Murder at Wrigley Field

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Table of Contents

T
hroughout this series I have been fortunate to have Pat LoBrutto as my editor, and it is a pleasure to finally express my appreciation. His guidance, encouragement, and humor have improved my work while making it seem like fun.

I am also grateful to my agents Meredith Bernstein and Elizabeth Cavanaugh for all their efforts in making sure that the Mickey Rawlings manuscripts become published books.

A number of institutions graciously provided assistance during the research of this book: the National Baseball Library & Archive in Cooperstown, New York; the Chicago Public Library; the Chicago Historical Society; the Government Documents Room of Harvard University’s Lamont Library; the Dewey Library at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the Boston Public Library; and the North Cambridge Public Library. I am indebted to all of these for so generously making their resources available to me.

T
hirty-six ounces of tight-grained American white ash, painstakingly carved and sanded into a sleek, tapered cylinder thirty-three inches long. The supreme achievement of the woodworker’s craft: a Mickey Rawlings model Louisville Slugger.

“Atten ...
tion!”

A baseball bat. An object simple in design, yet with a quiet elegance to its form and a latent power in its core. In the hands of a major-leaguer, it’s a versatile instrument with a dozen uses.

“Present...
arms!”

And I knew most of them. I could slip one hand up the barrel to drop a bunt down either foul line or choke up with both fists to poke the ball to right on a hit and run. If a sacrifice fly was needed, I could slide my grip down to the knob and swing from the heels to lift a drive deep enough for a runner to score from third. Deep enough for a fast runner to score, anyway.

“Shoulder...
arms!”

I raised my right forearm, lifting the bat to my shoulder. The thick end was cradled in my upturned palm; I could feel nicks where I’d struck it against my spikes to dislodge clods of earth. The handle, stained with sweat and grime from having been squeezed between my fists a thousand times, rested next to my collar bone. And every muscle and bone in my body screamed at me that this was no way to hold a baseball bat.

I never imagined any bat—much less one with my name stamped below the Hillerich & Bradsby imprint—could feel so unnatural to me. But then, the one thing I never expected to do with a baseball bat was use it for a make-believe rifle while I played soldier.

The entire Chicago Cubs team stood in formation, four rows of four players each, in foul territory behind first base. We faced the infield, our backs to the first base dugout. The team was arranged in order of height, with the tallest players in the back. I was in the front row, my toes touching the edge of the chalk foul line.

“Forward...
march!”

I promptly stepped forward with my left foot. Willie, next to me on my right, started with his right foot, as did several others. Some didn’t move at all until bumped from behind; then they shuffled clumsily forward to catch up.

As we marched in the direction of second base, the teenaged Army lieutenant in charge of our training chanted in his high-pitched voice, “Left... left... left, right, left...” It took quite a few paces before the footsteps of the Cubs players matched the instructions he squeaked out. We were not a spit and polish kind of squad—despite the fact that we did do an inordinate amount of spitting.

And we would be of little use if Kaiser Wilhelm’s army decided to invade the North Side of Chicago. Hell, we were going to have enough trouble defending Cubs Park from the visiting St. Louis Cardinals.

We were simply putting on a show orchestrated by the baseball owners. It was an attempt to impress Secretary of War Baker, who was threatening to shut down major league baseball. Baker believed that healthy young men belonged on battlefields, not baseball fields. The team owners thought that by marching us around with bats on our shoulders they could convince Uncle Sam we were training for war, not merely playing a game. I thought not even the U. S. government could be that gullible.

There was still some reason to hold out hope for a reprieve though: Baker had already given deferments to actors and opera singers for providing “essential entertainment.” I figured if
opera
could be considered essential, surely the national pastime was.

As we reached second base, the lieutenant yelped, “Right turn . . .
March!”

I spun to my right and collided with Willie turning left. “Your other right, Willie,” I said. I grabbed his shoulder with my free hand and turned him around.

He had a bewildered look on his young face and his cap was askew. It was also too large for his head, making him look like a kid whose mother had bought it for him with the hope that he’d grow into it. “This just ain’t natural,” he protested. “You’re supposed to turn left at second and go to third. Who the hell runs out to centerfield?”

“We’re not practicing triples,” I said. Although he was right: nothing about this felt natural.

We said nothing more, which I’m sure the lieutenant appreciated since we weren’t permitted to speak at all during drills, and scampered to catch up to our teammates marching toward right field.

Any other park would have had an outfield fence to mark the perimeter of the playing field. Except for a high wall that ran from the left field foul pole to left center, that useful feature was omitted in the design of Cubs Park. In right field, bleachers sprouted directly from the grass; only a low railing separated the seats from the field of play. With few fans occupying them, the bleachers looked like a wide squat staircase. It appeared we could march up those steps and walk right into the second-floor windows of the Sheffield Avenue row houses that overlooked the park.

“Company...
halt!”

I halted. Fred Merkle ran into my back.

As the Cubs players stumbled into each other trying to maintain some semblance of formation, I decided it was a wise move on the part of the Army not to equip us with real rifles. One of us would have probably ended up getting his nose shot off.

This little patch of Chicago, four acres of ballfield nestled in the juncture of Addison and North Clark streets, was a baseball oasis—a green cathedral in a blue-collar neighborhood.

The field itself was splendid. The turf, a lush mixture of bluegrass and clover, shimmered with life, and the dark earth of the base paths looked fertile enough to grow crops.

After a week of sporadic thunderstorms, the weather was finally cooperating as if nature herself wanted to see a ball-game. Gentle, cooling breezes blew off Lake Michigan. They sent wispy white clouds drifting across a high sun to provide soft shade for the park below.

Taking in the view, one could almost forget that across the Atlantic young men were dying by the thousands in trench warfare. Almost, but not quite.

The war in Europe had taken a toll on baseball that was most evident in the dugouts. The players seated with me on the Cubs bench were far from prime physical specimens, and the Cardinals across the field in the first base dugout weren’t any better. Not since the 1899 Cleveland Spiders had there been a major league baseball team comprised of such wretched-looking ballplayers. This year, with rosters decimated by players leaving for military service, it was the norm. Teams had to fill holes in their lineups with sandlot players too young to fight and old-timers too aged. It was often a challenge for a team simply to field nine players by game time.

It was also a challenge to fill a ballpark with paying customers. Factories were running round-the-clock to produce materials for the war effort, and even on Saturday few people could take an afternoon off to watch a baseball game. Of the eighteen thousand seats in the park, only about two thousand were occupied. There wasn’t enough of a crowd for the fans to feel part of, so they sat in self-conscious silence. The sounds that filled the park came from the streets outside: automobiles with bleating horns on Addison and trains rumbling past the entrance behind home plate.

With the game about to begin, the Cubs’ public address announcer walked to a point between home plate and the pitcher’s mound. Through a megaphone that wasn’t necessary, he gave the St. Louis starting lineup, then began to read off Chicago’s. The crowd listened with indifference until he announced, “Batting third and playing shortstop: Willie
Kay
ser.”

Jeers and boos immediately came from the stands, first scattered and then in unison as individual hecklers pooled their meager courage into one voice. The announcer had intentionally mispronounced Willie’s name, but they knew what it really was.

I looked down the bench at Willie. Willie Kaiser, that is. His head was down and he gave it a slight, sad shake. In the summer of 1918, “Kaiser” was not a popular name. All season long, in a dozen malicious ways, spectators and opponents continually reminded Willie of this fact.

So did the newspapers. A year ago, Willie was working in a meatpacking house and playing amateur ball for the Union Stockyards. Now in his first full season with the Cubs, he had a .322 batting average and the best glove since Honus Wagner. He should have been the sports pages’ biggest story. But the papers chose to avoid putting his hated name in print and rarely mentioned Willie in their coverage of the games. The box scores, which couldn’t omit him entirely, abbreviated him as “WKsr.”

After their outburst of patriotic disapproval at Willie’s surname, the crowd quieted down and remained in a dormant state through five scoreless innings.

Not until the top of the sixth did they come to life, when the Cardinals’ Cliff Heathcote led off the inning with a line drive single over first base that almost took Fred Merkle’s head off. The crowd gasped with one breath at Merkle’s near decapitation.

With Heathcote on first, heavy-hitting Rogers Hornsby stepped up next to face our Hippo Vaughn. Murmurs of anticipation came from the stands. The crowd was thinking base hit.

I was thinking double play. From my second base position I gave a glance at Willie. I could see his thoughts were the same as mine. We’d turned enough twin killings this season that Kaiser-to-Rawlings-to-Merkle was on a pace to beat the record of an earlier Cubs’ double play combination, Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance.

After Hornsby took a fastball for ball one, Willie picked up the catcher’s sign for the next pitch. He passed it on to me, flashing two fingers from behind the protective shield of his mitt. Curve ball. With Vaughn a lefty and Hornsby right-handed, a curve will break in on him. He should be pulling it. I started to cheat toward second as Vaughn released the ball.

Hornsby ripped it, a hard grounder up the middle. I was off, sprinting back and to my right. The ball skimmed the pitcher’s mound and veered to my side of the bag.

At the last possible instant, I threw my glove out, letting it pull my body along in a low dive. The ball snagged in the palm of my glove at the same time that my belly hit the ground. Skidding face-down on the outfield grass, I couldn’t see second base, but I knew Willie would be there. I flipped the ball over my left shoulder, then twisted around to watch the end of the play.

In one fluid move, Willie caught the ball cleanly, dragged his foot across second base, and transferred the ball to his throwing hand. Then the amazing part: with Hornsby two steps from the base, Willie snapped off a sidearm throw to first that nailed him with time to spare.

There wasn’t another shortstop in baseball who could put that much smoke on the ball. Not many pitchers, either. Although Willie was no more muscular than me, there was explosive strength in his wiry build. As cheers came from the crowd, I thought to myself that I’d give anything to have an arm like that. For just one throw I’d like to know what it felt like to unleash that kind of lightning.

Willie showed no joy in the play though. He trudged back to his position at short, looking as if he’d done nothing more thrilling than change a flat tire.

Jeez, Willie, let yourself have some fun. There’s only one thing that feels better than turning a play like that, and you can’t do it on a baseball field. Not during a game, anyway.

The yells from the stands continued, and people rose from their seats. I thought they wanted Willie to tip his cap in acknowledgment, and I was happy that he was being cheered for a change.

Then I saw that the fans were scrambling for the exits, and the one word they were all shouting became clear: “Fire!”

It took almost an hour to get the game going again. There had been no fire, only lots of acrid black smoke from a couple of smoke bombs in the grandstand seats near first base.

The final four innings were played before an empty stadium, so there was no one to boo our 3–1 loss to St. Louis.