The Original Curse (7 page)

Baseball pushed forward. Ban Johnson tried to get answers from the government on behalf of the National Commission, the game’s governing body, which was made up of three members: Johnson, representing the AL; John Tener, the former governor of Pennsylvania and now head of the National League; and Garry Herrmann, the owner of the Cincinnati Reds, who was supposed to serve as the neutral head of the commission (though, since the two were old friends and drinking buddies, Johnson held sway over Herrmann). Johnson has been treated harshly by historians for his handling of the war, and that’s reasonable, because he was treated harshly by the public and press at the time. But the circumstances were extraordinary, and what rarely is mentioned is that Johnson’s positions proved right in the end. In July 1917, Johnson offered to shut down baseball to support the war effort, but the public protested, and one week later President Woodrow Wilson put out assurances that he wanted baseball to continue. Johnson was accused of being a calamity howler, and the
Chicago Daily News
said, “All the leader of the American League has done for a year is take a pessimistic view of the situation and has done almost everything possible to create the idea that the sport is gasping its last.”
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Within months, newspapers would be reporting that the sport was, in fact, gasping its last.

Johnson knew that running baseball during the war was a losing proposition. He pressed authorities to define baseball’s status, and when he was ignored he came up with a plan on his own. In late November, he made public a suggestion that each team be allowed to exempt 18 players from the draft, 288 players total, making everyone else fair game for the military—the logic being that, if the government wanted baseball to keep going, then leaving 288 men out of the war was a small sacrifice in the context of an army that would eventually top 3.6 million fighting soldiers. But Johnson’s suggestion was a disaster. General Enoch Crowder, who, as provost marshal, was in charge of running the selective-service draft, was outraged. “That must be a pipe dream,” he said. “There is nothing in the regulations to warrant making exceptional rulings for men liable to service who make baseball their means of livelihood. It is absurd.”
¹⁶
John Tener agreed. “I would not go an inch toward Washington to ask President Wilson or the Secretary of War for special favors for baseball,” Tener said. “I think it most unpatriotic to suggest that baseball should even appear to shirk a duty at this time, when so many parents are giving their sons and when other business interests are giving their best men to the service.”
¹⁷

Throughout 1917, baseball did its best to dodge the “slacker” label by, among other things, inviting elaborate pregame military demonstrations, such as this one given at Weeghman Park on Opening Day. (N
ATIONAL
B
ASEBALL
H
ALL OF
F
AME
L
IBRARY
, C
OOPERSTOWN
, N.Y.)

Exasperated, Johnson issued a 10-paragraph statement. He had offered to shut down the game, but Wilson and the public disapproved. He floated the 18-player exemption but was slammed for it. Most magnates seemed resigned to simply pressing forward with a stiff upper lip, even with their best players subject to the draft. That was a sure failure. Johnson simply wanted the government to say where the
game stood. Not only would this inform players and magnates how to proceed, but it would let the public know that supporting baseball during the war was acceptable. Without word from the government, there were no good options. “Such conditions will arise in 1918 and must result in endless confusion in the great baseball family,” Johnson wrote in his statement. “The matter of maintaining a contest of keen interest that would appeal to the public seems impossible of accomplishment. We ask for nothing but an interest that represents millions of dollars seeks wholesome advice on the subject.”
¹⁸

Alas, it would be eight months—well into the season—before the government was prepared to give baseball its wholesome advice. By then it would be too late.

The press disapproved of the methods employed by Weeghman and Frazee, but the results were undeniable—the Red Sox and Cubs were well prepared for 1918 and were instant pennant contenders. Start with the Cubs. There was no Hornsby, but they had assembled base-ball’s best pitching staff. Alexander and lefty Hippo Vaughn made a fearsome front two. Lefty Tyler and Claude Hendrix added lefty-righty depth, and Phil Douglas would bolster the slabmen when he recuperated from an appendectomy.

Offense was lacking. The infield was young. In the outfield the Cubs had only slap hitters. Center fielder Dode Paskert hit eight home runs in 1916, but no other Cub had hit more than four in a season. Left fielder Les Mann hit for power in the minors but not in the big leagues. In right field would be ex–Fed Leaguer Max Flack or youngster Turner Barber, for whom Weeghman had paid $15,000 the previous year. A Tennessee native and a bit of a rube, Barber hurt his toe on his arrival in Chicago before spring training when, confused by the bustle of traffic, he, “forgot himself in crossing a downtown street when he should have been waiting for the cop’s whistle. A taxi whizzed past him and ran over one foot.”
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Injured, Barber sat for most of spring training and struggled throughout 1918.

(Perhaps the tragedy of the 1918 Cubs was foreshadowed when, just before the season, a player named King Lear vowed to Mitchell that he would win the third-base job. He did not. How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless manager!)

The Red Sox were impressive on the mound too. Left-hander Babe Ruth—whose hitting was still a sidelight to his pitching—was just 23
and coming off a 24–13 season. Submariner Carl Mays was 22–9 in ’17. Dutch Leonard and ex-A’s righty Joe Bush were inconsistent but had star qualities. Offensively, the Red Sox figured to be strong, with Harry Hooper in right, joined in center by Strunk, one of the league’s fastest players. In left field, Barrow drew on his knowledge of the minors to sign 35-year-old journeyman George Whiteman from the International League for $750. Everett Scott was a mainstay at short, with Schang behind the plate and team captain Dick Hoblitzell at first base—McInnis’s primary position. The Red Sox wanted to try McInnis, a slick fielder, at third base, with new coach and ex-Cubs star Johnny Evers (who was to assist Barrow with strategy as a coach too) taking a crack at second base.

But baseball as a whole had not done a good job preparing for 1918. Captain T. L. Huston, part owner of the Yankees and a member of the army’s engineering corps, wrote a letter from France that was printed all over the country. In it, Huston said: “Baseball must watch closer the signs of the times. The Alexander-Killefer deal, as well as that of Bush, Strunk and Schang, indicated that it is strangely out of step with national events. The loud publicity given the purchase of players for the large sums of $60,000 to $80,000 will be a harsh, discordant note in the existing worldwide atmosphere of economy, retrenchment and sacrifice, and tend to shock the fan public and make it pause and ask, ‘Is baseball still stark crazy?’”
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Huston ripped the small portion of 1917 World Series money that was given to war charities and criticized the magnates on baseball’s business end—he was the only one who enlisted. “Ye gods, what a mortifying and shameful spectacle,” Huston wrote of his cohorts. He went on: “Men of baseball, reveille sounded for you long ago. If you are deaf to that call, the nation will sound taps for you, and you will hear it.”

The winter slipped by without baseball making significant wartime adjustments. As teams prepared for spring training in 1918, the country was squeezed by food rationing, gas rationing, and limits on rail use. But, despite wise proposals to shorten the schedule, baseball kept the same 154-game marathon. Players, too, seemed clueless. Men were being drafted and paid $30 per month in the army, and yet many players held out for big contracts and bonuses. The government enforced a war tax of 10 percent on tickets, and the magnates responded by bumping up prices more than necessary—grandstand
tickets that were 75 cents, for example, technically should have been 83 cents with the tax, but the magnates decided to just make it 85 cents. A proposal that the extra pennies go into a Red Cross fund was made but not mandated.

The game made one change of note, altering the player payout system for the World Series, so that the top four teams in each league, rather than just the top team, would get some kind of share of Series receipts. This would wind up being a regrettable decision—though, it should be pointed out, players protested because they wanted a
deeper
division of the shares, so that even last-place teams got World Series money. They’d change their tune later.

Against this backdrop, teams headed to spring training, the Cubs to Pasadena and the Red Sox to Hot Springs, Arkansas. Both trips were marked by bad omens. The Red Sox were stranded by a snowstorm in Buffalo. The Cubs found, when they arrived in California, the trunk containing their uniforms had gone missing. Otherwise, the trips were notable only for their frugality. The Cubs, with a meager 27-man traveling party, made the 2,000-mile journey riding on the back two cars of a mail train. The special Cubs train that had been a point of pride in 1916 and ’17 was but a memory. “There was no de luxe special train for wealthy stockholders and their wives,” the
Tribune
reported. “There were no compartments and drawing rooms. There was no phonograph for entertainment during the long journey. There was no dining car, and there were no women.”
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And no Weeghman. He stayed in Chicago, tending to his restaurants.

Poor Harry. If he hadn’t dropped $60,000, Boston would not have won the 1918 World Series. But no one remembers that. They only remember the “rape.”

Frazee, especially when it comes to finances, is a fuzzy character. But we can say for sure that, sometime between the 1918 World Series and his death in 1929, Frazee fell on hard times. His drinking caught up with him—he contracted Bright’s disease, a kidney ailment linked to alcoholism, and was only 48 when he passed away. In his obituary, the
New York Times
reported, “For years, he seemed to possess the golden touch, but recently, it was reported among his associates that
his fortune had dwindled. His more recent ventures were less fortunate and he always was a generous spender.”
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Though Frazee is doomed to eternal demonization as a greedy bungler in Boston, we should remember that he was a real guy and that for too long we were given a cartoon villain caricature of Frazee. His story runs deeper than that. New York mayor Jimmy Walker, a close friend who was at his bedside when Frazee died, was quoted in his obituary: “Harry Frazee was one of the most popular figures in the theatrical and baseball worlds. I have known him a great many years. His was a unique character—unique in his friendship for others—and he was immensely popular with every one who knew him. He was a man of great energy, great mental ability and was greatly respected in the business and baseball world.”

Friday

Barrow removed a handkerchief, pushing up the brim of his straw hat, a sheet of sweat on his brow. He wiped it off, futile though that was, and retucked the handkerchief into the pocket of his suit coat—Ed had never really been a ballplayer, so he did not like wearing a player’s uniform. Morning rain had been replaced by a brutal afternoon sun. Barrow leaned against Majestic Park’s wooden bleachers. He had canceled the scrimmage against the Yannigans—that bunch of rookies and longshots that are the staple of spring training—that day, because the weather was too odd, there was no pitching on hand, and illnesses were depleting an already short supply of players. Sam Agnew had the grippe. John Evers was back at the hotel with tonsillitis,
¹
probably contracted while loudly urging on a nag over at the Oaklawn track. No matter. Evers wasn’t well liked by the men, or by Barrow for that matter. Just a few days into camp Barrow already wondered if taking on Evers as player/coach had been a mistake.

Barrow looked up. Dutch Leonard. He was not Barrow’s kind of man. He was out of shape. Undisciplined. Barrow again removed the handkerchief, again dabbed his brow.