In cleaning up my apartment today, a semi-annual event, I ran across my aged copy of Bill Stern’s BULLSHIT STORIES FOR GULLIBLE CHILDREN*, written in 1946, and found one that could actually form a tracer, being composed (as so few of Stern’s stories are) of actual facts, so I thought I’d run it for you. It takes place on October 6, 1922, as it happens, the anniversary of which is this Thursday, so I figured I’d run it now rather than waiting for next October 6th to come rolling around again.
Before I do, I assume most of you know Stern’s reputation for telling improbable, unprovable, sentimental tales that makes you go all warm and goopy inside, but if you don’t, let me refer you to Woody Allen’s film RADIO DAYS where he does an imitation of Bill "Kern"’s baseball stories that is a lot more fun than trudging through Stern’s actual treacly prose. Mostly these are stories about kind things that crusty old baseball managers have done for their players and other such piffle, and this is one of those.
Stern’s stories are Paul Harveyish in that his stock in trade is to withhold a key detail, like who the story is about, until the end, and he seems to be particularly fond of the tale of a promising young player who turns out to be –William McKinley! Or Harry Truman! Or Dwight Eisenhower! Or any kid rumored to have picked up a baseball but who got sidetracked into doing something else for a living! Like John L. Sullivan! Or Betty Boop! (He does feature stories about McKinley, Truman, Eisenhower and Sullivan in this volume, leaving the Boop story for later.) What surprised me a little was the realization that many of these stories weren’t ancient tales, but rather stories well within the memory of your average adult at the time of publication.
Take this one, from 1922—Stern is recounting it in 1946, only 24 years later, but he tells it as if it has been retrieved from the fogs of time. At least that’s how I read it, as a kid, like Stern was some kind of gray-bearded historian dredging up hoary tales of yore. Twenty-four years ago is, well, like 1992 is to us right now, and we still discuss plays and games from 1992 as if they just happened. Which they did.
So this one is about a grizzled veteran pitcher named Jack Scott, all washed up, a bum whom no one in organized baseball will take a chance on anymore, appealing to the crusty old manager of the New York Giants, Muggsy McGraw, for any kind of handout. Muggsy slips him fifty bucks and invites him to use a locker in the Polo Grounds clubhouse.
Now, in reality, according to baseball-reference.com, Scott was actually only a few months past his 30th birthday and, far from having been "a fine pitcher but now a washed-up has-been with a dead arm," had actually had his best year (really, his only decent year) the previous season, when he had gone 15-13 for the Boston Braves. The Braves, of course, played in the NL, one of only 7 opponents of McGraw’s team, but to hear Stern tell it, it was some sort of miracle that McGraw managed to recognize the face of this "wreck of a man in a shabby suit" who approached him that mid-summer day.
According to Stern, this wreck of a beggar had "slaved on his tobacco farm a whole year" only to see his harvested crop go up in flames, which if I were Muggsy I would have kicked him in his ass for insulting my intelligence with such nonsense—Scott had pitched briefly in the major leagues that very April, before being cut (doubtless suffering from a sore arm), and this was less than three months later, so anything he had planted during his farming career had barely had a chance to germinate, much a less a whole year to be harvested and tragically burnt, but Stern soon cuts away to McGraw notifying Scott during that year’s World Series against the Yankees, "You’re going to pitch today!"
What he leaves out is that Scott, during the months of August and September, was one of McGraw’s most reliable starters, going 8-2 in 10 starts (and 7 relief appearances), and was actually not at all a bad choice to start a Series game. The Giants were up one game to none, in the middle of a 4-0 sweep, and far from "the stands buzz[ing] with excitement" at McGraw’s astonishing choice, I’m pretty sure the only buzzing came from bumblebees and other assorted insects.
As to the game account itself, Stern is pretty good: Scott shut out the Yankees that day, retiring Ruth, Pipp and Meusel on grounders in the ninth to cinch the shutout. (He fabricates a little bit in claiming that the Yankees got "four scratch hits"—Wally Schang pounded a double down the RF line, advancing Meusel to third in the seventh inning—but let’s call that poetic license.) It’s just the bubba-meisers** Stern tells that amuse me so, the extra helping of sentimental details that are Stern’s trademark. Most of these stories have no possibility of running tracers on, because of the utter lack of time- and place-details, but when something can be tracked down and checked, you may be sure that some teary elements in it are probably exaggerated to a comical degree.
Incidentally, if anyone wants a load of old baseball books, send me a PM or just say so in the comments section—I’m kind of sick of having all these books cluttering up my apartment (I’m considering moving to a smaller place, and can’t take all of them with me when I do) so if you have an empty shelf or two, I’m glad to fill it up for you. Once I get to scour it for tracer material, of course.
*Actually BILL STERN’S FAVORITE SPORTS STORIES
** "Grandma stories" in my native tongue.