Читать книгу No Money, No Beer, No Pennants - Scott H. Longert - Страница 11

Chapter 4

TROUBLE AHEAD

The new year in Cleveland was like most new years of the past: loads of snow and temperatures falling below twenty degrees, although it was plenty warm inside the offices at League Park. The office staff of the Cleveland Indians had much to do, including the mailing of the 1929 player contracts. Most would be returned with signatures on them, a few would not. Holdouts in baseball were quite common, dating back to the National League of the 1890s. Players knew they were in for a difficult fight with management if they refused to sign. The guys that held out had few alternatives. The reserve clause kept them property of their club year after year, so owners simply had to reserve rights to each player on their roster on a yearly basis. The owners held all the cards and the players had a simple choice: sign, or don’t play at all. Those who were in the superstar category—a Babe Ruth or a Rogers Hornsby—had some leverage to squeeze a few more dollars by holding out. The average Major Leaguer had little clout, with no agents or players union to assist them in negotiating. The great majority of disputes ended at the start of spring training, when an unhappy ballplayer would reluctantly sign and report to camp. Most had to play baseball to support their families and pay the mortgage. Other than Ty Cobb, who made a fortune in the stock market, there were few independently wealthy ballplayers.

A good example of an unhappy player was Cleveland pitcher Joe Shaute. He sent back his 1929 contract despite getting a raise. A year earlier, Shaute had an incentive-based contract. Any wins he registered above thirteen meant an additional $400 for each victory. Shaute argued that, by the time he got win number thirteen, the Indians had thrown in the towel for the season. Roger Peckinpaugh was playing rookies and minor-leaguers to see who, if anybody, might provide more help next year. Shaute did not win any further games in 1928 and blamed the makeshift lineups as the reason. He had expected to win several more games and cash in on his incentives. He wanted the Indians to make up for the situation by raising him another thousand or two. That would not happen, and Shaute gave up the fight in early March and reported to spring training. He simply had no other action to pursue.

Alva Bradley had developed a progressive approach in contract disputes. If a player refused to sign, Bradley would take the necessary time to study the previous year’s stats and contributions of the holdout. This meant both on the field and off. If the player was a good citizen and had made positive contributions at the ballpark, a raise would be offered. As part of this policy, the Cleveland owner made it utterly clear that there would be no more negotiating: the new contract was final. Billy Evans claimed that the majority of players who quickly signed their contract, indeed got a raise from Bradley. The owner was, in any case, decidedly more generous than his counterparts in the American League. As a result, the Cleveland players understood his policy and thought twice before staying home.

In addition to handing out raises, the Cleveland front office had paid out a huge amount on new players. Gordon Cobbledick wrote in his column that the team had spent major dollars: “When Bradley and his associates took over the Cleveland club last winter he said he would spend money and he has spent plenty. A considerable estimate would place the Indians’ expenditures for new players in the past year at a quarter million dollars.” A chunk of that money went for Earl Averill and Dick Porter, but the team signed a total of twenty new ballplayers for the 1929 season. Cobbledick claimed his sources revealed that Cleveland had spent $20,000 for Jimmy Zinn, who was a gamble at best. The Johnny Miljus debacle of the previous season had cost $17,000. Prospects from college and minor-league rosters made up the remaining costs. If that was not enough, the Indians’ agreement with Terre Haute called for them to make up any of the farm club’s deficits, which in 1928 amounted to $14,000. By all accounts, Alva Bradley had truly made a serious commitment toward building a winning baseball team.

In February, Billy Evans announced that his team would remain in New Orleans for the duration of spring training. After consulting with manager Peckinpaugh, it was decided the team would be in better shape by not doing any traveling until the regular season. The Indians had only six exhibition games scheduled, two each against Cincinnati, Brooklyn, and the New York Giants. A handful of games were also arranged with the New Orleans Pelicans. Any other contests would be intra-squad. Evans thought the train rides and traveling in general were tiring for his ballplayers and he wanted them at peak condition by the season opener on April 16. Some of the ball clubs trained out west in Arizona and California. The temperatures were great, but Evans believed the thousands of miles of travel negated the positive effects of ninety-degree weather. Sportswriters and fans alike were curious to see if Evans’s innovative theory would pan out in the campaign ahead.

A day before the journey to New Orleans, Evans orchestrated another major deal. He sent third-string catcher Chick Autry—and cash—to the Chicago White Sox for left fielder August “Bibb” Falk. The trade surprised the baseball world, as Falk had been a star in Chicago since the 1920 season. He was a bona fide .300 hitter with a high of .352 in 1924. Falk was now part of a talented outfield that included Charlie Jamieson, Earl Averill, and Dick Porter. These players had a real chance to surpass the great Cleveland outfield of 1920 consisting of Tris Speaker, Elmer Smith, Joe Wood, and the now-veteran Jamieson.

Bibb Falk was born in Austin, Texas, on July 5, 1899. As a young man he carried bats for several Texas minor-league clubs. In 1917 he enrolled in the University of Texas, where he played tackle on the football team and pitched and played outfield for the baseball squad. He was all–Southwest Conference in football and batted over .400 in baseball. The White Sox signed him in July 1920 and brought him directly to Chicago. He sat on the bench for two months but became the regular left fielder when Joe Jackson was suspended for his part in the Black Sox scandal. Falk soon developed into a .300 hitter for the Sox with banner seasons in 1924 and 1926. In the latter year he batted .345 with eight home runs and 108 RBIs. Falk had some bad moments in 1928 and started telling anybody who would listen that he wanted out of Chicago. Billy Evans had attempted to acquire Falk after the 1927 season, and a year later the White Sox were listening. Evans offered $20,000 and catcher Autry. Faced with a likely holdout, Chicago agreed to the trade, giving the Indians a terrific outfield. The Indians were no longer a bottom feeder in the American League.

With an active off-season concluded, the Indians boarded a train on the Nickel Plate Railroad bound for New Orleans. For the first time in many seasons there was a degree of optimism among the players. Catcher Luke Sewell told reporters, “If I could choose from the sixteen clubs of both major leagues, I’d want to play with the Indians. They are going somewhere.” They were certainly headed to New Orleans, but Sewell believed his club had a chance to move up in the American League standings. It would be a monumental feat to pass the Yankees or the Athletics, but a higher place in the standings was possible.

The early days in Louisiana were drenched with rain and Heinemann Park turned into a lagoon. The team stayed off the field and started in on calisthenics. One day, the boys got a heavy medicine ball and began heaving it at one another, and Luke Sewell fired the ball at the stomach of Joe Shaute. On impact, the oversized ball exploded, showering everybody with the stuffing. That ended the calisthenics for the afternoon.

The new players in camp slowly got acquainted with their teammates. They were a diverse bunch from all parts of the United States. Ballplayers of the 1920s were more educated than their counterparts from previous eras. Each season, more and more players were coming from the college ranks instead of working their way up in the minor leagues. There were fewer stories of country boys who had never seen a big city before or ridden on a train. On the Cleveland roster there was pitcher Walter Miller, a civil engineer, Bibb Falk, an expert in the stock market and active investor, and Luke Sewell, who had his undergraduate degree from the University of Alabama and was just one semester away from completing his master’s degree. Ken Holloway owned a ranch in the southwest. Willis Hudlin built ham radios for amateur operators around the country. The modern baseball player was beginning to emerge, a much different figure than the older generation of hard-drinking and hard-fighting men who shocked the crowds with their colorful language.

The new method of training seemed to be working for the Indians. There were few injuries, and regular poundings of the New Orleans Pelicans. At the end of March they destroyed their minor-league club, 19–7. Carl Lind had two doubles and a triple. Wes Ferrell, the twenty-one-year-old pitcher, threw four innings of relief. He was unbelievably wild, walking eight batters. Even so, he managed to wiggle out of trouble, something noted by Roger Peckinpaugh. A later exhibition appearance against Cincinnati convinced Peck he had a new pitcher to add to the staff. In four innings of work, Wes gave up one run on two hits in a 7–6 loss. The other Indians pitchers were hit freely, but the Reds could not get to Ferrell.

While the Indians were gearing up for a new season, a troubling event occurred in the United States. On March 25, the stock market took a deep plunge, which caused a panic among investors. For years, Wall Street had been sailing along with positive results. For most of the 1920s, investing in the stock market was almost a guarantee to make money. People who knew little about stocks and bonds put their money in the market. If you did not have the cash to invest, you could buy on margin, putting in a down payment of 10 to 20 percent of the stock’s value and owing the rest. The risk was that if the stock did not perform well and dipped below the value of the purchase price, the buyer was responsible for the entire amount. Despite the chance of a margin call, buyers ignored the peril and continued to purchase on credit. When the twenty-fifth rolled around and stocks fell, a considerable percentage of investors could not pay what they owed. To avoid a serious crisis, National City Bank in New York announced it was allocating $25 million in loans. This action stopped any further panic, but did not serve as a warning to people heavily over-financed. The thrill ride continued, even though it had hit a serious bump in the road.

Spring training eventually turned into Opening Day, much to the delight of the eager Cleveland fans. League Park was again completely sold out. The oddsmakers in New York had the Indians listed as a 50-to-1 shot at the pennant, with 10-to-1 odds to finish in third place. As expected, the Yankees and Athletics were the favorites to claim the top spots. If you were an audacious gambler you might put money down on the Boston Red Sox, who came in at 1,000-to-1 odds to end up on top. Damon Runyon, in his syndicated column, offended the Cleveland fans by picking the Indians to finish seventh. Runyon was clearly not a first-class handicapper. He had the Philadelphia Athletics in fourth place while most writers had them fighting for the pennant. Stuart Bell of the Cleveland Press believed the locals would win eighty games. He based that on the new pitchers, who he figured on bringing another fifteen to twenty wins to the table.

Billy Evans sat in his upstairs office, dreaming of the new stadium and the prospect of filling double or triple the number of the twenty-five thousand seats available at the current home grounds. A full house at League Park would net the club roughly $20,000, but a crowd of just forty to fifty thousand at the new site would bring the team $35,000 to $40,000. No wonder Evans had dollar signs floating around his brain.

Alva Bradley took out a newspaper ad urging Clevelanders to support their team. The three-quarter-page ad spoke of all the changes his regime had made: “In all probability Never In The History Of Baseball has the personnel of a team been so changed from one year to another as the Cleveland Club of 1929. A dozen old faces eliminated and a dozen new ones added. Come out and help us put it out!” Bradley had really done his part. Now the focus shifted to Roger Peckinpaugh and how he would guide his team.

WTAM Radio reached a deal with the Indians to broadcast all the weekday games, beginning with the opener. Tom Manning was back in the booth to do all the play-by-play. The station had found a sponsor for the entire season, the automobile dealership Reeke-Nash Motors. The advertising element was fast becoming a staple of radio broadcasts. Soon, Manning would have his hands full trying to squeeze in the numerous commercials.

Radio listeners in Cleveland also had the choice of tuning in WHK, which was carrying Columbia Broadcasting’s national feed of the Yankees–Red Sox opener. As an added bonus there would be a cut-in to the Washington-Philadelphia game in the nation’s capital. Fans could hear the description of President Herbert Hoover throwing out the first pitch. Avid fans were taking the initial steps toward the concept of channel surfing.

The weather for Cleveland’s Opening Day against Detroit was better suited for a football game, with gray skies and temperatures in the upper thirties. To protect against the wind and cold, the fans arrived wearing heavy coats (including fur in the more expensive seats) and carrying blankets. There were unconfirmed reports of flasks being passed around the stands. At game time there were nearly nine thousand empty chairs: many fans decided to stay home rather than freeze to death. The left-field bleachers were all but deserted. Those staying home missed a rousing contest between the Tigers and Indians.

After the ceremonial first pitch and flowers for Peckinpaugh, the Indians jogged onto the field in crisp new uniforms. The jerseys had black piping and a black C on the chest. Each player had a ferocious-looking Indian on the left sleeve. The socks were black with narrow white stripes. Meanwhile, it wasn’t just the uniforms that had changed. The Indians lineup bore little resemblance to the one in the previous year’s opening game. Only Joe and Luke Sewell and Charlie Jamieson had started the previous season. Joe was now playing third base, as he could no longer cover the ground at shortstop. There were three new infielders and two more in the outfield.

The Tigers opened the scoring against Joe Shaute with a run in the top of the first inning: Harry Rice singled and went to second on a walk to Charlie Gehringer, then a sacrifice fly and an infield out brought him home. The excitement really began in the bottom of the inning when Earl Averill came to bat. There were two outs when Averill walked to the plate for his first Major League appearance. Detroit pitcher Earl Whitehill threw two strikes past the highly touted rookie. The third pitch was over the plate and Averill smacked a rising line drive over the right-field wall. The Cleveland fans jumped out of their seats when the baseball cleared the high screen by six feet and landed far up Lexington Avenue. Averill trotted around the bases to thunderous applause. He would always remember this trip to the plate as his finest moment while playing for Cleveland. Detroit scored two more in the third inning: Harry Rice was on first when Charlie Gehringer blasted a home run. Cleveland came back with a run in the fourth on a single by Charlie Jamieson. The Tigers added another run in the sixth to go up 4–2.

The score remained there until the eighth inning, when the Indians pushed across a single run. Willis Hudlin entered in relief and Detroit went out in the top of the ninth still holding a one-run lead. With three outs left, the home crowd began to make a significant amount of noise. Lew Fonseca drilled his third hit, a double off the right-field wall. Jamieson reached on a bunt single, Fonseca advancing to third. Luke Sewell drove a clutch base hit to center field, sending the game to extra innings. Neither team did anything until the bottom of the eleventh when Luke Sewell singled. Willis Hudlin flied to center. After a walk to reserve shortstop Ray Gardner, Carl Lind lined a double to deep left field, scoring Sewell with the game winner. Derby hats went flying through the stands as the fans celebrated a thrilling 5–4 win. This was not looking like a seventh-place ball club.

That night, the Hotel Winton hosted a meet and greet with old-timers from the Spiders and Naps. The honored guests in the chic Rainbow Room included Cy Young and Chief Zimmer from the Spiders. Representing the Cleveland Naps were Bill Bradley, Elmer Flick, Terry Turner, and Earl Moore. Two of the Delahanty brothers, Frank and Jimmy, were on hand, along with Patrick “Paddy” Livingston from the old Athletics and the Naps. A full orchestra provided the dance music while fans mingled with the popular stars of the past. The much-admired Jack Lynch’s Rainbow Girls performed during the evening. It had been a great day in Cleveland with hopefully many more to come.

The next day featured a matchup of the two recently traded pitchers, George Uhle and Ken Holloway. Uhle showed his old team a thing or two by beating the Indians 15–3. The only difficulty he had was giving up another tremendous home run to Earl Averill. The Tigers drove Holloway from the mound by scoring seven runs in the first two innings. Manager Peckinpaugh went to the bullpen early, calling for Wes Ferrell to relieve. In his first significant action as an Indian, Ferrell pitched a strong four and two-thirds innings. He did not allow a run, giving up only three hits. Gordon Cobbledick marveled at what he saw. He wrote in his column, “The big kid has a terrific fastball and a fine curve together with excellent control. Moreover he uses his head when he’s out there in the box.” Manager Peckinpaugh indicated Ferrell would soon get his chance to join the starting rotation.

Even though the season was just two days old, Cleveland fans were starting to notice Averill and Ferrell. One was pounding out line drives all over League Park while the other showed some exceptional pitching. The new players brought instant excitement to the field, which was surely good for business. With these young stars in the lineup, the Indians really had a chance to win their share of games. Over the course of the season, the American League would feel their impact.

Wes Ferrell was born on February 2, 1908, to Rufus and Alice Ferrell. The family lived in Greensboro, North Carolina, where his father worked for the Southern Railway. After twenty-five years of devoted labor, Rufus bought a large allotment of land just outside of Greensboro. In 1914, after some fiddling with the land, he added a herd of cows and started a dairy farm. The property had a great quantity of wide-open spaces where the seven Ferrell brothers learned to play baseball. They had an amazing team, with older brother Rick catching and other brother George in the outfield. Later, Rick would begin his Major League career with the St. Louis Browns. George played many years for Memphis in the Southern Association, compiling over two thousand hits before he retired.