Marshall Hunt - Matrix

player, absolutely bald, blowing his guts out with this hail just popping.
A devoted musician.
So I said, "Babe, just pause for a minute and think of your position
in this country, in society, and every other thing. Here you are.
Reverence is being paid by this poor band out there in that hail.
The mayor has already welcomed you. We don't know what will
happen the rest of the day, but it sort of gives you another chance to
gauge your position in the United States of America. Look at that
tuba player down there. It's a sight I'll never forget. And Babe, you
shouldn't forget this welcome here."
The Babe just turned around and said, "Okay, kid, let's eat."
The Babe made two movies. I went out to Hollywood on one of
them. The Babe insisted that I be installed as some sort of technical
adviser. The movie was called Headin' Home) with Anna Q. Nilsson.
She was one of the stars of the day. This was in 1928 or '29, right
when Hollywood was at its absolute peak. Lord, he was big out there.
It was a budget film and had to be completed at a certain time,
and Babe sawall this stuff around town. So Barrow sent Artie
McGovern out to be his keeper. Artie had a couple of fancy gymnasiums
in New York, a fine physical director. He put the Babe to bed
every night, usually at nine o'clock. Broke the Babe's heart. He was
never in the midst of so much at one time and could get so little.
One night the Babe and Artie were invited out. They had permission
to go. The Babe had promised to autograph a couple of hundred
baseballs. So he came down to my room and asked me to do
him a favor.
"What is it, Babe?" I asked him.
"Well, there's a bunch of baseballs on my bed. Will you autograph
'em as fast as you can? And then just leave 'em on the bed?"
I autographed about 250, and the Babe came back with Artie
and knocked on my door. I was reading. He said, "I saw the
baseballs and they're good. Thank you a lot."
The next morning I was having breakfast and Babe came over
to my table and said, "Say, kid, don't get too good with that pen."
When it came time to go back to New York, we got on the
Union Pacific. I was walking through the cars and who do I run into
but Joe Patterson, publisher of the News. I didn't know he was out
there. He said, "Hey, what are you doing here?"
22 NO CHEERING IN THE PRESS BOX
I told him and he said, "Is the Babe actually on this train?"
I said, "Well, yes, sure. We're going back to New York."
So here was Patterson on the same train. He was a great newspaperman.
He realized by us latching onto the Babe we had done a
good thing. It was 'Patterson, from the beginning, who saw we could
increase circulation by developing a strong sports department. He always
wanted us to write in kind of a bouncy way. Very biff, bang,
boom stuff.
I could see he was awed when he realized we were on the same
train, and he asked me if I could get the Babe back into his drawing
room for a little chat.
I said, "Oh, I think so. I'll talk to him."
So Patterson said, ''I'm awfully tired. But if you can bring the
Babe back to the drawing room, I'll talk to him for a while. And
when I signal like this"-he brushed his fingers against his coat­
"just say, 'We've got to go, Babe. We've got to go.' " Tha't was sort
of the brush-off sign, the sign for us to leave.
I brought the Babe in and I thought we'd be talking for about
ten minutes. I kept waiting for the sign. This went on for about two
hours. The Babe enjoyed it. Patterson had played some baseball at
Yale, and even after he became publisher, he would occasionally
come out to the ball park. Patterson went out to see things for himself.
That's what set him aside from most publishers. Finally, I got
the signal and I said, "Okay, Babe," and we left. I never saw Patterson
on the train again. I ducked him. I thought we had done a pretty
good job, as it was.
Only once did I have an awkward time with the Babe. There
was the question of the paternity of a daughter in 1923. And Payne
-he was the city editor in New York, really a busybody-called me
up in New Orleans and asked me to go up to the Babe and find out,
because the story was breaking in New York. Hints came out.
I went up there and I said, "Babe, I've never asked you any of
these personal questions before, but the heat's on from the office and
I'm going to have to ask you some questions."
He said, "Go ahead."
But when I started he began to hedge. He was a little bit mad.
He stalled his way through, lying like hell. I knew that. So I called
Payne back and said, "Listen, we've got along fine with the Babe and
Marshall Hunt 23

too deep into that for me. But he really was a student of literature,
as was proved when he was on "Information Please."
So versatile were the sportswriters that every once in a while
there would be a good story in court, maybe crime or an investigation
that needed some color. The witnesses were colorful, the judge
was colorful. So they'd yank a baseball writer and send him'down to
court for six weeks until the case was over because the sportswriters
did a better job of describing. They were a little shaky on law,
maybe, but that could be taken care of very easily by going to the
prosecuting attorney, or any attorney, and getting straightened out
on the terminology. They could do this after the day's hearing. The
sportswriters were absolutely the best writers on the papers in those
days, and baseball writing was the best of all the jobs on a newspaper.
You'd think that of the drama reviewers, but that was a different
deal. You were dealing with a strange bunch of people there.
Some papers had excellent drama critics. They wrote very, very well
-about drama. Sometimes a publisher or a managing editor would
send the drama critic to the ball park to cover a World Series game
and he'd fall flat on his face. Write some of the most ludicrous stuff
in the world. Some of it so preposterous that the managing editor, in
reading it when it came over the wire, would throw it in the garbage
can.
In the twenties and earlier, the publishers wanted long stories.
The reporters were paid by space, by the inch. I think they got ten
dollars a column, about twenty inches to the column. The one thing
these fellows wanted to avoid was having their stories cut. So they
became very practiced and could weave a story like a cable, or a
chain. They wrote with pencil, sometimes very swiftly.
Take the case of Jack Kieran. He'd be assigned to a Yale­
Harvard game at New Haven, and he would have with him a program
from the year before and he would write how the band struck
up and played so-and-so and so-and-so. Then the chorus sang
so-and-so. Then they marched around the field and then Yale sang
this and Harvard sang that. Then Jack would describe the crowd,
how it was a little slow getting into the stadium. He would write all
of this in longhand, on the train, going up to New Haven, page after
page. He would even quote the song, three verses. Then he'd put
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NO CHEERING IN THE PRESS BOX
that in his pocket, get off the train, have lunch, and go out to Yale
Bowl. He'd make copious notes. At the end of the game, in the cold
weather, Kieran would attack the typewriter and write and write.
Sometimes Yale wouldn't sing the full three verses of a song. Jack
would edit the copy he had written in advance so it would be accurate
and, of course, it made a great impression around town. How
could a man write so much and so fast? They didn't know the trick.
Dan Daniel was another one who did that very successfully.
Dan, who was a prolific writer, anyway, would go up to New London
to cover a Yale-Harvard regatta. Dan, at the time, was working for
Munsey, a notorious penny pincher. The first thing Dan would do
after he got off the train in New London would be to go up to the
Mohican Hotel, copy off most of the names on the register, then
write down the names of others he saw in the lobby. Dan would interview
quite a few old-time Yale-Harvard fellows he spotted in the
lobby. Then he wrote about the regatta and the old grads at the
hotel, because his boss, Munsey, owned it. And, of course, he'd throw
in a few words about the superb cuisine and the excellent service
that everybody enjoyed there and he would mention Munsey once or
twice. That pleased old Munsey a great deal. Others would wonder
how Dan could write so much, so fast. He did it in takes. Dan knew
most of the angles about writing, covering things minutely.
I always got a kick out of 'Will Wedge, who worked for the New
York Sun for a long time. Will covered nothing but baseball, really.
He had a few assignments in the wintertime, and of course, traveling
along with Wedge was Ford Frick, who was born in a small town in
Indiana, went to DePauw University, then got out in Colorado
somehow or other. Arthur Brisbane, old double dome, picked him
up in Colorado and sent him into New York. There was quite a bit
of country about Ford, really. Apparently while at DePauw, Ford
had earned a few dollars by doing stenographic work. He was very
fast with the typewriter. Wedge was a poet and he tried to have
everything sound like literature and was an awfully slow writer. At
the end of a game, Frick, with his lightning touch, could bat out an
overnight story in eight minutes flat, right there at the ball park, ,put
it on the wire, and he was through for the day. Wedge, before the
game, had probably interviewed a rookie, at great length. He knew
Marshall Hunt
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liked Peg's stuff. I liked anybody who could knock 'em out with a
fine lead, funny, or good description of something, something that
told the story quickly. It's a real art to do that, and Peg was an artist.
I remember one time Peg covered a dog show in Madison
Square Garden, and he started out saying there were all these thousands
and thousands of dogs but he discovered not one of them was
named Rover or Troy, not one of them out of three or four thousand
dogs. He developed that theme right on through beautifully.
He didn't even know who won, but it was easier to read his story
than the one in the Times that ran two columns, listing all those
long names those beasts have.
Toward the end of Peg's connection with the Hearst outfit his
stuff was buried in the back of the paper-in the classified ads,
among the rupture pads and patent medicine ads, electric belts and
all that. It drove Peg furious. Newspapers across the country owe
quite a debt to Peg. His writing inspired young reporters to improve
their product, to put more punch into it, to assemble a greater vocabulary,
to be more careful with the structure of sentences.
I heard Peg say one time, "My God, if you're going to spend a
couple of hours writing, why not do some good? Why not entertain
people, or annoy people? Just don't turn out a bunch of dull tripe."
I don't know who ordered Peg's stuff into the back of the paper,
but I suppose it must have been the same young Hearst that Bill Slocum
of the New York American and I used to lead out to the ball
park, by his hand. Slocum, working for a Hearst newspaper, had the
duty of picking the kid up and bringing him to the ball park. Sometimes
I'd take my car and we'd pick him up somewhere. He'd sit
through the game, very well behaved.
I still hear from Mrs. Pegler once in a while. She likes oysters.
She calls up and I go over to the oyster plant and have them send out
a good fat order. They arrive there in very good shape. She's a good
cook. They have a nice place down there, in Tucson. He bought it
when he was married to Julia Hartman. He bought forty acres, then
later, I think, he took over forty more-adobe house, big swimming
pool, a very comfortable place. And a Union Pacific caboose out in
front which he wanted to use as an office. But he didn't live long
enough.
I don't know how the modem baseball writers feel about the
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NO CHEERING IN THE PRESS BOX
players and the owners, but I think that the relations are not the
same as in the twenties. Most of us looked at the whole thing practically
as a business. The owners, we noticed, wore Brooks Brothers
suits and had rather round stomachs. They got into the barber shop
every day. Their shoes were shined. They lived in nice houses. They
drove in good cars. Well, that was okay with us. We never toadied to
them. Every once in a while they'd throw a dinner. We'd go. Then
the baseball writers, in turn, would throw a real fine dinner and invite
the owners. The writers' relations with the owners and players
were good.
I only had one argument with a manager-with John McGraw.
He was a feisty little devil. He got into lots of fights. Never won a
single one of them, I think. Started in fighting when he was a third
baseman for the Baltimore Orioles years ago. One night, on a station
platform in Pittsburgh, he came at me and said he was going to
knock the Jesus out of me. And I said, "Go ahead. Try it."
He had been drinking a lot and was objecting to a story I had
written a day or two before about a couple of his Giant players being
fined twenty dollars apiece for not obeying a signal and for not being
alert. I rode down to the station in a taxicab with the two players,
rookies. Didn't even know them, hardly at all. They were talking
about these fines. McGraw never announced fines. They spilled everything.
So when we got to the station I wrote about fifty words right
there, handed it to Western Union and it was in the New York News
that night. A day or two later McGraw heard about it, probably
from a phone call from the New York office. So he went after me on
that platform, but some player sort of grabbed McGraw and he
cooled off instantly. I never liked him particularly. He was ill up in
his home in Westchester County, and as I say, he was the least of my
favorite managers. But he asked if I would come up and shake his
hand before he died. I went up. I couldn't hardly see any sense in
not going.
Marshall Hunt
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