Spring Training
Spring training was an already well-established ritual in 1918. As the story goes, the 1886 White Stockings (who later became the Cubs) stopped in Hot Springs, Arkansas, on their way back to Chicago after a winter of barnstorming, and found the area’s mineral baths to be useful in melting flab and sobering up. Chicago went 90-34 and won the league that year, so spring training became a tradition.
Even before spring training ’18 began, it was clear that this year would be different. Since Charley Weeghman took over the Cubs, the training trip was always a big deal, packed with luxury and frills. On the spring training trip of 1916, Weeghman chartered a special Cubs train to camp in Tampa, outfitted with electric pianos, record players, canaries, fine foods, a billiards table and a singing group called the Florida Troubadors. Players, investors, writers, wives, even those only loosely associated with the team were allowed stretch out and relax on the way to Florida. Baseball Magazine breathlessly reported, “These gorgeous accommodations were really for ball players and not for millionaires.”
A panoramic view of Hot Springs, Ark., the Red Sox’s spring training home. (Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.)
But wartime rail restrictions in ’18 limited the number of people who could come to spring training. The Cubs, catering to increasingly powerful investor William Wrigley, moved their training to California, giving them the most traveling time by far. In deference to the war, spring training was limited to 30 days, and though no one went quite as far as the Cubs, other teams traveled long distances to hold their camps. Four teams were in Florida. Four others were in Texas. Two were in Louisiana, two were in Georgia and one was in Alabama. The Red Sox and Dodgers were both in Hot Springs.
The Cubs brought only a meager 27-man traveling party, making the 2,000-mile journey riding on the back two cars of a mail train. “There was no de luxe special train for wealthy stockholders and their wives,” the Tribune reported. “There were no compartments and drawing rooms. There was no phonograph for entertainment during the long journey. There was no dining car, and there were no women.”
The Red Sox did not travel quite so far, but did have a memorable journey—they were stranded by a snowstorm in Buffalo, and arrived in Arkansas late. The Cubs had their own bad omen. When the grueling journey west was over, the trunk with their uniforms had not arrived, pushing back the start of training by a day.
Not only did rail restrictions cause the journeys to be austere, but they had a real impact on how the players were able to get in shape. Managers all around baseball were accustomed to arriving at spring training with a horde of young players who were longshots to make the team, known as Yannigans. Those players made it easier to slowly work the star players into shape. But because the teams had such small traveling parties, there were few Yannigans on hand, forcing managers to use star players in odd spots.
One of those was Red Sox ace lefty Babe Ruth. Short on material, manager Ed Barrow began playing Ruth in the field—which meant he spent a lot of time batting. And Babe gained a taste for hitting that spring. He consistently knocked home runs in scrimmages and batting practice, and when the Red Sox started facing the Dodgers in live spring games, Ruth hit .429 with four homers in 21 at-bats. No other Red Sox player hit more than one home run. The Boston Globe described the home run Ruth hit on March 24: “The ball not only cleared the right field wall, but stayed up, soaring over the street and a wide duck pond, finally finding a resting place for itself in a nook of the Ozark hills.”
Ruth joked, “I would have liked to have got a better hold on that one.”
Out in California, Cubs camp was dominated by an ugly holdout—star pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander was demanding a $10,000 bonus, which he saw as part of the transfer money the Cubs paid to the Phillies. But Phillies owner William Baker made clear that he wasn’t going to pay Alexander. So it was up to the Cubs. For weeks, Alexander sat on the sidelines watching his teammates, refusing to practice until he was paid.
Wrigley took Alexander golfing at the Midwick club, sat with him in the bleachers, took him to the house of one of the most popular actors in the country, Douglas Fairbanks. Finally, it was Wrigley, with manager Fred Mitchell and secretary Walter Craighead, who worked out the bonus, rumored to be for $5,000 up front and $5,000 in 1919. The day after the agreement, the L.A. Times wrote, “Mr. Wrigley and the star hurler disappeared at once in the former’s touring car, and it was thought possible they went to the bank for a bag of gold.”
Finally at full strength, the Cubs began playing a series of exhibitions against local teams on their way back to Chicago. It was clear that the decision to go all the way to California was a bad one—it was hot on the ride back, the team was tired, the train broke down and the players began calling themselves, “Weeghman’s trained seals.”
There was one pleasant interlude in New Mexico, just after the train breakdown. The Cubs faced a mining team headed by former big-leaguer Bill Burns. But, because they had been delayed, the Cubs were forced to stay in the mine dormitories for the night. It wasn’t all bad. Burns was pleased to be among big-league friends. The Cubs, “were given an excellent wild turkey dinner, at which Bill Burns … was the host. Burns killed the birds himself.”
The next year, of course, Burns would be a central figure in the fixing of the 1919 World Series.
