I invented the leather baseball glove.
I taught Ulysses Grant to throw a curveball at Fort Sumter in 1861.
I broke into the National League with the Brooklyn Bridegrooms. Back
in those days we traveled a lot, and we got a nickel a day for meal
money. We used to whittle our own bats in the wagon. There were plenty
of trees. We used maple saplings, before ash came into fashion. One
time on a road trip I saw a ten-foot sturgeon in the Susquehanna! The
rivers weren't over-fished in those days. In the off-season I worked
as a trapper and a mule skinner.
I only batted .235 but it was rougher in those days. The pitcher's
mound was 30 feet, three inches from the plate. Of course all the
pitchers used to spit tobacco juice on the ball to make it harder to
see. It was four strikes to make an out, but you needed ten balls for
a base on balls! Also you could catch a foul ball on the bounce. If
you were hit by a pitch, it was considered a strike. Games would last
for days. Sometimes a game would be interrupted when a flock of
passenger pigeons flew over the park and blocked out the sun. Fellows
would slide with their spikes up, so the infielders used shinguards
made of birch bark. We wore burlap pants because they were better for
sliding. Talcum powder hadn't been invented, so we used moustache wax
instead. Boy that was uncomfortable! We didn't mind though. We were
just happy to have the opportunity to play ball.
We were chasing the Boston Bean Eaters for the NL pennant, and we were
two games behind with a big doubleheader scheduled, when war with the
kaiser broke out! Of course we all enlisted right away. Once the war
was over, we came back to find the women had taken our place! Well so
much for the dead ball era.
The next year we were in the World's Series against the Athletics. We
knocked Connie Mack out of the game, and they brought in the Injun Jim
Thorpe. Well he was pretty wild, and he beaned me. I woke up several
months later, with four wooden screws in my head!
