Edward Achorn

(A daily diary of the greatest season a major-league pitcher ever had.)

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — In the final game of the Providence Grays’ series against the once-mighty Chicago White Stockings (today’s Cubs), before a small but vocal crowd of 782 at the Messer Street Grounds, Chicago bats Old Hoss Radbourn hard for eleven hits.

But Providence gets under the skin of White Stockings pitcher Larry Corcoran. In a daring double steal, Paul Revere Radford and Sandy Nava take off and get caught in rundowns. But catcher Mike Kelly, who, like Gore earlier in the series, seems suspiciously woozy, “lost his head completely.” When he runs up the line to tag Radford, “the Mascot” simply darts past him for home plate, beating Kelly’s wild throw to Corcoran. Radford’s proud dad, delighted that his son has helped beat mighty Chicago, 6-4, gives Paul a $5 reward for scoring the key run. The Grays sweep Anson’s men, and Radbourn wins his 39th game.

In Boston, the defending champion Beaneaters (today’s Braves) win their eighth straight game, to remain 4½ games behind Providence.

Anson, who refuses give up on the season, is fit to be tied by these cascading losses. One writer paints an imagined scene of the big captain’s response to such defeats: He storms into the dressing room, as his players are stripping off their uniforms in the company of consoling friends. “Enter Anson with glaring eyes, pale countenance and froth dripping from his kisser. Glancing rapidly about the apartment he furiously yells to the visitors, ‘Get out of here, you fellers; this is not a resort for bums.’”

After the room is cleared, five players are “alone with the giant in all his demoniacal fury. Shaking with passion and hardly able to find his voice, he finally breaks out in a perfect storm of invectives, heaping barrels of abuse upon the heads of the luckless ball-tossers.

Quoth he: ‘You are a fine set of stiffs, ain’t you? You’re the rottenest set of bum players in the country. I can pick a better nine out of the morgue than you are. A nice thing it is to be giving you all a President’s salary and then to make such a sorry exhibitions of yourselves. Bah! From this date forward you will to a man retire to your couches at 7 o’clock in the evening chained together. Your food will be raw tripe until you win a game. Two detectives will constantly watch each man and the first unfavorable report he makes the culprit will be sent to Joliet. D’ye hear, you ’en, yes! you-you!’ — Rushes madly forth, foaming at the mouth, blood gushing from his ears and nostrils and tearing his hair wildly.”

Whiskey and women, it seems to many, has destroyed baseball’s greatest team. The White Stockings, who obviously enjoy the hospitality of Providence, are so intoxicated during the four games that they “did not know whether they were muffing, catching or hitting the ball,” one paper asserts. “Some of them were fined for their conduct and one of them told Anson to go to — a certain hot place.”

President Albert G. Spalding admits that his players had run wild all season. “This year it has been impossible to discipline and control the men in their habits on account of the bad influence exerted by the Union Association,” he complains. “If we rebuked or attempted to punish a player for dissipation we were met with the reply, ‘Well, if you don’t like it, I’ll go elsewhere.’ All of them had offers from Union Association clubs, and threats of blacklisting had no terrors for them.”

The following season, Spalding gives each man a bonus of $100 “for having abstained from intoxicating drinks and orgies,” the banes of 1884. Still, Spalding continues to hear well-founded rumors that his players are indulging in drunkenness and debauchery. At one point, he hires the famous Pinkerton detective agency (its slogan: “We Never Sleep”) to trail his men after hours. The private eye returns with a scalding report that seven of the club’s fifteen players have been found going up and down Clark Street and the saloons and shady haunts of Chicago’s tenderloin district late at night.

When the report is read aloud at a team meeting, Kelly strenuously objects to one passage — the one charging him with being at a saloon at 3 a.m., violating curfew, drinking lemonade. That is a bold-faced lie, Kelly bawls. “It was a straight whiskey. I never drank a lemonade at that hour in my life.”

RADBOURN’S RECORD: 39-9

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