Chapter 36

How do the members of the base-ball fraternity spend the winter seasons? If I have been asked that question once I have been asked it a thousand times. The public, as a rule, seem to think that because a man is a professional ball player and therefore employed but seven months in the year he must necessarily spend the other five in idleness, and there are doubtless some few ball players that spend their winters in that way, but, be it said to the credit of the craft, there are not many of them. There is no man upon whose hands time hangs so heavily as it does upon the hands of him who has nothing to do, at least that has been my experience, and for that reason I have always managed to busy myself at something during the winter months. Some of the things that I engaged in proved profitable, others did not, but, all-in-all, the winter of 1885 yielded me the best results of my life, for that winter I spent in doing what the old gentleman had wanted me to do years before, viz., in going to school. I had a very good reason for doing this, as you can readily see.

During my ball-playing career I had entrusted some money to the old gentleman up in Marshalltown for safe keeping, and while up there on a visit in the fall of 1884, needing some coin, I asked for it.

"Figure up how much I owe you, interest and all," was his reply, "and we will have a settlement."

Now, the old gentleman might just as well have set me down at the foot of the Rocky Mountains with a wheelbarrow and told me to carry them away to the Atlantic coast on that vehicle, as to have asked me to do an example in interest, and I was too ashamed of my ignorance to allow him to know that such a thing was beyond my powers, so I managed to get around the matter in some way, but I made up my mind then and there that I would at the first opportunity learn at best enough to take care of my own business. That winter I spent with my wife and daughter in Philadelphia, and here I found that she had a brother, Remey A. Fiegel, who was as averse to going to school as ever I had been. By this time I had come to a realizing sense of the power of knowledge, and so I labored with him until he consented to go to night-school, providing that I would send him, which I agreed to do.

Pierce's Business College was the place selected, and when I went up there to make the necessary arrangements for his tuition I asked how old a man had to become before he was barred from attending.

"Oh!" replied the superintendent, "age is no bar here. We have a great many scholars right now who are a long ways older than you are."

"All right! You can just put my name down, too," I replied, and the following Monday evening Remey and I started to go to school together, and this time there was no nonsense about it. That winter I studied faithfully, and, though it was hard work, by the time spring came and we returned to Chicago I had acquired at least a fair knowledge of the rudiments of business and was able to keep my own books, figure my own interest, and, in fact, run my own business.

During the greater part of another winter I ran a hand-ball court on Michigan avenue in Chicago, which did not prove to be a. paying venture, one reason, and the paramount one, being that it was too far away from the business center of the town at that time, though now it would have been in the very heart of the business district, while still another reason was that there were not enough hand-ball players in the city to keep the game running.

Some time during the latter part of the '80s the old Congress street grounds were converted during the winter season into a skating rink and toboggan slide, and of this I had the management during one whole season, a season that was pecuniarily profitable to the lessees of the grounds, as the weather during the greater part of the winter was severe, the ice in fine condition and the toboggan slide in apple-pie order.

Ice skating was that season more popular in Chicago than it had ever been before, and the toboggan craze, which had been brought over here from Canada, at once caught on to the public fancy. As a result the Congress Street Rink was crowded both afternoon and evening, and, strange to relate, the attendance was of the most fashionable sort, the young men and maidens from all parts of the city assembling for the purpose of going down the toboggan slide, which was attended with a great deal more of excitement in those days than was the sport of "shooting the chutes," its summer prototype, which later on became popular. The grounds were handsomely lighted and, thronged as they were in the evening with gaily-attired skaters of both sexes, and toboggan parties arrayed in the picturesque rigs that were the fashion in Montreal, Quebec and other Canadian cities, they made a pretty sight and one that attracted crowds of spectators, some of the skaters being of the kind that would have been styled champions in the days when Frank Swift, Callie Curtis and others were the leading fancy skaters.

The next season the same rink was managed by John Brown, the late secretary of the Chicago Base-Ball Club, but unfortunately he was not blessed with "the Anson luck," and the winter being a mild one and the freezes few and far between, he did not make a success of the venture. The toboggan craze was merely one of the fashionable fads of the moment, and now one rarely hears anything at all of the sport.

As a bottler of ginger beer I achieved at another time great distinction and there are some men in the country right now who have a very vivid remembrance of the beverage that I was unfortunate enough to put upon the market. My experience as a ginger beer manufacturer was laughable, to say the least of it, though I confess that I did not appreciate the fact at the time as much as did some of my friends and acquaintances.

During several of my visits to Canada in search both of players and pleasure I had made the acquaintance of a Mr. William Burrill, who at that time conducted a clothing store at London, Canada, and who had treated both myself and Mrs. Anson with great kindness. This gentleman finally went "down the toboggan slide" in a business way and at last turned up in Chicago with a very little money and a formula for making and bottling ginger beer. He needed, according to his own estimate, about $500 more capital than he was possessed of and wished me to join him in manufacturing it. He was a nice fellow, I was anxious to help him along, and, besides that, viewed from a business standpoint, it looked like a good thing, and as I was never averse to taking a chance when there was a good thing in sight I concluded to join him in the venture. The $500 that I was originally required to invest grew into $1,500, however, before we got the thing on the market, and then the sales started off in lively fashion, and so, not long afterwards, did the ginger beer.

There was a flaw in the formula somewhere, just what it was I never have been able to ascertain, but--well, there was something the matter with it. It wouldn't stay corked, that was its worst feature, but would go off at all times of the day and night and in the most unexpected fashion. If the cork would hold, the bottle wouldn't, and as a result there would be an explosion that would sound like the discharge of a small cannon. Sometimes only one bottle out of a dozen would explode, and then again the whole dozen would go off with a sound like that made by a whole regiment firing by platoons. It was by long odds the liveliest ginger-beer that had ever been placed upon the market. There was entirely too much life in it. That was the trouble. Sitting among a lot of fancy glassware on a back bar it looked as innocent of evil as a newborn babe, but, presto change! and a moment afterwards it was its Satanic Majesty on a rampage, and that back bar with its glassware looked as if it had been struck by a Kansas cyclone.

Complaints began to pour in to the factory from all kinds and classes of customers, and I began to be afraid to walk the streets for fear that some one would accuse me of having bottled dynamite instead of ginger-beer.

I sold a case of it to a friend of mine who kept a noted sporting resort on South Clark street, Chicago. It was harmless enough when I sold it to him. It was young then, and its propensity for mischief had not been fully developed. It developed later. One evening when all was quiet there was an explosion in the cellar. It sounded like the muffled report of a dynamite cartridge. The billiard players dropped their cues and some of them started for the door. A second explosion followed and the coon porters' hair stood fairly on end and their faces became as near like chalk as a black man's can.

The proprietor started down cellar to investigate. He had gotten half way down when there came a third explosion.

He came back again more hastily than he had gone down, and ordered one of the porters to ascertain the cause of the trouble.

The porter was a brave man, and he refused to do it.

I did not blame him when I heard of it.

In the meantime the rest of the ginger-beer bottles had caught the contagion and the fusillade became fast and furious, and it did not stop until the billiard-room and the last bottle of ginger beer were both empty.

After silence had reigned for some time and it had become apparent that danger was all past, my friend the proprietor grew courageous again and, lamp in hand, he visited the cellar to investigate.

Where the case of ginger beer had set there was a mass of wreckage. Broken glass was everywhere, while the flooring, ceiling and walls were strained in a hundred different places. As he emerged from the cellar with a look of supreme disgust on his countenance, he was surrounded by an anxious group who asked as one man:

"What's the matter down there, Louis?"

"It's that ginger beer of Anson's," was the reply.

Then there was another explosion, this time one of laughter.

"Anson's ginger-beer" was getting a reputation, but it was not exactly the sort of a reputation that I wanted it to have. I was willing to close out the business even at a sacrifice, and this I did.

I saved more in proportion of my money than my customers did of the ginger beer I had sold them. This was one consolation.