Hunting a Detroit Tiger (14 page)

One of the features that I liked about the Fraternity was that it included minor-league baseball in its membership and goals. “A minor leaguer is just as important to us as the biggest star,” said Fultz. It was on behalf of minor leaguers—who could be suspended without pay if they became injured—that Fultz threatened a major-league strike for 1917. He neglected to get the support of the players, though, and the Fraternity collapsed before the season’s opening day.

There were a couple points of interest about the Fraternity. One was that Ty Cobb had been one of its four vice presidents. Another was something that I didn’t find: any mention of Emmett Siever.

In a thorough check of the records, I found that Siever had played outfield for Detroit in three leagues: with the Detroit Wolverines back when Detroit was in the National League, with the Western League Detroit Creams in 1894, and with the new Detroit Tigers of 1901. But other than his having played for the Players League in 1890, I could find no documentation of his involvement with efforts to form a players’ union. Not until last summer.

Emmett Siever had burst onto the labor front from nowhere. But when he did launch his drive for a players’ union last year, he was uncompromising in his goals. He intended to openly challenge the reserve clause and stop teams from buying and selling players like commodities.

What I couldn’t find the answer to was
why
he’d become so interested and so active.

After leaving the
Sporting News
office, I went to the public library to read more broadly on labor movements and the recent conflicts between labor, management, and government.

To my disappointment, there was little material available on the subject. The library wasn’t permitted to carry “radical” literature, so there was almost nothing promoting the labor point of view. Information on union busting efforts was equally sparse because industrialists and government agencies were so secretive about their antilabor activities.

An attractive reference librarian, who appeared to share my frustration at the lack of published material, verbally shared with me what she knew about the IWW, the Justice Department, and the Palmer raids. She didn’t say so explicitly, but I gathered from the way she described the opposing sides that her sympathies were with the unions.

I listened closely, absorbed most of what she said, and came away with at least a tentative grasp of the issues. But as hard as I tried, I was unable to decide for certain where my own sympathies lay.

I
’d heard once that a pack of lions is called a “pride.” I didn’t know if that term also applied to a group of tigers, but if so, it was a misnomer for the humiliated Tigers team that slunk into Detroit’s Michigan Central Depot early Friday morning with our tails between our legs.

Hughie Jennings’s fearsome lineup of Ty Cobb, Harry Heilmann, and Bobby Veach had been throttled by the St. Louis pitching staff of Urban Shocker, Dixie Davis, and Carl Weilman. In three games against the lowly Browns, the Detroit batting order had managed to put across a grand total of one run. Not only had we extended the winless streak to eleven games, we had now been shut out for eighteen straight innings. The St. Louis sportswriters crowed about their club’s successful “Tiger Hunt” in Sportsman’s Park in language sure to antagonize both Detroit fans and animal lovers. One of them wrote that the Browns “tamed the toothless felines as easily as drowning a litter of kittens.”

Team morale, low since spring training, had entirely evaporated, and internal strife was rampant. Harry Heilmann had developed an inexplicable hatred for amiable Bobby Veach. Donie Bush and Ty Cobb had renewed their fierce ten-year-old feud. Hughie Jennings was no longer speaking to any of his coaches and only a few of his players. Rumors were flying that Jennings would be fired in a matter of days.

The dugout battles left the players too drained to perform properly on the field. My own fight in the Sportsman’s Park tunnel was unusual in that it yielded some positive results: neither Dutch Leonard nor Chick Fogarty bothered me for the rest of the series. It also left Leonard looking like he had a snootful for a couple of days and Fogarty sounding like he had a speech impediment.

Although I didn’t make an appearance in a game—not even as a coach—I did get in a lot of hitting, thanks to Lou Vedder. The two of us spent our free hours working out at the park. He pitched me enough batting practice that I started to develop a fluid swing from the left side of the plate. Then I caught for him while he tried to come up with another pitch to replace the forbidden spitter. I told him that a fastball, curve, and change-up were all a pitcher needed if he had control, but Vedder got it into his head that he was going to master the knuckleball. He had no more success with that than the Detroit batters had with the St. Louis pitching staff.

Now it was back to our home turf. While my teammates trudged out of the train station, I stopped at a newsstand to see what kind of reception we could expect from the fans—if we still had any fans.

I was happy to see from the headlines that the Tigers’ feat in going the entire month of April without a win wasn’t the biggest news. Attorney General Mitchell Palmer had managed to capture most of the front pages with headlines like
Terror Reign by Radicals
,
Says Palmer
and
Nationwide Uprising on Saturday
. Palmer claimed that that Bolsheviks were planning a May Day revolution: bombings, assassinations, and general strikes. State militias were being called up in response to Palmer’s warning, and federal troops were being put on alert. There were other headlines, much smaller, that suggested the scare was of Palmer’s own invention, intended to revitalize his campaign for the presidency. The country would find out soon enough whether Palmer was right. Tomorrow was May first.

Whether or not there would be a revolution—which I doubted—I was looking forward to May. It had to mark an improvement over April, a month in which I’d been credited with the murder of a popular ex-ballplayer, had incurred the wrath of owners, teammates, labor organizers, and union busters, and had again lost Margie Turner.

As I left the station, I remembered that tomorrow would also mark one week since I’d met with Leo Hyman and Whitey Boggs. One week gone, with no progress on finding Emmett Siever’s killer. Three weeks remained until I’d have to show Hyman some results. Of course, if that shotgun blast through my window had been fired by someone other than Wobblies, trying to meet Hyman’s deadline still wouldn’t protect me from another attack. I thought of Karl Landfors’s warning that the real murderer might try to stop me from exposing him.

Then I thought again of the St. Louis newspapers with their “Tiger Hunt” headlines. The only Tiger really being hunted was me.

At my apartment, I found Landfors gone and the icebox empty. I muttered a wish that he would marry Constance Siever and move in with her.

I also noticed that my landlady had replaced the glass in the parlor window. Just when I was thinking that a good thick piece of wood might be the best thing to have over it. What hung over the window instead was my favorite bath towel, which Landfors must have tacked up as a curtain. I renewed my wish about him and Miss Siever in language that would not have made for a polite wedding toast.

Spring had come to Detroit while we were out of town, so after tossing my suitcase on the sofa I opened the window to let in some fresh air. Then I dug under my bed for a dented old biscuit tin that I’d stashed there. I had carried the tin with me when I’d first left home at age fifteen to try and make my way as a ballplayer. Its purpose was to store my “important stuff.” The lid had airholes punched in it, and scratched above the holes was the warning:
Beware of Snake.
The tin had never contained a snake, but I thought the warning would discourage anyone from exploring its contents. At first, the container had held nothing more than a few tobacco cards of my favorite big-league players, a photograph of my late aunt, and the old-fashioned fingerless glove my uncle wore when he and I used to play catch—it was his going-away present to me. In the years since, I still hadn’t acquired enough additional “important stuff” to need a larger storage box.

I pried off the scarred lid. At the top of the pile inside were my discharge papers from the army and my playing contract for the current season. It was the contract I was interested in.

Unfolding the four-page legal-sized document, I read it word for word. I didn’t want to go by John Montgomery Ward’s or Emmett Siever’s opinions of the terms; I wanted to understand them for myself.

The reserve clause, the single sentence that had caused so much strife over the years, appeared in Clause 11:

In his speech at Fraternity Hall, Emmett Siever had said imagine if auto manufacturers had such a rule: a worker on the Ford assembly line could be bound to Ford “in perpetuity.” The employee could not seek better wages or conditions at Dodge or General Motors; Ford could simply keep renewing its contract with the worker under terms and salary to be determined solely by Henry Ford. Or, Ford could elect to sell or trade the employee to another company without the worker having any say in the transaction.

The way Siever described the reserve clause, it certainly did not sound fair. Nor could I find any fairness in the wording of the clause in my contract. As far as being sold or traded, the only obligation the Detroit Tigers had was to inform me of the name of my new club and the terms of the transfer.

It was clear from reading the contract that the club had all the options; I had none. Clause 6 of the contract even specified that I had to pay for my own shoes and give the club a $30 deposit for my uniform. On principle, I agreed that players were treated unfairly, and in some ways as “chattels,” to use John Ward’s word.

But then there was Clause 1:

Three thousand dollars. More than double what a typical factory worker earned in a year, and I got it for only six months of playing baseball. True, it was a little less than I’d made a couple of years ago, but all salaries had taken a dip after the shortened seasons of 1918 and 1919. What it came down to for me was that I was being well compensated for doing what I loved. Quite simply, I was satisfied.

I put the contract back in the biscuit tin and the tin under my bed. Since we had no game scheduled for Navin Field, and I’d gotten little sleep on the train from St. Louis, I then curled up in the bed for a short nap.

After two hours of sound sleep, I decided to put the day to better use than merely lazing around the apartment. I took a quick bath, then donned a blue seersucker suit, a soft-collar white shirt, and one of the brightly patterned neckties that Landfors had refused to wear.

I next fortified myself at Kelsey’s Cafe, downing two cups of coffee and a three-egg breakfast with a side order of flapjacks at an hour when everyone else was eating lunch. While I ate, I chewed over what my next step should be in probing Emmett Siever’s death.

I resented having to do anything at all. If the police had done their jobs, it wouldn’t be up to me. It
shouldn’t
be up to me. The most I could hope for from them, though, was that Detective McGuire might reopen the investigation—
if
I could bring him hard evidence. If I couldn’t make Leo Hyman’s deadline and find the killer in three weeks, perhaps I could at least get enough evidence for McGuire to take over for me. Whether that would suffice to keep the Wobblies from coming after me again, I somewhat doubted.

As far as what to do next, it seemed to me that learning more about the victim was the way to go. So far, what little information I had about Emmett Siever had come primarily from his allies—Hyman, Boggs, Landfors, and Connie. I needed another perspective—from one of his enemies. As much as I would have preferred to avoid him, I decided that Hub Donner was the man for me to see.

I tipped the waitress a nickel for a fifteen-cent meal, walked in the fresh spring air to Woodward Avenue, and caught a northbound streetcar.

Like its southeast neighbor Hamtramck, Highland Park was completely contained within the Detroit city boundary. As the streetcar entered Henry Ford’s company town, it first passed through the neighborhood where his workers lived. Their modest homes all appeared well maintained, but totally lacking in charm. A sterile quality permeated the area, as if the inhabitants were all living in conformity with someone else’s design.

Proceeding up Woodward, the first sign of the auto plant was a
FORD
banner stretched between a couple of towering smokestacks. Minutes later, the factory was visible, sprawling over a vast area. I’d heard the home of the first assembly line called the “Crystal Palace.” To me, it looked like an enormous flat-roofed greenhouse. The walls consisted mainly of windows, acres of glass that shimmered in the afternoon sunlight. As the trolley drew closer, the buzz and rumble of conveyor belts and machinery within the plant became audible.

I got off at Manchester and went to the factory’s nearest entrance; it turned out to be Ford’s employment office, and I was brusquely told that there were no jobs available. I then found the main gate, where I told a guard that I wanted to see Hub Donner of the Service Department. After the guard placed a call to Donner, a second guard escorted me into the office area. The floors vibrated softly from the activities in the plant, and a steady hum filled the air.

Although there was no sign identifying it as such, I knew when we’d reached the Service Department. The area gave the impression of a military headquarters. Smartly dressed, uniformed guards strode around purposefully; they looked alert and businesslike, nothing like what I’d seen so far of the Detroit Police Department. Mixed among them were a few large, disreputable-looking men wearing bad suits and bow ties. In comparison to these bruisers, the uniformed guards looked like Girl Scouts.