The Original Curse (18 page)

Of all the pleasant surprises for the Cubs in early 1918, first baseman Fred Merkle—considered washed up by some before the season—was perhaps the most surprising. (N
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The Cubs experienced much the same thing in the National League. They were in first place and played great baseball throughout
June, bolstering the pitching staff with the return of Phil Douglas—who tossed a three-hit shutout in his first outing—and getting exceptional performances from unexpected sources. Hendrix, who might have been bumped from the rotation had Alexander not been drafted, went on a seven-game win streak, and the offense, from the sprightly Hollocher to the sagely Paskert, was unstoppable. The
New York Times
wrote, “How Manager Fred Mitchell has enticed this collection of ancient and youthful players to play winning ball is something of a mystery. Such familiar relics as Rollie Zeider, Dode Paskert and Fred Merkle perform as if they had discovered some kind of tonic which laughs at the advancing years. This young Charley Hollocher … is a whirlwind with his hands and feet. Charley Deal, who is no Spring chicken, manages to insert hits at the proper time and Claude Hendrix blooms forth into a better pitching commodity than he has been for half a dozen years.”
¹⁸

Still, fans weren’t flocking to see the Cubs on the road. Even in New York, with first place on the line, crowds were modest. Over four games at the Polo Grounds, the Cubs and Giants attracted about 6,700 fans per game, which was not great but was big business relative to other teams. An article in the
Boston American
stated, “If the Giants and Cubs had not played to big crowds last week, it might have been time to admit that baseball had lost something of the glamour that once surrounded it…. Naturally, there are many things more interesting than the performance of talented teams, and war news is one of those things.”
¹⁹
When the June 18 game in Brooklyn drew about 1,900, Crusinberry joked, “this means that business is picking up tremendously in Brooklyn.”
²⁰

Business was about to decline all over, though. That’s because, 10 days before work-or-fight was to become the law of the land, General Crowder decided to say a few more things about his fateful directive. Throughout June, hints from Washington suggested Crowder would recommend that the War Department allow baseball to finish its season and then impose the work-or-fight ruling on players. But on June 21, Crowder issued more detailed definitions on the productiveness of several occupations. Crowder’s statement put the slacker label on “all persons engaged and occupied in games, sports and amusements, except actual performers in legitimate concerts, operas or theatrical performances.” But he didn’t specifically address professional baseball. Crowder left the game plowing uncertainly toward the all-important
July 1 date, when his order would become law. The appeal process still would have to play itself out.

But Crowder’s noncommittal statement cemented the opinion that baseball was shirking its duty, that players were not showing the requisite patriotic zeal of truly loyal Americans.

Across the country the public soured on the game. Many evening papers stopped printing sports extras that featured the day’s final baseball scores. When the Cubs were in Cincinnati on June 27, the
Tribune
reported, “Only a few hundred fans were out and they were as silent as deafmutes.”
²¹

The sport pressed on through the final week of June, resigned to the reality that the deck would be reshuffled in the coming month and that, until the reshuffling was settled (and perhaps beyond then), many would look on ballplayers as slackers. For the Red Sox on the field, the rise of Jones was offset by the loss of Leonard, which added pressure on Barrow to return Ruth to pitching. Ruth didn’t want to pitch, though. Besides, the loss of Hoblitzell meant Boston had no cleanup hitter, and with the way Ruth was slugging, there was no better cleanup hitter. Barrow needed two Ruths.

On June 28, Ruth knocked his 10th home run of the season, but, because he wouldn’t pitch, Barrow was forced to use an overmatched journeyman as his starting pitcher—30-year-old Lore Bader, who had made just two previous big-league starts in his career. The Red Sox lost. Still, the following day, columnist Hugh Fullerton wrote that Ruth hit the ball harder than any player he’d ever seen. Fullerton, obviously badly misinformed, went on to praise Ruth’s willingness to do whatever the team asked of him: “Ruth is one of the most likable fellows in the world, and he possesses one quality that makes him a great friend and a great ball player—loyalty. He is the most loyal man to his manager, to his team and to his fellow players in the world.”
²²

But loyalty was a tricky thing in 1918, for citizens and for ballplayers. In the coming days, Ruth would prove that.

For the Cubs, Hendrix and Merkle were among the pleasant surprises who pushed the team to a fast start. But two-and-a-half years later, both
would get their Cubs release amid suspicion that they were part of a group of players who participated in a game-fixing plot that drew such attention that a grand jury was called in Cook County court. When that grand jury began digging into baseball gambling in Chicago, it brought the Black Sox scandal to light—and never fully probed the Cubs scandal.

On August 31, 1920, the Cubs were to play the Phillies. Just before that game, team president William Veeck Sr. received six telegrams and two phone calls from mysterious sources in Detroit, warning him of abnormal betting on the Phillies. The messages advised pulling that day’s pitcher, Claude Hendrix. On orders from Veeck, manager Fred Mitchell benched Hendrix, inserting Grover Cleveland Alexander in his place. Veeck offered Aleck a $500 bonus to win. Merkle, too, was mysteriously benched.

The Cubs still lost, thanks in large part to a late error by second baseman Buck Herzog. As details of the suspected plot became public in the following days, Hendrix, Merkle, Herzog, and relief pitcher Paul Carter were sent home and were expected to testify about the scandal—until the Black Sox discoveries got in the way. Thus the truth of the alleged August 31 fix is lost to history. But the grand jury’s investigation did bring to light earlier accusations that Herzog and Hal Chase had offered $800 to pitcher Rube Benton to lose a game in 1919, an accusation that had been brought to NL president John Heydler in June and covered up. The Cubs released Herzog in the off-season.

Additionally, a letter from Kansas City sportswriter Otto Floto accused Hendrix (who, according to Harry Grabiner’s diary, had been suspected of fixing games in 1919) of sending a telegram to Kansas City gambler Frog Thompson. The text of the telegram, according to Floto: “Bet $5,000 on opposition.” The telegram itself was never produced, though, and both Hendrix and Thompson denied it. When Hendrix was released by the Cubs in February 1921, three weeks after Merkle, the
Tribune
wrote, “While no convincing evidence against Hendrix ever was presented in the investigation of crookedness in the game, his name was mentioned in an incident that started the big fireworks which culminated in the confessions of three White Sox players that the World’s Series of 1919 was thrown…. President Veeck stated yesterday that Hendrix wasn’t released because of any evidence against him, but was let out with the general idea of disposing of veteran material.”
²³
Hendrix died young, at age 52, of tuberculosis.

No charges were made against Merkle or Carter. Merkle later returned as a coach for the Yankees and even played eight games in his late 30s. He, of course, still bears the burden of his own curse—to be remembered solely for the one “bonehead” play that cost the Giants the 1908 pennant race, despite a solid record in 1,638 career games over 16 seasons. Hendrix, Herzog, and Carter never appeared in the majors again. Why the four were sent home from the Cubs was never explained.

Asked during the Black Sox investigation whether he believed the Cubs–Phillies game was fixed, NL president John Heydler said, “I am not in a humor to say any game is fixed or isn’t fixed…. I’ve heard so much about crookedness in baseball in the last year that I wouldn’t say anything any more, but I am in favor of running down to the end every rumor of crookedness from now on, and doing it openly and above board.”
²⁴

Note that Heydler used the phrase “from now on.” Inherent in those three words is the admission that it had not been baseball’s custom to run down crookedness, openly and above board, before that.

The Strategy Board was what Arthur Duffey from the
Boston Post
called them,
¹
and they—that group of Red Sox players who would meet a few times each week to track the progress of the war in Europe—rather liked the moniker. They were seated in the dining room of the Aldine Hotel, a converted mansion on Chestnut Street. A stack of newspapers and evening extras sat on the table. Harry Hooper, in the center chair as usual, opened up maps from old newspapers on the table while two other Strategy Board members, George Whiteman and Wally Mayer, huddled around him. (Amos Strunk also was an avid Strategy Board member, but he lived in Philadelphia and was likely off with his wife.) Dinner was over. Their sleeves were rolled up, collars loosened. Cigars were passed. Other Red Sox were locked in poker games and Quaker-town nightlife, but for the Strategy Board this was an opportunity to catch up on the activity of the armies overseas.

“All right, men, what do we have?” Hooper said, opening the map of the front before him and testing the tip of his pen. “What’s happening with our boys in France?” That’s what these meetings were all about—tracking the movements of the American Expeditionary Force and the Allies all over the globe. Maybe it was because the members of the Strategy Board were older than the other Red Sox players, but they seemed to understand better just what was at stake in the war in Europe, and they understood that a pursuit like baseball was largely
meaningless. So they’d meet, read the papers, mark maps, and give each other their recommendations on war strategy. Not that General Pershing was listening. But playing baseball every day with a war on felt so futile. This was a way, however small, for the players on the Strategy Board to feel they were part of things, as if by simply studying and understanding the war they could somehow give themselves a stake in it.

“Here now,” Whiteman said. “The Americans made an attack on German positions just outside of, er, Chat-tow Thee-rey. Vowks Village and Boys day la Roach were taken by Americans. Zow-wee. That’s good news.”

Whiteman pointed to the map in front of Hooper, locating Chateau Thierry. “It’s Vaux Village,” Hooper said, “and Bois de la Roche.” Whiteman nodded. He was accustomed to being corrected during these meetings. French wasn’t his strong suit.

“Right,” Whiteman said. “Now move the line up a mile. The American line now should run from, uh, Boo-res-chess to Chat-tow Thee-rey.” Hooper carefully put his pen to the villages. He drew with a steady hand, precisely.

Hooper shaded the territory the Americans had gained in the attack. “And this was? When?” Hooper asked.

“July 2,” Whiteman said. Hooper noted the date.

“What does the paper say about it?” Hooper asked.

“Says it’s the most important operation American troops have taken on so far. Planned for 10 days. Says Vowks is vital to the Germans holding Chat-tow Thee-rey. The sammies used big guns, high explosives, and gas. We wiped that village out!”
²

“A big one, and we ought to remember it,” Hooper said, putting a star next to the just-marked American advance. This was Harry in his element.

“They’ve got to drive the Huns away from Paris,” Mayer said. “That’s got to be the top priority, don’t you think? It looks to be only 70 miles to Paris from there.”

Hooper eyed the map. “More like 50 miles,” he said. “And, you’re right; it’s got the Paris road running through.” He tapped his pen along the Paris road. Hoop was eager to keep drawing. It came naturally to him. When he entered school in California, Hoop’s teachers had recognized his knack for mathematics and talked his parents into putting Harry into a baccalaureate program.
³
He’d been trained as an engineer at St. Mary’s College, even got a job as a land surveyor,
⁴
and though he gave it up for baseball, working with angles and movement and maps thrilled him. Engineering was strategy, defining what needed to be done and using math to determine the best way to do it. That was how Harry saw the world—angles to be measured, distances to be covered, problems to be solved.