They could have let them score

It was miserably hot that summer in Melrose, a pretty crossroads located at the mouth of the Gladstone Valley. Lives had been dragged through mine closures and crop failures and now the brutal heat was just the icing on the cake, melted and collapsed by the temperatures that hovered in the mid-nineties, even under a quaking aspen trees behind the home dugout.

1882 had already seen enough. Thousands of tramp miners swarmed to the goldfields, the railroad was buying up property like a banshee and Ute Chief Colorow and his bands were raising hell up and down the range.

The heat was temporary. The impact of the hungry hoards was not. Melrose was nice enough, a small one-street burg populated by cowboys, miners, prostitutes, shopkeepers, saloon girls, matrons, preachers and everyone in between. The transient nature of the settlement had given way to guarded affluence, or at least the opportunity to stay in one place and survive the Rockies. Melrose was self-sufficient and although most folks left well enough alone there was a growing kinship among the residents. One could always rely on his neighbors to help him out of a bad spot. Newcomers, although often laughed at for their Eastern and European ways, were treated fair and square.

On that August day a team of baseball players arrived by train. They didn’t take but a minute to get the town’s attention, especially the eye of the young ladies.
“Did you see the tall one with the whiskers?” asked one pretty girl.

He’s so handsome and from so far away, cooed another beauty. “I wonder if Cincinnati is exotic?”

The arrivals, a professional team from back in Southern Ohio, were completing a summer exhibition tour that had taken them from California to Kansas City. The new sport was catching on like wild fire. It was the American sport and these were God-fearing, dyed-in-the-wool, manifest destiny Americans (for the most part).
They called themselves The Red Stockings and concurred that baseball was a fine way to make a living. They admitted that, while most of the competition had been green the games had been rock ‘em sock ‘em and lots of fun. They saw themselves as representatives of the new endeavor and teachers of the athletic skills needed to play nine innings.

Most of Melrose watched approvingly as the team took fielding practice. Near the makeshift backstop local toughs taunted the easterners, as much in response to the players’ popularity with the local women as in reaction to any performance on the diamond.

“You slickers may know the country but you don’t know Melrose,” said one roughneck.

“You’d be lost without a ticket out of town,” laughed another. “Imagine playing a game for a paycheck!”

A little teasing did not upset the Red Stockings. They heard it in every whistle stop from Tacoma to Taos. Little did the locals know that these players were about as down and out as a hooker in a town full of churches. Although they had won 30 games straight that summer, the expenses of travel had ringed the coffers dry.

“Listen up boys,” said Joe Flahey, the manager of the squad. “These nice folks are planning to feed us in a few minutes. Let’s be on out best behavior and maybe we’ll even get dessert.”

The ensuing picnic included fried chicken, beans, potatoes, squash, tomatoes, hardboiled eggs and lemonade. The team wolfed the food, having not eaten since Utah the day before.

“You boys got it too good,” barked another man, wearing a ball cap and spikes. “I think we’d kick your butts on the field.”

That’s when Flahey had had enough. He suggested the immediate group accompany him across to the local saloon to record a proper wager. Then we’ll see “who has got it too good.” A gang of about a dozen Melrose men followed.

The locals crowded around the brass and mahogany bar plotting their next move while Fahey loudly reminded his charges that there’d be no booze for them until after the business of winning was completed. In reality a combined collection of monetary assets from the entire team would not have been enough to buy three beers. The tea teetotaler charade saved face and presented his scoundrels in high sox as a professional outfit.

That didn’t detour townsmen from slamming a few beers on a hot day. The more they drank the more Fahey smiled. Melrose had become ripe for the picking and prime for the plucking. The more booze the more bravado. The more laughter the more salutes.

“We could beat these vagabonds at their own game,” said one burly German miner named Wagner. “Yes, I think we could beat them at this baseball!”
The idea was met with great approval all around. Although the silly game was unfamiliar the protectors of the frontier could easily route these pampered dudes from Cincinnati.

“Yeah, we’d whip you in nine innings flat,” brandished another braggart.
Flahey, if on cue, smiled and looked away.

“What’s the matter there Big Time?” slurred the assailant. “You boys worried about backing up the act?”

Flahey looked the man in the eyes, frowned, smiled, and then frowned again.
“Beating us at baseball, heh? Now that might take some doing,” said Flahey, “about $50 worth of doing to be exact.”

“You’re on!” shouted the miner. “We’ve got a team right here.”

And that’s how it started. Nobody showed the color of their money since the locals were not sure of gambling etiquette and the Red Stockings, as it was previously stated, were pennies from destitute.

“We had to trust them,” said Flahey later. “We figured they had money stashed and their pride would not let them cheat us right out here in the sunshine.”

The local team spilled from the saloon informing every passerby that they would be playing the Red Stockings at Civil War Veterans Park the next afternoon.

That night the both teams practiced. The Red Stockings in a stretch of pasture near the river and the Melrose team at the park. The pros were smooth but the “rookies” were powerful miners, tough cowboys and farmers of great stamina. Some had played baseball before but only at Sunday socials. They had the heart. What they lacked was the skill that would be honed during the first long innings of the match.

The sun reached its perch in the middle of the sky the next afternoon the two squads arrived at the park. The Red Stockings were in white uniforms with red trim and ominous-looking spikes. Many had waxed the mustaches for the keystone soiree. The Melrose nine was a patchwork of costumes in overalls, knee breeches, and jeans. None had spikes and would play in boots. A few had commandeered kits and the team owned a shabby piece of wood that resembled a bat.

The audience was partisan but showed an interest in the starched, crisp Red Stocking uniforms showcased at the pre game drills. Admission was a nickel and kids were free. About 50 people paid and the rest watched from the foundry steps or under nearby trees.

In moments the umpires, enlisted from the nearby town of Pinkyville, called “Play Ball!” The home team trotted out onto the field to the cheers of the crowd. Harry LaRue, the leadoff hitter for the Red Stockings strode to the plate. The first pitch by Matt Hazleton of Melrose was driven into deep left field. By the time Henry Tyson got to the ball and threw it back into the infield LaRue was crossing home, much to the restrained delight of the fans. The more the pros hit the more residents paid their nickel.

The first inning did not go well for the Melrose team. When the Red Stockings came up to bat for their second helping the score stood 10-0.

The audience had come to its feet at the sight of flashy fielding and pinpoint hurling by ace Rube Walling who had set records (winning 8 games and 9 games respectively for the 1880 and 1881 New York Knickerbockers.

“Listen to how Ol’ Rube makes that catcher kit crack,” said one fan. “That ball looks lop-sided. He’s loaded it up with piss and vinegar!”

Abe Falkner, a carpenter at the Carne Canyon Mine, had all he could do to keep his knees from clattering as the fast ball painted the outside corner and he was sent away from the action to join the other dis-spirited Melrose players in the log and sod potato cellar, turned dugout.

Then finally in the fifth, with the score a pathetic 17-0 Melrose managed a puny line drive over the shortstop’s head that fell for a hit. The second batter then walked, as Walling seemed to lose his poise on the hill. Sensing something good was happening the chatter level increased in the stands. The catcher scurried out for a visit and a slap on the posterior and Walling wound up unleashing a strike that split the plate. Soon he was back to his salt and pepper work ethic and the fledgling rally was squashed like a cricket in a landslide.

The Red Stockings pounded Melrose pitching at will making the score an embarrassing 28-0 as the ninth inning mercifully peeked out of the battered Melrose redoubt on the third base line. The crowd had lost interest. No longer did the Melrose fans cheer when wood met cowhide. Even sparkling defensive plays by Charley Ellis and George McCormick did little to move anyone. The audience was insulted.

The local boys had been beaten like a bowl of scrambled eggs. This had not turned into such an honorable occasion. When the Red Stockings scored three more in the ninth it did little to quell the growing anger.

When Abe Falkner’s little brother Hal managed a single with nobody out in the ninth the fans stood up wondering if their team would finally score a run against the professionals. As a cloudy encore, Bobby Archer ran out an infield hit putting Falkner in scoring position. His theft of third base, sliding under the tag of Babe Martin, sent the crowd soaring. They couldn’t believe their eyes. Joe Flahey then inserted himself into the lineup as a pinch-hitter and was promptly hit in the middle of his back by a rogue curve ball and took first.

Now the bases were loaded with no outs. Surely the boys would score and Melrose would avoid humiliation at the hands of these outsiders.

Up to the dish ambled Homer Stihl, who hit two home runs in pre game batting practice earlier in the day. Melrose was bound to score. The first pitch was high. The second was right down the middle for a strike. The next pitch was a knee-high fastball that Stihl clobbered toward third. Babe Martin scooped it up, and threw to home for the first leg of a successful double play. Standing on home plate, catcher Mel Snodgrass then fired a line drive to McCormick at first to complete the play. Now there were men on second and third with two outs, but still no run.

The crowd was again deflated. The Melrose team looked shell-shocked while the Red Stockings methodically prepared for the last out in the person of Abe Farmer who, with the score 30 – 0, was handcuffed by a pitch under the wrists and fouled out to third, ending the game. The audience let out a collective whine, a hesitant sigh, uttering one-syllable words of disappointment.

“Losing is one thing,” said a bald man in the front row. “But you don’t kick a man when he’s down.”

“That’s right,” echoed a red-haired woman from behind the backstop. “They didn’t have to make fools of our players right here in our own town.”

“They could have let them score!” said Melrose mayor Andy Courtney.

The Cincinnati Red Stockings collected their due (paid in gold by the owner of the Limp Daisy Silver Mine up Mad Gulch) and retreated to their hotel where they were under orders not to mix with the townsfolk that evening. At would not have mattered since no one in Melrose wanted much to do with the victors anyway.
“Damn bullies,” said several of the ladies who were now busy consoling the Melrose team and ignoring the professional one. Men in the town square just sat there angry and spitting tobacco, digesting the terrible defeat.

The next morning the early train left Melrose bound for another destination where another nine innings would again test the mettle of grown men playing a game for young boys.

– Kashmir “Big Train” Horseshoe

September 14, 2016