Until I could picture him differently, I would just have to try to avoid thinking about him at all.
With some effort, I gradually prodded my thoughts away from the dead man.
And there were indeed more agreeable musings available to occupy me. For despite the disturbing start to my association with the Red Sox, I had every reason to look forward to what was ahead. Particularly to our immediate destinations: my first appearances in New York and Philadelphia as a major-league baseball player.
I grew up in Raritan, New Jersey. It was perfect for seeing major-league baseball, even though the state itself didn’t have a single team. In a journey of less than two hours I could reach the home grounds of any one of five big league clubs: the Giants in upper Manhattan, the Highlanders—or Yankees as some papers called them—in the Bronx, the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the Phillies and Athletics in Philadelphia.
I was raised by my aunt and uncle. Uncle Matt ran a general store in town and taught me baseball. And he gave those tasks about equal priority. My earliest memories are of playing catch with him in the backyard.
My uncle took me to major-league games whenever he could, usually to the Athletics’ Columbia Park, where I could cheer for my favorite player: Rube Waddell, a hard-throwing eccentric pitcher who spent his off-time wrestling alligators and chasing fire engines.
As I was growing up, I worked hard to polish the baseball skills I had and learn the ones I didn’t have. I rarely attended school, finding it useful only for rounding up enough other boys to play a full-scale ball game. I tried to get into every baseball game that the boys would organize, though I dreaded the choosing-up-sides ritual. Not once was I the first boy picked. I was smaller than most of the other kids, and despite all my practice, there was always one boy who could throw harder than I could, another who could run faster, and many more who could hit the ball farther. But I was usually the best fielder and best place hitter, so I was never the last picked either.
When I was fourteen, my aunt died after a brief illness. Uncle Matt didn’t feel like playing catch or doing anything else anymore. With my aunt gone, my uncle totally withdrawn, and school holding no interest for me, I was on my own.
I always knew that my career would be in baseball. I also knew that I would never be a star. But I figured I could have a pretty good career as a journeyman ball player and then go on to coaching and maybe managing.
The first teams that paid me to play were factory teams. Many companies would give jobs to men or boys who could play on the firms’ baseball teams. I worked and played for a variety of industries across the Northeast, including a snuff factory in New Jersey and a shipyard in Connecticut. I once took a job with a cotton mill in Rhode Island, but quit after just three days. Most of my coworkers in the mill were children, as young as ten. They labored sixty hours a week for forty cents a day, breathing air that was foggy with lint. I was getting twelve dollars a week to play baseball. My conscience couldn’t reconcile itself with the unfairness, so I left. I knew my departure didn’t help those kids any, but I liked to think that it hurt their employer by weakening the company team.
During those semipro years, I sharpened my playing skills, learned to get along with different kinds of people, and picked up the rudiments of a dozen industrial trades. My only book-learning came from what I read while killing time in railroad depots: dime novels, The Police Gazette, and The Sporting News.
I made it to the minors a year ago, and played most of the season with Providence until the Braves bought my contract. To my delight, old hurler Cy Young was on the team, playing his last season after more than twenty years and five hundred victories. The highlight of my stint with the Braves was that someday I could tell my grandchildren that I had been a teammate of Cy Young.
I had always assumed that once I made it to the majors, I would stay there. It didn’t occur to me that I could head down the system as well as up, and I was devastated when the Braves released me after the season. At age nineteen, I thought my career was over.
But now the Red Sox were giving me another shot at the big leagues, and I intended to make the most of it.
A sharp cough snapped my mind to attention. I looked up to see the stadium attendant I met yesterday standing next to my seat. He wore a navy suit almost identical to his uniform, with a red polka dot bow tie protruding from a high tight collar. I was startled to see him on the train—surely the Highlanders and Athletics had ushers for their own ballparks.
“I don’t believe I ever introduced myself,” he said, extending his hand. “My name is Jimmy Macullar.” I took his grip. “Mind if I sit down?” I shook my head, and he gently settled into the seat next to me.
In a low voice Macullar said, “I was feeling badly about yesterday.” The bumping train caused his words to rattle softly through his teeth. “It’s a terrible thing that happened. You must have been very shaken up.” He looked at me sympathetically as I murmured agreement. Considering my embarrassing physical reaction to the situation, I thought him gracious in understating my condition as “shaken up.”
“One way or another, I’ve been in baseball more than forty years,” he said. “I don’t go back quite as far as Abner Doubleday, but I’ve seen just about everything in the game since then. I want you to know that I’ve never been as excited about any team as I am about the 1912 Red Sox. Even before the season started, it seemed like everything was coming together for us. We already had the players, and now the new owners have taken care of everything else.
“Stop me if you like, but I thought you might want to know something about the ball club.” I didn’t stop him, so he went on. “A new group of owners bought the team last year. Some of them had been players, some managers—all of them have a solid baseball background. They know the game on every level.
“You met Bob Tyler. He’s the treasurer and general manager—handles all the day-to-day business decisions. I’m his assistant and sometimes I help out at the gate or do odd jobs. Mr. Tyler used to work for Ban Johnson—”
“Really?” I interrupted. I couldn’t picture Tyler working for anyone but himself—although if anyone could order Tyler around, it would be the American League president. “What did he do?”
“Mr. Tyler was the league secretary for six years. He knows more about league affairs than anyone but Ban Johnson himself.
“Jake Stahl is quite a man, too,” Macullar said. “I think you’ll like him. He owns about ten percent of the club. Player, manager, and owner all at the same time. It’s a lot of responsibility, but he handles it well.
“Anyway, what I wanted to say is that we have the ideal owners for a baseball club. They know the game from the playing field to the league president’s office. The first thing they did was move us out of the Huntington Avenue Grounds, and put up Fenway Park. Beautiful ballpark isn’t it?”
I shook my head up and down in unrestrained agreement.
“Opening Day at Fenway was a grand time—the game was postponed three days by rain, but that just made it more exciting when we did get it in. Mayor Fitzgerald and his Royal Rooters were there in force. They kept singing “Tessie” over and over—that was our fight song in ought-three when we won the first World Series.
“Anyway, we beat the Highlanders 7–6 in extra innings opening day. I took it as a good sign for the season. It seems like the whole city is excited by the team. Of course, with Honey Fitz our biggest fan, everyone is eager to get behind us.” I deduced that Honey Fitz was the mayor of Boston.
“Well, I’ve talked too much,” Macullar concluded. “Mr. Tyler asked me to bring you to his car, but I wanted to take a few minutes to let you know that this is a very special team, and you have a lot to look forward to.” He smiled confidently. “We’re going