AMONG GRIFF'S SOUVENIRS
Career Highlights Told By Desk Mementos
"Like most of us, the late Clark Griffith was a 'string-saver' who could never bear to part with the accumulation of trivia which came across his desk for more than 40 years.
You, of course, have seen a small boy empty his pockets. It was in the nature of such pocket-emptying that Calvin Griffith, the foster-son and new president of the Washington Senators, straightened his beloved master's desk recently.
Calvin was merely rummaging for some current contracts and papers pertaining to the present operation. He didn't touch a thing- in the sense that everything was put back as before and looked exactly like the uneventful evening of Sept. 27 when Clark Griffith unknowingly left his office for the last time. Exactly a month later he died, just three weeks before his 86th birthday.
Griff, of course, was not a somber man. He had what the French love to call 'joie de vivre'- joy of living. For instance, he was all set to pull a trick on one of his coaches, Joe Fitzgerald, who doubled as the old gentleman's chauffer when Griff went to spring training. Griff had a loaded golf ball all set for Fitz.
There was another golf ball in his desk which was stamped: 'Mr. Vice President.' It seems that the last time Griff attended the Washington Post and Times Herald National Celebrities tournament, he got out to the first tee without a golf ball. Vice President Nixon hastily obliged and Griff kept the ball for a souvenir after, of course, his exhibition drive had been retrieved.
There was a silver bullet presented by Griff's favorite cowboy character, The Lone Ranger, on the occasion of the old gentleman's last birthday last year.
There was a miniature furniture suite which had been hand-carved by a Negro employee of the ball park and presented to Griff as a birthday present.
There was a picture (in color, yet) from the 'special edition' of the New York Sunday American of May 5, 1907, showing 'The New York Yankees of the American League which will be led by Manager Clark Griffith.' In the picture with Griff were such familiar names as Willie Keeler, Hal Chase and Kid Elberfeld.
There was a small chunk of copper which Griff kept for 35 years when he abandoned his dream of ranching in Montana and sold his holdings to buy the Washington ball club in 1920. The copper came from Griff's ranch.
There were two tiny baseball bats, made from Griffs' house in Norman, Ill., which was torn down. There were religious tracts, many religious medals, honorary cards to various organizations, dozens of clippings, faded snapshots and a social security card.
There was the contract Griff on May 20, 1915, when he agreed to manage the Washington club for three years at $10,000 a year, the money to be paid in 14 semi-monthly installments at $714.28 per payment.
There was a schedule of the 1897 season when Griff pitched for the Chicago White Stockings and had an 18-18 record- the first time in four years he had failed to win better than 20 games. (He won 25 the next season, however.)
In Griff's neat handwriting were various comments on the games. There was one, in particular, which reflected the bantam's (Griff was five-foot-six-and-one-half and weighed 156 pounds) fighting spirit. He was thrown out of a game with Louisville and protested so vigorously that the game was forfeited,a common occurrence in those days. Griff's own comment was: 'Game forfeited because of umpire's failure.'
There were letters dating back to 1880 when Nicholas Young attempted to get Washington into the National League. There were autographed baseballs and, away down deep in the desk, a carefully preserved picture of Griff's first championship team of 1924.
Like a small boy, Griff's 'pockets' were bottomless."
-Bob Addie, Washington Post (Baseball Digest, January 1956)
A FINAL ECHO OF THE 1903 WAR
Giants' Move To Stadium Would Be Final "Surrender"
"The other day, after the New York Football Giants gave a farewell salute to the Polo Grounds, their home for 30 years, and announced they would move into Yankee Stadium, there was an admission by Owner Horace Stoneham that the baseball Giants were similarly minded.
Stoneham said he had been discussing, with Yankee Owner Dan Topping, the advantages of quitting the Polo Grounds, perhaps before his lease expires in 1962. Among the benefits would be a cheaper rental, what with the two teams sharing the maintenance of one park.
When that happens, as is now deemed probable, it will be the capstone to another of the monuments to the memory of the late Clark Griffith. The pity is that he could not have lived to see the baseball war he spearheaded in 1903 concluded in complete triumph for the infant American League over the hated and haughty Giants of that era.
It was the Giants who strived with every weapon, including professional goons, to keep the newly formed American League out of New York after the turn of the century and it was young Griffith who was storming the National League stronghold. For the A.L.'s first two seasons, 1901-2, there was no attempt to put a team in New York because the Giants were considered impregnable.
In fact, the Giants became even more strongly entrenched in 1902 because in July of that season the famed John McGraw jumped the Baltimore Orioles and joined the Giants as manager. The effect was two-fold. It not only brought the Giants another famous name but it was a blow to American League prestige, this inability to hold one of its managers in line. The Orioles' star battery of Iron Man McGinnity and Roger Bresnahan also jumped to the Giants with McGraw.
However, after the 1902 season, American League President Ban Johnson asked Griffith to make the attempt to plant a franchise in New York. Griffith, who helped found the American League two years before, was even then a considerable figure in the game. He had been an ace pitcher with the old Chicago Colts in the National League and in his first year in the American won a pennant with the White Sox as pitcher-manager.
The National League wasn't even recognizing the American as a major circuit. It wouldn't consent to a World Series in either 1901 or 1902 between its pennant-winner, the Pittsburgh Pirates, and the White Sox and Athletics, who won the A.L. pennants. Griffith's task was doubly difficult because there was only one suitable park in New York, the Polo Grounds.
When Griffith announced that the American League would build a park at 166th and Broadway, John Brush, owner of the Giants, laughed broadly. Firstly, the subway stopped ten blocks short of that sight. Next, the Giants were certain Griffith could not get the permission of city authorities to cut through several streets, necessary for the construction. But Ban Johnson and Griffith had planned it smartly.
As a backer for the new team in New York, they had Frank Farrell, a big wheel in Tammany Hall politics. Farrell disposed of the street problem in City Hall. The blasting crews that removed the rock on the hilly park site looked suspiciously like City Hall employees. Griffith himself superintended the construction, and then learned that it was a historic site that he had picked for his park.
He watched workmen unearth ancient bullets, gun stocks, grapeshot, canister and bayonets and then discovered that the place had once been a battleground for George Washington's troops. Finally, a park seating 12,000 was erected, the team was called the Highlanders, and Griffith prepared to take the new American League entry to Atlanta for spring training.
But, alas, there were other problems. No New York newspaper would cover the spring training activities of Griffith's team. They jeered it and said Griffith was on a fool's mission in his attempt to invade the Giants' territory. In desperation, Griffith turned to an old friend, Jim Price, sports editor of the New York Press. The Press was not a fashionable newspaper; in fact it was second rate, but Griffith convinced Price the paper had nothing to lose by covering the Highlanders.
Griffith had to promise to pay the expense and toll charges of the Press baseball writer. He picked his own man, Jim Bagley, whom he remembered as a one-time brilliant writer but was then an unemployed Bowery character. He dressed Bagley in new clothes, took him to Atlanta and was rewarded. Bagley's stories on the Highlanders were so entertaining that the other Manhattan papers rushed reporters to their camp before training ended.
When the season opened, Griffith noted that his team was being heckled by the same gang of thugs sitting in the same seats every day. Tammany Man Farrell rounded up some henchmen of his own, gave John Brush's bums the bum's rush and got the confession that they were in the hire of Owner Brush of the Giants. The Highlanders ended the season in fourth place, but American League baseball had come to New York to stay. At the end of the season, the first World Series was played. Mr. Griffith would have liked to have lived to see the Giants respectfully requesting permission to play in the American League park."
-Shirley Povich, Washington Post (Baseball Digest, May 1956)
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