Notes
Prologue: Beaumont, Texas, Summer 1950
1. This account of the episode derives from my own recollection as one of those present that night.
2. Sporting News, February 2, 1928, p. 4; Franklin C. Lane, “The Last of the Field Leaders,” Baseball Magazine 24 (July 1931), p. 343; Travis Jackson, interview by author, Waldo, Arkansas, December 3, 1985; Steve Smart, “Les Tietje,” National Pastime 13 (1993), p. 82.
3. George “Specs” Toporcer, “The Greatest Hitter of All Time,” Baseball Bluebook 7 (May 1953), p. 72; Chicago Tribune, December 12, 1930, p. 24.
4. San Antonio Light, April 12, 1950, p. 12; Boston Record-American, January 8, 1963, p. 46; Rogers Hornsby and Bill Surface, My War with Baseball (New York: Coward-McCann, 1962), pp. 14–15.
5. Sporting News, March 17, 1927, p. 5.
6. Cincinnati Enquirer, Aug. 13, 1953, p. 27; Rogers Hornsby III, interview by author, Denison, Texas, December 5, 1992.
7. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 15, 1943, p. 2D.
8. Hornsby and Surface, My War with Baseball, p. 15.
9. Arthur Daley, Kings of the Diamond (New York: Putnam’s, 1962), p. 208.
10. John Dos Passos, The Big Money (1936; paperback ed., New York: New American Library, 1969), p. 117.
11. Marshall Smelser, The Life That Ruth Built: A Biography (1975; reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), p. xi.
1. Stockyards Boy
1. Rogers Hornsby, My Kind of Baseball, ed. J. Roy Stockton (New York: David McKay, 1953), p. 29.
2. Sporting News, January 29, 1942, p. 2.
3. J. Roy Stockton, “Rogers Hornsby,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch Sunday Magazine, January 3, 1926, p. 3.
4. Ibid.
5. Organized Baseball, the pyramidal structure in place since the 1880s, consisted of the two major leagues and the officially recognized minor leagues, of which there were twenty-four at the start of the 1914 season.
6. Lee Allen and Tom Meany, Kings of the Diamond: The Immortals in Baseball’s Hall of Fame (New York: Putnam’s, 1965), p. 124.
7. Sporting News, January 19, 1963, p. 11.
8. Rogers Hornsby and Bill Surface, My War with Baseball (New York: Coward-McCann, 1962), p. 37; Sporting News, November 26, 1947, p. 7.
9. The Western Association’s top 1915 batting average, compiled by John Robinson of Muskogee, was .323.
10. Sporting News, September 9, 1915, p. 3.
11. Ibid.
2. Making It
1. Sporting News, September 9, 1915, p. 5.
2. The other all-wooden facility in 1915 was the Chicago Cubs’ West Side Park, which the Cubs vacated the next year for Federal League Park, the future Wrigley Field on the North Side.
3. Sporting News, December 25, 1941, p. 1; September 30, 1926, p. 4.
4. Ibid., September 30, 1926, p. 4.
5. Ibid., June 14, 1928, p. 7.
6. After Hornsby became a great player, sportwriters manufactured a fable out of his double off Alexander, to wit: Bill Killefer, now in his sixth season in the majors and Alexander’s favorite catcher, asked Alexander to “groove one” for the rookie, whose family had befriended him in Texas. Alexander complied; Hornsby hit the ball against the left-field wall. In fact, Killefer sat out that game (September 19, 1915) in favor of Ed Burns, and with Alexander winning by only 4–2, it seems highly unlikely that he had occasion to ease up on anybody. Yet both Alexander and Hornsby repeatedly told the story in later years.
7. Later told in several versions, often by Hornsby himself, the incident was first reported in the spring of 1916. The above quotation is from St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 7, 1916, p. 24.
8. Rogers Hornsby and Bill Surface, My War with Baseball (New York: Coward-McCann, 1962), p. 38; St. Louis Post-Dispatch Sunday Magazine, January 3, 1926, p. 3.
9. Frustrated in their efforts to acquire the Cardinals, the Baltimore group then brought suit in the federal courts, on the grounds that Organized Baseball was a monopoly operating in restraint of interstate commerce. In 1922 the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its historic ruling in the so-called Federal League case, exempting Organized Baseball from federal antitrust laws.
10. St. Louis Post-Dispatch Sunday Magazine, January 3, 1926, p. 3; Sporting News, March 30, 1916, p. 2; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 14, 1916, p. 17.
11. Sporting News, March 14, 1916, p. 17; March 15, 1916, p. 11; March 18, 1916, p. 6; March 30, 1916, p. 2; June 14, 1928, p. 7.
12. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 6, 1916, p. 16.
13. Ibid., April 11, 1916, p. 19.
14. Ibid., April 7, 1916, p. 23; April 10, 1916, p. 10.
15. Sporting News, May 11, 1916, p. 18.
16. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 29, 1916, p. 18.
17. Ward Mason, “The Star of the 1916 Recruits,” Baseball Magazine 10 (October 1916), p. 48.
18. Sporting News, July 16, 1916, p. 3; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 16, 1916, p. 28; August 8, 1916, p. 28.
19. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 16, 1917, p. 11.
3. Toward Stardom
1. Branch Rickey to August Herrmann, May 15, 1917, Branch Rickey Collection, National Baseball Library, Cooperstown, New York.
2. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 29, 1917, p. 16.
3. Sporting News, August 16, 1917, p. 2.
4. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 6, 1917, p. 29; January 2, 1918, p. 2D.
5. Ibid., January 5, 1918, p. 8.
6. Ibid., March 1, 1918, p. 18.
7. Ibid., March 14, 1918, p. 20.
8. Actually Hendricks had played briefly in the majors in 1902–3, with New York and Chicago in the National League and Washington in the American League.
9. At that time, the National Association of Professional Baseball Clubs, the overall governing authority for the minor leagues, classified the minors according to population as AA, A, B, C, and D circuits. After World War II, the new designations became AAA, AA, A, B, C, and D. Since 1963, minors have been grouped as AAA, AA, A, and Rookie circuits.
10. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 6, 1918, p. 16.
11. Ibid., July 16, 1918, p. 18.
12. Ibid., July 17, 1918, p. 18.
13. Sporting News, September 5, 1918, p. 6.
14. Chicago Daily News, undated clipping [1966], in Rogers Hornsby Collection, National Baseball Library, Cooperstown, New York.
15. Sporting News, September 5, 1918, p. 2.
16. Sporting News, September 12, 1918, p. 5.
17. Ibid., December 17, 1918, p. 24.
18. Ibid., January 1, 1919.
19. Quoted in Robert Gregory, Diz: Dizzy Dean and Baseball during the Great Depression (New York: Viking, 1992), p. 82.
20. Frank G. Rowe vs. Rogers Hornsby, October term, 1919, transcript in Clerk of the Circuit Court Records, City of St. Louis, Civil Courts Building, St. Louis, Missouri.
21. Ibid.
22. Quoted in Murray Polner, Branch Rickey (New York: Atheneum, 1982), p. 80.
23. Arthur Mann, Branch Rickey: American in Action (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957), p. 101.
24. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 12, 1919, p. 30; January 30, 1920, p. 30.
4. Best in His League
1. Sporting News, May 20, 1920, p. 4; June 10, 1920, p. 1.
2. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 1, 1920, p. 15; November 16, 1920, p. 18.
3. The National Commission, created as part of a peace settlement between the National and American Leagues, consisted of the two league presidents plus a third member, who was elected by the owners and served as its chairman. By the fall of 1920 the commission had no chairman, the owners having refused to reelect Garry Herrmann to the position. Two years earlier, National League president John Tener—alienated by contrary judgments on player disputes voted by the other two commission members (including the voiding of Pittsburgh’s claim on George Sisler)—had resigned in disgust. John Heydler, longtime secretary to the National League, eventually succeeded him. Ban Johnson, founder of the American League and its president for twenty-six years (1901–27), was the only surviving member of the original National Commission, but Johnson faced powerful opposition from several club owners in his own league.
4. Sporting News, June 1, 1949, p. 14.
5. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 11, 1921, p. 17.
6. Branch Rickey, The American Diamond: A Documentary of the Game of Baseball (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965), p. 49; George Toporcer, “The Greatest Hitter of All Time,” Baseball Bluebook 7 (May 1953), p. 72.
7. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 14, 1921, p. 11.
8. Before 1911, Spalding’s baseball had a solid rubber core.
9. Sporting News, October 13, 1921, p. 1.
10. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 31, 1921, p. 8.
11. Ibid., March 3, 1922, p. 20.
12. Ibid., March 16, 1922, p. 30.
13. Ibid., August 9, 1922, p. 18.
14. Sporting News, June 1, 1922, p. 1.
15. In 1897 Willie Keeler of the Baltimore Orioles in the old National League compiled a forty-four-game hitting streak, and in 1911 Ty Cobb hit safely in forty games. Two days before Hornsby’s streak came to an end, George Sisler broke Cobb’s American League record.
16. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 9, 1922, p. 18.
5. Troubles
1. George H. Williams to Branch Rickey, May 29, 1923, Branch Rickey Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
2. Sarah E. Hornsby vs. Rogers Hornsby, June term, 1923, transcript in Clerk of the Circuit Court Records, City of St. Louis, Civil Courts Building, St. Louis, Missouri.
3. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 23, 1923, p. 3. Hornsby’s letter and much other specific material relating to both his and Jeannette Pennington Hine’s marital difficulties were copiously reported in the Post-Dispatch, St. Louis’s leading afternoon newspaper. A Pulitzer-chain daily, the Post-Dispatch combined reformist agitations with detailed coverage of celebrity scandal.
4. Ibid.
5. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 4, 1923, p. 25.
6. Ibid., June 14, 1923, p. 3.
7. Ibid., June 23, 1923, p. 3.
8. Ibid., June 13, 1923, p. 3.
9. Ibid., June 20, 1923, p. 20.
10. As things turned out, Stuart’s feat wasn’t the start of anything extraordinary. He won eighteen more games over that and two more seasons, then dropped to the minors.
11. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 11, 1923, p. 25; Sporting News, October 11, 1923, p. 4.
12. Sporting News, December 13, 1923, p. 1. Late in 1923 Ainsmith finally got his money from the Cardinals, but only after appealing to Commissioner Landis.
13. Ibid., September 20, 1923, p. 2; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 30, 1923, p. 28; September 1, 1923, p. 18.
14. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 27, 1923, p. 29; September 30, 1923, p. 28; Arthur Mann, Branch Rickey: American in Action (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957), p. 124.
15. Frank J. Quinn vs. Rogers Hornsby, February term, 1927, transcript in Clerk of the Circuit Courts Records, City of St. Louis, Civil Courts Building, St. Louis, Missouri.
16. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 28, 1923, p. 37.
17. Ibid.
18. Quoted in Marshall Smelser, The Life That Ruth Built: A Biography (1975; reprint, Lincoln: University Nebraska Press, 1993), p. 317.
19. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 26, 1923, p. 50.
20. Ibid., November 1, 1923, p. 33.
21. Ibid., November 12, 1923, p. 27; December 22, 1923, p. 12; Charles C. Alexander, John McGraw (New York: Viking, 1988), p. 253. Including Charles Stoneham’s promise to pay an additional $50,000 if the Giants won the 1920 pennant (which they didn’t do), the bid for Hornsby had actually been $350,000.
22. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 14, 1923, p. 48; December 25, 1923, p. 10.
23. Ibid., February 22, 1924, p. 30.
24. Quinn vs. Hornsby, p. 6.
6. .424—and Cardinals Manager
1. Rogers Hornsby and Bill Surface, My War with Baseball (New York: Coward-McCann, 1962), p. 42.
2. Keeler’s 1897 average, while a remarkable feat, was compiled at a time when the pitchers were still adjusting to the lengthening of the distance to home plate by five and one-half feet—a rule change that went into effect with the 1893 season.
3. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 24, 1924, p. 48.
4. Ibid., October 16, 1924, p. 31; February 8, 1925, pt. 2, p. 1.
5. The American League had authorized such an award for the past two years, but no such National League’s Most Valuable Player selection had been made before 1924.
6. Sporting News, December 11, 1924, p. 1; February 16, 1974, p. 30.
7. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 2, 1924, p. 30; December 3, 1924, p. 30.
8. Sporting News, July 24, 1924, p. 5.
9. Before 1901 in the National League and 1903 in the American League, foul strikes weren’t counted as strikes except on attempted bunts.
10. Sporting News, March 30, 1922, p. 4; April 29, 1926, p. 4; June 10, 1926, p. 4.
11. Charles C. Alexander, John McGraw (New York: Viking, 1988), p. 65; Athletic Journal, quoted in Sporting News, April 12, 1928, p. 4.
12. Hornsby and Surface, My War with Baseball, p. 79; J. Roy Stockton, “Rogers Hornsby,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch Sunday Magazine, January 3, 1926, p. 3.
13. Stockton, “Rogers Hornsby,” p. 3.; Sporting News, August 6, 1942, p. 13.
14. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 22, 1926, p. 28; Boston Record-American, January 8, 1963, p. 28.
15. Ernest J. Lanigan typescript, Rogers Hornsby Collection, National Baseball Library, Cooperstown, New York.
16. Donald Honig and Laurence Ritter, Baseball: When the Grass Was Real (New York: Coward, McCann, and Geoghegan, 1975), p. 179.
17. George Toporcer, “The Greatest Hitter of All Time,” Baseball Bluebook 7 (May 1953), p. 71.
18. Chicago American, January 8, 1963, p. 16; Boston Globe, July 15, 1969, p. 25; Sporting News, October 5, 1944, p. 9.
19. Branch Rickey, The American Diamond: A Documentary of the Game of Baseball (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965), p. 49; Travis Jackson, interview by author, Waldo, Arkansas, December 3, 1985.
20. Elwood “Woody” English, interview by author, Newark, Ohio, September 10, 1991.
21. Sporting News, January 17, 1962, p. 1.
22. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 3, 1925, p. 23.
23. New York Times, May 6, 1943, p. 27.
24. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 9, 1925, p. 67.
25. Sporting News, October 31, 1951, p. 10; January 31, 1962, p. 23.
26. Toporcer, “Greatest Hitter of All Time,” p. 72; Frank Graham, McGraw of the Giants (New York: Putnam’s, 1944), 216.
27. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, February 11, 1925, p. 3.
28. Hornsby and Surface, My War with Baseball, p. 42.
29. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 14, 1925, p. 25.
30. Sporting News, June 4, 1925, p. 1.
31. Ibid., June 1, 1949, p. 14; June 6, 1947, p. 3; Hornsby and Surface, My War with Baseball, p. 43. Of the various accounts of the events surrounding Rickey’s firing and Hornsby’s hiring, my judgment is that the sources cited above are the most generally reliable.
32. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 30, 1925, p. 1; May 31, 1925, p. 68.
33. Arthur Mann, Branch Rickey: American in Action (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957), pp. 133, 135.
34. Sporting News, November 11, 1926, p. 5.
35. Franklin C. Lane, “Hornsby’s Winning System,” Baseball Magazine 20 (November 1926), p. 540.
36. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 1, 1925, p. 20.
37. Ibid., June 11, 1925, p. 20.
38. Sporting News, November 1, 1961, p. 20.
39. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 28, 1925, p. 23.
7. The Summit
1. Otto Williams, a onetime major-league infielder who’d been in professional baseball nearly thirty years, was hired as Hornsby’s second coach.
2. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 3, 1925, p. 27.
3. Sporting News, March 11, 1926, p. 3; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 21, 1926, p. 26.
4. Sporting News, April 25, 1956, p. 6.
5. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 21, 1926, p. 26.
6. Detroit News, April 27, 1937, p. 28.
7. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 18, 1926, p. 26.
8. Ibid., June 24, 1926, p. 26; Sporting News, July 1, 1926, p. 1.
9. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 20, 1926, p. 21.
10. Wecke’s recollection as reported by Bob Broeg, telephone conversation with author, August 8, 1992.
11. Rogers Hornsby and Bill Surface, My War with Baseball (New York: Coward-McCann, 1962), p. 106; Arthur Mann, Branch Rickey: American in Action (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957), p. 143; Sporting News, June 11, 1949, p. 4.
12. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 14, 1926, p. 32.
13. Lawrence Ritter, The Glory of Their Times, rev. ed. (New York: William Morrow, 1984), pp. 254–55.
14. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 3, 1926, p. 85.
15. Ibid., September 30, 1926, p. 38.
16. Sporting News, October 25, 1961, p. 10.
17. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 11, 1926, pt. 3, p. 19.
18. Ibid.; Sporting News, November 11, 1961, p. 11.
19. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 17, 1926, p. 5S.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid., pt. 3, p. 19. For the above account of Alexander’s seventh-game heroics, I’ve relied on the contemporary recollections of Hornsby, Alexander, and others, as opposed to a large number of later renditions by the same people, as well as by journalists and historians. Because they have a particularly truthful ring, I’ve also taken Flint Rhem’s 1961 recollections at face value.
22. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 11, 1926, p. 3.
23. Associated Press dispatch, Austin, Texas, October 13 [1926], in Rogers Hornsby Collection, National Baseball Library, Cooperstown, New York.
8. Touring the National League
1. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 10, 1926, p. 26.
2. Ibid., December 12, 1926, p. 1.
3. Ibid., October 10, 1926, p. 26.
4. Ibid., December 2, 1926, p. 28; December 6, 1926, p. 24; December 7, 1926, p. 24.
5. Sporting News, June 11, 1949, p. 14; Arthur Mann, Branch Rickey: American in Action (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957), p. 148.
6. Franklin C. Lane, “The Amazing Hornsby Deal,” Baseball Magazine 21 (March 1928), p. 436; Bob Broeg, telephone conversation with author, August 5, 1992.
7. Frank Graham, McGraw of the Giants (New York: Putnam’s, 1944), p. 213.
8. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 20, 1926, p. 34; December 23, 1926, p. 35; Sporting News, December 23, 1926, p. 1; Rogers Hornsby and Bill Surface, My War with Baseball (New York: Coward-McCann, 1962), p. 29.
9. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 21, 1926, p. 35.
10. Ibid., January 8, 1927, p. 6; January 9, 1927, p. 1S.
11. Ibid., February 2, 1927, p. 28.
12. Graham, McGraw of the Giants, p. 213.
13. New York Times, September 18, 1953, p. 31.
14. Sporting News, March 31, 1927, p. 1; New York Times, March 6, 1927, p. 19. Stoneham was referring to earlier National League practices whereby club owners gained controlling interests in more than one franchise. He ignored the fact that going back to 1890, stockholders in the Boston National League franchise had held stock in the Giants, and that Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert held the mortgage on Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox, as a consequence of the deal that brought Babe Ruth to New York after the 1919 season.
15. Graham, McGraw of the Giants, p. 216.
16. John H. Heydler to All Club Presidents, April 11, 1927, Rogers Hornsby Collection, National Baseball Library, Cooperstown, New York.
17. Transcript of telephone conversations, John A. Heydler with Rogers Hornsby and William F. Fahey, April 6, 1927, ibid.
18. Red Smith column in New York Herald-Tribune, undated, ibid.
19. Undated typescript, Hornsby Collection, National Baseball Library.
20. New York Times, April 11, 1927, sec. 10, p. 1; John A. Heydler to Kenesaw M. Landis, April 9, 1927; Heydler to J. G. Taylor Spink, April 15, 1927, Hornsby Collection, National Baseball Library.
21. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 14, 1927, p. 34; January 22, 1927, p. 30.
22. Sporting News, February 18, 1978, p. 6.
23. Weekly issues of the Sporting News during the 1927 season carried Wilson’s and Spalding’s advertisements for the two gloves.
24. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 15, 1927, p. 17.
25. Ibid., p. 18; Sporting News, June 23, 1927, p. 1.
26. Hornsby and Surface, My War with Baseball, p. 30.
27. New York Times, January 11, 1928, p. 32.
28. Sporting News, June 8, 1949, p. 15.
29. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 1, 1928, p. 5.
30. New York Times, January 13, 1928, p. 18.
31. Ibid., October 30, 1927, p. 1.
32. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 19, 1927, p. 11; December 20, 1927, p. 3.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid., December 22, 1927, p. 4.
35. Ibid., January 11, 1928, p. 4.
36. New York Times, January 11, 1928, p. 1.
37. Universal Service dispatch from New York Daily Mirror, January 30, 1928, Hornsby Collection, National Baseball Library; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 12, 1928, p. 24.
38. Charles C. Alexander, John McGraw (New York: Viking, 1988), p. 281; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 13, 1928, p. 32.
39. Quoted in Arthur Daley column, New York Times, September 18, 1953, p. 31.
40. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 12, 1928, p. 24.
41. New York Times, January 14, 1928, p. 9.
42. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 20, 1928, p. 18.
43. After one February visit, Barto prescribed (and himself sold to the Hornsbys) a bottle of whiskey.
44. In 1947 Coffee Pot Park, used by the St. Louis Cardinals since 1938, would be renamed Al Lang Field, after the onetime Pittsburgher who persuaded big-league teams to begin training at St. Petersburg. Crescent Lake Park, where the Yankees trained from 1925 to 1961, was named for Miller Huggins after his death in 1929 (and was later called Stengel-Huggins Field).
45. Quoted in Daniel Okrent and Harris Lewine, eds., The Ultimate Baseball Book (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982), p. 151.
46. New York Times, May 24, 1928, p. 23.
47. Boston Traveler, May 23, 1931, p. 16.
48. Ibid. As of the 1926 season, sacrifice flies were recorded on a fly ball on which a runner advanced to any base.
49. Fred Lieb, Baseball as I Have Known It (New York: Tempo-Grosset and Dunlap, 1977), p. 54.
50. Sporting News, June 7, 1928, p. 3.
51. Ibid., October 25, 1928, p. 1.
52. Chicago Tribune, November 8, 1928, p. 23.
53. Sporting News, December 27, 1928, p. 3.
9. “Enough of Second-Guessers”
1. Elwood “Woody” English, interview by author, Newark, Ohio, September 10, 1991.
2. Sporting News, January 1, 1933, p. 8.
3. Rogers Hornsby and Bill Surface, My War with Baseball (New York: Coward-McCann, 1962), p. 48.
4. Wrigley Field wouldn’t acquire its characteristic ivy-covered outfield walls until after the original bleachers were replaced by new outfield stands following the 1937 season.
5. Sporting News, January 9, 1930, pp. 2–3.
6. Chicago Tribune, October 10, 1929, p. 16.
7. Ibid., October 13, 1929, p. 1.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., p. 28.
10. Franklin C. Lane, “Rogers Hornsby Springs a New Sensation,” Baseball Magazine 27 (September 1933), pp. 443–444. The famed sports journalist Grantland Rice, who also liked to wager on horses and also lost money in the Crash, once figured his odds at 1–5 in the market, 1–10 at the track, concluding that both were “no good as sound investments.” Grantland Rice, The Tumult and the Shouting: My Life in Sport (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1954), p. 280.
11. Chicago Daily News, January 7, 1963, p. 22.
12. Chicago Tribune, April 8, 1930, p. 19.
13. Sporting News, May 22, 1930, p. 4; Charles C. Alexander, John McGraw (New York: Viking, 1988), p. 294.
14. Chicago Tribune, July 17, 1930, p. 19.
15. Clipping from Sacramento Bee (1991), Rogers Hornsby Collection, Sporting News Archives, St. Louis, Missouri.
16. Chicago Tribune, September 23, 1930, p. 1.
17. Sporting News, October 2, 1930, p. 2.
18. Chicago Tribune, January 11, 1931, pt. 2, p. 2.
19. Sporting News, March 12, 1931, p. 1; Paul Mickelson column [February 1931], unidentified clipping, Hornsby Collection, Sporting News Archives.
20. Grimm quoted in William B. Mead, Two Spectacular Seasons: 1930, the Year the Hitters Ran Wild; 1968, the Year the Pitchers Took Over (New York: Macmillan, 1990), p. 113; English interview.
21. Chicago Daily News, undated John P. Carmichael column [1937], Hornsby Collection, Sporting News Archives.
22. Sporting News, April 2, 1931, p. 1.
23. Chicago Tribune, July 1, 1931, p. 25; New York World-Telegram, July 2, 1931, p. 32.
24. Hornsby did use Wilson as a pinch hitter in the ninth inning; Wilson fouled out.
25. Chicago Tribune, September 7, 1931, p. 30.
26. Ibid., September 6, 1931, p. 17.
27. Gabby Hartnett prompted a reprimand from Commissioner Landis because, before that particular charity game at Comiskey Park, he was photographed leaning over a box-seat railing, signing a scorecard for Al Capone’s son, and talking with Capone, state representative Roland Libonati, Jack “Machine Gun” McGurn, and two of Capone’s bodyguards. At that time Capone was awaiting trial for income-tax fraud.
28. Chicago Tribune, December 10, 1931, p. 25.
29. Sporting News, February 4, 1932, p. 2.
30. Quoted in Robert Gregory, Diz: Dizzy Dean and Baseball During the Great Depression (New York: Viking, 1992), p. 346.
31. John P. Carmichael in Sporting News, September 30, 1953, p. 12.
32. Sporting News, June 9, 1932, p. 2.
33. Chicago Tribune, July 7, 1932, p. 1. Violet Valli’s legal name was Violet Popovich.
34. The Violet Valli saga continued for some months. In August the prosecutor’s office eventually dropped its charges against her, and she began appearing at a local burlesque theater. Subsequently police arrested a Chicago man for stealing letters from Jurges to Valli and trying to extort money from Jurges and Cuyler. Woody English remembered an incident the following winter at a North Side bowling alley, when Valli came in and Jurges, English, and several other Cubs scrambled to get out of the place. English interview.
35. Sporting News, August 13, 1932, p. 1.
36. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 14, 1933, p. 15; Chicago Tribune, August 3, 1932, p. 1.
37. Chicago Tribune, August 3, 1932, p. 1.
38. Ibid., August 4, 1932, p. 15.
39. Sporting News, August 11, 1932, p. 1; Chicago Tribune, August 3, 1932, p. 17; August 4, 1932, p. 15.
40. Chicago Tribune, August 12, 1932, p. 19; August 13, 1932, p. 19.
41. Ibid., August 14, 1932, pt. 2, p. 1.
42. Ibid., pt. 2, p. 2.
43. Ibid.; Sporting News, August 25, 1932, p. 5.
44. Sporting News, August 25, 1932, p. 5.
45. J. G. Taylor Spink, Judge Landis and Twenty-Five Years of Baseball (1947; reprint, St. Louis: Sporting News Publishing, 1974), p. 209; Sporting News, August 25, 1932, p. 4.
46. Sporting News, September 29, 1932, p. 1.
47. Chicago Tribune, October 15, 1932, p. 21.
48. Sporting News, October 20, 1932, p. 5.
49. Franklin C. Lane, “The Passing of Rogers Hornsby,” Baseball Magazine 25 (October 1932), p. 519.
10. Browns Blues
1. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 25, 1932, p. 20.
2. Ibid., p. 2.
3. Ibid., pp. 1–2; Sporting News, October 27, 1932, p. 1.
4. Sporting News, December 29, 1932, p. 3.
5. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 8, 1933, p. 4B.
6. Sporting News, April 27, 1933, p. 1.
7. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 26, 1933, p. 2B.
8. Sporting News, October 26, 1933, p. 6.
9. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 25, 1933, pp. 1–2.
10. Chicago Tribune, August 1, 1930, p. 17.
11. Sporting News, February 11, 1932, p. 7; August 3, 1933, p. 4; New York Times, September 18, 1953, p. 23.
12. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 27, 1933, p. 2B; July 28, 1933, spts., p. 1.
13. Sporting News, August 10, 1933, p. 2; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 16, 1933, p. 1B.
14. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 13, 1933, pt. 6, pp. 1–2.
15. Rogers Hornsby, My Kind of Baseball, ed. J. Roy Stockton (New York: David McKay, 1953), pp. 119–120; Bob Broeg, telephone conversation with author, August 5, 1992. Broeg, who would go on to a distinguished career in sports journalism in St. Louis, was a teenage spectator at Sportsman’s Park that afternoon.
16. The San Antonio Missions, the Browns’ Texas League farm, outdrew the parent club by about 20,000!
17. Ball’s death followed by seventeen days that of William H. Veeck, who succumbed to leukemia in Chicago.
18. Sporting News, May 29, 1957, p. 28.
19. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 8, 1934, p. 2B.
20. Ollie Bejma, interview by author, South Bend, Indiana, September 12, 1991.
21. New York Herald-Tribune, May 1, 1934, p. 22.
22. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 5, 1934, p. 3B; June 19, 1934, p. 2B; July 27, 1934, p. 26.
23. Several decades afterward, Charles L. Connor remembered that Hornsby was a client of his father, a well-known St. Louis bookmaker. One day at Sportsman’s Park, apparently out of concern for how it might look to Commissioner Landis, Hornsby ignored the elder Connor’s request that he come to the field-box railing and shake his son’s hand.
24. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 23, 1934, p. 16.
25. Of course Ruth didn’t retire, as he was expected to. Released by the Yankees, he signed in the off-season with the Boston Braves as player and “assistant manager.” He lasted for twenty-eight games in 1935, then gave up for good.
26. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 22, 1934, p. 1B.
27. Thus Barr got his start in umpiring pedagogy. Subsequently he would found his own school for umpires in Florida and go on to make it the most renowed institution of its kind.
28. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 7, 1935, p. 4B.
29. Ibid., May 1, 1935, p. 1B.
30. Sporting News, May 30, 1935, p. 2.
31. New York Herald-Tribune, July 19, 1935, p. 14; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 21, 1935, p. 2B.
32. New York Herald-Tribune, September 17, 1935, p. 15; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 5, 1935, p. 1B. Hornsby gave another and partly erroneous version of his run-in with Dick “Kauffman” in Rogers Hornsby and Bill Surface, My War with Baseball (New York: Coward-McCann, 1962), pp. 18–19.
33. New York Herald-Tribune, September 17, 1935, p. 15.
34. Sporting News, September 12, 1935, p. 3.
35. Quoted in ibid., October 31, 1935, p. 5.
36. The Crawfords defeated the Cubans in a six-game championship series, the Crawfords and Cubans having won the first and second halves, respectively, of the Negro National League season. Split-season play was a characteristic feature of Negro-league baseball.
37. Sporting News, November 7, 1935, p. 8. As good as the 1935 Pittsburgh Crawfords were, they may have been even better the next year, when Leroy “Satchel” Paige rejoined them. Early in the 1935 season, Paige had left the Crawfords to pitch for an integrated semipro team based at Fargo, North Dakota. That October, while the Crawfords battled the American All-Stars in Mexico City, Satchel Paige’s All-Stars played in California against Dizzy Dean’s All-Stars, who consisted mostly of past and present Pacific Coast Leaguers. Paige’s team included such Negro league standouts as Norman “Turkey” Stearns, George “Mule” Suttles, Raleigh “Biz” Mackey, and Chet Brewer.
38. Sporting News, November 7, 1935, p. 8.
39. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 11, 1935, p. 3E; January 30, 1936, p. 2B.
40. Minutes of proceedings, notation for January 31, 1936, Quinn vs. Hornsby, transcript in Clerk of the Court Records, Circuit Court, City of St. Louis, Civil Courts Building, St. Louis, Missouri.
41. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 18, 1936, p. 2B; January 7, 1936, p. 3B.
42. Ibid., March 11, 1936, spts. sec., p. 7; March 26, 1936, spts. sec., p. 1.
43. Ibid., May 11, 1936, p. 1B.
44. Ibid., June 10, 1936, p. 2B; Sporting News, July 9, 1936, p. 3.
45. Steve Smart, “Les Tietje,” National Pastime 13 (1993), p. 82.
46. Sporting News, May 7, 1936, p. 3.
47. Crowds for Browns home games tailed off badly over the last six weeks of the season, so that their final 1936 attendance still fell short of 100,000.
48. Sporting News, August 20, 1936, p. 1.
49. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 28, 1936, p. 2B.
50. Ibid., November 15, 1936, p. 3B.
51. Sporting News, October 15, 1936, p. 2.
52. The title “general manager” itself was new to baseball. Before the 1930s, people working under club presidents were usually called “business managers,” if such a position existed at all.
53. Sporting News, November 19, 1936, p. 1; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 15, 1936, pp. 1B, 3B.
54. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 11, 1936, p. 3B.
55. Ibid., January 18, 1937, p. 1B.
56. Shevlin quoted in Sporting News, March 18, 1937, p. 3; Hornsby in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 8, 1937, p. 2B.
57. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 8, 1937, p. 2B.
58. Ibid., March 17, 1937, p. 2B; March 24, 1937, p. 2B.
59. Ibid., March 29, 1937, p. 3B.
60. Ibid., April 13, 1937, p. 2B.
61. Sporting News, May 6, 1937, p. 1.
62. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 24, 1937, p. 3C; July 3, 1937, p. 2B; July 4, 1937, p. 1B.
63. Smart, “Les Tietje,” p. 82.
64. John P. Carmichael column, Chicago Daily News, undated [spring 1962], Hornsby Collection, Sporting News Archives, St. Louis, Missouri. According to what Carmichael wrote that Hornsby had told him, with the track again muddy a few days later, Quince King ran again, this time at 8–1 odds to win. Hornsby “bet $3000 across for myself and $300 for the boy,” and won an additional $24,000. Ibid. Hornsby himself gave a different account of his 1937 betting coup in My Kind of Baseball, pp. 116–118.
65. Hornsby and Surface, My War with Baseball, pp. 26–27; Hornsby, My Kind of Baseball, pp. 118–119.
66. Sporting News, July 29, 1937, p. 1; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 21, 1937, p. 1B; San Francisco Call-Tribune, June [?] 1951, clipping in Hornsby Collection, Sporting News Archives.
67. Sporting News, July 29, 1937, p. 1; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 22, 1937, p. 1B.
68. Sporting News, July 29, 1937, p. 2.
69. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 24, 1937, p. 2B.
70. Sporting News, July 29, 1937, p. 2.
11. Vagabond Years
1. Figuring ratios between money values past and present is always inexact, but a conservative estimate would put Hornsby’s earnings in the 1920s–30s at roughly $6–7 million in 1990s dollars.
2. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 29, 1937, p. 2.
3. For career purposes, of course, his batting records in part-time duty with the Browns in 1933–37 also figure in.
4. Hornsby wasn’t unfamiliar with airplane travel. Over one off-season, when he and Jeannette still had the farm outside St. Louis, he took a few flying lessons at neighboring Lambert Field.
5. Their usual wretched pitching doomed the Browns, even though they registered the second-highest team batting average in the American League (.285), with Sammy West batting .328, Joe Vosmik .325, Ethan Allen .316, Beau Bell .340 (with 117 runs batted in), and Harlond Clift .306 (with twenty-nine homers and 118 runs batted in).
6. Sporting News, October 31, 1951, p. 10.
7. Ibid., January 20, 1938, p. 8.
8. Ibid., March 24, 1938, p. 10.
9. Chicago Sun-Times, January 8, 1963, p. 68.
10. Sporting News, April 21, 1938, p. 8.
11. Ibid., May 5, 1938, p. 7.
12. The Texas League and Southern Association would be classified AA in the post–World War II period.
13. Sporting News, July 21, 1938, p. 8.
14. Under Cuyler, the Lookouts would go on to win the 1939 Southern Association pennant.
15. Unidentified clipping in Rogers Hornsby Collection, Sporting News Archives, St. Louis, Missouri.
16. Rogers Hornsby, as told to Dick Farrington, “‘Me an Underminer? Not on Your Life,’ Says Hornsby,” Sporting News, December 29, 1938, p. 3.
17. Ibid., January 5, 1939, p. 5; February 23, 1939, p. 6; March 10, 1939, p. 9.
18. Ibid., August 1, 1940, p. 1.
19. Ibid., June 26, 1941, p. 3. Under Homer Peel, Oklahoma City finished sixth in 1941, with a record of 69–85.
20. Ibid., November 27, 1941, p. 6.
21. Ibid., December 11, 1941, p. 12.
22. Ibid., January 8, 1942, p. 1.
23. Ibid., January 29, 1942, p. 2; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 20, 1942, p. 3B.
24. Sporting News, January 29, 1942, p. 2.
25. Zeke Handler letter [June 1963], Rogers Hornsby Collection, Sporting News Archives.
26. Sporting News, July 23, 1942, p. 9.
27. Ibid., March 4, 1943, p. 10.
28. Sporting News, February 3, 1944, p. 6; Rochester Democrat-Chronicle, January 6, 1963, p. 2C.
29. Rogers Hornsby and Bill Surface, My War with Baseball (New York: Coward-McCann, 1962), p. 52.
30. Sporting News, May 25, 1944, p. 6.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid., August 30, 1945, p. 9.
33. Cincinnati Enquirer, September 9, 1953, p. 1.
34. Sporting News, February 38, 1946, p. 2.
35. The Branch Rickey Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., contain an announcment of commencement exercises at Denison High School on June 4, 1937, sent to Rickey by Rogers Hornsby Jr. No such item can be found in the Hornsby collections at either the National Baseball Library, Cooperstown, New York, or the Sporting News Archives, St. Louis, Missouri.
36. Sporting News, August 20, 1952, p. 10.
37. Quoted in Rogers Hornsby, My Kind of Baseball, ed. J. Roy Stockton (New York: David McKay, 1953), p. 12.
38. Sporting News, July 23, 1947, p. 7.
39. Ibid., November 26, 1947, p. 15; Cleveland News, undated McAuley column [1952], Hornsby Collection, Sporting News Archives.
40. Sporting News, November 26, 1947, p. 15.
41. See, for example, ibid., November 12, 1947, p. 12.
42. Bill McKechnie, the fifth pennant-winning St. Louis manager (1928), was absent.
43. Sporting News, February 23, 1949, p. 8.
44. Atlanta Constitution, December 24, 1949, p. 14.
45. Ann Hornsby Rice, interview by author, McLean, Virginia, March 24, 1993.
12. Making It Back
1. Following World War II, the governing National Association designated the top three minor leagues (International and Pacific Coast Leagues and American Association) as Class AAA and the Texas League and Southern Association as Class AA.
2. Sporting News, February 15, 1950, p. 1.
3. Ibid., March 31, 1950, p. 33.
4. Keith Thomas, interview by author, Rocky Mount, North Carolina, May 26, 1992.
5. Black players had already appeared with big-league teams in exhibition games in several Texas League cities. In Beaumont, for example, Robinson drew an overflow crowd with the Dodgers in March 1949, and Sam Jethroe appeared with the Boston Braves a year later. But it would be 1952 before pitcher-outfielder Dave Hoskins, assigned to Dallas by the Cleveland Indians, broke the color line in a regular-season Texas League game.
6. Elvin Tappe, interview by author, Quincy, Illinois, June 18, 1992.
7. Tappe interview; Bob Marquis, interview by author, Beaumont, Texas, December 13, 1992.
8. Dallas Morning News, March 14, 1950, p. 27; Sporting News, May 17, 1950, p. 30.
9. Rogers Hornsby, My Kind of Baseball, ed. J. Roy Stockton (New York: David McKay, 1953), p. 25; Beaumont Enterprise, June 19, 1952, p. 24.
10. One of Branch Rickey’s major additions to the extensive Brooklyn farm system he built during the mid- and late-1940s was Fort Worth, through which moved a steady stream of the Dodgers’ prime prospects.
11. Something I personally glimpsed several times, inasmuch as the tavern was next door to the barber shop where my father and I got our haircuts. Bob Marquis and Clarence Beers, two of Hornsby’s players in 1950, affirm that he bet regularly that summer. Marquis interview; Clarence Beers, interview by author, Houston, Texas, December 11, 1992.
12. Thomas interview.
13. Ibid.; Sporting News, August 23, 1950, p. 33; St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August 14, 1950, p. 32.
14. One of my most vivid memories from that summer is of a night in Beaumont when the Roughnecks gave Grimm’s pitchers a particularly severe battering. As Grimm trudged repeatedly from the third-base visitors’ dugout to the mound and back, Hornsby, occupying the third-base coaching box, would turn toward left field and literally shake with laughter.
15. Beers interview.
16. Sporting News, August 23, 1950, p. 33.
17. Beaumont Enterprise, June 19, 1952, p. 16.
18. Sporting News, August 20, 1952, p. 10; Jack Brickhouse, interview by author, Peoria, Illinois, April 27, 1990.
19. Hornsby succeeded fellow Texan Paul Richards, who, despite Seattle’s sixth-place finish in 1950, had moved up to manage the Chicago White Sox.
20. For the last three weeks of the Puerto Rican winter season, Ponce played under the direction of Benny Huffman, a Ray Doan baseball school graduate who’d backed up Rollie Hemsley on the 1937 St. Louis Browns and, as he knocked around the minor leagues in the following years, maintained contact with his onetime manager.
21. While McDougald made the Yankees roster that spring, Courtney, Marquis, and Nevel were all assigned to Kansas City, New York’s American Association farm club.
22. Ibid., May 16, 1951, p. 21.
23. From 1946 through 1950, Oklahoma City was a Cleveland Indians farm club.
24. Sporting News, January 19, 1963, p. 34.
25. Sporting News, May 16, 1951, p. 30; Seattle Times, June 15, 1952, p. 28.
26. Harold Brown, interview by author, Greensboro, North Carolina, May 27, 1992.
27. Brown did remember, though, that a woman visited him in Seattle that season. He didn’t know who she was; undoubtedly it was Bernadette Harris.
28. Sporting News, June 13, 1951, p. 27.
29. Undated Cleveland News column by Ed McAuley [April 1952], in Rogers Hornsby Collection, Sporting News Archives, St. Louis, Missouri.
30. Sporting News, September 12, 1951, p. 27.
31. Ibid., September 19, 1951, p. 21.
32. San Francisco Examiner, September 29, 1951, p. 28.
33. Hornsby, My Kind of Baseball, p. 168.
13. “As Changeless as Gibraltar”
1. Bill Veeck and Ed Linn, Veeck—as in Wreck (New York: Putnam’s, 1962), p. 229.
2. Sporting News, October 17, 1951, p. 5; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 30, 1951, p. 1C.
3. Sporting News, October 17, 1951, p. 14.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., October 17, 1951, p. 14; December 26, 1951, p. 9.
6. Ibid., March 3, 1952, p. 15.
7. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 22, 1952, p.1C; February 24, 1952, p. 2C.
8. Ibid., February 28, 1952, p. 1C; March 29, 1952, p. 4B. Late in February 1952, I accompanied my father to St. Louis for the annual convention of the American Association of School Administrators, which met in conjunction with the National Education Association. One afternoon we took a streetcar out to cold and dreary Sportsman’s Park. Wandering unhindered inside the ballpark (as one could do in that less security-conscious time), we encountered tall, husky, bespectacled Bill DeWitt, who greeted us with utmost cordiality and showed particular interest in our opinions of Hornsby, whom we’d watched at Beaumont two years earlier. DeWitt never mentioned his own earlier experiences with Hornsby in St. Louis, either with the Cardinals as Branch Rickey’s assistant or with the Browns as number-two man to Donald Barnes.
9. Milton Richman column, undated [June 1952], Rogers Hornsby Collection, Sporting News Archives, St. Louis, Missouri.
10. Ned Garver, interview by author, Ney, Ohio, September 11, 1991.
11. Richman column [June 1952]. As was the case everywhere else in Texas, Corpus Christi was still a wholly segregated town (which in that particular locale affected not only black-white relations but, selectively, Anglo-Hispanic contacts). In Corpus Christi and other Texas cities where the Browns played, Paige stayed at all-black hotels or rooming houses in areas where, typically, white cabdrivers were reluctant to venture. (It might be noted, though, that if anybody knew how to deal with such situations, it should have been Paige, who pitched just about everywhere in the United States and encountered American racial mores in all their variants.)
12. Among those who occupied less than half the capacity of Beaumont’s Stuart Stadium on the afternoon of Wednesday, April 2, 1952, were my mother, father, and myself.
13. Rogers Hornsby, My Kind of Baseball, ed. J. Roy Stockton (New York: David McKay, 1953), p. 171.
14. Bob Broeg, interview by author, St. Louis, Missouri, June 17, 1992; Sporting News, April 30, 1952, p. 1; June 18, 1952, p. 10.
15. Sporting News, June 4, 1952, p. 13.
16. Hugh Trader Jr., column in Baltimore News-Post, April 10, 1954, in Hornsby Collection, Sporting News Archives.
17. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 10, 1952, p. 1.
18. Sporting News, June 18, 1952, pp. 1, 3.
19. Ibid., June 25, 1952, p. 10.
20. Ibid., p. 3; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 11, 1952, p. 3C; Garver interview.
21. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 11, 1952, p. 3C.
22. Ibid., p. 1.
23. Ibid., pp. 1, 3.
24. Ibid., June 18, 1952, p. 12.
25. Ty Cobb, “They Don’t Play Baseball Anymore,” Life 32 (March 17, 1952), p. 147; Charles C. Alexander, Ty Cobb (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 224–225.
26. Rogers Hornsby and Tim Cohane, “It’s Still Baseball, Ty Cobb!” Look 16 (June 12, 1952), pp. 55–56ff. On the page immediate following Hornsby’s piece in the June 12, 1952, issue of Look was a suddenly irrelevant picture story on Hornsby and his players, entitled “Under Hornsby and Veeck the Browns Have Ideas.” Cobb’s telegram, to Don Donaghey, June 13, 1952, is in the Rogers Hornsby Collection, National Baseball Library, Cooperstown, New York.
27. Sporting News, June 18, 1952, p. 6; Milton Richman column, Chicago Daily News, undated, in Hornsby Collection, Sporting News Archives.
28. Sporting News, August 6, 1952, p. 1.
29. Ibid., p. 10.
30. Quoted in Hornsby, My Kind of Baseball, pp. 183–84. Paul elaborated on his estimate of Hornsby in “Who Says Hornsby’s Too Tough?” Sport 8 (July 1953), pp. 20–21f.
31. Jim Greengrass, telephone conversation with author, July 17, 1992.
32. Cincinnati Enquirer, July 29, 1952, p. 1; August 6, 1952, p. 13.
33. Greengrass conversation.
34. Meanwhile the St. Louis Browns more than doubled their home attendance, played somewhat poorer ball under Marty Marion than under Hornsby, and finished in seventh place with a 64–90 record. Satchel Paige won twelve games and saved ten others, while Clint Courtney batted .286 and gained American League Rookie of the Year honors. By season’s end, though, Jim Rivera and Leo Thomas were with the White Sox, George Schmees was with Boston, and Ned Garver was with Detroit, where he now complained that Bill Veeck had insisted he pitch with a sore arm.
35. Sporting News, January 14, 1953, p. 14.
36. Hornsby, My Kind of Baseball, pp. 172, 185.
37. Sporting News, March 11, 1953, p. 5; Cincinnati Enquirer, March 1, 1953, p. 29.
38. Cincinnati Enquirer, March 18, 1953, p. 16.
39. One of several concessions major-league players won from club owners in the immediate post–World War II years was the right to have such a player representative on each team, elected by team members.
40. Cincinnati Enquirer, May 4, 1953, p. 24.
41. Ibid., May 6, 1953, p. 34.
42. Earl Lawson, Cincinnati Seasons: My 34 Years with the Reds (South Bend, Ind.: Diamond Communications, 1987), p. 97.
43. Unidentified clipping [May 2, 1953], in Hornsby Collection, Sporting News Archives.
44. Marquis interview; Greengrass conversation; Cincinnati Enquirer, June 12, 1953, p. 28; Lawson, Cincinnati Seasons, pp. 101–102. Although Lawson’s book is useful for particular aspects of the 1953 season, its venomously anti-Hornsby bias—and occasional factual mistakes—have caused me to use it with extreme caution.
45. Lawson, Cincinnati Seasons, p. 102; New York Times, June 12, 1953, p. 20; Cincinnati Enquirer, June 12, 1953, p. 28.
46. Lawson, Cincinnati Seasons, p. 101. According to Lawson, Hatton went to Gabe Paul to complain about Hornsby’s practice of urinating in the clubhouse shower. Like most anecdotes, that one has enlarged in the retelling, so that by the time they published The Cincinnati Game in 1988, Lonnie Wheeler and John Baskin’s version had become: “one day … the losing [Reds] pitcher found himself showering beside his crusty manager. Busy lathering his head, Hornsby was casually urinating on the leg of the pitcher, who suddenly leapt from the shower, dressed, and registered a complaint with general manager Gabe Paul” (Wilmington, Ohio: Orange Frazer Press, p. 124).
Given reports by various men who played for Hornsby on various teams (including the Reds) that he never showered at the ballpark, the urination story—in whatever form it’s told—seems highly improbable.
47. Sporting News, July 22, 1953, p. 8; Lawson, Cincinnati Seasons, p. 100.
48. Lawson, Cincinnati Seasons, p. 99.
49. Greengrass conversation.
50. Cincinnati Enquirer, August 10, 1953, p. 19; August 29, 1953, p. 13; Sporting News, August 26, 1953, p. 15.
51. Greengrass conversation.
52. Sporting News, September 16, 1953, p. 4.
53. Cincinnati Enquirer, September 8, 1953, p. 1.
54. Ibid., September 8, 1953, p. 1; September 9, 1953, p. 1; Sporting News, September 16, 1953, p. 2.
55. Cincinnati Enquirer, September 9, 1953, p. 1; Chicago Tribune, September 9, 1953, p. 1.
56. Cincinnati Enquirer, September 9, 1953, p. 1.
57. Sacramento Bee, undated clipping [1991], in Hornsby Collection, Sporting News Archives.
58. Cincinnati Enquirer, September 18, 1953, p. 33; Sporting News, September 23, 1953, p. 25.
59. Sporting News, September 23, 1953, p. 4; Cincinnati Enquirer, September 18, 1953, p. 33.
60. Cincinnati Enquirer, September 18, 1953, p. 33; Sporting News, September 23, 1953, pp. 12, 25.
61. Sporting News, January 27, 1954, p. 14. Jim Greengrass agreed that Hornsby wasn’t good with pitchers, didn’t really understand their uniqueness as ballplayers, and probably didn’t like pitchers as a breed. Greengrass conversation.
62. Cincinnati Enquirer, September 19, 1953, p. 17; September 26, 1953, p. 17; Sporting News, September 30, 1953, p. 25.
14. “I Belong in Baseball”
1. Copy of contract in Rogers Hornsby Collection, National Baseball Library, Cooperstown, New York.
2. Sporting News, September 21, 1955, p. 4.
3. Ibid., June 20, 1956, p. 15; July 4, 1956, p. 16.
4. Dorothy Stull, “Conversation Piece: Rogers Hornsby,” Sports Illustrated 6 (September 10, 1956), p. 32.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., p. 64.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Elvin Tappe, interview by author, Quincy, Illinois, June 18, 1992.
10. Stephen R. Lowe, The Kid on the Sandlot: Congress and Professional Sports, 1910–1992 (Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1995), p. 31.
11. Emmanuel Celler to Rogers Hornsby, August 14, 1957, Hornsby Collection, National Baseball Library.
12. Rogers Hornsby to Hon. Emanuel [sic] Celler, August 9, 1957, ibid.
13. Ibid. The text of Hornsby’s letter to Representative Celler may also be found in House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Organized Professional Team Sports: Hearings, 85th Cong., 1st sess. (1957), p. 3148.
14. Red Smith column in New York Herald-Tribune, Hornsby Collection, Sporting News Archives St. Louis, Missouri.
15. Jack Ryan piece for Sporting News [unpublished], February 1956, typescript in Rogers Hornsby Collection, Sporting News Archives, St. Louis, Missouri.
16. Sporting News, January 29, 1958, p. 19.
17. Tappe interview; Sporting News, March 12, 1958, p. 6.
18. Sporting News, April 23, 1958, p. 5.
19. The rest of the BBWAA all-time team consisted of Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, and Babe Ruth as outfielders; Harold “Pie” Traynor, Honus Wagner, and Lou Gehrig in the infield; Bill Dickey as catcher; Walter Johnson, Lefty Grove, Christy Mathewson, and Carl Hubbell as pitchers; and John McGraw as manager.
20. Sporting News, August 27, 1958, p. 4.
21. Ibid., September 3, 1958, p. 2.
22. Ibid., March 25, 1959, p. 15.
23. Ibid., August 5, 1959, p. 2.
24. Rogers Hornsby to Sid C. Keener, undated [1962], Hornsby Collection, National Baseball Library.
25. Brad H. Hornsby, interview by author, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, June 23, 1993, and telephone conversation, March 18, 1994.
26. Bill Surface, “The Last Days of Rogers Hornsby,” Saturday Evening Post 236 (June 15, 1963), p. 72.
27. Rogers Hornsby and Bill Surface, “You’ve Got to Cheat to Win in Baseball,” True 14 (August 1961), pp. 59–60ff.
28. Surface, “Last Days of Rogers Hornsby,” p. 76.
29. Ibid., p. 76.
30. The National League’s decision to expand to a ten-club league for 1962, like that of the American League for 1961, resulted directly from the threat posed by Branch Rickey’s Continental League project to move into choice territories such as New York, Houston, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis–St. Paul. Thus, unintentionally and indirectly, Rickey again had a role in Hornsby’s reemployment.
31. Rogers Hornsby to Sid C. Keener [undated], Hornsby Collection, National Baseball Library.
32. Sporting News, January 31, 1962, p. 23; February 28, 1962, p. 24.
33. Robert Lipsyte, “Rajah’s Return,” New York Times Magazine, April 29, 1962, p. 33; Lipsyte column, New York Times, June 16, 1969, p. 64.
34. New York Times, June 16, 1969, p. 64. Eastern Star is the women’s auxiliary of the Masonic Order. By “my first wife,” it’s not entirely clear whether Hornsby meant Sarah Martin Hornsby or Jeannette Pennington Hornsby, although from his context of his remarks it would appear he was actually talking about his second wife, Jeannette.
35. Lipsyte, “Rajah’s Return,” pp. 32, 36.
36. Rogers Hornsby and Bill Surface, My War with Baseball (New York: Coward-McCann, 1962), p. 86. Hornsby’s views on sluggers versus hitters were also aired in Rogers Hornsby and Bill Surface, “What Home-Run Fever Is Doing to Baseball,” This Week Magazine, March 25, 1962, pp. 12ff.
37. Sporting News, April 4, 1962, p. 11.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid.
40. Surface, “Last Days of Rogers Hornsby,” p. 76. That was the last year in a four-year stretch in which, to fatten the players’ pension fund, two All-Star Games were played each summer.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid. An “entry” is a two-horse betting combination.
43. Frederick Stenn, M.D., to Marjorie Hornsby, January 14, 1963, Hornsby Collection, National Baseball Library.
44. Sporting News, January 19, 1963, p. 10; Red Smith undated New York Herald-Tribune column, Hornsby Collection, Sporting News Archives.
45. Telegrams, Mrs. Richard J. Rice, George M. Weiss, and Casey Stengel to Mrs. Rogers Hornsby, January 5, January 7, 1963, Hornsby Collection, National Baseball Library.
46. New York Times, January 7, 1963, p. 8.
47. Associated Press release, January 9, 1963, Hornsby Collection, Sporting News Archives.
48. Austin American [January 9, 1963], clipping in Hornsby Family Collection, Austin History Center, Austin, Texas.
Epilogue: “What Else Is There?”
1. Hy Zimmerman column in Seattle Post-Intelligencer [undated], clipping in Rogers Hornsby Collection, Sporting News Archives, St. Louis, Missouri.
2. Bill Surface, “The Last Days of Rogers Hornsby,” Saturday Evening Post 506 (June 15, 1963), pp. 72ff.
3. Al Stump, “Ty Cobb’s Wild Ten-Month Fight to Live,” True 14 (December 1961), pp. 38–41ff; reprinted in Charles Einstein, ed., The Baseball Reader (New York: Lippincott and Crowell, 1980), pp. 282–300.
4. Zeke Handler to Sporting News [unpublished], June 1963, Rogers Hornsby Collection, Sporting News Archives, St. Louis, Missouri.
5. Boston Record-American, January 8, 1963, p. 17.
6. Jim Orford, Excessive Appetites: A Psychological View of Addictions (New York: Wiley, 1985), pp. 37, 43, 321; Tomas Martinez, The Gambling Scene: Why People Gamble (Springfield, Ill.: C. C. Thomas, 1983), p. 69. One of the more influential examples of the psychoanalytical school is Edmund Bergler, The Psychology of Gambling (1957; reprint, New York: International University Press, 1970).
7. Martinez, Gambling Scene, p. 64 (italics in original); Cecil Peck, “Risk-Taking and Compulsive Gambling,” American Psychologist 41 (April 1986), pp. 461–465.
8. Charlotte Olmsted, Heads I Win; Tails You Lose (New York: Macmillan, 1962), p. 202.
9. Sporting News, February 9, 1928, p. 4.
10. Bill Veeck and Ed Linn, Veeck—as in Wreck (New York: Putnam’s, 1962), p. 240.
11. Robert Lipsyte, “Rajah’s Return,” New York Times Magazine, April 29, 1962, p. 36; Sporting News, June 21, 1951, p. 14; Rogers Hornsby and Bill Surface, My War with Baseball (New York: Coward-McCann, 1962), p. 207. Italics in original.
12. Sporting News, February 22, 1969, p. 24.
13. Ibid., January 19, 1963, p. 12.