Murder at Fenway Park (6 page)

A
fter thoroughly washing my hands to avoid leaving even the faintest smudges, I struggled to attach a new stiff collar to a brilliant white shirt. I almost cut off the blood supply to my head in the process, but I succeeded in getting the collar on, as well as a crimson silk necktie. I was wearing a good part of my first Red Sox paycheck, and looked almost dapper. Even more so when I peeled off the shreds of tissue paper that were stuck to my face. I had only four hairs worth shaving, but managed to inflict five cuts attempting to remove them.

Everything I put on was new: from my socks and the garters that held them up to the blue-striped seersucker suit that had cost me $40. There was something about wearing new clothes that made me feel a new man; it gave me hope of getting off to a fresh start. I topped off the outfit by placing a straw boater over my slicked-back hair, and looking in the mirror, decided never mind “almost,” I
did
look dapper.

This was the first week of May, back in Boston after the Philadelphia series.

I had started the final game against the Athletics, but since the locker room talk about the murdered Detroit player, and with the silent mystery of the dead man at Fenway Park continually occupying my thoughts, I found myself unable to focus on baseball. After one throwing error and two fielding errors in the first three innings, Jake Stahl demoted me to the bench.

The only positive thing that happened before leaving Philadelphia was that another Red Sox player finally spoke to me, making me feel a little more like part of the team. Bucky O’Brien, a native Bostonian, suggested a rooming house in Back Bay that he said was clean and cheap. Seeing that his evaluation of the place was accurate, I moved into the house when we returned. It turned out to be owned by Bucky’s aunt.

Since our first full day back in Boston was a Sunday, I was free to find an amusement that would divert my mind from thoughts of murder.

I didn’t share the usual ball player passions for liquor, tobacco, or gambling, but I did have one weakness, and I was going to Scollay Square to indulge it.

The late-afternoon sun was still warm when I stepped out of the rooming house. I walked slowly to prevent working up any sweat that might spoil my clean crisp appearance. I strolled casually toward my destination, taking in the sights along Beacon Street.

Turning into Tremont Row, I spotted the building I was seeking. As approached it, I glanced about to see if there was anyone around who might recognize me. I did not want to be seen going into this place.

My heart raced, and with a deep breath I stepped inside the door.

My excitement waned considerably when I got a look at the chunky, graying woman who greeted me. Though disappointed, I decided to carry through with my plans anyway, and walked up to her.

“One please,” I said, sliding a dime through the ticket window.

She handed me a paper stub back, and said with a smile, “Go right in.”

I removed my hat, and found an empty seat in the darkened theater. A Mack Sennett comedy flickered on the screen in front of me.

About five years before, I had started going to the moving pictures. As a gypsy ball player, I was always finding myself with time to kill in unfamiliar towns. Almost every burg, no matter how tiny or remote, had a tavern, a church, and a nickelodeon. Since I wasn’t good at drinking, and figured I wasn’t bad enough to need churches, I took to the flickers. They were supposed to be bad for the hitting eye, though, so to avoid getting in trouble with my managers, I kept my vice a secret.

It was through my interest in moving pictures that I had met Miss Peggy Shaw. She was actually
Mrs.
Peggy Shaw, but I preferred not to be a stickler about that.

During a Saturday rainout last year, I had come to this theater for the first time to see the Mary Pickford picture that was advertised. At the ticket booth was a shapely young lady with light honey hair and sparkling green eyes. She looked like a Gibson Girl who just stepped out of the pages of
Collier’s.
I was instantly smitten.

As the movies began that day, the visual delight from the ticket window sat down at the piano. She played beautifully, choosing music that complimented each scene perfectly, and performing as if she were in a concert hall instead of a nickelodeon. Mary Pickford got barely a glance from me as I kept my eyes in the direction of the piano, eager for every glimpse of the musician that the flickering illumination from the movie screen provided.

I went back to the movie house almost every day the Braves were at home, and soon found out that the daytime ticket-taker and nighttime piano player was named Peggy Shaw. It wasn’t long before we started seeing each other outside of the theater.

Although we’d had no communication since last fall, I simply assumed that she would still be working here. It was my eagerness to see her again that had made me so particular about my appearance. And it was seeing someone else in her place at the ticket window that had sent my hopes plummeting. Feelings of guilt crept upon me as I sat and fretted in the theater. Could she have believed it when I said I’d write? I thought it was just a standard expression that people used to make goodbyes seem less final. Now I wished I
had
written.

I was only vaguely aware of the Keystone Kops capering on the screen in front of me, as I reviewed last autumn’s scenes of Peggy Shaw and Mickey Rawlings.

Although she looked about my age, Peggy had five years on me, and had once been married. At twenty-one she’d married a newspaper writer. Less than a year after the wedding, she became a widow when her husband was struck down with yellow fever while reporting on construction of the Panama Canal. She’d been widowed almost three years when I met her.

I wasn’t comfortable enough with the subject of her late husband to ask about him, but now and then Peggy would reveal bits of information about their brief life together. I gathered that her husband was the sort of reporter Teddy Roosevelt would call a muckraker. I also had the impression that he discussed his work with her a great deal, and that she had a deep interest in it. She once mentioned working for passage of child labor laws. I told her of my experience in the cotton mill, and she seemed impressed that I had quit the mill in protest.

Peggy also told me she had once dreamed of being a concert pianist. As a girl, she practiced for hours every day. Then, like me, she realized that she didn’t have the natural skills to be great. She stayed with music, though, giving lessons and playing at theaters. Just as I was determined to be the best utility baseball player, she intended to be the best nickelodeon piano player. This similarity between us seemed to cement our friendship, and raised in me hopes of becoming more than friends.

Now it seemed I would never have a chance to find out.

I should have written.

I
showed up two hours early for practice Monday morning. Except for that interrupted view through the runway corridor, it was my first real look at the Fenway Park playing field.

It was the damnedest baseball field I had ever seen. There was a hill in left field! About twenty-five feet in front of the left field fence, the ground began an upward slope, rising to a height of ten feet where it made contact with the wall. The rest of the park was strange, too. It seemed as if it had been squeezed in several directions to fit into the shape of the building lot. The outfield fence went from shallow to deep to shallow as it wound its way from the left field corner around to right, with a number of interesting nooks and corners that would make playing the outfield far too much of an adventure for me.

I was surprised that my roomie also arrived early to get in some extra fielding practice. As my counterpart in the outfield, Clyde Fletcher filled in for Speaker, Hooper, or Lewis if they needed relief. He hadn’t played so much as a single inning this year, but here he was, eager to shag some flies. I had dismissed him before as a dissipated sloth, but he obviously took professional pride in his play, and I grudgingly discovered that I was developing some respect for him.

Since there were no other players around, Fletcher and I traded off. He hit me practice grounders, then I hit fungoes out to him in left field. He looked pretty comical stumbling up the hill trying to go back for fly balls, but I had to admire his determination. He said if he never got into a game all year, he was going to conquer that hill. I suggested that if he got rid of his enormous wad of tobacco, he’d be a lot lighter and could run up the slope faster. He suggested I do something to myself that I unfortunately had never yet experienced doing to anyone else. I decided Clyde Fletcher and I might get along after all.

Soon other players joined us on the field, and fans trickled into the stands. I picked out the Red Sox stars as they warmed up—the ones who played with ease and grace, the natural ball players Clyde Fletcher and Mickey Rawlings would never be. We could fill in for the stars when they were hurt, but we’d never have their fame and stature.

Centerfielder Tris Speaker was the team’s leader and second only to Ty Cobb as the best all-around player in the American League; he was exchanging long throws with Duffy Lewis and Harry Hooper in the outfield. Jake Stahl, coming to the end of the line as a player but still batting .300, was hitting pepper to the infielders. Baby-faced fireballer Smoky Joe Wood threw light pitches to Bill Carrigan along the right field foul line. Next to him, throwing more seriously, was today’s starting pitcher, Bucky O’Brien.

This team could win it all. Jimmy Macullar could be right: the Red Sox could be on the way to the World Series. If the current roster survived the season. A fan, an opposing player ... could a Red Sox player be next? Would the first year of this magnificent, peculiar ballpark be ruined by more tragedies? I wanted to yell out to the players who were warming up so leisurely. To scream a warning at them. And, just as strongly, I wanted to keep utterly quiet—to forget all I knew and all I feared.

I didn’t yell. But I knew I wouldn’t keep my thoughts to myself much longer.

When the ball game against the visiting New York Highlanders got underway, Clyde Fletcher and I were both relegated to the pines. As the Red Sox regulars took the field, the two of us sat together at one end of the nearly deserted dugout. Hal Chase led off for the Highlanders, and I remembered our last game in New York. I nudged Fletcher with my elbow and asked him, “Hey, Fletch, do you believe the stories about Chase?”

“What stories?”

“That he throws ball games.”

Fletcher looked down the length of the bench, and seemed satisfied that we were out of earshot. Veterans don’t like to be seen talking to rookies. Hchoowook. Shptoo. Schplat. “Well, I don’t know that he throws games, but I’m sure of it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think nobody ever caught him at it, and I never heard him admit it, so I can’t say that I
know
it. But from what I do know about the son of a bitch, and what I hear from other guys who know him, I’m sure of it.”

I suppressed an impulse to tell Fletcher that I had caught Chase blowing plays. “Why does he do it? Money?”

“I dunno... maybe money. Mostly I think it’s a game with him. He likes the idea of pulling something over on somebody.” Fletcher grimaced. “It’s not just ball games, either. He took me in a card game once.”

“Cheated?”

“Oh yeah. I didn’t realize it till after the game, but no doubt about it. I watch for that in poker, but this was a goddam bridge game. Me, Addie Joss, Billy Neal, and Hal Chase. Chase took all of us, got away with a bundle. He seemed too sure of himself during the game, grinning like it was some kind of joke. His goddam joke cost me two months’ salary. But—nothing I could do about it.”

“Jeez.”

Hchoowook. Shptoo. Schplat. “Yeah.”

One thing about his story surprised me. Joss had been one of the best pitchers in baseball until he got sick and died the year before. I couldn’t imagine Fletcher palling around with a star player. “You knew Addie Joss?” I said.

“Not real good, but yeah, I knew him. I was with him in Cleveland.”

“He could have been a
great
pitcher.”

“He was a great pitcher. He just died too young. Barely thirty years old.”

I suddenly wondered how old I’d get to be.

With the Highlanders side retired and the Sox fielders coming into the dugout, our talk ended.

Fletcher and I remained on the bench throughout the game, and thus avoided contributing to our 3—1 loss. The fans were vocally disappointed, not only at losing, but for hometown favorite Bucky O’Brien who was charged with the defeat.

After the game, O’Brien stopped by his aunt’s rooming house for dinner. I welcomed what I thought was an opportunity to get to know him better, but he was in a surly mood after the loss to New York and didn’t say much at first.

His aunt, a short, round, chatty woman who seemed to think of herself as a mother to her boarders, explained that her stuffed cabbage was the only thing that could console Bucky after a loss. Whenever he was pitching in Boston, she would prepare it for supper. If he won, he’d go out to celebrate with the other players, leaving plenty of extra food for her boarders; if he lost, he would visit her and gorge himself with cabbage.

After filling himself this evening, Bucky revived a bit and became more talkative. The two of us went into the parlor after dinner, and after settling ourselves in overstuffed chairs, he started to review every pitching mistake he made in the game. I liked the fact that he only criticized his own performance; he didn’t complain about scoring opportunities missed by the Red Sox hitters, or lack of hustle by the fielders, or poor pitch selection by Bill Carrigan behind the plate.

Bucky had arrived in the big leagues late. His aunt told me that his thirtieth birthday was day after tomorrow, and I knew he was in only his second major-league season. He seemed determined to do everything in his power to stay in the majors for whatever good years he might have left. Too many seasons in the minors—grueting travel, cheap hotels, bad food, worse companions—had taken a toll on him. Bucky’s short brown hair was neatly groomed and a stylish blue suit draped his muscular frame, but he had sunken eyes and an overall grizzled look that would be his forever.

After he had gotten the self-criticisms out of his system and relaxed a little, I decided to broach the subject of the dead Tiger player. “Say, Bucky, I heard one of the Detroit players got killed during the last series here.”

“Yeah, Red Corriden. I struck him out three times in the last game. Couldn’t touch my spitter.” Bucky was still thinking like a pitcher.

I tried to move off of Corriden’s batting ability. “Clyde Fletcher was telling me he thought Corriden used to play with the Browns.”

“Sure did. Don’t you remember what he did in the batting race a couple years ago?”

“The batting race?”

“Yeah. Where you been? The Browns tried to give the title to Nap Lajoie. Remember?”

“Ohhh, okay. I thought his name sounded familiar. That’s where I heard of him.”

“Yeah, it’s a damn shame. Now the kid’s just going to be remembered for being a sap.”

“I read about what happened, but it seemed awful mixed up. I still don’t think I know what all went on. It was over a car, wasn’t it?”

“Not just a
car,
it was a
Chalmers 30
. I don’t make enough in two years to buy an automobile like that. I don’t know if it was really about the car though, or because Ty Cobb’s such a mean son of a bitch that everybody hates him.”

“I remember Cobb and Lajoie went just about all of 1910 neck and neck for the batting title—and whoever won the title would get the car as a prize. Right?”

“Yup. Then it came down to the last day of the season. Cobb was ahead by a few points, so he didn’t play—didn’t want to risk going hitless and blowing his lead. Son of a bitch is as gutless as he is mean. Anyway, the Tigers let him sit out.

“Lajoie and Cleveland were ending the year with a doubleheader against the Browns in St. Louis. I just finished another year in the minors—with Des Moines in the Three-I league. Jack O’Connor was managing the Browns and I heard he wanted to buy my contract. It was my first nibble from the majors, so I followed everything that went on with the Browns pretty close.

“When Lajoie came into St. Louis, he needed to get a hit just about every at bat to beat Cobb. And he did it. Got eight or nine hits, and he should’ve had the batting title and the car.”

“But the hits were gimmes, weren’t they?”

“Yup. The Browns third baseman was playing him back on the outfield grass. So Lajoie just kept dropping free bunts down third.”

“And the third baseman was Red—”

“Red Corriden, yeah. Wasn’t really his fault though. Turned out he was told to play back for Lajoie. He was a rookie, so he did what O’Connor told him.”

“The Browns fired O’Connor, didn’t they?”

“Yeah. Him and Harry Howell. Howell was coaching or scouting or something for St. Louis. Don’t remember how he was mixed up with it. But Ban Johnson kicked O’Connor and Howell both out of baseball. Huh! Ban banned ’em. Get it? Ban banned ’em.”

“Yeah. That’s a good one.”

“First I thought, there goes my shot at the majors with O’Connor being out. Then the Sox bought my contract, so it worked out even better.” Bucky belched vigorously and stood up saying, “I gotta get me something for my stomach. My aunt’s a great cook, but this goddam cabbage keeps repeating on me.”

He left me alone in the room to think over the pathetic aftermath of the batting race scandal. Ty Cobb was finally awarded the hitting title by the American League—but he was exposed as someone so despised by his fellow players that they would go to incredible lengths to cost him personal gain and glory. Jack O’Connor and Harry Howell were banned from baseball. And Red Corriden, who was publicly painted as a sap, would now never have a chance to live down that reputation.