Part 9

There are several types of umpires, and ball-players are always studying the species to find out the best way to treat each man to get the most out of him. There are autocrats and stubborn ones and good fellows and weak-kneed ones, almost as many kinds as there are human beings. The autocrat of the umpire world is "Silk" O'Loughlin, now appearing with a rival show.

"There are no close plays," says "Silk." "A man is always out or safe, or it is a ball or a strike, and the umpire, if he is a good man and knows his business, is always right. For instance, I am always right."

He refuses to let the players discuss a decision with him, maintaining that there is never any room for argument. If a man makes any talk with him, it is quick to the shower bath. "Silk" has a voice of which he is proud and declares that he shares the honors with Caruso and that it is only his profession as an umpire that keeps him off the grand-opera circuit. I have heard a lot of American League ball-players say at various times that they wished he was on the grand-opera circuit or some more calorific circuit, but they were mostly prejudiced at those moments by some sentiments which "Silk" had just voiced in an official capacity.

As is well known in baseball, "Silk" is the inventor of "Strike Tuh!" and the creased trousers for umpires. I have heard American League players declare that they are afraid to slide when "Silk" is close down over a play for fear they will bump up against his trousers and cut themselves. He is one of the kind of umpires who can go through a game on the hottest summer day, running about the bases, and still keep his collar unwilted. At the end he will look as if he were dressed for an afternoon tea.

Always he wears on his right hand, which is his salary or decision wing, a large diamond that sparkles in the sunlight every time he calls a man out. Many American League players assert that he would rather call a man out than safe, so that he can shimmer his "cracked ice," but again they are usually influenced by circumstances. Such is "Silk," well named.

Corresponding to him in the National League is "Billy" Klem. He always wears a Norfolk jacket because he thinks it more stylish, and perhaps it is, and he refuses to don a wind pad. Ever notice him working behind the bat? But I am going to let you in on a secret. That chest is not all his own. Beneath his jacket he carries his armor, a protector, and under his trousers' legs are shin guards. He insists that all players call him "Mr." He says that he thinks maybe soon his name will be in the social register.

"Larry" Doyle thought that he had received the raw end of a decision at second base one day. He ran down to first, where Klem had retreated after he passed his judgment.

"Say, 'Bill,'" exploded "Larry," "that man didn't touch the bag--didn't come within six feet of it."

"Say, Doyle," replied Klem, "when you talk to me call me 'Mr. Klem.'"

"But, Mr. Klem--" amended "Larry."

Klem hurriedly drew a line with his foot as Doyle approached him menacingly.

"But if you come over that line, you're out of the game, Mr. Doyle," he threatened.

"All right," answered "Larry," letting his pugilistic attitude evaporate before the abruptness of Klem as the mist does before the classic noonday sun, "but, Mr. Klem, I only wanted to ask you if that clock in centre field is right by your watch, because I know everything about you is right."

"Larry" went back, grinning and considering that he had put one over on Klem--Mr. Klem.

For a long time "Johnny" Evers of the Chicago club declared that Klem owed him $5 on a bet he had lost to the second baseman and had neglected to pay. Now John, when he was right, could make almost any umpirical goat leap from crag to crag and do somersaults en route. He kept pestering Klem about that measly $5 bet, not in an obtrusive way, you understand, but by such delicate methods as holding up five fingers when Klem glanced down on the coaching lines where he was stationed, or by writing a large "5" in the dirt at the home plate with the butt of his bat as he came up when Klem was umpiring on balls and strikes, or by counting slowly and casually up to five and stopping with an abruptness that could not be misconstrued.

One day John let his temper get away from him and bawled Klem out in his most approved fashion.

"Here's your five, Mr. Evers," said Klem, handing him a five dollar bill, "and now you are fined $25."

"And it was worth it," answered Evers, "to bawl you out."

Next comes the O'Day type, and there is only one of them, "Hank." He is the stubborn kind--or perhaps _was_ the stubborn kind, would be better, as he is now a manager. He is bull-headed. If a manager gets after him for a decision, he is likely to go up in the air and, not meaning to do it, call close ones against the club that has made the kick, for it must be remembered that umpires are only "poor weak mortals after all." O'Day has to be handled with shock absorbers. McGraw tries to do it, but shock absorbers do not fit him well, and the first thing that usually occurs is a row.

"Let me do the kicking, boys," McGraw always warns his players before a contest that O'Day is going to umpire. He does not want to see any of his men put out of the game.

"Bill" Dahlen always got on O'Day's nerves by calling him "Henry." For some reason, O'Day does not like the name, and "Bill" Dahlen discovered long ago the most irritating inflection to give it so that it would rasp on O'Day's ears. He does not mind "Hank" and is not a "Mister" umpire. But every time Dahlen would call O'Day "Henry" it was the cold shower and the civilian's clothes for his.

Dahlen was playing in St. Louis many years ago when the race track was right opposite the ball park. "Bill" had a preference in one of the later races one day and was anxious to get across the street and make a little bet. He had obtained a leave of absence on two preceding days by calling O'Day "Henry" and had lost money on the horses he had selected as fleet of foot. But this last time he had a "sure thing" and was banking on some positive information which had been slipped to him by a friend of the friend of the man who owned the winner, and "Bill" wanted to be there. Along about the fifth inning, "Bill" figured that it was time for him to get a start, so he walked up to O'Day and said:

"Henry, do you know who won the first race?"

"No, and you won't either, Mr. Dahlen," answered "Hank." "You are fined $25, and you stay here and play the game out."

Some one had tipped "Hank" off. And the saddest part of the story is that "Bill's" horse walked home, and he could not get a bet down on him.

"First time it ever failed to work," groaned "Bill" in the hotel that night, "and I said 'Henry' in my meanest way, too."

Most clubs try to keep an umpire from feeling hostile toward the team because, even if he means to see a play right, he is likely to call a close one against his enemies, not intending to be dishonest. It would simply mean that you would not get any close ones from him, and the close ones count. Some umpires can be reasoned with, and a good fair protest will often make a man think perhaps he has called it wrong, and he will give you the edge on the next decision. A player must understand an umpire to know how to approach him to the best advantage. O'Day cannot be reasoned with. It is as dangerous to argue with him as it is to try to ascertain how much gasoline is in the tank of an automobile by sticking down the lighted end of a cigar or a cigarette.

Emslie will listen to a reasonable argument. He is one of the finest umpires that ever broke into the League, I think. He is a good fellow. Far be it from me to be disloyal to my manager, for I think that he is the greatest that ever won a pennant, but Emslie put one over on McGraw in 1911 when it was being said that Emslie was getting so old he could not see a play.

"I'll bet," said McGraw to him one day after he had called one against the Giants, "that I can put a baseball and an orange on second base, and you can't tell the difference standing at the home plate, Bob."

Emslie made no reply right then, but when the eye test for umpires was established by Mr. Lynch, the president of the League, "Bob" passed it at the head of the list and then turned around and went up to Chatham in Ontario, Canada, and made a high score with the rifle in a shooting match up there. After he had done that, he was umpiring at the Polo Grounds one day.

"Want to take me on for a shooting go, John?" he asked McGraw as he passed him.

"No, Bob, you're all right. I give it to you," answered McGraw, who had long forgotten his slur on Emslie's eyesight.

Emslie is the sort of umpire who rules by the bond of good fellowship rather than by the voice of authority. "Old Bob" has one "groove" and it is a personal matter about which he is very sensitive. He is under cover. It is no secret, or I would not give way on him. But that luxuriant growth of hair, apparent, comes off at night like his collar and necktie. It used to be quite the fad in the League to "josh" "Bob" about his wig, but that pastime has sort of died out now because he has proven himself to be such a good fellow.

I had to laugh to myself, and not boisterously, in the season of 1911 when Mr. Lynch appointed "Jack" Doyle, formerly a first baseman and a hot-headed player, an umpire and scheduled him to work with Emslie. I remembered the time several seasons ago when Doyle took offence at one of "Bob's" decisions and wrestled him all over the infield trying to get his wig off and show him up before the crowd. And then Emslie and he worked together like Damon and Pythias. This business makes strange bed-fellows.

Emslie was umpiring in New York one day in the season of 1909, when the Giants were playing St. Louis. A wild pitch hit Emslie over the heart and he wilted down, unconscious. The players gathered around him, and Bresnahan, who was catching for St. Louis at the time, started to help "Bob." Suddenly the old umpire came to and began to fight off his first-aid-to-the-injured corps. No one could understand his attitude as he struggled to his feet and strolled away by himself, staggering a little and apparently dizzy. At last he came back and gamely finished the business of the day. I never knew why he fought with the men who were trying to help him until several weeks later, when we were playing in Pittsburg. As I came out from under the stand on my way to the bench, Emslie happened to be making his entrance at the same time.

"Say, Matty," he asked me, "that time in New York did my wig come off? Did Bresnahan take my wig off?"

"No, Bob," I replied, "he was only trying to help you."

"I thought maybe he took it off while I was down and out and showed me up before the crowd," he apologized.

"Listen, Bob," I said. "I don't believe there is a player in either League who would do that, and, if any youngster tried it now, he would probably be licked."

"I'm glad to hear you say that, Matty," answered the old man, as he picked up his wind pad and prepared to go to work. And he called more bad ones on me that day than he ever had in his life before, but I never mentioned the wig to him.

Most umpires declare they have off days just like players, when they know that they are making mistakes and cannot help it. If a pitcher of Mordecai Brown's kind, who depends largely on his control for his effectiveness, happens to run up against an umpire with a bad day, he might just as well go back to the bench. Brown is a great man to work the corners of the plate, and if the umpire is missing strikes, he is forced to lay the ball over and then the batters whang it out. Johnstone had an off day in Chicago in 1911, when Brown was working.

"What's the use of my tryin' to pitch, Jim," said Brown, throwing down his glove and walking to the bench disgusted, "if you don't know a strike when you see one?"

Sometimes an umpire who has been good will go into a long slump when he cannot call things right and knows it. Men like that get as discouraged as a pitcher who goes bad. There used to be one in the National League who was a pretty fair umpire when he started and seemed to be getting along fine until he hit one of those slumps. Then he began calling everything wrong and knew it. At last he quit, and the next time I saw him was in Philadelphia in the 1911 world's series. He was a policeman.

"Hello, Matty," he shouted at me as we were going into Shibe Park for the first game there. "I can call you by your first name now," and he waved his hand real friendly. The last conversation I had with that fellow, unless my recollection fails me entirely, was anything but friendly.

Umpires have told me that sometimes they see a play one way and call it another, and, as soon as the decision is announced, they realize that they have called it wrong. This malady has put more than one umpire out. A man on the National League staff has informed me since, that he called a hit fair that was palpably two feet foul in one of the most important games ever played in baseball, when he saw the ball strike on foul ground.

"I couldn't help saying 'Fair ball,'" declared this man, and he is one of the best in the National League. "Luckily," he added, "the team against which the decision went won the game."

Many players assert that arbiters hold a personal grudge against certain men who have put up too strenuous kicks, and for that reason the wise ones are careful how they talk to umpires of this sort. Fred Tenney has said for a long time that Mr. Klem gives him a shade the worst of it on all close ones because he had a run in with that umpire one day when they came to blows. Tenney is a great man to pick out the good ones when at the bat, and Fred says that if he is up with a three and two count on him now, Klem is likely to call the next one a strike if it is close, not because he is dishonest, but because he has a certain personal prejudice which he cannot overcome. And the funny part about it is that Tenney does not hold this up against Klem.

Humorous incidents are always occurring in connection with umpires. We were playing in Boston one day a few years ago, and the score was 3 to 0 against the Giants in the ninth inning. Becker knocked a home run with two men on the bases, and it tied the count. With men on first and third bases and one out in the last half of the ninth, a Boston batter tapped one to Merkle which I thought he trapped, but Johnstone, the umpire, said he caught it on the fly. It was simplicity itself to double the runner up off first base who also thought Merkle had trapped the ball and had started for second. That retired the side, and we won the game in the twelfth inning, whereas Boston would have taken it in the ninth if Johnstone had said the ball was trapped instead of caught on the fly.

It was a very hot day, and those extra three innings in the box knocked me out. I was sick for a week with stomach trouble afterwards and could not pitch in Chicago, where we made our next stop. That was a case of where a decision in my favor "made me sick."

"Tim" Hurst, the old American League umpire, was one of the most picturesque judges that ever spun an indicator. He was the sort who would take a player at his word and fight him blow for blow. "Tim" was umpiring in Baltimore in the old days when there was a runner on first base.

"The man started to steal," says "Tim." He was telling the story only the other day in McGraw's billiard room in New York, and it is better every time he does it. "As he left the bag he spiked the first baseman and that player attempted to trip him. The second baseman blocked the runner and, in sliding into the bag, the latter tried to spike 'Hugh' Jennings, who was playing shortstop and covering, while Jennings sat on him to knock the wind out. The batter hit Robinson, who was catching, on the hands with his bat so that he couldn't throw, and 'Robbie' trod on my toes with his spikes and shoved his glove into my face so that I couldn't see to give the decision. It was one of the hardest that I have ever been called upon to make."

"What did you do?" I asked him.

"I punched 'Robbie' in the ribs, called it a foul and sent the runner back," replied "Tim."

IX

The Game that Cost a Pennant

_The Championship of the National League was Decided in 1908 in One Game between the Giants and Cubs--Few Fans Know that it Was Mr. Brush who Induced the Disgruntled New York Players to Meet Chicago--This is the "Inside" Story of the Famous Game, Including "Fred" Merkle's Part in the Series of Events which Led up to it._

The New York Giants and the Chicago Cubs played a game at the Polo Grounds on October 8, 1908, which decided the championship of the National League in one afternoon, which was responsible for the deaths of two spectators, who fell from the elevated railroad structure overlooking the grounds, which made Fred Merkle famous for not touching second, which caused lifelong friends to become bitter enemies, and which, altogether, was the most dramatic and important contest in the history of baseball. It stands out from every-day events like the battle of Waterloo and the assassination of President Lincoln. It was a baseball tragedy from a New York point of view. The Cubs won by the score of 4 to 2.

Behind this game is some "inside" history that has never been written. Few persons, outside of the members of the New York club, know that it was only after a great deal of consultation the game was finally played, only after the urging of John T. Brush, the president of the club. The Giants were risking, in one afternoon, their chances of winning the pennant and the world's series--the concentration of their hopes of a season--because the Cubs claimed the right on a technicality to play this one game for the championship. Many members of the New York club felt that it would be fighting for what they had already won, as did their supporters. This made bad feeling between the teams and between the spectators, until the whole dramatic situation leading up to the famous game culminated in the climax of that afternoon. The nerves of the players were rasped raw with the strain, and the town wore a fringe of nervous prostration. It all burst forth in the game.

Among other things, Frank Chance, the manager of the Cubs, had a cartilage in his neck broken when some rooter hit him with a handy pop bottle, several spectators hurt one another when they switched from conversational to fistic arguments, large portions of the fence at the Polo Grounds were broken down by patrons who insisted on gaining entrance, and most of the police of New York were present to keep order. They had their clubs unlimbered, too, acting more as if on strike duty than restraining the spectators at a pleasure park. Last of all, that night, after we had lost the game, the report filtered through New York that Fred Merkle, then a youngster and around whom the whole situation revolved, had committed suicide. Of course it was not true, for Merkle is one of the gamest ball-players that ever lived.

My part in the game was small. I started to pitch and I didn't finish. The Cubs beat me because I never had less on the ball in my life. What I can't understand to this day is why it took them so long to hit me. Frequently it has been said that "Cy" Seymour started the Cubs on their victorious way and lost the game, because he misjudged a long hit jostled to centre field by "Joe" Tinker at the beginning of the third inning, in which chapter they made four runs. The hit went for three bases.

Seymour, playing centre field, had a bad background against which to judge fly balls that afternoon, facing the shadows of the towering stand, with the uncertain horizon formed by persons perched on the roof. A baseball writer has said that, when Tinker came to the bat in that fatal inning, I turned in the box and motioned Seymour back, and instead of obeying instructions he crept a few steps closer to the infield. I don't recall giving any advice to "Cy," as he knew the Chicago batters as well as I did and how to play for them.

Tinker, with his long bat, swung on a ball intended to be a low curve over the outside corner of the plate, but it failed to break well. He pushed out a high fly to centre field, and I turned with the ball to see Seymour take a couple of steps toward the diamond, evidently thinking it would drop somewhere behind second base. He appeared to be uncertain in his judgment of the hit until he suddenly turned and started to run back. That must have been when the ball cleared the roof of the stand and was visible above the sky line. He ran wildly. Once he turned, and then ran on again, at last sticking up his hands and having the ball fall just beyond them. He chased it and picked it up, but Tinker had reached third base by that time. If he had let the ball roll into the crowd in centre field, the Cub could have made only two bases on the hit, according to the ground rules. That was a mistake, but it made little difference in the end.

All the players, both the Cubs and the Giants, were under a terrific strain that day, and Seymour, in his anxiety to be sure to catch the ball, misjudged it. Did you ever stand out in the field at a ball park with thirty thousand crazy, shouting fans looking at you and watch a ball climb and climb into the air and have to make up your mind exactly where it is going to land and then have to be there, when it arrived, to greet it, realizing all the time that if you are not there you are going to be everlastingly roasted? It is no cure for nervous diseases, that situation. Probably forty-nine times out of fifty Seymour would have caught the fly.

"I misjudged that ball," said "Cy" to me in the clubhouse after the game. "I'll take the blame for it."

He accepted all the abuse the newspapers handed him without a murmur and I don't think myself that it was more than an incident in the game. I'll try to show later in this story where the real "break" came.

Just one mistake, made by "Fred" Merkle, resulted in this play-off game. Several newspaper men have called September 23, 1908, "Merkle Day," because it was on that day he ran to the clubhouse from first base instead of by way of second, when "Al" Bridwell whacked out the hit that apparently won the game from the Cubs. Any other player on the team would have undoubtedly done the same thing under the circumstances, as the custom had been in vogue all around the circuit during the season. It was simply Fred Merkle's misfortune to have been on first base at the critical moment. The situation which gave rise to the incident is well known to every follower of baseball. Merkle, as a pinch hitter, had singled with two out in the ninth inning and the score tied, sending McCormick from first base to third. "Al" Bridwell came up to the bat and smashed a single to centre field. McCormick crossed the plate, and that, according to the customs of the League, ended the game, so Merkle dug for the clubhouse. Evers and Tinker ran through the crowd which had flocked on the field and got the ball, touching second and claiming that Merkle had been forced out there.

Most of the spectators did not understand the play, as Merkle was under the shower bath when the alleged put-out was made, but they started after "Hank" O'Day, the umpire, to be on the safe side. He made a speedy departure under the grand-stand and the crowd got the put-out unassisted. Finally, while somewhere near Coogan's Bluff, he called Merkle out and the score a tie. When the boys heard this in the clubhouse, they laughed, for it didn't seem like a situation to be taken seriously. But it turned out to be one of those things that the farther it goes the more serious it becomes.

"Connie" Mack, the manager of the Athletics, says: