Over another mug I learned that his mother was black, his father a white dry-goods peddler. Growing up in the riverfront slums, Johnny had recognized early what life might hold for him. Finding he had an innate ability to make people laugh, he’d begun as a street dancer and graduated to the circus.
“How’d you happen to learn German?” I asked.
“Hid up here during the riverboat troubles.” He saw my blank look and explained. “After the war some of the niggers hereabouts tried out the new freedom by riding the boats first class. They got themselves chopped up and tossed in the river by gangs of roughs. For a while it looked like things might spread over the whole city.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“I hid out up here. The Dutch people, most of ’em, haven’t been over here so long. They’d had their own miseries with the Know-Nothings. They gave me work, taught me Dutch.”
As he favored me with the lopsided grin, I made my decision. “Tell you what, let’s tackle this first project together and see how it works out.”
He grinned again. “Yassuh, Boss.”
“One thing, Johnny.”
“What?”
“Call me Sam, okay?”
Champion’s message was urgent: get as many players as possible on the night train. The Olympics had failed to show up to play the Illinois state champs, Rockford’s Forest City club. People were journeying from as far as St. Louis. To save the day Champion had agreed—for a share of the gate—that the Stockings would replace the Olympics. All we had to do was get there. Fast.
I hired a hack and managed to track down everybody except Gould, Brainard, and Waterman. I left messages for them, tipped the hackster a small fortune, and reached the depot barely in time.
We filled the next twenty-four hours with cards and newspapers. I read that Queen Victoria had just turned fifty—a fact I found impossible to assimilate. General O’Neill was urging the Fenian Senate of Pittsburgh to initiate a policy of “active operations,” whatever that meant. O’Neill. I stared at the name. Cait used it. Did she consider herself married?
In baseball news, the Brooklyn Atlantics had beaten the Philadelphia Athletics by the whopping score of 51-48, the largest ever posted by two professional clubs. Attendance was noted as over fifteen thousand.
“We’re the ones who stirred ’em back there,” George said, “but it’s the eastern clubs cashing in.”
Talk turned to our opponents, the Forest Citys. My ears pricked up at mention of a pitcher named Spalding.
“They’ll be burning to steal our glory,” George said. “Folks a hundred miles around will be on hand, too.”
He probably underestimated. We had trouble even claiming our reserved rooms at the Holland House, a four-story brick hotel beside the Rock River. The city’s population of twelve thousand was swollen with thousands more. Bob Addy, the Forest Citys’ catcher, who boarded at the Holland House, told us he’d never seen the like.
“Course we’re just farmboy amachoors,” he said slyly, spitting tobacco. “But we’ll show up on the grounds anyway.”
Technically the Forest Citys were unpaid, but the town was so ball-crazy that numerous groups, including churches, had subscribed to compensate them for every minute lost from their jobs while practicing. A fine line, I thought. The reality was that all of America so loved its new sporting heroes that it eagerly showered them with rewards. In Cincinnati it took the form not only of salary but increasing numbers of gifts—meals, clothes, jewelry, livery service—representing a substantial income boost. George claimed he now banked almost all of his pay. Andy figured he received as much value in free services as he earned each month. Even I was deluged with offers of drinks each time I set foot in the bar of the Gibson.
Brainard and the others arrived the next morning, only hours before the game. Ten thousand people jammed the fairgrounds at the end of Peach Street, buffeted by near-gale winds swirling dirt in high spouts. The diamond was chalked inside an oval racetrack. On it the Forest Citys warmed up, most of them small and wiry, very quick in their drills. Harry cautioned us not to take them lightly.
Odds favored us up to four to one, but there were few takers after the first inning. Spalding—he had to be the future sporting-goods magnate, I decided, studying him—looked nervous. About nineteen, a six-footer, he was dark-haired, unsmiling, a budding Chamber-of-Commerce type. His pitches had excellent velocity but little variation. George watched a couple go by, then, taking advantage of the wind blowing out, teed off and slammed a ball far beyond the distant tree row in left for a homer. Gould followed with a stinging double to center; Andy later cleared the bases with a triple, and we led 13-1 after one.
“They’ll come back at us,” Harry cautioned. And they did, but not until the final two innings, when they struck for ten runs while holding us to two. Though the rally came too late—we won handily, 34-14—it set the crowd bellowing to see that the big-city pros weren’t invincible after all. Rockford’s captain insisted on a rematch in Cincinnati, and Harry agreed.
“They’ll learn from their mistakes and work on the points of their game,” he told us on the train on the way home. “They’ll come gunning for us.”
We didn’t worry. We were 27-0. And riding high.
We got home on Sunday morning, July 11, and learned that the Washington Olympics had arrived just ahead of us after careening around in a large circle, winning in Louisville and Mansfield, losing in Cleveland. Now they would play the Buckeyes on Monday and face us for the fourth and final time on Tuesday.
I spent the balance of Sunday in Over the Rhine, haggling and finalizing our arrangements with Johnny interpreting. Everything, he assured me, was going to
