Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers, The (3 page)

Anson looked upon the American Association champions as upstarts. It is impossible, at this late date, to sort out what was really said and done from the press notices sent forward to hype the gate, but in any case a best-of-seven series was arranged, and the public was told that it was winner-take-all. For the first time, the champions of two leagues would meet in a format resembling the modern World Series—seven games, four at one park and three at the other, no games on another field somewhere, no matches tapering off in indecision or indifference. The first three games were played in Chicago, with Chicago winning two of the three. Traveling to St. Louis to play in front of the rowdy, beer-guzzling, insult-belching fans that Comiskey and Von der Ahe had cultivated, the Colts lost games four and five to fall behind, three games to two.

Clarkson started the sixth game for Chicago against Bob Caruthers. Heading into the bottom of the eighth the Colts held a 3–0 lead. The Browns scored; it was 3–1. With runners on first and second and more than ten thousand fans crowding around the field and screaming like maniacs, littering the field with debris, Arlie Latham ripped a triple to left field, tying the game at three. In the tenth inning Chris Welch raced home, sliding in with the winning run—the famous $15,000 slide. The St. Louis Browns were the champions of the world.

Cap Anson would remain a proud and imposing figure until the day he died thirty-five years later, but in a very real sense Anson’s life passed its peak at that moment, and was lived forever after on a downward spiral. King Kelly, beloved by the fans but never a favorite of Anson’s due to his heavy drinking, was sold to Boston. George Gore, the star center fielder, had fought with the Colts constantly for more money; Anson sold him, too, to the New York Giants. “I’ll go,” said Gore, “but if I do, you’ll never win another pennant.”

And he was right. Gore and Kelly would play for championship teams again. Anson never would.

The Colts slipped to third in 1887. In early 1888 Anson signed a ten-year contract as manager of the Chicago Colts; he was also to receive 130 shares of club stock.

The hooves of racism were heard again in the background. In September 1887, the Cuban Giants were scheduled to play a game against the St. Louis Browns. Comiskey’s men refused to play the game.

In July 1888, Anson’s Colts were scheduled to go to Newark to play an exhibition. The Newark team of the International League had a black pitcher named George Stovey, who had major league ability. Some white players in the International League had been grumbling about playing against blacks. After a meeting of the International League’s board of directors on July 14 it was announced that they would “approve no more contracts with colored men.” On that same day the
Newark Evening News
, unaware of what was happening at the league meeting in Buffalo, announced that George Stovey would pitch for Newark in an exhibition game against the White Stockings on July 19.

But when the day came, Anson refused to play against Stovey; “Get him off the field,” Anson reportedly said, “or I get off.” Stovey, wishing to avoid an embarrassing incident, volunteered to withdraw.

By opening day of the 1888 season, the International League had no black players.

The color line had effectively been drawn.

When these incidents are written about today, Cap Anson usually bears the full weight of the responsibility for banning blacks. On a literal level, the portrayal of the color line as being a consequence of Cap Anson’s racism is extremely naive.

Anson had no authority by which to ban black players. The notion that Anson “intimidated” the National League into banning blacks is silly. Anson was a great and imposing figure, but the National League at that time was full of great and imposing figures, many of whom had more impact on the decisions of the league than did Anson.

One must remember that at this time Jim Crow laws were being enacted all over the country. According to C. Vann Woodward in
The Strange Career of Jim Crow
, “It was quite common in the ’eighties and ’nineties to find in the
Nation, Harper’s Weekly
, the
North American Review
or the
Atlantic Monthly
Northern liberals and former abolitionists mouthing the shibboleths of white supremacy regarding the Negro’s innate inferiority, shiftlessness, and hopeless unfitness for full participation in the white man’s civilization.” A series of Supreme Court decisions between 1873 and 1898 clipped the concept of equality, and cleared the way for the institutional racism. In the very month when blacks were banned from baseball, they were also banned from countless streetcars, theaters, drinking fountains, trains, and restaurants by this little city and that great state and the other private business. It is enormously likely that Jim Crow would have come to baseball even had Cap Anson never been born.

This is not written to mitigate Cap Anson’s moral responsibility. When one makes oneself a spokesman for racial intolerance, one becomes morally responsible for the pain that racism inflicts upon its victims. But the weight of Anson’s voice was derived entirely from one thing: that he was a spokesman for the
majority
position.

Attempting to promote baseball worldwide, Albert Spalding organized a world tour in the winter of 1888–1889. Anson was a part of the tour, as was Clarence Duval, the mascot. The trip went through Chinatown in San Francisco. Anson’s views of “Chinamen” were as enlightened as his views of blacks. Anson’s experiences in Australia, France, Egypt, etc., occupy a huge portion of his autobiography.

In 1890 baseball was split by the Brotherhood War, with most of the biggest stars in the game moving over to the Player’s League. Anson, a part owner of the Colts, stayed in the National League and denounced those who had left as greedy and disloyal.

The Colts were forced to put together a team of young and inexperienced players, whom sportswriters nicknamed the “Cubs.” Anson himself, once known as the “Marshalltown Infant,” reached his final stage as “Pop” Anson.

With the aid of Spalding’s pocketbook, the assembly of the 1890 team was accomplished fairly well. When the defectors returned in 1891, Anson, like the other managers around the league, was forced to piece the two teams together into one, and again he accomplished this fairly well. But when the American Association folded into the National League in 1892, there was a further compression of the talent. The short-run effect was that the quality of play moved up a notch. The Chicago team did not meet the challenge.

Anson himself, thirty-eight years old by 1890, was still a good player. On September 4, 1891, after some newspaper men had commented on Anson’s age, Anson dressed up in a white wig and false white beard that came down to his stomach, and played the entire game in that costume.

Anson was in a creative period. On August 6 of the same season, Anson batted against Kid Nichols. Just as Nichols would get set to pitch, Anson would jump to the other side of the plate, batting left-handed, then right-handed, etc. Nichols looked at him as if he was half-crazy, which wasn’t necessarily false, and waited for him to stand in and hit. Anson kept jumping from side to side.

At last the Boston coach asked the umpire to tell Anson to cut it out. The umpire said there was no rule that Anson couldn’t do that if he wanted. Nichols refused to pitch, Anson continued to jump around, and the umpire, perhaps intimidated by Anson, refused to order him to stop. At last the umpire sent Anson to first base, ruling that he was entitled to first base since Nichols had refused to pitch to him.

So they made a rule about that, that if a hitter switches positions in the batter’s box after the pitcher is set he is called out. This rule is still in the books; you may remember it was the subject of a beer commercial a few years ago.

Anson loved to play games like this; there are several other incidents on record in which Anson tried to exploit a hole in the rules. In the off season, he cashed in on his popularity by working in vaudeville. He had a slapstick routine in which he would wear green whiskers, was squirted in the face with soapy water, had buckets emptied on him, and sang silly songs.

In December 1895, he made Broadway. Charles H. Hoyt, a popular playwright, wrote a play for Anson called
A Runaway Colt
. According to James Mote’s wonderful book
Everything Baseball
, the play involved a minister’s son named Manley Manners who was recruited by Anson, as himself, to play for the Colts. It was a melodrama, involving a bad guy’s attempts to force Manley Manner’s fiancée into an unwelcome marriage. The
New York Dramatic Mirror
reported that Anson’s performance was “quite as good as most of the people on the stage with him,” but added that “he speaks his lines with the directness of an artillery officer, no matter whether he is accepting an invitation to dinner or defending the good cause of professional baseball.” It lasted only a few weeks, but provided the basis of Anson’s favorite self-description: a better actor than any ball player, a better ball player than any actor.

Another story from this era, since we’re having fun here, involved a swaybacked white horse which the Chicago groundskeeper kept to pull his equipment. The horse’s name was Sam, and when not working he browsed in a field behind the clubhouse.

Sam, for some reason, didn’t like Anson, and would lay back his ears and snort whenever he saw him. Well, one day a Louisville player grounded the ball to Bill Dahlen, and Dahlen threw wildly to first. The throw hit the stands and bounced toward right field. Anson was chasing the ball up the right field line, when he looked up and saw a horse. Somebody had left Sam’s gate open.

Now, Anson was not afraid of any man on earth, but a horse is another matter. Anson and the horse looked at each other for a second. Anson glanced at his glove, as if maybe he would throw that at the horse, but rejected that option and decided instead to run like hell. The horse took out after him. And the batter scored, because there just wasn’t any rule that said how many bases you could advance while the first baseman was being chased by a horse.

Anyway, that was 1891, which was maybe the last good year of Cap Anson’s life. In May 1892, the Ansons had their third baby boy, and for the third time the child died in infancy. Though the Ansons had four daughters of whom Cap was enormously proud, he idolized his own father, and no doubt very much wanted a son. The
Chicago Post
reported that on one occasion “Adrian Constantine Anson has given the New York Sun a few reflections concerning the duties of womankind … Mr. Anson thinks that the average woman cannot attend to her regular knitting and to clubs at the same time, and he fecilitates himself that the ladies of his immediate family have been restrained by his influence and his arguments from wasting time in society work that should belong to the needs of the small and sympathetic domestic circle.” Fun guy, Cap was.

Anson began to have trouble with the team’s owners. On the round-the-world trip several years earlier, one of the part-owners of the team, James A. Hart, had come along to act as financial manager. Spalding had organized an effort to buy a set of diamond cuff links as a gift for Hart. Everyone on the trip contributed—except Anson. “Why should Hart get a gift like this?” Anson wanted to know. “I’m doing the biggest work around here. He’s being well paid for what he does.”

In 1891 Spalding resigned as president of the Colts; Hart was elected to replace him. Hart was brave enough to second-guess Anson on such things as Anson’s choice of players and Anson’s dislike of the bunt, but the most serious problem between the two concerned training habits. Faced with a gradually declining team, Anson attempted to become even stricter, and even more of a disciplinarian. He did not allow his players to drink or smoke. He demanded precise performance of team drills, and would levy fines for drinking, misconduct, or insubordination. Hart would not collect the fines. As the team slipped away throughout the 1890s, Anson began increasingly to quarrel with everyone around him. He fought with his players, the management, the league, the opposition, the press, the umpires. “That ain’t no shadow,” one of his players remarked, pointing to the ground behind Anson. “That’s an argument. Everywhere Cap goes, the argument goes.”

A newspaper reporter asked Anson to name his All-Time team. He did, naming himself the first baseman. He was criticized, of course, for his arrogance.

“They wanted my opinion,” said Anson. “And I gave it to them.”

Jokes about Anson’s age became common. A letter to
The Sporting News
in 1897 contained the following verse from a fan:

How old is Anson? No one knows.

I saw him playing when a kid,

When I was wearing still short clothes,

And so my father’s father did;

The oldest veterans of them all

As kids, saw Anson play baseball.

In 1897 the ten-year contract Anson had signed in 1888 drew to a close. After a close loss, Anson approached sportswriter Hugh Fullerton of the Chicago
Inter-Ocean
and accused Fullerton of being a coward. Why, Fullerton wanted to know, was he a coward? Because, Anson said, you won’t print what I tell you. “You’re protecting them,” Anson said.

“Protecting who?” Fullerton asked.

“These ballplayers,” Anson said, gesturing toward his players. “You’re afraid to write the truth.”

“And just what is the truth?”

“The truth,” said Anson, “is that they’re a bunch of drunkards and loafers who are throwing me down.”

Fullerton said that if he wrote that he’d get sued. Well then, replied Anson, say that I said it. But what if you deny it, Fullerton asked?

Anson shook his fist under Fullerton’s nose. “Do you think I’d deny it?”

“No. You’re bullheaded enough to stick to it, and make it worse.”

“All right,” Anson insisted. “Put it in blackface type at the head of your column.”

The next day Fullerton wrote:

CAPTAIN A.C. ANSON DESIRES ME TO ANNOUNCE, IN BLACK TYPE AT THE HEAD OF THIS COLUMN, THAT THE CHICAGO BASEBALL CLUB IS COMPOSED OF A BUNCH OF DRUNKARDS AND LOAFERS WHO ARE THROWING HIM DOWN.