Murder at Wrigley Field (9 page)

“—and I don’t want to see the War Department shut it down. If we can show that baseball players can do both, play ball and help win the war, maybe we can keep everybody happy.”

Meanwhile, I thought ungraciously, you make money from both. “If that’s the purpose,” I said, “don’t people have to know about it? Nobody knew about Willie working in the plant.”

Harrington nodded. “That was his choice entirely. I respect him for that. Respect-
ed
, I suppose. Most of the players are eager to publicize the fact that they’re working in the plants. Not young Kaiser. He didn’t want any credit for it. Just wanted to do his bit to help.”

And keep his mother from finding out.

Harrington added, “Some of the players are taking a beating in the press for not fighting or doing war work.”

“Joe Jackson’s taking a beating and he is working. Comiskey says he won’t let him back on the Sox if he doesn’t enlist.”

Harrington chuckled. “That’s just The Old Roman’s way of negotiating. He’ll take Jackson back but at half the money he was paying him before. You’ll see.” Harrington suddenly caught himself. The art of negotiating isn’t something for an owner to reveal to a ballplayer. He changed the subject completely. “The Giants are coming in tomorrow, aren’t they?”

I nodded.

“John McGraw...” A relaxed smile developed on Harrington’s face. “You played for him before you came to the Cubs didn’t you?”

“Yup. Three years.”

“That must have been great.”

“Sure was,” I agreed, though it often hadn’t seemed so great at the time. McGraw was not an easy manager to play for. I’d heard, and didn’t doubt, that he breakfasted on warm blood and gunpowder, then cleaned his teeth with barbed wire.

“I used to love the old Baltimore Orioles,” Harrington said wistfully. “McGraw at third base, Hughie Jennings at short, Wilbert Robinson behind the plate...”

“Joe Kelley and Wee Willie Keeler in the outfield,” I joined in.

Harrington lit up. “Did you see them play?”

“Not at their best.” I wished I had. Ned Hanlon’s Baltimore Orioles of the mid-1890s may have been the best baseball team ever.

“John McGraw, he was the best of the bunch,” Harrington said with admiration. “Smartest ballplayer there ever was.”

Smart was one word for John McGraw. Opponents and newspapers had other words for him—“hooligan” and “ruffian” were among the few the papers could print.

“The tricks he came up with,” Harrington went on. “He had one where he used to hold back a runner trying to tag from third on a fly ball. While the umpire’s looking at the outfielder to see if the ball is caught, McGraw would hook his finger under the runner’s belt. By the time the ump turns around and McGraw lets go of the belt, he’s cost the runner a couple of steps.”

Harrington was off in a baseball reverie now. “I was at the game the time he got caught pulling that trick. Big Ed Delahanty, playing for the Phillies, hit a triple with nobody out. Next batter—might have been Sam Thompson—hits a towering fly ball to left. Delahanty’s ready to tag up from third when John McGraw moves up behind him and loops his finger through the back of Delahanty’s belt. So what does Big Ed do? He unfastens the buckle. The ball drops into Joe Kelley’s glove, Delahanty takes off for home, and John McGraw’s left holding a dangling strip of leather—looked like a dead snake! Delahanty runs all the way home holding his pants up with one hand and scores!”

We both laughed. I’d heard the tale before, but never from someone who’d been there.

“McGraw told me another one where they got caught,” I offered.

Harrington nodded for me to go on.

“The Orioles used to have their groundskeeper keep the outfield grass real high so they could hide extra balls in it. The other team hits a ball that looks like it’s going through for extra bases, and hey, the Oriole outfielder just picks up one of the planted balls and throws it in.”

Harrington roared, “That’s a good one!”

“Here’s the best part—I think it happened against Louisville. Joe Kelley usually played left field for the Orioles, but this game he was playing center and Willie Keeler was in right. A Louisville batter hits a low line drive that goes right between Kelley and Keeler. Both of them ran in the general direction of the ball, both of ’em pretended to field it, and they each picked up a different ball stashed in the grass. So what happens? Two balls are thrown in to second base when only one was batted out. Umpire forfeited the game to Louisville.”

“That’s what you call getting caught red-handed!”

“Sure is. And you know why McGraw told me the story?”

“Why?”

“Not because he thought it was funny. He still didn’t forgive Keeler and Kelley for costing them the game!”

Harrington shook his head. “That’s McGraw all right. I remember the tall grass in the outfield. Right field was really tough. Know how Fenway has that hill in left?”

“Yeah, I played there.”

“Orioles Park went
downhill
as you went back. And it was just about always wet. There was a crick—Brady’s Run it was called—that ran behind the fence. Water would overflow into right field. Keeler played it well, but I saw more than one visiting player take a header in that swamp.”

“Are you from Baltimore?”

“Born and bred.”

Funny, from his clothes he looked like he was from Georgia or Mississippi or somewhere. I never really thought of Baltimore as southern.

We swapped a few more stories about the old Orioles. The cracker barrel baseball talk was nice, but I still wanted to know what Willie was doing at his plant. The next time he paused for a sip of water, I said, “Say, Mr. Harrington, do you think you can give me a job, too?”

His face turned businessman. “What can you do?”

A little bit of everything, after working for industrial leagues. But the only thing I was good at was baseball.

“Chemistry?” he asked.

I shook my head no.

Of course, Willie couldn’t have known much either, I thought.

“Plumbing?” he tried.

“I can do anything Willie could,” I said. “You must have an opening for his job. Can I have that?”

Harrington smiled. “I have more than a thousand employees. I don’t know if Kaiser’s job has been filled yet. But if you want it, you’ve got it. I’ll check with the foreman.”

“Thanks Mr. Harrington. Oh, and I don’t want it publicized either.”

“Very well. Of course, it wouldn’t help as much with you as it would have with Kaiser anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“Kaiser. A ‘Kaiser’ working for the American war effort? It would have been great publicity. Not just for baseball. It would have shown that Americans of all backgrounds are united. We’re fighting the Germans ‘over there,’ not here. Anyway, how about starting Monday?”

“That would be great. We’re going on the road end of next week though.”

“No problem. Like I said, baseball comes first.”

I stood to go and offered my hand. “Thanks Mr. Harrington.”

Harrington took it without rising. “It’s a shame about Kaiser getting killed like that. That’s really going to hurt gate receipts.”

Hurt gate receipts. Just when I was starting to like the guy, he shows he really is an owner at heart.

S
aturday afternoon, hours before the final game of a three-game series with the Giants and long before my teammates would be joining me, I strolled about the infield of Cubs Park. Always the first player on the field, I was earlier than usual today. My punishment was over. I was wearing white home flannels again and was eager to show them to the fans already sprinkled throughout the stands.

Contrary to Bennett Harrington’s prediction that attendance would be down, we’d had packed crowds for both of the previous meetings in the series. For a game against the Giants, the fans will always come out—no matter that a player was shot and killed in the park not ten days before. Part of the attraction was John McGraw; fans throughout the country delighted in taunting him, giving him the same verbal abuse that he dispensed so profusely.

The other draw was simply that the opposition was a team from New York. There were plenty of rivalries in baseball—Giants and Dodgers, Red Sox and Yankees, Cubs and Cardinals—but those were for local bragging rights, like being the toughest kid on the block. A series between Chicago and New York was a battle between different parts of the country, different cultures almost. The frontier spirit of the Midwest versus the big-city pugnacity of the Northeast.

The papers had lately been playing up the rivalry, reminding fans that this was the tenth anniversary of the contentious 1908 pennant race that had ended with the Cubs beating the Giants in a play-off game to take the championship.

What the papers didn’t say was anything more about Willie Kaiser’s death. They’d reported nothing at all after that initial nonsense about the gunshot being an accident.

As I gave the second base bag a kick, I looked beyond the right field bleachers to the row houses on Sheffield Avenue, then at the spot on the outfield grass where Willie had last stood. It occurred to me that since the bullet had passed through his body, it might still be on the field someplace.

I picked one of the second-floor windows near the middle of the row and mentally drew a line from the window to where Willie’s chest would have been. Extending the line to the ground, I assumed that to be the most likely spot for the bullet to have landed.

Between the pitcher’s mound and first base, I began sweeping my right foot over the grass. I combed several square yards with my cleats, unearthing nothing but somebody’s front tooth, probably from a pitcher who’d caught a line drive with his mouth.

Stopping to take another look at the houses, I realized the shot could have come from any of them. That meant the angle could have been wider. And what if the bullet had ricocheted off a bone in Willie’s body and changed direction on exiting? I had enough trouble with arithmetic, never mind geometry.

I revised my estimate of where the slug had landed to somewhere in the infield and methodically resumed sweeping my spikes along the grass.

“Whatcha doin’?” a high voice behind me asked.

I turned around, surprised. It was still too early for other players to be out. But here he was: the baby-faced new kid, Wally Dillard, a ballplayer badly in need of a nickname. “Checkin’ out the field,” I answered.

“For what?” He apparently didn’t know that rookies aren’t supposed to pester veterans. Lucky for him, I wasn’t a stickler about that particular custom. I liked to share what I knew with other players. Maybe it was team spirit, maybe it was that I enjoyed a chance to demonstrate that I did indeed know something.

Of course I didn’t give him the exact truth. “You have to check out the field to see how to play a ground ball,” I said. “Got to see if it’s hard or soft or rocky, how thick the grass is, all that. You know how an outfielder plays a fly ball, judging the wind and how heavy or dry the air is?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, he’s got it easy compared to us. He can feel the air and the wind without trying. Playing infield, you gotta take the time to check out the ground and map it out in your head beforehand. Once the ball’s hit, it’s too late.”

“Huh. Makes sense.”

“Why don’t you go check out the field around short? Maybe Mitchell will put you in the game.”

“You think so?” he said eagerly.

Not a chance, I thought. “Never know. You always got to be ready.”

“Okay, thanks!” He trotted off to follow my example on the left side of the infield. I wished I could have asked him to let me know if he found any bullets.

I went back to searching for the slug on my side of the field. While I scratched the turf, I tried to think of a nickname for Wally Dillard.

Neither effort produced results.

It was a good game. A crowd of at least fifteen thousand saw us beat the Giants 5–1 to sweep the series. I went three-for-four with a stolen base and two RBIs. Shufflin’ Phil Douglas easily slipped his spirituous spitballs past the New York bats to ring up a dozen strikeouts. Wicket Greene booted two easy grounders at shortstop and made one throwing error. Wally Dillard maintained a steady stream of encouraging chatter from the dugout bench.

After showering and changing, I left the clubhouse with Fred Merkle. “I was talking to Larry Doyle before the game,” Merkle said. “How about the three of us get together for dinner tonight?”

“Sure, sounds good.” Doyle, Merkle, and I had been teammates on McGraw’s 1914 Giants. Last year, the three of us had all been playing for the Cubs. Now Doyle was back with the Giants.

A few fans stood at the exit gate waiting for autographs. We stopped while Merkle obliged them and I held his bag. I was thinking that baseball’s a strange business: your teammate one year can be your enemy the next. Then I tried to imagine what would happen if countries could do that— maybe France trades a lieutenant to Germany for a sergeant and two privates to be named later...

When Merkle finished giving out his signature, he said, “Gimme a call. I’ll set it up with Larry.”

We split up and I started walking west on Addison. I’d turned south on Racine, heading for home, when a sniffily voice behind me said, “Good to see they’re letting you wear the home uniform again.”

Slowly, I turned around. “I know they’re desperate to sell tickets, but I can’t believe they let
you
in.”

Karl Landfors grinned. “They made me pay extra for the privilege.”

I dropped my bag on the ground. We shook hands hard and long. The best I was hoping for was that his name would appear in the newspaper again; I never expected him to show up at a Cubs game. “Jeez, Karl. Where the hell you been?” Before he could answer, I gave him a playful punch to the shoulder and said, “You’re looking good.” Another thing I never expected of Karl Landfors. He used to resemble a skeleton, in both color and physique. Now his angular face was tanned, he’d put on a few pounds of muscle, and he’d abandoned his customary black undertaker’s suit and stiff black derby for a casual khaki sack suit and an oversized brown driving cap.

“Hey, I got a place not far from here,” I said. “Come on over.”

“Sure.”

During the walk to my house, Landfors gave me a cursory rundown on his three and a half years in Europe. He’d covered the war for the
New York Press
during most of it, then quit the paper to drive an ambulance. And he’d gotten married to a Belgian girl, who’d died of the influenza this spring.

When he related that last part, I glanced at him from the side of my eye. He didn’t look quite as good as he had on first appearance. Behind the horn-rimmed glasses on his long bony nose, I could see his eyes looked weary, as if they’d seen everything and would prefer to forget most of it.

In answer to his question about what I’d been up to, my report was less remarkable. Not getting into the World Series was what I’d been doing. I’d spent three years with McGraw’s Giants and we’d lost the pennant every year, to the unlikeliest teams: Boston Braves, Phillies, and the Brooklyn Dodgers. The
Dodgers
—that one really hurt. I left New York for the Cubs in 1917, and the Giants won the pennant that year.

By the time we walked through my front door, I was thinking that Landfors had certainly had the more interesting time of it. And that I was probably never going to get to play in a World Series.

Once inside, Landfors removed his cap to reveal a head that had gone almost completely bald. “Not bad at all,” he said approvingly, as he ran a finger over the same oak sideboard where Charles Weeghman had sat.

I headed off the joke I was sure would follow. “I know, almost as nice as some of the trenches you been in.”

He smiled. “No. This is a really nice place.”

Maybe Landfors had changed.

“You know,” he said. “Baseball’s really big with the doughboys. I impressed quite a few of them by telling them I knew a big league ballplayer.”

“Me?” I was flattered.

“Well, no. I told them I knew Ty Cobb and Casey Stengel. I figured you knew them and I knew you, so that was close enough.”

“You haven’t changed a bit,” I said.

Landfors walked around, inspecting the place. I thought he might be needing a place to stay. “Say, Karl. I got plenty of room here. You can stay if you want. Uh, no hot water though. Somebody stole the tank.”

“Huh?”

“Somebody stole my water tank. But other than that, it’s okay. Good location, nice neighbors. And quiet. There’s a cop who keeps the kids away.”

“Thanks,” he said. “But I’m staying with a fellow I met in the ambulance corps. Another writer. Got a place down in Roseland.”

“How long you been in town?”

“Not long. A couple weeks.” Spotting the issues of the
New York
Press stacked next to my chair, he picked one of them up. “What are you doing getting the
Press?”

“Is that what that is? Hell, to me a paper’s a paper. As long as they print the box scores right, I don’t care where they’re from.”

Landfors chuckled. I don’t think he was entirely sure I was pulling his leg.

I pointed him to the sofa. He sat down on the edge of the couch while I took the armchair.

Landfors leaned over and picked up a ten-day-old Chicago paper from the coffee table. It was opened to the story about Willie’s death. Frowning, he proceeded to spread out the other papers on the table; they were from the same date, also opened to that story. “I heard about this,” he said. “You knew the guy?”

“Of course I knew him. He was my teammate. Roommate when we traveled.”

“Huh.”

I gave him a few more minutes to read before saying, “You been reporting on battles a little too long, Karl.”

“What do you mean?”

“A major league ballplayer getting shot and killed in Cubs Park on the Fourth of July should be a pretty big story. Look at what page it’s on.”

He quickly shuffled through the papers. “They buried it,” he said.

“Exactly. Why do you think they would do that?”

“Don’t know.”

“I thought it might be the censors.”

“Could be.” Landfors pondered a minute. “Willie Kaiser.... There could be a lot of angles to something like that. A German baseball ptayer—”

“American,
” I corrected.

Landfors nodded and continued, “A baseball player of German heritage, named Kaiser, playing America’s national game, marching in a military drill, killed on the Fourth of July.” He thought some more. “The government censors wouldn’t know how to present something like that to the public—hell, either side could have wanted to kill him. So they bury the story. The Committee for Public Information likes to manufacture propaganda, but sometimes they don’t know how to handle reality.”

Either side could have wanted to kill him? That was crazy. Nobody should have wanted to kill him.

“Hey, look,” I said. “It’s been years. Let’s not talk about this stuff. How about dinner? There’s a place in the Loop I been wanting to try.”

“Great. I’m famished.”

We walked out the door, then I ran back in as I remembered to call Fred Merkle and tell him I couldn’t make the reunion with Larry Doyle.