âleaving quite three cents worth of peanutsâ behind, put on the only uniform available, which was much too large for him, but (of course) he won the game, striking out fifteen. By the end of that summer he was making twenty dollars a month, plus his board, pitching semipro ball up at Honesdale. âThis seemed like a princely sum,â Mathewson said in recollection, âand I began to speak of J. P. Morgan and me.â Soon he put his mind to it and stopped batting cross-handed. And then there was Bucknell and field goals and the class presidency and the Giants and ManagerMcGraw and Jane. No one ever worked any harder, but it all seemed so effortless, so obviously a matter of destiny.
The first professional game that John McGraw played in, at Olean, on May 18, 1890, he fielded the first ball hit to him at third and threw it away. He made seven more errors before the game mercifully concluded. He lasted five more games before Olean let him go, but somehow McGraw found a smaller town and a lower classificationâWellsville in the Western New York Leagueâand there, although playing infrequently, he managed to take the field at every position but catcher and, wielding what was called a âwagon tongue,â he batted a handsome .365.
McGraw, during his brief stint with Olean
From Wellsville he caught on with a barnstorming team that played all over Cuba that winter in hideously bright yellow uniforms. A kid who had never been anyplace more exotic than Syracuse, McGraw found that he loved the travel, loved the adventure. He had never cared much for learning before, but now that he was out of Truxton, out on his own, he was drenched in curiosity. He adored Cuba, and thereafter he would regularly return. Indeed, McGraw is given credit for naming the joint in Havana so identified with Ernest Hemingway. As the story has it, McGraw would tease the owner, José Abeal, about his balloonlike sleeves, which would, McGraw groused, get in the way, âslopping up the place.â Hence: Sloppy Joeâs.
In 1912, on one of his many visits to Havana, he discovered daiquiris at the famous La Floridita Bar, and so familiar a patron was he that the proprietor named another rum drink after him, calling it the âJota Jotaââusing the two Js in McGrawâs initials. Apparently it remained on the bar menu at La Floridita for more than another half century, until Fidel Castro, that knowledgeable baseball aficionado, found out what the Js stood for and demanded that any such drink named for a Yanqui ballplayer be expunged.
In 1890, though, the seventeen-year-old McGraw didnât drink. Maybe he had lost his virginity in a Havana whorehouse. He sure as hell hadnât in Olean or Wellsville. He never did smoke. âYouâll find cigarette stubs on the guideposts to baseball oblivion,â he once declared. Never in his life could he even tolerate a woman who smoked. But back then, all he wanted was the chance to play ball, and luckily for him, when the pickup team he was with came back to the States, it played an exhibition game in Florida against the big league club from Cleveland and McGraw got three hits. Reports of the cheeky little scuffler got out, and he went to Iowa for seventy-five dollars a month to play for the Cedar Rapids Canaries. He hit a respectable, if not spectacular, .285there, attracting the attention of a Baltimore scout who was looking for players for manager Bill Barnie.
âYou can tell Barnie Iâm just about as good as they come,â McGraw declared, and sure enough he was invited to move up to the Orioles. Muggsy had managed to go from signing a contract in Truxton when he was still sixteen years old to making the big leagues in only sixteen months, when he was yet just eighteen.
As quickly as he took to Baltimore and thought of it as home, though, McGraw soon began spending much of his off-season back in New York state. During his brief, dispiriting
The first professional game that John McGraw played in, at Olean, on May 18, 1890, he fielded the first ball hit to him at third and threw it away. He made seven more errors before the game mercifully concluded. He lasted five more games before Olean let him go, but somehow McGraw found a smaller town and a lower classificationâWellsville in the Western New York Leagueâand there, although playing infrequently, he managed to take the field at every position but catcher and, wielding what was called a âwagon tongue,â he batted a handsome .365.
McGraw, during his brief stint with Olean
From Wellsville he caught on with a barnstorming team that played all over Cuba that winter in hideously bright yellow uniforms. A kid who had never been anyplace more exotic than Syracuse, McGraw found that he loved the travel, loved the adventure. He had never cared much for learning before, but now that he was out of Truxton, out on his own, he was drenched in curiosity. He adored Cuba, and thereafter he would regularly return. Indeed, McGraw is given credit for naming the joint in Havana so identified with Ernest Hemingway. As the story has it, McGraw would tease the owner, José Abeal, about his balloonlike sleeves, which would, McGraw groused, get in the way, âslopping up the place.â Hence: Sloppy Joeâs.
In 1912, on one of his many visits to Havana, he discovered daiquiris at the famous La Floridita Bar, and so familiar a patron was he that the proprietor named another rum drink after him, calling it the âJota Jotaââusing the two Js in McGrawâs initials. Apparently it remained on the bar menu at La Floridita for more than another half century, until Fidel Castro, that knowledgeable baseball aficionado, found out what the Js stood for and demanded that any such drink named for a Yanqui ballplayer be expunged.
In 1890, though, the seventeen-year-old McGraw didnât drink. Maybe he had lost his virginity in a Havana whorehouse. He sure as hell hadnât in Olean or Wellsville. He never did smoke. âYouâll find cigarette stubs on the guideposts to baseball oblivion,â he once declared. Never in his life could he even tolerate a woman who smoked. But back then, all he wanted was the chance to play ball, and luckily for him, when the pickup team he was with came back to the States, it played an exhibition game in Florida against the big league club from Cleveland and McGraw got three hits. Reports of the cheeky little scuffler got out, and he went to Iowa for seventy-five dollars a month to play for the Cedar Rapids Canaries. He hit a respectable, if not spectacular, .285there, attracting the attention of a Baltimore scout who was looking for players for manager Bill Barnie.
âYou can tell Barnie Iâm just about as good as they come,â McGraw declared, and sure enough he was invited to move up to the Orioles. Muggsy had managed to go from signing a contract in Truxton when he was still sixteen years old to making the big leagues in only sixteen months, when he was yet just eighteen.
As quickly as he took to Baltimore and thought of it as home, though, McGraw soon began spending much of his off-season back in New York state. During his brief, dispiriting
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