty good.

  I know I spent a lot of time in Crotona Park because I wanted to make myself a better ballplayer, but in all frankness I suspect it was also more complicated than that. I’m no psychologist, but I think one reason I spent so much time there was related to the fact that I was 6 feet 3 inches tall when I was only thirteen. I was awkward and clumsy and had a bad case of adolescent acne and felt out of place. At school, I’d squeeze behind one of those tiny desks, and if I had to go to the blackboard it would be the event of the day: all the kids would titter ’cause I’d tower way above the teacher. Everybody always teased me. “How’s the air up there?” I heard that a dozen times a day. At home, if company was at the house they’d be astounded: “My God, look how much he’s grown! He’s grown two feet in a week!”