The Streak Read online

  Though popular, baseball was still a raw entertainment in the late 1800s, populated by drunks and gamblers both in the stands and on the field. Originally intended as a lighthearted pastime for the wealthy, it had degenerated into something darker. A hostile, unseemly atmosphere prevailed at many games. Incessant bickering among players, umpires, and “cranks,” as fans were called, was routine. “Many games featured fist fights, and almost every team has its ‘lushers,’” Albert Spalding wrote. “A game characterized by such scenes, whose spectators consisted for the most part of gamblers, rowdies, and their associates, could not possibly attract honest men or decent women.”

  Conditions were slightly better in the National League, the older, more sober circuit, which sought a higher class of fan by charging 50 cents per ticket, banning alcohol sales at games, and taking Sundays off, distinguishing it from the rowdier American Association, which was run by beer-baron club owners who plainly sought to lure a more common crowd by charging half as much for tickets, selling alcohol, and playing on Sundays.

  Charles Byrne, a sharp-talking realtor who owned Brooklyn’s club, had strong feelings about the sport’s general character. An opera and theater buff who had studied law and worked as a journalist before making his money in real estate, Byrne thought the sport needed cleaning up. When he founded his club with a partner in 1883, he tried to join the National League, found its ranks closed, and settled for playing in a minor league for a year before the American Association let him in. He pointedly sought players of “superior” character, hoping they would attract a higher class of fan.

  “Brooklyn’s management will under no circumstances employ any player where integrity of character is not a feature of his recommendations, nor anyone who has not a clean record of temperate habits,” the New York Clipper reported. “They want men of intelligence and not corner-lot toughs who happen to possess some skill as a player but whose habits and ways make them unfit for thorough team work.”

  Pinkney was exactly the kind of player Byrne wanted. Some fans called him “Gentleman George.” Henry Chadwick, the legendary baseball writer, described him in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle as “tender and high bred.” Pinkney brought dignity, almost delicacy, to the baseball scene, exuding class as he crouched at third base and waited for balls to come his way.

  A product of Peoria’s sandlot leagues, he had played in the minors for several years before breaking into the majors in 1884 with the Cleveland Blues, a National League club that folded. Picked up by Byrne, he split time between second base and third base in 1885 as Brooklyn, known as the Grays, finished under .500 in the American Association, behind such foes as the St. Louis Browns, Cincinnati Red Stockings, and Pittsburgh Alleghenys.

  Near the end of that season, on September 19, Pinkney sat out an 8–2 loss to Pittsburgh. It was the last game he would miss for more than four years. In 1886, he became Brooklyn’s regular third baseman and was on the field for every inning of the team’s 139 league games. He repeated the feat in 1887, playing every inning of 134 games. It was an especially long, hot, difficult campaign. The Grays trudged through a 16-game road trip early in the season and later played 15 straight on the road. Byrne tried to manage the club himself but had no aptitude for the job. Brooklyn finished 34½ games out of first.

  Byrne took drastic action after the season, firing himself as manager and spending $19,000, a huge sum, to wrest three stars from the pennant-winning Browns. Suddenly, Brooklyn had a new catcher, new right side of the infield, entirely new outfield, and new manager, William “Gunner” McGunnigle, a dapper New Englander who wore dark patent-leather shoes, lavender trousers, and a suit coat, silk tie, and derby hat during games. The club even adopted a new unofficial nickname, the Bridegrooms, when several players, including Pinkney, were married during the off-season.

  Pinkney survived the sweep of change, keeping his job at third base. He could not match the prodigious slugging of Dave Orr, a mountainous teammate who had bashed 31 triples while hitting .338 for the New York Metropolitans in 1886, but his defense was superb, and by playing every day, he piled up enough hits, walks, and runs to rank among the league leaders despite a relatively modest batting average.

  After Byrne’s reshuffling, Brooklyn nearly captured the American Association pennant in 1888. Attendance swelled at Washington Park, the team’s home ground in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood. Pinkney played a vital role in the success. Although he hit just .271, he led the league in runs scored, helped by the fact that he was the only player in the league to play in every game. By the end of the season, he had played in 432 straight.

  On May 27, 1889, Pinkney passed Joe Hornung and now owned the sport’s longest consecutive-game streak—465. But his achievement did not receive mention in newspapers or magazines. Baseball’s infatuation with statistics and records would not intensify until the 1900s.

  McGunnigle had told reporters before the 1889 season that he would “make a headlong plunge from the top of one of the towers of the Brooklyn Bridge into the East River” if his Bridegrooms did not capture the American Association pennant. After starting slowly, they reeled off a winning streak, gained a grip on first place, and maintained it, finishing ahead of St. Louis. McGunnigle was spared a dive off the majestic bridge connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan, which had opened six years earlier.

  That season, Pinkney’s batting average dropped below .250 as he again played in every inning of every game. Was he feeling the effects of having not taken a day off for more than four years? The question surely would have circulated if he had played a century later before a more questioning media, but Henry Chadwick never brought it up in print. Pinkney was above reproach, it seemed. His dependability, character, and unflinching work ethic made him a fan favorite. A typical workweek in Brooklyn in those years consisted of 60 hours over six days at a dockyard or sugar refinery. Fans worked hard, often in unsafe conditions, and had little leisure time or tolerance for slackers. They envisioned Pinkney as one of their fraternity, punching a clock every day. When the Sporting Life published scandalous gossip about him, suggesting he enjoyed “killing two bottles of beers per day at a hostelry near the ball field,” his fans flooded the magazine with complaints, clamoring for the record to be set straight. Sporting Life printed a correction, admitting it was wrong to have suggested Pinkney “may degenerate and be known as a member of the rosy nose circle.” The suggestion that he was “smuggling a too good will for the amber fluid” was groundless, the paper admitted.

  Every team, including Brooklyn, featured players who drank, fought, and gambled through the season. “The evil of drunkenness among pro teams has grown until it has become too costly an abuse to be longer tolerated,” the Spalding guide reported. But Pinkney floated above it all. Decades before Lou Gehrig and Cal Ripken Jr. personified the consecutive-game record’s golden-boy hue, Pinkney established the prototype. Chadwick proudly reported that he “has not asked the club for an advance on his salary in three years,” apparently distinguishing him from teammates who forever knocked on Byrne’s door and asked for his help covering their gambling debts and bar tabs.

  After enduring a cold winter that had lingered too long for anyone’s taste, fans of Byrne’s club emerged from hibernation when warm sunshine bathed Brooklyn on the afternoon of May 1, 1890. Flocking to a game against the Boston Beaneaters, they either took advantage of the weather and walked to Washington Park or rode one of the Brooklyn City Railroad Company’s horse-drawn streetcars to a nearby stop.

  Approaching the park’s entrance, they traversed a sidewalk with the words BROOKLYN BASE BALL CLUB etched ornately into the pavement. The crowd was mostly male, although a “Ladies’ Day” promotion had brought out more women than usual. The purchase of a 50-cent ticket got them through the wooden turnstiles Byrne had installed so he could determine the size of his crowds more accurately. Few in that day’s crowd paid attention to dark clouds gathering in the sky to the west.

  Washington Park was named for the first p
resident of the United States, who had headquartered in the spot during the Battle of Long Island in the Revolutionary War. The manicured playing diamond was laid out beside a stone house that had been used to store munitions a century earlier; now female fans sought shade there during games. Men filled the wooden grandstand that hugged the diamond, making it easy for them to shout at players and umpires.

  After winning the American Association in 1889, Byrne had finally jumped to his long-sought destination, the National League, over the winter. Another winning season was anticipated. The team’s core was back, featuring familiar faces such as William “Adonis” Terry, a tall, handsome pitcher who made the ladies swoon; Thomas “Oyster” Burns, a loudmouth outfielder who continually bitched at umpires; Dave Foutz, a slugger who seldom passed a bar without stopping and buying everyone a round; and Darby O’Brien, a goofy outfielder who carried snakes in his pockets and enjoyed pulling them out to startle strangers.

  Then there was Pinkney, so entrenched at third base that no one could remember when anyone else played the position even for an inning. He assumed his familiar pose, crouching in anticipation, as the game began, with Boston’s leadoff hitter, James “Chippy” McGarr, stepping to the plate. The umpire, sporting a dark blue coat and green cap, shouted, “Play ball!” Clouds scudded overhead, but the crowd settled in for nine innings of slap hitting, daring baserunning, flashy fielding, and incessant bickering with the ump—the elements that had helped make baseball so popular.

  McGarr lined a single to right field, darted for second when the next batter put a ground ball in play, and churned for third when an errant throw bounced against the grandstand. Pinkney sprinted to his base, hoping to catch a throw and tag out the aggressive runner. When the throw came, Pinkney grabbed the ball, bent over, and applied a tag as McGarr slid in with his spikes turned up.

  Even before the umpire could rule on the play, Pinkney straightened abruptly, as if jolted by a lightning strike, and hopped away on one foot, pain contorting his face. A spike on McGarr’s cleats had gashed his left foot.

  As blood stained his sock, Pinkney saw he could not continue and hobbled to the bench, disappointment etched on his round face. Fans stood and cursed McGarr for daring to put Gentleman George out of the game, and adding insult to the injury, Pinkney had missed the tag, the umpire ruled, so McGarr was safe at third. He stood on the base while manager Gunner McGunnigle, dressed in his usual finery, orchestrated changes in his team’s defense, sending the second baseman to third and putting a new man at second.

  When play resumed, Boston’s next three batters made outs, stranding McGarr. As Brooklyn batted in the bottom of the inning, the sky darkened, the wind gusted, and trash blew across the field. Rain began to fall and quickly accelerated into a downpour. The ideal spring afternoon had vanished. The game would not continue.

  Fans fled for cover, relieved that Byrne’s “rain check” policy meant they could use their tickets to attend another game; their 50 cents was not wasted. Henry Chadwick, dressed in a high-collared suit, with his long white beard protruding from his chin, also ducked out of the ballpark and headed for his newspaper’s office. Though nearly 70 years old, the sportswriter was as immersed as ever in his beloved game.

  Born in England in 1824, he had immigrated to New York not long before Americans began playing baseball. As the sport grew, Chadwick, equally adept with numbers and words, wrote about it for several newspapers while also developing statistics that helped identify who played well. Now in his eminence, he carried strong opinions about how the game should be played, preferring the “science” of steals, sacrifices, and speed to “brutish” displays of batting power, which increasingly thrilled fans.

  Still cranking out daily stories, Chadwick had no game to report on today, but there was news: Pinkney was out. “His bleeding foot will disable him for the remainder of the week, thereby breaking his famous record of four years of continuous play without missing a game,” Chadwick wrote. He did not specify how many games in a row Pinkney had played in. It is likely no one knew, not even Pinkney.

  When Brooklyn and Boston played the next day at Washington Park, Pinkney was on the bench. Years later, his absence from the field would give historical importance to an otherwise forgettable game, but Chadwick’s account of the contest, which Boston won, 11–0, did not mention that baseball’s greatest endurance streak had ended at 578 straight games.

  Pinkney sat out two games as his gash healed, then picked right back up where he left off, playing in every game for the rest of the 1890 season. His durability was never more valued as Brooklyn battled the Chicago Colts and Philadelphia Phillies for the National League pennant. Adonis Terry missed time due to heat exhaustion. Pop Corkhill, the center fielder, had a sore arm. Darby O’Brien put his hand through a glass case late one night, severing an artery. At one point, the club had just two healthy pitchers. But with Pinkney batting .309, his career high, Brooklyn captured the pennant with a strong finish.

  Pinkney, now 31, was battered with nicks and bruises, and plainly worn down by the end of the season. His daily playing habit had exacted a toll. When Brooklyn played Louisville in a postseason “World Series” matching the champions of the National League and American Association, Pinkney sat out several games before the Series was called off due to bad weather and poor attendance, with the teams deadlocked after seven games. (One had ended in a tie.)

  A year later, Byrne let Pinkney go after his seventh season in Brooklyn. It was an amicable parting; Pinkney would later work for the team as a scout. Catching on as a part-time player with the St. Louis Browns, he made it through two more major league seasons before retiring in 1893.

  The end of his career was unremarkable. There was no great public farewell for the holder of a record that would later reflect one of baseball’s most revered achievements. Pinkney just slipped away, returning to Peoria. It would have stunned him to know his name would still reverberate among fans a century later not because of his handy fielding or the consistency he exhibited at bat, but for the simple fact that he always wanted to play.

  When he reflected back on his career, Pinkney was proud of his durability. In 1896, a sportswriter using the byline “Hurley” in the Sporting Life mistakenly wrote that Bill Everett, the Chicago Cubs’ second baseman, “had not missed a game in two seasons, which was the record for consecutive playing.” Pinkney wrote to Hurley, who printed a correction.

  “George says one is soon forgotten when he is out of the game, as he holds the record in that particular,” Hurley wrote. “During the seasons of ’86, ’87, ’88, and ’89, George never missed a game, neither championship nor exhibition, and since each team played 152 championship games then instead of the number played now, it is easy to see the record belongs to Pinkney by a long lead. President Byrne of the Brooklyn club can verify the above.”

  Pinkney actually never played more than 143 games in a season, so the Sporting Life needed to correct its correction. But it did not. And the topic of “consecutive playing” faded away for more than two decades while Pinkney continued to work in baseball as a scout, reporting first to Byrne and then, after Byrne died, to Charles Ebbets, Byrne’s successor as Brooklyn’s owner. In fact, it was Pinkney who discovered Joe McGinnity pitching on a semipro team in Peoria in the late 1800s, surely the only instance in baseball’s long history when an Ironman discovered an “Ironman.”

  4

  Ripken

  BLUE-COLLAR STOCK

  The first Ripkens in America were German immigrants who worked as farmers, blacksmiths, and millers in Harford County, Maryland, in the mid-nineteenth century. Then they opened a general store at a crossroads just south of Aberdeen, one of those little institutions a rural community could not live without. You could buy groceries, drink coffee on the way to the train station, sit and eat a meal. Travelers could rent a room for the night on the second floor. When cars came along, drivers could fill their tanks at the Sunoco gas pump out front.

  The general st
ore supported several generations and by the 1920s was in the hands of Arend and Clara Ripken, a young couple not yet 30. Clara, a brunette of Irish descent, ran the restaurant, serving meals on linen tablecloths. Arend kept the rest of the place going. The couple had two sons, Oliver, born in 1918, and William, born in 1925, and it seemed they would have no more children, until Clara became pregnant in 1935, a surprise that was welcomed but not timely. The Great Depression had cut so deeply into the general store’s business that Arend had taken a second job at a lumberyard to help make ends meet.

  On December 17, 1935, in one of the tiny guest rooms above the general store, Clara delivered another son, Calvin Edwin Ripken. Her older boys were 17 and 10. When Arend was killed in an automobile accident shortly before Cal’s ninth birthday, in 1944, Oliver interrupted his military service to come home for the funeral. The older boys split up their father’s chores, mowing the lawn, running the Sunoco pump, tending their mother’s beloved rock garden.

  When World War II ended, the Ripken boys played baseball on Sundays for the Aberdeen Canners, a semipro team in the Susquehanna League. Their father had played some baseball, but “I got involved . . . because of my brothers,” Cal later wrote in his book, The Ripken Way: A Manual for Baseball and Life. Oliver was a catcher, Bill a talented outfielder. Cal wore the team’s uniform for the first time as an 11-year-old batboy, in 1946, and even at that age, in that role, he displayed savvy. The Canners’ manager feared opponents were stealing signs, so he gave them to Cal, who relayed them to players in the field.

  A scout for the Brooklyn Dodgers noticed Bill could hit, throw, and run, and signed him. Bill left the Canners and played in the minors, hitting .318 over three seasons to reach Brooklyn’s Triple A farm team in Montreal, one level from the major leagues. But Canada was cold, and Bill believed he would never be more than a utility player in the majors, so he quit playing in 1949, came home to Harford County, and took a job at a bank.