Hunting a Detroit Tiger

by Troy Soos

  “Two weeks.”

  “Two weeks! We’re leaving for St. Louis tomorrow. And we got an eastern road trip coming up soon. I need more time than that. How about two months?”

  “Four weeks,” Hyman decided. I started to protest again, but he cut me off. “Four weeks from tonight, we’ll meet again, and you better tell me who killed Emmett Siever.”

  He dropped me off at the corner of High and Fifth Streets, next to Crawford Park. I walked to the fountain in the middle of the park, splashed my face with cold water, and wiped it with a handkerchief.

  Then I sat on the edge of the fountain and mulled over what had transpired. It was a pretty successful outing, I thought: I’d picked up some new information about Emmett Siever, was granted a few weeks of peace to investigate, and I’d planted the suggestion of another suspect in Siever’s death: Hub Donner.

  I felt satisfied with the night’s progress until new questions started ricocheting around in my head. Who was “Detective Aikens”? Where had Leo Hyman been when Siever was shot? Who raised Connie after her father deserted her? And most importantly: how was I going to solve Emmett Siever’s murder in four weeks?

  Chapter Ten

  Lou Vedder threw without a windup, tossing me three-quarter-speed fastballs that came up to the plate big and fat. Swinging left-handed, I hit them where they were pitched, pulling inside balls up the first-base line and slapping the outside ones to left field.

  Like Ty Cobb and Wee Willie Keeler, though not as successful as them, I was a place hitter. Not for me the home runs that Babe Ruth was making so popular. I preferred the strategy of the bunt and the hit-and-run, and the challenge of driving a grounder through the hole and dropping a looper over the heads of the infielders. The fact that I rarely could reach the fences anyway—not even with the new livelier baseball—was only a minor consideration in my preference of hitting style, of course.

  I smacked forty or fifty of Vedder’s tosses, then called to him, “Let me lay down a few!”

  He nodded, and I started bunting his next throws. After each one, I took a couple of steps toward first base to get the feel of running out of the batter’s box. It was a little awkward, but since the lefty’s box was a step closer to first, I figured I should still be able to beat out more bunts from this side of the plate.

  From the dugout, Hughie Jennings yelled, “Let’s see some life out there, goddammit!” His anger was directed at a group of Tigers who were talking and laughing near the backstop.

  This was supposed to be an off day, and the team resented having to spend it in uniform in Sportsman’s Park. Jennings had ordered the extra practice session after we lost yesterday’s series opener to the St. Louis Browns, our ninth loss in a row.

  I’d had no trouble taking batting practice today; only Ty Cobb batted ahead of me. Most of the other players were making a show of refusing to take the practice seriously; they milled about, chatting casually. Other than Vedder and myself, only the pitchers looked busy, working out under Jack Coombs’s tutelage near the right-field foul line. A number of sportswriters had started speculating in print that Coombs would soon take over the managing job from the old Oriole.

  At Jennings’s outburst, Bobby Veach approached the plate. “Let me hit a few, Mick. Keep Hughie off my ass.” I stepped aside and watched while he took his licks. Veach’s sharp stroke sent a dozen line drives to deep right field before he tossed his bat aside and made way for Donie Bush.

  Bush was a sane version of Ty Cobb—smart, intense, a fiery competitor, but not demoniac like Cobb was. Now on the downhill side of his career, Bush relied more on savvy than speed. His range at shortstop was less, so he’d learned to position himself depending on the pitch and the batter. His bat was no longer as quick, so he’d taken to hitting to the opposite field more. Eventually, though, savvy wouldn’t be enough to compensate for the loss of physical skills, and Bush’s playing days would be over. As would mine someday.

  Clearly as disgusted with our practice efforts as he was with our game performances, Jennings finally yelled, “That’s enough for today! Get your asses in here!” As players filed past him to the clubhouse, he added, “You bushers don’t deserve to be on a big-league field.”

  Vedder and I were heading off, too, when I asked him, “You mind throwing me a few more? I didn’t get to hit right-handed yet.” I wasn’t sure how the wrist would hold up, and it seemed the perfect time to give it a try when no one else was watching.

  He cheerfully agreed and went back to the mound. I took a few swings to get readjusted to hitting from the right side of the plate, but there was no pain in the wrist and it felt smoother batting from my natural side.

  After fifteen or twenty off-speed fastballs, I asked him to put a little more on his pitches. I hit these fairly well, and then he tossed some curveballs that gave me a bit more trouble.

  “Okay,” I said. “One more. Give me the best you got.”

  He smiled. “Coming up.” Vedder turned his back for a moment, then toed the rubber, went into a windmill windup, and sent a white bullet to the plate that veered sharply down and in. My flailing bat didn’t pass anywhere near it.

  “What the hell was that!”

  Vedder walked in from the mound. “Spitter.”

  “You got a damn good one.”

  “Lot of good it’ll do me.”

  “Oh yeah. Jeez, that’s a shame.” With the spitball being phased out of baseball, only two pitchers per team were allowed to use the wet one this season; on the Tigers, Dutch Leonard and Doc Ayers were the team’s designated spitball-ers. “Well, you got a good curve, too. You’ll get a spot in the rotation soon enough.”

  We were almost at the dugout when I realized I’d left my mitt on the ground near home plate. “You go ahead,” I said. “Gotta get my glove.”

  After I retrieved it, I entered the runway tunnel to the clubhouse, pausing for a second to acclimate my eyes to the dark. I heard Dutch Leonard’s voice say, “There he is.” I resumed walking, but a little slower.

  Leonard and Chick Fogarty were outside the locker-room door, already in street clothes. I tried to push past them.

  “Hold on there,” said Leonard. “We want to talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  Fogarty grabbed my arm, causing me to drop my bat and glove. I tried to jerk free of him, but his grip was firm. Leonard took hold of my other arm and the two of them dragged me deeper into the tunnel. They released me by throwing me facefirst against the concrete wall. I turned my head just in time to take the brunt of it on my ear instead of my nose.

  “Let me explain what it means to be a team player,” Leonard said. He nodded at Fogarty, who quickly got me in a bear hug from behind. I felt his jaw touching the top of my head.

  Leonard took off his jacket. “Being a team player means you don’t go against your own kind like you did with Emmett Siever.” He reared back, about to launch a blow at my stomach.

  “What’s going on here?” interrupted Ty Cobb’s southern drawl. He walked closer and looked at each of us with curiosity. I never thought I’d be happy to see Ty Cobb.

  “Just having a little discussion with Rawlings here,” said Leonard.

  Cobb studied us again. With a faint smile, he said, “Well, fight nice, boys.” Then he walked away. Damn.

  The big catcher tightened his grip around my chest. “Let him have it, Dutch,” he urged. Fogarty’s chin bobbed on my skull as he mouthed the words.

  “You really want to be doing this, Chick?” I asked.

  Fogarty started to answer, “Just listen to wha—” I ducked my head forward then snapped it back, nailing him hard on the chin. “Aaah!” he screamed, his arms relaxing enough for me to break loose.

  Leonard had a startled look in his eyes. I took advantage to plant a right jab on his nose. “Sonofabitch!” he cried as his hands flew up to his face.

  I tried to slip past and get to the clubhouse. Leonard threw out a foot, tripping me. Before I could pull myself up, Chic
k Fogarty lifted me clear off the floor. “Made me bite my tongue,” he said in a slurred voice filled with rage. He gripped me like he was trying to squeeze the life out of me. He did succeed in forcing the air out of my lungs.

  “Hold him for me,” Leonard ordered.

  Fogarty turned me toward the angry pitcher, whose nose suddenly looked like it had an outbreak of gin blossoms. Leonard promptly threw a pair of hard punches into my midsection. With Fogarty squeezing me so hard, I didn’t have the strength to brace myself for them.

  I tried to slam my heel down on Fogarty’s foot, but couldn’t reach it, so I settled for kicking his shin.

  “Give him ’nother,” said Fogarty.

  Leonard complied with two more uppercuts to my stomach. “That’ll teach you,” he said. He picked up his jacket and ran a hand over his hair, smoothing it down. “Okay, Chick, let him go.”

  Fogarty released me and I sucked in badly needed air. Then he slammed me on the back of my head and I fell to the ground, struggling to stay conscious.

  Through my daze, I heard their footsteps as they walked away. I also heard Leonard’s voice say, “Little bastard fights back,” and Fogarty whine, “He made me bite my tongue.”

  Two hours later, I was walking down Olive Street, in St. Louis’s commercial district. My scuffle with Dutch Leonard and Chick Fogarty had left me mildly dizzy and with a bellyache so intense that I felt like I was going to give birth to a vital organ. The good news was that I hadn’t damaged my wrist by punching Leonard—which led me to conclude that it was completely healed—and there were no external bruises to mar my appearance.

  At Tenth Street, I came to the offices of The Sporting News, the weekly sports paper also known as “The Baseball Bible.” The purpose of my visit was to learn about baseball unions—from the beginning.

  A helpful editor directed me to a storage room used as a “library.” Stacked in no discernible order were old baseball guides, magazines, miscellaneous papers, a few books, and, of course, back issues of The Sporting News itself.

  Sorting through dusty, yellowing publications, I first looked for material on what I assumed was the earliest attempt to organize players: the Players League of 1890.

  In a stratum of papers from that era, I located a Players League Guide, and read the articles in it by League president John Montgomery Ward and secretary Tim Keefe. The legendary John Ward had been a star pitcher who’d successfully converted to shortstop when his arm went bad; and, while playing for the New York Giants, he’d earned a law degree from Columbia University. Tim Keefe had pitched for several New York teams, once winning nineteen games in a row and accumulating more than 300 career victories.

  I was surprised to learn that the league had its origins in the Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players, organized in 1885 when owners instituted a salary limit of $2,000. Three years after that, the National League set up a classification system: each player would be “graded” and placed into one of five classes, with a salary limit for each class. In addition, lower-ranked players could be required to perform duties such as sweeping out the ballpark or working the ticket booths. When owners refused to meet with the Brotherhood’s executive committee to discuss the classification scheme, the players elected to form their own league.

  Along with the Players League Guide was a copy of Lippincott’s magazine dated August, 1887. I thought it had ended up in the stack by mistake, until I saw that it included an article by John Ward entitled “Is the Ballplayer a Chattel?” His answer to that question, and his opinion of the reserve clause, was clear: “Like a fugitive slave law, the reserve rule denies him a harbor or livelihood, and carries him back, bound and shackled, to the club from which he attempted to escape.”

  In similar language, the Players League manifesto condemned the National League: “There was a time when the league stood for integrity and fair dealing; today it stands for dollars and cents. Players have been bought, sold, and exchanged as though they were sheep instead of American citizens.”

  Ward’s introduction to the Players League Guide declared that the new league was “the representation of all that is manly and honest in baseball. To the player it is a living monument for all time to come.” It didn’t last nearly that long. Losing money and backers, the Players League folded before the end of its first year. Its surrender to the National League was complete, and the Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players collapsed along with the failed league.

  I briefly delved into the Players League rosters, noting that Emmett Siever played center field for Ward’s Brooklyn team. It wasn’t such a rebellious thing to do, since most of the star players were with the new league. Among them were two of baseball’s most miserly current owners: Charles Comiskey and Connie Mack.

  Continuing my excavations through the old guides and papers, I found that the next attempt at a players union was the Players Protective Association organized in 1900. To avoid being branded as radical, no one from the old Brotherhood was elected an officer of the new organization. The Association was actively wooed and encouraged by Ban Johnson, who at the time was trying to launch the American League and needed ballplayers. Two years later, with his league established, Johnson dropped his support of the Association, and the union dissolved.

  It took ten years until another organizing effort was made, when Dave Fultz started the Baseball Players’ Fraternity. Once a mediocre outfielder best known for refusing to play on Sundays, Fultz had gone on to a Wall Street law practice after his retirement from baseball. He outlined the aims of the new players’ organization in the November 1912 issue of Baseball Magazine. Its stated goals were modest: to demand that team owners abide by contracts, to protect players from spectator abuse, and to provide financial assistance to deserving ballplayers. The Fraternity was not going to challenge the sacred reserve clause, because, according to Fultz, “baseball is a peculiar business and must be governed by peculiar laws.”

  One of the features that I liked about the Fraternity was that it included minor-league baseball in its membership and goals. “A minor leaguer is just as important to us as the biggest star,” said Fultz. It was on behalf of minor leaguers—who could be suspended without pay if they became injured—that Fultz threatened a major-league strike for 1917. He neglected to get the support of the players, though, and the Fraternity collapsed before the season’s opening day.

  There were a couple points of interest about the Fraternity. One was that Ty Cobb had been one of its four vice presidents. Another was something that I didn’t find: any mention of Emmett Siever.

  In a thorough check of the records, I found that Siever had played outfield for Detroit in three leagues: with the Detroit Wolverines back when Detroit was in the National League, with the Western League Detroit Creams in 1894, and with the new Detroit Tigers of 1901. But other than his having played for the Players League in 1890, I could find no documentation of his involvement with efforts to form a players’ union. Not until last summer.

  Emmett Siever had burst onto the labor front from nowhere. But when he did launch his drive for a players’ union last year, he was uncompromising in his goals. He intended to openly challenge the reserve clause and stop teams from buying and selling players like commodities.

  What I couldn’t find the answer to was why he’d become so interested and so active.

  After leaving the Sporting News office, I went to the public library to read more broadly on labor movements and the recent conflicts between labor, management, and government.

  To my disappointment, there was little material available on the subject. The library wasn’t permitted to carry “radical” literature, so there was almost nothing promoting the labor point of view. Information on union busting efforts was equally sparse because industrialists and government agencies were so secretive about their antilabor activities.

  An attractive reference librarian, who appeared to share my frustration at the lack of published material, verbally shared with me what she knew abo
ut the IWW, the Justice Department, and the Palmer raids. She didn’t say so explicitly, but I gathered from the way she described the opposing sides that her sympathies were with the unions.

  I listened closely, absorbed most of what she said, and came away with at least a tentative grasp of the issues. But as hard as I tried, I was unable to decide for certain where my own sympathies lay.

  Chapter Eleven

  I’d heard once that a pack of lions is called a “pride.” I didn’t know if that term also applied to a group of tigers, but if so, it was a misnomer for the humiliated Tigers team that slunk into Detroit’s Michigan Central Depot early Friday morning with our tails between our legs.

  Hughie Jennings’s fearsome lineup of Ty Cobb, Harry Heilmann, and Bobby Veach had been throttled by the St. Louis pitching staff of Urban Shocker, Dixie Davis, and Carl Weilman. In three games against the lowly Browns, the Detroit batting order had managed to put across a grand total of one run. Not only had we extended the winless streak to eleven games, we had now been shut out for eighteen straight innings. The St. Louis sportswriters crowed about their club’s successful “Tiger Hunt” in Sportsman’s Park in language sure to antagonize both Detroit fans and animal lovers. One of them wrote that the Browns “tamed the toothless felines as easily as drowning a litter of kittens.”

  Team morale, low since spring training, had entirely evaporated, and internal strife was rampant. Harry Heilmann had developed an inexplicable hatred for amiable Bobby Veach. Donie Bush and Ty Cobb had renewed their fierce ten-year-old feud. Hughie Jennings was no longer speaking to any of his coaches and only a few of his players. Rumors were flying that Jennings would be fired in a matter of days.

  The dugout battles left the players too drained to perform properly on the field. My own fight in the Sportsman’s Park tunnel was unusual in that it yielded some positive results: neither Dutch Leonard nor Chick Fogarty bothered me for the rest of the series. It also left Leonard looking like he had a snootful for a couple of days and Fogarty sounding like he had a speech impediment.