The Original Curse (15 page)

Johnson investigated, called an AL meeting, and decided that Speaker and Cobb should be forced out by quiet “retirement.” But new baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, no friend of Johnson, investigated the matter himself. Both Speaker and Cobb declared their innocence. Landis visited Leonard in California, but when Leonard was asked to come to Chicago to testify, he refused. Because of that refusal, Landis overturned the AL’s decision and declared Cobb and Speaker, two of the game’s most popular heroes, innocent. That left Leonard forever remembered as the goat. “Only a miserable thirst for vengeance actuated Leonard’s attack on Cobb and Speaker,” former umpire Billy Evans claimed. “It is a crime that men of the stature of Ty and Tris should be blackened by a man of this caliber with charges that every baseballer knows to be utterly false.”
²⁷

Newton Baker hadn’t really wanted to be secretary of war. He was a pacifist and had taken the job at the request of President Wilson in 1916, promising to stay aboard for just one year before he returned to his old job as mayor of Cleveland. He’d obviously broken that promise. And the job had grown on him.

Baker was back in the United States after having spent seven weeks in Europe.
Seven weeks
, in the heart of the war, traveling from the English Channel to Venice. Never had an American secretary of war had that kind of experience. He saw a German shell land, cleanly, 50 yards from him, one of the 105-millimeter, long-range jobs, leaving a crater in its wake. He’d climbed down into a trench. He’d worn a gas mask and a shrapnel helmet. He saw graves, thousands of them. He’d set his boot in mud tinged red with blood, saw limbs dangling from the barbed wire of no-man’s-land. He heard the low thud of heavy artillery, the metal groan of advancing tanks, the crackling putt-putt-putt of Browning guns. Even now, back in the States, the sounds of the front were easy to conjure. It was emotional. In France he was told about a woman who went to the intelligence office to inquire about her husband. He was dead. She staggered to the sidewalk, where one of the officers caught up to her and offered his condolences. Baker would never forget what the woman said: “Sir, under these circumstances there is only one proper sentiment to express.
Vive la France!
”
¹

This was what Baker had seen. He’d been back in America for little more than a month, but his fellow American citizens didn’t seem to grasp the way the war had descended into a stalemated slaughter that no one would have bargained for when the thing began. It had to end. America had to end it, and had to end it with a wave of soldiers and equipment so massive that victory would be inevitable. Baker had just gone before Congress and asked that Wilson be allowed to draft an unlimited army rather than the million-man force that had originally been authorized. Congress agreed.

The nation needed men. Throughout the country, there were still healthy young layabouts of draft age, plodding on as if there were no war, making no apologies for their slackerism. It seemed wrong that these men should continue in their cushioned jobs while others were fighting. If they weren’t at the front, they should be helping those at the front—farming their food, making their guns, building their supply ships. While Baker was making his request for an unlimited army, General Enoch Crowder made a corresponding change to the Selective Service Act, dictating that any man of draft age who was not in the military would have to give up his job and either enlist or get a useful occupation. If you are not shouldering a Browning gun in France, you should be making a Browning gun in America. Fight. Or work.

It was a profound moment for the United States, the army receiving permission to grow to an unlimited size, all men of draft age called to duty, at home or abroad, without exception. It would put America in a new light, show her strength to the rest of the world. Yet it seemed all anyone wanted to ask Baker was whether the rule would apply to the nation’s sports—especially baseball. The German offensive was pushing west, the Allies were struggling, the scene in Europe was gruesome, and this was the most crucial moment in America’s history, perhaps in the history of the world.

But over and over again, Baker was asked,
What’s going to happen to baseball
?

Jess Barnes, right-handed pitcher of the Giants, leaned forward in a high-backed chair. He was scheduled to pitch that afternoon against
the Cubs, but heavy rain was pounding the streets outside. Jess fingered the text on the front page of the newspaper, surrounded by several of his teammates, cleared his throat, and read aloud. “‘Baseball players all over the United States last night were wondering whether on July 1, the government would make them go to work on farms, in shipyards or munitions factories, or take up other pursuits with a more direct bearing on the war,’”
²
Barnes said in his dusty Oklahoma twang. When he pronounced
United
, it came out, “You-nighted.”

Benny Kauff bent down to flick a bit of dirt off his freshly polished (and quite expensive, he told anyone who asked) shoes. “Looks like you’ll be taking some of us with you, Barnes,” Kauff said. Kauff was Class 1A.

Barnes was not only 1A but had already been drafted. In less than a week he would head to Camp Funston for training. That left time to pitch one more game with the Giants. Figures. Barnes had knocked around with the Braves for three years, went 22–36, and now that he was having a great year—6–1—he was off to war. The Giants’ other top pitcher, Rube Benton, was already gone. Jess didn’t think the Giants could hold the pennant without two of their top pitchers. “What do the big gizzazzers say?” asked Heinie Zimmerman.

“Who?” Barnes asked.

“You know, Baker and Crowder.”

“Well, here’s what this one says,” Jess said, picking up another paper. “‘That baseball, as a business institution, will enter into the government’s decision on the question was indicated by Secretary of War Baker yesterday. He explained that the status of baseball players had been discussed before the regulation was approved and it was agreed that the question could not be disposed of until all the facts relating to the effect upon the baseball business had been brought out through a test case. The Secretary did not know that a large majority of the major league players were of draft age, but on the contrary, was under the impression that most of them were outside the draft limits.’”
³

Laughter broke out. “Outside draft limits?” Art Fletcher asked. “What’s the matter with this Baker? He thinks we are all 16!”

“Maybe he thinks we’re tottering old men like you, Fletcher,” Kauff said, drawing a grim stare from Fletcher, who, at 33, was beyond draft age but never opposed to a fight. “He doesn’t seem to think we’re in our 20s, that’s for sure.”

“What’s all that mean, a ‘test case’?”

“It means we’ll play till July 1,” Fletcher said. “After that, it might be illegal to play ball for a living if you are Class 1A. Not for me. But one of the draft boards will call one of you fellows, or just any player, I guess, and it’ll be up to that player to prove that baseball is useful in the war. If the draft boards say we’re doing something that helps the war, they’ll let us play. It’ll probably go all the way up to Baker, or even Wilson.”

Jess grabbed another newspaper. “There is a statement from Garry Herrmann in here. Let me read it,” he said. “‘If the new order should be strictly enforced, it would certainly cause the closing of all ball parks. It would be impossible to fill the places of the men in the draft age’”—here Jess slowed and spoke loudly—“‘so that the game would have to be abandoned.’”
⁴

Some commotion rose. “Unbelievable.”

“So they’ll shut us down starting on July 1? Until when?”

“Until after the war,” Kauff answered.

“When’s that?”

“When’s the war going to be over? Do I look like Pershing to you, Ivory Dome? It might be over tomorrow. It might be over in 1925.”

Outside, more rain. It was useless. The Giants and Cubs would not play today.

There were so many fans, they couldn’t all fit into the stands. This is what Fred Merkle had been expecting since he was traded to the Cubs the previous year. A lot had happened over the years, but now it was Cubs vs. Giants for first place in the National League, and it was the closest thing to ’08 anyone could remember. Fans swarmed the park, coming by car up Addison Street from Lake Shore Drive, pouring out of the ‘L’ at the Addison stop, and sardined into the Clark Street streetcar. There were no more seats, so the cops and ushers lined up fans on the outfield grass. Looked like 15 deep.
⁵
Merkle had been having a good year. Hitting .350. Mr. Muscle Merkle. But the Giants were in town, and the old ’08 Cubs–Giants rivalry was stoked up, and Merkle knew what that meant. Bonehead. Boner. It was 10 years since the end of ’08 and he had played
nine seasons
since that one bone play. Sometimes, Merkle thought, it seemed that no matter what he did in this game, all anyone would remember about him
in 10 years, 20 years, 100 years was not touching the base in the key game of a pennant race back when he was 19 years old.

“Hey, Merkle,” one of the haw-hawing fans shouted. “How about you don’t forget to touch second base if you have the chance to reach it?”

Merkle, usually such a gentleman, leaning on the top stair of the dugout, shot back: “How about you don’t forget to shut your yap so I don’t have the chance to lodge my spikes in it?”

Shufflin’ Phil Douglas, in the corner of the dugout near the water cooler, heard Merkle above the dugout chatter and began to laugh. Just then, Les Mann came bounding and whistling down the dugout stairs. He went to the cooler, pouring himself some water. Mann had finished his setting-up exercises. He patted the laughing Douglas on the knee.

“You’re in good spirits, Phil. How are you feeling? Near ready to pitch?”

“Almost, almost,” Phil said. “Crowd like this makes me want to get on the slab.”

“Can’t hurry a removed appendix,” Mann said. “Are you taking that nuxated iron I gave you? Good for the blood. You need that iron, coming back from surgery.”

Phil smiled. He was almost as big sitting down as Mann was standing up. “Is there nuximated iron in sour mash?” he said.

Les sighed. “No, Phil,” he said, shaking his head.

“Then I haven’t been taking nuximated iron,” Phil said, his laugh picking up again.
⁶
Douglas gave an elbow to Dode Paskert, who was sitting next to him, spitting tobacco onto his bat, rubbing the brown saliva into the handle, and talking with Rollie Zeider. Paskert half-heard Douglas’s joke before turning his attention back to Zeider.

“Suppose Baker orders ballplayers to go to work,” Paskert said. “And suppose they don’t shut it down. Suppose they try to go with players outside draft age. You see what I mean? All these young ones would be out. They’d be drafted. It’d just be me and you, Rollie! What do you think, Rollie? Can we win a pennant, me and you?”

Zeider shook his head. “They’ll probably sign up half a team of teenaged Yannigans and half a team of grandpas like us,” he said. “Keep it balanced.”

“Makes it nice to be 36 years old; I will tell you that much,” Paskert said.

With a pregnant wife and an awkward gait, Hippo Vaughn did not figure to be a prime target for the army. But he was a key in the Cubs’ crucial May sweep of the Giants. (N
ATIONAL
B
ASEBALL
H
ALL OF
F
AME
L
IBRARY
, C
OOPERSTOWN
, N.Y.)

“I think we’d have Vaughn too,” Zeider said, nodding toward the edge of the grass, where Hippo Vaughn and Lefty Tyler were standing side by side, warming up their arms. “The army would never take him, not with a pregnant wife and that hippo gait of his.” Zeider raised his voice to Vaughn. “Isn’t that right, Hippo?”

Vaughn paused and looked in at Zeider. “I did not hear you, Rollie, but I am sure it was an insult,” he said, shaking his head. “So, my response is, no, it is
not
right.”

Tyler watched Vaughn throw and then asked, “What are you going to do, Jim, when they shut us down in July?”

“Head on back to Texas, back to the farm,” Vaughn answered. “I think I can be useful enough there. How about you? Are you joining up with the sammies?”

“No,” Tyler said. “Back to the farm too. Uncle Sam would not take me anyway.”

“Why not?”

Tyler paused, putting the ball into his glove. He opened his mouth and reached in with his thumb and forefinger. With only a slight tug, he pulled out a yellowed tooth and held it up for Vaughn. “Bad teeth,” he said. Vaughn blanched. Tyler popped his tooth back into place and smiled.
⁷