Big-League
Batboy
A noted historian remembers his youth at
Ebbets Field
By Harold Seymour, Ph. D.
"Wanna mind the bats for Cincinnati today?"
The voice was that of Babe Hamburger, a Brooklyn clubhouse
attendant,
who had just passed me with his hands full of food one Sunday afternoon
about 1925 as I was standing near the Ebbets Field pass gate on Cedar
Place.
Did I! Surprised the somewhat apprehensive
but too
eager to refuse, I immediately said "Sure!" Before I had a chance to
get nervous I found myself in the midst of a crowd of Reds players
inside the small, crowded visitors’ clubhouse under the
stands in
the extreme right-field corner of the ballpark.
Although I had never been in the clubhouse
before, I
was not entirely unfamiliar with Ebbets Field. I lived only a couple of
blocks away, and, like other Brooklyn boys, knew many ways of getting
in free, some legitimate, some not. Fifty-five cents for a bleacher
seat and $1.10 for the grandstand were too steep for many boys or their
parents. But we had ways of seeing a game: Sometimes we slipped into
the park in the morning and hid patiently until fans started filling
the seats and it seemed safe to show ourselves; sometimes we pried up
an unused metal gate operated on chains, put a few bricks under it to
hold it up, and squirmed underneath; sometimes we just darted past the
special cop when the gate opened in the eighth or ninth inning, knowing
he could not give chase with all the others flooding in.
There were other ways to get in, too. We
could stand
near the pass gate, as I was doing that memorable Sunday, and ask,
"Extra pass, mister?" Quite frequently I was taken in on a
politician’s extra season pass when his field failed to show
up.
One time I watched the game from a reserved seat back of the Brooklyn
dugout as a "guest" of Mrs. Burleigh Grimes, wife of
Brooklyn’s
star spitballer, and her friend. They talked with each other all during
the game and, thankfully, ignored me. One spring I watched a three-game
preseason exhibition series with the Yankees on passes and saw Babe
Ruth for the first time. In one of those games Ruth’s
hard-hit
line drive off the right-field wall ricocheted so fast that he got only
a single. He left the games early, and during one of them he was making
his way, all dolled up, toward an exit. As he came along I saw him from
a ramp above. I leaned over the railing and hollered down,
"What’s the matter, Babe, afraid of our Brooklyn pitchers?"
Ruth
looked up at me but made no reply, probably thinking, "Just another
fresh Brooklyn kid."
We could even work to get in, picking up
papers in the
stands before the park opened to earn bleacher passes. These were
handwritten on strips of pink paper and handed out by one of the
owners, Steve McKeever, as he sat on a camp chair holding his
gold-handled blackthorn. We could also turn a stile for fifty cents and
get a seat in the grandstand around the fifth inning, depending on the
size of the crowd. We might even work up on the old-fashioned
scoreboard in left field by pulling ropes weighted with bricks to post
numbers while watching the game through one of the slots.
I had seen games in all these ways and
performed all
these jobs, but the job of jobs, so remote that I never dreamed of it,
was that of bat boy. The Sunday I was selected there was no time for
second thoughts. The visiting clubhouse boy, an older fellow of 17 or
18 named Danny, put me to work at once.
A BALL A DAY
I made my debut with the worst possible
team from the
point of view of a bat boy. The Reds carried about 90 bats on their
road trips (including Ed Roush’s, the heaviest in the
league),
about twice the number other teams brought. Every bat meant work. The
loaded bat bags had to be pushed on a hand truck along a dirt runway
under the stands all the way from the clubhouse in deep right field,
past the entrance steps up to the Brooklyn dugout, and on around to the
third-base side. Because the last 50 yards or so of the runway were too
narrow for the hand truck, Danny piled bats across my outstretched arms
and I had to make seven or eight trips lugging a dozen or so heavy bats
each time through a narrow tunnel, staggering up the wooden steps and
dumping them in front of the dugout. There was other equipment to
carry, too: catcher’s gear, ball bag, pails, and towels. This
sweaty job had to be repeated in reverse after the game.
After delivering everything I had to
spread out all the
bats in a neat, straight row on the ground in front of the dugout;
there was no bat rack in those days. Sometimes I had to run to the
clubhouse to deliver a message or get something a player wanted.
Occasionally I had to hustle outside the park for Star Chewing Tobacco;
that wasn't too bad unless the game was about to start.
Once the game began, when "my" team came
to bat I had
to be ready to run up to retrieve the bat discarded by each hitter,
return it quickly to its place, and get back in position kneeling next
to the on-deck hitter. I especially tried to anticipate a possible play
at the plate and make sure the hitter’s dropped bat was out
of
the way.
I managed to get through the first day and
apparently
did all right because I was told, "Come back tomorrow." I stayed on for
three exciting summers, two working for visiting clubs and the third as
bat boy for the Dodgers. I practically lived at the ballpark, and my
mother told me wryly that I should take my bed over there.
I had no uniform except my own baseball
cap, and I got
no pay except for a baseball after each game. The first day I didn't
even get that, being so green I didn't know I was supposed to. But the
following day one of the more kindly players asked, "Did you get your
ball yesterday, son?" When I said, "No," he didn't reply, but next day
I received a ball, and I got one after each game thereafter. Danny
didn't try to hold out on me again. Twice I took home cracked bats, one
from Cubs third baseman Howard Freigau and the other from Jake Flowers,
a slightly built infielder who used a light stick especially suited to
me. Tacked up and taped, they were better than store-bought bats
because they had better wood in them.
A SPOT OF
M’K’KM
Were all these jobs child labor and
exploitation?
Certainly, but none of us thought so at the time. My bat boy job in
particular provided many compensations. There were frequent
opportunities to grab a glove and horn in on a pepper game with the
players. Once in my third summer I actually warmed up a rookie pitcher
brought up "for a look." Another time I filled in for Watson Clark, a
Brooklyn lefthander, when he was called away while hitting grounders to
Harvey Hendrick, who was loosening up at third base during batting
practice after being out with an injury. Clark looked skeptical when I
offered to take his place, but because he was anxious to get away and
no player was available, he entrusted me with the fungo bat and ball. I
hit my hardest and sharpest grounders at Hendrick and was a little
nettled at the ease with which he came up with my best efforts. Jake
Daubert, who had once starred at first base for Brooklyn, showed me the
proper care of my own first baseman’s mitt: oil the pocket,
then
dust with the resin bag.
I also became a bit of a neighborhood
celebrity. In the
evenings, youngsters would gather around to ask questions about the big
leaguers or to say they had seen me on the field. Besides that, by
listening to baseball talk and asking questions I picked up knowledge
of "inside baseball" helpful in my own playing and in running the teams
I organized and coached.
More important, as I realized fully only
later, was
daily association with grown men of various types and backgrounds and
from different parts of the country talking in strange non-Brooklyn
accents. I particularly remember Hughie Critz (rhymes with kites), a
flashy Cincinnati second baseman with a thick Mississippi accent. One
day he told me to get some "m’k’km" from the
Brooklyn
clubhouse. Not understanding, I said, "Some what?" and listened more
closely. He repeated it. I still didn't understand, but not wishing to
appear stupid, I tried to remember the sounds he had made and rushed
down to tell Dan Comerford, the major domo of the Brooklyn clubhouse,
that "Critz wants some m’k’km." Comerford said,
"Mercurochrome," and went looking for it, muttering his usual stream of
expletives about Critz and Mercurochrome. I had never heard of the
stuff, but at least Comerford pronounced it in classic Brooklyn
English, much to my relief. I later learned that the concoction wasn't
much good anyway.
NO CROSSED
BATS
Seeing other players so vividly close up,
I grew to
respect, more than I could have from the grandstand, the skill and guts
these men required to face the daily demands upon them. Watching from
only about 15 feet away I could better appreciate the courage it took
for a batter to go up against a blazing fastball and a sharp-breaking
curve—or, worse yet, a duster; the intensity of a runner
rounding
third, straining to score, his desperate slide, the tension of the
catcher, who, flinging his mask off, had braced himself for the throw;
the alertness of the umpire in position to call the play (the cloud of
dust, the runner getting up, one leg of his pants pushed above his
knee, dusting himself off); the exhaustion of a pitcher having to bear
down on every pitch in a close ball game on a hot day, sprawled on the
bench between innings, soaked with sweat, two players fanning him by
snapping towels, and he exhorting his teammates, "Get me some runs,
goddammit!"
Relief and pride often follow victory over
pressure.
With the bases full, two out, and the count three and two, the veteran
southpaw Eppa Rixey crossed up the batter with a sweeping curveball and
left him standing with the bat on his shoulder. "I sure broke off that
sonuvabitch," exulted Rixey with a big grin as he triumphantly neared
the bench.
At times fierce competition could cause
angry outbursts
or even fights among teammates. Once the Cardinals’ Bill
Sherdel,
a lefty and master of the slow ball, was pitching well and leading in a
tight game when the left fielder and shortstop messed up a Texas
leaguer that should have been an easy out. Some base hits followed this
bad break, runs scored, and Sherdel was removed from the box. He was
furious. Stalking into the St. Louis dugout he sputtered, "I know that
ball would be f---ed up!" drew a glass of water (there were no
fountains then), took a sip, then flung the glass against the wall of
the dugout, smashing it to pieces. Another time during pre-game
practice there was a commotion at the far end of the bench when one
player insulted another with an ethnic slur. Cincinnati infielders Babe
Pinelli and Sammy Bohne were punching and pummeling each other while
corpulent Jack Hendricks, the team’s manager, fluttered over
the
two players, pleading, "Stop it, boys, stop it--right out here in front
of the public!" while other players quickly gathered in front to
conceal the fight.
I soon learned that, like other people,
many players
harbored individual and collective superstitions. The handles of bats
must never be crossed, for example, because it makes the bats impotent.
Once, going into the last of the ninth with my team holding a big lead
and the game sewn up, thinking to demonstrate my foresight and
enterprise, I began gathering up the bats. Immediately there were loud
cries, interspersed with curses, to "Let the bats alone!" Regardless of
how big the lead and how sure the victory seemed, for fear of jinxing
the team the bats must not be packed until after the final out. Still
another time, having left the bench very briefly on some errand, I came
back to find the bats scattered every which way all over the ground in
front of the dugout. I had to rearrange them laboriously. Later I
learned the reason: to help the team break out of its batting slump,
the players had "shaken up" the bats!
Every team had its bench jockeys, and some
were masters
of the art. Although some "riding" was vicious, much was mind, even
good-natured. (A call to a batter who was nearing the end of an
outstanding career: "Base-on-balls and bunt man!") In one game I
recall, the St. Louis bench got on the umpire very hard. He finally
decided he’d had enough, whipped off his mask, turned toward
the
bench, waved his arm and shouted, "Get out of there, Stuart!" only to
be greeted with roars of laughter and shouts of "He’s not
here!"
Johnny Stuart, a pitcher, was out in the bullpen.
WITH THE HOME
TEAM
After two summers as bat boy for all
visiting teams
except the Giants, who brought their own in full uniform, I was
promoted, if that’s the word, the manager Wilbert
Robinson’s colorful incompetents. By then I had already
become
bilingual--English and profanity—but contact with Dan
Comerford,
the Brooklyn Clubhouse boss, who only occasionally lapsed into standard
English, provided me a graduate course in my second language.
As for manager Robinson—Uncle
Robbie, as he was
called—he was often dismissed as an eccentric and even
clownish
manager, but he knew baseball and how to coax the most out of his men,
a few of whom had been outstanding players—on other
teams—and were now enjoying their last cups of coffee before
entering the pipe-and-slippers league. Some were simply journeymen
players.
Although he usually had a few good
pitchers like Dazzy
Vance and Jesse Petty and a first-rate hitter, Babe Herman, Robbie had
his hands full trying to put together a winning team. Once during a
team batting slump Robbie decided to revise his batting order. "The
trouble is," he told coach Mooney Miller, "nobody is on base when the
Babe hits one." After juggling names around in various combinations,
Robbie gave up in disgust. "No matter where I put these guys," he
grumbled, "they’re still outs."
At one point, with the pitching staff in
disarray,
Miller asked, "Who’s in the bullpen today, Robbie?" Robinson
growled, "Bullpen my ass! I don’t even have a starter!" With
that, Buzz McWeeney, an in-and-out righthander who had been knocked out
of the box in several previous starts, rose from the bench and,
squaring his shoulders, marched up to his manager and announced,
"I’ll go in there today, Robbie, and stop the sons of
bitches!"
Robbie looked up, briefly registered scorn, which quickly faded into
pity, and said, "For God’s sake, Buzz, sit down."
Robbie was superstitious. When things went
wrong, he
would invariably declare, "We can’t win in this goddamn park.
It’s a jinx." Near the end of the summer he left word that I
was
not to sit on the bench during games because I was jinxing the team.
When Jumbo Jim Elliott heard of this he shook his head and said to me,
"My God, Robbie’s getting more childish every day."
A RICH
EXPERIENCE
With the passing years my bat boy stint
became more
significant to me, because like the outstanding historian Samuel Eliot
Morison, I was fortunate in being able to combine my lifelong interest
(his in sailing, mine in baseball) with research and writing. Thus the
bat boy job fit in with my other baseball experience as high school and
college player; organizer, manager, and coach of sandlot and semi pro
teams; umpire; unofficial scout for two major-league clubs; and
participant in two minor-league training camps. All pointed me to
writing, at Cornell University, the first doctoral dissertation ever
written on baseball, which was later revised and expanded into the
first volume of my history of baseball.
Furthermore, I agree with Morison that the
richer the
historian’s experience outside the field of history, the
better.
Too many teachers and professors do not venture from their musty
libraries and studies into the real world of people and work. I have
accumulated experience in business as a marine contractor on the tough
New York waterfront, as a teacher on all levels from junior high school
through graduate school, as a union member, as executive and
administrator, and as traveler and resident abroad. None of this
experience remains more unforgettable than my youthful days with the
major leaguers at Ebbets Field.
Source:
Sports Heritage (Spring 1988 Issue).
