Reliving Yesteryear: Cleveland Indians, Champs of 1920, Fighting? Really?

When was the last time you were in a fistfight?

No sport’s history is as romanticized as baseball’s. This is especially so for the post-WWII height of its popularity, but it does extend back over its entire 120+ -year history. Early beat writers spent most waking hours with the teams they covered, especially when on the road. Besides lionizing the players, scribes protected them. Scandals and damning information were seldom reported.

By fistfight, I don’t mean a verbal altercation. Serious vocal protest may occasionally be necessary—and as our fathers teach us, its execution can be key in the avoidance of actual physical conflict. Most men learn the art of voicing displeasure. Done correctly, potential combatants take care not to activate the trip alarm that guarantees a melee. Any touching or spitting, or insulting female members of a guy’s family, is akin to asking for a broken nose.

Of course, any man (or woman) must fight if it is a matter of self-defense, or to protect the innocent. Or if in a position where an occasional fracas is part of his vocation. Like in the military, or the police. Or the military police. Or boxing. Or hockey.

The Cleveland Indians of 1920 weren’t the consensus pick to win the American League Pennant. That was the defending champion Chicago White Sox. The Indians had had some tough seasons through the ‘teens’. During the summer of 1919, owner “Sunny Jim” Dunn fired Lee Fohl, installing star center-fielder Tris Speaker as player-manager. The team did finish second that year.

On August 16, 1920, the first place Indians were in New York to face the Yankees in the Polo Grounds. The Yankees (who’d never enjoyed success) were battling Cleveland and Chicago for first place. Pitching for New York was submarine-style pitcher Carl Mays, who was known to intentionally knock batters down with pitches. Tribe fans know Mays hit Indians star shortstop Ray Chapman in the head during that game. Batting helmets had yet to be invented; the sound of the ball hitting Chapman was so loud, and the ball traveled back to Mays so quickly, that he instinctively threw it to first base. It was later discovered that the pitch fractured Chapman’s skull, caused a concussion, and broke his neck. He was carried from the field (makes you wonder how still they kept his head), and out to the clubhouse beyond center field.

To the right is an image of the Polo Grounds, to help in visualizing.

Hopefully, as adult men, we have thrown our last punch in anger (and never, ever, at women or children). I do wonder—do all kids still fight, to a limited extent?

I remember the last fight I took part in, when I was a kid. It involved peer pressure.

There are a couple separate accounts of what took place in the clubhouse after Carl Mays beaned Ray Chapman. One holds that left fielder (and close friend and road roommate) Jack Graney said Chapman had a desperate look in his eyes that indicated a desire to speak. Graney gave Chapman a pencil, which Chapman slowly let drop as he passed away. Another account is that Chapman died as he was squeezing a pencil, trying to maintain strength.

What a devastating loss, for the Cleveland Indians. Here was a time to come together as a team, to gain strength from one another. It was a moment for manager Tris Speaker to do what Mike Hargrove would do as Indians manager, 73 years later, when tragedy again struck the team.

I attended a school that taught kindergarten through the eighth grade. As I recall, there was a separation between the seventh and eighth grades and the rest of the school. There seemed to be a looser atmosphere among the older kids; that was no doubt due in part to having no kids around that were appreciably older than them.

For the eighth graders, at least. They were happy to remind us seventh graders to stay in their place. The ‘older’ kids had once kowtowed when were the younger class; while it wasn’t exactly hazing, now the tables had turned.

Instead of the Indians banding together in the wake of Chapman’s death, there was a fight. Jack Graney and Tris Speaker came to blows. This stemmed from a dispute over whether Chapman should be buried as a Catholic or as a Protestant. Chapman had been a Protestant, while his wife was a Catholic. She maintained that Chapman had been about to convert. The resulting fight between Graney, a Catholic, and Speaker, a Protestant, was so severe that due to their injuries, neither was able to attend Ray Chapman’s funeral. At least one account of Chapman’s death refers to some teammates requiring a sabbatical from playing, due to “grief”.¹

“Pelka!” (That was my nickname.) I turned in my desk chair and faced David. I was expecting some sort of raunchy gesture, or perhaps an object thrown my way. “The eighth grade is out there laughing. They are saying we are a bunch of wusses, and they’ll prove it when we won’t go out at recess and knock them off the hill. They’re calling for a fight.” 

The “hill” was the five-foot-high ridge of plowed snow on the playground, where the asphalt met the baseball field. In the winter, no students were allowed on the muddy field, let alone on the icy, jagged mountain range of snow.

“You in?” David was cool. It was circa 1973, and he had the longest hair of any boy in school. He often was one of the captains who chose players in pickup games, and he always picked me, early on. He stuck up for me when the opportunity arose. Now, his eyes were focused straight ahead at me. So were the eyes of several staring girls, who were all seated within a four-foot radius.

“Yeah, I’m in.” I turned back to face the front of the room. Phew, that moment had passed… but OK, now what? Recess was approaching quickly. Forty minutes. Crap.

I can only believe that Jack Graney and Tris Speaker had a pre-existing dislike for each other. This may also explain the lingering disagreement they had over whether Carl Mays had intentionally thrown at Ray Chapman. Speaker himself had been hit by Mays, in 1918. At the time, he accused the pitcher of intentionally hitting batters.

After Chapman was killed, entire teams (the Detroit Tigers and the Boston Red Sox) began a campaign to have Carl Mays banned from baseball. Curiously, however, Tris Speaker harshly criticized those teams. Jack Graney, on the other hand, believed his entire life that Mays threw at Chapman. (Which is interesting, as Graney had first broken into major league baseball as a wild, left-handed pitcher.)

For all the romantic prose spun about the grand old game of baseball, we’ll never know the entire story for certain. And, perhaps incredibly, that team would proceed to win the World Championship.

The bell in the hallway rang. The dread in my chest had by now extended to my arms and my legs. Forty minutes had never flown by so fast. Several of us seventh-grade boys stood slowly. We communicated non-verbally, eyeing each other to see who was ‘with us.’ I think it was all of us- the prospect of not even going outside would be something the eighth grade boys would never let us live down. Likewise, walking out onto the playground and avoiding the challenge was not an acceptable option. Keeping together, we exited the building.

There they were, peering over the snow, from the muddy side. As they watched us approach, they assumed posts on the highest mounds. Partly from the energy generated from fear, we charged the hill.

I think we were screaming.

Ahead of me was Michael, who was about three inches taller than I. I didn’t know Michael very well, although his house was on my News-Herald paper route. He was no more a fighter than I was. He was laughing some as I drew close… Not knowing what else to do, I threw a half-hearted punch up at him. It barely grazed something in the general area of his chin, and he went down. Actually, he’d slipped. Similar action had taken place elsewhere along the ridge.

Just as quickly as it had started, the ‘fight’ was over. In retrospect, the eighth graders no more wanted fisticuffs than we did. We all left the snow, convincing ourselves our honor remained intact.

Back in the seventh grade class, sweaty, relieved bravado hung in the air. David was talking about how those guys knew we weren’t taking their crap. He bragged about my “punch.” The girls were staring again. Yes: life was good.

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Sources:
Baseball Reference: 1920 Cleveland Indians
Baseball Reference: Jack Graney
Let’s Go Tribe: Jack Graney
The Cleveland Indians Encyclopedia, Russell Schneider
Wikipedia

1. I fail to appreciate Speaker’s stance, in going against what was ostensibly the grieving widow’s wishes. There’s no scriptural basis for such a dispute. It seems laughable that it would need to be solved with violence. [↩]