The Old Ball Game (22 page)

But the arm that won six years ago is just the same
   to-day,
And the curves that fooled the Elephant fool him the
   same old way.

Here's to you, Christy Mathewson, and the man behind
   your back,
And we hope they'll never tell us that Big Six is going
   back.

After the Sabbath respite, the Series moved to Philadelphia. Although the smug New Yorkers dismissed Philly as “Smalltown,” there was no less home-team fervor there. Not only was Shibe Park sold out, but enterprising neighbors erected actual grandstands on the rooftops that overlooked the diamond. As many as five thousand more fans paid for this vantage. Meanwhile, back in New York, it was estimated that hundreds of thousands congregated in the streets, and at the Polo Grounds and Madison Square Garden, wherever electric scoreboards had been set up to record the action.

Marquard faced off against Eddie Plank in this game. At six-feet-three, Marquard was taller than Matty, but he was skinny and, strangely for a big pitcher, he had the tiniest hands; they were a fascination, even described as “womanlike.” Their daintiness did not, however, appear to inhibit Marquard's ability to grip a horsehide; he would win 201 major league games.

The score was tied at one in the sixth inning when Marquard pitched to Frank Baker, the A's third baseman. Baker was stocky, just short of six feet tall, weighing 170 pounds, a left-handed-hitting farm boy up from the Eastern Shore of Maryland who was what passed for a slugger in these days of the dead ball. Baker had in fact led the American League in home runs, with eleven, but notwithstanding that distinction, he had a career total of but seventeen, hitting what was called a “four-furlong
drive” only once every hundred at bats. Nonetheless, attention must be paid. McGraw told Marquard to keep the ball down. Mathewson advised him to use breaking balls, for Baker had singled off Matty's fastball his first time up Saturday.

With a count at one-and-one, though, Marquard got a fastball up—or, as the
Tribune
described it: “The sphere came billing and cooing along about shoulder high.” Baker banged it out of the park to give the A's the game, 3–1. Series tied.

If that weren't bad enough, though, John Wheeler, Matty's ghostwriter, lambasted Marquard in a newspaper column signed by Mathewson. Did Matty approve of Wheeler's choice of words? It was never revealed; whatever, Mathewson took the responsibility for writing that “Marquard served Baker with the wrong prescription. . . . That one straight ball . . . right on the heart of the plate, came up the ‘groove' . . . [and] was what cost us the game.”

Marquard fumed. Connie Mack posted the column in the A's clubhouse the next day at the Polo Grounds. But Matty was back on the mound and held sway. The drizzle that the game started in disappeared and the sun came out, perfect imagery for what was transpiring on the field as the Giants scored a run while, per usual, Big Six blanked the A's. Going into the ninth, he had now pitched forty-four innings against Philadelphia in the two World Series, surrendering but a single run (and that, remember, possibly thanks only to the shifty offices of the wee hunchback). Matty retired the first Athletic in the ninth, too, and then Baker strode to the plate. On a two-and-one count, Mathewson's control deserted him just enough; his curve sailed high and Baker popped it down the Polo Grounds' short right-field line and into the stands—another four-furlong drive.

The stadium fell to shock. The Giants were in disbelief. In the tenth inning, to Matty's dismay, Fred Snodgrass, the speedy center fielder, bent more on revenge than victory, tried to take an extra base and was tagged out by several feet at third. All he was really trying to do was spike Baker. Even more than usual, McGraw growled and cursed at the umpires, meriting an official censure for his profanity.

Mathewson and McGraw conferring, 1911 World Series

Worse, in the eleventh inning, Baker got a scratch single, but it was really the Giant fielders who did themselves in with errors; the A's scored twice off Matty and held on for a 3–2 win. Marquard could not help himself from gloating in print in his own ghosted newspaper column: “Will the great Mathewson tell us exactly what he pitched to Baker? . . . Could it be that Matty, too, let go a careless pitch when it meant the ball game?”

But however much the Giants stewed, Frank Baker returned to Philadelphia a new man. Almost at the instant his blast off Mathewson dropped into the grandstand, he was titled “Home Run.” By the next game, souvenirs in Philadelphia were on sale:
little replicas of “Home Run” Baker's bat, tied with a red ribbon. The reason these lapel insignias could be manufactured so quickly was that a nor'easter had blown in, and a whole week went by before that fourth game could be played.

So long did Jupiter Pluvius rule that the sister of one of the A's, Rube Oldring, died during this hiatus, but he was able to go home and attend the funeral and return to Philadelphia with time to spare. Mathewson concentrated on checkers to while away the many hours. Even when the rains finally subsided, the diamond at Shibe Park was a quagmire. Whereas modern sports-writers sprinkle their copy with knowing references to celebrities, to movies and television, the common knowledge of the classics held by literate Americans then could be gauged by how often and casually sportswriters referenced ancient allusions. Now, for example, the man from the
Tribune
wrote: “Hercules' task of cleaning out the Augean stables was mere child's play compared to the job confronting Connie Mack's valiant band of hoe and shovel wielders.” Sponges, brooms, and sawdust were employed, so that the Series could finally be resumed after a full week.

McGraw figured he had gained the edge, for that meant he could pitch Matty right back again. Not only that, but the Giants staked Big Six to a 2–0 lead in the very first inning. But in the fourth, Home Run Baker doubled to left to start a three-run rally. The A's were jumping on Mathewson's first pitch, following advice proffered by Connie Mack. Baker drove in a fourth run in the fifth, when he smashed his second double off the fence, one that just missed being a four-furlong drive. Matty gave up ten hits. When he faced Baker again, he walked him intentionally. The fans booed with glee. Then: sacrilege! Matty came out for a pinch hitter. But to no avail. That “celebrated medicine man,” Chief Bender, allowed no more New York runs. A's 4, Giants 2. The
Tribune's
headline actually read:
ATHLETICS WIN AGAIN AS MATTY FAILS GIANTS
.

Matty
fails! Fails?
Had that awful verb ever been used before to impugn the beloved master? Hughie Jennings, covering the Series for a newspaper, wrote that he had never seen Matty hit so hard. Big Six himself offered no alibi. “I have no excuse to make,” he said stoutly.

So tell us
,
Christy Mathewson
,
have you gone back?

Well, no, he was far from finished, but it's fair to say that this game in Philadelphia was the first leaf of autumn.

The next day at the Polo Grounds, with Marquard on the mound for the fifth game, the Giants fell behind. Muggsy yanked Marquard, and New York rallied and won it in the tenth when Larry Doyle slid home. It was a most curious ending. Bill Klem was the umpire at the plate. He would go into the Hall of Fame—revered as the “Great Arbitrator” (although players referred to him behind his back as “Catfish”). Klem could also be as imperious as McGraw, if considerably more genteel. “What was that, Bill?” a player asked once when the umpire was slow to make the call. “It ain't nothing till I say,” he replied.

McGraw roared once to Klem: “I'll have your job for this!”

Evenly, the Great Arbitrator replied: “If my job depends on that, sir, then you can have it.”

In any event, in the fifth game of the Series, when Doyle slid home with the winning run, Klem gave no signal. He had seen Doyle avoid the tag, but he'd also seen that he'd missed touching the plate. Curiously, though, neither the Philadelphia catcher nor Connie Mack protested, and Doyle just walked away. In effect, the Giants won by default.

McGraw, coaching at third, realized what had happened. He asked Klem what he would have called if the A's had chased after Doyle and tagged him. “I would've called him out,” he said.

Both of them appreciated that this would have surely precipitated a riot. McGraw thought for a moment. “Well, Bill, I would've protected you,” he declared. Too bad it didn't happen;
it would have been fascinating to see Muggsy McGraw defending an umpire from a rampaging mob.

The Series returned to Philadelphia the next day. McGraw held Mathewson out, saving him for the rubber game back in the Polo Grounds. It wasn't to be. The A's finished off the Giants, 13–2. When it was still 1–1, in the fourth, Baker started the rally with a single and scored the go-ahead run. His was the best Series any player had ever had—except of course for what Big Six had done back in ought-five.

Jane and Christy had only one child, a son who was born on October 19, 1906. He was known, like his father, as Christopher, but, in fact, his first name was John. Sweetly, Mathewson had named his boy after Muggsy—a man who would never have any children. Under no circumstances were the Mathewsons ever gadabouts, but as parents, after John Christopher was born, they were even more limited than the childless McGraws. Nonetheless, in 1911, Muggsy convinced Matty and Jane to come along with Blanche and him to Cuba. McGraw was throwing together a squad to play some exhibitions against the local nines. McGraw's team consisted mostly of Giants—although he couldn't resist bringing Turkey Mike Donlin back for the trip—and while everybody assumed it was going to be mostly a good time, as soon as the Americans lost a game, McGraw acted as if it were the World Series.

When one of his Giants, Josh Devore, who had been out on the town the night before, contributed to a defeat, McGraw fined Devore and raged: “I didn't come down here to let a lot of coffee-colored Cubans show me up.” McGraw and the others cleaned up with bets, though, when Mathewson threw a three-hit shutout to beat a wonderful little pitcher named José Mendez. Matty called Mendez “great,” and McGraw said he'd pay fifty thousand dollars to sign him up, but Mendez was black and so ineligible for organized U.S. ball.

Christy (far right) and John McGraw (seated left), with their wives,
Jane and Blanche, at the Giants training camp in Cuba.

Even after two decades, the Cubans still remembered McGraw as
El Mono Amarillo
, and he and Blanche began returning there periodically for the rest of his life. Three winters later the Mathewsons came back with the McGraws, and the four of them had a grand old time, hanging out at Sloppy Joe's and other bars and restaurants, dallying in casinos and at the racetrack. One time, at the Cuban-American Jockey Club, McGraw bet Mathewson head-to-head in a mule match race. It is unclear why mules were racing, but anyway, they were. Mathewson's mule led coming into the stretch, when it suddenly lost interest in the race and started to inspect an open gate while McGraw's mule roared by to the finish line.

“Don't ever bet on mules, Mr. Mathewson,” McGraw said, pocketing his bet. “They're not reliable.”

McGraw also took his usual delight in watching Mathewson toy with the native checkers champions while Mathewson convinced McGraw to try some golf, out at the country club in Marianao. It didn't take. Muggsy played occasionally, but he always thought golf was an old man's game. It baffled him why healthy young men would fool with such a meager exercise. One time, in Pittsburgh, Mathewson played golf the morning after he had pitched a victory. McGraw surprised Mathewson by calling him in for relief that afternoon. Mathewson was less than stellar, and when McGraw found out that Matty had been on the links that morning, he blew his top and fined him a hundred dollars.

On an earlier occasion, when Mathewson thought a game another Giant was pitching was safely won, he snuck off to the clubhouse and took a shower. When McGraw then called for Matty to come into the game in relief, Mathewson quickly changed back into his uniform but didn't have time to put on his spikes. Hoping McGraw wouldn't notice, he went to the mound in his street shoes, and got a groundout and a strikeout to end the game. McGraw noticed. “Next time, dammit, don't take your shower in the middle of a pennant race,” he bellowed.