Tuesday, July 19, 1927: St. Louis
Eels and Inventions
St. Louis is as goddamn hot as the goddamn sun.
Cleveland was brutal — it was over 90 degrees and humid every game — but Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis is an oven. It couldn’t be any hotter if they had built it on the equator, nor more humid if it were in a rain forest.
I can’t help thinking that heat in July and August must have something to do with the St. Louis Browns being so awful every year. On the other hand, the St. Louis heat doesn’t seem to have crushed the Cardinals chances, so there goes that theory. I guess the Brownies just stink.
Yesterday, after Urban Shocker wilted on the mound in the seventh and had to be replaced by Wilcy Moore, he collapsed on the bench. Little Eddie Bennett must have poured a half dozen cups of water over his head. Urban finally opened his eyes and said, “Boys, there are days in this slice of hell called earth when being on the mound feels like you’re a fucking poached egg.”
Everyone’s feeling the heat, even Gehrig. Since the second game of the Detroit series, he’s barely batting .300 and as of Saturday he had only one home run in his past 10 games.
When the Babe gets into a slump, he just plays — and screws — his way out of it. He never let’s it get to him. He just believes in himself — he knows he’ll break out of it at any moment, most likely with a banger.
But Gehrig doesn’t have that inner faith in himself.
Before the slump, Lou had been on a three-week tear. In Detroit last week he hit a line drive into the right-center bleachers for his 29th home run, to tie the Babe for the major league lead. Heck, only a handful of guys had ever hit 29 round-trippers in a season — and barely halfway through this one, Lou and the Babe are close to Ruth’s 1921 record pace, when he hit 59 home runs.
That night on the train, as Lou, Schoolboy and I are about to brush our teeth and the three of us are sharing a sink, I say to Lou, “Think you’ll be dreaming about home runs tonight?”
“No.”
Lou brushes a bit, spits, and then says, “I always dream that one day I wake up and I just can’t hit the ball any more. Sometimes I can’t even put on the uniform. Can’t button the shirt. It’s like it all just leaves me.” Then he bends down and starts brushing his teeth, all over again.
Holy Christ. What a tortured bastard.
“Don’t worry, Lou, I don’t think it’s gonna leave you any time soon,” I say with a smile. I’m glad he’s looking down and can’t see Schoolboy and me shaking our heads.
Lou finishes up and leaves the bathroom ahead of us. Schoolboy with a mouth full of toothpaste says to me, “Twenty-four years old, and it’s like he’s lost without someone to tuck him into bed.”
In my berth with the lights out, feeling the train tracks underneath us as we move through the night, I start to think: What if I was given the choice of being great — not just great, but truly great, like Lou — but also being truly tortured. Would I take that deal? Is greatness at that price worth it? I fall asleep without making up my mind.
Will Lou always be like this? Is this just the way he is? Can Miller Huggins help him? Will he grow out of it? Is there a girl — other than his mother — who can save him from himself? It’s like he’s keeping a secret from the world.
Stanwyck told me when she met Lou, “He’s a strange bird. He’s off.”
“He’s just crazy-shy. And you’re a pretty girl,” I told her. “That’s a bad combination for Lou.”
“That’s not the combination,” is all she said.
Wednesday and Thursday in Cleveland, Lou has back to back “oh-fer” games where he looks lost at the plate. So, Friday morning, not panicked, only distressed, he asks me to go with him to the Western Union office, where he dictates a telegram to his mother:
Is he homesick? Does he miss his mother that much? What’s going on with this man-child?
When I get back from my trip to Western Union with Lou, the manager behind the the hotel front desk at the Hollenden House, hands me a note from Steven asking me to give him a call. I have the hotel operator call his office collect. When Steven gets on the phone he’s very excited because his company — 20th Century American Investments — has received thousands of invention ideas from immigrants. Now he and the boys who work for him are picking out the handful of ideas they’ll sell stock in.
“I wanted you to call me,” he says, laughing, “because by coincidence one of them just came in yesterday from a Greek street cleaner right there in Cleveland. Maybe you know him!”
“You calling me a mop-up pitcher?”
“No. But that’s funny, I should’ve. Listen to this: This street cleaner sent in a whole book of drawings and designs for a garbage cart with an X-ray machine built into it — so you can see if there’s anything valuable in the trash you’ve collected! He’s also got a plan to develop X-rays that can disintegrate the garbage while it’s inside the cart. Garbage goes into the cart. Nothing comes out. No trip to the landfill needed.”
“Steven, he’s a street cleaner. Can he build that? Can anyone build that?”
“Who knows. But wouldn’t it be great if he could? Anyway, the beauty of it is, like I told you, we don’t have to build anything. We just write them up in as much detail as possible, Rothstein will incorporate them and then Stoneham and I raise the money to fund them. After we raise the money, then we’ll see if the inventions really fly.”
Even though I’m in a hotel lobby phone booth, I still feel compelled to whisper when I ask him, “Is that legal?”
“Legal? It’s totally fucking American!”
This is becoming a pattern. Every time I bring up the law, Steven waves the flag.
“Did you get the article I mailed you?” he asks, referring to an article in the New York Times about immigrants, jobs and inventions.
“Yeah.”
“When we show people that during our presentation to investors, it’s a money magnet. It’s like the New York Times has written an article about me! This will move money our way.”
“What are the other ideas?”
“Get this,” he says, laughing again. “A Guin*a garbage man in Boston sent me a design for a diaper for horses — he replied to an ad we had in the Gazzetta del Massachusetts. A Pol*ck elevator man in Chicago wants to build a radio for elevators — we got that through an ad in a Polish newspaper, I can’t even pronounce the name of it, for Chrissakes. And a colored at the Ford plant in Detroit sent in a design for a special radio for cars with headphones — that one came through the Detroit People’s News. But my favorite is house paint that changes color depending on the amount of sunlight, so your house looks different colors all through the day.”
“Who thought of that one?”
“A Chinaman. Right here in Chinatown. I met him. And get this, he’s blind.”
“Since birth?”
“Since birth.”
“Should make for some interesting colors. So, what’s next?”
“Next? We create a company for each idea we like.”
“And you like them because… they can attract money?”
“Exactly. Then we sell stock in them, like there’s no tomorrow.”
“How do you make money?”
“You mean, how do we make a ton of money?”
He doesn’t say anything more. He’s waiting for me to ask the question correctly. I try to wait him out, but he’s stubborn. Finally, I give up.
“Okay, how do you make a ton of money?”
“Rothstein and Stoneham have final say on what ideas we pick, and they’re each putting up $100,000 to invest in five to ten companies. John McGraw’s in for $10,000 per company, for up to five companies. These guys and a few of their friends are buying in at 5-cents a share. We’ll then generate interest in the companies, and investors will move the price up. We’ll run advertisements in all those same ethnic papers, and also in some big city papers, especially in Chicago, Detroit, Boston, Philadelphia and New York — and we’ve picked out reporters we’re paying to plant articles about them, too.”
“You can do that?”
“Sure, it’s called public relations. It’s done all the time. Oh, and remember that investment tip sheet newsletter I bought last year, “Iconic Investor,” the one that’s always running exposés and railing against the evils of Wall Street? Well, that tip sheet is now going to be publishing articles about how great these companies are.”
“Your tip sheet?”
“Yup.”
“Is that legal?”
“It’s not only legal, it’s — ”
“Yeah, I know. It’s totally fucking American,” I say. “And then what?”
“Well, all of the excitement we create should push the stock up to at least 50 cents a share, maybe more. Rothstein and Stoneham will probably sell somewhere around there, and get out with a big profit, without waiting around to see if Socrates’ X-ray machine really can find gold in garbage.”
I don’t bother to ask Steven if it’s legal. It certainly sounds American.
“How’s Gehrig doing?” he asks.
“He’ll be fine, his mother’s sending him out some pickled eels — along with a Mamma’s love note, I’m sure. They should get here Saturday. That should calm him down.”
“Talk later.”
“Talk later.”
Saturday in St. Louis against the Browns Lou goes 0–3, with a walk. After the game, around 10 p.m., Mamma Gehrig’s package arrives at the Buckingham hotel.
About an hour later, Lou and some of the boys come back from the movies — and seeing Clara Bow in “It.” (Again! For chrissakes.) Gehrig immediately goes into the hotel restaurant carrying his case of eels, alone, and sits down for a second dinner. Sunday morning for breakfast and later at lunch, eels are on Lou’s menu. Sunday afternoon, Miller Huggins lets Lou break the rule about no food in the clubhouse, and after batting practice Lou has an eel snack.
And then in the eighth inning against the Browns, the tortured bastard crushes a ball into the center field bleachers.
“Jesus Christ,” laughs Schoolboy. “Only the Babe and Shoeless Joe can punish a ball like that.”
After the game, Ford Frick comes jogging into the locker room all excited and tells Lou that he’s now hit a home run in every ballpark in the league this year. “Thanks, Ford,” says Lou — not exactly sure of the importance of the information, but sweetly grateful that Frick was excited enough to want to tell him about it.
Monday, Lou finishes off the eels and hits another. Number 31. One ahead of the Babe.
Ford Frick writes all about Lou’s Mom’s Eels for the Evening Journal.
Back in New York, up in Washington Heights, I’m sure Mama Gehrig has already pasted Frick’s article into her scrapbook, waiting to show it to Lou when he finally comes home from this endless road trip.
- The Iconoclast
- NEW YORK EVENING JOURNAL, July 19, 1927: “Lou Regains Batting Form On Diet of Pickled Eels”
- NEW YORK TIMES, May 24, 1927: “Immigration and Invention”
- July 17, 1927: “Yanks’ Late Spurt Beats Indians, 10–9”. New York Times article and Box Score.
- July 18, 1927: “Gehrig’s Three Hits Win For Yanks, 5–2”. New York Times article and Box Score.
- July 19, 1927: “Gehrig Hits №30, Tying Ruth Again”. New York Times article and Box Score.
