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.
Chapter Nine
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
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.
Chapter Nine
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
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