Over Here: Eddie Foster And The Washington Senators During The World War I Years

In early 1917, the United States had not yet entered World War I, but war clouds were beginning to form for the country. From April, when America would finally enter the war, until November of 1918, the so-called “War To End All Wars” would take American lives, cost American treasure and consume most of America’s attention for the next two years. Although daily life in America continued, the war’s effects tinged virtually every aspect of American society. Before the war’s end, Major League Baseball’s very survival would come in to question. For Eddie Foster and baseball, World War I would change a lot over here.

1916 marked Washington Senators infielder Eddie Foster’s fifth season with the team, and it had been his worst year as a Senator to date. His batting average in ’16 was a measly .252, and his hitting really tailed off near the end of that season. Also, Foster played more games in the field at second base in 1916, where he was not accustomed to playing and therefore not as comfortable in the field, than any other season in his career. Late in the year in 1916, there was even talk Foster would be traded to the Browns, as there had been for several years prior¹. On November 7, 1916, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that the Browns sought to trade second baseman Del Pratt², third baseman Jimmy Austin³ and outfielder Ward Miller for Eddie Foster and Senators second baseman Ray Morgan, Foster being the main player sought by St. Louis. On February 7, 1917, the Browns owner said he was going to attend the American League Winter Meeting in Chicago to “acquire a third baseman, either Fritz Maisel or Eddie Foster.” On February 8^th, the Browns decided that Washington Senators Manager Clark Griffith “would not let them have Foster,” so the Browns pursued a different third baseman. Through the tumult of trade talk and potentially lower wages, Foster remained sanguine, telling the Washington Times in late 1916 that that he “cares little for Stove League gossip anyway.” Foster went on to say “I hope Teacher⁴ signs me up again, for it’ll be terrible not to be signed and have to play ball just the same.”

While war clouds were forming for the country as a whole in 1917, they were beginning to recede for baseball itself. The “baseball wars” had come to an end when the Federal League had folded. As a result of the death of the Feds, baseball players lost playing options and bargaining leverage and Major League owners therefore began chatter amongst themselves of cutting back ballplayer salaries. However, the Baseball Fraternity⁵, the euphemistic name for baseball’s first players’ union, threatened to strike after an adversarial ruling from the National Baseball Commission⁶. The biggest complaint of the Fraternity, headed by attorney and former baseball player Dave Fultz⁷, was that players could be cut and not have their contracts honored after being injured. The Number One complaint that precipitated the threatened 1917 strike, though, was that Fultz and the “Fraternity” wanted minor leaguer ballplayers to be provided transportation to their teams’ camps the same way that Major League teams did for their players. The threatened strike fizzled when most big name ballplayers ignored Fultz and signed contracts anyway.⁸ Eddie Foster, a member of the fraternity since its inception, was in the second year of a two year contract at the time and his remarks made to Evening Star sportswriter Denman Thompson were probably representative of most Major Leaguers at the time:

“I believe in the organization… and think its members should stick to it when it’s in the right, but it does look as if the demands being made now are a little unreasonable. The major league players are not concerned over the points at issue, already having been granted everything the minor league players are already contending for, so why should they take any action that would hurt themselves as well as the major league owners, whom they admit have treated them fairly and have met all their demands?”

When America entered the war later in 1917, the “Fraternity” dissolved, along with any threat of a player strike in the future.

In January, Eddie Foster and his wife came back to Washington after spending a month visiting Eddie’s mother and family in Chicago for Christmas. When he arrived in Washington, Foster got back into his yearly routine of training at the local YMCA prior to leaving for training camp. In 1917, he worked out each day at the Y in February and March to “lose ten or twelve pounds of superfluous flesh.”  In prior years, Washington’s Manager, Clark Griffith, had even had his pitchers do “gymnastics” at the Y before camp, but in 1917 he decided he was “dubious about the benefits to be derived from such a procedure,” preferring instead to work them hard at camp instead. Griffith also refused to consent to having his players inoculated against typhoid, even though he understood “…what the result would be if one or more of his men were stricken as Eddie Foster was a couple of years ago.⁹ Nevertheless, Griffith “…considers it inadvisable to take preventative measures at this time.” Anti-vaxxer sentiment is apparently not a new thing.

1917 was the first year that the Senators had training camp somewhere other than Charlottesville, VA.¹⁰ Griffith moved the Senators training camp to Augusta, GA, to take advantage of warmer March weather.  Foster rode the train with Griffith down to Augusta on March 8^th, and, if you believe Evening Star correspondent Denman Thompson, engaged in some minor law breaking:

“Griffith plans to have each of his men take down a quart of alcohol for rubbing purposes, Trainer Mike Martin being unable to buy the liquid in Augusta, owing to prohibition laws.”

Picture Caption: Prohibition started in November 1917 in the District of Columbia, well before it started in the rest of the nation.

Interestingly enough, although it was the Senator’s first training camp in Augusta, it was not Eddie Foster’s first training camp in Augusta. In 1910, Eddie Foster made the Yankees (then still known as the New York Highlanders) roster at their training camp in Augusta. Foster’s stay with the Yankees would not be a long one, though, due to his future teammate, Hall-of-Famer Walter “Big Train” Johnson. When the Yankees played in Washington on April 22^nd, 1910, Walter Johnson pitched against the Yankees.  That day, the Big Train was having trouble locating his pitches. When Foster came up to bat, Johnson hit him in the ribs with a fastball, sending Eddie to the hospital.¹¹ Foster evidently tried to play through it in subsequent games, but Foster’s batting average dipped so low afterwards that the Yankees sent him down to their minor league team, Rochester, where Clark Griffith eventually found him.

The entire Washington party seemed to enjoy Augusta. The weather was good and they found the local folks extremely hospitable, the only real complaint being the food. The great Ty Cobb made his home in Augusta at this time. He would occasionally pop by and watch practice or visit with folks associated with Washington’s team. Cobb even had Clark Griffith over for supper one evening.¹² Interestingly, Cobb played all his minor league ball before the Majors in Augusta, and the Washington scribes got some great stories on Cobb’s time as a minor leaguer there:

“Cobb came to the Augusta team with the dirt between his toes. At that time the club was in the hands of a fellow inclined to bet on the games, and not always on his own team. One day he had his money on the visitors and Cobb came to the bat with three men on the sacks. Ty was given instructions to tap an easy one to the infield, but, instead, cleaned up with a three-bagger. He was fired right then and there.”

Cobb was of course hired back shortly thereafter because Cobb was so good that even his gambling fool minor league team owner couldn’t keep him off the team. Another good tidbit was that:

“Cobb surely was a green youngster when he first came here. He used to take a ball of popcorn along with him to the outfield, and would munch it all during the game. When a fly ball was hit out his way, or he had to retrieve a hit, he would drop the popcorn and attend to his duties. As soon as the task was over, he would begin eating the popcorn again.”

Although America was still officially neutral in March 1917, war sentiment exploded in February when Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare on American shipping and the Zimmerman Telegram was made public. To demonstrate baseball’s patriotic bona fides (read: garner good PR), show that soldiers were willing to serve in the war too (read: keep the government from shutting organized baseball down during military conscription) and to set a “good example for others in military preparedness,” the American League’s owners¹³ decided at their winter meeting in February 1917 to have their baseball teams perform military drills during training camp, with a competition later in the season in which the best drilled team would receive a $500.00 dollar (about $10,000.00 in today’s money) prize. Each team was assigned a drill instructor by the military. On March 10^th, Washington’s drill instructor, a corporal in the Army named John Dean, arrived in Augusta to give the players “military instruction and training.” Dean was evidently very earnest in what he hoped to accomplish with the players. According to the Evening Star, “Corp. Dean is of the opinion that guns will be provided for the use of the players here, but says baseball bats will do if no rifles are available.” In fact, the drills initially consisted of the players marching in formation with baseball bats held on their shoulders as if the bats were rifles. In Augusta, the players practiced their military maneuvers for at least one hour every day. On March 12^th, “The start of the first drill was delayed for some minutes by the tardiness of Eddie Foster” [and two other players] “who did not reach the park until 10 o’clock and had to don their uniform before drilling. The trio was threatened with a term in the ‘guardhouse’ if the offense is repeated.” The military drills continued each morning for the rest of training camp and every day for the rest of the season. Washington’s drill instructor, Corporal Dean, traveled with the team all summer. When talk came up late in training camp that some other AL teams didn’t want to drill, Clark Grifith voiced strong approval for the drills, saying “The country faces a crisis and it will find every baseball player loyal to the core.”

As had been the case for much of 1916, Foster found himself playing second base rather than third in training camp. Foster did not hit well in the scrimmages against a squad composed of minor leaguers and reserves called Yannigans that the team played every spring. It wasn’t for lack of work, however: “Eddie Foster already is practicing at place hitting, for which he has an enviable reputation. Each of the men is allowed to two balls in practice and Foster invariably hits the first into left field and the second to right. Eddie is not hitting them far, but is getting a good hold on the ball and sending it on a line over the infield.”

Although his hitting was slow to come around, Foster’s play in the field almost always sparkled. “Foster has not started to hit as he should, but handles the chances given him at second base better than [Carl] Sawyer¹⁴ does.” “Eddie Foster has few, if any, peers when it comes to getting the ball away from him quickly.” “At second, in the games here, Foster is taking the ball on bad hops and throwing to bases from all conceivable positions, with not an instant’s hesitation.”

On March 22^nd, training camp closed up and the Senators’ starters left for a barnstorming tour of the Mid-South, starting in Birmingham, where Washington played the Barons and beat them 4-2. From there, the Senators went to Memphis, where they played the Memphis Chickasaws (or Chicks for short). Foster walked and scored a run for Washington in this game. On Sunday the 25^th, Washington played an exhibition game against the Cincinnati Reds in Memphis before a crowd of about 6,000. The Reds’ manager at this time was Hall-of-Fame pitcher Christy Mathewson. Griffith had managed the Reds in the past, so he was motivated to beat Cincinnati any time one of his teams played them, exhibition game or otherwise. Foster again walked and scored, and Washington beat the Reds 5-1. Earlier that morning, one of Foster’s teammates got the authentic Memphis experience:

“George McBride was the victim of a sneak thief some time early Sunday morning. While he and John Henry, who was rooming with him, were asleep, someone entered their room and rifled McBride’s clothes, removing $20” (about $400 in today’s money) “in cash and several stickpins from his pocketbook, which was later found empty in the bathroom.”

The team then left Memphis and arrived in Nashville on the 26^th. The Washington Herald reported that Griffith gave the team a talking to when they arrived, upset that they only had 13 hits as a team so far on the road trip. According to The Herald, however, the players all decided that 13 must be their lucky number, since:

“The Griffmen’s special was due to arrive here at 3:00 A.M., but the old Louisville and Nashville schedule shows a three-hour delay. Two freight trains had a head-on smash-up about eighty miles out of Nashville, and if it had not been for a twenty minute delay in getting away from Memphis the Nationals’ squad would have been one of the principals in this head-on collision.”¹⁵

The Senators exhibition game against the Nashville Vols¹⁶ was rained out on the 27^th, but Washington beat the Vols 6-3 on the 28^th, with Eddie Foster getting two hits in that game.  Despite the rainy weather, a relatively large crowd was on hand, no doubt due to the fact that Foster’s Senators teammates, the Milan brothers (outfielders Clyde and Horace), were from Linden, TN, which was “within auto riding distance of Nashville,” and to see Walter Johnson possibly pitch, if only for a few innings. “Zeb”¹⁷ [Clyde Milan] “told Manager Griffith today that the entire town – or as much of it as could be transported on wheels – is planning to be on hand to see Zeb and his ‘roomie,’ Walter Johnson, in action. Zeb asserts that the fans in his section are rabid to a degree, and that, in view of the fact that all the moonshiners thereabouts will be included in the party, a right noisy delegation should be in evidence.”

On March 30^th, the team went to Louisville, KY. While there, the team visited the Louisville Slugger facility. “The result of the visit to the bat factory here yesterday was an order for some three dozen sticks of various shapes and weights, including two ‘police billies’ for Eddie Foster.” While in Louisville, the team played the Reds in another exhibition game, this time losing 5-4. On the 31^st, the team moved on to Cincinnati and played the Reds again, this time winning 5-4. Foster singled and scored, but also made a throwing error that contributed to a big inning for the Reds.

In the wee morning hours of April 3^rd, the team finally ended their trip and rolled into Washington. “High priced hotels ruined the financial piles of everyone in the party. The club this spring picked out the best hotels on the road and the players, drawing no salaries, suffered accordingly. Laundry bills were heavier than usual. Tips were needed on every side, and by the time the boys reached Cincinnati, they were cleaned… it was a light crowd that emerged from their cars this morning at Union Station.” The team continued to practice and do military drills, and played exhibition game against Georgetown and the Philadelphia Phillies on 7^th, both of which Washington won. Foster had an RBI against the Phillies. After the Philadelphia game, the team ran off the field to catch a train to Columbus, OH.

From Columbus, the Senators went to Philadelphia to play Connie Mack¹⁸ and the A’s for opening day of the 1917 regular season. Before the game, the A’s baseball team put on a military marching spectacle. Although the general consensus is that the convention of playing the national anthem at sportings event started in the 1918 World Series, when it was played during the seventh inning stretch, it would seem that the anthem was being played before games prior to that time. For instance, that day in Philadelphia:

“It is doubtful there was a single one of the 7,478 who paid their way to see the 1917 curtain raiser yesterday who did not feel a little thrill when Old Glory was lifted to the top of the flagstaff in Centerfield by a delegation of four of the Mackmen. The entire squad of local players, marshalled by… their military instructor, marched from home plate to the flagpole, preceded by a band, and to the strains of the national anthem, the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ was hoisted aloft, while every person in the inclosure stood with bared heads and cheered.”

Picture Caption: Washington's 1917 team picture. I think.

That day, military recruiters were active in the stands, which were draped everywhere with bunting. Eddie Foster played second base and batted second in the lineup. He went hitless that opening day, but Walter Johnson pitched and Washington won 3-0. The next day was a different story for Foster. Foster had three hits, one of which was a triple, and drove in two runs in another 6-2 victory over Philadelphia. One Washington sportswriter wrote that “It’s the mystery of baseball that Eddie Foster doesn’t bat .330 or better each season. Nobody in this country can place the ball or engineer the run and hit better… Pitchers love him like they do sore arms.”

Washington proceeded to lose the last game of their series in Philly and were then swept in New York by the Yankees. On the 20^th, the Senators came back to Washington for their home opener. As had been the case in Philadelphia, pre-game involved patriotic displays of military marching by the team. Clark Griffith and Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Delano Roosevelt then led the team out to the flagpole that had just recently been installed in the outfield. Griffith and FDR then hoisted the flag up the pole as a military band played the National Anthem. Vice President Thomas R. Marshall then threw out the first pitch from his seat behind home. Washington lost to the A’s again that day, 6-4 in 13 innings. Foster had two hits in the game and drove in the tying run with a sacrifice fly in the 10^th. Washington took two out of the next three, splitting the series with the A’s. Washington lost to the A’s 4-3 on the 23^rd, but Foster drove in two runs that day.

Although the team was not doing particularly well, Foster individually stayed hot at the plate through the end of April in to early May. In the midst of Foster’s hitting outbreak, Clark Griffith waxed philosophical to sportswriter Denman Thompson one morning in Boston:

“I have had the three greatest place hitters of the game on my teams¹⁹, and I want to tell you that Eddie Foster is the best. The others are Willie Keeler and Hal Chase. Willie taught Hal, and Hal taught Eddie. Foster is the smartest batter I ever saw.

A pitcher usually can tell by the position of the batter’s feet just where he hopes to hit, even as a boxer gets a good line on the plan of his foe by watching the latter’s feet. If you see the right-hand batter’s feet set for an attem

pt to hit to right field you can pitch inside, and nine times in ten he will pop in the air. So it goes.

But you can’t do this with Foster, because he shifts too late for the pitcher. The hit and run with a man on second, or with men on second and first, is a play which Hal Chase excelled, probably does yet. You see, the shortstop would be edging over toward second to hold up the runner and the third baseman would be over nearer his bag for the force on a bunt, leaving a big space between him and the shortstop. Chase could bang the ball through that hole better than anyone I ever saw, but Foster can do it just as well.

It’s fairly easy to tell about the way to hit and run, but it’s the most difficult thing in the world to teach a man to get that snappy motion, foot-shifting and balance, which all place hitters must have.”

As soon as the war began, so did the government’s efforts to raise money to pay for it. Questions also began almost immediately about whether organized baseball would even be able to continue. In the spring, as part of its war tax bill, Congress proposed a 10% tax on all baseball tickets costing 40¢ or more. Even concession stand workers and credentialed news media were required to pay an admission tax to get in the game. The proposal was evidently so controversial that the Ways and Means Committee in the House refused to even hold hearings, although Johnson and his American League owners lobbied individual congressmen separately. Ban Johnson was quoted in early May as saying that if the War Tax went into effect, the league would have to call off the 1918 season. However, Johnson and the owners were undercut in their lobbying efforts by Chicago White Sox owner Charles Comiskey,²⁰ who voluntarily gave 10% of the gate from the White Sox’s first ten home games of the 1917 season to the Red Cross. Although Comiskey could afford to do this, due to low attendance and war factors, the other American League owners could not (or, at least, that’s what the other owners claimed). The so-called baseball tax did eventually go into effect, and stayed largely unchanged until 1928. Despite this, Johnson assured in the press that the 1917 season would play until completion, but ominously said that “If the country is still at war in the following spring no attempt will be made to begin another season, and the ballparks will remain closed until the return of more peaceful times.”

As the calendar flipped into May, Foster’s hitting began to cool off somewhat, and the team’s record stayed under .500. Despite that, 1917 was a year that had a lot of noteworthy occurences for Foster and the Senators. On May 13^th, Washington was in Cleveland to play the Indians. The game was a pitching duel, Cleveland getting only two hits off of Washington’s pitcher that day. In the 3^rd inning, a controversial balk, called after Eddie Foster had tagged out the baserunner at third and after Cleveland’s star center fielder/coach, Tris Speaker²¹, complained to the umpire, led to Cleveland’s first run. In the 7^th inning, Speaker got the Indians’ second hit of the day. He was at second with one out when a hit and run was called. Washington’s shortstop that day threw out the batter at first easily, and as Speaker tried to score the first basemen’s throw beat him to the plate. Washington’s catcher blocked the plate and Speaker slid around him, missed home “with his toes at least a foot” and never touched the plate. When the umpire called Speaker safe, “the entire Washington team came in to tell him about his eyes and plenty of other things that wouldn’t sound well in Sunday school. Even Eddie Foster chipped in with a few unkind words.”  According to The Evening Star, the umpire

“…was so clearly and absolutely wrong on the play that even Eddie Foster, who seldom registers a protest, no matter what happens, was all wrought up. Foster was the first player to reach McCormick after the ruling and threw his glove down in disgust when McCormick refused to reason with him. Play was suspended for five minutes while the Washington athletes stormed and raved.”

Two of Washington’s ballplayers were ejected from the game. According to the Washington Times, Foster “joined his mates in kicking and had to be waved back to his position twice.” Later in the season after another controversial umpiring decision in another game, the Washington Times had this quote: “It is a saying in the American League that whenever Walter Johnson or Eddie Foster kick, the umpiring must be rotten.” No matter how mild-mannered and reasonable people are, bad officiating/umpiring can turn even the best of us into enraged maniacs.

Umpiring in the dead ball era was a difficult and often times violent proposition. On June 23^rd, the Senators began a one month road trip with a doubleheader against the Red Sox in Boston. The Red Sox’s starting pitcher for the first game that day was Babe Ruth²². Washington second baseman Ray Morgan led off for Washington. After the third pitch was called a ball and the count was run to 3-0, Ruth yelled to home plate umpire Brick Owens²³, “If you’d go to bed at night, you [expletive deleted], you could keep your eyes open long enough in the daytime to see when a ball goes over the plate.” Brick told Ruth he’d throw him out of the game if Ruth didn’t pipe down. Ruth yelled back, “Throw me out and I’ll punch you right in the jaw.”  Owens called the fourth pitch (reportedly thrown right down the middle) ball four and Ruth charged Owens. Ruth missed his first punch, but connected with the second. A melee then ensued around home plate, and it took Boston’s manager and several policeman to drag Ruth off the field. Ruth would eventually get fined by the league and suspended ten games and was forced to issue a public apology.

After Ruth was ejected, the Red Sox brought in Ernie Shore²⁴ to pitch. Eddie Foster, second in the lineup that day, then came to bat. In the melee, Boston’s starting catcher had also been ejected. With a new pitcher (who was not given very long to warm up) and a new catcher in the game, Washington’s Ray Morgan, on base because of the walk, decided to try to steal.²⁵ Boston’s new catcher threw Morgan out a second. Shore got the second batter, Eddie Foster, to ground out, and then proceeded to throw a complete game no-hitter, recording 26 straight outs to get a quasi-perfect game. In the seventh inning of Babe Ruth and Ernie Shore’s no-hitter, with a man on at second, Shore hit an easy ball back to Washington’s pitcher, who had the runner at 2^nd hung up, was undecided where to throw. He threw late to the shortstop covering 2^nd, but the baserunner had taken off for 3^rd. The shortstop rocketed a throw to Foster, who evidently couldn’t handle it, and both runners were safe. The middle finger of Foster’s right hand was dislocated attempting to handle the throw to 3^rd. Foster had to leave the game and was out for the next ten days. Washington went on to be shut out of both games of the doubleheader that day.

Picture Caption: Boston's powerful 1917 pitching staff. Babe Ruth is 2nd from left; Ernie Shore is 2nd from right.

Eddie Foster returned to the lineup on the 4^th of July for a doubleheader against the Yankees at the Polo Grounds in New York. Starting second baseman Ray Morgan was out with an injury, so, as was often the case that season, Foster had to play 2^nd. Eddie Foster seemed to have a habit of playing his best games on holidays such as Memorial Day, the 4^th of July, and Labor Day, and also on days where there were big crowds on hand in the stands, such as Opening Day and weekends when folks were off work (baseball stadiums did not have lights at this time, so games were played in the afternoon or early evening when people were still at work). July 4^th, 1917, would be just such a game for Foster, who announced his return to the lineup by going 3 of 4, driving in two runs and scoring twice himself in the morning game of the doubleheader. Washington swept the Yankees that day and then split a doubleheader with the Yankees the next day, but Washington would struggle for the rest of their road trip afterwards.

On July 7^th, Foster got good news. The Washington Herald reported:

“Somewhere between Washington and Detroit, Eddie Foster, the Nationals’ second baseman, yesterday got a telegram that gave him more joy than a circuit smash with three on. ‘A darling little Foster and she’s a girl,’ was its text. Mrs. Clark Griffith, in announcing the arrival of the latest suffragist, said that everybody was happy and doing well. Eddie may take a day off and come and shake Miss Foster’s hand. Otherwise he will be on the job as usual, but getting the latest returns from the home grounds every few hours.”

As far as I can tell, Foster did not take any days off from playing to celebrate his first child’s birth, probably because, as stated before, the team was in the middle of a MONTH LONG road trip at the time (they stopped by in Washington after playing the Eastern Seaboard teams). Tragically, Eddie’s first child, little Nancy Foster, died only a little over two years later in August of 1919. The news item announcing her death in the Washington Times said “the child had been ill for about ten days, spinal meningitis finally coming to end its sufferings.”

On July 15^th, Washington played the eventual 1917 World Series champion White Sox in Chicago. There was a large crowd of about 20,000 on hand that day. The weather was warm and Eddie was playing in his hometown, so, true to form, he had a big day. In the 2^nd Inning, Foster walked and eventually scored. Morgan was still out with an injured leg so, as he had to do often during the course of the 1917 season due to injury and Griffith constantly juggling his lineup to improve the Senators’ perpetually light hitting, Foster was playing second base instead of third that day. In the 4^th Inning, an easy pop fly was lifted in Foster’s direction. Eddie proceeded to handle the pop up “as if it were a trench bomb,” dropping the ball and allowing the Sox to score the tying run. Washington came in to the top of the 9^th trailing 4-2. The Griffs rallied, though, and tied it. With two out and two on and the game tied, Foster “caught one on the end of his bat and drove it to deep left,” driving in the game winning runs. As the Washington Post put it, “Eddie Foster believes in making amends for mistakes, and he did so with a vengeance this afternoon.” In the bottom of the 9^th, Washington brought in Walter Johnson to close the game. With the Sox already having one run in and the score 6-5, Shoeless Joe Jackson came to bat with the bases loaded. He lined out to Johnson and Washington held on for the win on what could’ve been a big day for Chicago, if, as the Chicago Tribune put it, Foster hadn’t “spoiled the whole afternoon.”

In 1917, Washington Manager Clark Griffith joined in the patriotic euphoria and decided to donate balls, bats and other baseball paraphernalia to soldiers going overseas. The effort gradually grew into Griffith’s “Bat and Ball Fund.” According to one Washington sportswriter, raising money and getting the supplies together made Griffith “the busiest man in nine counties.” To help raise money, Griffith had bat and ball days in every Major League park, in which buckets would be passed around and fans would be exhorted to donate. The doughboys in France and Belgium did indeed play a lot of baseball; makeshift ball fields dotted the countryside behind the fighting lines, and military leaders like Pershing considered sports like baseball excellent for morale and physical preparation. The first shipment by Griffith’s fund of baseball equipment to Europe was put on a steamer named the Kansan, which was sunk by a U-boat in July 1917. Eventually, hundreds of thousands of dollars (millions in today’s money) worth of baseball equipment would eventually make it over there.

Besides being known for the hit and run and slick fielding at 3^rd base, Eddie Foster was also known for breaking up no-hitters late in ball games. For example, in August 1916, Foster broke up 42 year old St. Louis Browns pitcher Eddie Plank’s bid for a no hitter with one out in the ninth inning.²⁶ More on poor Eddie Plank shortly. On July 20^th, 1917, Eddie Foster again broke up a no-hitter in St. Louis in the ninth inning, this time against Dave Davenport. For the first eight innings, the closest anyone on Washington’s roster had come to getting a hit had been Eddie Foster himself earlier in the game, when future teammate Johnny “Doc” Lavan robbed him with a leaping catch of Foster’s line drive. Foster led off in the ninth. With the count 0-2, Foster refused to chase a curve, and on the next pitch, poked one into right field for a hit. St. Louis Star Times columnist Clarence Lloyd noted the similarity to the game the year prior, “only Foster didn’t use a fungo stick.²⁷ He picked out the thickest bludgeon in the Washington heap and crashed a bona fide blow to right. This upset Dave and he permitted two more hits to follow,” before George Sisler saved the day with some incredible plays in the field. As St. Louis sportswriter L.C. Davis wrote in his Sport Salad column:

“Oh Davy, dear, you very near

Pulled off a no-hit game;

You came within an eye-lash

Of the well-known hall of fame.

But in the ninth Ed Foster

Stung the pellet for a base

And, in a way of speaking

Slammed the door right in your face.”

At the end of their road trip on July 23^rd, Washington’s record had bottomed out at 17 games below .500 and they were in last place. As they played at home for a month, though, the Senators played better ball and their record began to improve. On August 6^th, Washington hosted the St. Louis Browns.²⁸ On the mound that day for Washington was future Hall-of-Famer Walter “Big Train” Johnson. On the mound for the Browns that day was none other Gettysburg Eddie (future Hall-of-Famer Eddie Plank), whose no-hitter Foster had so unceremoniously broken up about a year earlier. The crowd on hand that day was larger and louder than normal for a Monday game between two bottom dwelling teams due to the 500 DC National Guard soldiers in the stands. The Guardsmen’s section in the stands that day had “a bugler, a cheer leader and the vocal power peculiar to a college rooting section at a football game.” The game was a pitching duel, tied at 0 through nine innings. Washington’s best chance to score in the regularly allotted nine innings came in the 3^rd, when the leadoff man singled and then stole second. With one out and a man on second, Plank walked Eddie Foster intentionally. The next batter flied out and then Horace Milan was unintentionally walked to load the bases. Browns’ second basemen Del Pratt (Roll Trotsky – see Endnote 2) then made a diving stop of Sam Rice’s grounder and threw to first while lying on the ground to get Rice for out number three.

While Johnson overpowered the Browns’ batters with his fastball, and both pitchers had great fielding behind them, Gettysburg Eddie used guile to blank the Griffs:

“Plank had considerable fun yesterday watching the efforts of the Nationals to judge his slow ball. He occasionally varied it with a slower ball, a wide, slow curve and a fast one, straight over, all of which he delivered with practically the same motion. In the ninth Plank floated the slowest of the slow up to the plate, and, seeing that Rice was going to bunt, Severeid” (the Browns catcher that day) “left the catcher’s box and ran out into the diamond to field it, reaching a spot several feet in front of the plate before the ball got to Rice. Sam missed it altogether, Umpire Nallin’s chest protector stopping its flight. This so amused Plank he delayed the game for a minute or two laughing over it.”

According to another sportswriter, Plank laughed so hard when the ball he pitched hit the umpire that he “had to lie down on the grass for several minutes.”

The game went into extra innings still tied at zero. Until the 11^th, Plank had only allowed three hits all day. Gettysburg Eddie wasn’t laughing when Washington catcher Eddie Ainsmith²⁹ led off with a walk for Washington in the bottom of the 11^th. Walter Johnson fouled out for the first out of the inning,

“…but left fielder Horace Milan drove a single to left field and Ainsmith hustled to third. And when Ainsmith beat Shotten’s throw to third, the yell those soldier boys let out – if it had been heard ‘somewhere in France’ – would have scared a lot of lads on Kaiser Bill’s team out of their underground bunks…”

That brought up Eddie Foster, who proceeded to once again torment poor Gettysburg Eddie:

“Foster then demonstrated that Plank knew something when he passed him earlier in the fray, with a man on second base…” “And then Pop³⁰ Foster, who has been long on fielding but short on batting since the club returned home, sent the ball skipping merrily over second base. Ainsmith skipped just as merrily home, and it was all over – even the shouting.”

Washington had won, 1-0 in 11 innings. A few days after the game, Plank left the team while there was still a month and a half left in the regular season to back to his farm in Gettysburg. August 6^th in Washington turned out to be Eddie Plank’s last game as a Major Leaguer. Plank gave his reason for retiring as “the strain of baseball was telling on him, causing trouble with his stomach.” A pesky place hitter like Eddie Foster is just the kind of guy who could give a pitcher an ulcer.

In early June, Clark Griffith had taken virtually the entire team to register for the military draft. On August 7^th, Foster and two of his teammates were drafted into the Army. However, Foster was able to claim an exemption due to having two dependents, a wife and child. On August 17^th, Foster and first baseman Joe Judge were granted an exemption from the local draft board and “needless to say, the wives of these ballplayers were made happy by the news. It will be a good piece of news for Manager Griffith, as these boys are among the stars of the Washington club.” Foster’s teammate, future Hall-of-Fame right fielder Sam Rice³¹, would not be so lucky and Rice wound up serving over there in 1918.

  

The competition for best military drilling for an American League baseball team began on August 21^st. A committee composed mostly of military officers, led by Major General Henry P. McCain,³² was appointed by American League President Ban Johnson to judge all the teams. The committee visited four American League cities that week to judge each American League team (home and away) playing the day of their visit. On August 23^rd,  the committee was at Comiskey Field in Chicago to judge the Senators’ and the White Sox’s military drilling. According to the Evening Star, when it came time for Washington’s portion of the program,

“The Griffmen were on their mettle and, ably handled by Sgt. Dean, put up a snappy exhibition, remarkably free from even small, technical mistakes. The accuracy with which they executed squad movements and the machine-like precision with which they handled their ‘guns³³’ elicited spontaneous approbation from the thousands of uniformed men as well as the fans. Lieut. Col. Raymond Shelton, U.S.A., complimented them on their fine showing and said he considered them a very well drilled team.

An event not on the program was the collapse of Eddie Foster near the close of the drill. Foster and Clyde Milan both were seized with cramps early in the morning coming over on the train from St. Louis and were unable to sleep… When Foster arrived at the park from his home, where he stays while in Chicago, he was apparently very ill and was advised not to try the drill, but insisted on going on the field. Near the end of the maneuvers he fainted and had to be assisted from the field. Neither Foster nor Milan was able to play in the game that followed the military and flag raising maneuvers… Their illness was diagnosed as ptomaine poisoning³⁴, but neither was able to account for how it was contracted.”

Foster was taken to his mother’s Chicago home to convalesce. When he woke up the next day, Foster had no memory of even being on the field the day before. Foster stayed in Chicago while the Senators continued on their road trip to Cleveland. Foster did not get back in the lineup until Washington played the Yankees in New York on August 31^st, eight days later. He lost around ten pounds from the illness. Washington swept the doubleheader that day. Naturally, Foster drove in two runs in the 11^th of the 2^nd game. The St. Louis Browns, of all teams, won the military drilling competiton and the $500 prize; Washington finished third.

After his return from illness, Foster got hot at the plate in September. Washington played much better down the stretch, finishing the 1917 season only five games below .500 and in fifth place in the standings. As was often the case in the teens, Washington’s biggest problem was that they lacked good hitting and had almost literally no power. The rash of injuries and illnesses suffered by the team and the lack of depth on their bench doomed Washington to a lower finish than they probably deserved. Outside of his rookie year and his final year in the league, Eddie Foster’s .235 batting average for the 1917 season represented Foster’s worst year at the plate as a professional. Still, in the dead ball era, a .235 average was good for fourth place among American League third basemen that season.

In December 1917, Clark Griffith, in an effort to try and get more hitting for the team in 1918, traded pitcher Bert Gallia and cash considerations (he gave the Browns $15,000.00, which would be about $300,000.00 in today’s money) in cash to the St. Louis Browns in exchange for shortstop Johnny “Doc” Lavan³⁵ and outfielder Burt Shotten.³⁶ As the calendar flipped to 1918, Foster’s two year “baseball war” contract (negotiated while the Federal League still maintained a tenuous existence) with the Washington club was up. Foster signed another contract with the club in January. Although salaries were being cut across the league due to expiring contracts and dwindling attendance on account of the war,

“… it was hinted that the cut in salary handed ‘Fatima’ ³⁷ was a very slight one. Eddie has always been a player that worked heart and soul for the club which he was representing. Foster, during the past few years, has been a fixture with the Nationals, as he is a player who has always been in shape and has given the best he has in him.”

The Senators had their training camp in Augusta, GA again in 1918. Unlike the year prior, this time the weather was much rainier, beginning from the very first day the ball club arrived. Bad weather would plague the team all spring right up until Opening Day. Augusta was particularly soggy that spring. Practice games and exhibition games were repeatedly rained out. The team even practiced in the rain one day. And of course, the Senators went through their military marching drills each day regardless.

As usual, Foster came to camp in good shape. On the second day of camp, The Evening Star noted:

“Despite the strenuous matinee yesterday, there was no let-up work today. All the players, with the exception of McBride, Foster and Milan, are being driven at a smart pace to get the soreness out of their limbs. These veterans, along with Johnson” [and several others] “are being given wide latitude in their training, as they know how to proceed to get in condition the best and quickest way.”

Considering how Foster and the team started the 1918 season, Clark Griffith probably wished he had driven them a little harder.

  

One feature of that spring was that the Senators would often play soldiers in exhibition games. For instance, a large crowd showed up in Augusta to watch Washington play the 108^th Field Artillery Regimental team on March 23^rd. According to The Evening Star, the soldiers “got an eyeful of Major League Baseball as presented by the Washington club, and a laugh a minute from Nick Altrock, who acted as announcer, umpire and coach for both teams. Washington won 9-2 and “Foster showed the Sammies some fielding which earned him cheers.” Afterwards, many on Washington’s team hung out with the soldiers at their mess hall in Augusta Heights. On the 27^th, Foster had two hits and a stolen base when Washington played the 110^th Infantry from Camp Hancock. Foster had three hits and a sac fly when Washington scratched out a 4-0 win against the 112^th Infantry later that month.³⁸

The Senators left their training camp in Augusta on April 3^rd and headed North to play two exhibition games with the minor league Atlanta Crackers. On the way up, according to the Post, the players got another taste of what war time baseball would be like:

“Each player will have to carry his uniform in a roll as he will on all trips this summer. Well paid athletes will have to use their hands to carry something besides their bats in a game and hands to grip somethings besides a baseball this season. And there won’t be a lower berth for all the big leaguers either. Players who never rode in an upper when someone else was footing the bill, will have that experience.”

Washington won both games against the Crackers. They then proceeded to Chattanooga to play the Lookouts, but both of their exhibition games with them were rained out. According to the Post, “The rain has enabled them to take it easy, pinochle to their heart’s content and sleep late. Some of them had planned to take a trip to Lookout Mountain this morning to look over the historic spots in the vicinity. They are more interested in base hits than in history, but then ball players believe that old saying about when in Rome do what Romans do.” The Senators then went back down to play the Crackers again, but that game was rained out too. Washington played two exhibition games against the Phillies in Camp Jackson (Columbia, SC) and Camp Sevier (Greenville, SC), losing the first and tying the second. The Senators then proceeded North to play another exhibition game against Philadelphia in Norfolk, VA, on April 12^th, but that game was snowed out, so Foster went to Fredericksburg to visit his wife’s family.

The Senators opened the 1918 regular season at home against the Yankees on April 15^th. The Yankees won 6-3. It was not a good day for Foster; he committed an error that led to a Yankee run, went hitless and hit into a game ending double play in the bottom of the ninth, killing a potential rally. Washington won the second game of the series, but lost the third game to the Yankees when Foster dropped a throw from the catcher to third to get the man (Del Pratt) being sacrificed from 2^nd to 3^rd; darkness prevented the bottom of the 12^th from being played and the Yankees were given that win. Foster’s work at the plate to start the season was absolutely abysmal. Through four games, Foster was 1 for 17 at the dish, and he committed several errors.

Washington then proceeded to lose a home series against Connie Mack’s Philadelphia A’s, who were not a good team in 1918. On April 22^nd, Griffith was already juggling his lineup in order to do anything to get the team to hit a little better. Griffith benched starting 2^nd baseman Ray Morgan and moved Foster to 3^rd base for that day’s game and dropped Foster to 7^th in the batting order. Morgan, as it turned out, was one of several Washington players who were sick with “the grippe”³⁹ in the spring and early summer of that season, which may be at least a partial explanation why Morgan and the rest of the Senators played so terribly early on in the season.

Washington then went on a three city road trip to New York, Boston and Philadelphia, going 4-6 on the trip. Foster missed the next to last game of the road trip with “stomach trouble.” This seemed to be the turning point of the season for Foster, who came back the next day for the last game of the series and went to work with the stick, banging out several hits in an 11-6 Washington victory over Philadelphia.

Through his first ten games, Foster had made nine errors. Foster and his team were not playing well. However, on May 7^th, Washington came back home for a three game series with the eventual World Series champion Boston Red Sox. Washington won the first game of the series 7-2, thanks in large part to Walter Johnson shutting down the Sox (the Sox only two runs came off a moon shot of a home run by Babe Ruth). Foster got a hit and a walk and scored a run in this game. On the 8^th, Washington pounded the Red Sox 14-4. In noting Foster’s rapidly improving hitting, sportswriter Denman Thompson wrote:

“… yesterday [Foster] topped it off by registering three singles and a walk in addition to making one of the swellest barehand stops back of third base that has been witnessed on the local lot in many a moon. “Fatime” got a great hand from the crowd on appearing at the plate in the sixth after his spectacular stab and responded by plunking a hit to left that started Mays [one of Boston’s pitchers that day] on his way to the sheltering confines of the shower room. Foster will be a prime favorite with the fans if he will continue to show some of the pep which has characterized his work the last three days.”

Foster made another great defensive play in the seventh inning that day, when a hit ball took a funny hop and “Foster would’ve been without a few teeth if he hadn’t gloved it.”

Washington played the Red Sox in the final game of the series on May 9^th. Babe Ruth pitched for the Red Sox against Walter Johnson for Washington. With the two teams’ pitching aces facing off, the game was a pitching duel going into the bottom of the 7^th inning, with Boston holding a 1-0 lead. Washington took the lead in the bottom of the 7^th 2-1, but the Sox tied in the top of the 9^th and took a 3-2 lead going into the bottom of the 9^th. Leading off in the bottom of the 9^th, Ray Morgan walked and advanced to 2^nd when Foster beat out an infield hit. Another walk loaded the bases and a sacrifice fly from Walter Johnson tied the game. With one out in the top of the 10^th, Babe Ruth doubled. Ruth then attempted to steal 3^rd base, but he was “cut down in artistic style” when Washington catcher Eddie Ainsmith threw to Foster, “Ainsmith’s peg being true and Foster’s touch deft.” In the bottom of the 10^th, with one out and the bases loaded, Foster lifted a fly ball to left field, sacrificing in the winning run. Despite pitching well and going 5 for 5 at the plate (a triple, three doubles and a single – Walter Johnson himself went 3 of 4 that day with a sac fly that tied it), Ruth was the loser. As the Post put it,

“Eddie Foster played another of his old-time games yesterday. He batted .500, with two hits in four times at bat, and turned in the sacrifice fly which scored Shanks with the winning run in the tenth. He also fielded his position faultlessly, accepting six chances without an error. His one-handed catch and tag of Ruth on Ainsmith’s peg in the tenth when the slugging pitcher attempted to steal third was a great bit of work, and he deserved all the cheers he received.”

After sweeping the Red Sox, Washington played .500 ball against the Indians, White Sox, and Tigers, going 6-6-1 in their long home stand against those teams. Also during this long home stand, however, Washington was swept in a four game series by, of all teams, the ultimately last place St. Louis Browns. This put the Senators five games under .500 for the season by the time they left for their first long road trip in late May. In the midst of their long home stand, on May 19^th, the Senators played Cleveland in what was the first Sunday baseball game⁴⁰ played in Washington. The crowd of approximately 17,000 was the largest crowd to watch a baseball game in Washington to that time. Walter Johnson and Stanley Coveleskie⁴¹ faced off in a pitcher’s duel. Washington pulled out a 1-0 win in 12 innings that day.

Foster’s play both at the plate and in the field really picked up in May. On May 14^th, in the midst of Washington’s long home stand, Washington lost to Cleveland 4-2. Foster doubled and scored a run that day. In the 9^th inning, Foster walked but was stranded on base when the last Washington batter popped out. May 14^th was noteworthy because it marked the beginning of the longest hitting streak in Eddie Foster’s career, and the longest hitting streak in the majors in 1918. Some milestones that occurred during Foster’s streak included Walter Johnson’s marathon 18 inning victory 1-0 over White Sox on May 16^th, a game in which Foster had the second hit for Washington… in the 8^th inning. The aforementioned first Sunday baseball game in Washington on the 19^th, happened during Foster’s streak. Foster did not drive in many runs during his streak, and he was often stranded on base after his hits. There were also quite a few low scoring extra inning games, which was a feature of this season for Washington. For example, on May 24^th, Washington played a Red Cross Benefit game against Detroit, a game in which Foster did drive in a run. Woodrow Wilson was on hand that day for the first nine innings, but the result was a 2-2 16 inning tie game called due to darkness. Foster drove in a run on the 26^th in Washington’s 4-0 win over Detroit, a game in which Ty Cobb injured himself racing in from left field and leaping head first to catch Foster’s short fly ball off the top of the grass.⁴² As is often the case with ballplayers, when Foster did well at the plate, he also did well in the field. Yet for all that, Washington couldn’t do much better than go about .500 during that time. On June 3^rd, Foster’s hitting streak ended in Cleveland in a game Washington won.

On May 23^rd, to boost draft numbers and get the nation on a total war footing, Provost General Enoch Crowder, a Judge Advocate General who was essentially in charge of administering the draft, issued what came to be known as the “Work Or Fight” order. The Work Or Fight Order was an interpretation of the Selective Service Act that required men to either work in “essential industries” by July 1^st or be subject to the draft, regardless of whether their local draft board had exempted them or not. Under Crowder’s order, the organized sports of baseball, boxing, and horse racing were not considered “non-useful,” while actors, opera singers and people involved in the movie industry were considered “essential.” Almost immediately, confusion over the “Work Or Fight” order arose, as the government gave conflicting signals about how it was to interpreted. On the day the order was issued, Secretary of War Newton D. Baker said “… it was agreed that the question could not be disposed of until all the facts relating to the effect upon the baseball business has been brought out through a test case.” American League President Ban Johnson, always accommodating toward the government, said “I do not believe the government has any intention of wiping out baseball altogether, but if I had my way I would close every theater, ball park and other places of recreation in the country and make the people realize that they are in the most terrible war in the history of the world.” This pro government position in regards to the war draft would eventually get Ban Johnson in hot water with his American League owners.

Meanwhile, still more trouble was brewing for organized baseball. At this time, whenever the President of the AL and the NL butted heads, the vote of the Baseball Commission’s Chairman would break the tie. Inevitably, the Chairman’s tiebreaking vote would inevitably leave one of the league presidents aggrieved. A frequent flashpoint between the two leagues began to arise when players would sign with multiple teams.⁴³

In 1918, the problem flared up again. A pitcher named Scott Perry was sold by his minor league club to the Boston Braves. However, the deal wasn’t officially completed and while he was on the ineligible list, Philadelphia A’s owner/manager Connie Mack got interested in him and signed him. As Perry began to have success with the A’s, the Braves made a claim on Perry through the National Commission were awarded Perry on a 2-1 vote. Connie Mack then broke an unwritten rule of baseball and sued in state civil court to enforce the A’s contract with Perry. On June 17^th, Mack got an injunction against from a court in Ohio against the Baseball Commission for Perry to stay with the A’s. Later that summer, the National League President resigned in protest and National League owners, in an uproar, began talk of the baseball equivalent of war - cancelling the World Series and splitting the two leagues again. The National League owners appointed a new President, and the new NL President worked out a compromise to mollify his owners whereby Mack had to pay the Braves for Perry. These events would eventually cause MLB to ditch the Commission system and appoint a single Commissioner to adjudicate disputes.⁴⁴

Although he attended training camp with the team in 1918, future Hall-of-Famer Sam Rice was ordered to report to his unit by the draft board before the regular season started. Although Burt Shotten did an acceptable job in right field that season, Washington dearly missed Rice’s bat in the lineup. However, on June 19^th, Rice got a one week furlough and got in to the lineup to play for Washington against the Yankees and the A’s. Washington went 4-2 in the six games Rice played for them that week. In Rice’s farewell game on June 24^th, Rice drove in Eddie Foster with the winning run against the A’s. Shortly after Rice’s furlough ended, his artillery unit shipped out first to England and then to France for training. His unit was about to be shipped to the front when the war ended in November.⁴⁵

On June 23^rd, near the end of Rice’s furlough, Washington finally came home from another of their month long road trips. The Senators’ record at this time was right around .500. Washington then proceeded to sweep a 5 game home series from the A’s.  On June 28^th, Washington began another four game home series with Babe Ruth and the Boston Red Sox with a 3-1 victory. That day, Washington’s pitcher, Harry Harper⁴⁶, threw a one-hitter. Boston’s one hit was a towering home run hit by Babe Ruth. Foster got a hit and scored a run in that game. On the 29^th and 30^th, Boston returned the favor, beating Washington each day by the identical scores of 3-1. In the final game of the Red Sox series on July 2^nd, Eddie Foster had a nice day, while Babe Ruth had a miserable one. In the first inning, Foster doubled and then scored when Ruth (playing center field that day) fumbled a ball hit toward him. Later in the game, Foster walked and scored another run. In the sixth inning, Ruth struck out looking on three straight pitches, despite being ordered by his manager to execute a hit and run. The Red Sox’s manager then benched Ruth and fined him $500 (about $8,400.00 in today’s money). Washington won 3-0. After the game, Ruth went home to Baltimore and in a fit of pique he told the press that he was considering joining a shipbuilding league.⁴⁷ Boston’s owner traveled to Baltimore and smoothed things over enough for Ruth to rejoin the team a few days later. Although Ruth did well the rest of that season, the seeds had been sown for him to be traded to the Yankees.

As the July 1^st deadline for the Work Or Fight Order came and went, ballplayers kept playing baseball and the season continued. Predictably enough considering the mixed signals given at the time the order was issued in May, local draft boards across the country issued contradictory orders on whether or not baseball was an “essential industry.”  The vast majority of draft boards continued to exempt ballplayers that had already been declared exempted. However, on July 11^th, after the local District of Columbia Draft Board ordered Washington catcher Eddie Ainsmith to get essential work or be drafted, Ainsmith, with the help of Clark Griffith, appealed his local board’s decision to the War Department. On July 19^th, Secretary of War Newton D. Baker ruled firmly against Ainsmith and declared plainly and unequivocally that baseball was not an “essential industry.” Baseball owners immediately began lobbying Baker and the Woodrow Wilson administration to be allowed to finish the season. Eventually, a compromise was settled upon – the season would be cut short by one month and a temporary week and half exemption would be granted to the pennant winning teams to play the World Series early, in September.⁴⁸

On July 19^th, late in the Senators game against the Chicago White Sox in Washington, word spread of Baker’s decision on the interpretation of the Work Or Fight Order. Washington trailed the White Sox 5-2 that day going in to the bottom of the ninth. According to The Washington Times, conversation broke out amongst Washington’s players as it came time for their at bat in the bottom of the ninth.

“’What’ll Griff do, go to France with the Y.M.C.A.?’ asked Mister Foster to George McBride, one of the four eligible. ‘Guess I’ll hook up with ‘em myself. I stand in pretty good at the Y.’”

‘Wait till I come back!’ said George, ‘I’ve got to go out and get a hit.’

And he did, for he was starting that ninth-inning rally.”

With the bases loaded and one out, Foster got a hit and drove in his friend George McBride to make the score 5-3. A base hit by Washington first baseman Joe Judge drove in two more runs, tying the score at 5 and sending Foster to third. With two outs, veteran Frank Schulte came to bat. “Schulte’s single that let Foster romp in was all that was needed to close the pastime.”

Washington’s win on the 19^th put them four games over .500. From then until the end of the season, the team played good baseball. On August 15^th, in the midst of Washington’s nearly one month and final road trip of the abbreviated season, Washington had an off day in Cleveland. Clark Griffith owned horses, and horse racing was big in this time. According to the Washington Post, the entire team except for Eddie Foster went to see the horse races in Cleveland that day. Foster’s refusal to go was no doubt anchored in his strong evangelical faith. At some point in the past two or three years prior, his wife took him to a Billy Sunday revival, at which Eddie Foster was saved. From that point on, Foster became a holy roller. Foster was an usher at Billy Sunday revivals and often took his teammates to hear Sunday speak. In early 1917, at the suggestion of Washington’s trainer and “Mayor of Cherrydale” Mike Martin, Foster himself began speaking to Sunday School classes and other religious gatherings all over the city. After speaking to his first church, one Washington newspaper wrote “After hearing Eddie Foster preach, and he does very well, too, we are convinced he is a better ball player than evangelist.” By the summer of 1917, Foster evidently became more comfortable speaking to audiences. One newspaper piece entitled “How Eddie Foster Struck Out The Devil”, said the following:

“’You can’t be neutral. It must be either Christ or the devil for yours,’ Eddie Foster, the Nationals’ infielder, admonished his auditors in the mid-week service at the Washington Heights Presbyterian Church last night. Eddie was carded as the principal speaker of the evening, and the little Griff infielder told with a ‘punch’ how he forsook the ‘bright and breezy highway’ for the ‘straight and narrow.’

Relating his experiences since ‘hitting the trail,’ Foster spoke of the many excuses he had heard offered by what he termed ‘side-steppers’ from the church. ‘Too many hypocrites in the church,’ said Eddie, ‘is the reason they gave for not affiliating with it. But, believe me, better a short time with a few hypocrites in church than an eternity in hell with a whole bunch of them.’

Foster sketched briefly his wayward career before succumbing to the ‘great appeal’ first considered by him in a Billy Sunday meeting, contrasting his former weakness with his present strength against worldly temptations.”

As the season came to an abbreviated end, Washington played its best baseball. The team wound up finishing 72-56, good for sixteen games over .500 and a 3^rd place in the American League standings that season. Washington finished only 4 games out of first. There are a lot of what-ifs with this team. What if they hadn’t a lot of bad weather in training camp? What if most of the team hadn’t gotten sick with the flu? What if the team had played only just OK  to start the year? What if the season hadn’t been shortened by war, just as the team was playing its best baseball? What if the team hadn’t lost its Hall-of-Fame right fielder to the draft?

But by far the most maddening aspect of Washington’s near pennant miss that season was the one other American League team most directly responsible for it. You see, that year Washington had a winning record against all but one American League team. In a supreme irony for Eddie Foster, the one team that kept Washington from winning a pennant that season was the bottom-dwelling St. Louis Browns. The Browns “waxed fat and sassy at the expense of the Griffmen,” going 2-9 at home and 6-12 overall against the Senators in 1918. If Washington could’ve just gone one game above .500 against St. Louis, they would’ve played in the World Series that year against the Chicago Cubs. Instead, the Red Sox did.

Statistically, 1918 was a good year for Eddie Foster. He had the longest hitting streak in the league that year. He also led the league in at bats and hit for a solid .283 batting average. For a short time in September, Foster played for a team of “all stars” that Griffith put together to play exhibition games against soldiers.

Although it’s not completely clear that he did so, most likely Foster joined his fellow draft eligible but deferred teammates at “essential” work with the Alexandria Shipbuilding Company for at least a short time (Clark Griffith took the essentially the entire team to sign up to work with them on August 20^th) after playing for Griffith’s team in September.  As it happened, World War I ended only a little over two months after the 1918 baseball season ended, so if Foster did work at the shipyard, it probably wasn’t for long. On March 9^th, 1919, Foster is listed as having a seat on the board of directors of the newly formed General Auto Truck Co. “Eddie Foster, when not playing with the Nationals, will spend most of his time demonstrating the new trucks. This will probably be Foster’s last year on the diamond.” We know he worked somewhere that winter, though, because when he reported to training camp in Augusta in 1919,

“At the pilot’s suggestion the midget third sacker knocked off work a month ago. Juggling heavy sacks of cement all winter had him worn down fine, but the lay-off packed on about fifteen pounds. Now the reducing process the work here entails will not leave him thin and drawn.

‘Foster right now is in better shape than he has been any spring for the last four years,’ Griffith observed. ‘I never saw him look better.’”

That war was over, and it was time for Eddie Foster and baseball to start again.

Endnotes:  

1) Prior to the 1916 season, the Browns needed a third baseman and the Senators needed a pitcher, so the Browns proposed to trade their veteran and future Hall-of-Fame pitcher Eddie Plank for Eddie Foster straight up. Plank was nicknamed “Gettysburg Eddie” because he was born and raised and had a farm in Gettysburg, PA. There’ll be much more about Gettysburg Eddie later in this article.

2) Del Pratt would later be a teammate of Eddie Foster with the Boston Red Sox. Del Pratt played football and baseball at the University of Alabama in 1908 and 1909 (he transferred in from Georgia Tech). Pratt was the first University of Alabama athlete to play Major League Baseball. Pratt was a fullback and kicker for the Tide’s football team. Pratt’s field goal against Tennessee in ’08 gave Bama a 4-0 win over the Vols (field goals counted four points in those days). His athletic career at Bama was cut short in his senior year (the 1909 football season) due to “faculty trouble.” Pratt studied law at Alabama, but never became an attorney. He was, however, the Browns’ representative in the Players’ Fraternity. In 1917, Pratt and a teammate (Johnny “Doc” Lavan – more on him later) sued the Browns owner for slander after the owner told newspaper reporters that some of the Browns were playing poorly on purpose to get traded. Pratt settled his lawsuit with the owner for an undisclosed payment. It will give you some indication of the pro-ownership slant of sports media at that time that Pratt was referred to as “the Browns’ Trotsky” for suing his owner.

3) Jimmy Austin was a future teammate of Eddie Foster with the St. Louis Browns. Third base was really the only thing holding the Browns back from winning a pennant for six or seven years in the late teens and early twenties. Austin’s poor play at bat and in the field in 1922 and other years prior, coupled with injuries, caused the Browns to claim Eddie Foster off waivers. You can read my long winded essay on that here: http://flintfoster.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-right-man-at-almost-right-time.html

4) Although the popular nickname for Clark Griffith was “Fox” or “Old Fox,” Griffith’s ballplayers called him “Teacher.” Eddie Foster was himself responsible for this nickname, telling the Washington Post in 1915 that “The Old Fox gets his players together every morning for a talk, and Foster says it is worse than any school he ever attended.” Clark Griffith was born and spent much of his childhood in rural Missouri, but his family moved to rural Illinois after his father was killed in a hunting accident. Griffith’s playing career had begun in the 19^th Century and ended in the early 20^th Century. Griffith’s players liked to joke about his playing days in the Civil War. They weren’t far off; by this time, Griffith had already been involved in professional baseball in some capacity for 25 years and had been managing for 16 years. In 1919, Griffith bought a controlling share of the club owned the team until his death in 1955.

5) The Baseball Fraternity, also sometimes called the Players Fraternity, was formed in 1912 around the time that a third professional baseball league, The Federal League, came into existence. Much like the USFL would do to football 70 years later, the Federal League would attempt to build a presence by poaching players from the older, more established leagues with large contracts. This gave the ballplayers bargaining leverage, which they used in part to form the “Fraternity.” The Federal League went under for good and forever in 1916.

6) When the American League and the National League merged to form Major League Baseball in the early 1900’s, MLB was governed by a Commission composed of the President of the National League, the President of the American League, and a chairman of the commission who served as the tiebreaker vote. Later events would eventually lead baseball to ditch the three party Commission and appoint a single Commissioner of Baseball.

7) David Fultz was raised in Staunton, Virginia. He attended Staunton Military Academy before attending Brown University. After college, he played baseball with the New York Highlanders (now called the New York Yankees) in the early 1900’s. The Highlanders’ Manager at that time was Clark Griffith. When his playing career ended, Fultz became a lawyer. Former teammates and other ballplayers approached Fultz about their contracts and Fultz gradually formed the Fraternity from there.

8) Baseball’s ownership cowed less prominent baseball players into signing. American League President Ban Johnson threatened to throw Washington catcher (and college graduate) John Henry out of baseball permanently for writing correspondence to other Major Leaguers requesting that they join the strike. Only after Washington’s ownership and Clark Griffith interceded on Henry’s behalf did Ban Johnson relent and let Henry play. Later in the season, one Washington scribe cheekily referred to Henry as “the Robespierre of the baseball revolution.”

9) Eddie Foster contracted typhoid early in April 1913 and was in the hospital for several months. He probably would’ve died without the close care of his nurse, Nan  Crismond, whom he would later marry.

10) From at least 1912 through 1916, the Senators had training camp and played exhibition games in March at the University of Virginia. In addition to having spring games between the starters and the minor leaguers that they invited to camp, Washington would often play UVA’s baseball teams. When the Senators got off to a bad start to their regular season in 1917, Charlottesville’s Daily Progress newspaper noted “The Washington ball club, which this year passed up Charlottesville as a training camp, is next to the bottom of the standing of the American League clubs, while Newark of the International League, which trained here this spring, is now leading its league.” While lauding Augusta in 1917, Griffith “still insist[ed] that Charlottesville, Va., is the greatest place in the world in which to condition ball players.”

11) Later in that same game, Walter Johnson hit a Yankee outfielder by the name of Birdie Cree in the head, knocking him unconscious for five minutes.

12) As reported by one of the Washington newspapers, “The last time Manager Griffith was invited to Cobb’s home for dinner was in Detroit several years ago.” [1914] “Shortly before dinner time Cobb excused himself, saying he was going to a store. This was before 6 o’clock. He did not return until 10:30 that night, and when he did it was with a sprained hand and other marks of battle. It was the night of his long-to-be remembered encounter with the butcher boy because of an argument the proprietor of the shop had over the phone with Mrs. Cobb in regard to some fish she had purchased.” Cobb went to the butcher’s shop, put a pistol to the butcher’s head and told the butcher to call Cobb’s wife and apologize. The butcher did, but the butcher’s assistant/brother-in-law, who was oh by the way a black man, came out from the back with a meat cleaver right after the phone conversation and yelled at Cobb to stop. Cobb pistol whipped the assistant, and then Cobb and the assistant went outside and fought until the police showed up. Cobb broke this thumb and missed more than a month of that season, costing the Tigers a great chance at the pennant. Although Cobb got off relatively light with a stiff fine and a night in jail, he was mortally embarrassed and his wife and kids never lived with him during the season again. This episode, maybe more than any other, contributed to the public’s perception of Cobb as a hot head.

13) Having baseball players perform military drills and march was the brainchild of former New York National Guard soldier and part owner of the New York Yankees, Colonel Jacob Ruppert. After serving in the Guard, Ruppert used Tammany Hall connections to get elected to Congress and became wealthy when he inherited his father’s brewery. Ruppert’s co-owner of the Yankees was the wonderfully named Tillinghast L’Hommedieu Huston, who himself served as a combat engineer in World War I.

14) Carl Sawyer’s career as a Major League baseball player was short. A reserve who only played in about 50 games over the course of a two year career (1915 and 1916), Sawyer was far more well known in baseball as “Coach” Nick Altrock’s comedy sidekick while with the Senators. Altrock basically performed slapstick mime comedy from the coaching box before, during and after the game. The laughs Sawyer got on the field evidently went to his head when he decided to move to Hollywood and take up acting. In fact, Sawyer had to take a train from L.A. to Augusta to attend training camp. Sawyer let it be known that he would quit baseball and go into acting if Griffith farmed him out to the minors. Foster played well enough in training camp that that is exactly what Griffith did, so Sawyer went into acting. Unfortunately, Sawyer only appeared in two movies, so his Hollywood career was about as noteworthy as his baseball career.

15) Train mishaps were apparently a regular feature of that time. For instance, later in 1917, Evening Star correspondent Denman Thompson posted this note on the team’s train ride to Cleveland:

“The Griffmen always are assured of an interesting trip when they travel on the line which brought them to this fair city. Last fall their journey was enlivened when the train they were traveling on plowed through a mile or two of pig iron, carelessly scattered along the tracks by a freight train, and last night their ‘rattler’ bumped into a nocturnal cow about twenty miles from Cumberland, causing a delay of half an hour while trainmen picked up sirloin steaks and pot roasts and made notes about the accident to the commissary department.

The train was a special and was not ‘due’ in Cleveland at any particular time, otherwise it would have been an hour late. It was delayed long enough to make it necessary that all hands eat on the train instead of waiting until they arrived here to break their fast, and this fact came near making the squad shy two ball players and a scribe. The trio in question was juggling three-minute eggs and balancing coffee in the dining car when Akron was reached. The players were regulars – Foster and Judge – and the newspaper man was a regular fellow, too, but the train crew did not seem to realize this fact and very inconsiderately uncoupled the diner and ran it onto a siding half a mile or so from the remainder of the train. This little divergence from the customary routine fortunately was discovered, however, and the three finished their breakfast while walking the ties back to where their Pullmans were awaiting a relief engine.”

16) The Nashville Vols played in the Cotton States League and had several players who had played baseball at the Major League level. It was the Vols roster, playing as ringers for Cumberland College, that beat John Heisman’s Georgia Tech baseball team 22-0 in the spring of 1916. That game prompted Georgia Tech’s retribution in the record setting 222-0 football win over Cumberland later that fall. Heisman’s retribution for the baseball. If you’ve never seen Jon Bois’ short video about the Georgia Tech-Cumberland blowout football game, stop everything you’re doing and watch it now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doZzrsDJo-4

17) Clyde Milan, centerfielder for the Senators for 16 years, was most widely known by his nickname “Zeb,” which was a common nickname for players from small towns. However, Milan’s nickname with his teammates was “Rodney,” which is explained in the Washington Post in 1915:

“Jesse Clyde Milan became famous as a storyteller from the first day he joined the Washington baseball club. His tales of the woods and stream rival any that has ever been written. He is a second Jules Verne when it comes to forecasts and weird stories. It is a hard matter to believe the majority of them, and one of these tales brought forth his nickname.

It seems that Milan’s father had a big mule, which refused to be shod. According to Milan, his parent was an unusually strong man during his younger days. The elder Milan dug a ditch and threw the mule into it with the animal’s feet in the air. Then he was shod. ‘Did that mule have a name?’ one of the players inquired. ‘Yes, its name was Rodney.’ When Milan said this he was doomed, he has been dubbed ‘Rodney’ ever since.”

18) Eddie Foster’s first shot at making a Major League roster came when to Connie Mack’s A’s training camp in 1908. Although he did not make the regular roster, Foster turned heads that spring.

19) Clark Griffith is widely credited with creating the hit-and-run (then known as the run-and-hit). Griffith reportedly invented it with Eddie Foster in mind. Foster was so good at making contact with the ball that a runner could go at will with the certainty that Foster would make contact.

20) Eddie Foster’s hometown team, the White Sox, were another organization, like the Browns, who tried for many years to talk Washington into a trade. Comiskey evidently liked him a lot.

21) Future Hall-of-Famer Tris Speaker (who had broken Ty Cobb’s streak of nine consecutive American League batting titles in 1916) played center field for Cleveland, but Speaker also served as a coach of the team in all but name. It was said that Cleveland’s manager at the time, Lee Fohl (who managed the St. Louis Browns when Eddie Foster played there in 1922 and 1923) never made an important decision without getting Speaker’s input first. Due to a disagreement over a pitching change in a game, Fohl was fired in 1919 and Speaker was made player-manager of the team. In those roles, Speaker would Cleveland to its first World Series title in 1920. In 1917, Speaker was in a very close race for the American League batting title with Ty Cobb and George Sisler.

22) If you didn’t already know, famous home run hitter Babe Ruth started his career as a pitcher. He was the ace of a dominant Red Sox pitching staff on a team that won 2 World Series in three years.

23) Clarence “Brick” Owens got his nickname umpiring a minor league baseball game one day in Pittsburg, Kansas, when Owens made a call that upset the home crowd so much that they began throwing bricks on the field. One of those bricks hit Owens in the head, hence the nickname. Owens was certainly not a stranger to combat and mayhem on the baseball field. During another minor league game, an enraged fan came out of the stands and hit Owens in the head with a baseball bat.

24) 6’4” Ernie Shore came up to the Red Sox with Babe Ruth from the Baltimore Orioles (then a minor league team) in 1914. Shore served in the military in 1918 and retired from baseball in 1920, when he went back to North Carolina and started successful businesses. In 1936, he ran for sheriff in Forsyth County, North Carolina, and won. Shore served as sheriff for 36 years.

25) Morgan was a light hitter but a good base runner. According to the Post, Ray Morgan like to tell a story about his mother and base running. “His sisters attended one of the first games in which he took part, and when they returned home told their mother Ray had played a fine game and had stolen two bases. Mrs. Morgan, not being as familiar with baseball then as she is now, held up her hands in horror. ‘I’ve taught Ray it isn’t right to steal,’ she said. ‘I’ll speak to him about it as soon as he comes in.’”

26) Gettysburg Eddie was so upset when Foster broke up his no-hitter in the top of the 9^th in 1916 that he pitched underhanded “such as a grown man would pitch to a three year old” to the next two batters he faced. One Washington sportswriter described Foster as a “villain” for breaking up the no-hitter, and that “it was nothing but peevishness.” A St. Louis sportswriter said “If Eddie Foster lives to be 1,000 years old he will be booed in St. Louis.” Foster would later be claimed off waivers by the Brows in 1922.

27) One of the pictures I’ve found of Eddie Foster batting in a spring game appears to show Eddie holding a small bat. Considering Eddie was said to have picked up two “police billies” from the Louisville Slugger bat factory earlier that year, I think the “fungo stick” described in that 1916 game was probably just one of the small bats that Foster sometimes used.

28) The Browns moved to Baltimore in 1953 and became known as the Baltimore Orioles. Eddie Foster finished out his playing career in St. Louis in 1922 and 1923.

29) By this time in the season, Eddie Ainsmith had supplanted John Henry (“the Robespierre of the baseball revolution”) in Washington’s lineup by hitting much better than Henry. Ainsmith was frequently suspended by the league for fighting with umpires. After his playing career was over, Ainsmith was an umpire and briefly managed the all-girl Rockford Peaches, made famous in the movie “A League Of Their Own.”

30) The newspapers took to calling Foster “Pop” or “Papa” after the birth of his first child in July.

31) Sam Rice had previously served in the navy on the USS New Hampshire in 1913. 1917 was Rice’s first year as a full time starter. The reason he could not claim an exemption in 1917, and the reason Rice joined the Navy in 1913, was that on April 21, 1912, while Rice was away playing minor league baseball, a tornado struck his family’s farmstead in Morocco, IN, near the Indiana/Illinois border. The tornado killed his wife, both of his daughters, his parents, and two of his sisters. Just like George Sisler and Babe Ruth, Rice began his baseball career as a pitcher.

32) Major General Henry P. McCain was born and raised in Carroll County, Mississippi. He went to West Point (New York, not Mississippi) in the late 19^th century and then rose through the ranks of the military after that. Henry McCain was the great uncle of Vietnam hero and U.S. Senator John McCain. Camp McCain, a training area for the Mississippi National Guard which is located near Grenada, Mississippi, is named for Henry P. McCain.

33) By this point in the season, the military drilling by the players evidently did not just consist of military marching, but also included dropping to their knees or lying prone on their belly and pretend firing their “guns” (baseball bats) while others of their teammates “charged.”

34) Ptomaine poisoning was a strange 19^th century/early 20^th century medical term for food poisoning or stomach virus.

35) Johnny Lavan got the nickname “Doc” from being an actual medical doctor (unlike, and not to be confused with, Washington pitcher “Doc” Ayers, who had a medical degree but never practiced medicine), being one of the rare ballplayers who made more money at his offseason job. Lavan served as a surgeon for the Navy during both World Wars. Lavan was the other St. Louis Brown who joined Del Pratt’s libel lawsuit against the St. Louis Browns’ owner, Phil Ball. His lawsuit was the main reason he was traded so cheaply.

36) Burt Shotton was the third St. Louis Brown upset at the Browns owner for the charge of quitting during the 1917 season. Shotton, along with Lavan and Pratt, was so upset that he and the others refused to suit up for the next game unless they met with Browns owner Phil Ball. Ball did meet with them and retracted his statement in the media – sort of – by qualifying that he had “heard from his friends that the Browns were quitting.” Shotton didn’t join the libel suit, but he did demand to be traded. Shotton would go on to have a career as a Manager after his playing days were through. He was Jackie Robinson’s first Manager with the Dodgers, and he led the Dodgers to two National League pennants in the late 40’s/early 50’s.

37) By far, the most common nickname for Eddie Foster was “Fatima.” According to a story in the 1915 Washington Post, “Williams” [Utility infielder Rip Williams, Foster’s teammate in Washington at the time] “discovered one day that Foster was in possession of a great number of Fatima cigarette coupons. ‘Are you smoking the weed in that form now?’ asked Williams. ‘No,’ said Foster. ‘A girlfriend of mine has asked me to collect them for her. She wants to get a sewing machine.’ Immediately Williams hit upon an idea. Then and there the Nationals’ third sacker was nicknamed ‘Fatima.’ The word Eddie very rarely passes a ballplayer’s lips.” Newspapers also often used close variations of Fatima, such as “Fateem,” “Fatim” and “Fatima.”

38) Senators bench coach/team clown Nick Altrock was a big source of entertainment for soldiers during exhibition games as he was for civilians in the stands. For instance, the Evening Star had this quote from the 30^th about Altrock’s routine that day: “Nick Altrock made a big hit with the Sammies in the stands again today with his umpiring and antics at first base when he relieved Judge in the sixth. In addition to his shadow boxing and lone wrestling match, he staged a foot ball game by himself as center in passing the ball, catching it, making an off-guard drive and then tackling himself.” Altrock was not only a comedy act, though; he was also Washington’s first or sometimes third base coach when Washington was at bat. From time to time, Altrock would either unnecessarily hold the runner or foolishly send the runner. Maybe Altrock was too busy thinking up his next comedy routine. Altrock also had a penchant for making fun of umpires with his vaudeville-like mime routines; several times, Altrock was ejected from games without uttering a word. 

39) “Grippe” was another strange late 19^th/early 20^th century medical term for the flu and other flu like viruses. In 1918, a particularly virulent form of the flu, known as the “Spanish Influenza” or the “Spanish flu,” killed tens of millions of people across the world. Was this the strain of flu that the Washington players were sick with early in the season?

40) In the 19^th and early 20^th Century, most states had broadly written and broadly interpreted Blue Laws, which not only prohibited the sale of alcohol, but also prohibited sports events on Sunday as well. The Major League cities in the “West” (Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit) started playing Sunday baseball around the late aughts, but the states on the Eastern seaboard, where most of the large population centers were, still had strict blue laws on the books in the World War I years. On account of the war and the “increased need for civilian and military recreation”, D.C.’s local government legalized Sunday baseball in May 1918. Clark Griffith immediately set to work scheduling games on Sundays, which instantly drew bigger crowds and bigger paydays and continued to throughout the rest of the season. According to The Evening Star, “Almost as many women as men turned out to see the first Sunday ball game. Many of them knew baseball, too, which indicates the modern woman is taking an interest in the national game as well as in politics, the other great American game.”

41) During these years, Hall-of-Fame pitcher Stanley Coveleskie was the bane of Eddie Foster and the Washington Senators existence. Coveleskie’s best pitch was the spit ball. Interestingly enough, although the spit ball was outlawed in baseball in 1920, Coveleskie was one of about 20 pitchers who were grandfathered in and allowed to still throw the pitch afterwards. In the deadball era, it was not against the rules to coat the baseball in literally any substance you wanted, and pitchers did. Dan Davenport (whose no-hitter Foster broke up in 1917) had a pitch called the “mud ball,” which involved stepping on the ball and covering it in mud. Chicago White Sox pitcher Eddie Ciccote threw something called the “shine ball,” which involved coating the ball in so much paraffin wax that the ball would “shine.” A talented pitcher could use almost any substance to make the balls virtually unhittable.

42) The Washington Post summed up Cobb’s day this way:

“Ty Cobb wasn’t able to stay in the full route to make an effort to ruin the record of 37 straight scoreless innings Johnson has pitched and it isn’t likely Walter or the Nationals felt like throwing themselves into the Potomac because of it. Tyrus took a hit from Eddie Foster in the third, picking the ball off the grass tops, falling heavily on his shoulder and turning over but bobbing up with the ball in his hand.

He remained in the game three innings longer but then found the jolt he had received was too much for him. Just before he quit in the sixth he drew a pass from Johnson, which gave him a .500 batting average for the day and on top of his stroll he stole second. That finished his work for the day, which any way you look at it made for a pretty good job. The hit he got off Johnson was a bunt that refused to roll outside the third base line despite the admonitions of several crouching Nationals.”

43) The first really notable example of the American and National Leagues arguing over a player occurred when future Hall of Famer George Sisler signed with the Pittsburgh Pirates to play for a minor league team in their organization in 1911, but refused to play for them and instead went to the University of Michigan, where he played baseball for Michigan coach Branch Rickey (yes, that Branch Rickey). When he graduated, Rickey (now coaching the St. Louis Browns) tried to talk the Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss into releasing Sisler, but Dreyfuss refused. The National Baseball Commission, on a 2-1 vote, let Sisler sign with the Browns in 1915. The National League President and owners never forgot or forgave this.

44) Famously, baseball’s first Commissioner was Federal District Court Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis.

45) One more note about the modern-day equivalent of the biblical Job, Sam Rice – Rice still has the most hits of any Major Leaguer who has less than 3,000 hits. Rice came only 13 hits (2,987) shy of 3,000. When asked why he didn’t have 3,000 hits, Rice said simply that he never knew how many career hits he had. Considering the statistical knowledge of baseball players today, it is unlikely Sam Rice will ever lose this dubious distinction.

46) Washington sportswriters nicknamed Senators pitcher Harry Harper “The Hackensack Junk Dealer,” because in the offseason Harper owned an “antique shop” (read: junk shop) in his hometown of Hackensack, New Jersey. After retiring from baseball, Harper became wealthy as an industrialist (read: factory owner).

47) Even before the “Work Or Fight” order, many draft eligible professional baseball players flocked to “work” at shipbuilding yards, steel mills and other war time industries. Scare quotes are put around “work” because these baseball players did little to no real work when hired to their new jobs; instead, they mostly just played baseball for their company’s team. Ballplayers such as Shoeless Joe Jackson weren’t paid nearly as much to “work” as they were to play ball in the Majors, but at least they weren’t subject to the draft when they “worked” in an essential industry. Ship yards and steel mills used these company teams as recreation for their massive work forces (and, undoubtedly, as a tool to help recruit more workers). Ballplayers dodging the draft by getting these jobs contributed mightily to the perception that ballplayers were shirking their duty and not doing their fair share. This public perception of ballplayers was in turn a partial cause of the later strict interpretation of the “Work Or Fight” order.

48) American League President Ban Johnson enraged his owners by refusing to push back on Baker’s order or to lobby the government to at least allow the regular season to be completed as scheduled. When Johnson publicly suggested that the season should end immediately in early August, the owners revolted. There was even a movement amongst several owners (Comiskey and Cleveland’s owner, to name two) to fire Johnson and make Clark Griffith the new AL President. Griffith poured cold water on that notion and publicly supported Johnson. The owners went around Johnson and successfully lobbied the government themselves to allow the season to end in late August and to allow the World Series to be played between the pennant winners in September.

Bibliography: 

Walter Johnson: Baseball’s Big Train by Henry W. Thomas, University of Nebraska Press, 1995.

The Washington Senators by Shirley Povich, Kent State University Press, 2010. Facsimilie of 1954 Edition.

Wins, Losses, and Empty Seats: How Baseball Outlasted the Great Depression by David George Surdam. (Don’t know publishing info – read selected excerpts on Google)

The Washington Post, The Evening Star, The Washington Herald and The Washington Times newspapers, 1917 and 1918, accessed via newspapers.com

https://www.baseball-reference.com

https://en.wikipedia.org

A wonderful blog post about baseball generally during the World War 1 years. http://www.thisgreatgame.com/1918-baseball-history.html

http://www.1918redsox.com/season.htm

https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2018/09/baseball-and-world-war-i/

https://baseballhall.org/discover-more/stories/short-stops/1918-world-war-i-baseball

Del Pratt tidbits come from: http://boblemke.blogspot.com/2011/03/pratt-was-bamas-first-mlb-star.html

Ty Cobb fish episode: http://baseballhistorian.blogspot.com/2011/12/spoiled-fish-jeopardized-ty-cobbs.html

Nick Altrock: https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/aea7c461

Carl Sawyer’s movie career: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0768141/

Babe Ruth’s “Perfect Game” - https://www.mlb.com/cut4/ernie-shore-threw-quasi-perfect-game-after-babe-ruth-ejection/c-132245176 and https://sabr.org/latest/mcmurray-100-years-later-looking-back-ernie-shores-perfect-game

Work or Fight and other stuff: https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/baseball-and-the-armed-services-d61bd35af5a3