Including a new Victory Faust story; from Fred Lieb in The Literary Digest, April 9, 1921
Training-time in Dixie looks pretty soft to the brethren of the Hot Stove League, but to the rookies just breaking into “big time” and to the veterans whose names are household words wherever base ball is the chief topic of conversation it is often also a season of anxiety. Who knows what disappointments and broken hopes the end of the training trip will disclose?
As a rule, however, the players have plenty of fun, and the newspaper reporters who travel with the gang learn a lot they wouldn’t learn sitting at a desk and trying to think of something new to interest their readers. To the young player who has, perhaps, just come out of the “sticks” and has never before been beyond walking distance of home and mother, it is an excursion of some importance. He looks upon training-camps under the sunny skies of Texas or Florida as a vacation or a joyful lark, but to the veteran of a dozen seasons spring training is part of the routine, and sometimes a trifle monotonous.
All the novelty has worn off, writes Fred G. Lieb, baseball editor of the New York Telegram, in Baseball [Magazine], and the trip means a period of sore muscles, hard, steady work to get off those ten pounds added on during the winter months, one-night jumps to the small towns of the cotton-belt, and hot nights spent in stuffy Pullmans. Yet, when all things are considered, much worse could happen to the adult male whose blood tingles his finger-tips than to be sentenced for about a month to Miami, Fla., San Antonio, Texas, or New Orleans, La. A month in jail, for instance, would be less enjoyable. The work is hard and plentiful, but there is time for play, and, continues the writer [i.e. Lieb]:
Seldom is there a training-camp which is not full of humorous incidents. There is no better place to study human nature, and what often is comedy to the onlooker is grim tragedy in the heart of some rookie, who is having all the hopes of years dashed away. Yet the horseplay and crude humor of the training-camp have their uses; they take attention from the grind of daily training and keep the players contented and in a good humor.
Many of the rookies are as funny as a motion-picture comedy, especially some of the real green ones picked up from obscure minor-league towns or plucked from a trolley league circuit. Nearly all of them wear caps, and their clothing was purchased in Hick’s Corners. Yet many of them have developed into real stars, and in a few years could pose as models for a clothing-house. I recall one youngster who reported with one of the New York teams some half-dozen years ago in an outfit that belonged on the vaudeville stage. He wore a light summer suit of loud design, no overcoat, and a green cap pulled down over his ears. But there was a lot of baseball under that green cap; his talent wasn’t all from the neck down. Success became him well, and to day there isn’t a better dresser in the league.
The fresh rookie, the one you read about in the fiction magazines, is the exception. Occasionally, you will get a real fresh one, like Walter Rehg, formerly of the Pirates, or Bill Percy, tried out several times by the Yankees, but the majority of baseball recruits are modest, unassuming boys. Usually they mind their own business, which is trying to make good with a big league team, and ask to be let alone. Their first days at a camp are amusing, as they feel around for the lie of the land. They don’t know whether to put on their party manners or go right in and mix it up with the other boys.
Many of them get terribly homesick after a few weeks’ training, especially those with no minor-league experience, who never have been more than a dozen miles from their place of birth. And the feeling that they are not showing anything always brings on the symptoms, especially after an arm gets sore.
There was a young chap with the Yankees in Jacksonville last spring who probably deserved the championship as the most homesick rookie. He was a pitcher on the team’s roster, but an undeveloped boy over six feet tall, who didn’t weigh much more than 135 pounds. After three days at the camp the youngster tried to show Huggins why a Yankee scout had plucked him out of the wilds of Manitoba, with the result that he had a pain like a toothache in his arm for the remainder of the trip. The lad’s spirits sagged each day, and the only time his face lighted up was when he got a railroad-ticket back home.
The youngsters eagerly scan the papers which drift into the camps to see what kind of “write-ups” they are getting, and it is with much joy that they send the clippings back home. Often the young player will make a confidant of some experienced reporter and tell him all about his hopes and ambitions, and then try to pump him on what chances he has to stick with the major-league club he is training with.
However, some look on the newspaper fraternity with considerable suspicion and distrust. And others object to “write-ups,” especially if they are treated in a facetious way. Several years ago the Giants took a young semiprofessional to Marlin by the name of Mike. It is just as well to leave off the rest of his name. Mike wasn’t reared in a drawing-room, and brought fame on himself by eating soft-boiled eggs with a knife.
One of the Giant correspondents sent a note to his paper: “If Mike doesn’t make good with the Giants as a pitcher, he need not worry. He should do very well as a sword-swallower; in fact, he rehearses his act every day.”
Mike got hold of the item and was up in the air about it. “What does that guy mean by calling me a sword-swallower? Does he think I want to work in a museum? I got a good trade as a machinist, and I got a mind to quit this bunch right now and go back to it.”
And once in a while there is a rookie who really can’t stand the gaff. Such a one was Walter C — , who several years ago was with the Yankees at their training camp at Savannah. From the start he was a man of mystery. He never associated with anyone in the camp, either among the youngsters, veterans, or correspondents, and one night he went out as “freight” and never came back. To the others it was a funny episode, but to C — his failure to make good may have meant a lifelong tragedy. Some of the men like publicity and are regular gluttons over it.
Cy Pieh never objected to it, even tho he was held up to ridicule. He was more or less a buffoon, says the writer, and usually was the butt for all kinds of jokes. One time his wife wrote to him in Macon, Ga.: “Stop making such a fool of yourself; everybody thinks I married a dunce.” And Cy exhibited the letter. However, there was one time when Cy strode into the sunlight and was the envy of all his team-mates.
Says the writer:
The Yanks were playing the Dodgers a spring series at the training-camp of the latter at Daytona, Fla. One of the Senators from North Dakota, whose farm adjoined the one where Pieh was raised, was a winter resident at Daytona and made much of his fellow Dakotan. Cy was the guest of the Senator at dinner, and was brought to the ball-grounds in the Senator’s big car.
The Senator requested Bill Donovan to pitch Pieh, and Bill, always congenial, complied with the request. Caldwell pitched the first four innings for New York, and when Pieh was sent in to pitch in the fifth, the Dodgers led, 2 to 1. Evidently nervous over the Senator’s presence, Cy made a wabbly start, as he filled the bases by walking three men in succession. Donovan was just about to yank him, when Pieh struck out the next two and retired the side without a run. The Yanks soon tied the score, and Pieh pitched about the best ball he ever showed with the New York team. He struck out Brooklyn sluggers almost as fast as they came up, and in six innings the Dodgers made only two hits.
The game still was tied when, with two out in the tenth, the Yankees made a rally and put men on third and second. It was Pieh’s turn at bat, and he was a woful [sic] hitter. The Brooklyn pitcher soon got two strikes on him, when he threw a wide one. Pieh ducked, and as he did so the ball accidentally struck his bat. One of those freaks hits followed, the ball getting between Daubert and Cutshaw for a single, and the winning run came in from third.
The Senator came out of his box and congratulated Cy on his great work. But the last straw fell when Cy said to his host: “Did you see how I placed that one between the first and second basemen?”
Of course, you will find “nuts” as a training-camp as at anywhere else. Of all the “nuts” in baseball, Charley.F — , [Faust] mascot of the Giants in 1911, was by far the most famous, says the writer. He had the advantage over most “nuts” in that he had a farm out West and a brother in Kansas who always responded to a wire for money. So Charley stuck around, whether he was wanted or not. He reported to the Giants several times in St. Louis, and once McGraw drove him out of the Cardinal park. But you couldn’t discourage him, and finally he got a job as mascot. But he lost his jinx, and, failing to get a Giant contract, he tried to put himself up at auction. The next spring he tried to take his wrath out on McGraw by training with the Dodgers at Hot Springs, Ark. The writer recalls that —
One night there was a cake-walk advertised at the hotel where the Dodgers were stopping. All the colored help of the Springs — waiters, rubbers, and attendants — were to participate. Frank Gould was one of the judges. Charley never missed anything, and he confided to some of the Dodger players that he was an expert cake-walker and that he would be able to take first prize from the hotel help.
Expenses meant nothing to Charley, as he invested over $100 with a Hot Springs tailoring establishment for an open-faced suit, Tuxedo coat, patent leather shoes, hard-boiled shirt, and all other “soup and fish” accompaniments. The entire Brooklyn team helped Charley dress, and it took four healthy athletes to pull a pair of white gloves over the hams which he called hands.
The players then blacked him up, leaving his shock of straw-colored hair untouched. Faust was a freak without a make-up, but this time he was a scream. Charley rehearsed his act in the room for the benefit of the Brooklyn players, and then started majestically for the ball park. However, the manager of the hotel had received a tip of Charley’s intention, and steered him into another room, where he was “detained” while the cake-walk was being held.
Charley’s antics would fill a book. He tried to wish himself on the Giants for the next five years, and once wrote McGraw a letter of ninety-six pages, telling him he was getting in condition by climbing a mountain in California every day. Finally the letters were stopt [sic], and when he last was heard of he was confiding to the keeper he was “greater than Matty.” [Faust died in 1915 at an insane asylum at Fort Steilacoom, Oregon.]
Rookie arguments often break the monotony of a training-camp. One of the favorite arguments is as to who will and who will not make the club. One night, says the writer,
A group of them were sitting in the lobby talking about their respective chances. Bill Piercy, a youngster from the Coast and as sassy as they made them, listened for a few minutes with a rather bored air.
“You fellows give me a laugh,” said Piercy. “The only thing I am worried about is where do I go from here — Kalamazoo, Calcutta, or California?”
He pulled the line, “Where do I go from here?” a year before the popular war song came out. As a matter of fact, Donovan carried Piercy that year for half a season, while the others were shipped to all points of the compass.
Then discussions on history and geography also help while away the hours of travel. For several springs the Yanks held title to a young left-handed pitcher, Sammy R — . He was a Tennessee mountaineer, a really lovable boy, but his ideas on geography were rather vague.
After leaving the Macon, Ga., training quarters in 1916, the Yankees came North by way of the Mississippi Valley, and played games in Chattanooga, Memphis, and Nashville. The next spring, after leaving Macon, the Yankees joined the Braves and made a lot of small towns along the Atlantic coast. The two teams were en route from Wilmington, N. C., to Petersburg, Va., when Sammy, in his rich Southern drawl, asked a group of reporters: “Kin you fallahs tell me the time we all will be passing through Tennessee? I guess you all know that’s mah State.”
It was explained to him that we were along the Atlantic coast, several hundred miles east of Tennessee, and would not touch Tennessee. But that was unconvincing.
“Ah don’t see how you figure that out,” he answered. “Last yeah when we come Nawf we pass through Tennessee, so why don’t we pass through this year?”
“Why, we go through North Carolina instead,” further explained one of the correspondents.
“Well, maybe you’re right, but I can’t figure it,” he replied, and then added as a parting shot: “I suppose you all know that Tennessee is a mighty big State.”
Another time Sammy pitched into a Civil War argument. He advanced the argument that his grandfather, a Confederate veteran, knew of proof that if the South had fought a week longer the North would have given up.
“Aw, that’s a lot of bunk,” said Frank Gilhooley, the little outfielder.
Sammy got on his Tennessee dignity. “Gilhooley, you think the way you like and so will I,” said Sammy. “But you wasn’t in that war, and I wasn’t, but my grandpap was, so he ought to know.” […]
Humors and Tragedies of Baseball Training Time in Dixie was originally published in Our Game on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.