The Kansas City Cowboys

by The Kansas City Cowboys (retail) (epub)

  He started tossing the ball again. I took that to mean that he was no kin to Dodge City lawman Charlie Bassett.

  “You want to get loose?” I asked.

  Again, he stopped his trick, but this time he did not drop the ball.

  “Huh?”

  Before I could explain the idea of muscles and such, a pistol shot rang out in the morning air, followed by the first “Jesus-son-of-a-bitching-pig-shitting-asshole-damn-it-all-to-hell-bastard-loving-Christ” I ever heard, with a few other delicately edited bits of profanity that, alas, Mother heard, too.

  “Who the hell are you two buckos and what the hell are you doing on my baseball field?”

  He was a tad shorter than Charley Bassett, though much stockier, and while I had him beat in the height and weight departments, he certainly wore more scars on his face than Charley Bassett and me combined. Plus, he held one of those self-cocking pistols, nickel-plated, with smoke still wafting from the barrel, which was aimed in the general direction of Charley Bassett and myself.

  “I’m … uh … Silver … King,” I said.

  I should have kept my mouth shut, because now the barrel trained directly on my nose.

  “I didn’t ask who you are, because I don’t give a shit who you are. What I want to know is what you’re doing here?”

  Mother was shouting something from the grandstand, and the burly cuss in the baseball uniform turned in her direction. He lowered the revolver, and nodded at my mother, even though none of us could hear what she had said.

  His tone changed. He wet his lips with his tongue. “Who the hell’s that sweet-looking petticoat?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Charley Bassett said.

  Blushing again, I managed to find the note Mr. McKim had given Mother, and slowly withdrew it from the back pocket of my trousers. The man turned, saw the note, glanced again at my mother and father, and slid the .32 behind his back. He took the note, read it, and swore again.

  “Cowboys.”

  That was another voice, but this one I recognized, and I also remembered the big cowboy hat as Mr. Americus McKim came down the steps—not a rickety ladder—that connected the playing field with the stands, something neither my parents nor I had noticed. Joseph Heim and a sloppily dressed man, smoking a pipe, followed Mr. McKim.

  “Where’s your mother?” Mr. McKim asked me as he shook my hand, while looking toward the stands.

  “Yonder.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Joseph Heim said. “I remember this punk. The little son-of-a-bitch with a buxomly ma who went behind my back.”

  “And gave us a great name for a baseball team,” Mr. McKim said. He had doffed his hat and was bowing in the general direction of my mother.

  “Damn it all to hell,” the man with the .32 said. “What the hell is going on here?”

  “This is Silver King,” Mr. McKim said, “a local talent with a wonderful name that we can market like blazes. Right, Joe?” He put his hat back on his head and nudged his partner, then turned to the man with the pipe. “What do you think, Jimmy?”

  Which meant that the man with the pipe was the third partner in this baseball franchise, the great sportswriter for the Kansas City Times, James Whitfield.

  “It’s a handle, all right,” Whitfield said. The pipe stayed in his mouth.

  “Pig shit,” the burly man said. “Ain’t I supposed to be managing this team? This is the son-of-a-bitching National League. Professional. Top of the world. Don’t I get a say in who the hell plays for me?”

  “You’re Dave Rowe?” I sang out.

  The man’s right hand reached behind his back, and I knew he clutched the Smith & Wesson, waiting for me to say the wrong thing so he could murder me in self-defense.

  “You got a problem with me, boy? I owe you money? Got your sister in the family way?”

  “No, sir,” I said. “I just admire the way you play. Or what I’ve read about you in Mister Whitfield’s articles in the Times.”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” That came from Charley Bassett. “You’ll lick anybody’s boots, won’t you, boy?” He stopped, dropped the ball, and realized his mistake. Now everyone, including me, was staring at him. The only difference was that I wanted to pound him beneath the ground.

  “You got a letter, too, I warrant,” Dave Rowe said, but at least he had left his revolver behind his back. “Or at least a name?”

  “Charley Bassett,” he said.

  Rowe glanced at Heim, then Whitfield, each of whom shrugged, but McKim stepped closer, looking the young man up and down. “Charlie Bassett’s son?”

  I’ll give Charley Bassett credit. Seeing Mr. McKim’s big Stetson, hearing the comments about cowboys, Charley Bassett learned quickly.

  “That’s right. From Dodge City.”

  “By thunder, isn’t this something?” In a furious handshake, Mr. McKim worked Charley Bassett’s arm like the pump to a dry well. “I knew your father … not well, but sold him my beer. He ran the Marble Hall Saloon in our fair city for a year or so, till he sold it and headed back west. Where’s your father now, son?”

  “Probably chasing train robbers,” Bassett said, “somewhere in the West. Maybe playing poker with Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, or Dug Dugdale.”

  “By grab, that’s something. Wonderful. Just wonderful.” Still gripping Bassett’s hand, Mr. McKim turned to explain to Rowe, Heim, Whitfield, and the other ballists who had begun descending the stairs into the hole. “He’s the son of a great Kansas lawman. You can get even more publicity out of this, Joe. The son of a Dodge City great … he helped organize that Peace Commission in Dodge three, four years back.” At length he released Bassett’s hand, but kept marveling as he laughed. “Playing poker with Wyatt Earp and …” McKim’s expression changed. “Who’s Dug Dugdale?”

  Now it was my turn to grin, but Charley Bassett showed he was no stranger to the world of lies.

  “A tough hombre out in the frontier,” he said, and looked at me, “but he’d lick my pa’s boots just so he could play poker.”

  “Poker?” A giant of a man stepped toward Dave Rowe. “I thought we come here to play baseball?”

  Chapter Six

  Which is what we did all that morning, through dinnertime, and into the afternoon.

  Not all the ballplayers had arrived when we began. After all, Mr. McKim had told me to be there at ten in the morning, and I doubted if it was past eight now. The arrival of the seven or eight ballists that early, though, impressed me. This is what it took to be a professional ballist, I thought. Dedication to the game. Practicing every waking minute.

  The fat catcher, though, shattered that dream.

  “Most of the boys is still in their cups, Skip,” the brute said to Dave Rowe. “And you’ll need to bail two of ’em out of jail.”

  “That’s a job for McKim or Heim. Or you, Whitfield.” Dave Rowe sneered, not at the owners, but at Charley Bassett and me. “I got my own designs,” Rowe said. “To rid us of some rotten eggs.”

  Luckily for me, Dave Rowe decided to test Charley Bassett first.

  “All right, Mister Kansas Shootist,” he said. “What position do you play?”

  “Anywhere on the infield,” Bassett said, “except first base.”

  “Get to second base.” Rowe fetched a bat, stared at me, then nodded at the big man who had made the poker comment. “Fatty,” he said, “this tall drink of water fancies hisself a pitcher. See what he can do.”

  So while Dave Rowe smacked ground balls to Charley Bassett at second base, I walked to the pitcher’s line and began throwing to Charles Briody, a fat man with the pudgy face of a child. Some people called him Alderman, but to most fans and friends, he was simply Fatty, a proper sobriquet for a man who topped two hundred and fifty pounds.

  Crack went Rowe’s bat. Another crack sounded when Bassett snagged the ball and drilled a perfe
ct strike to Mox McQuery at first base. And slap went Fatty Briody’s hands when I fired a fast ball to him.

  He screamed, stood, shook his hands, and hurried to the bench along third base where most of the real professional ballists had left their satchels, baseball bats, sacks of Bull Durham or plugs of chewing tobacco, and liquor bottles. While other players laughed, Briody found two gloves of black leather—one with fingers, the other without—and pulled them over his beefy hands. He was right-handed, so he put the fingerless glove on that hand, for a better grip and dexterity when he had to throw the ball.

  Even the players who likewise wore fingerless gloves (only one glove, of course, pulled over the non-throwing hand) tormented Briody.

  “Fatty!” Dave Rowe pointed. “You—” he stopped, remembering Mother was sitting in the stands, and whispered “—you said you wouldn’t be caught dead catching with gloves.”

  “Said I wouldn’t be caught dead catchin’ a baseball,” Fatty clarified. A cannonball. That’s different, Skip.”

  That stopped Rowe for a minute, and he dismissed Charley Bassett. “Go over to shortstop,” he told the young man who was no kin to a Kansas lawman. “Throw with Myers and Donnelly for a bit. I’ll deal with you later.”

  Briody squatted and held his now slightly protected hands a good six feet behind home base, a twelve-inch diamond of white stone.

  “Well …?” Dave Rowe was leaning on his bat maybe a foot outside the batter’s box. “Throw it, boy.”

  I did. Fatty Briody grunted, but caught the ball with both hands, pulling the ball into his ample gut. He stood and stared defiantly at Rowe.

  “That’s heat, Skip,” he said.

  “And a ball. Eight inches inside.”

  “Umpire’s gotta be able to see it to make that call, Skip. And a batter can’t hit what he can’t see.”

  “Bullshit.” Rowe straightened, hefted the bat, and stepped inside the batsman’s lines. “All right, Silverado, pitch to me.”

  Holding the ball against my side with my left arm, I wiped the sweat off my palms, and tried to swallow.

  “Strike him out, kid!” the big first baseman, Mox McQuery, said with a snort.

  “He can’t hit. That’s why he’s playing for Kansas City,” came a cry from one of our outfielders.

  “Come on, Silver.” I stared across the infield at Charley Bassett, who grinned and repeated his encouragement. I guess as a rookie, he had decided that we should join forces, after all. Besides, I hadn’t sold him out and let Mr. McKim or anyone know that his relationship to former Sheriff Charles Bassett of Ford County, Kansas, was as close as my relationship to King Arthur.

  Briody settled into his stance, and I began windmilling my arm, then zipping a fast ball.

  Crack!

  With a grimace, I turned to watch the ball I had just pitched—my baseball, not one belonging to the Kansas City Cowboys—bounce off the fence.

  “Can’t hit what you can’t see, eh, Fatty?” Dave Rowe chuckled.

  “I can see that’s a foul ball, Skip,” Briody said.

  “Bullshit.”

  “Foul,” Briody repeated. “By a good ten feet.”

  Dave Rowe spun, but nods from Whitfield, McKim, and two pitchers standing against the catcher’s fence behind home plate, Grasshopper Jim Whitney, and Stump Wiedman, confirmed the catcher’s call.

  Cursing again, Dave Rowe returned to the plate, bent his knees, swiveled his bat, and glared. “All right, Silver Queen, try it again.”

  I did, and Rowe swung so hard he practically corkscrewed himself into the dirt.

  “Strike two!” Grasshopper Jim Whitney said with a chuckle.

  “The Beaneaters don’t miss you in Boston, Jim,” Rowe snapped at the pitcher. Pushing himself to his feet and brushing the dirt off the knees of his britches, Rowe gave Whitney a cold stare. “And you sure as hell ain’t been here long enough for them to miss you in Kansas City after I send your ass to the Western League.”

  Then, lowering the giant bat, Rowe spit into the palms of his hand and dropped to his knees to grind his hands in the dirt. Satisfied, he picked up the bat, tapped it against the ground, and rose to step inside the batsman’s lines. “All right, Silver,” he said. “Strike me out, if you can.”

  I couldn’t.

  Dave Rowe was thirty-one years old, tougher than a cob and meaner than a rattlesnake. He had been playing professional baseball since 1877, in the National League, American Association, Union Association, and on semiprofessional clubs from Baltimore to Denver. Besides, I hadn’t forgotten that .32 he still kept tucked inside his belt behind his back. Would he shoot me dead if I struck him out? It’s hard to pitch when that kind of fear eyes you in the face. And Dave Rowe had one awful stare when he had two strikes on him.

  I tried, however. After all, my parents were up in the grandstands. Yet Dave Rowe showed me that he was a pro, and that I was a seventeen-year-old kid out of his league. He fouled off three consecutive pitches, then laid off one I threw, on purpose, far outside.

  “You’re gutless,” Rowe said.

  This time, I did the glaring, and threw my last pitch to Rowe. I didn’t strike him out, but I sure as hell fooled him. Taking off most of the speed on my pitch, I watched, quite pleased with my cunning, as Rowe dribbled a weak roller toward third base, where third baseman Jim Donnelly fell to his knees laughing hard at the pathetic hit. Dave Rowe wasn’t laughing, though, for he was a true baseball player, and as soon as he made contact, he ran as hard as he could to reach first base.

  He didn’t make it there in time, though.

  “Criminy!” Finally the pipe had left James Whitfield’s mouth.

  Something zipped past my ear, and I realized it was the baseball. Charley Bassett had sprinted from deep at shortstop, and closer to second base, to bare-hand the ball and throw it while his momentum carried him toward Fatty Briody. I turned just in time to see Mox McQuery secure the catch a step ahead of the charging Dave Rowe, who ran through the bag, and turned to see McQuery shaking his head.

  Rowe strung together another long curse.

  “You’re out!” James Whitfield said with a chuckle, and tapped the pipe bowl against the third-base bench.

  “Yeah, well I didn’t call my pitch,” Rowe said. That was another thing that impressed me about Dave Rowe. As hard as he had run, and as old as he was, he did not look winded in the least. “Hell, if I’d called high, I would have sent that ball to Topeka!”

  “Which would’ve been foul, too,” said Mr. McKim.

  Rowe, forgetting all about Mother in the stands, cursed foully and furiously.

  * * * * *

  So I made the team. Mr. McKim said he would bring contracts to the park for Bassett and me on Monday. After that first practice or tryout or audition, or whatever you want to call it, however, Dave Rowe let me know that there was one big difference between making a baseball club and actually being a part of a baseball team. “McKim wants you, boy,” he whispered. “I don’t. I hope your long-handle underwear is tough, kid. ’Cause you’re gonna find out how hard, and how many splinters, there is on a baseball bench.”

  * * * * *

  Now, I’m not sure what kind of deal Mother made with the schoolmaster, but it sure wasn’t to my liking. I would practice with the Kansas City Cowboys from morning to dusk, come home, and burn the coal oil while I pored through my Reader, doing all sorts of ciphering and writing. Mother would take my homework to school the next morning while Papa would drop me off at League Park on his way to the packing house.

  For the next three weeks, we practiced as the carpenters finished the stadium, and McKim and Heim thought of gimmicks they could use so Whitfield—and the other Kansas City newspapers—would write stories to bring spectators into League Park, or, as most of my teammates had begun to call it, the Hole.

  Eventually we began practicing against other ba
seball teams. I rarely pitched except at batting practice, so I spent most of the time chasing down baseballs. To Dave Rowe, I was nothing, and my anger festered when I realized that Charley Bassett would likely earn a starting position on the team. On the other hand, I could not deny that Bassett was a wonderful infielder.

  So I sat on the bench when we played games against muffin teams from Independence, St. Joseph, and Fort Leavenworth. But during that spring, I learned a few things from my teammates.

  William Thomas “Mox” McQuery, a Kentucky-born bear of a man, not yet twenty-five, had played for the Outlaw Reds of Cincinnati’s Union Association team in ’84 and the Detroit Wolverines the previous year. McQuery loved baseball, but I think another dream drove him. He kept asking Charley Bassett about what it took to be a lawman like his pa. Charley told him, although I knew Charley Bassett had no idea. I wondered what Bassett’s real father did.

  Second baseman Al “Cod” Myers, another slender mustachioed man in his early twenties, had spent one year in the Union Association (Milwaukee) and one in the National League (Philadelphia). He loved baseball. He loved gin even more.

  Third baseman Jim Donnelly, another pro ballist but, like me, not even old enough to vote, had spent part of 1884 with the American Association’s Indianapolis team and, in 1885, started with the Hoosiers, then playing in the Western League, before joining the National League’s Detroit team. He stood out because, like me, he didn’t have a mustache. Fatty Briody said he couldn’t even grow one.

  Outfielder “Shorty” Paul Radford, no taller than five foot six, no older than twenty-four, had three National League seasons under his belt, one with Boston and two with Providence. No one could understand how Shorty’s short legs could carry him across the dirt outfield so quickly. The man wasn’t built for speed, but he damned sure had it.

  Outfielder Jim Lillie, who had spent the previous three seasons with Buffalo in the National League, was always stealing Myers’ gin, and getting into fights.