The Christy Walsh memoir concludes
This series began at: https://goo.gl/V8EYft and continues from: https://goo.gl/vPwnF2.
$13,252 Financial Tops for the World’s Series Ghosting
The World’s Series of 1927 and 1928 found the ghosting industry reaching its peak. In both years, hundreds of thousands of words went over the telegraph wires, under the by-lines of ten famous stars, all bearing our copyright notice. Lou Gehrig crashed to fame in 1927 with 47 home runs and also was the brightest new name in either World’s Series line-up when the Yankees pummeled Bush’s Pirates in four straight games.
Hans Wagner covered the series again in 1927, but his second appearance in the ghost brigade lacked the glamour and spontaneity of a first series and as in Walter Johnson’s second attempt, the sale on Wagner took a drop.
The best time to sell a baseball serial used to be during the winter months, called the Hot Stove season, when the players are heading for the southern training camps and before the box scores of daily games start eating up white space. But the sensational rise of Gehrig in the summer of 1927 found the newsreels, rotogravures and sport pages playing him in №1 position, so there was a ready market at boom prices, for the autobiography of this clean-living, level-headed son of a poor New York family, who was destined to be the “Iron Man” of baseball. His story “From Sandlot to Stadium” ran during August and September and he kept in close communion with his literary ghost, right through the World’s Series against the Pirates.
By 1928, Bill McKechnie was heading the Cardinals at St. Louis, scene of Babe Ruth’s historic three home runs in one game and his sensational one-handed catch in the final, hectic contest. McKechnie continued his ghosting activities and the names of Grover Alexander and Wilbert Robinson were added. Alex was a willing collaborator but no longer the sensation of his great pitching days and the newspapers did not respond, as we expected. Before I went to the Olympic Games in Holland, with Knute Rockne, July 1928, Brooklyn was making a desperate drive for the pennant. It would be settled before I returned and to protect the syndicate and our newspapers, I signed the Dodger manager before my departure. Robbie demanded a guarantee of $1,000, win or lose, and I was obliged to meet his terms. St. Louis eventually won the pennant and we did not sell enough of Robbie’s stuff to meet his guarantee, absorbing a deficit of $540, the only loss in 16 title clashes.
Our series writers dropped to seven in 1929, but the gross sales soared to heights never reached before or after, $43,252 for five games. After many years in the second division, the perennial Connie Mack finally produced a winner at Philadelphia and Joe McCarthy whipped the Chicago Cubs into a winning finish at Wrigley Field. This was the series in which corpulent Hack Wilson muffed a fly ball in the center field sun and the Athletics whaled out ten runs in a single inning, to crush the Cubs. Jimmy Isaminger, whose star of loyalty has been hitched to the Athletics almost since the turn of the century, helped Connie Mack write his articles and did a job that put him in a bracket with Bozeman Bulger. The excellence of his copy and the popularity of the veteran Mack created a market for articles by him through the two seasons that followed and a spontaneous demand for his life story — “My 50 Years in Baseball,” which Isaminger prepared for Hot Stove publication, during early 1930. Warren Brown, sport writer, toastmaster and radio’s finest baseball reporter, worked with Manager Joe McCarthy and turned out intelligent, authentic copy.
Coming under the heading of “What every fan knows,” the Cubs gave McCarthy the air, after winning a hard-fought pennant, but he was quickly employed by the New York Yankees, with whom he has become the premier major league manager of the day.
Gabby Street, then heading the Cardinals, received his syndicate baptism in 1930, repeated in 1931 and was followed by Charley Grimm, boss of the Cubs in 1932, with Warren Brown ghosting. Joe McCarthy, now leading the Yankees, summoned his Chicago Boswell, Warren Brown, to write his World’s Series copy again in 1932 and the following year found the Giant-Washington feud renewed, with Managers Cronin and Terry deep in collaboration with their respective ghosts.
Cheers for Dean in New York, as Giants Lost, Put Diz on Roll
Three great headliners came into the syndicate camp at this juncture; Mickey Cochrane, Detroit’s heroic skipper, teamed up with sport writer Bud Shaver in 1934 and 1935 and they produced reading matter that had the stamp of intimate collaboration and sparkling feature value. Frankie Frisch, native New York protégé of John McGraw and originally billed as the “Fordham Flash,” was heading the Gas House Gang in 1934 and covered the riotous St. Louis series against the Tigers. The third stellar name was Dizzy Dean, incomparable, loquacious, much misunderstood and in spite of setbacks, for my money still the most colorful personality in Organized Ball.
I was not particularly hot to sign old Diz, as I sat in the Polo Grounds, on the last Sunday of the 1934 season. But as the Giants battled Brooklyn for their baseball life and the scoreboard showed Dizzy Dean catapulting his teammates to a pennant, a thousand miles away, I beheld the paradoxical sight of New York fandom roaring encouragement to the unseen enemy and there was nothing to do but sign Diz.
Considering the short, 48-hours sales campaign, the response from the papers was unparalleled and the sales on Dizzy Dean went sky high. Copy under Dean’s signature was every bit as eccentric, amusing and intriguing as the verbal wisecracks of this talkative pitcher. But to Roy Stockton, newspaper and magazine writer of St. Louis, goes all the glory of the Dizzy Dean literary product. Jerome, as he was christened, provided the spark, but Stockton reduced the charm of an egotistical vocabulary to printers’ ink, with consummate skill and in certain respects, turned out the best World’s Series copy ever syndicated.
Schoolboy Rowe of Detroit was a potential sensation for World’s Series ghosting, but the breaks went against him in his premier showing and the syndicate sales fell below par.
Of all the life stories which I have handled, in many ways, the most fascinating was written three years ago and has never yet felt the friendly touch of the printers’ ink — for tucked away in mothballs, possibly for future publication, the life story of Frank Frisch reposes in the dust of a syndicate shelf. The colorful Bronx flash tells the Merriwell story of his baseball and football career at college, the secrets that he learned in his rookie days with McGraw; the anecdotes of his years as player and manager with the boisterous, battling Cardinals and many intimate highlights, as ghosted by Sid Mercer, veteran New York writer. The Hot Stove syndicate market in 1935 was in depression and despite a timely punch in the Frisch biography, it was not published and still awaits a better setting. A ghost is worthy of his hire and Mr. Mercer collected his well-earned fee, but the Fordham Flash and the syndicate remain unpaid.
Four Writers in Walsh “Box Score” Who Received $10,000 Include Frick
The box score of my thrilling, 16-season “game” shows over 34 newspaper writers collecting more than $100,000 for their ghosting, with Bulger, Frick, O’Hara and Isaminger each in the $10,000 division. The biggest take was in 1929, with collections beyond $43,000; the smallest sales, excepting 1921 (the syndicate’s kindergarten year), were below $5,000, in 1936. The highest individual average, over the entire period, was Babe Ruth, but the best sale for a single World’s Series was $9,602.50 on Connie Mack, in 1929. The smallest sale, except Wilbert Robinson’s loss in 1928, was $326 on Hornsby in 1922 and yet four years later Rajah shot up to $7,000. Ruth always personally present, covered 15 consecutive series; McGraw 12, Altrock 11. Our ghost-written material, including life stories, World’s Series coverage and season service (26 weeks per season) from 1921 to 1937, would fill 5,641 solid newspaper pages — a 16-year publicity campaign which would have cost Organized Baseball nearly $3,000,000 at advertising rates. The net result to this ex-cartoonist has been an opportunity to study human nature; make friends in 48 states and earn respect and confidence — but not always popularity — at every point of contact.
The box score would be incomplete without the name of Damon Runyon. His ghost-writing for me was inconsequential and did not have to do with baseball, but his pat-on-the-back, when needed most, reserves a special spot for him in the “assist” column. In that first, exciting World’s Series, green, inexperienced, enthusiastic, hopeful but scared — Runyon gave me a break. He was already on top of the sport-writing world. He spoke to me in a friendly way. He mentioned my name in his column. He gave the “sign” to his fellow scribes. Behind the solemn mask of his Broadway nonchalance, Runyon had not forgotten his own freshman days in the big city, when a feller needs a friend. Runyon’s attitude is typical of the majority of newspaper writers — glad to boost a beginner.
SUMMARY — So far as the World’s Series and baseball is concerned, the game is over but the melody of memory lingers on. It was great, all of it — and the best lessons came from “socks” and set-backs. I don’t know just when ghost-writing began, because Hendrik Willem Van Loon couldn’t tell me and he is final authority on any subject. Ghost-writing is fascinating because there’s a little bit of ghosty in the most of us; a little imagination, a little exaggeration. For a dozen years I traveled over 25,000 miles annually, selling the products of the ghosts; I never knew the meaning of a 12-hour day and have often closed contract with newspapers in three cities, in a single day, example: Milwaukee, Chicago and Detroit. But the wanderlust is gone forever and the baseball ghosts will haunt no more.
As this film of reminiscence fades out, scenes of youthful enthusiasm, lucky breaks and lasting friendships flash across the screen and each sequence dissolves rapidly into a single panorama, including … Joe Bihler, 15 years my loyal, efficient associate; 14 years with Pop Warner, unsurpassed for his appreciation and co-operation; seven year handling affairs for Knute Rockne; the birth of the All-America Board of Football; the secret “ghost” in Hendrik Van Loon’s literary life; persuading Alonzo Stagg to write for newspapers, contrary to his lifelong policy; handing Ty Cobb $10,000 for the story of his baseball career; putting Lou Gehrig in motion pictures; talking like a Dutch uncle to Dizzy Dean and in eight years, saving and establishing a quarter-million dollar, irrevocable trust fund, for George Herman Ruth — but all that is another story. This story is … Adios to Ghosts!
P.S. — The author guarantees that this book (unfortunately) was not ghost-written.
Adios to Ghosts, Part 5 was originally published in Our Game on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.