Pinstripe Empire (9 page)

Chase, handsome and tall at six feet and 175 pounds, batting right but throwing left, almost immediately became the team’s most popular player. Although he batted just .249 in his rookie season, he would hit .323—third in the league—the following year.
Sporting Life
magazine called him “perhaps the biggest drawing card in baseball.”

He was often seen in the company of Broadway showgirls. He lived for a time in the same apartment building as John McGraw, and then in Suffern, New York, with his fiancée, Nellie Heffernan. He drank, he played poker, and while he loved New York, he would always hold out the possibility of retiring to California for outlaw league baseball as leverage in his contract negotiations.

Chase quickly became known as the best fielding first baseman the game had yet produced. Even by midcentury he was still included in the debate of who was the best first baseman ever.

His dazzling plays seemed to make up for a large number of errors, but it was all part of what made him exciting. He was also an adept base stealer, and his 248 steals while with New York was a team record that stood until Rickey Henderson passed him in 1988.

“His first base wizardry is beyond dispute, but Hal committed an amazing number of errors for one possessing his skill,” wrote Fred Lieb.

But a shadow came to follow Chase’s career: accusations that gambling may have caused him to deliberately throw games, perhaps accounting for the high error totals. This would take on increasing significance in later years.

He readily admitted to betting on games, but always denied that he bet for or against his own team. “My limit was $100 per game and I never bet against my own team,” he said. “That was easy money.”

His future teammate, shortstop Roger Peckinpaugh, recalled “a few times I threw a ball over to first base, and it went by him to the stands and a couple of runs scored. It really surprised me. I’d stand there looking, sighting the flight of the ball in my mind, and I’d think, ‘Geez, that throw wasn’t that bad.’ Then I’d tell myself that he was the greatest there was, so maybe the throw was bad. Then later on when he got the smelly reputation, it came back to me and I said, ‘oh-oh.’ What he was doing, you see, was tangling up his feet and then making a fancy dive after the ball, making it look like it was a wild throw.“

(With runarounds like Elberfeld and Chase playing key roles on the team, it is worth noting that on August 4, 1905, the Yankees started a battery of Jim “Doc” Newton on the mound and Mike “Doc” Powers catching. Both men were physicians.)

Near the end of the 1905 season, a collision between Dave Fultz and Elberfeld at the Hilltop silenced the crowd of twenty thousand as three doctors (including Newton) ran onto the field. The two men lay motionless for ten minutes. Elberfeld suffered bad cuts over his right eye, chin, nose, and cheek, while Fultz went into shock and was taken to a hospital, unconscious. He had broken both his jaw and his nose, and his baseball career ended.

IN 1906, GRIFFITH’S men were once again contenders. Maybe it was the long-awaited opening of the subway station at Hilltop Park, which helped attendance jump from 309,100 to 434,700, providing a more encouraging audience.

A crowd of fifteen thousand turned out on opening day to visit the new subway station and see Chesbro outduel Cy Young 2–1 in 12 innings with Chase driving in the winning run. Old-time star John Montgomery Ward, now a forty-six-year-old lawyer in New York, threw out the first pitch, the band played “Yankee Doodle,” and the fans began inventing songs for the different players. It was a great day at the ballpark, and the two legendary pitchers shook hands after the game, admiring each other’s performance.

Griffith, having pretty much wound down his playing career, coached at third and turned over the starting rotation to Chesbro (23–17), Orth (27–17), Bill Hogg (14–13), Clarkson (9–4), and Newton (7–5).

Hogg, who hurled a one-hitter against Boston on May 1, was in the starting rotation for New York from 1905 to 1908, but then died at twenty-nine of kidney disease after pitching for Louisville in 1909.

The Highlanders were in first place as late as September 24. They had been boosted by a fifteen-game winning streak surrounding Labor Day. But hurt by a suspension of Elberfeld, the team would win only five of its remaining thirteen games and finished second, three and a half behind Chicago. Elberfeld’s suspension followed what the
Times
called a “disgraceful attack” on umpire Silk O’Loughlin.

No one knew, of course, that this would be the team’s last serious pennant race under the ownership of Devery and Farrell. What would follow would be a string of mediocre to bad seasons and not a very good attraction for baseball-crazed New York fans.

1907 WAS A big step backward. In fact, the Yankees were the only American League team sharing a city with the National League who failed to outdraw its rival. Attendance fell to 350,020 while the Giants’ reached 538,350. (Brooklyn drew 312,300.)

“If it gets any smaller, they’ll have to put fractions on the turnstiles,” wrote Mark Roth in the
Globe.

Griffith was starting to feel the pressure of not producing a winner. The team started strong, with a deliberate worker named Slow Joe Doyle hurling shutouts in his first two outings, but then found themselves essentially out of the running by mid-June.

(Doyle won only 22 games in his career, but a variation of his T-206 tobacco trading card—the set containing the famous Honus Wagner card—sold for $329,000 in a 2009 auction simply because it erroneously identified him as being with the New York Nat’ls, not Americans.)

On June 12, with his players starting to openly complain about his managing, Griffith exited Hilltop Park through the right-field exit and encountered a fan complimenting Ty Cobb on a game well played. Griffith struck the fan in the jaw, and the victim threatened to seek a warrant for Griff’s arrest.

On June 28, a rookie catcher named Branch Rickey, the man who would one day bring Jackie Robinson into the major leagues, was given a start despite a sore arm. Rickey that day set a record which still stands, allowing 13 stolen bases.

“My arm was numb and I was helpless to do anything,” he explained.

Keeler, sidelined by injury, was replaced in right field by Rickey on July 6. During the game, Rickey nearly broke his arm sliding into third and was essentially done as a ballplayer. He said good-bye to Griffith in mid-September.

CHASE, MEANWHILE, WAS enjoying a twenty-seven-game hitting streak. Yet he was often high drama.

He was living with his fiancée, Nellie. On July 26, the day he hit in his twenty-seventh straight, Nellie and her friend Ethel Martin (who was newly married to the team’s trainer, Mike) were arrested in Suffern, charged with the unlawful disposal of a dead infant. Ethel had delivered the baby seven days before, apparently stillborn. Ethel and Nellie went to gruesome means to destroy the baby (think fire and stray dogs), and a tip to the police led to their arrest.

It could have been Devery’s connections with the area police that brought the case to a quiet close, but clearly Chase had a knack for meeting “interesting” women, and Mike Martin was not much better.

JOE GORDON, WHO had taken long summer vacations in ’06 and ’07 and who had been “demoted” to vice president, was ousted by Farrell before the 1908 season began.

Gordon did not go quietly. He sued Farrell, claiming he was due to receive half ownership of the team, something he believed was understood when the parties first came together. Farrell countered that he was only due the dividends on $10,000 worth of stock. Both sides admitted that establishing Gordon as team president in 1903 was a “front” to present a more reputable owner to the public. Farrell further claimed that he kept Gordon on the team’s stationery only to help Gordon’s coal business.

Documents introduced at trial allow a look into the finances of the club, which showed a nice profit: receipts being about $240,000 for a season, operating costs about $80,000. Not until January 1912 did the court dismiss Gordon’s complaint, with Judge Bischoff stating he found no evidence that any contract of partnership existed.

THE HIGHLANDERS OPENED the 1908 season well and were in first place as late as June 1. Griffith took his team to the White House during a series in
Washington, and the players got to meet Teddy Roosevelt. It would be the team’s first White House visit, but Teddy’s son Quentin was not at home and was described as “inconsolable” at missing a chance to meet his heroes. The
Times
reported that Quentin “worshipped” the players in both leagues and knew all of their records.

But six weeks later, with the Highlanders going through a 3–27–1 stretch, the time had come to bring down the curtain on the Clark Griffith era. It would be the first firing of a manager in team history.

On June 24, Griff issued a statement: “In justice to Mr. Farrell and myself, I think a change in management will give better results. Whenever the team had a chance to win the pennant luck broke against us … I want it distinctly understood that Mr. Farrell and myself are good friends. He always treated me fine and spared no expense to get a winner.”

Griffith was probably fired and paid for the rest of the season, and the breaking point was likely a difference over the value of Elberfeld to the team. The Tabasco Kid was forever getting into ugly umpire feuds, getting suspended at critical times, and not really providing enough value to balance those misdeeds. Griffith was fed up with him, but Farrell seemed to like the rogue. He said he wouldn’t sell him for $50,000. So he did the logical thing: He fired Griffith and replaced him with Elberfeld.

It was believed that Farrell’s first choice was actually Keeler, now thirty-six and slowing down. That season he played only 91 games and hit just .263. He wasn’t the player he’d been, blaming the slowdown in his game on “one of the most trying [sun fields] in the country.” But he was still enormously popular with the fans. The question for Farrell was, could a man barely five foot four lead a baseball team?

Maybe even Keeler thought he could not. And so it came to be believed that as Farrell sought him out to take over the team, he in fact fled from the hotel in Philadelphia where the Yankees were staying, determined not to be found. Farrell understood and turned to the thirty-three-year-old Elberfeld instead. All five foot seven of him.

Chase, who was mild-mannered and not a big fan of Elberfeld’s style of play, was reportedly upset that he had been passed over. In September he left the team and headed back west, joining Stockton in the outlaw California State League. He hit .383 in 21 games for Stockton and was banned from the major leagues by the governing National Commission. It could have been the end of Hal Chase.

Griffith would emerge as the manager of Cincinnati in 1909, the start of
a three-year stint. He took the Highlanders trainer Mike Martin with him (and presumably his impetuous wife, Ethel), and then in 1912 took him to Washington when he became manager of the Senators. Martin remained in Griffith’s employ until he died in an auto accident in 1952, one of the last ties to the Highlanders still in the game. (Harry Lee succeeded Martin in New York.)

By 1920 Griffith took off the uniform for the last time, acquired majority interest in the team, and devoted the rest of his life to running the Senators. He became friends with U.S. presidents, an elder statesman of baseball, and gave his name to the Senators’ ballpark. He seldom reached back and hired anyone from his New York days. In fact, when he arrived and took over the Senators in 1912, he released the team’s third baseman: a fellow named Elberfeld who had gone there in 1910.

Griffith would never really be “family” to the Yankees, but at the 1952 Yankees Old-Timers’ Day, marking the franchise’s fiftieth season, they saluted the Old Fox, with Tannehill, Conroy, Ganzel, and Fultz, 1903 Highlanders all, among the guests that day to honor him. He would live until 1955, his last great act being the signing of Harmon Killebrew.

ELBERFELD WAS GREETED by a floral horseshoe and seven thousand happy customers in his first game as manager at Hilltop, a crowd that included Griffith, who stayed to wish him well before departing for his Montana ranch. All the players pledged support. Everyone said nice things about one another, and the press hailed Griff as courteous, fair, and luckless.

As for the Tabasco Kid, it went as some had feared. He wasn’t long into the job when he had a terrible argument with umpire Silk O’Loughlin again and found himself suspended indefinitely. Defiantly, he managed the team’s first game during a July 4 doubleheader in Washington, sitting in a box next to the Yankee dugout. The umpire that day, Rip Egan, chose to allow this behavior despite great protests from the Washington manager, Joe Cantillon. But Elberfeld was sent to the clubhouse for the second game and watched from the porch.

Suffering from an injury, Elberfeld turned over much of the shortstop play to Neal Ball, while he coached at first. (Ball earned fame with Cleveland the following year, pulling off the first unassisted triple play in history.) By July 8, the Yanks already seemed doomed to finish last, then endured a twelve-game losing streak later in the month.

The horrible season would include the embarrassment of being no-hit by Cy Young, the oldest pitcher in the game at forty-one. It was an 8–0 gem at the Hilltop on June 30 in front of just fifteen hundred people, most of whom were cheering for Young from the sixth inning on. It was nearly a perfect game—New York’s leadoff man in the first walked and was thrown out stealing. Young also had three hits, drove in four runs, and made a sensational catch on a bunt attempt by Neal Ball. It was the first no-hitter against the Yankees.

Then twenty-year-old Walter Johnson, seeking to establish himself in his first full season, shut out New York three times in four days (with no game on Sunday, of course), September 4, 5, and 7, pitching 27 innings, allowing no runs, 12 hits, and one walk. With these games, he served notice that he would be a formidable foe for years to come. He did, in fact, defeat the Yankees 60 times in 101 decisions during his career, far and away the most wins against the franchise. (Lefty Grove and Ed Cicotte had 35 each, tied for second place.)