The Great Days, The Great Stars

I splashed grapefruit juice into the eye of the first Hall of Famer I ever met. I trailed another Hall of Famer into the clubhouse toilet and kept talking to him until he agreed to his first radio interview. Still another Hall of Famer hired me for a fascinating, never-to-be-forgotten publicity job the day I met him.

These three weren’t in the Hall of Fame at the time. There was no Hall of Fame at the time. The three were honored some years later, after the Cooperstown shrine came into existence in 1939.

My first observations of major league baseball had come in the early 1920s, from the vantage point of the Knothole Gang section in the wooden left-field pavilion at Sportsman’s Park, St. Louis, and later from the bleachers after the old stadium was remodeled. I used my Knothole pass until one day Mel Curran, the gatekeeper, looked up at me and noticed my size. That was the end of that.

In college I began writing—and selling—baseball articles. These were mostly statistical in nature since at that time I had never met a real live major leaguer. But I wanted to. George Sisler had been a superstar with the Browns for many years. In 1920 and 1922 he hit above .400, but eye trouble forced him to sit out the entire 1923 season. Later he played briefly with the Washington Senators, then had a few years with the old Boston Braves. Since he had played in both the American and National Leagues, I wanted to write an article giving his views on their merits.

His reputation awed me, but I screwed up enough courage to phone him at the sporting goods store he owned in St. Louis. I got an appointment to meet him the next day at 10 A.M. for breakfast at the old Statler Hotel. He appeared on time, and we sat down to eat. Before could calm myself about meeting such a celebrity in the flesh, I plunged my spoon into the half grapefruit.

Disaster. A big splash of grapefruit juice shot straight into Sisler’s eye. What a way to start an interview! Sisler, however, wiped his eye and tried to put me at ease. He couldn’t help but see how nervous I was. I was thinking about the time he slugged an umpire when the Browns lost a close call at first base. Would his temper flare up again? (Such behavior was completely out of character for him, though—George was a gentleman.)

Except for the designated hitter rule in the American League and the minors, baseball has not changed fundamentally since the 1920s. However, the game has changed in many minor but noticeable ways.

There used to be two umpires officiating a game. If one of them got hurt, or missed a train, or just didn’t show up, the competing teams would agree on a coach or a player from one of the teams to call the plays on the bases. Think of it! Try to imagine Billy Martin or Earl Weaver looking on calmly as one of these partisan umpires called a close play against the Yankees or the Orioles!

When I was a kid, a “courtesy runner” was occasionally allowed to substitute for a player who later continued in the game. There was a time back in the 1920s when, because of injuries, the Cardinals had only one catcher available: Verne (Tubby) Clemons. Clemons reached base a couple of times on a boiling, humid afternoon. The opposing manager allowed the Redbirds to use a runner each time, but afterwards Tubby still continued to catch. He took his later turns at bat. Of course, no pennant was at stake. But courtesy runners are a thing of the past. To my best recollection, they disappeared in the 1930s.

Another custom that seems to have vanished a long time ago is this: With one team enjoying a big lead in the ninth inning, the pitcher and the infielders would often completely ignore the baserunner. If the losing team got a man on first base with two outs, the pitcher would concentrate solely on the batter, allowing the runner to trot down to second base, and then on to third. No stolen bases were credited to this runner.

Batting helmets were unknown. Even though Ray Chapman died after after being beaned by a Carl Mays pitch in 1920, it took more than two decades to get helmets used at all. Even then, many macho types refused to wear head protection until it became mandatory.

Likewise, there were no batting gloves. There were plenty of other gloves lying around, though. The gloves of the team at bat were left right on the playing field during the game, left there for infielders and outfielders to stumble over when making a play. Occasionally, a batted ball would hit one of these gloves and take a crazy bounce. Some players would simply toss their gloves anywhere on a grassy area. Others carefully placed their gloves in a specially chosen spot at the end of every inning. Pitchers usually dropped their gloves in foul territory outside the first or third base line. Catchers took their mitts to the bench with them. It took years before the rules required players to remove their gloves from the playing area when their team was at bat.

Other hazards remained. There were no padded walls to keep outfielders from crashing into concrete or wooden barriers. Warning tracks did not exist. Bats were often spread out on the ground in front of the dugouts,. and trying to catch a foul ball near one of them was needlessly dangerous until somebody changed the system.

Another source of danger: in those days newspaper photographers occasionally appeared on the field during the game. The cameramen didn’t have the zoom lens used nowadays, and they would crowd close to home plate trying to snap a close play. Occasionally they got in the way of the catcher, or the umpire, or a runner trying to score. Such collisions sparked plenty of cussing on the part of players, plus numerous arguments about interference. Eventually all cameramen were barred from the field during a game.

Loudspeaker systems were unknown in the early days. Instead, a bull-voiced announcer armed with a megaphone shouted out the lineups before the game, bellowing them in the direction of the press box. Next he would trot down the first and third base lines, barking out the batteries but not the full lineups. Then he would resume his seat near the grandstand and do no more announcing unless there was a change in the lineup. No attempt was made to identify each player as he came to bat.

Undoubtedly, this was a deliberate strategy to get the fans to buy scorecards. The familiar yell, “Ya can’t tell the players without a scorecard,” still echoes in my ears after all these years. But even with a scorecard, it wasn’t easy to identify the players. There were no numbers or names on the backs of players’ uniforms. Instead, each player had a scorecard number. This number appeared on the hand-operated scoreboard as the player took his turn at bat. Only then, if you didn’t already know him by his appearance or had a scorecard, could you be sure of who the hitter was.

Both the Cardinals and the Browns sometimes changed all the numbers on the scorecard. They did this for two reasons: They wanted to discourage fans from bringing an old scorecard to the park to identify players, thus failing to buy a new one. They also wanted to cross up independent vendors outside the ballpark who tried to sell scorecards of their own, thus undercutting the “official” scorecards sold by the clubs. Competition was keen between these “legal” and “illegal” scorecards, although they cost only five cents each (later a dime).

At one point the Cardinals sewed numbers on the sleeves of their players to help identify them. But the numbers were small, couldn’t be read from far away, and the Cards soon abandoned the idea. It was several years before large numbers were placed on the uniform backs.

Even with numbered uniforms, there were those scorecards to sell. For a time, the Cardinals and Browns used two sets of numbers for their players. One was the new uniform number. The other was the old scorecard number—a different number entirely—that popped up on the scoreboard when the player took his turn at bat. Confusing . . . but anything to sell more scorecards!

There were no exploding scoreboards then, no instant replays. Very little information was available to the fans. The scoreboard told who was at bat, indicated the pitcher and catcher, and gave the batteries and scores for other teams in the same league. When the Browns were in town, the scoreboard showed what was happening in the American League. When the Cardinals were at home, fans got only National League scores.

When someone suggested that the scoreboard register a hit or an error on a doubtful play, Sam Breadon, owner of the Cardinals, vetoed the idea. He thought it might upset a Cardinal player to learn immediately what the official scorer had ruled. He also rejected the idea of a clock on the scoreboard, fearing this would make some fans restless and cause them to leave the game early, thus hurting concession sales.

The only way fans could learn about the ruling on a hit or an error was to sit near the press box. Then they might see the official scorer raise a finger to indicate a hit, or make a circle with his thumb and first finger to signal an error.

Baseballs have always been expensive. Back in those days they cost major league clubs about $1.50 each. Ushers and players were supposed to save money for the ballclub by guarding against “theft” of the baseballs. When a foul ball was hit into the stands, there was often a struggle between a fan and an usher for possession of the ball. If the usher won, he threw the baseball—”club property”—back onto the playing field. If the fan won, he might be threatened with arrest for stealing.

These encounters were not very pleasant, and there was the danger of legal action against the ballclub resulting from an usher’s physical attack on a fan. For a time the ballclubs offered fans a free pass to a future game in exchange for the baseball. This seemed to work fairly well.

Gradually, baseball teams began to realize that it was good public relations to let a fan take the ball home and proudly show it to his friends. It might pay off with the fan remaining friendly and coming back another time, perhaps spending a few dollars for beer, hot dogs, popcorn, and peanuts. In those days the ballclubs had not yet thought of selling pennants, caps, bumper stickers, and other souvenirs.

Autographed baseballs are treasured by fans and collectors. But neither fans nor collectors will ever know how many of those autographs are forgeries. When Harrison (Doc) Weaver was the Cardinal trainer back in the days of the Gas House Gang, one of his duties was to keep the players’ arms in shape by relieving them of the chore of autographing baseballs.

Weaver used eight or ten fountain pens filled with different colored inks. The points were varied, some ‘stubby, some fine. He became adept at copying the handwriting of each player. Autographed baseballs were in great demand, and Doc Weaver did his part without public credit for this contribution to the physical welfare of the Cardinal players and the good will of the team . . . and the lasting confusion of collectors.

Along about Labor Day there were showers at old Sportsman’s Park every time the Cardinals or the Browns showed any signs of a rally. Not rain, but showers of straw hats—the flat-brimmed kind you see nowadays only at a stage show recalling the 1920s. Everybody wore hats in those days—straw in summer, felt headgear in the winter. NOBODY wore straw hats after Labor Day, so baseball fans showed their enthusiasm for their home teams by sailing their straw skimmers onto the field when Kenny Williams or Sisler or Hornsby or Jacques Fournier banged hits. Oftentimes the games were delayed ten or fifteen minutes while ushers collected the hundreds of boaters from the field.

Public relations always interested me, and in 1931, having been a sportswriter and a fan, I went to Branch Rickey with a plan for baseball publicity. Rickey was vice president and general manager of the Cardinals. At the time, the National League had Cullen Cain as its public relations man and the American League had Henry Edwards. But no single major league team had a publicity man, or information director, as I later was called.

My plan was simple: I intended to try to get more Cardinal stories in newspapers by giving the editors interesting, dependable material—human interest stories about players and statistical dope for the baseball bugs. Within a 300-mile radius, I would supply suburban, rural, and small-city papers with additional pictures of players; offer radio stations live interviews with players or dramatizations of their lives; and, in general, help the newspapers and radio stations in any way possible.

Rickey listened, quizzed me at length, then discussed my ideas with Sam Breadon. That very morning I became the first publicity man hired by a major league club.

Soon the Cardinals were getting lots of free publicity in the newspapers and on the radio in Missouri, Illinois, western Indiana, and in parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas. Outside of my modest salary, postage, and some mimeograph paper, the only cost to the club was for the passes we handed out to newsmen and radio people.

Within a few years the Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds followed suit, hiring publicity men. Eventually, all the big league teams came to hire not one but oftentimes several men doing publicity, digging up material for the sportswriters and announcers.

One of my early calls on a newspaper editor was a visit to the St. Louis Argus, a Negro publication. It embarrassed me that while the passes I gave the black editor were the same as those I gave to white editors, the Argus editor could use his passes only for the bleachers, since no blacks were allowed in the grandstand. This was a decade and a half before Jackie Robinson put on a Brooklyn Dodger uniform.

Shortly after Rickey hired me, he asked whether I could learn shorthand quickly—in one month. He suggested that I temporarily drop all other jobs, go to a commercial school, and learn enough shorthand so that I could travel with him. He wanted me to take care of his correspondence on the road and to help with the driving, which meant going to spring training and to many of the minor league cities in the Cardinal organization.

I learned shorthand, or at least enough to get by. Most of his correspondence on the road consisted of incoming and outgoing telegrams. So, while Cardinal publicity was my main job for four years, I spent a lot of days and nights during this time traveling with, living with, and becoming intimately acquainted with this complex man.

We talked baseball on these trips, lots of it. We talked about batting stances, pitching skills, how to break up the double steal, and the moral fiber needed by a young man to become an outstanding ballplayer. But Rickey was interested in more than baseball. He was interested in every subject under the sun. We also talked about world travel, history, politics, religion, education, science, bridge playing, and the sexual mores south of the border.

One day as we were driving somewhere, Rickey meditated out loud, “Today is my fiftieth birthday. I always thought I’d be out of baseball by now. I fully expected to get out of the game and go into the practice of law.” By then he was hooked, though. He probably realized he was making a lot more money in baseball than he might have made were he to switch occupations in middle age.

In 1932 the Depression hurt attendance, and furthermore the Cardinals were having a bad season on the field. Breadon was anxious to earn a few dollars any time there was an open date. He booked the House of David traveling team for a night game in Sportsman’s Park. What’s this? A night game in a major league park in 1932?

Yes. The House of David ball club had its own portable lighting equipment, which it carried around the country in trucks. This equipment consisted of floodlights that were mounted on top of telephone poles placed in foul territory, perhaps 30 feet away from first base and third base. The trucks had their own noisy generators. Illumination was far from perfect, but the Cardinals and the bewhiskered visitors staged a pretty fair exhibition game under the circumstances. Everybody had fun.

Still, the game had its sad side. The manager. of the House of David, and the only man on the club without long hair and a beard, was Grover Cleveland Alexander. This was the same fellow who had been a great Cardinal hero in the 1926 World Series. Alec’s strikeout of the Yankees’ Tony Lazzeri with the bases loaded in the seventh inning saved the final game for the Redbirds and gave them their first world championship.

A modest crowd saw their erstwhile hero pitch a couple of innings under the lights.

One of my publicity blurbs for this event said, “It is possible that regular major league games may be played at night next season.” I was a little premature in my speculation. Slightly over two years passed before Cincinnati played its first game under the lights, early in 1935.

Before the exhibition game, I met Alexander and took him to a radio station for an interview. Alec was a tragic figure. This great pitcher had won 373 games in his major league career, the same number as Christy Mathewson. When he enlisted in the army in the First World War, he had won 190 games over seven years for the Phillies, losing just 88, pitching them to a flag in 1915. The big guns in France deafened him in one ear, and by the time he was mustered out of service he was suffering from epilepsy. He began to drink heavily and did so for the rest of his life. It was downhill from then on, although he did have some good seasons, including that spectacular success in the 1926 World Series.

After his release by the Phillies in 1930, he was offered a job by the House of David. This meant barnstorming around the country, living in cheap hotels when the team wasn’t driving all night, or riding a broken-down bus in time to reach the next tank town.

Finally, Alec joined a flea circus on 42nd Street in New York City. On exhibition with the freaks, he talked baseball and answered questions about his magnificent past. Epilepsy, alcoholism, and finally cancer brought his life to an end in November 1950. During his final years, the Cardinals, through the National League, sent him a modest monthly sum to go along with his $60-a-month pension as a First World War veteran.

I’ve mentioned George Sisler and the grapefruit juice. I’ve told about Branch Rickey and the on-the-spot job offer. But I still haven’t said anything about the man I chased into the toilet, where I finally got him to agree to a radio interview. That man was Carl Hubbell, the famed screwball pitcher with the New York Giants. Hubbell was in his peak in those days. I tracked him down in the visiting clubhouse at Sportsman’s Park and stayed with him until he said yes, he’d make his radio debut on station KWK.

That was quite a coup for me, but there were other good radio interviews: Dizzy Dean, Frankie Frisch, Joe Medwick, Charlie Grimm, Jimmy Wilson, Rip Collins, Leo Durocher, Sam Breadon, Branch Rickey, and Larry MacPhail, to mention a few. Sometimes I did the interviewing, but mostly it was done by the station’s sports announcer.

I got a special kick out of my experience with Rogers Hornsby when I lined him up for a radio appearance in the winter of1932-33. Hornsby had been the great superstar of the Cardinals in the early 1920s. He had his clashes with Breadon and was traded to the Giants after leading the Cardinals to their first pennant in 1926. Later he managed the Boston Braves and the Chicago Cubs. Though he had made big money for years, he had lost most of it gambling. Broke and out of a job, he signed for the 1933 season as a player in the ranks. As soon as he signed, he borrowed money against his next season’s salary. He needed it to meet his current living expenses and to pay some of his debts.

I recalled the days when I was a kid in the Knothole Gang watching him hit right around .400 season after season. In my eyes he was a great hero; now this demigod with feet of clay was asking me what he should say over the radio. He had had his battles with Breadon and Rickey. But in this winter of 1932-33 he wanted to do whatever was needed to earn his modest salary. “I’ll say anything Mr. Rickey and you want me to say,” he told me.

This must have been one of the few times in his life when the great Rajah didn’t show his blunt, brutally frank, bigoted, and profane personality to everyone in sight.

Besides Sisler, Rickey, Hubbell, Dean, Frisch, Medwick, Alexander, and Hornsby, the subsequent years brought me into personal contact with a great many men who have been honored in the Baseball Hall of Fame, including players, owners, managers, umpires and sportscaster Red Barber.

Those days are long behind me. Calling them up has been lots of fun—almost as much fun as it was to live them . . . but not quite.

GENE KARST (1906-2004) was the first full-time publicity man for any major league club (the 1931-1934 St. Louis Cardinals). He was later with the Cincinnati Reds, Montreal of the International League, and Hollywood of the Pacific Coast League, then spent 27 years with the State Department, the Voice of America and the United States Information Agency. He is the principal author of “Who’s Who in Professional Baseball.”