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A BALL PLAYER'S CAREER
Being the PERSONAL EXPERIENCES AND REMINISCENCES of ADRIAN C. ANSON
Late Manager and Captain of the Chicago Base Ball Club
1900
To My Father Henry Anson of Marshalltown, Iowa, to whose early training
and sound advice I owe my fame
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I.--MY BIRTHPLACE AND ANCESTRY.
II.--DAYS AT MARSHALLTOWN
III.--SOME FACTS ABOUT THE NATIONAL GAME
IV.--FURTHER FACTS AND FIGURES
V.--THE GAME AT MARSHALLTOWN
VI.--My EXPERIENCE AT ROCKFORD
VII.--WITH THE ATHLETICS OF PHILADELPHIA
VIII.--SOME MINOR DIVERSIONS
IX.--WE BALL PLAYERS Go ABROAD
X.--THE ARGONAUTS OF 1874
XI.--I WIN ONE PRIZE AND OTHERS FOLLOW
XII.--WITH THE NATIONAL LEAGUE
XIII.--FROM FOURTH PLACE TO THE CHAMPIONSHIP
XIV.--THE CHAMPIONS OF THE EARLY '80S
XV.--WE FALL DOWN AND RISE AGAIN
XVI.--BALL PLAYERS EACH AND EVERY ONE
XVII.--WHILE FORTUNE FROWNS AND SMILES
XVIII.--FROM CHICAGO TO DENVER
XIX.--FROM DENVER TO SAN FRANCISCO
XX.--TWO WEEKS IN CALIFORNIA
XXI.--WE VISIT THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS
XXII.--FROM HONOLULU TO AUSTRALIA
XXIII.--WITH OUR FRIENDS IN THE ANTIPODES
XXIV.--BALL PLAYING AND SIGHT-SEEING IN AUSTRALIA
XXV.--AFLOAT ON THE INDIAN SEA
XXVI.--FROM CEYLON TO EGYPT
XXVII.--IN THE SHADOW OF THE PYRAMIDS
XXVIII.--THE BLUE SKIES OF ITALY
XXIX.--OUR VISIT TO LA BELLE FRANCE
XXX.--THROUGH ENGLAND, SCOTLAND AND IRELAND
XXXI.--"HOME, SWEET HOME"
XXXII.--THE REVOLT OF THE BROTHERHOOD
XXXIII.--MY LAST YEARS ON THE BALL FIELD
XXXIV.--IF THIS BE TREASON, MAKE THE MOST OF IT
XXXV.--HOW MY WINTERS WERE SPENT
XXXVI.--WITH THE KNIGHTS OF THE CUE
XXXVII.--NOT DEAD, BUT SLEEPING
XXXVIII.--L'ENVOI
CHAPTER I. MY BIRTHPLACE AND ANCESTRY.
The town of Marshalltown, the county seat of Marshall County, in the
great State of Iowa, is now a handsome and flourishing place of some
thirteen or fourteen thousand inhabitants. I have not had time recently
to take the census myself, and so I cannot be expected to certify
exactly as to how many men, women and children are contained within the
corporate limits.
At the time that I first appeared upon the scene, however, the town was
in a decidedly embryonic state, and outside of some half-dozen white
families that had squatted there it boasted of no inhabitants save
Indians of the Pottawattamie tribe, whose wigwams, or tepees, were
scattered here and there upon the prairie and along the banks of the
river that then, as now, was not navigable for anything much larger than
a flat-bottomed scow.
The first log cabin that was erected in Marshalltown was built by my
father, Henry Anson, who is still living, a hale and hearty old man,
whose only trouble seems to be, according to his own story, that he is
getting too fleshy, and that he finds it more difficult to get about
than he used to.
He and his father, Warren Anson, his grandfather, Jonathan Anson, and
his great-grandfather, Silas Anson, were all born in Dutchess County,
New York, and were direct descendants of one of two brothers, who came
to this country from England some time in the seventeenth century. They
traced their lineage back to William Anson, Esq., of Lincoln's Inn, an
eminent barrister in the reign of James I, who purchased the Mansion of
Shuzsborough, in the county of Stafford, and, even farther back, to Lord
Anson, a high Admiral of the English navy, who was one of the first of
that daring band of sailors who circumnavigated the globe and helped to
lay the foundation of England's present greatness.
I have said that we were direct descendants of one of two brothers. The
other of the original Ansons I am not so proud of, and for this reason:
He retained the family name until the Revolutionary war broke out, when
he sided with the King and became known as a Tory. Then, not wishing to
bear the same name as his, brother, who had espoused the cause of the
Colonists, he changed his name to Austin, and some of his descendants my
father has met on more than one occasion in his travels.
My mother's maiden name was Jeanette Rice, and she, like my father, was
of English descent, so you can see how little Swedish blood there is in
my veins, in spite of the nickname of "the Swede" that was often applied
to me during my ball-playing career, and which was, I fancy, given me
more because of my light hair and ruddy complexion than because of any
Swedish characteristics that I possessed.
Early in life my father emigrated from New York State into the wilds of
Michigan, and later, after he was married, and while he was but nineteen
years of age, and his wife two years his junior, he started out to find
a home in the West, traveling in one of the old-fashioned prairie
schooners drawn by horses and making his first stop of any account on
the banks of the Cedar River in Iowa. This was in the high-water days of
1851, and as the river overflowed its banks and the waters kept rising
higher and higher my father concluded that it was hardly a desirable
place near which to locate a home, and hitching up his team he saddled a
horse and swam the stream, going on to the westward. He finally
homesteaded a tract of land on the site of the present town of
Marshalltown, which he laid out, and to which he gave the name that it
now bears. This, for a time, was known as "Marshall," it being named
after the town of Marshall in Michigan, but when a post-office was
applied for it was discovered that there was already a post-office of
that same name in the State, and so the word "town" was added, and
Marshalltown it became, the names of Anson, Ansontown and Ansonville
having all been thought of and rejected. Had the name of "Ansonia"
occurred at that time to my father's mind, however, I do not think that
either Marshall or Marshalltown would have been its title on the map.
It was not so very long after the completion of my father's log cabin,
which stood on what is now Marshall-town's main street, that I, the
first white child that was born there, came into the world, the exact
date of my advent being April 17th, 1852. My brother Sturges Ransome,
who is two years my senior, was born at the old home in Michigan, and I
had still another brother Melville who died while I was yet a small boy,
so at the time of which I write there were three babies in the house,
all of them boys, and I the youngest and most troublesome of the lot.
The first real grief that came into my life was the death of my mother,
which occurred when I was but seven years old. I remember her now as a
large, fine-looking woman, who weighed something over two hundred
pounds, and she stood about five feet ten-and-a-half inches in height.
This is about all the recollection that I have of her.
If the statements made by my father and by other of our relatives are to
be relied upon, and I see no reason why they should not be, I was a
natural-born kicker from the very outset of my career, and of very
little account in the world, being bent upon making trouble for others.
I had no particularly bad traits that I am aware of, only that I was
possessed of an instinctive dislike both to study and work, and I
shirked them whenever opportunity offered.
I had a penchant, too, for getting into scrapes, and it was indeed a
happy time for my relatives when a whole day passed without my being up
to some mischief.
Some of my father's people had arrived on the scene before my mother's
death, and, attracting other settlers to the scene, Marshalltown, or
Marshall as it was then called, was making rapid strides in growth and
importance. The Pottawattomies, always friendly to the whites, were
particularly fond of my father and I often remember seeing both the
bucks and the squaws at our cabin, though I fancy that they were not so
fond of us boys as they might have been, for we used to tease and bother
them at every opportunity. Johnny Green was their chief, and Johnny, in
spite of his looks, was a pretty decent sort of a fellow, though he was
as fond of fire-water as any of them and as Iowa was not a prohibition
State in those early days he managed now and then to get hold of a
little. "The fights that he fought and the rows that he made" were as a
rule confined to his own people.
Speaking of the Indians, I remember one little occurrence in which I was
concerned during those early days that impressed itself upon my memory
in a very vivid fashion, and even now I am disposed to regard it as no
laughing matter, although my father entertains a contrary opinion, but
then my father was not in my position, and that, ofttimes, makes all the
difference in the world.
The Pottawattamies were to have a war dance at the little town of
Marietta, some six or seven miles up the river, and of course we boys
were determined to be on hand and take part in the festivities. There
were some twelve or fifteen of us in the party and we enjoyed the show
immensely, as was but natural. Had we all been content to look on and
then go home peacefully there would have been no trouble, but what boys
would act in such unboyish fashion? Not the boys of Marshalltown, at any
rate. It was just our luck to run up against two drunken Indians riding
on a single pony, and someone in the party, I don't know who, hit the
pony and started him, to bucking.
Angrier Indians were never seen. With a whoop and a yell that went
ringing across the prairies they started after us, and how we did leg
it! How far some of the others ran I have no means of knowing but I know
that I ran every foot of the way back to Marshalltown, nor did I stop
until I was safe, as I thought, in my father's house.
My troubles did not end there, however, for along in the darkest hours
of the night I started from sleep and saw those two Indians, one
standing at the head and one at the foot of the bed, and each of them
armed with a tomahawk. That they had come to kill me I was certain, and
that they would succeed in doing so seemed to me equally sure. I tried
to scream but I could not. I was as powerless as a baby. I finally
managed to move and as I did so I saw them vanish through the open
doorway and disappear in the darkness.
There was no sleep for me that night, as you may imagine. I fancied that
the entire Pottawattomie tribe had gathered about the house and that
they would never be content until they had both killed and scalped me. I
just lay there and shivered until the dawn came, and I do not think
there was a happier boy in the country than I when the morning finally
broke and I convinced myself by the evidence of my own eye-sight that
there was not so much as even a single Indian about.
As soon as it was possible I told my father about my two unwelcome
visitors, but the old man only laughed and declared that I had been
dreaming. It was just possible that I had, but I do not believe it. I
saw those two Indians as they stood at the head and foot of my bed just
as plainly as I ever saw a base-ball, and I have had my eye on the ball
a good many times since I first began to play the game. I saw both their
painted faces and the tomahawks that they held in their sinewy hands.
More than that, I heard them as well as saw them when they went out.
That is the reason why I insist that I was not dreaming. I deny the
allegation and defy the alligator!
There were two Indians in my room that night. What they were there for I
don't know, and at this late day I don't care, but they were there, and
I know it. I shall insist that they were there to my dying day, and they
were there!