Or maybe it was. It kept me from feeling guilty over the longings I felt to be with Cait and Timmy.
They listened patiently at Wells Fargo Bank without asking why, lacking receipts, account numbers, any record whatever, I believed deposits had been made in 1869 in the names of Susanne and Hope Fowler. They did ask if I were a descendant. I said I was, sort of—and realized I hadn’t thought this through at all.
They explained that mergers had occurred, that banking laws permitted the transfer of accounts to the state after a lapse of a number of years. I could check with the Superintendent of Banking in Sacramento to see what laws might have applied. But even if the gold pieces had remained in special accounts opened in 1869—similar to placing them in a safe-deposit box—they would have drawn no interest. Their value would lie only in what a coin collector would pay.
So much for that.
Pizza—like TV and a good many other modern cravings—turned out to be not such a big deal. Now I missed the clatter of horse-drawn vehicles; the sight of men wearing tall hats and high collars; women with bustles and parasols; even dirt streets with their raw stinks.
At work I stared out the window at the Old Mint for long minutes, remembering the morning I had walked by and seen its foundation being prepared.
Before long I was spending all my spare hours at the public library poring over 1869 newspapers on microfilm. I discovered what I was looking for in the October 6 San Francisco Call.
IRISH SPEAKER FOUND DEAD
The body of Capt. F. J. O’Donovan, noted Fenian lecturer and organizer, was found at the foot of a precipice near Vallejo Street yesterday. The body bore marks of its fatal descent, the head and neck injured terribly. This tragedy is but another lamentable example of the City failing to provide safety railings in mountainous sections—a needed reform long urged in these columns.
I stared at the smudged gray words. Fatal descent . . . head and neck injured terribly. . . .
It had happened; I hadn’t fantasized it.
But that was all I could find. No hint of foul play or mention of witnesses. Nothing about Johnny or me. No coverage at all in other papers.
Rereading accounts of the Stockings’ San Francisco games made me feel part of it all again. Hungry to know what happened to them, I haunted UC’s Bancroft Library, where I cranked through reel after reel of the Cincinnati Enquirer—jolted by the occasional sight of my own dispatches.
The Stockings had demolished foes as they headed back across the country. At home again, they beat the Philadelphia Athletics and New York Mutuals, each making one last-ditch try at knocking off the unbeaten Stockings. There was wild celebrating in Cincinnati the night they concluded the perfect season: sixty games without a loss. Champion awarded them fifty-dollar bonuses on November 15, the day their contracts ended.
I felt an odd moment of trepidation when I ordered the reels for 1870. Time had gone on. What had the next year brought?
By late January the Stocking regulars were “reengaged without change,” the Enquirer noted. Harry’s lineup would be the same—although the substitute was one Ed Atwater. In April they toured Dixie, winning seven games in New Orleans and Memphis. In May they notched eight victories in Ohio and Kentucky, then in June invaded the East again, taking nine straight in Massachusetts and New York.
Then it finally happened. On June 14 they finished nine innings against the Brooklyn Atlantics with the score 5-5. The rules allowed ties, and the Atlantics, content with their performance, drifted from the field. But the Stockings stayed—I could picture Harry grimly commanding them to hold their positions—until the Atlantics returned from their clubhouse.
With Brainard tiring, Brooklyn got runners on first and second in the tenth. But George snuffed the threat by dropping a pop-up to start a double play. Brainard doubled and scored in the eleventh, and George, coming through in the clutch as ever, singled in another run. The 7-5 lead looked decisive.
But the Atlantics’ leadoff man blooped a hit in front of Andy and took third on Brainard’s wild pitch. The next hitter drove one into the right-field crowd. By the time Mac plowed among them and dug out the ball, the run was home and the hitter stood on third. Waterman took a hot grounder cleanly, held the runner, made the throw. One down. The Brooklyn captain, Ferguson, normally a right-handed batter, hit lefty to keep the ball away from George and managed a dribbler between Gould and Sweasy. The tying run scored. The next Atlantic drove a smash at Gould, who knocked it down to save the run but had no play. Ferguson alertly moved to third. A grounder went to George. He fielded it and threw to Sweasy at second to begin a game-saving double play.
Sweasy dropped the ball!
He scrambled, picked it up, threw desperately to Allison. Too late. Ferguson crossed the plate and was carried from the field by his teammates. Brooklyn went crazy. And an eighty-four-game win streak came to an end.
Eleven innings. 7—8.
Sweasy, you son of a bitch, I thought. But then I felt sorry, knowing how wretched he must have felt. I was sorry for all of them.
Champion sent a telegram home: “Our boys did nobly, but fortune was against us. Though beaten, not disgraced.” The newspaper said that he cried in his room that night.
It wasn’t the same afterward. George hurt his leg and the Stockings dropped more games—including narrow losses to Chicago’s new White Stockings and our old hungry rivals, the Rockford Forest Citys—and ended at 68—6.
A sensational record for anybody else. But not the Stockings. At the end of the season there was mention of discord among the players and even instances of
