September 13, 2025 • 48 mins
In which the outfielder called Zaza is rediscovered, as is the hit “dirty” turn-of-the-century play that gave him his name. We then briefly pause for a Dodgers outfielder’s career to come to a sudden end, leading to an unusual inning in more ways than one, and the ride concludes with a visit to the world of September 1901 and an argument about who acts, who doesn’t, and what games they might have attended instead.
The Infinite Inning is a journey to the past to understand the present using baseball as our time machine. America's brighter mirror, baseball reflects, anticipates, and even mocks the stories we tell ourselves about our world today. Baseball Prospectus's Steven Goldman shares his obsessions: history from inside and outside of the game, politics, stats, and Casey Stengel quotations. Along the way, we'll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?
The Infinite Inning is a journey to the past to understand the present using baseball as our time machine. America's brighter mirror, baseball reflects, anticipates, and even mocks the stories we tell ourselves about our world today. Baseball Prospectus's Steven Goldman shares his obsessions: history from inside and outside of the game, politics, stats, and Casey Stengel quotations. Along the way, we'll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
In nineteen oh one, the first season of their existence
of the American League as a wholes existence. The Cleveland
team no name yet. They were still experimenting, and some
writers were calling them the Bluebirds, but officially they were
just Cleveland struggled to identify their starting right fielder. Nothing
new there. They began the season with Ali Pickering, who
(00:22):
sounds like he should have signed the Declaration of Independence,
but no, he was an outfielder at the turn of
the twentieth century. They needed to move him to center
when the opening day center fielder see Frank Frenchy Shanins.
I think that's how you pronounced it. It could be
Gennins or Gennins. I don't know. I wasn't there. Don't
blame me. These things don't always come with pronunciation, guys.
He was thirty four years old. It developed that he
(00:44):
wasn't a major league hitter, although that shouldn't have been news.
He had proved it long before. They probably knew that
going in, but every American League team that year was
functionally an expansion club, and they only had so much
latitude in the matter. Moving Pickering gave a player named
Jack Oprah, Ryan nod Shuck O'Brien, But Jack O'Brien, that
one's pretty clear. It gave him a chance in right field.
(01:05):
He was a much better hitter than Jeanine's, but that's
like saying Anthony Volpe is a far better hitter than
I am. Cleveland's manager, Jimmy meclear still had problems to solve,
and that was when a twenty two year old ex
pitcher stepped forward to plug the breach, though only for
a moment. He was born Irvin King Harvey, but history
(01:28):
knows him as Zaza. Wait, can I can I do
that again? Because that was fun? History knows him as
Zaza Cool. We're cool, right, Zaza. I'm not going to
do that every time. Was from Saratoga, California. He made
his way up through the miners as a pitcher, performing
well for the Sacramento Gilt Edges of the Pacific Coast League.
(01:52):
At the turn of the twentieth century, the Cubs, who
were then the Orphans, snagged him in the nineteen hundred
Rule five draft. The Rule five draft goes back quite
a ways. He was twenty one. The Cubs gave him
the briefest of looks before sending him to Minneapolis and
the next spring he jumped to the White Sox. Again,
these new teams were functionally expansion clubs, so they had
(02:15):
more opportunities for an untried player. They gave him nine
starts and seven relief appearances, and he wasn't awful. The
league era was three sixty six, his was three sixty two.
Still he went only three and seven for a good team.
And you know they paid more attention to the record
back then, Clark Griffith the manager or Charlie Comiski the owner,
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and GM sold him on to the Clevelands Bluebirds whatever.
They didn't bother with asking him to pitch and stuck
him in the outfield. And and this testifies to the
incoeight nature of the American League. In nineteen ought one,
he killed it. In forty five games, Zaza hit three
point fifty three with a three to ninety two on
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base percentage and a five forty nine slugging percon And
if you are inclined to think that that was a
small sample fluke, well he came back in nineteen oh
two and hit three forty eight in twelve games. That
was a small sample, Fluke, or maybe it wasn't. We
really can't know, so pause for a moment. Why was
(03:17):
Irvin called Zaza? According to John Skipper's book on Baseball nicknames,
it derived from the fact that he was a redhead.
His hair reminded well someone of a nationally celebrated actress
named Missus Leslie Carter, the American Bernhardt. Her real name
was Carolyn Dudley, but back then actresses and most other
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women were referred to by their property of husband name.
Back then, Scarlett Johansson would have been Missus cullin jos
Coming to a Theater near You in Jurassic Park nineteen
Lucky Lucky Us. What makes this especially awkward from our perspective,
beyond just the erasure of Carolyn's identity, is that she
was Missus Carter all her fashional life, even though she
(04:01):
divorced Carter in a scandalous trial. He was a Chicago
millionaire lawyer and president of the South Side Elevated Railroad Company,
among others. They broke up in eighteen eighty nine. She
said he physically abused her and he had her involuntarily
committed even though she was fine. It was just a
tactic he was using to control her. He also countered
(04:22):
that she was having an affair. The jury found that
he was telling the truth and she was lying. I
guess we have no way of knowing, so I suppose
we should leave it alone. There's no particular reason to
note this, but mister Carter exited in nineteen oh eight.
He had been choked by gas in his home in
November nineteen oh seven, spent most of a year in
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a coma, and then expired. They had a son together,
mister and Missus Carter, Dudley, named after her maiden name.
Dudley chose to live with Mom, so Dad disinherited dud Ugly.
Missus Carter was a redhead. Almost every story of her
mentioned her Crimson tresses. You start to see where I'm
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going with this, don't you. There was even a Warner
Brothers film made about her life in nineteen forty with
Miriam Hopkins and Claude Rains. Look up some clips if
you can find them, because there's dialogue in that with
Claude Rains playing Missus Carter's mentor, David Belasco, and he
really makes a meal of some of those lines. The
title The Lady with the Red Hair, the real Belasco
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with whom she had a falling out after she got
remarried without his permission, apparently remembered their first meeting. This way,
I saw before me a pale, slender girl with a
massive red hair and green eyes gleaming under black brows.
She began to cry, and then she smiled. Her gestures
were full of unconscious grace, and her voice vibrated with
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musical sweetness. So why wasn't Irvin Harvey known as Carter
or Missus Carter or Leslie. It wasn't because he vibrated
with musical sweetness, but rather because Missus Carter's big hit
of eighteen ninety eight was Zaza, originally a French play
which is about a prostitute who becomes a singer. Well,
let me take that back. It's about a singer who
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becomes a mistress who discovers a kind of morality in
which she rejects her mistresshood. At no time during the
original French play or the American version, which was adapted
for Missus Carter by David Belasco, does she take cash
in return for services rendered. Rather, she is just an
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adult sexual being, and at the turn of the twentieth
century that was enough for male critics, in particular, to
write her character off as a prostitute, even though all
she's really guilty of is having a relationship or an affair,
or a situationship as we might call it, with a
male admirer who she doesn't know for four of the
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first five acts is married, and once she does figure
out he's married, she has a decision to make, and
that's where the play turns. An eighteen ninety nine review
says that Zaza tells the pathetic story of a music
hall actress who rises from a depth of illicit love
to a height of pure self abnegation, which is kind
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of the opposite of being a sexual mercenary. In Missus
Carter's nineteen thirty seven obituary, The New York Times noted
the play was considered a shocker in its day. It's
actually been filmed a number of times, including by Hall
of Fame director George Qcourt with Claudette Colbert in nineteen
thirty nine. I can't find that version, at least not
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right now. It has three songs with lyrics by Frank
Lesser of Guys and Dolls Fame, so I'm eager to
hear it. That's postcodes, so no doubt they cleaned it
up a lot. So did Belasco, who changed the ending
just a little. The French were a little more audacious.
Their ending isn't unhappy so much as it reflects a
woman deciding not to be a home wrecker any longer.
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But at the end she doesn't give up the possibility
of future lovers. The crux of the play is not
that she's having extramarital sex, but rather who she's having
it with and her yes no decision, the one that
she has to face as to whether she wants to
be complicit in his immorality. In the American version, she
sort of renounce his extramarital sex again because Americans appruds.
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I'll quote one of the better exchanges from that decision
in a few minutes, because it moved me. It chimed
with something in my own history. I do want to
give credit where it's due. I was able to look
at both the English and French versions, or I should
say the American in French versions of the play, but
I also consulted a two thousand and two paper in
Theater Journal Zaza The Obtruding Harlot of the Stage by
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Katie N. Johnson, And here's a small irony for you.
Because Zaza was thought to be such an obtrusive harlot,
missus Carter was not allowed to take her Zaza tour
to Cleveland, even as Zaza was playing in the Cleveland outfield.
True story about that Zaza, I mean Irvin Harvey, not
miss Carter's character, is that on April twenty fifth, nineteen
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oh two, he had one of the biggest days in
baseball history. If what he did happened again today, it
would still be a big deal. He went six for
six in a nine inning game. Now that's not the
rarest of accomplishments. It since happened over fifty times, but
it's still pretty unusual. Nick Kurtz did it this year
with a ridiculous four home runs show, Hey, Otani did
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it last year. It hit three. All six of Zaza's
hits were singles. As you know, it was a different
time and the ball didn't so much go crack when
struck as si. Hey, now here's something that Kurtz and
Otani didn't do. Quentin go home a little over a
week later, saying they didn't feel well. Zaza just ghosted
on Cleveland in the middle of the season, saying that
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his stomach hurt too much to play. I don't know
what has become of him, said the manager, Bill Armor.
I wish we had not lost his services, for he
was an extremely valuable man. Had he played with us
all year, we would have been higher in the race.
Cleveland held on to his rights for another three years,
just hoping he would turn up, but uh uh. At
(10:06):
one point he went to Panama to recover his health,
but that didn't take and when he got back, he
went right into the hospital in New York. He also
tried Westboden Springs, Indiana. The California with the Sunset Locks,
as they called him, never did return to the game.
Decades later, when researchers were trying to fill in gaps
in the game's records, it was noticed that no one
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knew what had happened to Zaza. They figured he was dead,
but they couldn't say when or where. A researcher eventually
found out that he had left us in Santa Monica
in nineteen fifty four. The Infinite Inning has now dealt
definitively with the only Zaza in Major League history, as
well as the only outfielder named after a fictional chantous
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from a nineteenth century play, as portrayed by a redheaded actress.
There's no major takeaway here, except maybe something about the
miss serious nature of tummy aches. Mostly though, the excuse
is simply this one offered by Sherlock Holmes. In the
case of the Redheaded League, my life is spent in
one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence.
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These little problems helped me to do so, and I
find that that is the healthiest way to cope with
on we here in the infinite inning. Well, hello there,
(11:58):
sanitary drinks. Duffy's famous unfermented pure apple cider drawn from
the wood and airtight packages is on sale at the
Exposition Grounds. A pleasing ice cold drink at five cents
per glass. Try it. I don't know why that stuck
with me. It was an ad I happened to see
while spending days in nineteen oh one for our mutual
(12:19):
entertainment and edification. What haven't I said yet? Welcome back
to the show, episode three forty four in an ongoing series.
I'm very pleased to be back with you and to
have you back with me as always as ever, I
am Steven Goldman. There is simply no escaping it, particularly
for me. You have some other options, and I am
here to guide you, to escort you as we travel
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to the past on a mission to better understand the present,
the time machine being mostly, but not entirely, the game
of baseball. Did you pack a bag lunch? I hope so, because,
as that ad suggested, you can't always rely on things
being clean. In nineteen oh one, from the fifth act
of the original French version of Zaza, not in French
but in English, Zaza says to her now jilted lover,
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who is arguing that despite his marital status, they still
love each other, so they might as well get back together,
or at least hook up a bit. I know what
you are going to say. What I refuse you today,
I'll give tomorrow to others whom I don't love the
way I love you, the lover says, and who won't
love you as much as I love you, Zaza, lovers
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for a month, I have enough that I could resell them.
If in a month I could separate from you without suffering,
it would mean that I didn't love you as much
as I have. If I loved you as I did.
I'm going to suffer again as I've already suffered. Once
is enough. I've suffered enough. I don't want to start again.
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I went through something like that conversation once a long
time ago, during my single years. Why are you going
off to be with people who don't care about you
as much as I do and who you don't care
about as much as you care about me? And the
answer was because that has fewer consequences than being with you.
It's not as serious. So that's my choice. You have
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to live with it, and you do, and I did,
but I've never forgotten. Here's a fun baseball bit that
I came across I just wanted to share with you.
I was writing about some old old Dodgers' outfielders as
part of my column at Baseball Perspectives this week. More
on that in a moment, and I came across outfielder
Albert Tye Tyson, who had a brief major league career
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with the Dodgers and Giants from nineteen twenty six through
nineteen twenty eight. He had been a thirty four year
old rookie, so good on him for making it. And
it's not precisely surprising given that that he didn't have
a long shelf life. It might be that there's more
to that than meets the eye. It was just an
odd career all around in that he started in the
minors at age twenty or twenty one, not unusual, played
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in the International League and American Associations for five years,
and then seems to have given up and gone home.
Maybe he felt after five years, if he wasn't going
to get the call up to the highest level, might
as well get on with life. It's not like there
was that much money in baseball back then. But he
was out for five years, came back for Joe McCarthy
at Louisville and played so well he did get the call.
(15:12):
The Giants traded Earl Webb to the Colonels to get
him to Louisville. I mean, web was another overage rookie,
but when McCarthy went up to the Cubs, he brought
Webb with him, and a few years later, playing for
the Red Sox, he set a record that still stands
the single season mark for two Baggers doubles with sixty seven.
I noticed that Tyson's career came to a sudden end
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in the bottom of the first inning at the Polo
Grounds on July third, nineteen twenty eight. What got me
at first, what's remarkable about that inning is that even
if Tyson's career had not ended at that moment, it
would have been weird anyway. What would jump out at
you was the fact that that one frame or half
a frame, contained two inside the park home runs when
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you don't often see one. Maybe they were more frequent
back then, I mean, no baby about it. The parks
were larger, and so it was easier for a ball
to find a gap and roll on forever. Still two
in one inning. Brooklyn's pitcher was Jumbo Elliott. He had
a very rough first. He gave up a double two
Giants let off hitter Andy Cohen, then struck out center
fielder Jimmy Webb before giving up the first of those
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inside the parkers. It was hit to right field by
a future Hall of famer, a week Hall of famer,
but still, Fred Linstrom. He was a right handed hitter,
so you could imagine maybe the outfielders were playing him
to pull and were unprepared for him to go the
other way. Plus the Dodgers right fielder was Babe Herman,
who couldn't have been as bad as people said he was.
Maybe he was that bad, but by reputation not a
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very intuitive defender at least or at best. So it's
easy again to imagine that the ball got past him somehow,
and that Lindstrom made his way all the way around
the bases. So nothing that unusual, right, But the second
inside the park home run happened in gruesome fashion, and
it was the play that ended Tyson's career. Right Fielder
less Man walked, first baseman Bill Terry singled that brought
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up another player now in Cooperstown, shortstop Travis Jackson. He
hit a ball into the left center field gap and
it must have been low enough to seem catchable, but
high enough to require a leaping effort. And I say
that because both left fielder Rube Bresler and centerfielder Tyson
jumped for it. Tragically, they each took a running leap
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into the same space at the same time. The collision
bloodied Bresler's nose. I don't know how bad it was,
but he didn't miss any time. But it inflicted a
compound fracture on Tyler's tibia, and he missed the rest
of his life. Hence the second inside the park home run.
One outfielder was no longer ambulatory, and the other was
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probably pretty out of it too. So while it would
be neat to see two inside the park home runs
in a game or an inning, let's hope it doesn't
happen that way, if it does happen at all. As
I alluded to earlier, my column at BP this week
was called one thousand Outfielders to See Before You Die,
and it's half about how bad the Cleveland outfield has
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been this year, not in Zaza's time, and half about
how much I hate books with titles that end in
before you Die. While speaking of death in Act two
of the show, I do want to return to nineteen
oh one, not for Zaza, although I will mention him again,
but for a number of other things that happened early
that September, almost precisely one hundred and twenty five years
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ago this week. As I speak to you today, you
will join me there, won't you. Your chronal vehicle will
depart just after this upcoming break time machine ticket takers
are standing by at the end of your aisle to
your right. You're right, not mine. That's right, move along,
move along into this break, move along, move along, thank you,
thank you very much. And as the flames compassed him,
(19:08):
he moaned, how about those Mets. Don't ask that question?
Not a good question to ask this week in September.
What a strange, difficult, and disturbing week we've had as
a nation. It's never hard to talk about baseball. It's
a great privilege to be even a very ancillary and
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dispensable part of the national pastime, to get to think
about it, to joke about it, and share the love
of the game for a living. And yet there are
times when, at first at least, the game seems like
an inadequate vehicle with which to even distract from the
times that we are living through, and occasionally even to
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explain them. And you know, if you've been listening to
this program long enough, that it's unusual for me to
despair of finding some way to do that, because that's
our whole Raisin deetra raisin debt. It sounds like a
serial true story. In high school, my accent made my
French teacher cry. He was half laughing when he did it,
but he was also actually crying. I think I had
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made him doubt his choice of career, and he was
not a young man. That is the corrosive effect that
your host can have on people. Ue Lavash Sava, Sava, Desila, Desila.
I feel a little bad here because for people who
don't hear this episode immediately after it comes out, it's
going to sound like I'm being terribly COI about what
happened this week and why it was so hard for
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me to find a perfect analogy in baseball. And here's
the thing, It's not that I'm being COI. I just
don't want to mention it specifically. I don't want it
here for a lot of reasons. So suffice it to
say that there was an unexpected episode of violence in
the nation that resulted in a death, and some people
seem to sincerely feel that loss and be disturbed by it.
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And there are a lot of reasons to feel disturbed
by it. No matter how you felt personally about the
individual whose life was ended by this incident, it wasn't
someone who I had ever thought about at all, if
I'm being honest with you. Simultaneously, there are those out
there who want to profit by it, to exploit it,
and it seems to me to be using it insincerely
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as a vehicle to further some other agenda. And again
I don't want to debate that aspect of it with you.
It is not worth it. In the final analysis, there's
naught to do but deplore the loss of life without
further comment. Further comment would only serve to subtract or
detract from that clear, pure principle that murder is wrong.
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And sometimes, perhaps always, when one among us acts to
deprive another of his or her life, even if that
person the victim I mean, had as a matter of course,
advocated for others to be deprived of their lives by
taking there's all we do is vindicate their pernicious principles.
And the only thing that advances or begins out of
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that is a vicious cycle of violence that has no bottom.
And as we go through this segment, which is about baseball,
in the end, no, there is no direct analogy I
can make to what happened this week to something that
Babe ruther Casey Stegel or Joe DiMaggio did. And thank
goodness for that, but that in itself is the analogy.
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The continuity, the through line of baseball provides an alternative
to all the other choices that we might make, which
is to say, you can do something good, or you
can do something bad, or you can buy a ticket.
That off ramp is always available to you. And I
don't mean to sound like a shill for the game.
I don't mean to sound like Humphrey Bogart did in
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that old ad about going to the game. Hot dog
at the game is better than roast beef at the Ritz.
Now I'll take a roast beef at the Ritz. Sometimes
you know the providence of the roast beef at the Ritz.
You can't say the same thing about the hot dogs
at the ballpark. But Bogie was right, because there's nothing
inevitable about the worst decisions that we might make. And
what he might have said was a hot dog at
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the game is better than a gun in your hand.
And look, as foods go, a hot dog might be
kind of futile, but it also tastes good. The gun
is just futile, period, as I hope you'll agree once
we go back to September sixth, nineteen oh one, which
was a typical late season baseball day, although it was
far from a typical season, as I said earlier, it
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being the first since the American League had declared itself
a major league in competition with the venerable and perhaps
creaky National League. I suppose the Pennant winners aren't too
well remembered, given that it was long ago and the
World Series had yet to come about. The National League
was won by the Pirates, how quaint, and the American
League was won by the White Sox, which, ditto, the
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former team was still absolutely loaded two years after the
NL had folded. The Louisville team not the same Louisville
team that Joe McCarthy had later that was in the
High Miners. This was actually a National League team that
was killed off as part of the Contraction of eighteen
ninety nine after the American Association wars. You don't need
me to go through all that again. We've talked about
it a lot of other times. If you would like
(24:14):
me to write in, I'll do it next time. That
contraction brought Hans Wagner to Pittsburgh. He hit three point
fifty three four seventeen four to ninety four that year,
with a league leading one hundred and twenty six RBIs.
He also led the league in stolen bases with forty nine,
and he did that while playing all over the field.
He didn't settle in as a shortstop until a few
years later. That Pirates team also had what is probably
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still the best collection of starting pitchers they ever had.
You can't compare a spitballer like Happy Jack cheez Bro
to Paul Skeens, or even to John Candelaria, so we
won't even try. But relative to the league, Happy Jack
and Deacon Philippe Jesse Tannehill and Sam Leaver the Goshen
school Master were terrific, with Tannehill leading the league with
a two eighteen ERA. That staff was so deep, in fact,
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that the Pirates were able to be annoyed with Rube
Wadell and sell him to the Cubs. The White Sox
were managed by Clark Griffith I mentioned that earlier, better
remember now for owning the Senators. He was also a
very good pitcher, of course, and a racist, selfish son
of a bitch. The best bat on the team was
centerfielder Billy Dummy Hoy. Sensitive time nineteen oh one, he
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was thirty nine and in his second to last major
league season, but he hit two ninety four with a
four to h seven on base percentage and a four
hundred slugging percentage with a league leading eighty six walks.
I will take that from any outfielder right now. If
the Dodgers had that going on instead of Michael CONFORDO, well,
you know. The two leagues played a full scheduler, a
(25:43):
foolish one that day with a ton of scoring. The
Pirates thwacked the Giants fifteen to two in Game one
of a double header, with their center fielder Ginger Beaumont,
a very good hitter whose career was just a little
short for him to get Hall of Fame consideration, going
five for six with five RBIs, had two doubles in
a homer. Lever went all the way, allowing one earned
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run the second game. The Pirates won that thirteen to four.
The Giants were just a bad team back then with
John mccra as we'll see still in their future. That
was a six game series they were playing, consisting of
three double headers, and the Pirates swept all three by
a combined score of Pirates eighty Giants twenty three. The
crowd don't mention it, said the New York Evening World
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merely a gathering and for a Saturday at the Polo Grounds.
It was sad the Dodgers, then called the Superbas, routed
the Reds thirteen to one. The Reds right fielder that
day was Wahoo Sam Crawford, better remembered as Ty Cobb's
outfield partner for Enemy in Detroit. The third baseman was
Harry Steinfeld, a former actor who would soon be the
(26:50):
answer to a trivia question in the Tinkerty evers to
chance infield, who was the third baseman? He's also the
answer to the question who is resting? In Grant's Two.
The Superbas were another team was another team to benefit
from the National League's contraction. Because one of the teams
that folded was the Baltimore Orioles. There was kind of
(27:13):
a tug of war between Baltimore and Brooklyn factions as
to which of the two teams were to be killed off,
given that both were now owned by the same people,
including manager Ned Hamlin, who had been the force behind
some great Orioles teams of the eighteen nineties. Ultimately, however,
the Brooklyn faction won out, and while the rest is history,
(27:34):
with some very good Baltimore players being squished into the
Superbas roster, including two Hall of famers that they brought
with them on this particular day. Right fielder and leadoff
man we Willie Killer went five for six with a triple.
This is the hit them where they ain't, guy and
keep a clear eye. That part is never mentioned, but
it's important. And then another old oriole and outfielder was
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playing first base that day, Joe Kelly, one of the
more obsc if you're a Hall of famers, at least
from my perspective, he went two for three. They had
at least two other great players going that day, Jimmy
scheckerd and left, probably better known for being part of
some great Cubs teams with the aforementioned Tinker Evers, Chance
Ann Steinfeld and at short bad Bill Dollen, who longtime
(28:17):
listeners will recall is my personal favorite one of mine anyway,
for neglected great player who somehow never wound up in
the Hall of Fame. I mean, put him in just
for sending flowers to an umpire mid it bat. I mean,
that's awesome. We covered that in a prior episode. And
of course you've heard me quote one of my all
time favorite baseball lines. He said this when he was
(28:40):
manager of the Dodgers. Later on, he was you thought
I wouldn't get Casey in here one more time. Casey
was only eleven in nineteen oh one, so he's not
the most germane to these stories. But Bill Dollen was
ten years after this or twelve, Casey's first major league manager. Ultimately,
he was fired, eventually to be replaced by Wilbert Robinson
Uncle Robbie, who kept team for most of twenty years.
(29:02):
You will forgive me for repeating this one more time.
I love it so much. I think about it at
least once a week, I promise you I do. It
has relevance to things. Right after Dallan was fired, but
before Uncle Robbie got the job, some beat writer, relatively
insensitively as far as I'm concerned, went up to Dollan
and said, who do you think will replace you? Dallan replied,
(29:24):
I don't know, but it won't be you, you son
of a bitch. One aspect of this baseball day that
confused me for a few minutes was a transaction related
to the superbus. All the papers talked about how Hanlin,
who too is now in the Hall of Fame after
a long posthumous wait, had signed a new infielder, a
(29:44):
third baseman who they were thinking of putting it shortstop,
even though Dollan was there and Dallan was awesome. I'm
not just saying that because I was a fan, not
that I was a fan. I mean, I'm a fan.
This was a long time ago. I'm not that old.
Dallen was thirty one and had had a upula down
years offensively, but not very down by the standards of
shortstops except for Hans Wagner, and Wagner wasn't even a
(30:08):
shortstop at that point. Over the next three years and
four of the next five, Dallen would be an above
average offensive performer while continuing to be one of the
best gloves of his day. Bad Bill has been gone
for almost seventy five years, so it really doesn't matter
whether he gets a plaque or not. I just enjoy
keeping his memory alive. So the appalling impossible thought of
(30:31):
pushing Bill Allen off of short for this untried kid
wasn't what balked me. It was that the name was
totally unfamiliar, And certainly there are many names in the
baseball encyclopedia with which I'm not instantly familiar, particularly players
who only had a cup of coffee. However, there's no
record of this guy ever playing for the nineteen oh
(30:53):
one Superbuzard Dodgers or Robins or whatever you want to
call them. They definitely wouldn't have been the Robbins yet.
But at first I couldn't locate him because every newspaper
spelled his name differently, and either they spelled it incorrectly,
or there wasn't any concurrence on how it should be spelled,
or it was just later that whoever makes these determinations
(31:14):
about baseball records decided that the spelling of his name
would be standardized. Like, so his name was Charlie Loudenslager.
I felt like that's a name I would have remembered.
Louden Slager. Is that some kind of craft beer? And
the great thing about it is it was almost like
Loudenslager didn't want to be found, because this was the
second time that Hamlin had signed him, and the first
(31:36):
time he just didn't bother to show up. Now, how
many of us, if we had been selected to the
major leagues in any era, would have been like, ah,
not in a hurry to get up there. I'll get
back to you when I'm free. In any event, I
couldn't find him on the nineteen oh one superbase because
he was not part of the nineteen oh one Superbase.
They farmed him out. He didn't make it to Brooklyn
(31:59):
until nineteen Oherfore he got one game into it bats
the Superbose lost. It's not important. I just love these
old reports about hot prospects who are going to push
Bill Dollen to the bench, and then they turn out
to be Charlie Login, slouder Leyden Sugar Ludendorffer. I give up.
There's so much in fact about that day that makes
you want to not give up, but rather go back
(32:21):
to the books because your education feels so incomplete. The
Cardinals and Braves played that day, and there were four
greats in that game, at least in so far as
Cooperstown was concerned, Jesse Burkette four hundred hitter and shortstop
Bobby Wallace with the Cards sliding Billy Hamilton and pitcher
Vic Willis going for the Braves. It was sliding Billy's
last season. I didn't remember he had made it out
(32:43):
of the nineteenth century, and I have to admit I
rarely think of Willis at all. Managers that year, who
in some cases were also players, included Jimmy Collins, Connie Mack,
John McGraw in the American League with that circus version
of the Orioles which would soon be folded to allow
the Yankees to the league, folded after McGraw absconded to
the Giants with a whole bunch of the best players.
(33:05):
Of course, there was also Hugh Duffy, Fred Clark, George Davis,
Bid McPhee, Frank Seeley, Griffith, and Hanlon, both of whom
I've already mentioned. That's ten managers, all of whom eventually
got plaques, not that all of whom lived long enough
to hear about it. Cardinals manager Patsy Donovan isn't in
the Hall of Fame, but was born in Ireland in
(33:26):
eighteen sixty five, Different world, Different America. In nineteen oh one.
The Senators beat the White Sox that day behind the
pitching of Win Mercer, a handsome young fellow who was
a couple of years from taking his own life at
the age of twenty eight, perhaps due to gambling debts.
The Orioles under McGraw split a doubleheader in Cleveland and
(33:48):
as I just said, a number of players in his
starting lineup, including Turkey Mike Donlin, who could really hit,
but couldn't stay healthy, couldn't focus, couldn't stop drinking, couldn't
stop abusing women, couldn't stop changing his career to go
into the movies, and Roger Bresnahan would soon go off
to New York with McGraw. Doesn't and Roger Bresnahan sound
so inadequate. After I gave you all that stuff about
(34:09):
Turkey Mike, I probably should have done that. In the
opposite order, catcher Wilbert Robinson, who I just mentioned a
few minutes ago and would eventually lend his name to
the Brooklyn team. He would inherit the Orioles after McGraw
had stripped it, and he was also later inducted into
the Hall. He started the second game at catcher that
was very late in his career, but again still playing
(34:31):
into the twentieth century. This is where I came across Zaza.
Zaza went four for eight in the doubleheader, and I
asked myself, what is a zaza and how is it?
It went for for eight And I've never noticed this before,
And as I said, missus Carter was still touring in
Zaza just then. It ran a good long time, but
(34:52):
it also hasn't been revived since nineteen oh five. Maybe
now is the time, The time is ripe for Zaza
to be rediscovered. Maybe we could make it about someone
who's really into the food of the gods. Yes, in
this new version, this twenty first century version, Zaza is
short for a girl named Peteza. Peteza, I invite you
(35:15):
to go have some if you have it handy while
we take this second and last break of the episode,
and I'll see you with a napkin on the other side.
So I have a final note from that day, September sixth,
(35:38):
nineteen oh one, the Phillies beat the Orphans, that is,
the Cubs, three to two. The Phillies had a great
outfield just then ed Delahanty and left Roy Thomason center
and Elmer Flick in right. And a weird note about that.
Flick eventually jumped to the A's and then ran off
to Cleveland when the Phillies got an injunction. The same
thing applied to nap Lajaway. Flick's career ended early, not
(36:00):
as early as Zaza's, but still there are similarities, because
you guessed it. He went to Cleveland and started having
stomach pain. Now Zaza lived to be seventy five. The
literary Zaza is of course immortal, and Elmer stayed around
till he was day short of turning ninety five. So
you have to wonder what it was that troubled them
(36:20):
for so long. Just the other day, there was a
story in one of the newspapers, I think the Washington Post,
which I'm almost embarrassed to admit I read. I do
so intermittently. It was one of those medical mystery columns
about a fellow who had these crippling stomach aches turned
out to be epilepsy. I did not realize that epilepsy
expressed itself in that way. So why am I talking
(36:42):
about this particular day other than for Trivia's six September sixth,
nineteen oh one. You might have guessed that was the
day that a self appointed anarchist, Leon Zolgosh of Detroit
went to Buffalo and shot William McKinley at point blank range,
the President of the United States. He both succeeded and
(37:03):
failed in the sense that what killed the president was
not the immediate wound but septoceemia when the doctors failed
to locate the bullet and clean them up. Still murder,
however slowly committed, is still what it is, and after
a trial, Zolgosh went to the electric chair. Anarchism was
an idiotic political philosophy that was pretty much content free,
(37:25):
so empty that it ended up espousing violence as a
solution to the problems that we're facing people at that time.
Any philosophy that shouts blow everything up and covert in
the ruins is about wish fulfillment and psychopathy, not reality.
In the absence of some rules based order of some kind,
all humans end up doing is hurting each other. And
(37:48):
the long struggle over the centuries the millennia has not
been to find a way to do without rules, but
first to have them at all, so that the strongest
and most powerful among us are somewhat constrained, and then
secondarily to structure them in such a way that they're
not circumvented so that the most powerful among us can't
get what they want anyway. And that's a struggle that
(38:11):
goes on every day in every country of the world
down to the present day and will never end. The
reason the anarchists got to such a dire place and
painted themselves into such a terrible corner. Is that they
were reacting to were frustrated by lawlessness of another kind,
the out of control rapacious capitalism of the late nineteenth
(38:32):
and early twentieth centuries, not that capitalism ever really stopped
being those things. And even in the present day, it's
going to insist that we bake the planet because too
much money is invested in fossil fuels to avoid the
losses that would come if we stopped for a while.
Though workers had rights and the appeal of anarchy diminished,
anarchists argued we should question all flavors of authority, which
(38:55):
was good. Anarchists said we should bomb buildings, which was dumb.
Here's the thing, though Zolgosh didn't speak for any monolithic
anarchist group, which didn't exist in any case, he spoke
for himself. He acted for himself. Before the assassination, he
sniffed around some of the more prominent anarchist speakers like
(39:15):
Emma Goldman no relation to me that I'm aware of,
and she and others around her quickly understood that there
was something wrong with the guy, and they shewed him away.
This will become a recurring theme in just a moment. Again,
I'm not saying anarchism was innocent. I have no use
for it. Heck, Goldman's own partner, Alexander Berkman, tried to
murder the industrialist Henry clay Frick, which was pointless. Not
(39:39):
that he was a great guy, it just wouldn't have
changed anything. And I don't know that Emma was complicit
in that. No one ever proved that she was, and
oh boy, they tried, but she didn't disavow Berkman either,
So I'm not trying to hold her up as any
sort of paragon. My point is that Zolgosh was not
aimed by her or anyone else who might have had
thoughts that overlapped with his own. When he was being interrogated,
(40:02):
he said, I don't believe in the Republican form of government,
and I don't believe we should have any rulers. It
is right to kill them. His last words were, I
killed the president because he was the enemy of the
good people, the good working people. And that's all just madness,
which is not to say that McKinley was pro labor,
and it's not to say that he wasn't a war
(40:23):
criminal either. Look up what our histories call the Philippine Insurrection.
We promised freedom to a whole lot of people and
then renegged at the point of a gun. This was
when Mark Twain wrote that the version of the American
flag which flew over the Philippines should not be the
stars and stripes, but rather the skull and crossbones. So
when I say that what Zolgosh preached was madness, I
(40:46):
don't mean it was mad in the sense that his
perceptions of William McKinley were necessarily completely off, but rather
that there is no moral argument that would allow you
to murder a leader, even when you think is pernicious,
because those arguments are inevitably vitiated by the fact that
your act will tend to set your cause back, not
(41:08):
advance it. What wins is persuasion, and murder is an
act of anti persuasion, specifically because it is morally repugnant.
Very rarely do people say, hey, that guy doing that terrible,
awful thing. He has a point. You can have your
political arguments, you can try to persuade people, but shooting
someone doesn't do that. It doesn't persuade anybody stabbing Henry
(41:30):
clay Frick won't win the union, better pay and a
four day work week. Changing the world is a question
of argumentation, and nowadays increasingly one of the money to
command attention. It's not and never has been, about a
single violent gesture. Those are reserved for crazy people. And
(41:51):
there is a through line to this sort of thing.
As I said, the anarchist met Zolgosh and said this
fella is dangerous. Let's get him out of here, and
they showed him away. People met Charles Getteau, President Garfield's
assassin that was about twenty years earlier, quickly understood there
was something wrong with the guy and showed him away.
(42:11):
I realized layers and layers of conspiracy theories have attached
themselves to the JFK assassination. But whatever happened, it seems
pretty clear that even Communist officials in Russia who encountered
Lee Harvey Oswald seemed to understand that there was something
wrong with the guy and showed him away. And they
were proved right. There was something wrong with those guys.
(42:34):
It's almost always those guys, by the way. In the
book Political Murder from tyrannicide to terrorism. Professor Franklin Ford wrote,
the perceptions of neurotics must be distinguished from the more purposeful,
though not necessarily less repellent, ideological commitment shown by a
few of America's most publicized assassins. All of these men
(42:56):
were unbalanced to some degree, lacking the restraint dictated by
common sense or ordinary kindness, as well as any rational
calculus of either self interest or the needs of a
functioning society. At the same time, each of the figures
in question displayed a resolute, in a limited sense of
self sacrificing devotion to some cause greater than his own
(43:18):
ease and self esteem. What has just been said applied
to John Wilkes Booth in eighteen sixty five, Leon zol
Goosh in nineteen oh one, the Puerto Rican nationalists who
sought to shoot President Truman in nineteen fifty, and Sir
Hans Sir Han, Senator Robert F. Kennedy's assailant in nineteen
sixty eight. Professor Ford was making the same point. I
(43:39):
am now that all of those murderers or wanna be
murderers had causes. They had no true interest, However, in
advancing those causes and were not aimed by anyone who
had a true desire to change the world for the
better in any way, no matter how near or far
the current of their thought ran from the mainstream. And then,
of course there were also the marginal, frustrated or even
(44:02):
severely mentally ill people who have just tried to kill
someone famous because well they could. Think of the assassins
who separately got very close to killing both Theodore and
Franklin Roosevelt, the fellow who shot Ronald Reagan, and the
loser who murdered John Lennon. What Zolgosh did and when
he did what he did, The authorities, as I said earlier,
(44:23):
tried to pin it on Emma Goldman. When Booth killed Lincoln,
they tried to pin it on Jefferson Davis, and no
doubt he wasn't too troubled, but he didn't order it
for all I know. When Getou killed Garfield, they tried
to pin it on chronic masturbaders. Gettou had a bit
of an addiction there. Whoever or whatever gets blamed for
causing the latest bad act in this country. And until
(44:44):
this morning, when things became a little clearer, the blame
for the latest thing was going to be put on
quote transgender ideology or something equally incoherent, And what it
seems to have been instead was a young man who,
like some previous young men I've mentioned, should have taken
in hand at some point somewhere somewhen by someone. All
these years later, we don't really have the tools for that.
(45:07):
John Wilkes Booth's last words were useless, useless. So maybe
he got there at the end, Maybe he understood, with
a bullet in his spine that he had espoused a simplistic,
bloody fix for a complex problem, same for all of
these other guys. Better then, rather than go to Buffalo,
Zolga should stayed in Detroit. The Tigers took on the
(45:29):
A's that day, and though they got in only six innings,
the home team still romped eight to three. Connie Mack's
club had naplajhwe hitting four fifteen didn't matter. Useless, useless, right,
But so is condemning the speech or thoughts or lives
of thousands or millions based on the actions of one
person who's disturbed thinking led him to do something they
(45:53):
never would. Maybe blaming is sort of like trying to
ban the nineteen nineteen Reds players from baseball because as
they happen to agree with Chick Gandle that they should
have won that World Series. It doesn't make them complicit
or even fellow travelers. It just meant that for a moment,
some electric impulse of their thoughts happened to align with
(46:13):
those of the immoral crazy person. But the act that
was all gandals. I don't know about you, but I'm
happy to put this particular week in the rearview mirror.
Should you wish to join me in that voyage away
from it, you can do so on social media at
Stevengoldman dot bsky dot social. You can also write us,
(46:34):
by which I mean me, at Infinite Inning at gmail
dot com. There's still a Facebook group that is still
coming to an end. Simply go to Facebook search on
Infinite Inning. If you happen to do so today, you'll
find a couple of pictures of both Zaza's, that is,
missus Carter and mister Harvey. Should you wish to support
the show, and I very much hope you do, please
visit patreon dot com slash the Infinite Inning gear of
(46:55):
a rudimentary kind of available at the hyphen Infinite hyphen
Inning dot create Hyphenspring dot com. Original soundtrack available gratis
at casualobserver Music dot bandcamp dot com. Finally, should you
find yourself with the proverbial moment to spare, please go
to the podcast of your choice and rate, review, and subscribe.
And if your podcasterer doesn't let you do those things,
(47:17):
write some famous Broadway producer or maybe the Schubert organization
and say you really want to see a certain play
back on Broadway after all these years. How ear themes
song which you are hearing now and have been listening
to throughout the episode was a co composition of myself
and doctor Rick Mooring, who only has this much to say, Zaza, Well,
(47:42):
if the world doesn't continue to be so stressful that
the rapidly inflating price of coffee declines because we're all
too worked up and nervous that we no longer require
the aid of stimulants, help me back next week with
more tales from inside the Infinite Inning. End of the
In nineteen oh one, the first season of their existence
of the American League as a wholes existence. The Cleveland
team no name yet. They were still experimenting, and some
writers were calling them the Bluebirds, but officially they were
just Cleveland struggled to identify their starting right fielder. Nothing
new there. They began the season with Ali Pickering, who
(00:22):
sounds like he should have signed the Declaration of Independence,
but no, he was an outfielder at the turn of
the twentieth century. They needed to move him to center
when the opening day center fielder see Frank Frenchy Shanins.
I think that's how you pronounced it. It could be
Gennins or Gennins. I don't know. I wasn't there. Don't
blame me. These things don't always come with pronunciation, guys.
He was thirty four years old. It developed that he
(00:44):
wasn't a major league hitter, although that shouldn't have been news.
He had proved it long before. They probably knew that
going in, but every American League team that year was
functionally an expansion club, and they only had so much
latitude in the matter. Moving Pickering gave a player named
Jack Oprah, Ryan nod Shuck O'Brien, But Jack O'Brien, that
one's pretty clear. It gave him a chance in right field.
(01:05):
He was a much better hitter than Jeanine's, but that's
like saying Anthony Volpe is a far better hitter than
I am. Cleveland's manager, Jimmy meclear still had problems to solve,
and that was when a twenty two year old ex
pitcher stepped forward to plug the breach, though only for
a moment. He was born Irvin King Harvey, but history
(01:28):
knows him as Zaza. Wait, can I can I do
that again? Because that was fun? History knows him as
Zaza Cool. We're cool, right, Zaza. I'm not going to
do that every time. Was from Saratoga, California. He made
his way up through the miners as a pitcher, performing
well for the Sacramento Gilt Edges of the Pacific Coast League.
(01:52):
At the turn of the twentieth century, the Cubs, who
were then the Orphans, snagged him in the nineteen hundred
Rule five draft. The Rule five draft goes back quite
a ways. He was twenty one. The Cubs gave him
the briefest of looks before sending him to Minneapolis and
the next spring he jumped to the White Sox. Again,
these new teams were functionally expansion clubs, so they had
(02:15):
more opportunities for an untried player. They gave him nine
starts and seven relief appearances, and he wasn't awful. The
league era was three sixty six, his was three sixty two.
Still he went only three and seven for a good team.
And you know they paid more attention to the record
back then, Clark Griffith the manager or Charlie Comiski the owner,
(02:36):
and GM sold him on to the Clevelands Bluebirds whatever.
They didn't bother with asking him to pitch and stuck
him in the outfield. And and this testifies to the
incoeight nature of the American League. In nineteen ought one,
he killed it. In forty five games, Zaza hit three
point fifty three with a three to ninety two on
(02:57):
base percentage and a five forty nine slugging percon And
if you are inclined to think that that was a
small sample fluke, well he came back in nineteen oh
two and hit three forty eight in twelve games. That
was a small sample, Fluke, or maybe it wasn't. We
really can't know, so pause for a moment. Why was
(03:17):
Irvin called Zaza? According to John Skipper's book on Baseball nicknames,
it derived from the fact that he was a redhead.
His hair reminded well someone of a nationally celebrated actress
named Missus Leslie Carter, the American Bernhardt. Her real name
was Carolyn Dudley, but back then actresses and most other
(03:38):
women were referred to by their property of husband name.
Back then, Scarlett Johansson would have been Missus cullin jos
Coming to a Theater near You in Jurassic Park nineteen
Lucky Lucky Us. What makes this especially awkward from our perspective,
beyond just the erasure of Carolyn's identity, is that she
was Missus Carter all her fashional life, even though she
(04:01):
divorced Carter in a scandalous trial. He was a Chicago
millionaire lawyer and president of the South Side Elevated Railroad Company,
among others. They broke up in eighteen eighty nine. She
said he physically abused her and he had her involuntarily
committed even though she was fine. It was just a
tactic he was using to control her. He also countered
(04:22):
that she was having an affair. The jury found that
he was telling the truth and she was lying. I
guess we have no way of knowing, so I suppose
we should leave it alone. There's no particular reason to
note this, but mister Carter exited in nineteen oh eight.
He had been choked by gas in his home in
November nineteen oh seven, spent most of a year in
(04:44):
a coma, and then expired. They had a son together,
mister and Missus Carter, Dudley, named after her maiden name.
Dudley chose to live with Mom, so Dad disinherited dud Ugly.
Missus Carter was a redhead. Almost every story of her
mentioned her Crimson tresses. You start to see where I'm
(05:04):
going with this, don't you. There was even a Warner
Brothers film made about her life in nineteen forty with
Miriam Hopkins and Claude Rains. Look up some clips if
you can find them, because there's dialogue in that with
Claude Rains playing Missus Carter's mentor, David Belasco, and he
really makes a meal of some of those lines. The
title The Lady with the Red Hair, the real Belasco
(05:26):
with whom she had a falling out after she got
remarried without his permission, apparently remembered their first meeting. This way,
I saw before me a pale, slender girl with a
massive red hair and green eyes gleaming under black brows.
She began to cry, and then she smiled. Her gestures
were full of unconscious grace, and her voice vibrated with
(05:49):
musical sweetness. So why wasn't Irvin Harvey known as Carter
or Missus Carter or Leslie. It wasn't because he vibrated
with musical sweetness, but rather because Missus Carter's big hit
of eighteen ninety eight was Zaza, originally a French play
which is about a prostitute who becomes a singer. Well,
let me take that back. It's about a singer who
(06:12):
becomes a mistress who discovers a kind of morality in
which she rejects her mistresshood. At no time during the
original French play or the American version, which was adapted
for Missus Carter by David Belasco, does she take cash
in return for services rendered. Rather, she is just an
(06:32):
adult sexual being, and at the turn of the twentieth
century that was enough for male critics, in particular, to
write her character off as a prostitute, even though all
she's really guilty of is having a relationship or an affair,
or a situationship as we might call it, with a
male admirer who she doesn't know for four of the
(06:54):
first five acts is married, and once she does figure
out he's married, she has a decision to make, and
that's where the play turns. An eighteen ninety nine review
says that Zaza tells the pathetic story of a music
hall actress who rises from a depth of illicit love
to a height of pure self abnegation, which is kind
(07:14):
of the opposite of being a sexual mercenary. In Missus
Carter's nineteen thirty seven obituary, The New York Times noted
the play was considered a shocker in its day. It's
actually been filmed a number of times, including by Hall
of Fame director George Qcourt with Claudette Colbert in nineteen
thirty nine. I can't find that version, at least not
(07:35):
right now. It has three songs with lyrics by Frank
Lesser of Guys and Dolls Fame, so I'm eager to
hear it. That's postcodes, so no doubt they cleaned it
up a lot. So did Belasco, who changed the ending
just a little. The French were a little more audacious.
Their ending isn't unhappy so much as it reflects a
woman deciding not to be a home wrecker any longer.
(07:55):
But at the end she doesn't give up the possibility
of future lovers. The crux of the play is not
that she's having extramarital sex, but rather who she's having
it with and her yes no decision, the one that
she has to face as to whether she wants to
be complicit in his immorality. In the American version, she
sort of renounce his extramarital sex again because Americans appruds.
(08:17):
I'll quote one of the better exchanges from that decision
in a few minutes, because it moved me. It chimed
with something in my own history. I do want to
give credit where it's due. I was able to look
at both the English and French versions, or I should
say the American in French versions of the play, but
I also consulted a two thousand and two paper in
Theater Journal Zaza The Obtruding Harlot of the Stage by
(08:41):
Katie N. Johnson, And here's a small irony for you.
Because Zaza was thought to be such an obtrusive harlot,
missus Carter was not allowed to take her Zaza tour
to Cleveland, even as Zaza was playing in the Cleveland outfield.
True story about that Zaza, I mean Irvin Harvey, not
miss Carter's character, is that on April twenty fifth, nineteen
(09:03):
oh two, he had one of the biggest days in
baseball history. If what he did happened again today, it
would still be a big deal. He went six for
six in a nine inning game. Now that's not the
rarest of accomplishments. It since happened over fifty times, but
it's still pretty unusual. Nick Kurtz did it this year
with a ridiculous four home runs show, Hey, Otani did
(09:23):
it last year. It hit three. All six of Zaza's
hits were singles. As you know, it was a different
time and the ball didn't so much go crack when
struck as si. Hey, now here's something that Kurtz and
Otani didn't do. Quentin go home a little over a
week later, saying they didn't feel well. Zaza just ghosted
on Cleveland in the middle of the season, saying that
(09:46):
his stomach hurt too much to play. I don't know
what has become of him, said the manager, Bill Armor.
I wish we had not lost his services, for he
was an extremely valuable man. Had he played with us
all year, we would have been higher in the race.
Cleveland held on to his rights for another three years,
just hoping he would turn up, but uh uh. At
(10:06):
one point he went to Panama to recover his health,
but that didn't take and when he got back, he
went right into the hospital in New York. He also
tried Westboden Springs, Indiana. The California with the Sunset Locks,
as they called him, never did return to the game.
Decades later, when researchers were trying to fill in gaps
in the game's records, it was noticed that no one
(10:30):
knew what had happened to Zaza. They figured he was dead,
but they couldn't say when or where. A researcher eventually
found out that he had left us in Santa Monica
in nineteen fifty four. The Infinite Inning has now dealt
definitively with the only Zaza in Major League history, as
well as the only outfielder named after a fictional chantous
(10:52):
from a nineteenth century play, as portrayed by a redheaded actress.
There's no major takeaway here, except maybe something about the
miss serious nature of tummy aches. Mostly though, the excuse
is simply this one offered by Sherlock Holmes. In the
case of the Redheaded League, my life is spent in
one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence.
(11:13):
These little problems helped me to do so, and I
find that that is the healthiest way to cope with
on we here in the infinite inning. Well, hello there,
(11:58):
sanitary drinks. Duffy's famous unfermented pure apple cider drawn from
the wood and airtight packages is on sale at the
Exposition Grounds. A pleasing ice cold drink at five cents
per glass. Try it. I don't know why that stuck
with me. It was an ad I happened to see
while spending days in nineteen oh one for our mutual
(12:19):
entertainment and edification. What haven't I said yet? Welcome back
to the show, episode three forty four in an ongoing series.
I'm very pleased to be back with you and to
have you back with me as always as ever, I
am Steven Goldman. There is simply no escaping it, particularly
for me. You have some other options, and I am
here to guide you, to escort you as we travel
(12:41):
to the past on a mission to better understand the present,
the time machine being mostly, but not entirely, the game
of baseball. Did you pack a bag lunch? I hope so, because,
as that ad suggested, you can't always rely on things
being clean. In nineteen oh one, from the fifth act
of the original French version of Zaza, not in French
but in English, Zaza says to her now jilted lover,
(13:02):
who is arguing that despite his marital status, they still
love each other, so they might as well get back together,
or at least hook up a bit. I know what
you are going to say. What I refuse you today,
I'll give tomorrow to others whom I don't love the
way I love you, the lover says, and who won't
love you as much as I love you, Zaza, lovers
(13:24):
for a month, I have enough that I could resell them.
If in a month I could separate from you without suffering,
it would mean that I didn't love you as much
as I have. If I loved you as I did.
I'm going to suffer again as I've already suffered. Once
is enough. I've suffered enough. I don't want to start again.
(13:44):
I went through something like that conversation once a long
time ago, during my single years. Why are you going
off to be with people who don't care about you
as much as I do and who you don't care
about as much as you care about me? And the
answer was because that has fewer consequences than being with you.
It's not as serious. So that's my choice. You have
(14:05):
to live with it, and you do, and I did,
but I've never forgotten. Here's a fun baseball bit that
I came across I just wanted to share with you.
I was writing about some old old Dodgers' outfielders as
part of my column at Baseball Perspectives this week. More
on that in a moment, and I came across outfielder
Albert Tye Tyson, who had a brief major league career
(14:27):
with the Dodgers and Giants from nineteen twenty six through
nineteen twenty eight. He had been a thirty four year
old rookie, so good on him for making it. And
it's not precisely surprising given that that he didn't have
a long shelf life. It might be that there's more
to that than meets the eye. It was just an
odd career all around in that he started in the
minors at age twenty or twenty one, not unusual, played
(14:49):
in the International League and American Associations for five years,
and then seems to have given up and gone home.
Maybe he felt after five years, if he wasn't going
to get the call up to the highest level, might
as well get on with life. It's not like there
was that much money in baseball back then. But he
was out for five years, came back for Joe McCarthy
at Louisville and played so well he did get the call.
(15:12):
The Giants traded Earl Webb to the Colonels to get
him to Louisville. I mean, web was another overage rookie,
but when McCarthy went up to the Cubs, he brought
Webb with him, and a few years later, playing for
the Red Sox, he set a record that still stands
the single season mark for two Baggers doubles with sixty seven.
I noticed that Tyson's career came to a sudden end
(15:36):
in the bottom of the first inning at the Polo
Grounds on July third, nineteen twenty eight. What got me
at first, what's remarkable about that inning is that even
if Tyson's career had not ended at that moment, it
would have been weird anyway. What would jump out at
you was the fact that that one frame or half
a frame, contained two inside the park home runs when
(15:58):
you don't often see one. Maybe they were more frequent
back then, I mean, no baby about it. The parks
were larger, and so it was easier for a ball
to find a gap and roll on forever. Still two
in one inning. Brooklyn's pitcher was Jumbo Elliott. He had
a very rough first. He gave up a double two
Giants let off hitter Andy Cohen, then struck out center
fielder Jimmy Webb before giving up the first of those
(16:20):
inside the parkers. It was hit to right field by
a future Hall of famer, a week Hall of famer,
but still, Fred Linstrom. He was a right handed hitter,
so you could imagine maybe the outfielders were playing him
to pull and were unprepared for him to go the
other way. Plus the Dodgers right fielder was Babe Herman,
who couldn't have been as bad as people said he was.
Maybe he was that bad, but by reputation not a
(16:42):
very intuitive defender at least or at best. So it's
easy again to imagine that the ball got past him somehow,
and that Lindstrom made his way all the way around
the bases. So nothing that unusual, right, But the second
inside the park home run happened in gruesome fashion, and
it was the play that ended Tyson's career. Right Fielder
less Man walked, first baseman Bill Terry singled that brought
(17:05):
up another player now in Cooperstown, shortstop Travis Jackson. He
hit a ball into the left center field gap and
it must have been low enough to seem catchable, but
high enough to require a leaping effort. And I say
that because both left fielder Rube Bresler and centerfielder Tyson
jumped for it. Tragically, they each took a running leap
(17:28):
into the same space at the same time. The collision
bloodied Bresler's nose. I don't know how bad it was,
but he didn't miss any time. But it inflicted a
compound fracture on Tyler's tibia, and he missed the rest
of his life. Hence the second inside the park home run.
One outfielder was no longer ambulatory, and the other was
(17:49):
probably pretty out of it too. So while it would
be neat to see two inside the park home runs
in a game or an inning, let's hope it doesn't
happen that way, if it does happen at all. As
I alluded to earlier, my column at BP this week
was called one thousand Outfielders to See Before You Die,
and it's half about how bad the Cleveland outfield has
(18:09):
been this year, not in Zaza's time, and half about
how much I hate books with titles that end in
before you Die. While speaking of death in Act two
of the show, I do want to return to nineteen
oh one, not for Zaza, although I will mention him again,
but for a number of other things that happened early
that September, almost precisely one hundred and twenty five years
(18:29):
ago this week. As I speak to you today, you
will join me there, won't you. Your chronal vehicle will
depart just after this upcoming break time machine ticket takers
are standing by at the end of your aisle to
your right. You're right, not mine. That's right, move along,
move along into this break, move along, move along, thank you,
thank you very much. And as the flames compassed him,
(19:08):
he moaned, how about those Mets. Don't ask that question?
Not a good question to ask this week in September.
What a strange, difficult, and disturbing week we've had as
a nation. It's never hard to talk about baseball. It's
a great privilege to be even a very ancillary and
(19:29):
dispensable part of the national pastime, to get to think
about it, to joke about it, and share the love
of the game for a living. And yet there are
times when, at first at least, the game seems like
an inadequate vehicle with which to even distract from the
times that we are living through, and occasionally even to
(19:52):
explain them. And you know, if you've been listening to
this program long enough, that it's unusual for me to
despair of finding some way to do that, because that's
our whole Raisin deetra raisin debt. It sounds like a
serial true story. In high school, my accent made my
French teacher cry. He was half laughing when he did it,
but he was also actually crying. I think I had
(20:13):
made him doubt his choice of career, and he was
not a young man. That is the corrosive effect that
your host can have on people. Ue Lavash Sava, Sava, Desila, Desila.
I feel a little bad here because for people who
don't hear this episode immediately after it comes out, it's
going to sound like I'm being terribly COI about what
happened this week and why it was so hard for
(20:35):
me to find a perfect analogy in baseball. And here's
the thing, It's not that I'm being COI. I just
don't want to mention it specifically. I don't want it
here for a lot of reasons. So suffice it to
say that there was an unexpected episode of violence in
the nation that resulted in a death, and some people
seem to sincerely feel that loss and be disturbed by it.
(20:57):
And there are a lot of reasons to feel disturbed
by it. No matter how you felt personally about the
individual whose life was ended by this incident, it wasn't
someone who I had ever thought about at all, if
I'm being honest with you. Simultaneously, there are those out
there who want to profit by it, to exploit it,
and it seems to me to be using it insincerely
(21:20):
as a vehicle to further some other agenda. And again
I don't want to debate that aspect of it with you.
It is not worth it. In the final analysis, there's
naught to do but deplore the loss of life without
further comment. Further comment would only serve to subtract or
detract from that clear, pure principle that murder is wrong.
(21:44):
And sometimes, perhaps always, when one among us acts to
deprive another of his or her life, even if that
person the victim I mean, had as a matter of course,
advocated for others to be deprived of their lives by
taking there's all we do is vindicate their pernicious principles.
And the only thing that advances or begins out of
(22:06):
that is a vicious cycle of violence that has no bottom.
And as we go through this segment, which is about baseball,
in the end, no, there is no direct analogy I
can make to what happened this week to something that
Babe ruther Casey Stegel or Joe DiMaggio did. And thank
goodness for that, but that in itself is the analogy.
(22:27):
The continuity, the through line of baseball provides an alternative
to all the other choices that we might make, which
is to say, you can do something good, or you
can do something bad, or you can buy a ticket.
That off ramp is always available to you. And I
don't mean to sound like a shill for the game.
I don't mean to sound like Humphrey Bogart did in
(22:49):
that old ad about going to the game. Hot dog
at the game is better than roast beef at the Ritz.
Now I'll take a roast beef at the Ritz. Sometimes
you know the providence of the roast beef at the Ritz.
You can't say the same thing about the hot dogs
at the ballpark. But Bogie was right, because there's nothing
inevitable about the worst decisions that we might make. And
what he might have said was a hot dog at
(23:10):
the game is better than a gun in your hand.
And look, as foods go, a hot dog might be
kind of futile, but it also tastes good. The gun
is just futile, period, as I hope you'll agree once
we go back to September sixth, nineteen oh one, which
was a typical late season baseball day, although it was
far from a typical season, as I said earlier, it
(23:31):
being the first since the American League had declared itself
a major league in competition with the venerable and perhaps
creaky National League. I suppose the Pennant winners aren't too
well remembered, given that it was long ago and the
World Series had yet to come about. The National League
was won by the Pirates, how quaint, and the American
League was won by the White Sox, which, ditto, the
(23:52):
former team was still absolutely loaded two years after the
NL had folded. The Louisville team not the same Louisville
team that Joe McCarthy had later that was in the
High Miners. This was actually a National League team that
was killed off as part of the Contraction of eighteen
ninety nine after the American Association wars. You don't need
me to go through all that again. We've talked about
it a lot of other times. If you would like
(24:14):
me to write in, I'll do it next time. That
contraction brought Hans Wagner to Pittsburgh. He hit three point
fifty three four seventeen four to ninety four that year,
with a league leading one hundred and twenty six RBIs.
He also led the league in stolen bases with forty nine,
and he did that while playing all over the field.
He didn't settle in as a shortstop until a few
years later. That Pirates team also had what is probably
(24:36):
still the best collection of starting pitchers they ever had.
You can't compare a spitballer like Happy Jack cheez Bro
to Paul Skeens, or even to John Candelaria, so we
won't even try. But relative to the league, Happy Jack
and Deacon Philippe Jesse Tannehill and Sam Leaver the Goshen
school Master were terrific, with Tannehill leading the league with
a two eighteen ERA. That staff was so deep, in fact,
(24:59):
that the Pirates were able to be annoyed with Rube
Wadell and sell him to the Cubs. The White Sox
were managed by Clark Griffith I mentioned that earlier, better
remember now for owning the Senators. He was also a
very good pitcher, of course, and a racist, selfish son
of a bitch. The best bat on the team was
centerfielder Billy Dummy Hoy. Sensitive time nineteen oh one, he
(25:22):
was thirty nine and in his second to last major
league season, but he hit two ninety four with a
four to h seven on base percentage and a four
hundred slugging percentage with a league leading eighty six walks.
I will take that from any outfielder right now. If
the Dodgers had that going on instead of Michael CONFORDO, well,
you know. The two leagues played a full scheduler, a
(25:43):
foolish one that day with a ton of scoring. The
Pirates thwacked the Giants fifteen to two in Game one
of a double header, with their center fielder Ginger Beaumont,
a very good hitter whose career was just a little
short for him to get Hall of Fame consideration, going
five for six with five RBIs, had two doubles in
a homer. Lever went all the way, allowing one earned
(26:04):
run the second game. The Pirates won that thirteen to four.
The Giants were just a bad team back then with
John mccra as we'll see still in their future. That
was a six game series they were playing, consisting of
three double headers, and the Pirates swept all three by
a combined score of Pirates eighty Giants twenty three. The
crowd don't mention it, said the New York Evening World
(26:27):
merely a gathering and for a Saturday at the Polo Grounds.
It was sad the Dodgers, then called the Superbas, routed
the Reds thirteen to one. The Reds right fielder that
day was Wahoo Sam Crawford, better remembered as Ty Cobb's
outfield partner for Enemy in Detroit. The third baseman was
Harry Steinfeld, a former actor who would soon be the
(26:50):
answer to a trivia question in the Tinkerty evers to
chance infield, who was the third baseman? He's also the
answer to the question who is resting? In Grant's Two.
The Superbas were another team was another team to benefit
from the National League's contraction. Because one of the teams
that folded was the Baltimore Orioles. There was kind of
(27:13):
a tug of war between Baltimore and Brooklyn factions as
to which of the two teams were to be killed off,
given that both were now owned by the same people,
including manager Ned Hamlin, who had been the force behind
some great Orioles teams of the eighteen nineties. Ultimately, however,
the Brooklyn faction won out, and while the rest is history,
(27:34):
with some very good Baltimore players being squished into the
Superbas roster, including two Hall of famers that they brought
with them on this particular day. Right fielder and leadoff
man we Willie Killer went five for six with a triple.
This is the hit them where they ain't, guy and
keep a clear eye. That part is never mentioned, but
it's important. And then another old oriole and outfielder was
(27:56):
playing first base that day, Joe Kelly, one of the
more obsc if you're a Hall of famers, at least
from my perspective, he went two for three. They had
at least two other great players going that day, Jimmy
scheckerd and left, probably better known for being part of
some great Cubs teams with the aforementioned Tinker Evers, Chance
Ann Steinfeld and at short bad Bill Dollen, who longtime
(28:17):
listeners will recall is my personal favorite one of mine anyway,
for neglected great player who somehow never wound up in
the Hall of Fame. I mean, put him in just
for sending flowers to an umpire mid it bat. I mean,
that's awesome. We covered that in a prior episode. And
of course you've heard me quote one of my all
time favorite baseball lines. He said this when he was
(28:40):
manager of the Dodgers. Later on, he was you thought
I wouldn't get Casey in here one more time. Casey
was only eleven in nineteen oh one, so he's not
the most germane to these stories. But Bill Dollen was
ten years after this or twelve, Casey's first major league manager. Ultimately,
he was fired, eventually to be replaced by Wilbert Robinson
Uncle Robbie, who kept team for most of twenty years.
(29:02):
You will forgive me for repeating this one more time.
I love it so much. I think about it at
least once a week, I promise you I do. It
has relevance to things. Right after Dallan was fired, but
before Uncle Robbie got the job, some beat writer, relatively
insensitively as far as I'm concerned, went up to Dollan
and said, who do you think will replace you? Dallan replied,
(29:24):
I don't know, but it won't be you, you son
of a bitch. One aspect of this baseball day that
confused me for a few minutes was a transaction related
to the superbus. All the papers talked about how Hanlin,
who too is now in the Hall of Fame after
a long posthumous wait, had signed a new infielder, a
(29:44):
third baseman who they were thinking of putting it shortstop,
even though Dollan was there and Dallan was awesome. I'm
not just saying that because I was a fan, not
that I was a fan. I mean, I'm a fan.
This was a long time ago. I'm not that old.
Dallen was thirty one and had had a upula down
years offensively, but not very down by the standards of
shortstops except for Hans Wagner, and Wagner wasn't even a
(30:08):
shortstop at that point. Over the next three years and
four of the next five, Dallen would be an above
average offensive performer while continuing to be one of the
best gloves of his day. Bad Bill has been gone
for almost seventy five years, so it really doesn't matter
whether he gets a plaque or not. I just enjoy
keeping his memory alive. So the appalling impossible thought of
(30:31):
pushing Bill Allen off of short for this untried kid
wasn't what balked me. It was that the name was
totally unfamiliar, And certainly there are many names in the
baseball encyclopedia with which I'm not instantly familiar, particularly players
who only had a cup of coffee. However, there's no
record of this guy ever playing for the nineteen oh
(30:53):
one Superbuzard Dodgers or Robins or whatever you want to
call them. They definitely wouldn't have been the Robbins yet.
But at first I couldn't locate him because every newspaper
spelled his name differently, and either they spelled it incorrectly,
or there wasn't any concurrence on how it should be spelled,
or it was just later that whoever makes these determinations
(31:14):
about baseball records decided that the spelling of his name
would be standardized. Like, so his name was Charlie Loudenslager.
I felt like that's a name I would have remembered.
Louden Slager. Is that some kind of craft beer? And
the great thing about it is it was almost like
Loudenslager didn't want to be found, because this was the
second time that Hamlin had signed him, and the first
(31:36):
time he just didn't bother to show up. Now, how
many of us, if we had been selected to the
major leagues in any era, would have been like, ah,
not in a hurry to get up there. I'll get
back to you when I'm free. In any event, I
couldn't find him on the nineteen oh one superbase because
he was not part of the nineteen oh one Superbase.
They farmed him out. He didn't make it to Brooklyn
(31:59):
until nineteen Oherfore he got one game into it bats
the Superbose lost. It's not important. I just love these
old reports about hot prospects who are going to push
Bill Dollen to the bench, and then they turn out
to be Charlie Login, slouder Leyden Sugar Ludendorffer. I give up.
There's so much in fact about that day that makes
you want to not give up, but rather go back
(32:21):
to the books because your education feels so incomplete. The
Cardinals and Braves played that day, and there were four
greats in that game, at least in so far as
Cooperstown was concerned, Jesse Burkette four hundred hitter and shortstop
Bobby Wallace with the Cards sliding Billy Hamilton and pitcher
Vic Willis going for the Braves. It was sliding Billy's
last season. I didn't remember he had made it out
(32:43):
of the nineteenth century, and I have to admit I
rarely think of Willis at all. Managers that year, who
in some cases were also players, included Jimmy Collins, Connie Mack,
John McGraw in the American League with that circus version
of the Orioles which would soon be folded to allow
the Yankees to the league, folded after McGraw absconded to
the Giants with a whole bunch of the best players.
(33:05):
Of course, there was also Hugh Duffy, Fred Clark, George Davis,
Bid McPhee, Frank Seeley, Griffith, and Hanlon, both of whom
I've already mentioned. That's ten managers, all of whom eventually
got plaques, not that all of whom lived long enough
to hear about it. Cardinals manager Patsy Donovan isn't in
the Hall of Fame, but was born in Ireland in
(33:26):
eighteen sixty five, Different world, Different America. In nineteen oh one.
The Senators beat the White Sox that day behind the
pitching of Win Mercer, a handsome young fellow who was
a couple of years from taking his own life at
the age of twenty eight, perhaps due to gambling debts.
The Orioles under McGraw split a doubleheader in Cleveland and
(33:48):
as I just said, a number of players in his
starting lineup, including Turkey Mike Donlin, who could really hit,
but couldn't stay healthy, couldn't focus, couldn't stop drinking, couldn't
stop abusing women, couldn't stop changing his career to go
into the movies, and Roger Bresnahan would soon go off
to New York with McGraw. Doesn't and Roger Bresnahan sound
so inadequate. After I gave you all that stuff about
(34:09):
Turkey Mike, I probably should have done that. In the
opposite order, catcher Wilbert Robinson, who I just mentioned a
few minutes ago and would eventually lend his name to
the Brooklyn team. He would inherit the Orioles after McGraw
had stripped it, and he was also later inducted into
the Hall. He started the second game at catcher that
was very late in his career, but again still playing
(34:31):
into the twentieth century. This is where I came across Zaza.
Zaza went four for eight in the doubleheader, and I
asked myself, what is a zaza and how is it?
It went for for eight And I've never noticed this before,
And as I said, missus Carter was still touring in
Zaza just then. It ran a good long time, but
(34:52):
it also hasn't been revived since nineteen oh five. Maybe
now is the time, The time is ripe for Zaza
to be rediscovered. Maybe we could make it about someone
who's really into the food of the gods. Yes, in
this new version, this twenty first century version, Zaza is
short for a girl named Peteza. Peteza, I invite you
(35:15):
to go have some if you have it handy while
we take this second and last break of the episode,
and I'll see you with a napkin on the other side.
So I have a final note from that day, September sixth,
(35:38):
nineteen oh one, the Phillies beat the Orphans, that is,
the Cubs, three to two. The Phillies had a great
outfield just then ed Delahanty and left Roy Thomason center
and Elmer Flick in right. And a weird note about that.
Flick eventually jumped to the A's and then ran off
to Cleveland when the Phillies got an injunction. The same
thing applied to nap Lajaway. Flick's career ended early, not
(36:00):
as early as Zaza's, but still there are similarities, because
you guessed it. He went to Cleveland and started having
stomach pain. Now Zaza lived to be seventy five. The
literary Zaza is of course immortal, and Elmer stayed around
till he was day short of turning ninety five. So
you have to wonder what it was that troubled them
(36:20):
for so long. Just the other day, there was a
story in one of the newspapers, I think the Washington Post,
which I'm almost embarrassed to admit I read. I do
so intermittently. It was one of those medical mystery columns
about a fellow who had these crippling stomach aches turned
out to be epilepsy. I did not realize that epilepsy
expressed itself in that way. So why am I talking
(36:42):
about this particular day other than for Trivia's six September sixth,
nineteen oh one. You might have guessed that was the
day that a self appointed anarchist, Leon Zolgosh of Detroit
went to Buffalo and shot William McKinley at point blank range,
the President of the United States. He both succeeded and
(37:03):
failed in the sense that what killed the president was
not the immediate wound but septoceemia when the doctors failed
to locate the bullet and clean them up. Still murder,
however slowly committed, is still what it is, and after
a trial, Zolgosh went to the electric chair. Anarchism was
an idiotic political philosophy that was pretty much content free,
(37:25):
so empty that it ended up espousing violence as a
solution to the problems that we're facing people at that time.
Any philosophy that shouts blow everything up and covert in
the ruins is about wish fulfillment and psychopathy, not reality.
In the absence of some rules based order of some kind,
all humans end up doing is hurting each other. And
(37:48):
the long struggle over the centuries the millennia has not
been to find a way to do without rules, but
first to have them at all, so that the strongest
and most powerful among us are somewhat constrained, and then
secondarily to structure them in such a way that they're
not circumvented so that the most powerful among us can't
get what they want anyway. And that's a struggle that
(38:11):
goes on every day in every country of the world
down to the present day and will never end. The
reason the anarchists got to such a dire place and
painted themselves into such a terrible corner. Is that they
were reacting to were frustrated by lawlessness of another kind,
the out of control rapacious capitalism of the late nineteenth
(38:32):
and early twentieth centuries, not that capitalism ever really stopped
being those things. And even in the present day, it's
going to insist that we bake the planet because too
much money is invested in fossil fuels to avoid the
losses that would come if we stopped for a while.
Though workers had rights and the appeal of anarchy diminished,
anarchists argued we should question all flavors of authority, which
(38:55):
was good. Anarchists said we should bomb buildings, which was dumb.
Here's the thing, though Zolgosh didn't speak for any monolithic
anarchist group, which didn't exist in any case, he spoke
for himself. He acted for himself. Before the assassination, he
sniffed around some of the more prominent anarchist speakers like
(39:15):
Emma Goldman no relation to me that I'm aware of,
and she and others around her quickly understood that there
was something wrong with the guy, and they shewed him away.
This will become a recurring theme in just a moment. Again,
I'm not saying anarchism was innocent. I have no use
for it. Heck, Goldman's own partner, Alexander Berkman, tried to
murder the industrialist Henry clay Frick, which was pointless. Not
(39:39):
that he was a great guy, it just wouldn't have
changed anything. And I don't know that Emma was complicit
in that. No one ever proved that she was, and
oh boy, they tried, but she didn't disavow Berkman either,
So I'm not trying to hold her up as any
sort of paragon. My point is that Zolgosh was not
aimed by her or anyone else who might have had
thoughts that overlapped with his own. When he was being interrogated,
(40:02):
he said, I don't believe in the Republican form of government,
and I don't believe we should have any rulers. It
is right to kill them. His last words were, I
killed the president because he was the enemy of the
good people, the good working people. And that's all just madness,
which is not to say that McKinley was pro labor,
and it's not to say that he wasn't a war
(40:23):
criminal either. Look up what our histories call the Philippine Insurrection.
We promised freedom to a whole lot of people and
then renegged at the point of a gun. This was
when Mark Twain wrote that the version of the American
flag which flew over the Philippines should not be the
stars and stripes, but rather the skull and crossbones. So
when I say that what Zolgosh preached was madness, I
(40:46):
don't mean it was mad in the sense that his
perceptions of William McKinley were necessarily completely off, but rather
that there is no moral argument that would allow you
to murder a leader, even when you think is pernicious,
because those arguments are inevitably vitiated by the fact that
your act will tend to set your cause back, not
(41:08):
advance it. What wins is persuasion, and murder is an
act of anti persuasion, specifically because it is morally repugnant.
Very rarely do people say, hey, that guy doing that terrible,
awful thing. He has a point. You can have your
political arguments, you can try to persuade people, but shooting
someone doesn't do that. It doesn't persuade anybody stabbing Henry
(41:30):
clay Frick won't win the union, better pay and a
four day work week. Changing the world is a question
of argumentation, and nowadays increasingly one of the money to
command attention. It's not and never has been, about a
single violent gesture. Those are reserved for crazy people. And
(41:51):
there is a through line to this sort of thing.
As I said, the anarchist met Zolgosh and said this
fella is dangerous. Let's get him out of here, and
they showed him away. People met Charles Getteau, President Garfield's
assassin that was about twenty years earlier, quickly understood there
was something wrong with the guy and showed him away.
(42:11):
I realized layers and layers of conspiracy theories have attached
themselves to the JFK assassination. But whatever happened, it seems
pretty clear that even Communist officials in Russia who encountered
Lee Harvey Oswald seemed to understand that there was something
wrong with the guy and showed him away. And they
were proved right. There was something wrong with those guys.
(42:34):
It's almost always those guys, by the way. In the
book Political Murder from tyrannicide to terrorism. Professor Franklin Ford wrote,
the perceptions of neurotics must be distinguished from the more purposeful,
though not necessarily less repellent, ideological commitment shown by a
few of America's most publicized assassins. All of these men
(42:56):
were unbalanced to some degree, lacking the restraint dictated by
common sense or ordinary kindness, as well as any rational
calculus of either self interest or the needs of a
functioning society. At the same time, each of the figures
in question displayed a resolute, in a limited sense of
self sacrificing devotion to some cause greater than his own
(43:18):
ease and self esteem. What has just been said applied
to John Wilkes Booth in eighteen sixty five, Leon zol
Goosh in nineteen oh one, the Puerto Rican nationalists who
sought to shoot President Truman in nineteen fifty, and Sir
Hans Sir Han, Senator Robert F. Kennedy's assailant in nineteen
sixty eight. Professor Ford was making the same point. I
(43:39):
am now that all of those murderers or wanna be
murderers had causes. They had no true interest, However, in
advancing those causes and were not aimed by anyone who
had a true desire to change the world for the
better in any way, no matter how near or far
the current of their thought ran from the mainstream. And then,
of course there were also the marginal, frustrated or even
(44:02):
severely mentally ill people who have just tried to kill
someone famous because well they could. Think of the assassins
who separately got very close to killing both Theodore and
Franklin Roosevelt, the fellow who shot Ronald Reagan, and the
loser who murdered John Lennon. What Zolgosh did and when
he did what he did, The authorities, as I said earlier,
(44:23):
tried to pin it on Emma Goldman. When Booth killed Lincoln,
they tried to pin it on Jefferson Davis, and no
doubt he wasn't too troubled, but he didn't order it
for all I know. When Getou killed Garfield, they tried
to pin it on chronic masturbaders. Gettou had a bit
of an addiction there. Whoever or whatever gets blamed for
causing the latest bad act in this country. And until
(44:44):
this morning, when things became a little clearer, the blame
for the latest thing was going to be put on
quote transgender ideology or something equally incoherent, And what it
seems to have been instead was a young man who,
like some previous young men I've mentioned, should have taken
in hand at some point somewhere somewhen by someone. All
these years later, we don't really have the tools for that.
(45:07):
John Wilkes Booth's last words were useless, useless. So maybe
he got there at the end, Maybe he understood, with
a bullet in his spine that he had espoused a simplistic,
bloody fix for a complex problem, same for all of
these other guys. Better then, rather than go to Buffalo,
Zolga should stayed in Detroit. The Tigers took on the
(45:29):
A's that day, and though they got in only six innings,
the home team still romped eight to three. Connie Mack's
club had naplajhwe hitting four fifteen didn't matter. Useless, useless, right,
But so is condemning the speech or thoughts or lives
of thousands or millions based on the actions of one
person who's disturbed thinking led him to do something they
(45:53):
never would. Maybe blaming is sort of like trying to
ban the nineteen nineteen Reds players from baseball because as
they happen to agree with Chick Gandle that they should
have won that World Series. It doesn't make them complicit
or even fellow travelers. It just meant that for a moment,
some electric impulse of their thoughts happened to align with
(46:13):
those of the immoral crazy person. But the act that
was all gandals. I don't know about you, but I'm
happy to put this particular week in the rearview mirror.
Should you wish to join me in that voyage away
from it, you can do so on social media at
Stevengoldman dot bsky dot social. You can also write us,
(46:34):
by which I mean me, at Infinite Inning at gmail
dot com. There's still a Facebook group that is still
coming to an end. Simply go to Facebook search on
Infinite Inning. If you happen to do so today, you'll
find a couple of pictures of both Zaza's, that is,
missus Carter and mister Harvey. Should you wish to support
the show, and I very much hope you do, please
visit patreon dot com slash the Infinite Inning gear of
(46:55):
a rudimentary kind of available at the hyphen Infinite hyphen
Inning dot create Hyphenspring dot com. Original soundtrack available gratis
at casualobserver Music dot bandcamp dot com. Finally, should you
find yourself with the proverbial moment to spare, please go
to the podcast of your choice and rate, review, and subscribe.
And if your podcasterer doesn't let you do those things,
(47:17):
write some famous Broadway producer or maybe the Schubert organization
and say you really want to see a certain play
back on Broadway after all these years. How ear themes
song which you are hearing now and have been listening
to throughout the episode was a co composition of myself
and doctor Rick Mooring, who only has this much to say, Zaza, Well,
(47:42):
if the world doesn't continue to be so stressful that
the rapidly inflating price of coffee declines because we're all
too worked up and nervous that we no longer require
the aid of stimulants, help me back next week with
more tales from inside the Infinite Inning. End of the
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