Lefty, page 10
During the 1929 exhibition season, the Pittsburgh Pirates, who trained at Paso Robles, were barnstorming through California. The Pirates’ lineup was loaded, led by three future Hall of Famers: Pie Traynor and the Waner brothers, Paul and Lloyd. One Sunday, the Pirates played an exhibition against the local team. The Seals’ starting pitcher got bombed, allowing a bucketload of runs in the first inning while retiring only one batter. Lefty was all over Nick Williams even before the manager had left the bench to yank the starter. “Let me go in there. I can stop this club.” Williams said later that Lefty practically walked out to the mound and grabbed the ball out of the other pitcher’s glove. Nick wasn’t averse to the idea. The Pirates had already put the game pretty much out of reach, the bases were still loaded, and here was a chance to see what this kid who had been badgering him since he was fourteen could do under pressure.
“Okay, go ahead,” Williams said. “Show me.”
The Seals lost the game, but the Pirates got no more runs. For eight and two-thirds innings, Lefty pitched a two-hitter.
He started the season out of the rotation but he was never far from Williams’s ear. Lefty made it a point to sit near the manager whenever a starting pitcher was running into trouble. Then he’d say, “Lemme in there. I’ll stop those bums.” Sometimes Williams would look down the bench before the game and say, “Who’s got the guts to challenge the enemy?” Lefty was always the first to yell back, “I’ll challenge ’em.”
Finally, in early May, acutely aware that Gomez would never leave him in peace, Williams let him start a game. Lefty promptly tossed a five-hitter. The next time Williams gave him the ball, Lefty won again. Lefty kept winning, and the West Coast press began to make quite a bit of it. Between Lefty’s streak and a three-way fight for the PCL pennant between the Seals, Missions, and Hollywood Stars, fans followed the fortunes of the players breathlessly.
Of course, not every breed of fan was breathless for the same reason.
Each Thursday when they were at home, the Seals held a Ladies’ Day promotion at Old Rec. And to make sure the ladies actually showed up, the Thursday starting pitcher was generally Walter “Duster” Mails, a local boy born outside the walls of San Quentin who had gone east to pitch for the Dodgers and Cleveland, eventually returning to become one of the team’s top pitchers. Mails was a strapping, square-hewn Adonis who had acquired his nickname by throwing fastballs under batters’ chins. Occasionally Mails got dusted back. Once during the season, Mails had aimed one directly at Missions second baseman Neal Finn’s ear. Finn, only about 160 pounds, hit the deck, then bounced up and calmly completed his turn at bat, apparently having accepted the knockdown. When the inning ended, Finn trotted out to his position. Mails, striding off the mound, shouted at him, “And you’re gonna get the same thing the next time and I won’t miss.” Finn stopped short and casually turned around. “I’m sorry, Walter,” he said matter-of-factly, “what was that you said?”
“You heard me,” said Mails. “I’m gonna stick it in your ear.”
“That’s what I thought you said,” replied Finn politely, and busted Duster right on his square jaw, planting him in the infield. Finn then leisurely trotted off to take his position.
The incident did little to dissuade the Thursday afternoon ladies. After all, Duster had always claimed, publicly at least, that he was “a lover and not a fighter.” To further this image, Mails had chosen to refer to himself not as Duster but as “Walter the Great,” and boasted regularly of how glorious he looked in his baseball uniform.
As Paddy Cottrell put it, “Walter sure packed in the fluttering-heart crowd on Thursdays. He’d strut out to the mound on those long, trim legs of his and tip his hat to the ladies. The ladies, in turn, would wave their lace handkerchiefs and chant, ‘Walter! Oh, Walter!’ Overcome with such adulation, Mails would turn completely around on the mound so all those feminine eyes could behold the charm of his physique. I was only seventeen but I could see why the other players envied his charisma. There were some good-lookin’ chicks in those stands. Gosh. Walter was even going out with my English teacher at St. Peter’s.”
Distractions aside, by early July there was a pennant race on. The top three PCL teams were separated in the standings by only two games and Vernon Gomez, not Walter the Great, was now the Seals’ best pitcher. So that Thursday, on Ladies’ Day, Nick Williams left Duster on the bench and put Lefty on the mound.
“At first there was total silence in the stands,” Paddy Cottrell reported. “The ladies stared in disbelief. ‘God sakes, what’s that?’ they asked themselves. ‘That lead pencil takin’ the hill? That thing out there with long spindly legs and no hips who kept hitchin’ his pants up between pitches?’
“The women didn’t care a fig about the pennant and Gomez’s fastball whizzin’ by the batters. They wanted their big, strapping Walter with the sweat of the big leagues clinging to his flannels. Hadn’t they paid $1.25 a head to see the Great One pitch? A wail of protest washed over Recreation Park. ‘Birdlegs!’ they screamed. ‘Take him out!’
“ ‘Birdlegs.’ That’s what the ladies called him. From then on he was known as Birdlegs up and down the California coast, and boy, the opposition rode him with that one. Gomez got so burnt up he wore two pairs of stirrup socks to make his ankles look fatter. No such luck. The ladies still screamed ‘Birdlegs!’ Come every Thursday, they were out there to see the wind blow Gomez away. But Gomez blew the hitters away.”
Walter the Great was not forgotten, however. After he retired, the Seals’ owners, never ones to miss a trick, hired Mails to be the team’s official greeter.
Off the field, Lefty began to get a taste of city life. After games, more often than not he would drop by Kenneally’s, sax slung over his shoulder. Before Prohibition, Kenneally’s had been a tavern; after, it became a smoke shop and pool hall. When the Seals played a weeklong series in Seattle or Portland, the results came over the telegraph wires too late for the afternoon editions of the Chronicle, Call-Bulletin, or Examiner. Neal Kenneally set up a chalkboard inside his establishment, posting scores and winning and losing pitchers. Fans eager to get the details of the day’s game jumped off the trolley on their way home from work and dropped by to check. Kenneally’s was also a players’ hangout, home and visitor alike, so fans and players mixed with a casualness that would be unthinkable in later generations. Lefty generally stayed for a while, chatting with whoever happened to be there, then left to play a gig at a vaudeville theater or with a speakeasy band downtown.
By early August, Lefty was working on a winning streak of ten straight and was being touted as the best southpaw in the loop. On August 5, he was scheduled to pitch against the Missions and Dutch Ruether, who, with some justification, thought of himself as the best southpaw in the loop. Ruether felt no personal animosity toward Lefty. Before he left the Seals, Dutch had even taken his fellow left-hander aside and showed him some tricks of the trade. But that didn’t mean he didn’t want to beat the pants off the kid.
Red Killefer, manager of the Missions, was so certain Ruether was the better pitcher that he had held him out of his scheduled start just so he could face Gomez. Twelve thousand customers jammed into Old Rec, one of the largest weekday crowds in the park’s history. In the crowd were nine major league scouts, all to watch the pitchers duel it out.
The grandstand contained two other notables. Lizzie and Coyote Gomez had taken the ferry from Rodeo, the first time they had ever seen their son pitch. Milfred, who had done so much to get Lefty there, had insisted they watch Vernon in the most important game of his life.
Lefty was famously cool before a game but Nick Williams was a bundle of nerves. He kept giving advice to his young pitcher, not all of which turned out to be helpful. Jack McDonald was in the dugout. “Just before he went into the game, Nick cautioned Lefty to take his time. Lefty tried so hard to take his time with Missions on base in the first inning that he committed two glaring balks, one of which fortunately escaped the umpire’s eye.
“Meanwhile, Ruether was the Dutch Master of old for the first four innings. He toyed with his former Seal teammates. He slow-balled Jolley, cross-fired Suhr, and change-of-paced Caveney, creating a lot of frustration in the Seals ranks. But in the fifth, something snapped in Ruether. He walked Bob Reed on four straight balls. Then he walked Crosetti on four straight. That was the tip-off that the bloom was off the flower for Dutch. He himself would tell you that control was 90 percent of his pitching success.”
In the end, Lefty beat Ruether, pitching a six-hitter to run his streak to eleven straight. The scouts made a beeline for Charley Graham. Cy Slapnicka got there first and secured a ten-day option for the Cleveland Indians to purchase Lefty’s contract for $50,000 and three players. But it turned out that Lefty’s weight was not the only physical attribute that would work against his getting to the majors. As San Francisco Examiner sportswriter Abe Kemp recounted, “I’m sitting up in the tower talking to Charley Graham. Slapnicka … he’s the guy who later signed Bob Feller … comes in and he says, ‘Charley, is it all right if I go down to the clubhouse where the players are dressing?’ Charley said, ‘Sure.’ After Slapnicka left, Graham says to me, ‘What the hell do you suppose he wants to go in the clubhouse for?’ I told Charley I had no idea. About a half hour later Slapnicka comes back and says, ‘Charley, I’m going to forfeit my option on Gomez.’
“Graham asks him why he would change his mind from the time he left here to the time he came back. ‘Well,’ Slapnicka says, ‘I’ll tell you, Charley. I just saw Gomez undressed in the clubhouse and anybody who’s got as big a prick as he’s got can’t pitch winning ball in the major leagues.’ Slapnicka ducks out and I start to laugh like hell. Graham says, ‘What do you find so amusing?’
“I said, ‘This is the best goddamned story of my life and I can’t write a word of it.’ ”1
For others interested in Lefty, it was back to the stamina bugaboo.
Bill Essick was the chief scout for the New York Yankees. He had played and managed in the Pacific Coast League as “Vinegar Bill.” As soon as Slapnicka passed, Essick—“one of the ivory hunters,” as Jack McDonald described him—stepped into the breach. He talked with the Seals’ owners in private, then left town without speaking with anyone else.
Being bypassed by Cleveland would turn out to be an enormous stroke of good luck for both Lefty and the Yankees.
1 Lefty never knew about Cy Slapnicka’s option until he read about it in 1973 in Chicago sportswriter Jerry Holtzman’s book No Cheering in the Press Box. “I had to laugh,” he said. “Abe Kemp only tells the story when I’m sixty-three years old. But Abe won’t write about it when I’m twenty and it would have made a big difference on my road trips.”
11.
A DEATH IN NEW YORK
Two events changed baseball forever and helped turn the Yankees into a juggernaut. One occurred in 1919 and the other in 1920 and each involved a vile-tempered, widely detested pitcher named Carl Mays.
Going into the 1919 season, Mays, who sported a wicked submarine delivery, was considered the best pitcher on the Boston Red Sox. He had won 22 games in 1917 and 23 in 1918, including two victories in a 4-games-to-2 World’s Series triumph over the Cubs. The winning pitcher in the other Red Sox victories was a brilliant young hurler named Babe Ruth, who was by then also the club’s top slugger.
But almost from opening day Mays seemed snake-bit. Although he pitched well, sometimes brilliantly, his teammates refused to hit for him. Even the mighty Ruth appeared to save his off days for when Mays pitched, which Mays chalked up to their competition for the role of number-one starter on the pitching staff. Almost two months into the season Mays had a losing record, although his earned run average was a gaudy 2.50.
Mays was also known to throw at batters’ heads. On Memorial Day he extended that practice to the heads of opposing fans. In Philadelphia, an Athletics rooter named Byron Hayes unleashed a steady flow of invective at the fulminous hurler from the third row of Shibe Park. Mays suddenly whirled and, showing the pinpoint control for which was he was famed, whistled a pitch that caught Hayes high on the forehead, breaking his skimmer and raising an egg-sized lump on his head. After the game, Hayes swore out a warrant for Mays’s arrest but the Red Sox had left town before it could be served.1 On their next trip back, July 1, constables were waiting at the train station. Red Sox manager Ed Barrow was tipped off and kept Mays on the train. Barrow then hustled his pitcher onto another train and back to Boston.
American League president Ban Johnson announced that Mays would be fined $100 for the incident and suspended him until the fine was paid. Mays categorically refused to pay up and turned his wrath to the team that he had decided was sabotaging his season. After some unpleasant comments about the Red Sox, Mays asserted he would not “stand for the withholding of his salary,” then announced to sportswriters that he planned to go fishing.
Barrow was livid; he had risked a confrontation with the Philadelphia police to smuggle Mays out of town just days before. Moreover, he insisted that only because of his pleas to Ban Johnson was the punishment not more severe. Not only would Mays pay the fine, Barrow insisted, but his salary would indeed be withheld until his suspension was lifted. Barrow added that Mays could go fishing or anywhere else as far as he was concerned. Red Sox owner Harry Frazee announced that he supported his manager entirely.
Mays was eventually coaxed back to the team, though conflicting accounts exist as to who ponied up the $100. On July 14, Mays pitched and gave up four runs in the first inning to the White Sox. In the second inning he was hit in the back of the head with a ball launched by his own catcher, who later claimed he was trying to throw out a runner at second base. After the inning Mays stormed out of the dugout and disappeared. Two days later he surfaced in Boston and declared that he would never again throw a pitch for the Red Sox. Then he actually did go fishing.
Harry Frazee was in a bind. He had a star pitcher on strike and a season fast going down the drain. On top of that, his finances were tenuous, as always. Theater, not baseball, was his first love and he was always pulling money away from the club to back Broadway shows. So Frazee began to entertain offers to sell Mays. Charles Comiskey of the league-leading White Sox offered $25,000, then raised it to $30,000. But the new, aggressive owners of the heretofore wretched New York Yankees, Jacob Ruppert and T. L. Huston—each of whom called himself “Colonel” although only Huston was—bid $40,000 and threw in two pitchers. On July 31, Frazee made the deal. Ban Johnson, who had little use for Frazee, Ruppert, or Huston, suspended Mays indefinitely for leaving the Red Sox without permission.
Ruppert and Huston insisted that the suspension was simply a ploy to muscle Mays to the destination of Johnson’s choice. “He had two weeks to suspend him. Why wait until we got him?” Ruppert asked. The Yankees went to court. After some wrangling, not only did the court uphold the deal but Johnson was required personally to bear the legal fees.2 Mays was allowed to pitch for the Yankees and went 9–3 for the remainder of the season, establishing the team as a coming power in the American League.3
Ban Johnson tried to redeem his authority by prohibiting Frazee from doing business with anyone but the traitorous Yankees and White Sox. Frazee didn’t care. The Yankees and White Sox were the league’s richest teams. So after the 1919 season, still in need of funds to finance his other endeavors, Frazee offered for sale baseball’s best young player, an act unthinkable just one year before. Charlie Comiskey, fresh off a World’s Series defeat to the unlikely Cincinnati Reds, offered $60,000 and Shoeless Joe Jackson, who had been a disappointment in the Series. The Yankees offered $100,000 straight cash. Frazee took the money—a wise choice since Jackson would soon be banned from baseball for life—and Babe Ruth moved to the New York Yankees where he rejoined his old teammate Carl Mays. The Yankees then lured Ed Barrow from the Red Sox and appointed him general manager. Although Babe would be credited for the coming surge of Yankee fortunes, Ed Barrow, a genius at spotting talent, was the real architect of the team’s rise.
The 1920 season began well for both Mays and the Yankees. By August, the team was contending for the pennant and Mays was on his way to a 26–11 record. On August 16, Mays was facing the Cleveland Indians at the Polo Grounds on an overcast day. In the fifth inning, Indians shortstop Ray Chapman was at the plate, standing close as was his style. Chapman was as popular as Mays was not, excellent in all phases of the game and the backbone of his team. Mays unleashed a fastball, high and tight. Chapman never saw it, never moved. The ball struck him in the temple with such a resounding crack that Mays fielded the ball as it rolled toward third and threw to first, thinking it had hit the bat. Chapman lay still for a few moments, then got up with the help of his teammates. “Tell Mays I’m all right,” he mumbled. But Chapman’s legs gave out from under him as he walked toward the clubhouse. He was helped from the field and taken to St. Lawrence Hospital. By morning he was dead.
Mays claimed to be devastated but the rumor that he had thrown intentionally at Chapman’s head was so rife that players throughout the league briefly threatened a boycott if Mays was not banned from the game. Ban Johnson predicted Mays would never pitch again. But Mays was back on the mound eight days later and threw a shutout against the Tigers. The following year, when veteran players refused to have anything to do with him, Mays counseled young pitchers to throw up and in if that’s what it took to win a game. “He says this after killing a man!” fellow Yankee pitcher Bob Shawkey said later. “He was a stinker. That’s what he was. A stinker.”4
In the wake of Chapman’s death, major league baseball made two important rule changes. The first was to ban the spitball, which caused the ball to behave erratically. Seventeen pitchers who were then making their living with the pitch were grandfathered. The second was to require that baseball be played with a white ball. Of course baseballs always started out white but up until then they had ceased being so the instant they were put into play. They were smeared with mud, licorice, tobacco juice, or even tar. Balls were scuffed, sanded, pounded out of shape, even punctured. Baseballs were expensive, so one ball was often used for an entire game; club employees were placed in the stands to ensure that any ball caught by a fan would be returned. By the middle of the game, the ball was a brown, misshapen mess, hard to see and even more difficult to hit with power. Most of the legendary hitters of the day, most notably Ty Cobb, therefore choked up on the bat and hit with a short, quick swing, waiting as long as possible in order to maximize the chance of making solid contact. That Babe Ruth could hit the ball so solidly with his long, powerful, fully committed cut was considered remarkable.
