The Original Curse

by Sean Deveney; Ken Rosenthal

  The war also paired well with Sunday’s fire-and-brimstone style. The violence of war hit Americans psychologically, and Sunday’s inflammatory sermons appealed to that violence. Preaching about pacifists, he said, “Do you know what a pacifist is? He is one too damned cowardly to fight and too damn cowardly to run. He ought to be stood up against a wall with a firing squad in front of him.”12 He said of Germany, “She has used her power to burn cities, sack cathedrals and slay men, murder children, rape women, starve people and inoculate with typhoid and tuberculosis germs. The religion of Germany is the roar of the cannon, the spit of the machine gun, the shrieks of the dying, battlefields drenched with blood. She is happy when she sees these horrors.”13 The previous December, in Atlanta, when a German pacifist harangued Sunday during a sermon, Sunday invited him onto the stage and punched him. A fistfight ensued. Some in Sunday’s audience piously shouted, “Sock him! Kill him! Lynch him!”14

  Sunday’s sermons were tracked daily in Chicago’s newspapers, and given the contradictions between praising God and executing pacifists, it’s little wonder that citizens were having a hard time setting their moral compasses. Sunday was just one symptom of that problem, which was not exactly a new conflict in Chicago. The city’s early-20th-century experience, like that of many major American cities, was marked by a back-and-forth between lax moral standards and sporadic campaigns against immorality. The war only intensified that back-and-forth.

  When it came to moral laxity, prostitution was a Chicago specialty, but thanks to the efforts of Mont Tennes, Chicago also was a national gambling headquarters. Tennes was the head of the General News Bureau, but the only news the bureau generally disseminated was horse racing information. After a bloody war fought in spurts in 1907–08, Tennes emerged with control over the racing wires in Chicago and eventually across the country. That meant that in the back rooms of hotels, poolhouses, saloons, and “cigar stores” that never sold cigars, men could bet on races across the country—with 50 percent of the take going to Tennes, who also sold police protection. This made Tennes wealthy.

  Attempts to expose Tennes were fruitless. He even managed to best Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. In October 1916, Landis was investigating a blackmail scam when he stumbled onto witnesses involved at a low level in Tennes’s gambling business. Over the course of two days, Landis pressed several hapless witnesses into revealing the inner workings of the General News Bureau. Finally, Tennes himself showed up in court with his lawyer, Clarence Darrow, who had held a conference with those Tennes underlings who had been so loose-lipped in front of Landis. “As a result of this conference,” the Tribune reported, “the fear of self-incrimination took a strong hold on all the gamblers.”15 Thus ended Landis’s confrontation, with no consequences for Tennes. The investigation only fortified the view of the city once expressed by muckraking journalist George Kibbe Turner, who wrote, “Chicago, in the mind of the country, stands notorious for violent crime.”16

  In the early 1910s, Mayor Carter Harrison Jr. tried to stamp out Chicago’s crime and graft, but only until William Hale Thompson was elected mayor in 1915. Thompson reverted Chicago to a “wide-open” form of government, with little oversight of vice districts. A little more than a year after Thompson took office, his chief of police, Charles Healey, fired seven of the city’s eight morals inspectors. Healey himself was brought up on charges of corruption, facing allegations that he peddled protection to lawbreaking businesses. (One captain complained that because of Healey’s influence “he had not been allowed to interfere with all-night cafes in which whites and blacks danced and drank together.”17) Healey’s replacement, John Alcock, picked up the slack, firing tough-minded morals inspector Major M. L. C. Funk-houser—well liked by foes of vice—in May 1918 on flimsy charges.

  But while Thompson was loosening the city’s oversight of vice, the war gave the federal government, concerned about the moral standards of soldiers, a stake in the vice struggle around the country. Under pressure from the Anti-Saloon League, the sale of liquor to soldiers was banned. The army confronted the widespread problem of venereal disease in the ranks and went to great lengths to ensure its men stayed clean—either by keeping the soldiers clean themselves with extensive prophylaxis inspections or by hitting them with propaganda, such as camp posters that read “A German Bullet Is Cleaner than a Whore” and pamphlets that wondered “How could you look the flag in the face if you were dirty with gonorrhea?”18

  In wide-open cities like Chicago, federal agents bypassed police and attempted to shut down vice districts, even threatening to take over police forces themselves. Cities across America were undergoing such moral struggles, but Chicago was an especially raucous cauldron, and polarizing figures such as Billy Sunday ensured that it stayed that way. For citizens exposed to this moral back-and-forth, it was increasingly difficult to figure out just what was right and what was wrong.

  Boston, though certainly not without its vices, was an older, wealthier city than Chicago and, thus, more morally stable. Or at least the city’s advanced age had given it time to find places in which to keep its immorality hidden. Back in 1828, writer and teacher Bronson Alcott (Louisa May Alcott’s father) declared Boston “The city that is set on high.” Its morality, he said, “is more pure than that of any other city in America.”19 That self-image stuck. As morality increasingly became a war issue, Boston prided itself on its cleanliness. At a party on April 20, Boston’s ex-mayor John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald proudly approached Josephus Daniels, secretary of the navy, with a newspaper clipping citing a study that “showed less vice in Boston than ever before and the best moral conditions in the history of the city.”20 (Fitzgerald would go on to serve in Congress and had a grandson who bore his name: John Fitzgerald Kennedy.)

  Massachusetts passed the prohibition amendment in early April, cracked down on bootleggers who sold alcohol to soldiers, and passed a law to regulate hotels and lodging houses, keeping them free from prostitution. When the weather warmed, officials at popular Revere Beach (a Babe Ruth favorite) did their best to keep girls pure by “strictly enforcing” the ban preventing men at the beach from lying on their backs, which was apparently too suggestive.21 The city was much more attuned to the repressed, Puritan attitude of the nation than Chicago. All the wrangling over prostitution and venereal disease in the army, for example, was a strictly American problem. French prime minister Georges Clemenceau offered what he thought was a logical solution: He wrote a letter offering American soldiers use of clean, licensed French brothels. Raymond Fosdick, with the Commission of Training Camp Activities, showed the letter to Secretary of War Newton Baker, upon which Baker said of the prudish Wilson, “For God’s sake, Raymond, don’t show this to the President or he’ll stop the war.”22

  Boston’s reconstituted American League team, meanwhile, got off to an even better start than the Cubs. The Red Sox arrived home from spring training to find snow covering the field at Fenway Park but were offered a day of training at the Harvard batting cage, where Boston baseball legend Hugh Duffy coached. Duffy had spent 17 years in pro ball, posting a record .440 batting average for Boston’s Beaneaters in 1894, and would later take over the Red Sox as the manager. Fittingly, the Red Sox were to open the season against Connie Mack’s Athletics and featured two ex-A’s in the starting lineup—Stuffy McInnis at third and Amos Strunk in center. One of the big unknowns for Boston was its cleanup hitter, and Barrow, after much consideration, finally settled on Hoblitzell. “But when he said that [Hoblitzell] had just the nerve that a cleanup hitter required, he was not scaling any asparagus at any of the other boys,” Ed Martin of the Globe explained.23 The other boys were, presumably, relieved not to have any asparagus scaled at them.

  John Evers was in the stands at Fenway on Opening Day, but he was no longer with the team as a coach or an infielder—in his place, the Red Sox had acquired capable veteran second baseman Dave Shean, a native of Belmont, Massachusetts, from the Reds and brought back well-liked coach Heinie Wagner,
who had been fired to make room for Evers. Wagner knew the American League and could help Barrow with strategy. On the mound, Babe Ruth got the nod in the opener and, in front of 10,000 fans, threw a four-hit complete game, driving in two runs for a 7–1 win.

  Carl Mays threw a one-hitter in the second game, barely missing a no-hitter when Shean was too slow to get to a grounder (which surely drew the ire of Mays). In the third game, with Mary Pickford on hand to push for the sale of Liberty Bonds, ex-A’s catcher Wally Schang knocked in two in the ninth to pull out a 5–4 win. With that, the Red Sox—who had rebuilt their roster by sending $60,000 and some good young players to the A’s—started 1918 with a sweep of Mack’s bunch.

  The Red Sox followed that sweep by taking four out of five from the Yankees, including a game on April 23 in which Boston had been held hitless by rookie Hank Thormahlen in a scoreless game until there was one out in the ninth. Strunk finally broke through with a single, when Barrow pulled a telling maneuver. He removed Hoblitzell for Ruth. This was an odd move. Thormahlen was a left-hander and, theoretically, a more difficult matchup for Ruth, also a left-hander. And Hoblitzell was a right-handed cleanup man, not generally a candidate to be replaced by a pinch-hitter. But Ruth pounded a single, sending Strunk to third. Strunk would score to win the game, 1–0, and sure enough, the notion of subbing in a pitcher for a cleanup hitter now seemed to make some sense—assuming the pitcher in question was Babe Ruth.

  The Red Sox were 7–1. Their new players seemed to fit right in. Their pitching staff looked outstanding—with one out-of-shape and distracted flinger being the only exception. Their one loss of the season to that point was an 11–4 blowout in which “The Yanks mauled the offerings of Dutch Leonard … mercilessly.”24 It was a bad start to a strange year for Leonard.

  SEVEN

  Cheating: Hubert “Dutch” Leonard

  BOSTON, MAY 21, 1918

  Hubert let out a deep breath and rubbed a hand over his stomach. All right, he was carrying around a bit more lard than he should. He knew that. Barrow, Frazee, all the beat reporters, they’d been calling him chunky and portly and all that bunk. Of course, the fans jumped right in and mimicked them. There was no ape like a Fenway ape. Dutch had been hearing it since Hot Springs. Portly portsider. Stocky southpaw. He didn’t give a damn. He had bigger concerns. Like his own hide. He’d spent most of the off-season getting the vineyards in shape, because if anything was going to keep him out of this hell of a war, it was growing grapes, not tossing horsehides for Barrow and Frazee. Dutch’s hope was to pitch in the big leagues for a few more years, gain fame, and capitalize on that fame in business. And that business was good, sweet Fresno raisins.

  But he needed to be alive to count raisin money, and being alive meant staying out of the war. This was of chief importance to Dutch Leonard. Last winter he’d looked into signing on with the naval yard in Charlestown, and in Mare Island too, figuring he could call himself a yeoman, get a contract to pitch for the team, drive a rivet every now and then, and keep his backside far, far away from the trenches at Arras or Amiens or wherever the fight was today. He would have done it, too, if Sybil—the new Mrs. Leonard—hadn’t gotten sick almost immediately after their wedding the previous fall.1

  Dutch Leonard was a talented but enigmatic lefty and did not pitch for the Red Sox after 1918. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY, COOPERSTOWN, N.Y.)

  They’re not supposed to call farmers, he figured, which was why Dutch had written it right on his draft registration card. “Do you claim any exemption from draft (specify grounds)?” the card wanted to know. Very carefully, and in large letters, he wrote in script, “Farmer.”2 They’d had him in Class 4 of the draft. But he knew he could, and probably would, be shifted to 1A. Seemed everyone was losing exemptions, getting shifted to 1A—all the married fellows, like Joe Jackson, and some of the farmers, where it was shown that the farm owner was not actually doing the farming, as in Dutch’s case. All right, then, he still was not fool enough to march to the gates of Hades to fight Huns. No, no. This war is not for me, thought Dutch Leonard.

  He glanced over to third base. Fred Thomas. He was 25, a year younger than Dutch. Class 1A. Behind him, shortstop Everett Scott. He’s deferred, married, kids, Class 4, but Scott has money socked away, Dutch thought, enough money so that his dependents aren’t really dependent on him. That made Scott a good candidate to move up from Class 4 to 1A. Over his left shoulder, at second base, Dave Shean was 34, too old for the draft. At first, Hobby. Doc Hoblitzell wanted to go to the war, but he was doing it with the Dental Corps. He had been distant all spring, like he was already gone. Good riddance as far as Dutch cared—Hobby was batting one-fifty-something. Dental Corps. Dutch had asked Hobby if they needed dentists at the front. Are cavities a big problem for soldiers? Dutch pictured a fellow in a trench in France, with his leg blown off, gushing blood, screaming for a doctor, and here comes Hobby, saying, “You know, son, we should really take that molar out.”

  Dutch hadn’t expected to be with the Red Sox this year, not until Frazee talked him into it back in February. He was comfortably in Class 4 then. That’s why he wasn’t in shape. On the slab, Leonard had been getting knocked around by a lot of duck-soup teams, but umpires had been giving him a bum deal. He gave out 10 passes against Philadelphia and walked 7 Tigers last time out. Umps’ fault, not his. Besides, Dutch was worn out, and that was Barrow’s fault. Big Ed was riding the boxmen too hard. Dutch’s speedball had not been hopping, and there wasn’t a lot of break in his slants. He needed a rest. But the Big Baboon Babe Ruth was sick, in the Eye and Ear Infirmary, and Barrow was still too scared to use the young pitchers. There would be no rest.

  Ed Miller was in the leadoff hole for the Indians, and Dutch knew that the game was in bad shape when a busher like Miller could make it back into the American League. One of the bugs yelled, “Come on, Lard Pants, even you can get this one out!” Dutch scowled and scanned the crowd. The sky was dark with thunderclouds. Old Jupiter Pluvius had not shown up just yet, but it looked like he was rapping at the door. Place was near empty, not even 2,000 in the cushions, and Dutch knew on a day like this the only arses who showed up were the so-called sporting men of the gambling fraternity. He scanned the first-base bleachers where they sat. From the mound, everyone looked the same to Dutch, pasty-faced and hook-nosed, passing sheets of paper around, wearing $2 straw hats, popping peanuts, downing frankfurters and bottles of soda.

  Today, Hubert decided, he was going to take a little extra help. He needed it. His arm was tired. Barrow was on him. The fans were on him. Dutch didn’t particularly like the taste of licorice and didn’t like the way it blackened his teeth, but it was better than slippery elm bark. He chewed the licorice and worked up a nice ball of sticky saliva in his cheek. He readjusted his hat and, as he did, let the blackened spit fly onto his left palm. Working quickly in the pocket of his glove, he kneaded the licorice spit and a bit of dirt into the ball. Dutch stepped to the mound, looked long at Miller, and then nodded to catcher Wally Schang. He wrapped his fingers around the loaded ball, placing the licorice-and-dirt stain comfortably into his palm. He was ready to pitch.

  Spitballs, licorice balls, slippery elm balls, emery balls, shine balls, mud balls, paraffin balls. In 1918, there was no shortage of ways for pitchers to cheat. Only it wasn’t really cheating, not until baseball, after years of discussion and foot dragging on the topic, finally outlawed, “freak deliveries” after 1920. There was a fine for “discoloring the ball,” but it was minimal. Still, ball doctoring was unseemly, and no pitcher wanted to be blatant about it. It was not done openly. Reds infielder Heinie Groh later described teammate Hod Eller’s approach: “Old Hod had what we liked to call 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.”3 Altering the surface of the ball would give it strange movement on its way to the plate.

  Use of “freak” pitches was so widespread in 1918 that fed-up Washington manager Clark Grif
fith, who had long wanted the pitches outlawed, went on a campaign of “shine-balling the American League to death,” as The Sporting News put it.4 He ordered his pitchers to use every available doctoring method—paraffin oil, tar, talcum, licorice—and withheld their pay until they mastered freak pitches. He figured nonstop freakery from Washington pitchers would force the league to do something. He was wrong. The league did nothing. On the bright side, the Senators’ team ERA dropped from 2.75 in ’17 to 2.14, first in the AL, in ’18. That did not much discourage the use of freak pitches.

  Dutch Leonard wasn’t necessarily a licorice-ball pitcher in 1918 (he would later become one of the “grandfathered” pitchers who were allowed to throw a spitball after the pitch was banned). In fact, it wasn’t certain just what kind of pitcher Leonard was. He had burst into the big leagues at 22 with a stunning second season for the 1914 Red Sox, going 19–5 with a 0.96 ERA, lowest in modern baseball history. But after ’14, Leonard didn’t much apply himself, routinely reporting overweight, earning a reputation as a late-night carouser and chronic complainer. He went just 16–17 in 1917. His slow start in 1918 was no surprise, and it’s easy to understand why he, according to Cleveland batters, resorted to smearing balls with licorice on May 21.5 He had a record of 4–3 at the time, including a couple of lucky wins. He had allowed 57 hits, 32 runs, and way too many walks (31) in his seven starts. Throughout the start against Cleveland, batters protested to umpire Dick Nallin that the ball was marked with licorice. All Nallin could do was look at the balls, toss them aside, and issue limp warnings to the Boston dugout.