I felt a little like a boy myself as we passed the white-foaming falls in the Genesee and angled left past Brown’s Race. As the river’s noise faded I thought I heard singing.
“Team song,” said Millar. “Each player has a verse. Listen, they’re starting Harry’s.”
“Our captain is a goodly man,
And ‘Harry’ is his name.
Whate’er he does is always ‘Wright’
So says the voice of fame.
And as the leader of our nine
We think he can’t be beat,
For in many a fight old Harry Wright
Has saved us from defeat.”
They broke into a booming chorus:
“Hurrah, hurrah,
For the noble game hurrah!
Red Stockings all will toss the ball
And shout our loud hurrah!”
“Singing on their way to play ball,” I said. “Amazing!”
“No more so,” Champion said defensively, “than men singing on their way to battle.”
He had a point. It wasn’t more amazing than that.
Our passage slowed as we entered Jones Square, a block-long public park lined with elms, and crowds pressed around us. I craned my neck to see the diamond.
“How many?” Champion said suddenly.
Millar said he guessed about three thousand.
Champion glanced nervously at the storm clouds. “Another Yellow Springs and we’re in deep.”
Millar explained that the tour’s opener against Antioch College, four days earlier, had been rained out—posing a problem since gate receipts had to meet travel costs.
“You don’t have enough to cover rainouts?” I said.
“The truth is we’re vastly in debt,” Champion replied. “We’ve borrowed against future receipts to pay the ballists while they trained. We plunged thousands into erecting a new clubhouse and stands. If this tour fails, it will spell disaster.”
“Our grounds are the finest in the country,” Millar asserted.
“And doubtless the most expensive,” Champion said. “The lease alone costs two thousand a year.”
I nodded gravely; newsman on his job.
“But beyond those concerns, Mr. Fowler, is the larger issue of whether the national game can succeed as a profession.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said.
“That phrase is unfamiliar,” Champion said, a bit huffily. “As you may know, baseball with standard rules was developed by gentlemen’s sporting clubs only several decades ago. The old amateurs did all they could to keep control of their game. But its popularity during the war weakened their control, and a newer element—sharps and their ilk—brought drunkenness, brawling, and wagering to contests, the very things the old clubs feared. Of late, matches have been deliberately thrown off by players in the hold of gamblers. The game’s integrity is in grave question.”
“Where do the Red Stockings fit in?” I asked.
Champion smiled wanly. “So far, it appears that we threaten both amateurs and gamblers—the latter because salaried ballists are harder to bribe.”
I nodded, wondering how much he was overdramatizing..
“We are a novel experiment, Mr. Fowler. People, some of them unscrupulous, are watching us carefully to see whether the national game can be put on an honest business footing. That is why our men must give their very noblest performance at all times. They must be incorruptible—”
He looked at me.
“—and sober.”
I got the point.
“Don’t worry, baseball will survive,” I told him, mindful of my era’s enormous stadia, fawning media coverage, and millionaire players.
“Your assurance is gratifying,” he said tartly.
On a field still wet from the early downpour the Alerts warmed up, moving crisply in white uniforms with long pants bearing navy stripes that matched their flat Civil War-style caps; each tunic was emblazoned with a red A. Using both hands, they seemed to catch the ball as effortlessly and painlessly as if they wore gloves. How could they do that?
“They look good,” I said to Millar. “What are our chances?”
“Our?” He gave me a pained look. “We’ve won all six of our matches so far—three at home and three on tour—and should take this one. The Alerts are veterans, but this is only their opening game. Still, they’ll want to be the first eastern club to topple us.”
We had been surrounded by working-class males of all ages in shapeless pants and collarless shirts. I’d seen no women among them. Closer to the diamond, things began to change. On the arms of men dressed more or less like Brainard—“swells,” Millar called them—women glided demurely, faces blurred by veils on tiny hats, torsos encased in rich, heavy, elaborate, bustled dresses; scarves fluttered about their necks, and their gloved hands brandished parasols with practiced ease.
I stared at them, fascinated. They looked formidable, mysterious, utterly unapproachable—and desirable. Were Victorian women as repressed as they’d been made out? A fact-finding mission seemed called for. My brain concocted erotic fantasies. Even though I was still disoriented, I was undeniably horny.
The ladies took seats with their escorts in a covered stand behind home plate. Officials herded other spectators toward what Millar called the “bull pens,” roped-off sections behind the foul lines where men stood shoulder to shoulder. Ringing the outfield behind a low fence were horse-drawn vehicles ranging from carts to omnibuses.
I sat between Millar and Hurley at a long table outside the first-base line. Hurley, the team’s sole substitute and keeper of the score book, looked a bit healthier than he had that morning at breakfast.
A crescendo of admiring oohs began to rise from the crowd. In the center of the diamond, four Stockings—Andy, Sweasy, Waterman, and George Wright—stood tossing a ball rapidly among themselves. It reminded me of a Harlem Globetrotter warm-up routine. The ball blurred behind their backs, around their heads, over their shoulders, under their legs, the four of them feinting, stretching, diving, laughing at their own sleight of hand, urged on by the crowd’s response: applause, delighted cries, and finally full-throated roars as George Wright capped the exhibition by hurling the ball straight overhead, higher than it seemed a ball could be thrown. He stood nonchalantly under it until the last possible instant, when, with no other movement, he cupped his bare hands and made a basket catch, waved the ball aloft with a flourish, and, joined by the others, followed it downward in a sweeping
