Right off the Bat: Baseball Ballads

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Right off the Bat: Baseball Ballads

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Right off the Bat: Baseball Ballads

Author: William Frederick Kirk

Illustrator: H. B. Martin

Release date: February 12, 2011 [eBook #35243]
Most recently updated: January 7, 2021

Language: English

Credits: Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
generously made available by The Internet Archive.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RIGHT OFF THE BAT: BASEBALL BALLADS ***

RIGHT OFF
THE BAT

BASEBALL BALLADS

By
WILLIAM F. KIRK

ILLUSTRATIONS BY
H. B. MARTIN

G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

(These verses originally appeared in the New York Evening Journal, and are here
reprinted through the courtesy of the National News Association.)

TO
JOHN J. McGRAW
THE SCHOOLMASTER
OF BASEBALL

	PAGE
John Bourbon, Pitcher	7
Sunday Baseball	9
The Big League	11
The Ballad of the Minor Leaguer	13
Ballade of a Substitute	15
Casey on a Bat	17
The Pitcher’s Soliloquy	19
Blessed Be Baseball	21
Raymond’s Ride	23
Four Conversations	25
“Inside” Baseball	27
The Difference	29
Cricket and Baseball	31
The League of Long Ago	33
The Longest Hit on Record	35
The Umpire’s Home	37
“Yellow”	39
The Umpire	41
“Choosing Sides”	43
Ode to a Georgia Gent	45
Life and Baseball	47
What Happened to Hilo	49
I Was with Clarke	51
“Home Folks”	53
The Outfielder’s Dream	55
The Law of Averages	57
A Converted Rooter	59
To the Lady Bugs	61
Polo in Arizona	63
The Laddies’ League	65
The $11,000 Beauty	67
The Lay of the New York Fan	69
The Old Rooter	71
“If”	73

Right Off the Bat

JOHN BOURBON, PITCHER

They tell me that Matty can pitch like a fiend,
But many long years before Matty was weaned
I was pitching to players, and good players, too,
Mike Kelley and Rusie and all the old crew.
Red Sockalexis, the Indian star,
Breitenstein, Clancy, McGill and McGarr.
Matty a pitcher? Well, yes, he may be,
But where in the world is a pitcher like me?

My name is John Bourbon, I’m old, and yet young;
I cannot keep track of the victims I’ve stung.
I’ve studied their weaknesses, humored their whims,
Muddled their eyesight and weakened their limbs,
Bloated their faces and dammed up their veins,
Rusted their joints and beclouded their brains.
Matty a pitcher? Well, yes, he may be,
But where in the world is a pitcher like me?

I have pitched to the stars of our national game,
I have pitched them to ruin and pitched them to shame.
They laughed when they faced me, so proud of their strength,
Not knowing, poor fools, I would get them at length.
I have pitched men off pinnacles scaled in long years.
I have pitched those they loved into oceans of tears.
Matty a pitcher? Well, yes, he may be,
But where in the world is a pitcher like me?

SUNDAY BASEBALL

The East Side Slashers were playing the Terrors,
Piling up hits, assists and errors;
Far from their stuffy tenement homes
That cluster thicker than honeycombs,
They ran the bases like busy bees,
Fanned by the Hudson’s cooling breeze.

Mrs. Hamilton-Marshall-Gray,
Coming from church, chanced to pass that way.
She saw the frolicking urchins there,
Their shrill cries splitting the Sabbath air.
“Mercy!” she murmured, “this must stop!”
Then promptly proceeded to call a cop;
And the cop swooped down on the luckless boys,
Stopping their frivolous Sunday joys.

Mrs. Hamilton-Marshall-Gray
Spoke to her coachman and drove away
Through beautiful parks, o’er shady roads,
Past splashing fountains and rich abodes.
Reaching her home, she was heard to say
“How awful to break the Sabbath day!”

The Slashers and Terrors, side by side,
Started their stifling subway ride
Down through the city, ever down
To the warping walls of Tenement Town.
Reaching their homes, the troublesome tots
Crept away to their shabby cots
And dreamed of the grass and the droning bees,
The pure, cool air and the waving trees,
And how they had played their baseball game
Till the Beautiful Christian Lady came.

THE BIG LEAGUE

You want to play in the Big League, boy?
I guess that you will some day,
For you’ve shown the speed the managers need
And the lightning brain (the managers’ creed),
And the heart that will bid you stay.

But when you go to the Big League, boy,
And play on the Big League grounds,
As the seasons roll you will pay the toll
From your fresh young nerves and your clean young soul,
Till your pulse less buoyantly bounds.

And you’ll learn strange things in the Big League, boy,
The cream of the good and bad;
You will come to know, in that shifting show,
The things that I learned in the long ago
When I, too, was a careless lad.

For I came to play in the Big League, boy,
And I played my string to the end.
To eyes divine where the white lights shine
I mumbled toasts over bubbling wine—
And finished minus a friend.

You want to play in the Big League, boy?
I guess that you will, some day,
And this is the prayer of an old-time player—
None was stronger and none was gayer—
God help you along your way.

THE BALLAD OF THE MINOR LEAGUER

He came here in the early Spring with all the tryout mob,
Striving to bat like Wagner and to slide (spikes first) like Cobb.
Some of the vets cried, “Bonehead!” Others remarked, “Poor zob!”

Modest as Spring’s arbutus, calm as an April dawn,
He asked for no advances though his ticker was in pawn;
He learned the law from Jawn McGraw but never called him “Jawn.”

He graced the bench until July, leading the simple life—
He wouldn’t touch a cocktail once to please a schoolmate’s wife;
The slightest hint of a “creme de mint” would cut him like a knife.

The village smith that stood beneath the spreading chestnut tree
Had nothing on this youngster in the dodging of a spree.
Others could tipple if they would—not for Recruit McGee.

Thus did the minor leaguer seek for affluence and fame—
Virtue’s its own reward at times, but oft it pulls up lame.
Now he has went back to the place from which he once had came!

BALLADE OF A SUBSTITUTE

I’ve been here nearly a season now,
Watching the regulars, day after day;
I wish some wizard would tell me how
To break right into the game and stay.
It isn’t as if I were some thick jay,
Like a lot of those clumsy “Class B” flivvers,
But I’m glued to the bench so hard that, say—
The seat of my pants is full of slivers.

McGill is a terrible lobbygow,
But he’s drawing a regular shortstop’s pay;
He romps around like a crippled cow
And shows the speed of a two-ton dray.
Night after night I kneel and pray
For a chance to work with the real high livers,
But I guess I’ll sub till my hair turns gray—
The seat of my pants is full of slivers.

Clancy ought to be steering a plow
Back on the farm near old Green Bay;
He’s playing third, with his slanting brow;
And Dugan ought to be pitching hay.
The bulls they’ve made since the first of May
Would give a McGraw one million shivers,
But it’s “stay on the bench!” for Kid O’Shay,
The seat of my pants is full of slivers.

“ENVY”

Manager, pardon this mournful bray,
But my pride is hurt and my conscience quivers;
Give me one chance in the thick of the fray—
The seat of my pants is full of slivers.

CASEY ON A BAT

It looked extremely rocky for the Boston team that day,
The score was one to nothing, with one inning left to play.
Casey, who played in centre field, had shown an hour too late—
He hadn’t any alibi when staggering through the gate.
So when he tore his necktie off and stepped upon his hat
The manager looked grim and said, “It’s Casey on a bat.”

“Well,” said the Boston manager, “with joy I ought to scream—
Here’s Casey with a dandy load, the best man on the team.
He told me he was sober, but he couldn’t quite get by
When he stepped upon his derby and was yanking off his tie.
Of all the hard luck in the world! The mean, ungrateful rat!
A blooming championship at stake and Casey on a bat.”

Two Boston batters in the ninth were speedily retired,
“Here, Casey!” cried the manager, speaking as one inspired,
“Go in and bat for Grogan! There’s a man on second base,
And if you hit the way you can we’ll win the pennant race.”
This is no knock on buttermilk, or anything like that,
But the winning hit was made that day by Casey on a bat.

THE PITCHER’S SOLILOQUY

A pitcher known in the days gone by
As a star of the first degree
Was making the dirt and gravel fly
In the shade of an old oak tree.
His spade was long and his arm was strong,
And the ditch that he dug was wide;
He paused at the sound of the dinner gong—
And this is the sermon he sighed:

“Young man, you are climbing the ladder now—
Your arm is as firm as steel;
The wreath of laurel is on your brow
And the pride of a prince you feel.
Do you think you will play when your hair turns gray?
I thought my prowess would last,
But you can’t strike out the men of to-day
With the curves you threw in the past!”

In the merciless baseball game of life
We may shine for a fleeting hour,
But the strongest frame comes to shun the strife
And loses its youthful power.
So strive to lay, while it comes your way,
A fence for Adversity’s blast.
You can’t strike out the men of to-day
With the curves you threw in the past.

BLESSED BE BASEBALL

The game was on! The cheers and roars
Rang Eastward to Long Island’s shores;
“Come on, you Matty—show your class!”
“Oh, you Red Murray! Scorch the grass!”

“Heads up, Big Injun!” “Scoop ’em, Bridwell!”
“Devore stole home! And sure he slid well!”
These and a thousand other roars
Rang Eastward to Long Island’s shores.

And folks of various sorts were there
From East Side yeggs to ladies fair;
Here a tragedian, there a joker,
Here a banker and there a broker.
Young dry goods clerks with booze clerks mingled,
And all sat in with nerves that tingled.

One white-haired woman sat alone,
Proud as a queen upon her throne.
One dear old lady, calm, sedate,
Age, very likely, eighty-eight.
“Isn’t she sweet?” the women said;
“Look at that lovely silvery head!”

As in the sun she serenely basked
A rooter sitting beside her asked:
“How did you come to get away?”
“My grandson,” she answered, “died to-day!”

RAYMOND’S RIDE

Listen, dear rooters, and you shall hear
Of the ride of a modern Paul Revere.
The Paul Revere of “seventy-five”
Rode like a fiend and won in a drive.
The Paul Revere whose praises I sing
Is Arthur Raymond, the spitball king.

No plunging charger, no Arab steed,
Loans to Raymond its wondrous speed,
No dainty thoroughbred, sleek of side,
Plays a part in our Raymond’s ride.
Just a lumbering wagon, creaking and shaking
Serves for the wonderful ride he’s taking.
And it hustles him over hollow and hill,
Drawn by a good old horse named WILL.

It bumps like blazes and swerves like sin
When it nears a bar or passes an inn;
It jerks like the tail of a crazy kite
When a brewery looms on the left or right.
When it nears The Coop or The Rooters’ Rest
It bucks as a mustang bucks out West.
But, calmly refusing to get a jag on,
Raymond clings to that water wagon.

* * *

To Revere’s great feat you may point with pride,
But Raymond is riding a greater ride.[1]

FOUR CONVERSATIONS

“I used to have ’em buffaloed when I was with Duluth,
Out in that dinky pine tree league, and here’s the honest truth:
This Mathewson ain’t better. Say, the benders that I slung
Had all the sluggers swinging till they’d almost bust a lung.
I’ll get ’em just the same right here—McGraw knows I can’t lose.”
Said the Pitcher to the Barboy up at Paddy Donahue’s.

“I lost a tough game yesterday, but that don’t make me sad;
Believe me, I had everything—they walloped all I had.
I didn’t get no swell support; my catcher crossed me twice
And all the infield acted like a wagon full of ice.
They all support this Mathewson. When I go in we lose!”
Said the Pitcher to the Barboy up at Paddy Donahue’s.

“I’ve been here just two months to-day, and things are looking black;
I lost a tough one yesterday, and now I’ve got the sack.
Say, everyone’s against me, kid. My curve is breaking great,
But four guys slammed it yesterday clear to the left field gate.
Now I’m released—you hear me? Released with run-down shoes!”
Said the Pitcher to the Barboy up at Paddy Donahue’s.

* * *

“Get out of here, you rummy! I can’t hand you no more booze!”
Said the Barboy to the Pitcher up at Paddy Donahue’s.

“INSIDE” BASEBALL

(The warden of one of the State penitentiaries has begun a system of Saturday half holidays for the convicts, a baseball game on the prison grounds being the main feature.)

You talk of “inside” baseball and of managerial plans,
Of signs and mental flashes that are Greek to all the fans;
You tell of wondrous brainwork, such as Evers used to use
When he wasn’t in his shoe store, selling patent leather shoes.
I’ve seen some “inside” baseball in the various big league towns,
And seen some “inside” pitching by the Mathewsons and Browns,
But the finest “inside” baseball I have seen in many a day
Is inside the dear old prison, where they like to have me stay.

The Yeggmen lead the league just now—that team is full of tricks;
They beat the Con Men yesterday by seventeen to six.
The Lifers have an outside chance to win the prison flag;
The Counterfeiters still have hopes, although they seldom brag.
The pitcher for the Grafters, namely, Alderman McGee,
Has bet his good behavior that they’ll finish one, two, three.
Yes, the finest “inside” baseball I have seen in many a day
Is inside the dear old prison, where they like to have me stay.

The game we had last Saturday was sure a corking sight;
The Yeggmen beat the Grafters, but the Grafters made them fight.
McGee, the Grafters’ pitcher, had to hide his head in shame—
He tried to bribe the warden, who was umpiring the game.
If Saturday’s a pleasant day for outside games like ball
The Con Men play the Lifers, and we’ll be there, one and all.
For the finest “inside” baseball I have seen in many a day
Is inside the dear old prison, where they like to have me stay.

THE DIFFERENCE

“It’s just this way,” said Danny O’Shay,
As he whittled a stick and the hours away,
“A player can booze for a year or two,
The same as me or the same as you.
You meet a ball-gamer now and then
Who can guzzle more than the most of men.
But sooner or later he has to go
The way I was chased from the big league show.

“The difference, kid,” said Danny O’Shay,
“Between the hard and the easy way,
As far as ball players goes, at least,
Is a difference big as the West and East.
I played ten years before I was spurned,
And this is the lesson your uncle learned:
The boozer THINKS he is splitting the wood,
The man that is sober KNOWS he’s good.

“You see,” continued Danny O’Shay,
“A dog and a man must have his day.
I played like a demon for seven years,
’Till I switched to whiskey and quit my beers.
I laughed at the friends that steered me right,
But here’s the difference, black and white:
The boozer THINKS he is splitting the wood,
The man that is sober KNOWS he’s good.”

CRICKET AND BASEBALL

The cricket game was over and the sun was sinking low,
The players in their blazers plodded homeward in a row.
They stopped within the clubhouse for a final cup of tea,
When up spake Captain Edgerton to Bowler Basil Fee:

“Jolly well tried, old chap!
You lost as the greatest can;
But whether you win or whether you lose
You’re always a gentleman.
Have a Scotch and soda, old fellow—
It will drive off the blooming blues;
Keep up your stride, you jolly well tried,
And a man can’t always lose.”

The baseball game was over and the home team had been skinned,
The players slunk across the field while sundry knockers grinned;
They hurried to the clubhouse for a bath and change of garb,
When up spake Manager McDuff, and each word was a barb:

“Fine lot of high-priced athletes!
Most of you ain’t alive!
I could pick a team from the Soldiers’ Home
And beat you four out of five.
Be out here at ten to-morrow—
That goes the way that it lays;
Any mixed-ale sport that doesn’t report
Will squat on the bench ten days!”

THE LEAGUE OF LONG AGO

They’ve got me sitting on the bench—I knew it had to come—
Kid Casey subbed for me at third the day I broke my thumb;
My thumb got better fast enough, but when I wanted back,
“The Kid is stinging them a mile,” says good old Captain Mack.
“The Kid is running bases like a Murray or a Cobb,
The Kid does this, the Kid does that, the Kid is on the job.”
And so I’m sitting on the bench, my spirits sort o’ low,
And playing memory ball games in the League of Long Ago.

I’m pulling for Kid Casey, and I hope he makes a mint,
I help him every way I can, from cussword down to hint;
He knows that I am for him, too—’twas only yesterday
He says to me, “Old leaguer, you’ve got ten more years to play.”
But I know that he knows better, and I know just what I’m worth—
A man can’t last forever in the swiftest game on earth.
And so I’m sitting on the bench, my spirits sort o’ low,
And playing memory ball games in the League of Long Ago.

I played with Old Buck Ewing just before Buck blew the game,
I played with Jimmy Ryan in the days of Anson’s fame.
Then I was just a fresh young kid, and they were getting old,
But not one slur they gave me when I broke into the fold.
That’s why I like Kid Casey, and I’ll plug like sin for him,
I told Mack only yesterday my eyes were getting dim.
And so I’m sitting on the bench, my spirits sort o’ low,
And playing memory ball games in the League of Long Ago.

THE LONGEST HIT ON RECORD

I’ve heard of hits by Wagner, hits that scaled the left field fence,
I’ve read about full many a clout tremendous and immense;
I know about that old time wheeze where Ryan hit a ball
That lit upon a steamer due in London late that Fall.
But the longest hit on record was a hit by Dan O’Shay
When the Bankers played the Brokers just five years ago to-day.

Dan played left field or right field, I can’t remember which,
But when it came to batting—well, Dan had the batter’s itch.
His fellow brokers often said—perhaps they did but joke—
They spent their all repairing baseball fences Danny broke.
But the longest hit Dan ever made, as I set out to say,
Was made against the Bankers just five years ago to-day.

A banker named O’Connor waited out in centre field
When Dan O’Shay came to the plate, his nerves all calm and steeled.
Dan hit the ball an awful soak, O’Connor clenched his teeth,
And after quite a fearsome sprint, the ball he got beneath.
Just as he caught the pellet two detectives hove in sight;
He put the ball inside his shirt and told the gang “GOOD NIGHT!”

He ran to far-off Labrador, the land of ice and snow,
And everywhere O’Connor went the ball was sure to go.
From there he went to Canada, from there he made Bengal,
Then journeyed he to Mandalay, accompanied by that ball.
And then he tried Australia, seeking diamonds in the dirt,
But all the time he kept that ball he’d hidden in his shirt.

He didn’t like Australia, so he trekked to many a land,
From Greenland’s icy mountains clear to India’s coral strand.
He sweltered in strange deserts, onward, onward, day by day,
But always kept that baseball hit so hard by Dan O’Shay.
If you ever go to Sing Sing, which I hope you never will,
You’ll find O’Connor in a cell with that same horsehide pill.

* * *

Yes, the longest hit on record was a hit by Dan O’Shay,
When the Bankers played the Brokers, just five years ago to-day.

THE UMPIRE’S HOME

Where does an umpire live? You ask me that?
Come, I will take you to an umpire’s flat.
Ah! Here we are! ’Tis five flights up, behind;
Umpires are used to hiding—they don’t mind.
This is the entrance. It’s a bachelor’s den,
For umpires aren’t often married men.
The owner’s not at home, but come with me;
I know him well and have an extra key.

This is the library; note well the books,
Dingy and dismal, like the umpire’s looks.
“Lives of the Martyrs,” “The Deserted Home,”
“Dante’s Inferno,” “Rise and Fall of Rome.”
“Paradise Lost,” “The Sinking of the Maine,”
“Ballad of Reading Gaol,” and “Souls in Pain.”
“The Death of Joan of Arc,” “The Convict’s Woe,”
And all the works of Edgar Allen Poe.

This is the dining room, all done in black,
With rugs of drab and tapestries of sack
Notice the mottoes on the gloomy walls:
“Drink to the countless strikes that I called balls,”
“A toast to all the close ones that I miss,”
“A curse upon the man who loves to hiss!”
Where does an umpire live? You ask me that?
Well, I have shown you through an umpire’s flat.

“YELLOW”

He wasn’t a strong looking fellow,
And roughnecks played ball in those days;
The ballgamers christened him “Yellow”
Because of his mild, timid ways.
Red Flynn slapped his face to a whisper
One day when he missed a fly ball,
And his jaw almost broke when he got a swell soak
From the fist of Outfielder McCall.

I used to feel sorry for “Yellow,”
The gang made his life one long moan.
He wasn’t a strong looking fellow,
They ought to have let him alone.
I’ve found, in my baseball excursions,
From Maine to the parks way out West,
That the players who win and draw down the tin,
Are the players who throw out the chest.

But courage is courage, I reckon;
It’s hard to explain, but it’s true;
And sometimes a fellow that people call yellow
Turns out to be brave and true blue.
One day when a hit meant a pennant
Our “Yellow” came up to the bat;
Did he quit in the pinch? Did he falter and flinch?
Sure he did. He struck out like a rat!

THE UMPIRE

He was tall and rugged and coated with tan,
He asked no odds and he feared no man.
When he shouted “Strike!” or yelped “Ball Two!”
You can wager it went, and went clear through.
Seldom he argued, and never he fined
The player who cursed or the player who whined,
But he ran the game from beginning to end,
Knew no mercy and feared no friend.

Six years in the league he remained the same,
Sneering at kickers and bossing the game,
Snapping at roughnecks who made foolish howls,
Slapping them, sometimes, fair on the jowls;
Taking no talk, always making good,
He ran the game as an umpire should,
Till every paper and every fan
Allowed that Flynn was a fearless man.

Flynn weighed two hundred, ringside weight,
His sweet little wife weighed a hundred and eight;
But when he finished the daily game
And home to his small apartment came
It was “Mike, you’re late!” and “Stay in the flat!”
“Mike, do this!” and “Mike, do that!”
’Twas surely a shame, and almost a sin,
The way that she bullied the fearless Flynn.

* * *

Kipling knew nothing concerning the Flynns
When he wrote about “bearing the yoke.”
A woman is only a woman, perhaps,
But an umpire’s only a joke.