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Grover Cleveland Alexander changes uniforms

16 Monday Apr 2018

Posted by in Baseball

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Grover Cleveland Alexander’s World War One draft registration card

A few weeks back on Opening Day I mentioned that baseball once began much later than it does today. The Cubs and Cardinals began their 1918 seasons playing each other on April 16. Those on the field in St.Louis that day included Grover Cleveland Alexander, starting for the Cubs, and Rogers Hornsby, playing shortstop for the Cardinals. Alexander was an established star by this point and was slated to earn $8000 for the season; Hornsby, an up-and-comer in his third season with the Cardinals, would earn precisely half that after losing a bitter contract dispute to the Cardinals’ Branch Rickey. Throughout late 1917 and early 1918 baseball players were getting their draft notices from their local boards. In January 1918 Hornsby had appealed for a deferment to board officials back home in Fort Worth, Texas. Hornsby argued that his baseball salary was his family’s sole source of income. He received a Class 3 deferment and was thus free to play ball.

Owners understood that there was a manpower shortage and agreed to a 21 (not 25) player roster for the 1918 season. They also held an abbreviated spring training. Though Grover Cleveland Alexander turned thirty-one in February 1918 he was still eligible for the draft. In December 1917 the Philadelphia Phillies traded Alexander and batterymate Bill Killefer to the Cubs. The trade was partly about money but another, more cynical, reason may have been because Phillies management realized that both players were likely to be drafted into the A.E.F. sometime in 1918. The trade was a huge deal and made headlines across the country.

Alexander held out for a signing bonus but finally reported to the Cubs in mid-March. Meanwhile his draft board went about its work. The head clerk in Howard Country, Nebraska announced on April 12 that as of yet Alexander had not been called. There was great confusion, with some newspapers saying Alexander had been drafted and others saying he had not. Less than forty-eight hours later things had become clearer. Grover Cleveland Alexander had indeed been drafted into the Army and was to report to Camp Funston by the end of the month. Alexander asked to be allowed to join the Navy but his draft board would not have it.

Cubs and Cardinals 1918 Opening Day box score, via Baseball Almanac. Grover Cleveland Alexander had been drafted just days before the game and would join the Army by the end of April.

The pitcher’s call-up finally came just as the Cubs were breaking training in mid-April. On April 16 Alexander and the Cubs were in St. Louis to begin their season against the Cardinals. That very day Killefer received notice from his own draft board in Michigan that he had been declared 1A: eligible for draft and service. The board had originally designated Killefer 4A but the government appealed that status and won. So there they were facing the Rogers Hornsby and the Cardinals at Robison Field. Alexander pitched well but not effectively enough to win. The Cardinals took the contest 4-2. He went 1-for 3 at the plate. Hornsby went 1-for-4 with a run scored and an RBI. Sure enough, Alexander would soon leave the Cubs to train at Camp Funston. He pitched two more games, winning both and ending his season, before it truly began, with three complete games and a 1.73 ERA.

Hemingway and Roosevelt: cub reporters

27 Friday Mar 2015

Posted by in Baseball, Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), Writing

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Theodore Roosevelt officially began his journalism career with the Kansas City Star on October 1, 1917. With typical Rooseveltian vigor however, he wrote a few stories in the weeks leading up to his official start date; Roosevelt was typing away at a desk at Star headquarters on Saturday September 22nd. He used his platform at the newspaper primarily as a vehicle to excoriate Woodrow Wilson and his Great War policies. After that brief September stay Roosevelt returned to Oyster Bay, where he dutifully filed dispatches until his death in January 1919. Roosevelt’s collected output for the Star, published in book form in 1921, runs 295 pages.

A few weeks after Roosevelt’s debut with the Star another cub reporter joined the staff: Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway began on October 18th, less than three weeks after Roosevelt. For the next six months he wrote the types of stories—fires, accidents, petty crime—to which young reporters are invariably assigned. He was only a teenager. Hemingway always maintained that the Star’s daily grind was the best thing that happened to his writing career.

Grover Cleveland Alexander was the ninth inductee and fourth pitcher inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame

Grover Cleveland Alexander was the ninth honoree, and fourth pitcher, inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. He entered Cooperstown in 1938.

It had its moments. In March 1918 young Hemingway met pitching great Grover Cleveland Alexander at Kansas City’s Union Station. The right hander was en route to California to join the Cubs in spring training. Hemingway dutifully filed a report. After all he had a scoop on his hands: The pitcher wanted a $10,000 signing bonus. The Cubs saw things differently and the two sides were at an impasse. That Alexander was even thinking of going to California to join the team was a story.

Alexander only pitched three games for Chicago that season, though he did go 2-1 with a 1.73 ERA. Hemingway was not long for the Star. He left the newspaper a month later. By mid-summer both were in Europe helping the Allied cause. Hemingway was driving an ambulance in Italy and “Old Pete” Alexander—now in his thirties—was wearing an A.E.F. uniform in France.

The war was hard on Alexander. He already suffered from epilepsy and his military experiences exacerbated an already growing drinking problem. He almost certainly suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Still, when he returned Alexander had plenty of baseball left in him. In 1926 he led the St. Louis Cardinals to a World Series title over Babe Ruth’s Yankees. Alexander went 2-0 (two complete games) and had a game seven save to seal the deal. He pitches 20 1/3 innings and had a 1.33 era. Babe Ruth ended the series when, with Alexander on the mound, he unsuccessfully tried to steal second base.

That same year Ernest Hemingway published The Sun Also Rises, his story of the disilussioned Lost Generation living in Paris after the war. Future decades proved difficulty for both men but the Twenties were good years. Alexander was a twenty-one game winner at the age of forty in 1927. The aging star posted winning records in 1928 and again the following year. Hemingway’s career was now in full swing. He published A Farewell to Arms in 1929.

(image/Library of Congress)