Chats With Baseball Stars

JOSEPH WALKER JACKSON

Interviewed by J. A. Fitzgerald

No need of emphasizing the fact that you’ve got to stick around the uttermost suburbs to grab any swats delivered by Joe Jackson, the Cleveland slugger. Don’t be disappointed if they fail to stop on signal. The speediest outfielders in the American League frequently fail to flag the Jackson wallops. They have to content themselves with watching his hits clear the breastworks, and with wondering if the ball will anchor inside the city limits. Therefore, do not grieve if one of his offerings gets away from you. No, as a rule, Joseph’s slams keep right on going, minding their own business, and absolutely refusing to stop and shake hands with the fielders. Somehow or other, they always appear to be in a hurry. His unwarranted brutality with the bat is positively shocking – especially to opposing pitchers. Why, on one occasion when there were three men on – but what’s the use of getting all worked up about this Jackson person? You’ve all been “on to him” for a long while. The fact that the superintendent of Cleveland’s right pasture is “Ty” Cobb’s most dangerous rival in the belting department of our popular pastime has been an open secret for some time. But there is this much to be said in Tyrus Raymond’s favor: He is satisfied to slap the ball when it tries to fool him; he does not try to kill it. Not so with Cleveland’s clean-up merchant. He’s a firm believer in corporal punishment for baseballs. Not content with clubbing them unmercifully, he drives them from home at every opportunity. “Spare the rod, spoil the batting average,” is his motto.

     It was in the finely appointed clubhouse at the Polo Grounds, New York, that I separated Joseph from his past. “Go right in,” the man on the gate directed. “Joe’s all alone. You can’t miss him.”

     A few seconds later, standing at the door of a large and airy room, in one corner of which Jackson was stooped over, lacing his shoes, I began to understand why the great outfielder should be alone. As yet he had not seen me. As I watched him closely, in the hope of attracting his attention, my ears were assailed by the most distressing sounds. Now like a low moan, again resembling the protests of a man parting with a pet tooth, the author appeared to be suffering intensely. I looked about me in an effort to discover the source of the distress. Jackson and I were quite alone, and I listened intently. Yes, it must be Jackson. Closer scrutiny of his expression proved that he was the origin and author of those sounds. They were coming from that part of Jackson’s face just north of the chin and directly south of the nose. Straining my listeners to analyze his complaint, I gathered something to the general effect that he was growing old and grieving bitterly over that circumstance. I hurried forward to offer my sympathy.

     “Mr. Jackson, if I can be of any assistance to you ---”

     “Hello there!” he broke in. He straightened up, stamped his feet on the floor, and said with a laugh: “I didn’t know there was any one in the room.”

  But he couldn’t fool me. He was in pain, and I knew it. Furthermore, I made up my mind to help him, if possible.

     “What were you crying for just now”? I asked gently.

     “Crying!” he repeated quizzically. The he tore off a three-base laugh. “Why, I wasn’t crying,” he explained. “I was singing. You knew I was, too; you’re only joshing. On the level, what do you think of my yodling?”

     Can you imagine a more embarrassing situation than that? There I was, looking for our hero’s sad story, compelled to give an opinion of his gargling. I yield to no fan in my admiration for Joe Jackson as an industrious right fielder. In common with my fellow countrymen I appreciate his untiring efforts to keep baseballs in circulation. But I didn’t intend to let my enthusiasm influence my verdict as to his vocal efforts. The time had come for plain speaking. At the risk of being “thrown out” – he has one of the greatest throwing arms in the business – I determined to tell the truth. Without any desire for the customary number of cheers, the fact that Joseph was caressing a bat at the time will give you a faint idea of the hazard undertaken by the humble historian.

     “Come on, get in the game!” he urged, impatient at my delay in returning a decision.

     “It – it didn’t sound like singing to me,” I faltered. “I thought you were strangling!”

     I fell flat on my face to escape his club, but to my intense gratification he made no attempt to assault me. He just stood staring at me in an uncomprehending way, his expression one of disappointment rather than anger.

     “And I spent a week learning that madrigal!” he said dejectedly. Then, by way of an afterthought, he brightened up and added: “Of course, I was only humming at the time you heard me. Maybe if I should sing out loud you’d permit me to bat over again. I ---”

     “You’re no singer, Joe, and that’s all there is to it,” I blurted out. “As a vocalist, you’re not even a bush leaguer, and ---”

     “But don’t put me out of the game without giving me a chance,” he pleaded. “Let me bat out just one verse.”

     I assured him that he had all the best of it, that I could not stop him, and, realizing that I could do nothing but slide out, he cleared his throat. I prepared to “run on anything,” but he laid a detaining hand on my shoulder. Presently the words of “Darling, I Am Growing Old” were pouring all over me.

       “What do you think now?” There was a note of triumph in his tone.

     “That your chances of growing old will be increased considerably if you cease wailing,” I replied. “If you do not, you are likely to be assassinated in youth.”

     Completely crestfallen by his failure to impress me with his singing, he explained that a recent attack of tonsillitis was responsible for the profusion of sour notes. “I should have had my tonsils cut years ago,” he said seriously.

     I assured him that it would require more cutting than that to make his singing acceptable. “Any special reason for the vocal outburst?” I inquired.

     “Why, I was feeling pretty chesty to-day,” he admitted. “I had the pleasure of shaking President Wilson’s hand yesterday.”

     Joe held his hand up proudly. He waxed enthusiastic over the reception accorded the Cleveland team by the bobs of the original Federal League.

     “He’s one of the greatest players Uncle Sam has ever had in his line-up,” remarked Joe. “He hits ‘em on the nose every time he comes to bat. His knowledge of the inside game is marvelous. As a sacrifice hitter he never has had an equal, and he covers more ground than any man in the game to-day.”

Nature must have had the great national game in mind when she designed Jackson. He is built for baseball – from the ground up. And he goes up a matter of six feet and a trifle, a long, lean, rangy fellow, with sloping shoulders – broad shoulders that make it easy to understand why his hits travel at such a terrific speed – and a pair of legs that take him around the bases without the assistance of a relief expedition.

     “Are you going to be Cobb to the batting prize this season?” I inquired, for this question seemed the easiest way to start the regular game.

     “I’d like to,” he said, with a low laugh, shaking his head doubtingly, “but I’m not banking on it. Ever since I broke into the American League I’ve been after him. Up to date I’ve failed to overhaul him. I’m beginning to think it cannot be done.”

     “You’re running neck and neck with him now, aren’t you?”

     “Bat and bat would be better,” amended the outfielder. “I’ve got Ty outnecked from the scratch. But as I was about to remark, if by any chance I should manage to hit one million, Tyrus would be up there with fifteen or twenty points ahead of me. I’ll admit that I’ve got a healthy batting appetite, but Tyrus is a glutton!”

     Joe says that he has days when he could not hit a balloon with a snow shovel, that he is either hitting the ball a mile or missing it by a block. His longest hit was made in Cleveland in 1911 – four hundred and eighty-three feet from the home plate. He recalled several instances in which one of his swats furnished transportation for a party of four.

     “I was born in Greenville, South Carolina, twenty-seven years ago; I bat left-handed; I have a public-school and high-school education; I wear a seven-and-a-quarter lid, a sixteen collar, a ---”

     “Wait, wait, wait!” I interrupted; and, with a chuckle, he stopped short and said he was a good waiter.

     “Isn’t it time yet for the big confession?” he inquired.

     I said it was, but he would have to go back to Greenville and tell us something about his boyhood’s happy days. The suggestion came very near breaking up the game.

     “ ‘When I was a boy I used to dwell,’ “ he started to sing.

     Before he could get any farther, my hand shut off the discords. It was a thrilling one-hand stop. Really, I may be pardoned for boasting about it.

     “You began your career in Greenville?”

     “All over the place. When the other kids were buying candy I bought baseballs. Golly! I think I lost a ball in every yard in Greenville! My brothers ---“

     “Then you have brothers?”

     “Enough to stock a minor league.” The idea of any one doubting that he had brothers struck him as being ridiculously funny. “Say,” he chuckled, “if some of my brothers were to pass here now, you’d think the grand jury was out for a stroll.”

     “Some of them! How many are there?”

     “I couldn’t think of trying to answer that question without the aid of an adding machine.”

     I urged him to recall as many as he could. After half a dozen false starts, he said he could remember two parents, six brothers, and two sisters. He added that it was necessary to establish a ground rule in the dining room, where his mother frequently had to stretch ropes to keep the crowd back. Here Joe volunteered the information that he is married, and that this action on his part has relieved the congestion in the vicinity of the home plate.

     “Even so, it must keep your father hustling to make both ends meet.”

     “That’s the time you hit into a double play,” he cried joyously. “My father runs a meat market.”

The laugh was on yours truly, all right. But can you conceive of a more appropriate place to “pull a bone”? Of course, there had to be a lot of chatter about the butcher market. Joe then assured me that while working for his father he learned how to “chop” the ball, and that making sausages was his first introduction to the “squeeze” play.

     “I started in pitching for one of the cotton-mill teams in Greenville,” he resumed in a more serious vein. “This was prior to 1907. I had one of those cheese-box curves, and the neighbors thought I was a wonder until a bunch of heavy hitters came along and bent that curve of mine clear around the other way.”

     “Do you remember the first money you earned as a ball player?”

     “Do I? Might just as well ask me if I remember my first circus! I got three dollars and fifty cents for pitching a fifteen-inning game. Our side won. Take it from me, I knew that three fifty by heart before it was spent. Gee, but I felt sorry for Rockefeller that day! What those swatters that I was telling you about did to my curve convinced me that I belonged in the outfield. Oh, yes, I was hitting the ball pretty hard all the time. My hitting enabled me to get a job with Greenville in 1907, when the town was given a franchise in the Carolina League. The league curled up and died along about Fourth of July. In 1908 Greenville made another attempt at regular baseball, this time with more success. I made twenty-seven home runs that year, and the first thing I knew I was asked to take tea with the Athletics.”

     He said he remained with Connie Mack’s team eight days, and then jumped back to Greenville. An uncontrollable longing for the land of cotton was his only excuse for his back somersault. In 1909 he was reinstated by Mack and rejoined the Athletics, only to desert the club on the opening day.

     “Homesickness was the sole reason for my action in both instances,” said Jackson. “Connie concluded that he had an acrobat, not a ball player, on his hands, and he shipped me to Savannah, in the South Atlantic League. I hit .354 that season. New Orleans was the scene of activity in 1910. The finish of the frolic found me with a batting average of .364, a set of figures that paved my way for an introduction to the Cleveland fans in 1911. I have been with the Naps four years, and I’d like to stick until we win a pennant. No city is more deserving of one. Our fans in Cleveland are the squarest in the country.”

     “Why is there such a scarcity of heavy hitters?”

     “In my opinion, the timidity of a great many players when they are at the bat is responsible for the low-hitting averages. I am willing to admit that most of the men who hit above three hundred, year in and year out, are natural hitters, that their ability with the bat is something which cannot be taught; but I maintain that if the other players would stand right up there and fight the ball and not pull away, they would in a very short time acquire a batting eye that would bring them closer to the select circle of batsmen. The man who is afraid of being hit will never be a successful batter. All the great sluggers in the old days crowded the plate. There is less danger now because the pitchers have better control.”
     Greenville looks better to Joseph than any other place on the map when the season closes. He carries back enough booty to enable him to give a perfect imitation of a leading citizen. He says he has no idea what he will do when he lays aside the big-league spangles.

“However,” he explained, “I am not greatly concerned over the future. I’m soaking a large share of my ill-gotten gains, and – there goes the bell! I’ll have to beat it. Fare thee!”