How do the members of the base-ball fraternity spend the winter seasons?
If I have been asked that question once I have been asked it a thousand
times. The public, as a rule, seem to think that because a man is a
professional ball player and therefore employed but seven months in the
year he must necessarily spend the other five in idleness, and there are
doubtless some few ball players that spend their winters in that way,
but, be it said to the credit of the craft, there are not many of them.
There is no man upon whose hands time hangs so heavily as it does upon
the hands of him who has nothing to do, at least that has been my
experience, and for that reason I have always managed to busy myself at
something during the winter months. Some of the things that I engaged in
proved profitable, others did not, but, all-in-all, the winter of 1885
yielded me the best results of my life, for that winter I spent in doing
what the old gentleman had wanted me to do years before, viz., in going
to school. I had a very good reason for doing this, as you can readily
see.
During my ball-playing career I had entrusted some money to the old
gentleman up in Marshalltown for safe keeping, and while up there on a
visit in the fall of 1884, needing some coin, I asked for it.
"Figure up how much I owe you, interest and all," was his reply, "and we
will have a settlement."
Now, the old gentleman might just as well have set me down at the foot
of the Rocky Mountains with a wheelbarrow and told me to carry them away
to the Atlantic coast on that vehicle, as to have asked me to do an
example in interest, and I was too ashamed of my ignorance to allow him
to know that such a thing was beyond my powers, so I managed to get
around the matter in some way, but I made up my mind then and there that
I would at the first opportunity learn at best enough to take care of my
own business. That winter I spent with my wife and daughter in
Philadelphia, and here I found that she had a brother, Remey A. Fiegel,
who was as averse to going to school as ever I had been. By this time I
had come to a realizing sense of the power of knowledge, and so I
labored with him until he consented to go to night-school, providing
that I would send him, which I agreed to do.
Pierce's Business College was the place selected, and when I went up
there to make the necessary arrangements for his tuition I asked how old
a man had to become before he was barred from attending.
"Oh!" replied the superintendent, "age is no bar here. We have a great
many scholars right now who are a long ways older than you are."
"All right! You can just put my name down, too," I replied, and the
following Monday evening Remey and I started to go to school together,
and this time there was no nonsense about it. That winter I studied
faithfully, and, though it was hard work, by the time spring came and we
returned to Chicago I had acquired at least a fair knowledge of the
rudiments of business and was able to keep my own books, figure my own
interest, and, in fact, run my own business.
During the greater part of another winter I ran a hand-ball court on
Michigan avenue in Chicago, which did not prove to be a. paying venture,
one reason, and the paramount one, being that it was too far away from
the business center of the town at that time, though now it would have
been in the very heart of the business district, while still another
reason was that there were not enough hand-ball players in the city to
keep the game running.
Some time during the latter part of the '80s the old Congress street
grounds were converted during the winter season into a skating rink and
toboggan slide, and of this I had the management during one whole
season, a season that was pecuniarily profitable to the lessees of the
grounds, as the weather during the greater part of the winter was
severe, the ice in fine condition and the toboggan slide in apple-pie
order.
Ice skating was that season more popular in Chicago than it had ever
been before, and the toboggan craze, which had been brought over here
from Canada, at once caught on to the public fancy. As a result the
Congress Street Rink was crowded both afternoon and evening, and,
strange to relate, the attendance was of the most fashionable sort, the
young men and maidens from all parts of the city assembling for the
purpose of going down the toboggan slide, which was attended with a
great deal more of excitement in those days than was the sport of
"shooting the chutes," its summer prototype, which later on became
popular. The grounds were handsomely lighted and, thronged as they were
in the evening with gaily-attired skaters of both sexes, and toboggan
parties arrayed in the picturesque rigs that were the fashion in
Montreal, Quebec and other Canadian cities, they made a pretty sight and
one that attracted crowds of spectators, some of the skaters being of
the kind that would have been styled champions in the days when Frank
Swift, Callie Curtis and others were the leading fancy skaters.
The next season the same rink was managed by John Brown, the late
secretary of the Chicago Base-Ball Club, but unfortunately he was not
blessed with "the Anson luck," and the winter being a mild one and the
freezes few and far between, he did not make a success of the venture.
The toboggan craze was merely one of the fashionable fads of the moment,
and now one rarely hears anything at all of the sport.
As a bottler of ginger beer I achieved at another time great distinction
and there are some men in the country right now who have a very vivid
remembrance of the beverage that I was unfortunate enough to put upon
the market. My experience as a ginger beer manufacturer was laughable,
to say the least of it, though I confess that I did not appreciate the
fact at the time as much as did some of my friends and acquaintances.
During several of my visits to Canada in search both of players and
pleasure I had made the acquaintance of a Mr. William Burrill, who at
that time conducted a clothing store at London, Canada, and who had
treated both myself and Mrs. Anson with great kindness. This gentleman
finally went "down the toboggan slide" in a business way and at last
turned up in Chicago with a very little money and a formula for making
and bottling ginger beer. He needed, according to his own estimate,
about $500 more capital than he was possessed of and wished me to join
him in manufacturing it. He was a nice fellow, I was anxious to help him
along, and, besides that, viewed from a business standpoint, it looked
like a good thing, and as I was never averse to taking a chance when
there was a good thing in sight I concluded to join him in the venture.
The $500 that I was originally required to invest grew into $1,500,
however, before we got the thing on the market, and then the sales
started off in lively fashion, and so, not long afterwards, did the
ginger beer.
There was a flaw in the formula somewhere, just what it was I never have
been able to ascertain, but--well, there was something the matter with
it. It wouldn't stay corked, that was its worst feature, but would go
off at all times of the day and night and in the most unexpected
fashion. If the cork would hold, the bottle wouldn't, and as a result
there would be an explosion that would sound like the discharge of a
small cannon. Sometimes only one bottle out of a dozen would explode,
and then again the whole dozen would go off with a sound like that made
by a whole regiment firing by platoons. It was by long odds the
liveliest ginger-beer that had ever been placed upon the market. There
was entirely too much life in it. That was the trouble. Sitting among a
lot of fancy glassware on a back bar it looked as innocent of evil as a
newborn babe, but, presto change! and a moment afterwards it was its
Satanic Majesty on a rampage, and that back bar with its glassware
looked as if it had been struck by a Kansas cyclone.
Complaints began to pour in to the factory from all kinds and classes of
customers, and I began to be afraid to walk the streets for fear
that some one would accuse me of having bottled dynamite instead of
ginger-beer.
I sold a case of it to a friend of mine who kept a noted sporting resort
on South Clark street, Chicago. It was harmless enough when I sold it to
him. It was young then, and its propensity for mischief had not been
fully developed. It developed later. One evening when all was quiet
there was an explosion in the cellar. It sounded like the muffled report
of a dynamite cartridge. The billiard players dropped their cues and
some of them started for the door. A second explosion followed and the
coon porters' hair stood fairly on end and their faces became as near
like chalk as a black man's can.
The proprietor started down cellar to investigate. He had gotten half
way down when there came a third explosion.
He came back again more hastily than he had gone down, and ordered one
of the porters to ascertain the cause of the trouble.
The porter was a brave man, and he refused to do it.
I did not blame him when I heard of it.
In the meantime the rest of the ginger-beer bottles had caught the
contagion and the fusillade became fast and furious, and it did not stop
until the billiard-room and the last bottle of ginger beer were both
empty.
After silence had reigned for some time and it had become apparent that
danger was all past, my friend the proprietor grew courageous again and,
lamp in hand, he visited the cellar to investigate.
Where the case of ginger beer had set there was a mass of wreckage.
Broken glass was everywhere, while the flooring, ceiling and walls were
strained in a hundred different places. As he emerged from the cellar
with a look of supreme disgust on his countenance, he was surrounded by
an anxious group who asked as one man:
"What's the matter down there, Louis?"
"It's that ginger beer of Anson's," was the reply.
Then there was another explosion, this time one of laughter.
"Anson's ginger-beer" was getting a reputation, but it was not exactly
the sort of a reputation that I wanted it to have. I was willing to
close out the business even at a sacrifice, and this I did.
I saved more in proportion of my money than my customers did of the
ginger beer I had sold them. This was one consolation.