The Irish and the Making of American Sport, 1835–1920

The Irish and the Making of American Sport, 1835–1920

The Irish and the Making of American Sport, 1835–1920 PATRICK R. R EDMOND

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina

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Redmond, Patrick R., 1965– The Irish and the making of American sport, 1835–1920 / Patrick R. Redmond. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7864-7553-7 (softcover : acid free paper) ISBN 978-1-4766-0584-5 (ebook) 1. Irish Americans—Sports. 2. Irish Americans—History. 3. Irish Americans—Social conditions. 4. Sports—United States—History. 5. United States—Social life and customs. I. Title. E184.I6R436 2014 BRITISH LIBRARY

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2013048085

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© 2014 Patrick R. Redmond. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. On the cover: Currier & Ives lithograph of John L. Sullivan, 1883 (Library of Congress) Manufactured in the United States of America

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com

To the memory of my father, John Joseph Redmond (1930 –2007)

Contents Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1. The Millers — The Irish Sportsman’s Road to America . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2. The Shanty — The Irish-Born Sportsman in America . . . . . . . . . . . 13 3. The Clamor — The Irish Sportsman in the Big City and Small Town . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 4. The Joint — The Irish Sportsman and Alcohol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 5. Racketeers and Suckers — The Irish Sportsman and Gambling . . . 84 6. The Heeler — The Irish Sportsman and Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 7. The Crank — The Irish and Fan Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 8. Buccaneers — The Irish Sportsman and Fighting the Law . . . . . . 157 9. Big Shots — The Irish and Sporting Management . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 10. Sluggers — The Irish Sportsman and Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204 11. Swells — The Irish Sportsman and Respectability . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 12. Cronies — The Irish Sportsman and Irish Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . 260 13. Ballyhoo — Irish Sports and Games in the United States . . . . . . . 288 14. Skedaddle — The Irish Sportsman and International Competition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 15. Squares — The Irish Sportsman and Amateurism . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347 16. So long — Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451 vii

Acknowledgments There are a number of people I would like to thank in connection to this book. Ultimately, one of my biggest aids was the Internet. The ease with which I can access newspaper archives, articles and online libraries from the comfort of my own desk has been priceless. Without the ability to type in a subject and get back a list of articles at, say, the New York Times, the effort would have been costly and time consuming, and would have entailed missing out a number of gems that make this book what it is. So the first person I should thank is Timothy Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Internet. In this respect I would also like to thank the excellent sources of information out there on the Internet that have enabled me to research and create this book: The New York Times on-line news archive; the ProQuest Archiver stable of newspaper archives (Atlanta JournalConstitution, Baltimore Sun, Boston Globe, Chicago Times, Cincinnati Enquirer, Detroit Free Press, Hartford Courant, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post); LA84foundation.org, which hosts most of the editions of The Sporting Life and Outing; the British Newspaper Archive; Paper of Record (Sporting News); the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America and its online photographic archive, the Genealogy Bank; the Sports Illustrated vault; and Google News. Other indispensable Web sites include Baseball-Reference.com (as well as its offshoots Pro-football-Reference.com, Hockey-Reference.com and Basketball-Reference.com) in finding information on baseball players, especially those born in Ireland. With regards to the prize ring, Cyberboxingzone.com and Boxrec.com provide the best source in researching the early prize ring. Undoubtedly the best resource in investigating the Irish-American Athletic Club is wingedfist.org run by Ian McGowan. Other invaluable Web sites include the SABR Baseball Biography Project (www.bioproj.sabr.org); hickoksports.com; baseballlibrary.com; www.findagrave.com; imdb.com; Google Books; Amazon. com, and of course the much-maligned Wikipedia. Without these Web sites and organizations it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to write a book of this complexity. Sometimes the Internet won’t do, and one needs to get out to the library. In this respect I would like to thank the British Newspaper Library of Colindale, London, which will soon be no longer with us. I have been visiting the BNL for two decades now and I am eternally grateful to the excellent staff there. Things won’t be the same when the BNL finally moves to the St. Pancras-based British Library. I would also like to thank the National Library of Ireland and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts for their assistance. I would also like to pay homage to my alma mater, the Metropolitan University of London, ix

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not only for my tertiary education, but by having probably the largest collections and centers of Irish history in Britain. Also thanks to Steven A. Riess’s City Games, Melvin A. Adelman’s A Sporting Time, Elliott J. Gorn’s The Manly Art, and Benjamin G. Rader’s Baseball for pointing the way to many events mentioned in this book, while David L. Fleitz’s The Irish in Baseball was also hugely influential. Individuals I would like to thank include Peter Carbery of the Irish Post, later a journalist with The Times (London), and now currently editor of the Daily Star on Sunday (London) for his help in getting me into writing. Also included are former editors of the Irish Post, Martin Doyle and the late Donal Mooney. I’d like to thank my former lecturer at the University of North London (now Metropolitan University of London), Jonathan Moore, for all his help in my original dissertation on the bare-knuckle boxer in American sport and for being truly inspirational at times. Finally I would like to thank my family. First, I am grateful to my mother Maria for all the help that she has given me, enabling me to have more time for this project. Then I would like to thank my children, Sean, Shannen and Eléna, for their patience and support. I cannot go without thanking my late Dublin-born father, John, without whose pride in his country and its history I would never have had the interest to investigate such a subject as the Irish in American sport. It is to him that I dedicate this book. Naturally, behind every man there is a good woman; and without my charming, intelligent and beautiful wife Claudia I would not be writing here today. Her perseverance in getting me to develop the best of my cerebral assets, pushing me through university and eventually bringing me here to this book. I am eternally grateful for her encouragement and support. As usual, any mistakes found are all mine and I would be pleased to hear any feedback.

Preface It was during the mid-nineties, some time after I started my BA degree, that the subject of a dissertation cropped up. At the time I had a vague idea that there was a significant Irish history in American sports; despite a limited knowledge of baseball and American football, I knew of John L. Sullivan as one of the greatest fighters of the nineteenth century and that he was the last of the bare-knuckle champions. I knew that the Boston Celtics were founded by an Irish-American, Walter Brown — because I had written a two-page article for the Irish Post in London on the Celtics — and that the franchise played heavily on its “pride” and “mystique” that set it aside from the other, supposedly “synthetic” concerns of the NBA. I also knew that Notre Dame University was nicknamed the “Fighting Irish” and had what appeared, from the abundance of shamrock on his hat, a son of Hibernia with his Irish up as its mascot. However, I was pretty ignorant about the rest of the Irish in American sports. I knew virtually nothing about the Irish in baseball—Connie Mack, John McGraw, Ed Delahanty or Andy Leonard. At the time I was publishing and editing a soccer fanzine, and one of my outlets, in the days before Amazon, was a London bookshop called Sportspages, located off the Charing Cross Road, between Leicester Square and Tottenham Court Road tube stations in the city’s traditional bookshop district. This was probably the only shop in the city at the time that sold any American sporting literature, and I began picking up books on Irish-American baseball stars at the time, the first being probably Charles Alexander’s biography of John McGraw. And so back to my dissertation for my degree: the idea was to write ten to twelve thousand words on the Irish in American sports. That’s the whole Irish sporting journey, covering playing and management from basically the time James Burke and Sam O’Rourke fought to the present day, in a space of a book’s chapter. Laughable now, but it shows my ignorance. In the end I settled for the prizefighting era, concentrating not only on the sportsmen but the ring’s connections with alcohol, gambling and politics. It was at this time that the idea of a book on the Irish journey in American sports came into my mind. One of the books on the shelves of Sportspages was Ellis Island to Ebbets Field: Sport and the American-Jewish Experience, by Peter Levine. As I continued to research my dissertation, it became clear that there was very little literature about Irish-American sporting history as a whole outside individual biographies. Over the following decade and a half I would read some of the growing number of books being written about Irish-American sportsmen and the one thing that became clear was that most of these Irish-Americans began their trade in the nineteenth century. 1

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One of the best offerings was Ed Delahanty in the Emerald Age of Baseball, Jerrold Casway’s biography of the tragic Ed Delahanty. It was Casway who coined the phrase the “Emerald Age” of baseball, which was essentially the last decade of the nineteenth century; and as I prodded more, it became increasingly clear that of the great moments of IrishAmerican sports — the best champions of the ring, the Irish dominance of the diamond, the Olympic heights of the Irish-American Athletic Club — all happened before the First World War. After 1920 there was a decline in the Irish-American athlete in the traditional “bluecollar” sports of baseball and boxing, while the Irish never dominated ice hockey, pro football, or basketball in the manner they had once the other two American sports. This book therefore covers the period of the growth of modern sports in America up to the point that I believe was the final year of any significant influence of the Irish on American sports and the beginning of a decline of their participation in baseball, boxing and athletics, along with the Irish-American Athletic Club’s descent into a bootleggers’ den. Chapters are titled after American slang terms derived from the Irish language, much of which is still in common use today. Definitions are taken from Daniel Cassidy’s How the Irish Invented Slang. In Chapter 1, I introduce the book by examining the backdrop to the beginning of the Irish sporting migration to America, particularly with regards to prizefighting. In Chapter 2, I discuss the initial Irish-born sportsmen who arrived in America. Many of these were the first “stars” of prizefighting, billiards and athletics. I also examine the part played by Irish-born baseball players and how limited their numbers were compared to other sports. The chapter also deals with the first death from the prize ring and the American press reaction to both it and prizefighting as a whole, as well as the interethnic violence of the age that the ring became a surrogate for. In Chapter 3, I compare the influence that the big cities of America — particularly New York — and the small towns both had on the Irish sportsmen. The chapter also explains how “Blood Sports” served the leisure industry, how interconnected they were with the prize ring, and finally the backlash both faced from so-called do-gooders. Also mentioned is the emergence of the “picnic,” hosted by Irish societies, which increasingly included athletic events in their programs. These events led to the emergence of Irish athletic clubs that culminated in the greatest of these associations, the Irish-American Athletic Club of New York. Chapter 4 talks about the relationship between the Irish sportsman and alcohol through the “Bachelor Subculture”; it delves into the part that the tavern and saloon played in hosting many early sports, giving employment to sportsman and serving the curse of alcoholism on the Irish sportsman. I also briefly discuss the country’s opposition to liquor, which subsequently led to the Volstead Act, and its connection to sports, and how fraternal societies of the “Bachelor Subculture” provided positive input for successful athletics. In Chapter 5 I concentrate on gambling and its varying hold over many aspects of American sports and the Irish who participated or watched it. It also notes the active participation of the Irish in circumventing the prohibition of gambling. Chapter 6 discusses the role of Irish politicians in American sports. Political influence was often split between the “auld country”–influenced Irish politics of Clan na Gael and the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and what I have termed the “New World” politics of the Democratic Party. Also debated is the opposition from the “Know-Nothing” nativists and how the gang served in the rise of both the athlete and the politician. I also speak about the politicians and their complicity in permitting prizefights to operate, either through their influence on the police and courts, buying franchises, or striding to change state laws, while using sports to improve their voting base. Chapter 7 exposes the Irish participation in making the American sporting

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fan. It covers the Irish spectator in crowd violence, and in creating fan organizations. It also notes the growing celebrity cult that grew in the nineteenth century, which included large funerals for Irish sportsmen, while dealing with America’s first “sporting superstars,” the Irish-American pair of Mike “King” Kelly in baseball and John L. Sullivan in boxing. Chapter 8 deals with the battle against the blue laws of “sabbatarianism” and the legal clampdown on the prize ring; it also covers the fight for labor rights in baseball. The chapter briefly touches on drug use and the contemporary attitudes to it. Chapter 9 centers on the destinies of many Irish sportsmen in becoming coaches, managers, franchise owners, and the heads of leagues and the bodies that ruled sports. Chapter 10 discusses the violence of certain Irish sportsmen of the period and debates violence within sports, in and out of the diamond or ring. Chapter 11 concentrates on the gradual growth in the respectability of sports over the period discussed, and the role the Irish played in this. This was often a result of the growth of “Muscular Christianity” and the need for the improvement in the nation’s health, when the biggest question being asked was whether the ring could ever be reformed. It also includes references to the counteracting of the Irish “sporting” stereotype of drunken violent men with athletes who were college- and university-educated and led clean and temperate lives. In Chapter 12, I detail Irish identity within American sports. I cover the role of the Catholic college and university varsity teams in granting the Irish crank organic teams to follow. Also included is the interethnic rivalry of prizefighters and its growth within baseball teams; as the Irish became integrated, how new immigrant groups chose Irish names to enhance their ring careers; and how the Irish defined themselves with regards to others, especially their role in the search for the “White Hope” and how far the Irish were willing to test the sport’s own “color line.” Chapter 13 talks about the Irish club. It also deals with the native Irish sports and how successful they were in attracting the attention of the American sporting public; and with the polemic over the deaths in American football, how well the game was marketed as a safe but suitably rugged alternative to the college game. It also examines the only Irish sport to do well in the States — court handball — and how the IrishAmerican Athletic Club became so successful. Chapter 14 covers the role the Irish played in creating and furthering the United States in the field of international competition while suckling on American identity and jingoism. Starting with baseball tours and pedestrian exports to Britain, the chapter moves through athletic sporting contact between American and British or Irish teams, finally to the 1908 Olympic Games, where Irish-American sportsmen and officials played crucial parts as the games’ key protagonists. Finally, Chapter 15 talks about amateurism and the Irish. It discusses the snobbery, discrimination, and exclusion that amateurism drove — including towards women. There are also the battles that the lowly educated and less socially connected athletes fought to get paid, which increasingly was only achieved by becoming coaches, and the exposure of “shamateur” athletes receiving underhand payments, or “jobs” that did not exist. While there is undoubtedly a wealth of individual books on Irish and Irish-American sportsmen and the Irish in baseball and boxing, there has been a vacuum with regards to a history that brings together all the diverging points of the Irish-American sporting experience of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as alcohol, gambling, political influence, sabbatarianism, violence, labor discontent, coaching, management, sporting administration, respectability, prejudice, nationalism and amateurism. This book goes some way to rectifying this vacuity in Irish-American history.

1 The Millers — The Irish Sportsman’s Road to America The term “miller” comes from “mile: a warrior, a champion, a hero.”1

On the evening of May 30, 1833, inside the Woolpack Inn in the prosperous Hertfordshire town of St. Albans to the north of London, a man lay dying. Approximately twenty-six years old, Dublin born, and the son of a dairyman, Simon Byrne had just been beaten in a prizefight by a twenty-three-year-old, deaf, London-Irish prizefighter called James “Deaf ” Burke. Located to the north of the town, “Nomansland” was notable as the scene of the Second Battle of St. Albans in February 1460. Four centuries later it would host another more infamous battle: two pugilists would fight ninety-nine bloody rounds over three hours for the Championship of England.2 Immediately after the mill, Byrne was carried to the Woolpack, where patrons attended him as he lay in a stupor, the left side of his face and body severely bruised. Despite a brief recovery, “sufficiently conscious to thank his friends for their ministrations,” his condition worsened on the afternoon of June 1 with a renowned surgeon from nearby Hemel Hempstead, Sir Astley Cooper, fearing there was little hope of recovery.3 Bell’s Life in London wished him well: “Be the fate of the poor fellow as it may, it is impossible to withhold from him the credit of being as brave and honest a man as ever stood up for the honor of Shamrockshire.”4 Three days after the fight, Byrne passed away, saying to his chambermaid: “If I should die it will not be from the beating I received, but from mortification. I would rather have died than been beaten in that fight.”5 Despite probably being Roman Catholic, he was quickly buried in the grounds of St. Albans Abbey due to the summer-like heat. Bell’s set up an appeal for his widow and children, with both fighters’ seconds and backers contributing five guineas each.6 Both fighters were of Irish stock: James “Deaf ” Burke was described by Bell’s Life in London as “naturally deaf, and equally so to anything like the word ‘enough,’” and was champion by default, having beaten Harry Macone following the previous incumbent’s ( Jem Ward) retirement.7 But Ward had pinned all his hopes on Simon Byrne, believing him a better fighter, while another English celebrity of early nineteenth century prizefighting, Tom Spring, was Byrne’s second.8 And despite being described by one witness during a previous fight as having “a corporation that would have done credit to a city alderman,” Byrne 5

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The Irish and the Making of American Sport, 1832–1920

had shed two stone (28 pounds).9 Bell’s Life in London had doubts, claiming that since his semi-retirement in Ireland, “we have heard [Byrne’s] habits were not the most abstemious.” Burke, who had previously taken an hour and a half of a brutal contest to dispose of Macone, was a far more muscular, experienced fighter. Bell’s Life in London added: “Burke, on the contrary, who is far from being a slave to the lush tub, had only to improve his condition by good air and healthful exercise…. His weight, on the morning of fighting … was sufficient to cope, accompanied by science, with Goliath himself, were he a competitor for fistic honors.”10 In the aftermath Burke and Spring took the principal blame for Byrne’s death. Spring did nothing to prevent his beating, even carrying him to the mark in the final round.11 At Byrne’s inquest, S.G. Shaw, a reporter for the County Press, opined that both fighters were exhausted and the fight should’ve been stopped.12 Burke, Spring, Ward and Burke’s financial backer, Tom Gaynor, were arrested and stood trial at Hertford after the coroner recorded a verdict of manslaughter, but when in court Shaw explained: “I cannot say that the blows [Byrne] received were the cause of death, either in the whole or in part,” the judge suddenly stopped the trial and instructed the jurors to find the four men not guilty as spectators cheered.13 Complaints of “carrying” of fighters to the scratch led to a change in the London Rules. Yet despite Byrne’s also having been found not guilty of the manslaughter in the ring of Alexander McKay in 1830, Burke wasn’t shown the same forgiveness, and found patrons unwilling to sponsor him.14 An immediate mill with a fighter called Dutch Sam was forfeited as Burke couldn’t raise the stake, while Ward continued to ignore approaches by Burke, citing his inability to get the £200 stake.15 His only offer was from the Irish champion Sam O’Rourke. Just back from the States, O’Rourke insisted the fight take place at the Curragh, in Kildare. But despite there being little backers for a Burke fight in England, Burke refused to travel, fearing a lynching from the Irish crowd that blamed him for Byrne’s death. There was an alternative, which could hardly have been much better: to fight in the United States.16 Every journey starts with a single step, and the long, rich and often tragic journey of the Irish in American sports does not begin at the Polo Grounds on September 14, 1947, when Cavan and Kerry played the only All-Ireland football final outside of Ireland, or at the 1908 London Olympics. The journey begins instead in “Nomansland.” The States was touted as an ideal place for pugs to ply their trade as early as the year before Byrne’s death. A Philadelphian pug called Andrew McLain wrote to one Jack Langan, claiming: “Should you, or any other first-rate Professor of Milling, come here, you may depend you would make a good thing of it.” The letter was published in Bell’s Life in London, and the paper cooed, “While the sun of pugilism is setting in Old England, it is rising with unusual effulgence on the other side of the Atlantic.”17 Furthermore, the Irish boxing historian Patrick Myler stresses that it was the fertile, virgin, pugilistic soil of the States that attracted Irish fighters across the Atlantic, and not any clampdown on the sport in Britain: “Around the year 1830, bare-knuckle boxing began to establish its roots on American soil. The New World offered plenty of opportunities to hardy young men with surplus energy to burn and a yearning for fame and fortune…. To those with talent in their fists, England was no longer the place to look to.”18 Yet the truth was that there remained an innate cultural hostility to sports in America.19 And while a number of reasons increasingly pushed Irish pugilists to the U.S., there was very little pulling them there. America was certainly no sporting El Dorado. Indeed, the

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word “sport,” as Steven A. Riess writes, wasn’t a positive label: It defined “a mutation, an object of derision, or a person with a flashy lifestyle.”20 New England in particular was hostile. There may have been no legal restraint against ball and blood sports but that was an indication that self-policing and the Puritan “public contempt sufficed to bar them.”21 John Chester Miller explains the American demographics vis-à-vis sport: “Between the Puritans, Pietists, Quakers, Presbyterians, Baptists and the other religious groups that regarded most of the normal diversions of Englishmen as shameful, immoral and a waste of precious time, there was little chance for sports and recreation in colonial America.”22 Part of this was founded, as Bruce Daniels explains, with the New England Puritan hatred of what sports entailed: “Puritans’ opposition to sport was grounded on at least seven propositions: sport was frivolous and wasted time; sport did not refresh the body as good recreation should, but tired people instead; much sporting activity was designed deliberately to inflict pain and injury … led to gambling; more sport … [and] encouraged people to defile the Sabbath; sport was noisy and disrupted others…; and many sports had either pagan or ‘Popish’ origins.” 23 Through most of the nineteenth century, the perception remained in the WASP elites and also among the “lace curtain” upwardly mobile Irish, that all plebeian sports were pointless pursuits partaken by a feckless underclass. Melvin Adelman observes that a sport — perhaps like recreational drugs a century later — became problematic once it moved from a small number of the middle and upper classes, to the masses: “As long as the game remained essentially the prerogative of the wealthy it was an acceptable diversion. Criticism of [games like] billiards didn’t intensify until its public form became popular amongst the masses.”24 The Irish alone didn’t change American sports: Equally important were urbanization, industrialization, and the American Civil War. But they certainly played a part in providing many of its influential protagonists. They were at a huge advantage as this sporting “craze” took off after the Civil War, with a great sporting tradition that was frequently trumpeted by the Irish themselves. The Irish American Weekly wrote in 1879: “The Irish race, from the earliest periods of their history, were known to excel in athletic exercises and manly sports. Their descendants have inherited these noble traits of their ancestors….”25 Paul Darby, who has chronicled the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in the United States, claims that because of this national sporting culture, the Irish took to baseball “in large numbers and achieved the highest laurels that this game offered.”26 By the turn of the century, the Irish had acquired a formidable sporting reputation within American culture in all the major sports, either as participants, coaches, fans or owners of the major sporting institutions. Additionally, they formed their own sporting clubs in an attempt either at expressing cultural separation, or as a means of meeting fellow countrymen away from the workplace. Followers “of Irish national pastimes [owed] a debt of gratitude” to organizations like the Irish Athletic Club of Boston and the Gaelic Society in New York, enthused the Irish American Weekly, because their “successful efforts towards the establishment of the national games of Ireland in this country” promoted Gaelic games.27 Athletic festivals under the auspices of the major Irish Republican organizations, Clan na Gael and the Ancient Order of Hibernians, were organized. The Irish World commented in 1873 following the fourth “Irish Nationalist’s Games” in Oakdale Park, Philadelphia: “Few, if any, who either participated in, or were spectators of, those manly games … were not forcibly reminded of home and fatherland….”28 Irish baseball clubs also helped the second generation integrate during a period of widescale discrimination. Robert Burke writes: “Some immigrants, and certainly many more

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The Irish and the Making of American Sport, 1832–1920

second generation Americans, could pass for upright Yankees on the basis of their conduct, occupational success, or intermarriage. Barring that, they could form their own baseball clubs.”29 However, as Benjamin Rader observed, ethnic clubs existed only as long as exclusion remained: “The need of immigrant groups to form separate ethnic communities depended upon a host of variables including their nationality, religious beliefs, language and status…. The history of nineteenth and early twentieth century sport clubs reflected the process of acculturation by distinctive ethnic groups.”30 Clubs founded for participation in exclusively Irish sports, such as outposts of the Gaelic Athletic Association, lasted longer than Irish baseball or athletic clubs. The true importance of the Irish in the development of American sports began with prizefighting, as Nathaniel Fleischer, founder of The Ring, concedes: “American ring history from the middle of the nineteenth century through the early part of the twentieth is primarily a history of Irish supremacy. In every division, the headliners were, with few exceptions, either immigrants from the land of Erin, or native sons of Hibernian parents….”31 Prizefighting began with foreign (English and Irish) pugilists, emigrating after the War of 1812, and following the great famine the Irish dominated the sport in America, until they too were edged out by the next wave of immigrants. Between 1853 and 1899 twelve of America’s thirteen disputed and undisputed heavyweight prizefighting champions were Irish-born or had at least one Irish parent.32 Baseball’s popularity also grew from the 1850s, but while the Irish-born were amongst some of the initial professionals, first-generation participation in the sport was tiny, and made up of men who had learned the game from childhood.33 It was their offspring that put the Irish mark on baseball as the century closed. Harold Seymour spoke of the Irish contribution to baseball that suggested a natural disposition to the game, where “some thought they had a special talent for ball playing.”34 Few have noticed that one of the team sports under the GAA’s control, when it was founded in 1884, was rounders, a sport many argue was the natural precursor of the American game. The 1890s has been labeled the “Emerald Age of Baseball” by Jerrold Casway. In 1892 the St. Louis sporting weekly, the Sporting News, admitted: “The Irish surnames in the baseball profession represent one-third of all the players engaged by the twelve clubs of the league.”35 In the same year its major rival, the Philadelphia-based Sporting Life, ran an article titled: “IRELAND ON TOP. Players of Irish Extraction Predominate.” It opened with the statement: “A glance at a score card during any League game will reveal the fact that probably one-half the players of the League are Irish born or of Irish-American parentage.”36 An almost identical article appeared verbatim under the by-line of O.P. Caylor in the New York Herald, except it centered on the score card of the two games between Cleveland and New York, concluding: “It all goes to show that as a nationality the Irish have a peculiar talent for ball playing and have since baseball became professional, monopolized the best positions on the diamond and carried away the bulk of money paid out for salaries.”37 Three years later, the Sporting Life’s correspondent in Scranton, Pennsylvania, argued that a team strong enough to compete in the National League could be made of players with names of “Macs.”38 Later the same newspaper quoted a baseball writer who claimed that, of the two hundred and fifty players in the National League, eighty were “real Americans,” with the Germans “slightly” below that figure and the Irish “slightly” above. The New York Giants’ manager Bill Joyce was then asked who made the best players, replying: “Give me a good Irish infield and I will show you a good team. I don’t mean that it is necessary to have them all Irish, but you want two or three quick-thinking [Irish] … to keep

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the Germans and others moving. I don’t want to be accused of casting reflections on any nationality, but there is no question but that it takes the Irish to keep the world agoing.”39 The Sporting Life had noted that eight of the twelve League captains in 1896 were “of the blood Irish.”40 The following year a scribe for the APA wrote: “I have been requested to state what nationality as a rule turns out the best base ball players. The question can be answered off-hand. Irish blood predominates among the stars of the ball field.” Germans were next, followed by “whole-blooded” Americans. He concluded: “So we see that the men of Irish and German lineage predominate in the profession of baseball. Possibly it is the Irishman’s love of a scrap or his proficiency in the use of a club which leads him into the pleasures and pursuits of the diamond.”41 A head count the same year suggested that there were sixty-four Irish players to fifty-seven Germans.42 There was some dissent. The Sporting Life quoted the Cincinnati Commercial-Gazette in pointing out that they were all Americans: The old argument about the superiority of Irish or German players is being spilled, column or so at a time, upon the public. What’s the matter with the superiority of American players? Nine out of ten of them in the League to-day exercise the right of suffrage in America, and this thing of tracing their ancestry back to Plymouth Rock or the settlement of Manhattan Island … is getting away from base ball and into theosophy, or some other occult science.43

When this Irish dominance began to decline, Tim Murnane would still write in 1906 that it was “practically essential to have a few Os and Macs on the [baseball] team to make good either artistically or financially.”44 By 1910 Irish managers made up just under two-thirds of managers in both the National and Major Leagues. And as the 1915 season opened, one sporting historian observes that eleven out of sixteen National and American League managers were of Irish origin, although the figure was actually nine.45 One of these managers, the Cleveland Indians’ Joe Birmingham, had noted the pressures of other ethnic groups in pushing the Irish into management the year he too moved upstairs: “Base ball is like railroading…. A few years ago the section hands were mostly Irish. The Italians drove them into jobs as foremen … now the Dutch are doing the same thing … driving them into jobs as managers.”46 Other sports were equally marked by Irish participation from the start. The leading billiards players of the antebellum, Dudley Kavanagh and Michael Phelan, were Irish-born, and Irish athletes regularly participated in major Pedestrianism (athletics) events from as early as 1835, when Patrick Mahony, a butcher from Kerry, ran in an international invitation event called “The Great Race” organized by the founder of the America’s Cup, John Cox Stevens.47 In contrast to baseball the Irish founded successful high-ranking athletic clubs, the most prominent being the Irish-American Athletic Club in New York. The question to be asked is what made the Irish so good at sports, and equally why their presence declined through the twentieth century? There are many varied reasons. Firstly, sports were culturally central to the Irish male. Following the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the Irish began marrying later than other Europeans.48 As a counter to the frustrations of bachelorhood, the Irish male became subsumed in a “Bachelor Subculture,” that simultaneously worked as a bulwark against the threat of social disintegration by sexual promiscuity, which both the British government and the Catholic Church feared. Richard Stivers describes the basis for this uneasy, contradictory arrangement: A low status for marriage is functional to a system in which relatively few marry and chastity is expected of the unmarried. If sex is only allowable in marriage, the undesirable aspects of

10

The Irish and the Making of American Sport, 1832–1920 married life have to be stressed to offset its natural attraction. And stressed they were in Ireland until the point was reached where the son who married and inherited the land sometimes wished he, too, had been allowed to emigrate.49

The Irish arrived with a male leisure culture that centered on “saloons and grocery stores, places where Irish men in particular, enjoyed some recreation after grueling hours of physical labor,”50 and extended to other associations, unknown “back home,” where the young Irishman “could perpetuate rather than abandon adolescent ties.”51 As the first American immigrant group, in the modern sense of the word, the Irish became, as Lawrence McCaffrey notes, the “classic ethnics” pioneering “the American urban ghetto, [and] challenging Anglo-Protestant cultural homogeneity.”52 Street gangs were the vanguard in the defense of community in an era where the Irish came increasingly under violent attack from local mobs and anti–Irish riots in American cities increased in frequency. Street fighting proved an indispensable training ground for pugilism and other athletic pastimes. Unlike future migrant waves, the Irish were mainly English-speaking. Yet their customs and religion worried the settled Protestant population, culminating in what became known as “Nativism.” Nicknamed the “Know Nothings,” the anti-immigrant American Party was founded with the intention to limit Irish naturalization to twenty-one years’ residence and bar Roman Catholics from public office.53 While the movement disappeared, it sufficiently polarized the urban poor into competing ethnic camps, pushing the Irish into the orbit of the Democratic Party. Politics became an integral part of both the Irish-American sporting experience, or as Richard Lindberg writes of the Chicago billiards entrepreneur-cum-gambler, Tom Foley: “The three avocations [of professional sports, gambling and politics] were almost interchangeable in the big cities at this time.”54 The lack of opportunities for advancement for the Irish meant professional sports offered an escape, real or metaphoric, for every poor urban immigrant of Irish descent. Everything suggested an occupation in sports was far more appealing for the Irish than it was for WASPs. Up until the early twentieth century, the move didn’t bring material wealth or the universal unfettered attention of the sportsman of today. Professional sportsmen in the nineteenth century were often looked down on as little better than stevedores. One baseball club secretary noted in 1866: “The invariable question put to young men applying for situations in New York is whether they are members of ball clubs. If they answer in the affirmative, they are told that their services will not be needed.”55 In 1872, the New York Times insisted that the typical professional baseball player was “though doubtless occasionally an honest, inoffensive fellow, is usually a worthless, dissipated gladiator; not much above the professional pugilist in morality and respectability.”56 There was also the racial factor. What would now be termed as unacceptable racial stereotyping, Social Darwinism — the scientific theory that poverty and intellectual backwardness of a race, nationality or class of people is purely down to their breeding — was regarded as valid during the Gilded Age. Where science led, popular thinking followed, and there was a tendency to believe that the Irish were physically suitable to the task of sportsman, in much the same way the African American was later thought of as having the same advantage. While the “Leisure Class” wallowed in their genteel pastimes of road trotting and yachting, the more proletariat sports of baseball and prizefighting, as Leo Herskowitz observes, required the “strong arms and legs” of the working man. Urbanization, poverty, and immunity to extreme violence meant the lower urban Irish and their American-born offspring were a perfect match for these sports.57

1. The Millers —The Irish Sportsman’s Road to America

11

Thus the Irish demonstrated that on level playing fields, they were as good as, if not better than, anyone else. Sports not only ultimately offered wealth and heroic status, but it gave the Irish community a self belief in offsetting WASP suppression and exploitation, as Hibernians of Edinburgh and then Glasgow Celtic had proved invaluable in elevating the status of the exiled Irish community in Scotland. Later nineteenth-century American social and health reformers, including John Boyle O’Reilly and James Edward Sullivan, subscribed to encouraging sports as a weapon in the fight against the poor health and the perception of a growing effeminacy of the nation’s males. Rader notes that team sports were increasingly promoted by churches and such new religious youth organizations as the YMCA, in the “healthy growth of moral and religious reflexes … [that] deemphasise the teaching of feminine traits to boys of Jesus.”58 Sports also came to be deemed a means of easing immigrant assimilation. Morgan Bulkeley, the first president of the National Baseball League, once said: There is nothing which will help quicker and better amalgamate the foreign born, and those born of foreign parents in this country, than to give them a little good bringing up in the good old fashioned game of Base Ball. They don’t have things of that kind on the other side of the ocean, and many spend their hours fussing around in conspiring and hatching up plots when they should be out in the open improving their lungs.59

To the likes of Bulkeley, baseball was a business with special rules, cartels, and restraints on pay. It thus proved vulnerable to unscrupulous exploitation, pushing players to throw games, culminating in the 1919 Black Sox scandal. While franchise owners were only too willing to generalize the gambling and drinking shortcomings of their players for material gain, they were oblivious to fomenting the conditions where players sought other sources of pay. From the start, they refused to pay their players in the off season, or interest themselves with after career care, citing that to do so would be “misplaced,” as the players would just throw their generosity away on “gambling and dissipation.” They gradually equated the “growing Irish cohort with moral declension … more than willing to exploit the Victorian prejudice that equated Irish with corruptibility, in order to explain and justify their tightening restrictions on players.”60 The individual sportsman also proved too much of an economic threat, too, as Rader concedes: “The [prize] ring inverted Victorian ideals about money and success…. [T]he accumulation of money represented and validated years of hard work and self-restraint by its possessor. The prize fight and gambler, on the other hand, might earn hundreds of dollars by winning a single bout or bet; such a single stroke of success openly mocked the Victorian ideals of frugality, sobriety, and hard work.”61 Despite being banned in most of the forty-four American states and classed as a felony drawing up to ten years in prison, in 1895 boxing was the other popular sport in the U.S.62 By 1917, the sport was legal in only twenty-three states.63 But within those twenty-two years, it had gained the backing of President Theodore Roosevelt before receiving his wrath. As a scrawny youth he began boxing at Harvard: “There is a certain tendency to underestimate or overlook the need of the virile, masterful qualities of the heart and mind…. There is no better way of counteracting this tendency than by encouraging bodily exercise and especially the sports which develop such qualities as courage, resolution and endurance.”64 Yet while governor of New York State, Roosevelt later repealed the Frawley Act, claiming “prize-fighters themselves were crooked, while the crowd of hangers-on who attended and made up and profited by the matches had placed the whole business on a basis of commercialism and brutality that was intolerable.”65

12

The Irish and the Making of American Sport, 1832–1920

Ultimately there was little in common between the noble art of boxing and the “barbarity” of prizefighting, but the patronage of a set of rules by a titled toff. The prize ring remained just as brutal, immoral, unjustifiably dangerous and corrupt, where violence was a key part of its entertainment value, in 1920 as it was in 1850. The eagerness with which white America sought a “Great White Hope” to counter Jack Johnson was an example of how a community pinned its hopes on sports to reaffirm a racial supremacy of the majority over a minority, where previously it was proof that the minority was racially inferior. With Theodore Roosevelt himself stepping over the line between impartial observer into partisan supporter in visiting the first such “hope” as he prepared for the fight, nothing illustrated how important boxing had become as a synonym for all that was “good” with the white American male. As the United States moved from hostility to embracement of professional sport, the country also moved from a rural Puritan homogenized society to one with greater urbanized and industrialized heterogeneity and clear world martial aspirations. However, to get to this point we must return briefly to “Nomansland” and to the departure of Burke. Had Burke gained forgiveness for the death of Byrne; had he never left the land of his birth; and had prizefighting been allowed to continue in England, there is no doubt that boxing would still have come to the United States. Burke’s arrival wasn’t as significant as that of the hordes disembarking in the wake of the Irish famine. It just preceded it. Prizefighting would remain illegal for decades and participants would be treated as criminals rather than celebrities, long after it gained acceptance by the nation’s 26th president. But Burke versus O’Rourke in New Orleans of 1837 was perhaps to American sports what the first sighting of the Pinta, Niña and Santa Maria coming over the horizon was to the continent as a whole: It was a sign of things to come.

2 The Shanty — The Irish-Born Sportsman in America The term “shanty” comes from “seantigh: an old house.”1

James Burke arrived in the United States in March 1836 from Belfast. Sam O’Rourke had been in North America since 1832, being listed in Bell’s Life in London as fighting in Canada, then briefly bedding down in New York, before settling in New Orleans to open his own fight club in 1835.2 While some sources claim that O’Rourke immediately challenged Burke in insulting terms, the pair traveled what Burke called “Yankeeshire” together, performing exhibitions and fighting challengers.3 Burke appeared in theatrical performances, while O’Rourke supplemented his income by writing a training manual, The Art of Pugilism.4 However, with opponents scarce, the pressure mounted for the two top pugs of the time to meet each other. The date was set for May 5, 1837, and the location was O’Rourke’s adopted home town.5 The Crescent City already possessed a sizeable Irish community in the mid–1830s. Drawn by the ongoing construction of the New Basin Canal, they died in large numbers from yellow fever. Huge industrial public works, like canals and railways, changed the face of American labor relations, abolishing slavery quicker than Wendell Phillips ever could. Up to thirty thousand Irish were buried along the canal, having survived huddled in shacks left by slaves, in the age of industry when slave owners saw their chattel as too valuable and indispensable to waste on dangerous projects. As the Irish-American crime expert T.J. English puts it, better that “an Irishman died on the job, [as] he could be replaced at no cost, since starving Paddies were arriving by the boatload on a near daily basis.”6 Unsurprisingly, Burke walked into a New Orleans that had become another perfect breeding ground for vice, gangs and a deep resentment of anything that smacked of the Anglo-Saxon. Here “the celebrated pugilist and Champion of England” settled on Camp Street and immediately placed an advertisement in the New Orleans Picayune “respectfully beg[ging] leave to inform the gentlemen of this City” he was teaching “the scientific and manly art of Self Defense, whereby gentlemen, after taking a few lessons, will be enabled to chastise those who may offer insult, and protect themselves against the attack of the ruffian.”7 Despite Burke’s ethnicity, the fight between him and O’Rourke ensured another chance 13

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The Irish and the Making of American Sport, 1832–1920

to replicate “in microcosm the long standing enmity between the Irish and English.”8 Handbills were posted in taverns and on the streets in an effort to whip up more hype. Before long O’Rourke had begun to fan the flames by accusing Burke of murdering Byrne.9 The fight was uneventful until Burke smacked one of O’Rourke’s seconds who had accused him of cheating. The crowd swarmed into the ring, as much to protect their bets as to gain revenge for Byrne, and it was they who decided the “result.”10 Declared the victor, O’Rourke was carried through the streets of New Orleans’ Irish quarter, as partisans of both fighters, enflamed “by ethnic hatreds, frustrated by hard economic times and drunk on cheap liquor,” battled throughout the afternoon.11 The fight, or rather the riot that followed it, was reported as far away as Portland, Maine.12 The Albany Evening Journal couldn’t contain its disgust for the participants: One American born citizen, who interfered to save a man’s life, was beaten down with twenty sticks, kicked until he was nearly dead and carried away lifeless. Another respectable native born American, who took no part whatever in the melee, but who was trying to escape from the turmoil, was beaten over the head with big bludgeons by a dozen draymen, until he was laid out upon the gallery of a house in the vicinity, apparently dead…. After the fight was over, and the crowd reached Camp St. the draymen fell on another native American citizen … and beat him till he was nearly dead…. We have been informed that one of the men who was so cruelly beaten is now dead.13

This wasn’t the first Anglo-Irish scrap in the United States.14 Also, Pat O’Donnell and Jim O’Hagan had fought each other in early spring 1832 before a crowd sufficiently large enough to swell the fighters’ purse well beyond contemporary limits.15 But Burke-O’Rourke was the most prestigious the country had yet seen, two champions from a pair of top European pugilistic nations sharing one ethnicity, a significant marker of where the sport was heading for the next half century. Before returning to England, Burke also beat Tom O’Connell three months later at Hart’s Island, Long Island Sound, in a one-sided scrap for which the Baltimore Sun reported “two large steamers were scarcely capacious enough to transport the spectators … to the place of combat.”16 A ton of disgust met this exhibition of imported hooliganism by “two foreign vagabonds … actors” in an “exhibition of brutality, commonly known as a prizefight,” by the Commercial Advertiser of New York City.17 In Gloucester, Massachusetts, the local rag chillingly suggested that a “little acquaintance with the law” of the infamous Charles Lynch and his summary justice “might have a tendency towards reforming these brutish vagabonds.”18 O’Rourke’s hometown rag, the New Orleans Picayune, also wanted the prize ring banned: “As to any two or more men going to the outskirts of our city and enjoying a social knockdown, we have no objection. They may pummel one another to their hearts’ content and we would ever lift our hands or voice to interfere; but when their friends in the public streets of our city, enact such scenes of violence and riot as was committed on Friday, we wish to see them well and severely punished.”19 But elsewhere there was some admiration. The New York Herald, speaking about the Burke-O’Connell fight, proudly proclaimed that “the Anglo-Saxon race is alike under every sky.” Americans, the paper continued, “have been outdone by the ancients in bloody noses and black eyes, but they feel the inequality and are determined to restore the equilibrium.”20 The message was clear: The old world was dominant with the fists, and things had to change. Things did indeed change, but not in the manner that the New York Herald had hoped. By 1855, the New York Times happily conceded this brutality was now monopolized by foreigners, or more specifically, as this word in the lexicon of the day invariably suggested, the Irish:

2. The Shanty —The Irish-Born Sportsman in America

15

The “manly art of self defense” we are happy to say, has never flourished very extensively in this country. Almost all the “professors” of the pugilistic art have been natives of the British Isles, and where Americans have been engaged in a prize fight, it has almost always originated from personal quarrels…. [We] hope, sincerely, that it may never have to be continued. But still, we’re not sure whether this manner of fighting is not preferable to the frequent use of fire-arms, except that the latter will rid us of a troublesome class more quickly.21

It has been suggested that between the start of the eighteenth century and the founding of the Irish Free State, seven million people emigrated from Ireland to North America.22 According to Kerby A. Miller: “In its size, composition, and character, pre–Famine emigration differed significantly from earlier movements and anticipated the massive flight which followed the potato crop failures of the later 1840s.” In the immediate years after 1815, emigration from Ireland was still typically Protestant and affluent. Between 1827 and 1832, Ulster accounted for half the Irish emigration to North America.23 However, it was during the early thirties that Catholics began to outnumber Protestants, as the less skilled and wealthy were on the increase, enticed by “opportunities” such as the New Basin Canal project. By 1836 almost 60 percent of the Irish embarking in New York, were laborers or servants, a jump of 22 percent from a decade previously. The tide was turning on who emigrated, and the Irish famine of 1845 to 1855 turned this growing Catholic wave into a tsunami.24 In total, between 1815 and 1855, up to 2.85 million Irish migrated, with 848,000 entering New York between 1847 and 1851 alone.25 Life was harsh for most of these immigrants. With high illiteracy and rural origins, they were ill prepared for urban life, and possessed few funds to move on to the interior after disembarkation.26 They lived in the worst housing, were highly represented among paupers, criminals and the mentally ill, and contracted more poverty-related diseases than the natives.27 Where they did find work, they did the dirtiest and most dangerous offered, requiring “physical strength and occupational flexibility,” while Irish women were overrepresented among the 50,000 prostitutes working on New York streets in 1849.28 Within this atrocious living hell, it wasn’t surprising that many slipped into alcoholism. George G. Foster described the Irish saturated Five Points of the Lower East Sixth Ward of Manhattan as “the great … ulcer of wretchedness — the very rot skeleton of civilization.”29 Charles Dickens, visiting in 1843, saw it as “loathsome, drooping and decayed.”30 The conditions for prizefighting couldn’t be better, although it was wrong to suggest that fighting was unknown in America. The New York Evening Post in 1823 described prizefighting as one of the “pernicious customs which disgrace the populace of Europe” that were now “creeping among us.”31 Yet there was already a pretty horrendous form of “rough and tumble” contested in Virginia and the Southern frontier involving practices — kicking, biting, kneeing, hair-pulling, emasculation, and eye-gouging, which entailed tearing an eye out of an opponent’s socket — that the ring’s lawmakers in Britain had banned.32 Charles Woodmason, a traveling Anglican minister, noted Virginians fighting “like Tygers [sic] and Bears … Biting one anothers [sic] Lips and Noses off, and gowging [sic] one another — that is thrusting out one anothers [sic] Eyes, and kicking one another on the Cods, to the great damage of many a Poor Woman.”33 The first recorded American champion was Jacob Hyer, based on one fight against a certain Tom Beasley in 1816. Nat Fleischer opined that “the only thing that can be reported concerning it is that Hyer won,” and it was his only fight.34 Who was Beasley, and what were his credentials, are harder questions to answer, but the first book on the American prize ring lists the pair as “very large and powerful first class men” and adds their fight was

16

The Irish and the Making of American Sport, 1832–1920

decided instead “in favor of the latter [Beasley] by an accident, and Hyer retired from the ring with a broken arm.”35 It could also be argued that Jacob Hyer’s own résumé was inflated by being the father of Tom Hyer, a fighter with a more solid claim to champion.36 “Yankee” Sullivan was the original international man of mystery. Born anyone from James Ambrose, Francis, or Frank, Murray or Murry, Francis Martin or Frank Amor, anywhere between Bandon or “Bander,” County Cork, Liverpool, or London’s East End, at anytime between March 10, 1811, and April 12, 1815, a rather thin fighting career in the old country stretched between 1830 and 1832, saw him beat a string of nondescript fighters.37 At some point, Sullivan was arrested and shipped off to Australia, though not for something befitting his profile — such as revolutionary treason — but burglary, or even murdering his wife.38 Ed James rehashed a story in a later edition of his work, Life and Battles of Yankee Sullivan, long after Sullivan died in San Francisco, claiming the twenty-three-year-old Irishman had been arrested in Liverpool, “convicted of felony,” and packed off to Sydney for fourteen years: “For nearly three years he wore the prison uniform, and being of a very ungovernable temper, he was more than once subjected to the ‘cat-and-nine tails,’ and publicly lashed….”39 Sullivan first arrived in 1838, and soon, as James contends, had “one or two ‘dashes.’” First he fought Pat O’Connor in New York in January 1840, and then Bob Carbrey in Boston a month later. He “got a liking for the Yorkers … and [made] arrangements for taking up residence permanently in this country.” 40 The following year Sullivan slipped into England using his alias, where he defeated Johnny “Hammer” Lane at Crookham Common, near Newbury, Berkshire, for the middleweight championship of England. Bell’s Life in London didn’t have a clue who he was:

Yankee Sullivan, circa 1846 (Library of Congress).

With regard to Sullivan, he is unknown in the pugilistic circles; he is stated to be a Yankee; but we are inclined he is an Eastender; like Jem

2. The Shanty —The Irish-Born Sportsman in America

17

Ward, of Irish parents, and having quitted his country at an early age, has for the last fifteen years been improving his knowledge of the use of his digits in foreign climes…. On returning to this country he renewed his acquaintance with his East-end pals, who, finding him rough and ready, with tolerable knowledge of the art of self-defense, determined to give him a chance in the London ring.

A fortunate Sullivan, despite being overmatched, succeeded because his opponent had his arm fractured in the third round.41 He then took on another Englishman, Vincent Hammond, at League Island, Pennsylvania, in September 1841, before fighting Tom Secor on Staten Island in January and William Bell on Hart’s Island in August, a year before American fistic history’s first major event of notoriety.42 Fought in a spot “between Yonkers and Hastings in Westchester County,” New York, in September 1842, the fight between Tom McCoy and Chris Lilly was given extensive coverage in the press, not for its sporting magnitude or significance — there was little of that — but for the ghoulish interest in its bloody violence.43 Fought under London rules, this fight led to the New World’s first ring death. Like many fights of the time, it originated from “an unsettled grudge between them,” following Lilly’s victory over a fighter called Murphy (possibly Joseph Murphy). Amid the general encomiums bestowed on the youthful conqueror, McCoy’s voice was silent, and when challenged for his opinion, he gave it in opposition to the prevailing sentiment. This Lilly couldn’t bear, and feeling desirous to brush away any existing doubt from his rival’s mind asked Tom to put the gloves on with him for a set-to and try. But the latter refused and in an instant, Lilly hit him a straightforward blow that carried him to the floor. McCoy rose and rushed in, but they were soon separated, and a match was instantly proposed.44

The fight lasted a grueling 120 rounds, in which McCoy was knocked down eighty times. There was certainly an amount of carelessness that contributed to McCoy’s death when his backers dismissed victory in the fifteenth round for a low blow.45 Many of the spectators were eventually so disgusted that they demanded a halt of the fight, while Sullivan, Lilly’s second and fight organizer, called for McCoy’s team to save his life.46 The actor Henry Shanfroid replied, “He ain’t half licked yet.”47 And McCoy, barely conscious and choking on his own blood, wasn’t having any of it, telling his team at the end of the penultimate round: “Nurse … nurse me and I’ll whip him yet.”48 Writing later, Sullivan described how he battled through the crowd to get to McCoy: God grant that I may never see such another sight. He lay upon his back, his face and neck one bruised, unseemly, bloated mass of incipient corruption; gasping for breath, and sucking by the violence of his respiration, his bloated lips far back in his mouth. In the next moment he ceased to breathe, and word went in a hoarse whisper that he is dead! Never shall I forget the talismanic horror of that expression.49

A coroner determined that McCoy had died from drowning in the blood from his own gaping wounds.50 Little is known of McCoy other than a description by Sullivan: “If Lilly’s appearance was fine, McCoy’s was beautiful. His skin had a warmer glow than the former’s; his form more elegantly proportioned, and his air and style more graceful and manlike. His swelling breast curved out like a cuirass; his shoulders were deep with a bold curved blade, and the muscular development of the arm large and finely brought out.”51 At the very least he was Irish by descent (his birthplace is unknown).52 Before the fight, the Baltimore Sun had written of the prominence of Irish pugs in the British ring, laying the blame for the problem squarely at the feet of Perfidious Albion:

18

The Irish and the Making of American Sport, 1832–1920 In Ireland … it is an importation — one, too, which has paid no duty to the British government. Calculated to brutalize and degrade the people, and thus combine with other causes to fit them for the bondage in which they have long been held, it was British policy to encourage it there; hence Irish pugilists were brought to England, rewarded with that badge of disgrace, “the champion’s belt,” and sent back to sow the seeds of degradation among their own countrymen.

Such a view was a reflection of contemporary Anglo-American relations, but the Sun also warned of treacherous attempts of promoting the ring by certain members of the press, often “owned and conducted by men of property and enterprise, devoted to what are commonly called ‘the sports of the turf ’ … gratifying the viscous taste of the low and the depraved” of America. While New York was where English pugs and “their Irish disciples” had settled, the Sun was determined that “this species of imported brutality will never reach our city.”53 It would fail in that respect, and soon it was reporting on America’s first homegrown pugilist victim: [T]he brutal practice of prize fighting as it was conducted in England … has for years past, been struggling for patronage and favor in this country. In connection with the subject we now present in another column a terrible illustration of the consequences of this imbruting and pernicious vice…. It will be seen that in a matter of “sport”— to gratify the devilish taste of a certain class of the community — and for a purse of a few dollars, a wretched man has been beaten to death….54

Still, if we expected this self-righteousness to be extended to the fallen and their families, then we were mistaken. A report circulated in both the above article and in the New York Herald that McCoy’s mother had told him that if he didn’t win, he shouldn’t come home alive. Now “her wish has … been realized.”55 A journalist from the New York Tribune doorstepped “to see the monster, in shape of woman and mother who could make such a declaration,” and his dispatch proves sickening in its exploitation and mockery of a grieving mother: “[A woman] was talking incoherently and when pressed … she replied: ‘I am the mother — yes, I am the mother of that beautiful boy … I told him not to go — I begged him — yes, I got down upon my knees on Sunday night before him, and plead: My son! My son! Do not break the heart of your poor mother — do not go!’” The correspondent, slightly hypocritically, demanded no more accusations against the woman.56 Still, the New York Herald demanded a day in court: “We now call upon the authorities to punish all concerned, to the full extent of the law and to put a stop to these disgraceful proceedings in this country forever.”57 Eighteen men, eleven for also causing a riot and affray, were put on trial for McCoy’s manslaughter.58 “Yankee” Sullivan, George Kensett, and John McCleester, were quickly found guilty at Westchester. Yankee served almost ten months in Sing Sing before being pardoned by the Democratic Governor William C. Bouck on the proviso that he hand over two sureties of five hundred dollars and that he’d refrain from the prize ring for two years.59 The others fared far better, with Lilly getting hit with a five-hundred-buck fine after the judge refused demands for a jail sentence, claiming the expense of these “milling” trials was huge and that financial penalties were more effective.60 “Country” McCleester ended up fighting in the Mexican War with the U.S. Army, while another of the fighters’ backing staff, James Reed, deserted to join Jon Riley’s San Patricio battalion.61 Taking such a patriotic nom de guerre and wearing the Stars and Stripes round his waist was typical of Sullivan’s shifting identity.62 But while he was keen to embrace his new home, if only for money, he soon found himself still the representative of the marginalized and

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detested immigrant. Opposite to him in this ethnic battle stood a butcher called Tom Hyer, son of Jacob, who had been placed at the top of the nation’s fistic pyramid as early as 1841 following what appears to be little more than an impromptu scrap on the Hudson north of New York with Sullivan’s friend John “Country” McCleester. American Fistiana later wrote: “[Nativist Americans] cast their eyes round about the pugilistic circle to find a man capable of holding up the honor of the Stars and Stripes against the encroachments of the Green Flag of the Emerald Isle.” Hyer never felt that once you were a “champ,” you were obliged to defend your title, but the fight against immigration convinced him that should there be an offer to restore ethnic pride, he was the man to take it.63 The offer finally arrived one night in April 1848, when Sullivan stumbled half drunk into Frank Stuart’s oyster bar on the corner of Park Place and Broadway.64 Having fought just once since the Bell contest, a twelve-minute victory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, over the brother of former English champion Benjamin Caunt, Robert, he was hardly in any great shape to accept an impromptu punch-up in front of a limited number of spectators. But that was what Sullivan did. Immediately seeing each other, like two fighting dogs in a corner of a park, Hyer and Sullivan set about each other, with Sullivan coming off worse after being caught in a headlock and beaten senseless in a scuffle that left “Hyer cock of the walk.”65 A passing policeman, the future chief of the city’s police, George Walling, entered the room as Hyer fiddled with his gun to finish off the horizontal Sullivan, lying in a box. He told Hyer to “put up that pistol,” to which Hyer replied, in a gruff voice: “Who the devil are you?” “I’m an officer,” I replied, exhibiting my star. “They’re going to bring the gang here,” said Hyer, in a calm voice, “and I’m not going to let them murder me without a pretty tough fight for my life.” “Come, get out of this. Come along with me,” I said, and Hyer, taking hold of my arm, we left the saloon…. No sooner was he out of sight than a howling mob of Sullivan’s friends came rushing toward me. They had heard of Sullivan’s discomfiture, and were in search of Hyer, who, if they had caught him, would most assuredly have been murdered. Some of the crowd asked me where Sullivan was, and when I told them where I had last seen him, they made a rush for the oyster saloon. I could plainly hear their yells of rage when they found their friend. Hyer had not left the place a moment too early.66

Following his recovery, both to his body and his pride, Sullivan took out an advert — a card — in newspapers declaring: “I am no ‘Irish braggart’ or bully, although I am an Irishman and believe I can show myself worthy of my country whenever I am required.”67 Hyer accepted the challenge, with both participants signing “articles of agreement” that August. The Baltimore Sun later claimed that Hyer “heartily detests the vocation” but had been needled by Sullivan for years, and now that his mother had passed away, had no reason left not to confront Sullivan.68 He’d later insist that the fight was merely a series of “acts … of self defense,” and that he had only fought Sullivan because he had been followed “from city to city … for the purpose of provoking a fight,” with Sullivan insulting his late mother.69 The fight was set to take place at Rock Mount, Maryland, on January 10, 1849. The New York Weekly Herald predicted it would end in “homicide” at the very least: “There is, we are told, a great deal of personal feeling existing between the two parties … over and above the rivalry between them as to who is the best pugilist…. What a strange exhibition in this civilized Christian community.”70 However, the Maryland government wasn’t willing to agree to an illicit event by out-of-town criminals on their patch. A spot among a pine knoll, a mile in from the shores of Kent County, Maryland, called Roach’s Point

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according to one report, was found instead,71 and at ten past four on February 7, 1849, just as the sun began to go down, both combatants were finally able to emerge to fight, with Sullivan arriving first, throwing his “rich, dark green” velvet hat into the ring as a sign of his readiness.72 The match lasted a bloody, untidy ten minutes and sixteen rounds, with as much wrestling present as actual punching. The Baltimore Sun quoted one witness saying, “The parties met with considerable exhibition of personal animosity, and upon exchanging blows it was with an evident determination to make short work by sharp punishment.” Sullivan suffered such a deep laceration of his scalp that it lifted “from the bone of the forehead [so] that it fell over his [left] eye and obscured his sight.”73 The scandal rag, the New York Police Gazette, wrote: “Both men came up bloody to the scratch; Sullivan being literally clotted with gore, while the clear crimson smoked on Hyer’s chest, from a lance wound which had been made under his right eye to prevent it from closing out his sight.”74 Sullivan, when he finally recovered, denied he had been defeated, and called on his cronies “throughout the country, who have money staked on my fight with Hyer, not to give up a cent,” and continued to argue that he had won.75 The animosity of the fight continued with a report a few weeks later claiming a pair of the fighters’ seconds were arrested in New York after quarrelling “about the merits of their respective champions.”76 Hyer never fought again in a prize fight, although he did have a couple of barroom scraps. He challenged the English heavyweight champion the following year, while simultaneously continuing to palm off the attention of a new challenger on the block who had come down the Hudson from Troy: John Morrissey. Born in February 1831 in the Tipperary town of Templemore, he was barely three when his parents, Timothy and Julia, crossed the Atlantic to Canada, before moving south to settle in the New York town of Troy. A colorful youth saw the lad make his “Metropolitan” pugilistic debut in 1849, but his route to fistic fame took John Morrissey. Lithograph by Currier & Ives, c. 1860 (Library many turns. In between, as might be expected from of Congress).

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someone whose claim to world greatness was hailed by his contemporaries, it’s hard to tell what is and isn’t the truth about Morrissey’s early years. The legend about how he acquired his nom de guerre, “Old Smoke,” is perhaps worth recalling. His first biographer, William E Harding, noted how Morrissey’s eye “became infatuated with a noted Cyprian, Kate Ridgely, who was a mistress of Tom McCann, a noted rough and tumble fighter.” One night, Morrissey walked into a saloon belonging to Sandy Lawrence, where McCann offered to fight him for Ridgely. In the ensuing brawl Morrissey was trapped on a burning coal stove, with only his coat protecting his posterior. With smoke pouring out of his backside, Morrissey persevered sufficiently, with the coals now burning his flesh, to beat McCann half to death. He left the tavern with little more than a burnt coat, second-degree burns, and a sobriquet that would remain for the rest of his life.77 This was Morrissey’s first recorded “prize fight.” No stake and no belt for the winner, although it’s doubtful that all onlookers would’ve declined the opportunity to place a flutter on the outcome. He survived two years in New York before joining the rush for Californian gold, stowing away on a ship to California in 1851, where like most of the folks that kept their cash, he concentrated on the service industry to the prospectors, by providing gambling dens. Then Morrissey pulled off an incredible stunt. Historians of prizefighting will tell you that George Thompson lies nowhere: he doesn’t even get a page of his own in the Cyber Boxing Zone, despite apparently being Californian champion until he lost to John Morrissey on Mare Island in San Francisco Bay in August 1852. Even while he was beating “Old Smoke” around the ring for ten rounds it’s doubtful Thompson knew the significance of this fight, and that this was something to tell his grandchildren, if he lived long enough to see them. He was fighting for the “Championship of America,” despite Morrissey’s record being identical to any young drunk on a Saturday night.78 As round eleven started, a menacing pro-Morrissey crowd started baying for Thompson’s blood. Looking like he wouldn’t see the end of the day, let alone recite boring yarns to young children sitting on grandpa’s knee, Thompson decided “a quick end of the fight, was preferable to a quick end to him,” and fell on his sword, deliberately fouling Morrissey twice. Morrissey pocketed the two-thousand-dollar stake and the right to call himself— if only because he said so himself—“Champion of America.”79 The ability of Morrissey to achieve boxing immortality shows the disorganization of “sports” at the time. More surprising is how his boast has been held up by boxing experts like Nathaniel Fleischer, whose The Ring elected him in 1954 to its Hall of Fame. One person not playing ball was Hyer. He too could be accused of forming his own “association,” one that demanded far more money from Morrissey and his backers to fight him than they could ever show. This was fortunate, as his pastimes included an aversion to physical exercise and a love of the two nemeses of the fighter: drink and women. So in his place, Morrissey turned to Yankee Sullivan. Now in New York, Boston Corners was a remote Massachusetts hamlet in 1853. Lying in the tri-state area that also bordered Vermont, it was difficult to police, and thus a perfect setting for a prize fight. The New York Times reported that between noon Monday and 6 o’clock Wednesday morning, three thousand people left New York in trains packed “with hundreds of persons, whose curiosity was excited to such a pitch, as to prompt them to abandon their business, families and all else, for the purpose of witnessing the brutal exhibition.”80 Fight fans could only alight near the venue after assaulting the train crew.81 Morrissey won controversially in the thirty-seventh round when he put his arm around

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Sullivan’s neck and with his back against the ropes lifted him up. Both fighters’ seconds — Sullivan’s Andee Sheehan and William Wilson, and Morrissey’s “Awful” Gardner and Tom O’Donnell — rushed into the melee and began fighting each other as Morrissey lay on the floor waiting for his seconds to pick him up. Suddenly the referee decided Morrissey had won, claiming later that Sullivan was taken out of the ring, something that the New York Times reporter disagreed with. Shocked spectators looked on as Sullivan, far from finished, beckoned Morrissey to continue fighting. The Times began its intense round-by-round coverage with a pompously hypocritical declaration by calling the fight a “brutal … disgusting … [and] revolting affair.”82 In the aftermath, the two Irishmen took different paths. Deciding his fighting career was finished, and fearing another spell “inside” as authorities connived to bring all participants, including spectators, to justice, Sullivan moved to the West Coast.83 Meanwhile, Morrissey remained in New York, his first undertaking to write to the New York Times contradicting a report that he was dead, not from the effects of the fight but as one of the twenty-seven fatalities reported to have died from “sun stroke” during the sweltering heat on fight day.84 It took Morrissey nine months before he fought his next fight. William Poole, an associate of Tom Hyer and the sinister inspiration for Martin Scorcese’s Bill “The Butcher” Cutting in Gangs of New York, was a “native” mirror of Morrissey, and proved an ideal opponent. Born across the Hudson in Sussex County, New Jersey, probably to English parents, he supplemented his income as a butcher with membership in a fire company and a gang by hiring political muscle for the Know-Nothings, and through crime. He was also a formidable fighter, and this time Morrissey’s underhanded tactics failed when the pair squared off at the Steamboat Wharf at the end of Amos Street, in the early morning of July 26, 1854. According to the New York Times, there appears to have been no time for any signing of documents in the planning of this fight. A clear animosity between the fighters spilled over in the City Hotel on the corner of Broadway and Howard Street when Morrissey interrupted Poole with a demand for payment of a gambling debt from the Sullivan fight. An “exceedingly rough argument” contrived that the fight should go ahead at seven the following morning. With news of the scrap spreading quickly, over a hundred spectators managed to get up in time. In the end Morrissey was badly beaten by Poole in a short brawl that was probably a lot less than the reported five minutes. Morrissey’s injuries, including an eye gouged from its socket, weren’t just to his body. He was humiliated, had cried “enough” to prevent further injuries, and “left the scene in a light wagon, without a friend to attend him….”85 In the New York Times, two days later, Morrissey reissued a challenge in a long-winded letter, in which he suggested Poole was more than a little aided in the fight: “My friends advised me not to go. When I started from my house to go and fight Poole, I was alone, but little did I think that Poole had a hundred men on the ground stripped to help whip me.”86 Some claimed that Poole wasn’t even present. Regardless, Morrissey never fought Poole again. Eight months later, on a Saturday night in March 1855, the pair met at a Broadway saloon called the Stanwix Hall, where Morrissey spat in Poole’s face. An attempt to shoot Poole was foiled when Morrissey’s gun jammed, as Poole fought back with a pair of carving knives. The altercation was eventually broken up by the police and both men were arrested and shortly freed. Poole then returned to the saloon at midnight, where he was mortally wounded by Morrissey’s crony Lewis Baker. Fourteen days later, Poole finally passed away with the immortal last words of: “Good-bye, boys: I die a true American.”87

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Morrissey managed to escape any involvement in the murder. His interests moved away from fighting, with the Irish-American John Carmel Heenan, aka “The Benicia Boy,” his final opponent. They fought for a side bet of $10,000 and the American Heavyweight championship on October 20, 1858, at Long Point, seventy miles from Buffalo, in Canada. Heenan proved an inadequate challenge to Morrissey, with the New York Times describing Old Smoke as looking like a “magnificent animal … [with] a look of wear and tear about him which spoke volumes,” while Heenan “looked pale and dull of eye, and his muscles, though large, lacked consistency.”88 Newspaper coverage was even greater this time, something quite remarkable for an illegal event. The New York Herald devoted the whole front page to the fight, describing it as “eleven terrific rounds,”89 before adding sheepishly: “Gymnasiums … are useful but not indispensable institutions … to our youthful sons of toil, who have more exercise than their bodies require in their daily labor…. Pugilism is alike dangerous to their moral and social existences.”90 Meanwhile, the New York Tribune’s editorial took the oft-repeated line that their presence was purely to report crime and cater to public interest. In keeping with a “duty of reporting the fights as well as the hangings and the murders of the community, we have … given the particulars.”91 As far back as the Burke-O’Rourke “mill,” newspapers recognized the importance of prize-fight coverage to sales. Then the New Orleans Picayune had declared sarcastically: “[W]e have seen no other evidence of better times on the money market that the fact that our paper has had a most extensive sale….”92 The middleweight Chandler-Dooney fight of 1867 received a more robust defense of reporting from the San Francisco Chronicle, which had spent five hundred dollars on getting swift results by telegraph, the interest so substantial for it to “incur the expense of an enterprise never before attempted in San Francisco,” while taking a swipe at one rival’s hypocrisy: “The [San Francisco] Bulletin sermonizes with great solemnity and unction on the wickedness and brutality of prizefighting, but nevertheless dispatches its reporters to the ground … in order that it may spread the ‘demoralizing’ details before its readers.”93 Prizefighting offered the initial opportunities for the Irish, but other Irish athletes increasingly viewed America as the land of milk and honey. Professional athletics took off in the seventies with Daniel O’Leary as its biggest star. From Cork, he had arrived around 1861 as a nineteen-year-old, working as a book agent in Chicago before resigning to become a professional runner.94 John Ennis, from Richmond Harbor, Cloondara, County Longford, had emigrated in 1849 as a six-year-old and eventually fought in the Civil War, while Tippborn John Hughes migrated sometime before 1877, coming to notice after challenging O’Leary to a race despite not having any money or backer.95 “Captain” James Daly (Daley), the first of three great all-round athletes of the 1870s, was a stonecutter and professional athlete born in Shanballymore, County Cork, in 1852, who came to the States at the latest by the mid-seventies, and was by the end of the decade marketed as the “Champion Athlete of the World.” A member of the Kings’ County AC, the forerunner of the first Irish-American AC, he also fought as a low-level prizefighter.96 Daly would make his mark as a noted wrestler in the eighties, but he also performed as a medieval knighted swordsman at events organized by a promoter called Billy O’Brien in 1887. At one show the New York Times noted Daly “cavorted about the field while waiting for his opponent in the way which may have been characteristic of Knights errant in days of old.”97 He dispatched Sergeant Geiss of the Prussian Cavalry in an Independence Day contest at the Polo Grounds refereed by the pugilist Joe Coburn, whom the New York Times

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mocked as knowing “as much about the sport, as a chess player does about baseball.” Daly took just one swipe of his sword on his opponent’s shoulder to dispatch the Teuton, and as he lay on the floor his horse allegedly “picked up a mouthful of grass and looked imploringly at the gigantic Captain as he chewed on his free lunch.” Despite concerns, Geiss was quickly revived with whiskey, brushed down, and was soon in mufti drowning any sorrows in lager at the grounds’ bar.98 Further contests were halted when Daly’s horse lost control in a similar event at Coney Island and ran into the crowd, causing one man to break his leg.99 Another Irish champion poly-athlete cum military man was Thomas F. Lynch, who was born in 1852. While there is no record of when he arrived in New York, he moved to Boston in 1880 to compete for the South Boston AC, before returning to New York as a soldier in the Sixty-Ninth Regiment.100 James T. Maloney, the last of this trio, was recalled by John L. Sullivan as being one of the greatest athletes he had ever seen: “I had seen [Maloney] jump in and out of ten flour barrels, one to the other, one hundred times and then make a running jump of twenty-two feet. I think the record then was something like twentyfour feet.”101 In 1885, fourteen visiting Irish athletes, including William J.M. Barry and the sprinter, jumper and Irish rugby international Edward J. Walshe, competed at the NYAC Fall Games. Barry returned to New York in July 1887, hailed by James Gordon Bennett as “a great athlete coming,” and eventually joined the NYAC.102 The long jumper John Purcell of Barefield, County Clare, who Malcolm W. Ford claimed was “one of the best amateur general athletes yet seen in Great Britain, Canada or America,” broke the world record for the hop, step and jump on his athletic debut in 1884. He eventually settled in San Francisco, competing for the Olympic AC in the Pacific and Western Athletic Championships.103 The following January the Sporting Life announced that the Manhattan AC had successfully recruited Tom Conneff to “make the trip across in time to run in the two-mile race in the great indoor athletic meeting of this club in Madison Square Garden on Jan. 28.”104 A native of Clane, County Kildare, he had already attracted considerable media attention on his debut in the States the previous year when he was a “feature of the occasion” of the MAC’s winter games in January 1887.105 On the morning of January 25, 1888, he returned and immediately declared to a waiting reporter of the Evening World his intention “to remain here permanently.” When asked if he knew he was billed to run three days later, the nineteen-year-old was upbeat: “Why, no. I hadn’t contemplated running so soon. But I won’t mind it much, I guess.”106 At Madison Square Garden, Conneff was given a warm reception in what was “in the opinion of the club men and many of the spectators” deemed the “event of the evening.”107 In his first few years in America, Conneff became one of the top “imported” or “adopted” amateurs who “brought with them quality competition and increased interest in amateur distance running.”108 Winning the 10 Mile American title four years in a row, he was described by Samuel Crowther as “an excellent example of the stocky, solidly built longdistance runner … scarcely more than five feet in height and built like a gymnasium man.” Crowther also observed that men of Conneff ’s stature rarely excelled at the middle distances, “where a certain amount of speed and great length of stride are necessary.”109 In 1893 Conneff enrolled at Holy Cross College, slipping out of most competitions for two years with his aversion to training given as one reason, until Mike Murphy at the NYAC convinced him to return.110 Murphy put him on a strict three-month course of training in an effort to get him fit enough to compete against the London AC in September 1895. His success was extraordinary: on August 21, 1895, despite working all night as a Pullman car conductor,

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Conneff ran three quarters of a mile in just over three minutes, setting a world record that would stand until 1931.111 Two months later he ran the fastest mile of the nineteenth century in four minutes, fifteen and three-fifths of a second, a time that remained unbeaten for sixteen years.112 The “Gaelic Invasion” later in the year deposited seventeen of its fifty “stalwart young lads with remarkably well developed limbs [who] sprang down the gangplank of the steamer Wisconsin of the Guion Line in a lively fashion … [carrying] big blackthorn sticks and ‘hurling’ clubs in their hands,” permanently in America.113 Only one of these athletes would go on to win a national athletic title: James S. Mitchell, the original “Irish Whale.” Born in Emly, Tipperary, in 1864, he was a quarter-mile runner before moving into the throwing events after breaking both his ankles in 1882. Within two years he had taken the world record for the 56-lb. weight.114 Like some others on the tour, Mitchell found “America so congenial” that he remained.115 Although banned initially by the now dominant AAU for being a “professional” after joining the Manhattan AC to procure a promised job, he was reinstated in March 1889, breaking further records through “ingenious devices used as handles” on the weights.116 He left for the New Jersey AC, then joined the NYAC in 1890, where, in contrast to the NYAC’s nominal membership code, he was part of an increasing accumulation of talent.117 Mitchell went on to win eleven American National Championships — seven consecutively between 1891 and 1897 — in the 56-lb. weight division and nine — eight consecutively between 1889 and 1896 — in the hammer event. By 1894 he simultaneously held both throwing world records. He also took a bronze medal, when he was past his best, in the 56-lb. weight event at the St. Louis Olympics in 1904. The others who emigrated were athletes like John J. Mooney, from County Cork, who joined the Xavier AC and returned to Ireland in 1894 as an American representative, taking an unrecognized world record in the long jump at Mitchellstown.118 William McCarthy from Macroom, Cork, a runner since fourteen, competed for the Manhattan AC.119 Others included J.J. Connery, who participated at the 1890 Gaelic Society games for the Star AC and took part in pole vaulting.120 J.J. Cullen, a hurler and official on the tour, became a referee.121 Meanwhile the GAA secretary between 1888 and 1889, William Prendergast, would return to America in the nineties, eventually becoming New York City’s comptroller, the Progressive Party nominee for governor in 1912, and one of the major players within the third I-AAC.122 In 1896 another Irish immigrant, John J. McDermott, became the winner of the first marathon on American soil. This “pale faced man in blue tights,” a lithographer from the Pastime AC, had run from Stanford, Connecticut, to the Columbia Oval in the Bronx in a moderate three hours, twenty-five minutes and fifty-five seconds, with the New York Times accepting that the poor time was due to heavy rain.123 A year later, on April 19, 1897, he won the inaugural Boston Marathon, defeating fourteen opponents over the twenty-five miles from Ashland to Boston and beating Louis Spiros’s time in Athens by ten seconds.124 Crossing the finishing line, as Colman McCarthy of the Washington Post would a century later write, McDermott massaged “his cramped legs … [wiped] blistered and bloodied feet, with skin peeling from the soles, [and] vowed never to run in Boston again.”125 Pamela Cooper records the large number of Irish runners at this event, which included second-place J.J. Kiernan of St. Bartholemew’s AC, that “anticipated the marathon’s potential for the assertion of ethnic solidarity.”126 Now one of the world’s foremost marathons, it remained successful for the Irish, being won by a disproportionate number of its sons in its first twenty years.127

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From the mid-nineties to around 1910, a third wave of Irish athletes began arriving in America, many of whom became part of the group of bulky throwers known as the “Irish Whales.” According to Arthur Daley, the men were so christened as late as the 1912 Olympics by a dining room steward on the boat transporting the athletes to Stockholm, who was astonished at their capacity to eat. Having “grown bowlegged from carrying heaping trays to [their] table,” he complained: “They’re not men, they’re whales.”128 These were “a roistering carefree set of hellions,” according to the famous sportswriter, who participated in sport purely for the fun of it: “And fun they had. They were all weight-throwers and never had to worry about their waistlines or training. They ate enormous quantities of food. Beer never affected them. It was like water.”129 James S. Mitchell was the first of these huge athletes, but they became famous with the generation following John Flanagan’s embarkation in New York around early 1897, in which he won altogether twenty-two Olympic medals of various metals. Martin Sheridan followed in 1901, joining his brother Richard, who had already won an AAU National Championship in the 16-lb. hammer the previous year. Matt McGrath, “one of those huge, iron-muscled athletes that have been Ireland’s glory,” arrived as a greenhorn in Manhattan aged twenty-one in 1898.130 Pat McDonnell, from Doonbeg, County Clare, left Ireland as a nineteen-year-old a year later, on arrival, an immigration officer at Ellis Island misunderstood his brogue and put his name down as McDonald.131 Con Walsh, from Carriganimmy, County Cork, moved onto New York from Canada around the winter of 1906 and began competing for the I-AAC in 1907.132 Pat Ryan saw the back of Pallasgreen, Limerick, in 1910 after winning numerous Irish championships.133 Irish track and jumping athletes also arrived during this period. John Holloway from Bansha, Tipperary, emigrated shortly after his last Irish pole vault championship in 1898.134 In 1909, the Leahy brothers, Con and Patrick, moved to New York, while the steeplechaser Pat Flynn washed up in the States after the First World War from Bandon, County Cork.135 The previous December, Matthew Maloney of Trinity AC in Brooklyn, a Clareman who had been in the States since 1905, ran from Rye-on-the-Sound to Central Park in the snow, breaking the world amateur record at the New York City Marathon in the process.136 Some only became great athletes after they arrived in the States, either as children or adults, and joined local clubs. Pat McDonald won his first national championship in 1907, eight years after his arrival.137 Unlike McDonald, Mike Sweeney, born on a farm outside Kenmare, County Kerry, in 1872, the eldest of eight children to Daniel and Ellen Sweeney, grew up in the Canal Street area of New York.138 In the winter of 1891 Sweeney joined the Xavier AC, showing immense promise as an eighteen-year-old rookie. Within a year he had broken the world record for the high jump. At Travers Island in October 1892, the New York Herald described how a “disappointed but not disheartened” Sweeney took that crucial second jump after failing at the first: This time he eyed the bar crucially for two minutes. Then having gauged the height accurately, he walked slowly forward, gradually increasing his pace until it had developed into a run. Now he was within five feet of it, and springing from the ground as lightly as a panther he leaped into the air and over the bar without disturbing it. He had accomplished the ambition of his life and eclipsed the efforts of W.B. Page, the greatest jumper of his time.139

The New York Times noted Sweeney’s peculiar stride as he leapt into the air: “As he rose at the bar everyone in the big crowd held his breath for an instant, but as the jumper came down upon the other side and it was seen that the bar remained in its position, a big shout went up that might have been heard across the sound.”140 The following February he broke the world indoor high jump record at the winter meeting of the Boston Athletic Association.141

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Some stays in America were fleeting. Denis Horgan from Banteer, Cork, had just set the world record for the 16-lb. shot when he joined this growing community of Irish athletes in New York in August 1900. He joined the Pastime AC in time for that year’s AAU National Championships, where he gained revenge on Richard Sheldon’s win in London earlier in the year.142 He was back in 1905 declaring his intention to take the 16-lb. shot world record back from W.W. Coe and that he’d stay for a year.143 The following season he joined the NYAC, setting a new world record for the 28-lb. stone at the AOH games at Celtic Park, before returning to Ireland in January 1908.144 Other guest athletes, like Tom Kiely and Peter O’Connor, also competed in the American Athletic Union championships or for the I-AAC, prompted by the club’s success and promises of excellent career prospects both on and away from the stadium.145 But in the words of Mark Quinn, this exodus devastated Irish athletics: “The extent of sporting talent that Ireland lost due to emigration in the final decades of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is inestimable and it could be argued that Irish athletics and field sports in particular never recovered.”146 And as the century closed, the Irish sporting prowess on the track and field encompassed every major American athletic attraction, and their dominance would continue for another decade. In 1913, the Chicago Tribune, probably through its sport writer Jack Proctor, observed the long history of the Irish and athletics and their place at the time among the world’s top track and field performers: “The Irish always have leaned toward athletics and many of the greatest athletes of the present day are Irish or of Irish descent.”147 While Sullivan and Morrissey were battling it out in 1853, the country became infatuated by a bat-and-ball game. By the end of the Civil War, baseball was evolving into a major sport. In 1871 came the birth of its first major league, the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, formed by clubs located solely in the Northeast or the Midwest around Chicago. Unlike other sports, the Irish-born who became successful at its highest level had almost exclusively moved to the States as young children, while none ever returned to Ireland to die. Typical of them was Con Lucid. A Dublin-born journeyman who played just fifty-four games with four teams in five seasons, he was brought to the States when he was just eight months old.148 The first Irish-born player to participate in any major league game was Andy Leonard, debuting for the Washington Olympics against Boston on May 5, 1871. This piece of luck from the scheduling of games meant he preceded Ed Duffy by three days. Andrew Jackson Leonard was born somewhere in County Cavan on June 1, 1846, and whose family, probably Protestant, emigrated across the Atlantic and settled in Newark. Already having seven years of playing experience, including two with the highly rated Cincinnati Red Stockings where he earned $800 a season, he later won two National League pennants with the Boston Red Stockings in 1877 and 1878 before ending his career back in Cincinnati suffering poor eyesight.149 A total of at least a further forty-six Irish-born baseball players followed Leonard and Duffy into the Major Leagues.150 From a country without a tradition of playing the game, this is a remarkable figure. Comparing it to other countries’ players who have made it to the majors, excluding Canada and Puerto Rico, only the Dominican Republic (560), Venezuela (283), Cuba (173), Mexico (113), Japan (57)— all major baseball playing countries — have provided more foreign major leaguers. Also, Ireland had more major leaguers than Japan until 2009, or Nicaragua (12). Thirteen players debuted in the 1870s, nineteen in the 1880s, seven in the 1890s, six in the 1900s, and two in the 1910s: just nine Irish players

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debuted in the twentieth century, and there has not been an Irish-born player since Joe Cleary’s solitary game for the Washington Senators in August 1945. Regarding managers, the figure is even more impressive; at eight, there were more Irish bosses than any foreign nation, including Cuba (7), Canada (6), or Puerto Rico (2).151 The Chicago Cubs and the Pittsburgh Pirates lineal franchises have hired the most Irish players with ten each, followed by the Boston (now Atlanta) Braves and St. Louis Cardinals, each having eight. Of the Irish immigrants who have graced the majors, eight players have appeared in more than five hundred games: Patsy Donovan (1824), “Dirty” Jack Doyle (1569), Jimmy Archer (847), Tony Mullane (784), Reddy Mack (550), Jimmy Walsh (541), Tom Needham Patsy Donovan, pictured in 1910 as Boston Red Sox (523) and Andy Leonard (501). Born manager (Library of Congress). in Cobh around 1863, his date of birth of March 16, 1865, generally regarded as being falsified in an attempt to make himself appear younger, Patsy Donovan moved to America when just three, settling in Lawrence, Massachusetts.152 Breaking into baseball with his local club, he moved up to the majors via the International Association’s Tecumsehs of London, Ontario, then debuting with the Boston Beaneaters in April 1890, before being shipped immediately midseason to Brooklyn during the Bridegrooms’ pennant-winning season. Spells in Louisville and Washington were followed by eight seasons in Pittsburgh, which saw him make 979 appearances for the Pirates.153 Then in 1900 he joined the St. Louis Cardinals. Three years later, he overtook Sam Thompson’s record for most number of major league appearances, a phenomenal achievement considering that Donovan was possibly twenty-seven on his debut. As Daley once noted, Donovan attained a .313 lifetime average, considered impressive in the “Deadball Era,” and gained membership to “the rather exclusive 2,000 club” of hits.154 He managed five major league clubs and coached future Yankees manager Joe McCarthy while taking the Buffalo Bisons to the International League pennant in 1915. In terms of respectability, Donovan was up there at the top. David Jones writes that during the violence-ridden nineties, he cultivated “a reputation as a savvy, principled baseball man who aided the careers of many young players.”155 In contrast, the most infamous of the Irish-born players was John “Dirty Jack” Joseph Doyle. Born in Killorglin, County Kerry, Doyle emigrated as a child, settling in the heavily Irish mill town of Holyoke in western Massachusetts. Like Donovan, he started off as a semi-pro with local sides, moving onto Canton, Ohio, of the Tri-State League before making his major league debut with the Columbus Solons of the American Association in 1889.156 Through his tremendous, almost reckless, competitiveness and inability to be either liked

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or trusted by his teammates or managers, Doyle was unable to settle at any one team or position. He turned out in the uniforms of ten different clubs, while one historian describes him as “a first baseman who played several positions, none of them too well.”157 James Patrick Archer spent eight seasons with the Cubs, playing for just three other teams in a twelve-year career. A Dubliner by birth, Archer and his family settled in Canada. He debuted with the Pittsburgh Pirates as a twenty-one-year-old rookie in 1904, before a loan spell in Atlanta with the Southern Association’s Crackers, breaking a kneecap in the process that was sewn back together with two silver threads. Moving to Hughie Jennings’s Detroit Tigers in 1907, he played eighteen times in the Tigers’ American League–winning season, including the final game of the 1907 World Series defeat to the Cubs. Following his move to the Cubs in 1909, Archer spent nine years there, winning an NL pennant in 1910. He possessed a unique ability to remain squatted and still throw out runners attempting a steal on second base. This capability was the result of an earlier serious injury. In 1902 he had worked in a Toronto cooperage making barrels, when he severely scalded his right arm and leg in a vat of boiling oak sap. Almost losing his right arm, he spent three months hospitalized. The tendon in his arm shortened slightly, giving him the ability to throw from a squatted position with accuracy.158 He was elected into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 1990. Tony Mullane was born in County Cork in 1859. When he was five, his family moved to Erie, Pennsylvania. Debuting in 1881 with the Detroit Wolverines, he moved to Louisville, St. Louis, and Toledo, then spent eight seasons with the Cincinnati Reds. In 1893 he joined Ned Hanlon’s Baltimore Orioles, before playing just four games for the Cleveland Spiders. Known as “Count” and “The Apollo of the Box,” Mullane was one of baseball’s first “showmen.” He was also one of the first ambidextrous pitchers, having taught himself to throw with his left after suffering an injury in a long throwing contest at Detroit. When his right arm healed he’d alternate throughout games, often facing the batter with both hands holding the ball before choosing one to throw.159 Mullane also had a following among women, where his “handsome dark features and beautifully waxed moustache made him look like a nobleman…. He generally attracted a contingent of female fans to the games…”160 This led to the inaccurate legend that his good looks persuaded the Reds to introduce “Ladies’ Day.” 161 Certainly not all ladies were impressed when Mullane and Cleveland’s Bob Gilks got into a fight in the clubhouse following “exchanged words that were not complimentary” after a delivery that nearly knocked Gilks out. The Cincinnati Enquirer remarked: “It is to be regretted that two of the players so far forgot themselves yesterday as to take part in a public broil,” which caused “several ladies to threaten to leave.”162 Very little is known about Reddy Mack’s origins. Born Joseph McNamara somewhere in Ireland in May 1866, he spent his major league career entirely in the American Association with just two teams: four seasons with the Louisville Colonels and two with the Baltimore Orioles, retiring at just twenty-four. Jimmy Walsh, a native of Killala, County Mayo, enjoyed a phenomenal minor league career with Syracuse of the New York State League and the International League, playing 1,824 games, principally with the Baltimore Orioles, but also in Akron, Newark, Buffalo, Jersey City and Toronto. His spell in the majors was exclusively in the American League with the Philadelphia Athletics, the Yankees and finally the Red Sox; he appeared in the losing World Series for the A’s in 1914 and the winning side for Boston two years later. He was inducted into the International’s Hall of Fame in 1958, the only Irish-born player in the Hall of Fame of either a major or Triple A league. “Deerfoot”

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Tom Needham was a catcher born in Ireland who grew up in Steubenville, Ohio, near Pittsburgh. One of the tallest catchers of his time in the majors, he had a varied career in the minors, finally joining the Beaneaters in late 1903 after being talked about as a possible signing the previous season.163 Born in Granard, County Longford, in April 1856, Tommy Bond was only twelve games short of the 500 mark when he hung up his bat in August 1884. Debuting in the NA with the Brooklyn Atlantics ten years earlier, Bond had already played semi-professional since he was a sixteen.164 As a pitcher, and often cited as the first curveball specialist, he had shown from the start his promise by helping the Atlantics to their best season ever at sixth place, which included three victories over the Boson Red Stockings in five meetings.165 He went on to play in the two National League pennants won by the Boston Red Stockings in 1877 and 1878. He retired at the age of twenty-eight due to injury to his arm. He was the last of the original first-season players of the National League to die, passing away in Boston in January 1941. Jack and Mike O’Neill were the two Irish-born brothers of the O’Neill quartet who escaped the coal mines of Scranton, Pennsylvania. Jack was the eldest brother, born John Joseph in Galway on January 10, 1873, while Michael Joyce O’Neill was born in Maam, County Galway, four years later on September 7, 1877, and debuted under the name of Michael Joyce in his first season. Other Irish-born players of note included Fergy Malone and Charles “Curry” Foley. Fergus Malone was born in Tyrone in 1844 and grew up in Philadelphia. He was one of the early professionals whose career had been spent mainly in the years that preceded the founding of the NA. Starting out with the Philadelphia Athletics in 1864, his career included spells with other Philly sides Keystone and Quaker City. He then moved on to the Washington Olympics between 1867 and 1870 before rejoining the Athletics.166 Twenty-six when he played in the National Association, he moved to their city rivals, the Philadelphia Whites, and spent a season in 1874 with the Chicago White Stockings, managing both these teams in 1873 and 1874, respectively. Regarded as one of the greatest catchers of his day, he went into managing a string of minor league teams on both coasts of the States before returning to manage the Philadelphia Keystones of the Union Association, followed by a disastrous spell as an umpire. He left the game to be a policeman and finally a U.S. Customs inspector in Seattle, where he died of a heart attack in 1905.167 Foley played 305 games for Boston and Buffalo between 1879 and 1883 in a career cut short by rheumatism. Known as the first player to hit a “cycle” (single, double, triple and home run) in one game, Foley had been born in Milltown, County Kerry, in 1856, emigrating to Boston in 1863, and played for Lowell in the minors of the New England Championship. When he succumbed to illness, his employers in Buffalo rewarded him by accusing him of faking injury, refused to release him or pay him, and retained him through the detested reserve clause. John Montgomery Ward, the pioneer of players’ rights cited this as one of the worst management abuses when he presented his arguments for better player conditions.168 Yet despite his decline into destitution and fighting a condition that was to cut short his life at just forty-two years, Foley also became a respected writer of the game for both the Sporting News and the Sporting Life. In his obituary, the Sporting Life suggested it was “remarkable” that he had lived as long as he did. On his journalism, his employer commented: “He wrote practically, and from the player’s standpoint. In reminiscence he was particularly happy. His memory was trustworthy, and stored with a fund of material apparently inexhaustible. Foley had a happy faculty of extracting humor out of almost every situation.”169

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Prizefighting remained the major sport among the “sporting crowd” until the emergence of baseball, but there were few major fights to watch like the one in the summer of 1857 when two Philadelphian Irish saloonkeepers of differing religions, Dominick Bradley and Samuel Rankin, fought a three-hour, 152-round scrap in Buffalo. With both Heenan and Morrissey looking on, victory came to the more experienced Bradley, with his supporters touting him as the American champion. Rankin was carted off to Buffalo with head injuries, a nose broken in two places, ears and lips split, and a face bruised beyond recognition, presenting what the Philadelphia Press described as “a shocking spectacle.”170 One ambitious Irish fighter of the time was Joe Coburn. Born into a Protestant family in Middletown, County Armagh, in 1835, he fought his first fight, a 160-round, three-hour and twenty-two minute draw, with the English middleweight Edmund “Ned” Price in 1856 near Boston.171 He then defeated fellow Irishman Harry Gribben in thirty minutes on the Canadian side of the Niagara in November 1857, in what the Chicago Tribune described as a blow to “the region of Gribben’s ear which rendered [Gribben] insensible for several minutes, and prevented his ‘coming to time.’”172 In 1862, John C. Heenan’s refusal to meet Joe Coburn prompted the press to declare the title vacant, and the chance appeared for the title to pass onto another Irish-born champion. On May 5, 1863, while Heenan was in England preparing to fight Tom King, Coburn took on Mike McCoole. Born in 1837 in either in Ballybofey, Donegal or in Birmingham, England, to Irish parents, McCoole was known as the “Deckhand Champion,” obtaining his nom de guerre after working on Mississippi River steamers around St. Louis, gaining his reputation fighting obscure pugs.173 Although the fight had been initiated in 1860, numerous legal restraints and obstacles had prevented it from taking place for three years. There was also a not-so-little matter that had started with the attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina in April 1861. Reporting preparations for the fight, the New York Times opined: “If these men are very anxious to fight, their proper place is in the army helping to put down the rebellion. Nevertheless the country will endeavor to do without their services until May, and then, when they have pommelled [sic] each other to their mutual content, there will be a chance to make them useful under the Conscription law.”174 The fight itself took place at Charlesworth, Maryland, right in the middle of the Battle of Chancellorsville, Coburn winning in sixty-seven rounds over one hour and ten minutes, with the New York Times lamenting that people were “better pleased to hear of a successful ‘cross counter’ by McCool [sic] than of the capture of Fitzhugh Lee and several thousand rebels.” The Times continued: “Even the general public was tainted with a curious desire to find out whether Coburn or McCool was the better man, and looked for the solution of that momentous problem, with a concern that could not be wholly suppressed by a more legitimate anxiety as to the success of Gen. Hooker’s operations.”175 Looking on from a prison cell in New Jersey was Jim “Cock-Eyed” Elliott. Elliott was the Sonny Liston of his day, a fighter with a fearful reputation, and an inclination to be “unfair and tricky.” Elliott was born in Athlone in 1838, beginning as a “featherweight,” losing in New Jersey to Nobby Clark of England in 1860.176 In 1863 he fought another Irishborn fighter, “Bulldozer” Jim Dunne (or Dunn), in a mill that ended with a pitch battle between both sets of followers.177 When Jim Coburn refused to meet him in 1865, he granted himself the heavyweight championship and defeated the Belfast-born Bill Davis in Canada in May 1867 in his first “defense,” then Charley Gallagher at Peche Island on the Detroit River.178 The American title was also claimed by McCoole, after he also beat Bill Davis near St. Louis in September 1866.179 McCoole reasoned that when he went to fight Joe Coburn

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in Cold Spring, Indiana, and both fighters were arrested before fisticuffs commenced, he was in the ring when the law arrived, while Coburn was getting undressed outside.180 A fight with Tom Allen at Foster’s Island near St. Louis saw a fat and unfit McCoole lose in nine rounds through a disqualification for gouging Allen’s eyes while being beaten heavily.181 Elliott was imprisoned in 1870 and nobody took McCoole’s claim seriously. Ned O’Baldwin, aka the “Irish Giant” after his six-foot-five frame, from Lismore, County Waterford, was probably the least fortunate of the claimants of the era. Despite his flooring Morrissey while working as his sparring partner, his efforts at fighting any meaningful fights were hampered by the crackdown of the period. His “Championship of the World” bout with Joe Wormald in October 1868 at Lynn, near Boston, lasted one round before the police broke it up and O’Baldwin was later jailed.182 Plans were made to fight Tom Allen in September 1875 when O’Baldwin was murdered. Due to the difficulty in arranging fights, these clandestine years also saw a greater acceptance of smaller and lighter fighters. However, middleweight and lightweight championship bouts from the 1860s were intermittent and often dismissed as irrelevant by all but the more serious sporting press. Owney Geoghegan and Tom Chandler were two early Irish champions in the lighter divisions of America. Chandler beat the London-born “favorite,” Dooney Harris, in twenty-three rounds at Point Isabel, California, on April 13, 1867, just as his wife was going into labor, two days after a fight scheduled near Seventeen Mile House had been halted by the San Mateo County Sheriff.183 A former resident of Fairfax, Virginia, who later settled in Baltimore, his actual birthplace is unknown, although one source notes his being born in 1842.184 He first came to the notice of the East Coast fancy after a farcical fight with Pete Maguire in the mud at Lakeville, Sonoma County, near San Francisco.185 The lightweight division was especially neglected during the anarchic early years of prizefighting, and it’s even more difficult to pinpoint any genuine champions. Owney Geoghegan, originally from County Meath, who had come to America between the ages of eight and twelve, is credited as the first Irish-born champion of this weight after his defeat of Eddie Touhy in April 1861, before taking the American middleweight belt from Con Orem at Middlesex County, New Jersey, in May 1863. Referred to as Leighan (a misprint of Geighan, which is how the press had spelled Geoghegan’s name), Geoghegan took just over an hour to complete the job at a clandestine “sporting house in the east side of the town” in front of few witnesses, after the original fight on Staten Island was broken up by police.186 Another Irish fighter who moved up the divisions was Mike Cleary. A publican from Philadelphia originally born in County Laois in 1858, he was middleweight “champion” of America after deposing John Rooke on October 18, 1882, in New York. Rooke had held his dubious claim on the title after a farce of a fight with the Irish-American middleweight champion, Mike Donovan, and the New York Times sought to speak for everyone when it stated upon Rooke’s arrival at a dinner in the Big Apple: “What Mr. Rooke is champion of is a question which might not, perhaps, be safely put to him.”187 The victory took three rounds, with Cleary knocking Rooke off his feet five times after the “champion” had promised before the fight to knock out the Irishman before the fourth round ended. The following April, Cleary moved up to heavyweight, losing to Charlie Mitchell, a second-generation Irishman from Birmingham, England, before police broke up the fight.188 With the Laois man having his eyes on the heavyweight crown and fighting the likes of Mitchell, Jake Kilrain, and John L. Sullivan, the vacant middleweight championship was

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fought at Great Kills, New York, between George Fulljames and the “Nonpareil” Jack Dempsey, with Dempsey winning a twenty-one round battle after Fulljames’s second, Barney Aaron, threw in the sponge.189 The bout was fought in front of a mere twenty people who got the tip for its location at half five in the morning, indicative of the problems the sport continued to have with the law.190 Arguably — along with Sugar Ray Robinson — the best “pound for pound” fighter ever, Dempsey was born in Curran, Kildare, as John Edward Kelly on December 15, 1862, moving to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, as an infant. The young Kelly initially started out as a wrestler with his brother, but in 1883 he moved on to the more lucrative prize ring as a lightweight with the nom de guerre of “Nonpareil.”191 Dempsey defended his title for eight years, fighting mainly ethnic Irish fighters, before losing to Bob Fitzsimmons, the Cornish-born son of a Tyroneman, at New Orleans in January 1891. Fitzsimmons paid tribute to Nonpareil, claiming: “I think he is the gamest and best man I ever met. He can whip any other man of his weight in the country…. Dempsey discounts anybody I have ever seen on heart. He certainly won my admiration.”192 Another resident of Williamsburg was Jack McAuliffe, who was born in Cork in 1866, arriving in America five years later, whereupon his father enlisted as a soldier.193 McAuliffe himself was to suffer the scorn of critics regarding his lightweight career. Myler believes that for much of it he enjoyed dubious decisions in his favor, and the fact that he only fought American fighters meant any world champion status was suspect.194 From his knockout of Jack Hopper in New York in February 1886 to his defeat of Billy Myer in New Orleans, two days before Corbett’s disposal of Sullivan, he defended his title six times and retired unbeaten.195 On May 30, 1880, at Collier’s Station, West Virginia, Paddy Ryan entered the ring under the London rules against Joe Goss, the disputed champion of America. In an epic eighty-seven-round match lasting ninety minutes, Ryan departed victorious with the heavyweight championship of America.196 Just like Morrissey twenty years before, Ryan had been born in Tipperary, this time in Thurles, on March 14, 1851. Surviving on exhibition fights against journeymen like Charlie McDonald, whom he fought four times, as well as matches with both Goss and Dwyer, Ryan needed that one big payday associated with a real prize fight that law enforcers continued to try to prevent. On the horizon was a son of Irish parents who would become the most famous of the Irish-American sportsmen. On February 7, 1882, less than twenty-one months after winning the title, Ryan lost it to John Lawrence Sullivan in a ninth-round knockout. The fight was the last time the American championship would be taken with bare hands, a pivotal moment in the sport, transcending the “barbaric” old London rules with the supposedly more “civilized” of Marquis of Queensberry.197 For Ryan, boxing wasn’t quite over. He continued a fighting career that would stretch almost another fifteen years, mainly against Sullivan a further ten times in exhibition fights throughout various cities in the Northeast from 1891 until 1897, when he moved into refereeing. Three years later, on December 14, 1900, Ryan passed away in Green Island, New York, closing the chapter on the Irish fighters who had moved across the Atlantic in the wake of Burke and O’Rourke half a century previously.

3 The Clamor — The Irish Sportsman in the Big City and Small Town The term “clamor” comes from “glam mór: a great howl.”1

A country that was rural and small-town in character, with only four cities with populations over 20,000 in 1800,2 had by 1850 thirty-five such cities, six with over 100,000 inhabitants, while New York’s population had expanded eightfold within fifty years.3 New cities were born and burgeoned rapidly, with the most outstanding being Chicago, a village of just 200 people in August 1833 that within sixty years became the nation’s second largest conurbation. While cities were the symbol of a new, wealthier America, many native citizens were deeply suspicious and fearful of them. They were centers of criminality and infected with the purveyors of this disease: immigrants. The Irish were the first “virus” to arrive, and previously homogenous cities became venues for interethnic violence. Jack Beatty quotes the American historian Oscar Handlin as describing the antebellum Irish community in Boston as a “lump —‘undigested, indigestible’…— in the throat of a city that had not asked them to come, and that regarded them as the human equivalent of locusts.” From “clean and salubrious,” Boston was now “dirty and noisome,” and it was the “suddenness” of the arrival as much as “the sheer engulfing fact of it that so upset the social equilibrium.”4 However, it was New York City, what Hasia R. Diner called “truly … an extension of Ireland,” where one third of the population counted in the 1880 U.S. census were of Irish ethnicity, that was the most hated of these urban areas for small-town America.5 The biggest city in the new republic from 1790, its future as the country’s largest urban entity was guaranteed when it annexed America’s third largest city, Brooklyn, in 1894. The vices of the city were seen as crime, violence, drunkenness, gambling and political corruption. Prizefighting, with its disproportionate number of Irish protagonists, embraced all of these, since it was an import that was “[b]rutal, riotous, patronized by effete aristocrats and debased urban rabble, [and] symbolized the corruptions that a virtuous republic must avoid.”6 However, as pugilism came under crackdowns by the law, “sporting resorts”— or dives — embraced another form of contemporary “sport”: the ill treatment of animals. Blood “sports” are, of course, a controversial subject to include in a book on American sports. But there is more than ample evidence to suggest that the line between that which 34

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is seen as acceptable sport today and that which isn’t, was so blurred in mid-nineteenthcentury America that it’s almost impossible to separate them. Equally, it’s hardly surprising that with the dehumanizing of prizefighters, in the face of prohibition, animals were substituted for them. After all, they are easier to acquire, and leave no judicial “smoking gun” such as a body with a grieving family in their wake. Not that the violence was limited to the animals. The Lancaster Daily Intelligence recorded the violent end to a cockfight at the mining settlement (now ghost town) of Centralia, Pennsylvania. Two Irish “chicken-fanciers,” Edward Dillon and Mike Cleary, battled each other after the cockfight: “Enraged, Cleary sprang out and said he could whip any man in the house. No one answered him, he sprang towards Dillon and struck him a terrific blow in the face.” A battle commenced between the pair and their followers and even a wife: In the fight that followed knives and pistols were freely used…. Cleary went to his home and was followed by Dillon, who asked him why he struck him. Cleary made no answer but struck him again. Both men then grappled and were struggling in each other’s embrace when Cleary’s wife and two men entered and went to his assistance. The four then beat Dillon unmercifully and would probably have killed him but for the opportune arrival of two of his friends, who after a desperate struggle succeeded in saving him. While [they were] carrying him home Cleary’s wife crept up behind them and struck the insensible man a terrible blow on the back of the head with a large stone, weighing about twelve pounds. The back of his head was split open and there is very little hope of his recovery.7

While blood sports were found in small towns, large cities had a number of advantages: it was easier to be lost in anonymity, plus there was a more laissez-faire attitude by the authorities, and a more sizeable market of willing patrons, whom one reporter for the Spirit of the Times referred to as “a pack of keen fellows pandering and catering to the low, useless, depraved, and unchristian tastes of man.”8 And not least, a cheap and unlimited supply of animals, in particular, rats. One such youthful patron of Yankee Sullivan’s Bowery saloon saw an opportunity to make a pile of money while ridding New York of its unwanted inhabitants. Christopher Keybourn was born in County Donegal in January 1830.9 A former member of the notorious Dead Rabbits street gang,10 at some point Keybourn changed his name to Kit Burns and opened his own “sportsman’s hall,” probably in the mid to late forties. Naturally, Burns wasn’t far away from the clandestine prizefight, but his key money earner was his first-floor amphitheater at 273 Water Street, Lower Manhattan, where terriers devoured rats.11 Water Street was, according to Herbert Asbury, for a twenty-five-year period, the scene of more violent crime than any other “on the continent.”12 Overrun with sailors, it was “a slum of moral putrefaction.”13 Robert Sullivan, in his book on New York’s rat population, describes Burns as a “stout and red-faced, portly but muscular” man who “wore muttonchop whiskers … a bright red shirt and suspenders.” Others claimed he looked like one of the dogs he employed.14 Yet as one New York World reporter remarked upon a visit to Burns’s dive, most clients contradicted the stereotype of a sport watched by plebs: “The majority seemed to be business men and clerks, who stopped in to see what was going on, in a casual manner,” although the scribe complained about “a sickening odor … from the dogs and debris of rats’ bones under the seats.”15 Burns’s dive held two hundred and fifty “decent people” and four hundred “indecent people,” and his own distilled liquor — of which he enthusiastically took himself— was sold.16 Spectacles for women and children included ferrets and weasels killing rats. Sometimes

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patrons would also fight the rats, biting their heads off, although this seemed beyond the pale for Burns, who, disgusted by the bite-ridden mugs of the competitors, threw out at least one customer for doing this.17 Burns had taken “ancient brutal sports of alleys and farmyards and turned them into a steady proposition,” and with New York’s rat population in 1840 exploding, there was no shortage of participants.18 But this didn’t mean that the rats were queuing around the block to work at Burns’s Pleasure Palace. Advertisements were run in sporting newspapers like the New York Clipper, asking for “Rats, Rats, Rats,” offering ten dollars per hundred. 19 Burns’s top rat-catcher was Jack Jennings, who rubbed oil he named rhodium on his hands to prevent being bitten by the vermin and sold rats to the pits for fifteen cents each, with leftovers made into gloves. Meanwhile his brother Harry, sarcastically known as the “professor,” offered facilities not only for cockfighting, but rat catching and dog fighting, with his prize pooch named Waterford Jack, a dog described by The Sun as “one of the ugliest customers the other dogs who fought against him had to tackle.” His fighting career came to an end in a scrap with an old German man’s dog, Spring, that left Jack with his “ears gone and his anatomy generally used up.”20 Little is known of the Jennings’ origins except that Jack was born in England, possibly to Irish parents, and apart from the company he chose to keep, the nearest he got to his Irish roots was taking advantage of the St. Patrick’s Day leisure market with a “rat bait, dog fight and pup quarrel entertainment” in 1860.21 In October 1858 he invited the “gentlemen of the vicinity of New York” to his forthcoming “Grand Black and Tan Exhibition.” The New York Herald’s reporter describes the night’s “entertainment”: “One dog called Lucy was as the word was given, ‘let go.’ Down went the ‘young un’ and ran at a rat almost as big as itself, which it dispatched in 57 seconds, to the great gratification of the spectators…. I failed to see the place where the laugh came in — though the other spectators seemed to be gifted with keener vision.” Proceedings turned to a comical farce when Jennings decided to introduce a leopard to the evening’s entertainment. As it had already been fed, it declined to move. A fox was also produced, but likewise his appetite was satisfied, so he was also disinclined to participate.22 Burns’s hall continued twenty-six years unmolested, making him enough money to pay for the passage of his parents to New York. He was a popular character in his neighborhood as well as being well connected with his alma mater, the Dead Rabbits gang, and contributor to many a Tammany politician.23 All went well until a certain Henry Bergh arrived. Of course, rats probably get the worst press of anything in the animal world. They spread diseases such as Weil’s disease and leptospirosis, and are chiefly blamed for the bubonic plague that killed 200 million people worldwide. However, they had a defender in Bergh, a retired American diplomat, and founder of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1866. He prowled the streets looking for injured and mistreated animals, stopping carriages to inspect horses and having them immediately shot if he thought them unfit.24 Bergh didn’t think rats were akin to the lemur, but he was appalled by Burns’s industry. While there could be no doubting his concern for animal welfare, critics have claimed that he possessed more of what the English historian Thomas Babbington Macauley called the Puritan hatred of blood sports, “not because it gave pain to [the animals] but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.”25 Bergh’s war bore fruit, with the Evening Telegram claiming the “sport” was now “put down.” The only blip was that Burns’s pit was still in operation.26 In the following years,

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he went after Burns with a vengeance, failing to get him tried for animal cruelty; as Burns argued in court: “Mr. Bergh calls a rat an animal. Now, everybody of any sense knows that a rat is a vermin…. Wouldn’t he kill a rat if he found one in his cupboard? Of course he would. But would he kill a horse if he found one in his yard, or even in his parlor? Of course he wouldn’t. Why? Because a horse is an animal, but a rat ain’t. I know rats. I know they’re vermin, and they ought to be killed. And if we can get a little sport out of their killing, so much the better.”27 But the tide was turning against Burns. The saloons, dance and sporting halls in the previously decadent lower Manhattan were increasingly being rented by religious groups deeply hostile to all the pastimes of the “Fancy.” Burns then wrote an extraordinary letter to Bergh in which he invited the man to give an anti-ratting speech before the rat fights: “Now, if that gentleman [Bergh] will just call on me any day, I’ll fix it so he can talk to the crowd, deliver his lectures to them … and if he can Henry Bergh, the scourge of blood sports show us that we are cruel and are doing wrong, why entrepreneurs (Library of Congress). all I’ve got to say is, I’ll burst the pit and give away or sell out my dogs; and I’ve some of the finest ratters out…. I’m sincere, if he’ll only call on me, at my place, No. 273 Water Street.”28 Bergh never replied, but Burns finally rented out his hall for religious meetings once a day in the morning, where at one gathering a preacher asked loudly if he was going to give up his demonic business. He remained adamant that he’d never discard his “sports”: “As soon as those ‘fellers’ leave, we’re going to have a rat-killin’— a bully time — and all the fun you want.” The religious leaders retorted that the money would eat at his conscience, but Burns brushed their preaching aside. However, the death of his favorite dog, Belcher, in a dogfight in December 1869, seemed to convince Burns of the need to change. Burns was convinced the dog had performed poorly after the arrival of the God squads and that he may have found the Lord himself: “It wasn’t so much the praying as the singing that took hold of him.”29 He rented the entire building to the Reverend William Boole, a Methodist pastor from Williamsburg with a “dedication” that attracted much publicity: “A large and enthusiastic gathering was held at the house heretofore known as Kit Burn’s [sic] Dog-Pit … the occasion being the dedication of that notorious den to the benevolent and Christian work of rescuing fallen and degraded women of that locality, and teaching them how to live nobler and purer lives.”30 Burns’s arena was now the sort of workhouse laundry made notorious later by the Magdalene Sisters, where, the New York Times announced, “the girls who shall be deemed fit residents for the Home may, by washing and ironing clothes, achieve the double object of honestly earning a few dollars and keeping their minds preoccupied with business to the exclusion of unholy thoughts.”31 Burns was to keep a whiskey shop next door, “his ‘occupation gone,’ in a great measure, from the inroads of his Christian neighbors,” claimed the Tribune.32 However, another cynic questioned the intelligence of placing an institution

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rehabilitating drunken prostitutes next door to a grog shop: “[I] can’t see how the preaching is going to do those ladies any good when they can just get their gin by going to the door leading from the laundry to Kit Burns whisky shop.”33 Burns moved onto the Band Box at 234 Water Street, but Boole still wouldn’t leave him alone. Burns complained to a Times reporter that they “keep constantly annoying me because I disposes [sic] of beer to make a living.”34 Undoubtedly Bergh smelled blood in a wounded Burns having to downgrade his business. On November 21, 1870, the police raided the Band Box to the shout of “Douse the glim!” Patrons tried to make their escape but the six-foot-plus Bergh blocked their path with a lantern. The police had the nonparticipating dogs taken away, while the mutts that had been fighting — two pooches called Slasher and Old Rocks — were put down. “Very rarely has a more barbarous scene been brought to light in a civilized community than where the Police dashed into a squalid arena occupied by two bleeding brutes, torn and gashed, and surrounded by a lower order of creation, frenzied with the brutality before them,” concluded the New York Times.35 Meanwhile, the rats were thrown into the East River. Burns and thirty-eight other men, including Jack Jennings — almost all the defendants had Irish surnames — were arrested.36 In court, Bergh described Burns as “well known as a man who delighted in torturing dumb animals.” Burns’s lawyer was equally sanguine: he got the first judge changed on account of his ASPCA membership, while declaring his intention of testing the “constitutionality” of the law against animal cruelty relative to killing rats.37 Burns never saw the trial’s conclusion. Falling into a deep depression after being sued by the police for the costs of putting the dogs down, he moved to Sackett Street, South Brooklyn, and succumbed to a severe cold, dying on December 19, 1870, six days short of his fortieth birthday, leaving three children.38 Burns was buried at Calvary Cemetery, Queens, following a huge parade from his home, his body borne in a hearse pulled by six white horses. The New York Herald spotted “several elegantly attired females present, a great many well dressed men, and a sprinkling of Fourth ward roughs, not near so many, however as one might expect to find there.”39 The New York Times claimed the mourners consisted of “a motley crowd of young urchins, grown up rowdies, hard faced men, ‘sports’ and women.”40 Afterwards, the Band Box was passed to Richard “Dick the Rat” Toner and Jack Jennings, who claimed they merely wanted to sell rum.41 All surviving defendants were found not guilty at the trial. Having been convinced that the entertainment on show wasn’t a dogfight but a rat fight, and that any dogs fighting were doing so because of the raid, Recorder Hackett summed up that “rats and mice were vermin and why should not cats as well as dogs be interdicted from killing them.”42 “Do-gooders” were increasingly targeting the inner-city “sporting” trade that had transformed American towns into modern-day Gomorrahs, and after animals, their next target was child labor. Nationally the fight to bring children out of the workplace and into school was done significantly through the efforts of John Peter Altgeld, the governor of Illinois, Florence Kelley, and the Cork-born Mary Harris Jones, while Bergh founded the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in December 1874 with the philanthropist John D. Wright.43 His new target was Owen Geoghegan for his use of child labor. The New York Times, no fan of Geoghegan’s, once claimed that a leper at Blackwell’s Island Charity Hospital was known as “Owney Geoghegan” because of “his ugly disposition,” but couldn’t deny his courage44: “He was bold, intrepid, and fearless, and as he could take any amount of pun-

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ishment without feeling it, he always came out victorious…. No young ruffian who hoped to rise to eminence in the prize ring was considered worthy of notice until he had fought Geoghegan, and many a desperate fight occurred in the saloon, and more than once only the nerve and pluck of the proprietor saved his life.” Turning his hand to operating a string of dives, Geoghegan held a “standing challenge” that he’d fight anyone willing to face him, always knocking these intrepid men out in the first round, by wearing gloves padded with horseshoes. This brought “the admiration of every acquaintance” until it was found that he had been using his nags’ slippers.45 Geoghegan thought he was untouchable. Seeing off one particularly persistent police captain, he didn’t reckon with Bergh. In 1883 he was arrested by Officer George H. Young of the SPCC for allowing twelve-year-old William Hoffman to work in his dive at two in the morning while the “place was full of men and women, who were drinking beer and more fiery liquors at the tables….”46 The society used the charge against Geoghegan as a test case. Owney’s defense claimed the saloon belonged to Charles Kelly, who couldn’t be found, or to an Italian known only as “Tony,” who also vanished. The sign that was hung up claiming the bar was owned by Geoghegan was only there “because it is an attraction.” Hoffman’s mother Rose testified she was at the dive on the morning in question, although Young denied this. She and Hoffman Junior’s father were fined a dollar each for allowing their son to work at the saloon. Geoghegan was hammered harder, picking up a five-hundred-dollar fine and a month inside. Still he was sanguine about the verdict: “They ‘railroaded’ me, but I don’t understand why…. I had nothing to do with the place. I don’t know why they should select me for a victim … when I kept a place I never allowed any one to be ill-treated in it. My place was always respectable and safe for anyone to go into…. When I fought a man it was always done openly.”47 The only damage to Geoghegan’s dive was that it was temporarily stopped from selling alcohol, something he had ignored in the past. More destructive was Geoghegan’s spell on Blackwell’s Island jail, which broke his previously good health. He died within two years.48 As the onslaught on blood sports proved destructive, other pastimes were sought for the inside urban leisure industry. And while anything that occurred in the saloon was dismissed as of “questionable reputation” by the moralists, not all these necessarily entailed anything barbaric. One man who did more than anyone to change these views was the “Father of American Billiards,” Michael Phelan. Born in Castle Comer, County Kilkenny, on April 18, 1819, he left for the States to join his father in 1825, who had made money by opening a number of billiards parlors across New York.49 Although he enrolled as an apprentice in the jewelry trade, Phelan resigned upon his father’s death and moved into billiards. He took a post at a parlor in New York City to learn how the business was run while also enhancing his skills. Phelan became America’s first billiards star. In 1850 he challenged the English champion  John Roberts  to a match, after Roberts’s defeat of Edwin Kentfield caused him to declare himself the “First Player in the world.” While his challenge went unanswered, the publicity got both Phelan and the American side of the sport noticed outside the saloon.50 The following year he traveled to Ireland to give exhibitions for the poor, and then in 1855 he briefly visited San Francisco, where he beat a top French player, one Monsieur Damon, for $10,000. After his aim at supplementing his career in gold speculating had failed, he returned to New York, spending the following years promoting the game.51 Phelan was the polar opposite of Burns, with little evidence to suggest that he was

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involved in either politics or gangs any further than would be the norm at the time for “protection.” In 1847, he opened the Arcadia Billiard Parlor on the corner of Broadway and 10th Street whose “posh design and elegant atmosphere … would set a trend for the lavish rooms to follow.”52 He sought to improve the image of a game still regarded by many as little better than prizefighting, promoting the sport through two books, The Game of Billiards and Billiards without a Master. Here for the first time the rules to both billiards and pool were set out with instructions, diagrams and charts of shots to practice and perform. He launched The Billiard Cue, the sport’s first American magazine, in 1856, and later became the billiard columnist with Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly. He also laid down the rules of billiards etiquette and behavior and norms deemed acceptable during a game.53 The game became aesthetically admired and grew in popularity, with almost sixty billiard parlors in New York by 1850.54 Yet gambling and cheating remained a problem: “What people wanted was a level playing field, an honest arena in decent surroundings, where they could play without fear of being ‘taken.’ Perhaps what they needed, more than anything else, was a thorough billiard education: A respected teacher, who could teach them how not to get taken, by teaching the rules, skills and tricks of the trade.”55 In 1860 Phelan bought Tobias C. “Chris” O’Connor’s share of the billiard table business, O’Connor & Collender. Hugh William Collender was born in Waterford in December 1829, and apparently had fled Ireland in a coffin following the Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848,56 initially working as a blind maker before making billiard tables with O’Connor.57 He became Michael Phelan’s son-in-law and together they made a successful partnership. Phelan invented new types of tables and cushion designs, and “angular” pockets that enabled shot-making streaks to enhance the game’s excitement. The firm continued until Phelan’s death, when it became Collender and Co. It was subsumed into today’s largest pool equipment producer, Brunswick, in 1879.58 Undoubtedly Phelan’s greatest ever bestowment to sports was pool. Known initially as pocket pool, the game was designed for the small area of a saloon patronized by the lower classes rather than the bigger, “respectable” billiards tables that were found in large stately homes or gentlemen’s clubs. Phelan’s legacy is seen throughout the world’s bars today. Not everyone was impressed: the New York Times described how Phelan’s reputation had “become world-wide as a great billiard player and has caused feelings of jealousy and rivalry to spring up, especially in New York.”59 The following spring witnessed a ten-thousand-dollar offer for Phelan to play John Sereiter at Detroit’s Firemen’s Hall.60 The match drew extensive press coverage and attracted 500 paying spectators, with many others turned away for lack of space. Phelan won, taking “the Billiard Championship of the United States.”61 Sereiter later complained about the quality of the cloth and balls, forcing Phelan to issue a “rejoinder” in Porter’s Spirit of the Times.62 Sometimes referred to as Kavanaugh or even Kavanah, Dudley Kavanagh was born somewhere in Ireland. By the start of the sixties he was challenging Phelan’s dominance, with one historian claiming they were cousins.63 He first came to prominence by beating Michael Foley for the billiards championship in April 1859 in Detroit.64 An exciting rival to Phelan had arrived, and they met at the Billiard Rooms of 14th Street and Union Square the following year, with the match witnessed by gentlemen and ladies alike.65 In April 1863, Kavanagh won the championship of America against William Goldthwaite of Boston at Irving Hall, New York,66 and four months later he joined Phelan in assembling a team of the East Coast’s best to take on the West in a match at the same venue.67 The following April, Kavanagh beat Cincinnati’s Philip Tieman, still recovering from a recent bout of

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pneumonia.68 Kavanagh and Goldthwaite fought again for the American championship in 1865 at the New York Academy of Music. The New York Times paid testament to the sport’s growing popularity: “As early as six o’clock, parties began to gather around the building, and when the doors were opened the rush was so great that it was almost impossible, even with the aid of a large body of police, to preserve anything like order, and prevent persons not supplied with tickets from entering the crowd.”69 The pair’s great rivalry slowly developed into animosity as each moved away from the billiards circuit in the mid-sixties into their business interests. Phelan, ever egotistical, wasn’t just happy with changing the face of the game, and he brought a large segment of the sport under his control by organizing the American Billiard Players Association in 1865. Meanwhile Kavanagh began to concentrate on publishing books, opening his own equipment company, and organizing a rival, the National American Billiards Association. The feud between their organizations ended only when Phelan died suddenly at home in 1871, after being made a virtual invalid by a yachting accident a few months previously. 70 In contrast to its treatment of many other Irish organizers of indoor sporting activities in the city, the New York Times lauded Phelan’s “kindly disposition ever inducing him to extend a liberal hand in aid of any charitable object.”71 Afterwards Kavanagh settled into refereeing high-profile matches,72 and continued as a billiards guru before passing away in March 1914 in New York at the age of eighty.73 The Irish dominated urban billiards up until the turn of the century, turning from professionals to opening billiard halls or moving into journalism. Such was their control of New York’s billiard halls come the turn of the century that one non–Irish owner, Sol Allinger, complained: “The Irish have all the money in the billiard business of this city. Where is the use in the Jews making money when the Irish get it away from them?… Change my name at once from what it is to what it should be. O’Allinger, McAlinger, or any other Irish name, if I am to hold onto what the Irishmen in the business have!”74 In 1863, Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times went as far as to suggest that the majority of the best players were of “Hibernian extraction,” but of the twenty-three players out of forty-two whose birthplaces were then known, only three others were born in Ireland.75 James Lynch was born in Ireland in 1822 and worked as a stage singer with “a fine tenor voice” until he was convinced by Phelan to move to New York and run a twenty-nine-table parlor. He remained in this business for thirty-three years, before dying in Baltimore in 1911.76 John W. McCullagh (or McCullough), a Presbyterian born in Dublin in May 1838, arrived as an adult at the start of the Civil War, traveling from New York to Cincinnati, then meeting up with his brother Joseph Burbridge McCullagh, who had bought and edited the St. Louis Globe Democrat. McCullagh moved from being a professional to being employed by the Brunswick brothers as editor of Billiards Mirror.77 Called “Chicago’s Father of Billiards,” Tom Foley also co-founded the Chicago White Stockings. But it was billiards that he excelled in, becoming one of the world’s top players by 1870. Born in Cashel, County Tipperary, in August 1842, Foley migrated to America in the first year of the Irish famine. His family settled for five years in New York and then moved onto Chicago in 1854, where shortly he took his first job as a twelve-year-old, working at the old Tremont House. He took the Illinois championship in 1865, by which time he was running the billiard room at Newhall House, Milwaukee.78 A year later, Foley returned to Chicago to open his first poolroom, the Palace Billiard Hall, on Monroe and Dearborn Streets, selling the booze and cigars he’d never touch, and a place where “famous men of both sides in the fierce war” put behind them their recent history of killing each other to

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play a few games.79 That September he competed against Phelan and John McDevitt at the Grand Billiard Tournament in the Hippotheatron, New York.80 When his billiard hall was burnt down in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, he built his second poolroom, the Barnes House, where he had “the largest room ever known in this country” with thirty tables. The failure of the Jay Cooke Bank during the post–1873 depression forced him out of owning billiards halls between 1876 and 1880. He returned to open the first of four more halls, the second of which, the Collender Hall, was noted by Sporting Life as “one of the finest in this country, if not in the world,” and two more on Madison Street. His final hall, on S. Wabash Avenue, survived his death until another depression.81 Foley would later recall the diverse clientele that he catered to: “The greatest lawyers, the most famous physicians, the best known capitalists, railway and corporation presidents, men high in state and national affairs, leading lights of the legitimate stage, of burlesque, of vaudeville and minstrelsy, professional baseball players, champion boxers and sportsmen on all lines played billiards conscientiously and regularly in the olden days.” [King] Kelly was “an expert billiardist,” along with others.82 Other professionals included John Keane, who was born in Ireland in 1831 and came to the States in 1855. Along with Joseph Martin, Drypolcher Hermans and John Walsh, he was one of “Collender’s Giants.”83 William V. “Billy” Barry hailed from Cork,84 John Creahan, who became the highly respected billiards correspondent of the Sporting Life, was born in Galway in 1850 and came to the U.S. when he was six.85 Phelan’s nephew John O’Connor, Michael Foley, Michael Geary, John McDevitt, John Deery, Joseph Dion, Maurice Daly, Edward McLaughlin, Daniel E. Gavit, Thomas J. Gallagher and Tobias C. “Chris” O’Connor were also prominent Irish-American players of the Phelan-Kavanagh era, with Harvey McKenna and Jerome Keogh coming later. By the 1850s New York City was the driving force behind all of America’s modern sports. All of the country’s major sports were either invented or evolved there. But as Steven Riess explains, there was something else: “Cities were organic entities composed of physical structures, social organizations and value systems that interacted over time to create urban change that itself helped shape the rise of sport.”86 Some sports, like “pedestrianism” and what is known now as ultramarathoning, suddenly appeared, but within a decade or two were gone. Organized athletics in both the United States and Britain took off in the 1860s, but long before the Civil War, Irish track athletes had already made an impact. “The Great Foot Race,” which offered one thousand dollars to run ten miles within an hour, was held at the Union Course Race Track on Long Island on April 24, 1835. Sixteen to twenty thousand spectators witnessed Patrick Mahony, a thirty-three-year-old porter from Kenmar, Kerry, dressed in “a green gauze shirt,” come third to an American, Henry Stannard, and a Prussian, George Glauer, despite setting a blistering early pace. Mahony had apparently “undergone no training whatever; he left his porter’s cart in Water Street, went over to the course, [and] ran the first mile in less than five and a half minutes….”87 After the Civil War, another Kerry-born athlete led the American middle-distance stakes. James H. Griffin was born in 1842 and arrived in the States in 1857 aged fifteen. Within a few years he had defeated the cream of American distance athletes and set a record by covering ten miles in just over fifty-four minutes at North Bridgewater, Massachusetts.88 But Griffin hardly registered in the regular press of the time, and the fame associated with popular sports would wait for another Munster athlete, Daniel O’Leary.

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A farmer in Ireland before settling in Chicago in 1866, O’Leary worked first as a postman in the Windy City, then as a book-canvasser, whereby he discovered his walking talents collecting debts on Bibles.89 In 1875 he took the much-hyped title “Champion Pedestrian of the World” from the Oregonian runner Edward Payson Weston. Weston had initially refused to entertain the Irishman, but training hard, O’Leary took the distance records held by Weston, first by covering 116 miles in less than twenty-four hours, and then walking five hundred miles in two hours and twenty-eight minutes less than the 156 hours allotted.90 The pair finally met each other on November 15, 1875, at the Exposition Building, Chicago, where three to four hundred onlookers witnessed the start of a six-day epic race. Weston set a steady pace, hoping that O’Leary would soon succumb. He did no such thing: with breaks of between fifteen and forty-five minutes to eat, change clothes and be “rubbed down,” and three to four hours’ sleep at night, O’Leary kept up. Curious crowds grew over the week to around six thousand for the final three hours’ as the Irishman finally covered five hundred and three and a third miles to Weston’s four hundred and fifty one and foursevenths. On completion the pair were surrounded by the masses, and when they cleared, O’Leary was presented with a gold medal commemorating his “Championship of the World.”91 O’Leary met Weston two years later at the Agricultural Hall in Islington, London, in what the Chicago Tribune called “An Exhibition of Pluck and Endurance Such as Was Never Before Witnessed.”92 Weston had moved to Britain and soon found an amiable patron in a British member of Parliament and noted “sportsman,” Sir John Dugdale Astley. He was a sporting toff, the third in a line of baronets, who had married an heiress, Eleanor Blanche Mary Corbett, to service his love of the track. Britain still had no decent long-distance runners, and Astley backed Weston against “any man.” Reading of his success in Britain and his bleating about being “bulldozed” in Chicago provoked O’Leary to return to Europe.93 On April 8, 1877, after six days and seventy thousand paying spectators throughout the week, O’Leary was confirmed the winner by walking 520 miles to Weston’s 510.94 A “special correspondent” for the Chicago Tribune, J.W., wrote from London: Amongst a scene of the greatest excitement, ladies waved their handkerchiefs and gentlemen threw their hats in the air while the cheering was perfectly deafening for fully five minutes. A clergyman walked up to O’Leary, and, taking off his hat, shook the pedestrian cordially by the hand. Then the bouquets began to arrive, and soon the front of O’Leary’s tent looked more like a florist’s shop than anything else.

Astley lost between five hundred and twenty thousand pounds by backing Weston.95 Back in the States, O’Leary disposed of challengers Peter Van Ness and the Frenchman Peter Napoleon “Sport” Campana. Harry Hill’s “protégé,” John “The Lepper” Hughes, aka “The Greenhorn,” who had taken up walking when “following the hounds on foot,” was beaten at Gilmore’s Garden in October 1878.96 O’Leary was finally beaten by the Englishman Charles Rowell the following March at Gilmore’s Garden, thus preventing him from retaining the Astley Cup forever. He dropped out midway complaining of a “severe fever,” although there was speculation, denied by O’Leary, that he had overdone it with the booze.97 The feud with Weston continued. In 1880 Weston challenged O’Leary to a race in a “card” to Turf, Field and Farm, with bitterness clearly evident: “Daniel O’Leary takes pains to boast that he has beat me twice. He fails to state, however, that I have beaten his best record nearly 30 miles. I taught him to walk in the first place, and I can teach him to go 550 miles provided his heart has not lost its courage since he lost the Astley Belt.” Curiously,

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Weston wanted the race run in London, prompting Turf, Field and Farm to advise that “as they are citizens of this country, we should prefer to see them walk here.”98 In what the periodical called “the usual amount of chaff,” O’Leary responded by calling the proposal to go across the Atlantic ridiculous: “This country is neutral enough for either of us…. I think New-York, with its large population of liberal-minded, public-spirited, and thoroughly impartial citizens, is the place for the contest…. [Weston] need not have any doubts about my ‘heart’; it is as good as it ever was, and he will quickly learn that if he really wants to meet me.”99 In Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1886, the two aging athletes got into a scrape during the race. O’Leary was reported to have abused Weston and twice tried to push him off the track, causing the crowd to hiss the Irishman. Weston’s attempts at the end of the race — probably sarcastic — at excusing his opponent “on account of his condition” led O’Leary to make a “hostile demonstration” towards Weston, and he had to be dragged away by associates.100 The two men could never agree on anything. One row broke out over who could cover the greater distance over six days: a human or a horse.101 By 1914, O’Leary claimed he had walked a total of 101,857 miles since 1874 and walked the number of miles of his age every birthday. In Cincinnati in 1907 he covered 1000 miles in 1000 hours, achieving this by walking a mile, resting for the remainder of the hour, then walking another, then another, and so forth, “which was a most arduous performance for a man of any age.” In an interview with the Pittsburgh Press, he claimed the secret of his success was looking after his feet: “I don’t let any calluses grow on the bottom. By using a little sandpaper I file off any growth, and the result my feet are soft and smooth as glass. I never use one pair of shoes two days running. In fact, I used up six pairs coming down from Portland.”102 In April 1879 the Kings County Athletic Club changed its name “to the more comprehensive one of the ‘Irish-American Athletic Club.’” With one hundred and fifty members, its home was a piece of ground on Thirty-Second Street, of the Irish American Weekly enthused: “The club is now started on a firm basis, and in a short time will most probably have enrolled among its members most of the your Irish-American element in this city and Brooklyn, when, it is to be expected, after the necessary training, they will be able to contend against any athletic club in the country in those exercises for which their ancestors were once famous.”103 The following month a certain H. Alsheimer of I-AAC competed in the 56-lb. weight at the NYAC spring games.104 Soon other athletes were representing the club at meetings, such as the middle-distance American champions James H. Gifford and P.J. McDonald, the latter winning the three-mile race at the second meeting of the American Athletic Club that October.105 On Monday June 23, 1879, the I-AAC held its first annual picnic at Jones Wood Coliseum with what the Irish American Weekly described as “large numbers of various nationalities of which the community is composed.” The picnic included a program of ten athletic events and was crowned by a tug-of-war between bachelors and married men. The Irish American Weekly concluded with praise: The great ordeal through which the “Irish-American Athletic Club” had to undergo is now passed. They have made their bow to the public as a chartered club and have come off with flying colors. The picnic has been a success financially and socially, and their games have commanded the commendation of rival athletic clubs…. Everything looks favorable in the direction we have indicated, and great things will be expected at their hands in keeping up the traditions of their ancestors, whose exploits were the theme of bard and historian.106

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By September the I-AAC sent athletes to Mott Haven for the NAAAA National Championships,107 while the club hosted its own Fall Games the following month at the Manhattan AC grounds, which included a Mr. Price from England along with the “World Champion,” Thomas F. Lynch. Here attendance was reduced somewhat by the Astley Belt at Madison Square Garden, but was still respectable, with the Irish American Weekly demanding: “[The] Irish-American element in this community should make it their duty to lend their aid in advancing the material progress of the club by attending their games in large numbers, and thus give it the prestige it deserves….”108 The following year’s event on May 25, 1880, at Jones Wood attracted between one and two thousand spectators and was covered by the New York Times: “The heat was intense, and the seconds and backers of the contestants were fully occupied in sponging and rubbing down their charges, feeding them with lemonade, soda, pieces of ice, &c., in order to supply the waste of perspiration. In the long runs and walks, men followed at the heels of the pedestrians, flinging water from sponges upon their backs and limbs.”109 Meanwhile, a seventeen-year-old youth, Thomas Gallagher, the son of a Circuit Court clerk who tried to climb over the wall of the dancing pavilion bordering the East River, forced the parapet to give way. He fell “amid the shrieks of the spectators” upon the rocks twenty-five feet below, breaking a couple of his ribs, his nose and a kneecap, while also cutting his face and scalp: “From the rocks the stunned and senseless lad bounded off into the swiftly-running current, where he would have assuredly been drowned but for the exertions of two passing boatmen who fished him out and bore him, bleeding profusely to the shore.”110 Despite holding four further annual spring meets, the first I-AAC disappeared between 1885 and 1888.111 However, as late as January 1889, a boxing match between James Maher of the I-AAC and Oscar Finn of the Union Bicycle Club was mentioned in the New York Times.112 The 1888 GAA tour revitalized the desire for a new Irish-American athletic club, and in April 1890 the news came that Michael O’Sullivan of the Pastime AC, James Fitzgibbon, Thomas Curran and Richard Mahoney were now “foremost in a movement to form an Irish-American athletic club in this city.” Irishmen “living in this vicinity” were invited as members, with a meeting organized for April 20 at Berrigan’s Hall.113 The Irish American Weekly noted: It will not be denied that the Turn Verein has done much for the Germans, and in our native land the [GAA] is developing successfully the athletic prowess of our race much to the benefit of the individual and the credit of our people…. For the encouragement of manly sports and exercises, and the advancement of the standard of the Irish-American Athlete, the Irish Athletic Club has been organized.114

The New York Herald reported that Thomas Lonergan was elected president, Joseph Bradley as his vice and Patrick Curtis as treasurer.115 Soon the Irish World noted that membership was up to two hundred by the first week of July, “all of who [sic] are among the sturdiest and most active of the young Irish and Irish-American element in the city.”116 The headquarters were located at Halcyon Hall, 597 Third Avenue, and grounds and a clubhouse at 24 North Moore Street, Staten Island, although efforts were made to secure a more central location at the recently closed Polo Grounds (II) for one day a week.117 The club received three hundred entries, including Tom Conneff, to compete in its first meeting at Jones Wood on July 29, which turned out to be successful despite poor weather.118 The I-AAC included not just athletics, but also baseball and soccer.119 Gaelic team sports featured more prominently, with one newspaper report claiming: “The object of the Irish-American Club of this city is to gain a foothold in this country for a typical Irish

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game.”120 They won the first Gaelic Football Championship in the city, although the Evening World reported that despite two hundred and fifty members, their “chief trouble is that they have no time to practice.” The club had also rejected membership of the AAU, confining “themselves to all athletic sports as they are played in Ireland.”121 In an extensive article in The Sun in March 1893 about hurling, it was still regarded by rooters as “the best team of hurlers hereabouts.”122 The future looked bright for the club. It celebrated its first anniversary at the Military Hall, 198 Bowery, on April 20, 1891, and in October 1892 the I-AAC secured the Polo Grounds on Eighth Avenue and Fifty-Fifth Street for Sunday games of Gaelic football and hurling.123 However, this I-AAC itself petered out around 1894. Despite successfully hosting its annual games at Ridgewood, the club was veering into trouble.124 A meeting arranged with the intention of “considering the advisability” of the club’s remaining within the GAA was postponed when a quorum couldn’t be assembled. Along the Eastern seaboard, Chicago, the Midwest and on to San Francisco, other “Irish-American” athletic clubs either emulated the I-AAC or were formed along similar lines, often having very short life spans. In August 1879, the Irish Athletic Club of Boston was established, according to a former club president, Maurice Dineen, writing years later, as an “organization that was exclusively of men of Irish birth, all of whom were members of the Boston Philo-Celtic Society,” which had been formed with the express purpose of preserving and promoting Irish culture throughout Boston and Massachusetts.125 Their initial goal was introducing Irish sports into America and to “secure the perpetuation of the old Irish Athletic games and sports,”126 and their first gathering at Centennial Grove by Wenham Lake, past Slalem, was an ambitious, extravagant affair reported in newspapers as far away as Lowell and Springfield.127 The Pilot hailed the picnic’s success as proof that the club promised a home for Irish sport in the city: “The [IACB] cannot be praised too highly for the magnificent success of this their first endeavor to bring the national games of Ireland to prominence….”128 The Boston Daily Globe claimed the IACB was “worthy of the great praise which it has universally received by” the eight to ten thousand who attended, “some of them being handsome and stylish turnouts.” Kicking off in central Boston, a procession led by five marshals representing Tara and the four provinces, a twenty-three-piece band, members of the city’s Caledonian Club in “scotch uniforms,” and hurlers shouldering their sticks, made its way to Eastern Depot for special trains to the venue: “All through the grove were little side shows of sports or varying devices, in which groups of people found fun and frolic.” Of the whole event it concluded: “The day was one of unalloyed enjoyment and no mishap or accident marred its pleasure.”129 The Boston Journal reported that the picnic was “a highly respectable one and free from any and all rough elements which usually gather at such events,” while among the “numerous catch penny attractions” was “a son of Africa, who would place his head through an aperture in a piece of canves [sic] and allow folks for a consideration to throw rubber balls at his cranium.”130 Fittingly, as the revelers arrived back in Boston the procession once more marched through the city, stopping briefly outside the Globe’s office, where the band serenaded as the patrons gave the newspaper “hearty cheers.”131 The IACB hoped to consolidate its hold on the venue a year later by going into partnership with the venue’s owner, Mr. Low, including an early failed attempt at naming rights to rename the Centennial Grove the “Irish Athletic Grove.”132 Throughout the eighties these picnics became the showcase of Irish athletics in the Hub, attended by other Irish sporting celebrities like the wrestler John McMahon and swimmer

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“Captain” Tom Riley.133 Aficionados of the sweet science were rewarded with John L. Sullivan and Jake Kilrain as frequent guests. Sullivan took part in gloved exhibitions of “the manly art” with Peter McCoy and other local pugs in 1882 that were “delicate in their nature.”134 He returned the following year with McCoy, “followed everywhere by admiring and howling crowds of small boys.”135 Jake Kilrain also boxed a certain D. Gill and another “unknown” at the 1884 picnic.136 Meanwhile, John Boyle O’Reilly was the chief judge at many picnics, refereeing the wrestling and self-defense matches, and donated a cup to the games’ hurling championship.137 Athletics included foot races, throwing and jumping events, tug-of-war, dancing, and in the case of the first picnic, “impromptu” events such as sack races.138 The 1882 picnic began with a rifle match between the Boston Press RC and the East Boston Schnetzen Corps, followed by three boating events: the single and double-sculls and four-oared boat race, with entries from the West End Club of Boston, the Salem Boat Club and St. Mary’s of Charlestown.139 The 1884 picnic at Highland Lake included the new craze of roller-skating.140 Dancing was also a key feature. The Boston Globe, previewing the 1882 picnic, noted that at three p.m. “the patriotism of the throngs will have an opportunity to be aroused at an exhibition of Irish jigs and hornpipe….”141 In 1884 the IACB opened new headquarters at 116 Eliot Street, but its influence began to wane through the decade as newer athletic clubs, like the National Irish Athletic Association, began grabbing the better athletes, hosting the more popular annual picnics and vying for the heart of Bostonian Irish athletics.142 The 1885 picnic attracted only between 800 and a thousand visitors despite an impressive list of participants, while the 1887 event also counted 1200 patrons, although the hurling match was abandoned when one of the teams failed to appear.143 The IACB remained in the public view until the late eighties, when it disappeared from high-level athletics. Founded in 1885, the National Irish Athletic Association’s first annual picnic on September 17 at Point of Pines, near Lynn, attracted eight thousand patrons, making the event a “complete success,” according to the Boston Daily Advertiser.144 For the next fifteen years the Nationals, whose club emblem was a golden eagle soaring away from an Irish harp, representing “America possessing the best genius of Ireland,” remained Boston’s foremost club. 145 Major picnics switched to Oakland Gardens and then Oak Island, 146 and by 1899, their annual picnic attracted ten thousand spectators to watch the professional athletic events.147 The following year eight thousand patrons “thronged the grounds … picnicking under the trees, dancing in the pavilion, promenading the shady avenues within earshot of the brass bands, or taking chances on the hundred and one catch penny schemes that had grown up in a night.”148 But the figures showed that attendance at these picnics were in decline, and the 1901 event, the last reported picnic, had just five thousand present.149 Still, the esteem in which this club was held was highlighted when the 1888 Gaelic tourists were met by at the NIAA’s “rooms” on Mason Street and not by the IACB.150 An effort to revitalize the IACB with an Irish-American Athletic Club, that brought together Boston’s smaller Irish clubs, resulted in a meeting at the Alpha Hall on Essex Street in 1892.151 Further sessions at Montgomery Hall on Washington Street included delegates from the Boston Hurling Club, with one of the main focuses being to gather a team from Massachusetts for the proposed Tailteann Games in Ireland.152 In the end, upwards of nine clubs had joined the Irish-American Athletic Union by its October meeting, with Captain John M. Tobin presiding and Peter Daly as secretary, but the union disappeared afterwards.153 Filling the void left by the disappearance of the “Nationals” were the picnics organized by

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Irish societies. Fifteen thousand attended the first “Annual Athletic and Military Field Day” of the United Irish Societies of Massachusetts at Oak Island on the Fourth of July 1903, with the highlight a hurling game between the Celtics of Malden and the Emmetts of Lynn.154 As in New York, the representative of Irish athletics in Boston would reincarnate. In July 1911 the Boston Journal wrote of the “considerable internal dissension in local amateur track athletics which may amount” to an attempt by Boston’s Irish athletic community to found their own answer to the I-AAC, on the remnants of the faltering South Boston AC that was deemed to be “on its last legs and really existed only on paper.” Men like James B. Connolly were rumored to be the backers, along with other former South Boston athletes like Dr. John McDonnell, a former weight thrower, and Noble S. Ray, a relay runner and secretary of the SBAC.155 The Bostonian Irish athletic club would finally re-emerge in 1913 as the Irish-American AA, and the “Winged Shield’s” first Annual Field Day and Monster Carnival scheduled for July 25, 1914, at the Locust Street Grounds was attended by athletes from all over the city, with former professional Pooch Donovan one of the judges.156 The club would compete at the 1916 AAU championships before also disappearing.157 In Chicago, an Irish-American Athletic Club was formed around 1879, and the Chicago Tribune first lists it hosting a picnic at Ogden’s Grove, Clybourn Avenue, with a day of “athletic exercises, music, and dancing.” The star was Peter, or Pat, Foley, who won the 12lb. hammer, the 16-lb. hammer, the 21-lb. shot, and the 56-lb. weight events.158 The “second annual picnic” was well attended, according to the Tribune, with fourteen athletic events, including a tug of war, “Hitch and Kick,” “three forward jumps with weights,” “one forward jump without weights,” and tossing a sixteen-foot caber, with the day closing with the “three-legged race.”159 The 1881 event was similarly well attended, with the Tribune adding that despite “the fact that considerable beer was consumed by the people on the grounds, remarkably good order was maintained.” Only an eleven-year-old boy’s picking up a gash and four stitches from a wayward throw of Maurice Moriarty’s 22-lb. weight marred a successful day.160 The club disappeared — or possibly ran under another name — from mainstream reports for nearly three decades. An attempt to reorganize it in 1895 left the club’s president, Joe Ryan, spending most of the time denying that the club was in competition with the Illinois GAA: “The prospects of the IAAA are decidedly encouraging and we expect our membership roll to reach the century mark at our next meeting. An impression has been created among outsiders that the new organization is antagonistic to the [GAA]. This is entirely erroneous. On the contrary the most friendly feeling exists.” Ryan said the only sticking points were plans to also play football under “intercollegiate,” not rugby and soccer rules.161 Resurfacing around 1909, the club continued at least until the mid-teens. In August 1910 it organized its first annual meeting, a spectacular “big track meet,” at the White Sox’ stadium, where the CI-AAC established its credentials for the upcoming national outdoor championships by coming second to the Chicago AA, beating both the New York I-AAC and the NYAC.162 In New Orleans a month and a half later, the CI-AAC came ninth in the 1910 AAU National championships, its only credible placing.163 San Francisco’s Irish-American AC was founded in early 1907, with a logo featuring a large shamrock and a shield of the Stars and Stripes in the middle.164 By 1910 it moved into a brand-new gymnasium on Mission Street, between Nineteenth and Twentieth Streets, described by the San Francisco Morning Call as “outfitted with a complete gymnasium, which includes the latest paraphernalia in the gymnastic line as well as shower baths … a

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handball court,” and a 220-yard running track. The club also hosted amateur boxing contests, Gaelic football and basketball.165 Lacking its own stadium, it competed at various locations such as Inglewood race track, Shell Mound, and the Presidio Athletic Grounds, often with the Pastime and Olympic clubs. In July 1910, six thousand people turned up for “the popular picnic … to make merry and from early in the morning until the late hours of the evening people thronged in and out.”166 Gaelic games were also an integral part of the club’s program. Fine weather saw a large crowd attend the I-AAC meeting in October 1909, where teams from the Seattle AC and the Olympic AC were joined by local football teams Parnell’s and Erin’s Hope.167 Their annual spring meeting of May 1911 also included a hurling game for a trophy by the Brewers Association, while a meeting at the Presidio Athletic Grounds a week later included several “crack performers” from St. Mary’s college and was followed by a Gaelic football match between the Erin’s Hopes and a new team made up of I-AAC members.168 When the famous pedestrian, John Ennis, now almost seventy, arrived in the Bay Area in 1910 following his epic walk from Coney Island, the club, in conjunction with the Olympic AC and the Gaelic Dancing Club, gave a benefit dinner at the Knights of the Red Branch Hall on Mission Street, which was attended by the Limerick-born city mayor, Patrick H. McCarthy.169 Smaller cities also followed with Irish-American clubs. The Irish-American AC of Kansas City, Missouri, was formed in 1909 and organized baseball, boxing, wrestling, and basketball, as well as Gaelic football.170 Club premises started out at Oak Street with the grounds on Forty-Seventh and Main Streets, before moving into the former Railroad Club on Delaware Street, which the Kansas City Star noted “will make a very fine club house as there is plenty room to put in a first class gymnasium and swimming pool.” When it moved into its third premises on Fourteenth and Penn Streets in 1911, the club soon folded.171 The Irish-American AC of Jersey City was founded in 1890 with fifty members and rooms on Third Street.172 An Irish-American AC of Buffalo is listed as being granted permission by the Metropolitan Association to organize a meet in September 1909.173 Spalding’s annual Official Athletic Rules and Official Handbook of the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States between 1905 and 1912 lists Irish-American clubs in St. Louis; Pittsburgh174; Providence, Rhode Island175; and Wilmington, Delaware.176 At the end of January 1898 the New York Times announced that one hundred people had joined a new athletic club, the Greater New York Irish Athletic Association, at a meeting at the Annex on the corner of Sixty-Sixth Street and Third Avenue. William Dunne was voted secretary and William Prendergast, president of the Kickhams Gaelic Football Club and head of the city’s GAA, was club treasurer. The main player was the club’s president, Patrick Joseph “Pay Jay” Conway, a successful blacksmith who would remain in the post for twenty-seven of the club’s thirty-three years.177 Born in Limerick on St. Patrick’s Day either in 1859 or 1861, Conway came to the States as a twenty-year-old. An average athlete in his younger days —“I could do the 100-yard dash in 11 seconds when I was a boy,” he said, joking this was still only possible if he jumped off a building’s roof— he was now “200 pounds of good nature … [laughed] easier and louder than [President] Taft and resembles [him] in many physical respects. He has the same full face, shaggy eyebrows and mustache like a hanging garden.” He claimed that the club was the product of a Sunday afternoon get-together in East Sixty-Sixth Street: “Many of our early meetings were held in that room, which was so small that a man was not permitted

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to bring more than one idea with him.” The club obtained a charter in 1897 and operated from the following year. Conway described the early days “as a hard struggle and the club was always in debt. But there was a game lot of men behind it. They gave their time and money to keep it afloat.”178 The club announced ambitious plans to build its own athletic grounds at Laurel Hill on Long Island close to the “City of the Celtic Dead,” Calvary Cemetery, with a “summer clubhouse, a third of a mile track, and grand stand to accommodate 5,000 persons.”179 While there was some confusion about the name — one edition of the New York Times claimed, “The Irish Athletic Club is the name of a new organization that has for its primary object the propagation and cultivation of Irish sports and pastimes”— there was little doubt that the club would soon boast of one of the finest grounds in the city, that would include shower baths and locker rooms.180 By July, Celtic Park was open, handily connected by trolley from the Long Island terminus of the Thirty-Fourth Street Ferry.181 Soon the club began to capitalize on a new batch of emigrating Irish athletes. The first was the world shot put record holder, Denis Horgan, in 1900. He left for the NYAC in 1905, but not before “single-handedly [putting] the club on the athletic map.”182 The following summer John Jesus Flanagan joined the club. Born in Kilbreedy, County Limerick, in January 1873, Flanagan was a noted athlete in Ireland. His first moment of renown came at Stamford Bridge, London, in April 1896, where he smashed James Mitchell’s four-year record for throwing the 15-lb. hammer.183 At that year’s GAA Sports at London’s Kensal Rise, he took the unlimited run and follow hammer record with the same hammer that Mitchell used to set his record in 1892.184 He departed for America in early 1897, joining the NYAC, competing in his first major event at Bayonne, New Jersey, at the end of May, smashing his own record of the 16-lb. hammer in a seven-foot circle, then taking the national title that August in the 16-lb. hammer that James Mitchell had held since 1889.185 Richard Sheridan had left Ireland possibly around the same time and began competing for the Pastime AC in 1897, but his athletic career failed to match that of his younger brother.186 Born in Bohola, near Foxford in County Mayo, Martin Sheridan would later boast that his father was “the greatest leaper in Ireland,” and with “a twinkle in his eye,” who once jumped across a valley “leaping from hilltop to hilltop.” He worked as a streetcar driver in his early years, and a cartoon in the Evening World showed how he gained his muscles by reaching over the front of the vehicle and throwing people out of the way.187 His first mention in the New York press came when he beat John Flanagan in the handicap discus at Celtic Park, in which Flanagan set a new world record of 118 feet and nine and a half inches.188 Within a month, at Paterson, New Jersey, New York’s newest athletic sensation had smashed Flanagan’s record.189 Flanagan retook it two days later in St. Louis, but Sheridan went on to beat the record three times in one afternoon the following year at the Pastime’s autumn games, with a final distance of 129 feet, three inches.190 For all his talents, Sheridan had to wait for two further years before he’d acquire his first AAU national title of many in the discus.191 He was also credited with “resuscitating” the all-around athletic event, later called the decathlon, winning the national titles in 1905, 1907 and 1909. His contribution to this event can’t, according to Frank Zarnowski, be overestimated: “So dominant was Sheridan that he couldn’t find all-around adversaries, so [James E.] Sullivan had to dredge up straw man entries to maintain the appearance of a competition.”192 According to Alan Katchen, Sheridan “embodied the Irish heritage of talented athletes” stretching back to the birth of the “Tailtin [sic] Games,” and who were now arriving in America.193

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The popularity of professional athletics declined in the late eighties. The New York Times, commenting on the O’Leary-Campana race, opined that the event was “one of the poorest recorded exhibitions of professional pedestrianism,” with spectator interest especially “unaccountable”: All day yesterday the vast inclosure [sic] was crowded, not with the throngs of Christmas Day, but still thousands who, despite the manifold discomforts to which they were subjected, found a mysterious fascination in the place that compelled them to linger hour after hour, gazing at the contestants and yelling themselves hoarse over the mediocre exhibition to which they were treated…. To be compelled to spend a day in such a place is an infliction that can only be appreciated by those who have been in similar positions.194

Certain sports’ popularity was fleeting, and nothing better exemplified the sudden rise and fall of the popularity of a sport than cricket. Like prizefighting, it was an imported pastime popular among the genteel classes of New York, and between 1840 and 1855 was the leading ball game in America, with only horse racing receiving greater coverage.195 Yet by the end of the Civil War, it had virtually been wiped it off the sporting map, by what the baseball “fraternity” began to call “the national game.”196 Unlike cricket, baseball was “home-grown”; crucially more suited to American life, it took as many hours to complete as cricket took days; while its simplicity, compared to cricket’s complexity, was another advantage.197 The Brooklyn Eagle opined it was “but purely an English game, [and] it never will be in much vogue with the Americans, especially the New Yorkers, who are all for fast and not slow things.”198 The Irish were involved in establishing America’s first-ever baseball club. The Gotham Club, founded in 1837 and noted as forming the basis of the New York Knickerbocker club’s “New York” rules that are continued to this day, was co-founded by a “well known [Irish] hotel-keeper,” John Murphy.199 Then in November 1843 three “hardened Irishmen,” John McKibben, Joseph Carlisle and Andrew Lester, set up the Magnolia Ball Club, playing out of Elysian Fields in Hoboken.200 Sporting clubs were still owned and run by the members for the members, and profit-making didn’t exist. Baseball didn’t need large acres: it needed a bat, which could include a reasonable sturdy stick; a ball, or some sort of spherical object to hit; and a reasonable number of participants. In effect, it could be played anywhere, and the yard of a tenement was sufficiently acceptable. Inevitably the upper and middle classes could no longer monopolize who played the game, even though they could control who entered their clubs. In reaction, Irish clubs sprang up in big cities and small towns alike, with names like “Shamrock,” “Celtic” and “Hibernian Green.” Ed Delahanty was probably the most famous of many players who graduated from such clubs, in his case the Shamrock Club of Cleveland.201 Because of its modest costs, the sport became “poorly suited for those that turned to sport as a means of distinguishing themselves from the masses.”202 Indeed, it wasn’t long before the likes of the Knickerbocker Club lost their grip on the game. Clubs moved outside to take on rivals and form leagues, and then the need to pay for success crept in. The Knickerbocker Club never participated in anything as vulgar as an organized league, eventually folding in the late 1870s as it lost the battle to keep the game amateur. New upstarts began to appear to challenge the hegemony of the Knickerbockers. Brooklyn’s Eckfords, Atlantics, and Excelsior all jostled to compete with the New York Mutuals as Greater New York’s top side. The Irish became closely associated with the Atlantics, founded in 1855, that took its name from Atlantic Avenue.203 Rader claims the club by 1860 was “a team comprised mainly of Irish Catholic workingmen,” suggesting an intra-urban rivalry that

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Peter O’Brien (center, in black), secretary of the Brooklyn Atlantics, and a bearded veteran who looked “like he needed oiling” (Library of Congress).

pre-dated the “exclusive territories” of the sports franchising of later years that could divide clubs along ethnic grounds.204 However, the names among the club’s playing staff suggest the team was ethnically heterogeneous. One report in the Brooklyn Eagle following a game with the Liberty club of New Brunswick, New Jersey, had only two players with clear Irish names, Mattie and Pete O’Brien. And only one other player of note with an Irish surname — Archy McMahon — participated for the Atlantics that season. Both O’Brien brothers were part-time cricketers who had played matches with the Long Island CC of Bedford.205 Peter himself was noted as being “the very cut of a comic singer,” having entertained both teams at a post-match function near Fulton Ferry with “quite a budget of the drollest of Irish songs” confirming his ancestry. 206 He had joined the Atlantics in 1856 and the pair had also participated as highly regarded umpires for contests of other teams.207 Neither played in the professional leagues: Peter, now known as “Old War Horse,” a bearded veteran who looked “like he needed oiling,” was an aging veteran when the Atlantics defended their championship in 1865.208 He contributed more in the clubhouse than the park, becoming its treasurer in the first year of his membership in 1856. After retiring he became a journalist, writing under the pseudonym of “Old Peto Brine.” Mattie had retired by 1865, and through the effects of “consumption” he died soon after on October 20. According to the Brooklyn Eagle he had “wasted away his once powerful frame, until reduced to a mere skeleton.”209 Out of respect, the club initially decided to cancel the

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rest of the season’s games, which would’ve meant they’d forfeit retaining the championship. After speaking to Mattie’s brothers Peter and Christophe, the club decided to continue with their schedule. Such “mouthing” and “chin music” was coupled with the story that, despite his totally decimated state, Mattie had proclaimed the original “win one for the gipper” line and demanded his colleagues to get on the train to the City of Brotherly Love and beat the Philadelphians. The Atlantics duly won the game and a second championship on the trot.210 By the mid-sixties, baseball showed all the signs of imitating prizefighting as a pastime heavily played and watched by the Irish. The role of New York and other big cities in plowing a fertile land for future Irish-American baseball players to succeed is undeniable. This was where the major clubs played, where their fan base was located and the big political clout resided. Ted Vincent bemoans this megalopolis destruction of what he terms “Mudvillian” towns: “Teams represent major metropolitan marketing areas rather than the more anthropomorphic communities. Sandlot ball fields stand empty much of the time; the townsfolk can’t get up the energy to go out and create their own version of Casey at the bat.”211 There once was a time when Lowell was better than Boston, Troy came higher in the league than Cleveland, Elizabeth higher than Brooklyn, and New York didn’t even have a major league baseball team of its own. For those who would ultimately make the mark as the highest participants of the game, there is plenty of evidence that the craft was learned as much in small towns and villages as in the tenements of the large cities. While formulated in the big cities, baseball had long been a part of small-town life, where the game’s forerunners, “Town Ball,” “Round Ball” or “Rounders,” were played on village greens,212 even if some skeptics, like the journalist William M. Rankin, failed to see any connection between these so-called Old Cat games and baseball.213 Moreover, the game’s supposed values nodded toward the utopian life of Smallsville that inevitably led to the peddling of the myth that its birth wasn’t in a stinking, immigrant-ridden city, but in quaint Cooperstown, where a future Civil War hero, Abner Doubleday, invented it one lazy day in 1839. As Stephen Freedman suggests: “It is no coincidence that the game of baseball became popular at a time when the Arcadian myth of the small town in the countryside … was becoming increasingly difficult to realize within the confines of the city.”214 Situated 135 miles up the Hudson River from Manhattan, Troy was named in 1789 after the legendary city in Homer’s two poems and was chartered as a city in 1816. Located so far inland from the ports where the Irish initially settled, it hardly seems the place to search for the Irish sporting contribution to America. Yet despite its relative anonymity and lack of status, Troy was one of the most prosperous towns in the country, being an important center of iron production and later a producer of consumer goods. As in other American towns, the Irish had arrived in Troy long before the famine, yet their presence was sufficiently an irritant to the locals to produce its own St. Patrick’s Day riot in 1837.215 Sectarian riots were to follow across the country up until the 1870s, but for Troy, things began to settle down for almost sixty years. Most Irish were employed doing the dirtiest and worst-paid jobs, and it was here that the twenty-three-year-old Kate Mullany founded America’s first female labor trades union, the Laundry Union and Co-operative Collar Company, around 1868.216 However, it was another Irish-born resident of the city that remains one of Troy’s most famous icons, and for reasons far less noble than Mullany’s.

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John Morrissey’s childhood was stark, but no different from many an immigrant’s early years. John Touhy writes that by twelve, “Morrissey was already an experienced hand in a wall paper factory, where, if he was paid at all, [he] earned less than a dollar a day.” By seventeen, the huge lad had followed his father into working as a cargo handler on the quays that lined the Hudson, supplementing his meager income by stealing goods and working as a bouncer. Soon he was taken under the wing of the local gangsters and promoted to enforcer and “land shark,” someone who preyed on his own people as they arrived in the country.217 He led his own gang of Irish and German teenage toughs called “The Downtowns,” who fought battles with rival Nativists, while also partaking in burglaries, and even an assault with intent to kill charge that saw him do a two-month stint in the county jail.218 With such a taste for violence, and an unlimited success from the brawls he fought, it was inevitable that Morrissey came to the conclusion that his ambitions were “too great for that two-horse town.”219 So, aged nineteen, he moved downstream to the Big Onion to further his pugilistic, political, and criminal career, only returning to Rensselaer County when his wife, Susan, the daughter of a Hudson steamboat captain with social aspirations, insisted it would be advisable in the wake of William Poole’s murder. Morrissey’s initial businesses in Troy were disappointing, but it was the dullness compared with the excitement of the big city that persuaded Morrissey three years later to return to New York and defend his crown against a young IrishAmerican Trojan, John Carmel Heenan.220 Heenan was born in Troy on May 4, 1835, the eldest of four children to Irish parents Timothy Heenan, a blacksmith, and his wife Mary Morissey. 221 He was nicknamed the “Benicia Boy,” after his own brief sojourn to California, and his loss to Morrissey didn’t deter him.222 He immediately called for a $5,000 rematch within six months, placing a “card” in the New York Evening Express claiming: “Myself and friends not being satisfied with my defeat by John Morrissey … through sickness, which laid me on my bed for six days previously…. I only met him on that day to prevent animadversions from himself or his partisans, being totally 223 John C. Heenan was known as the Benicia Boy even though he unfit for the struggle.” The fight never took was from Troy, New York (Library of Congress).

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place. Morrissey initially refused the challenge, but he changed his mind almost a year later. His “card” stated that this was an attempt “to arrest the course that Mr. Heenan has been pursuing towards my friends, and as he has whipped one of my former seconds, and also recently threatened to whip the other, I thought it my duty to them to come forward and give him a chance, if he could, to whip me.” Despite his depositing $500 with the editor of Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times, two things prevented the fight taking place.224 First, the Buffalo authorities wanted to arrest the pair for their previous mill. Then Heenan departed for England to face Tom Sayers, to whom Morrissey chose to offer his services as a second. Morrissey reiterated his intentions, sarcastically stating, “It appears paradoxical to me and my friends to see a man dubbed ‘Champion of the World’ who has never won a fight in the ring,” before adding his own get-out clause by stipulating that he’d only fight him “as a winner.”225 With Morrissey concentrating on sporting concerns and aspirations for a political career, talk of a rematch was exactly that. The title passed to Heenan by default and Morrissey moved back up to Troy in the summer of 1861, establishing one of the country’s leading sporting resorts. Saratoga Springs, as T.J. English points out, while being the place “the hoi polloi came to relax in the local hot springs,” was also a conservative small town inhabited with the likes that hated big cities and big Irish gangsters. Residents were hardly overjoyed to see the notorious Old Smoke turning up, yet the charmer dodged local objections with “lavish gifts, i.e., payoffs” to any organization — religious or civic — or person that was big enough of a threat. A local columnist of the time, possibly a recipient of Morrissey’s generosity, gushed: “Morrissey divides the profits of his sinning with the good people of the village with a generous hand.”226 Meanwhile, Heenan never fought in anger again in the States. He returned to England, losing to Tom King in Wadhurst in December 1863, then forfeited his American title by refusing to meet Joe Coburn. A fight against Mike McCoole was arranged for September 4, 1868, but was canceled, and during the next two years, Heenan toured the states with King’s successor as English heavyweight champion, and the man known as the “Father of Modern Boxing,” “Gypsy” Jem Mace, but the only record was a three-round exhibition fight in New York in 1871.227 Completing the roster of Troy’s three great heavyweight Irish fighters was Thurlesborn Paddy Ryan. At the age of twenty-three Ryan opened a saloon and it was while throwing troublesome drunks out on the streets that he allegedly attracted the attention of Jim Killoran, the athletic director of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Killoran taught the “Trojan Giant,” as he inevitably became known, the intricacies of not just the manly art but also wrestling, which worked well with the London prize rules era that he initially fought in.228 His first three fights were arranged and then canceled, with the mill against Joe Hess in Milwaukee undated and unknown. The next fight was scheduled to be against John J. Dwyer, who had claimed the heavyweight championship of America following his victory over Jimmy Elliott, and the inactivity of Joe Goss. The fight was set for a venue in Canada some fifty miles from Buffalo on July 25, 1878,229 but it didn’t take place. First, Ryan was beaten and stabbed in New York in June after refusing to perform at a sparring exhibition.230 Then the fight fell through due to a number of objections, mostly by Ryan. Neither side could agree upon a final stakeholder, with Ryan putting forward a gambler called Donnelly, when the fight’s articles of agreement insisted on a “responsible man.” The fancy believed that Ryan merely wanted out of the scrap, and Dwyer published a “card” expressing his disgust.231 In the end the pair met for

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their “set-to” six months before Ryan finally won the heavyweight championship of America against Joe Goss. The scrap took place not in the clandestine shadows of a deserted forest, or a swaying riverboat, but through a chance meeting at Billy Tracy’s saloon at Broadway and Twenty-Ninth Street, New York, with a barroom brawl akin to the “exhibitions” of Sullivan and Morrissey of yonder days. The New York Times made the result clear with the succinct headline: “John Dwyer Whipped.”232 By the late 1860s, baseball clubs were increasingly willing to drop amateurism — or “shamateurism,” as some clubs practiced it — in favor of professionalism. The Cincinnati Red Stockings were the first club to openly declare paying wages, bringing in “foreigners” from New England, moving from four professionals in 1868, to see their “amateur element … completely liquidated” in 1869.233 In 1870, a group of baseball magnates initiated the National Association’s league. The initial season of 1871, however, showed that its financial footing was on unstable ground, with teams coming from only four of America’s ten major cities. While San Francisco and New Orleans could be excused until the age of the jet plane, there were still no teams from Brooklyn, Baltimore, Cincinnati, or St. Louis, while Fort Wayne of Indiana, the eightythird largest town in the States, had their Kekiongas. It was also the only team in the league with a healthy Irish surname presence, and they lasted just that initial season. Meanwhile, Rockford in Illinois, a town not even in the top 100 American towns and located 85 miles from Chicago, were represented by the Forest Citys. Small-town America was “unable to effectively compete with the other [Big City] clubs, maintain an adequate fan base in their markets, and generate sufficient revenues and profits.”234 While it was clear that only the major cities could produce the enormous gate money that baseball owners craved, small towns were more than able to supply a fair share of top baseball players, especially those of Irish descent. Deciphering the specific numbers of the American-born Irish in the sport is impossible, because of the scarcity of the most basic information about many baseball players during the National Association era, and the early years of the National League. The obvious course is to look at the Irish surnames that are available to us through the records of team rosters, but even here, there are deep flaws to the process. Lee Allen tried when he researched and concluded that in the decade from 1880 to 1889, Irish-Americans made up 36 percent of major league debutants.235 First, what counts as an Irish surname? Many people have surnames that are, due to the anglification of Irish names, identical both in Ireland and England.236 Second, what of the Irish players who don’t have immediately apparent Irish names? Third, Irish surnames omit a large part of Irish America because they center on the Gaelic-Catholic majority.237 While religion shouldn’t be a prerequisite for being included in this book, in American-born terms it plays an important part in matching how many generations a family has been in America to how strongly they regard their Irish identity. The biographer of Billy Hamilton, born in the Ulster-Scots stronghold of Newark in 1866, insists that his remaining relatives claimed Hamilton thought of his ethnicity as Scottish, while census returns point to an “Irish” origin that suggests Hamilton’s parents, Samuel and Mary, were probably from Ulster.238 The Virginian senator, former Secretary of the Navy and American Ulster-Scots historian, Jim Webb, traces this lack of affection for what some deride as “hyphenation” to what is probably the only hyphenated group among America’s myriad of immigrants: “[D]ue to their individuality and the timing of the migration — roughly the first seventy years of the 1700s — the Scots-Irish never really desired to define themselves by their ethnic identity.

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In their rush to become Americans, the ‘hyphens’ didn’t matter….”239 Webb neglects to mention that the social, religious and ethnic discrimination that the post-famine Irish migration suffered wasn’t something that the Scots-Irish endured a century earlier. So despite the problems that conjuring up such a list would incur, by collecting players known to have at least one Irish grandparent (and therefore currently eligible for Irish citizenship), Irish surnames, common English surnames found in Ireland with typical Catholic first or second forenames, or who have attended Catholic educational institutes, and then subtracting players who can be discounted either because their surnames are also common in other countries (e.g., the Killefer brothers, Red and Bill, who were of German origin) or because they changed their birth surnames to Irish ones, such as Jack Brennan ( John Gottlieb Dorn), approximately 1138 players, or almost 23 percent of all debutants between 1871 and 1920, were Irish or Irish-American.240 Also during the first fifty years of the major leagues, approximately 656 players, or 58 percent of these ethnic Irish players in the majors, were born in towns outside the top fourteen cities of the U.S. as opposed to 28 percent being born there.241 In an era where the Irish were heavily concentrated in the East Coast urban areas, this proves that for the Irish second generation, baseball wasn’t exclusively the game of the big city that many historians contend.242 True, it can often be impossible to gauge if these players remained in small-town USA or moved on to the big cities, no more than we can tell where the Irish-born arrived in America and where they lived. However, the less repressive and claustrophobic nature of towns like Holyoke, which doesn’t even make it into the 100 biggest towns of the country until the 1880 census, was crucial to baseball’s Irish history. Situated in Western Massachusetts, almost a hundred miles from Boston, Holyoke was the typical sort of inland settlement, usually with a nascent industry or a major engineering project that attracted Irish workers away from the depredation from the ports, and its major industry was the paper supplied by the twenty-five mills scattered around the town by midcentury. By some fluke, it became one of the most Irish towns in the country.243 Of the nineteen major league players to have been born there, ten were Irish-American debutants from 1871 to 1920, including two players with over one thousand appearances, Tommy Tucker and Tommy Dowd. Other small Eastern towns were instrumental as birthplaces of Irish-American sport. In Massachusetts, Cambridge — now a suburb of Boston — produced the three Clarkson brothers, and three Hall of Famers: John Clarkson, Tim Keefe, and Joe Kelley. Lowell produced the Conway brothers of Bill and Dick, Denny Driscoll and Frank McLaughlin, while Springfield, in the southwest of Massachusetts, bestowed five Irish-Americans in the majors, including Rabbit Maranville. Pennsylvania saw Scranton, a steelmaking town in the north of the state, give us five major leaguers, including Bill Coughlin, while Carbondale saw Pete Gillespie and four other Irish-American players leave town between 1850 and 1920. From New York, eight, including Bill Dineen, graced the majors from Syracuse. Bridgeport, Hartford and New Haven in Connecticut produced at least five players from this era that counted Jim “Orator” O’Rourke and Tommy Corcoran. In all, Smallsville USA was the birthplace of Hall of Famers Dan Brouthers (Sylvan Lake, New York), Roger Connor (Waterbury, Connecticut), George Davis (Cohoes, New York), Ned Hanlon (Montville, Connecticut), Hughie Jennings (Pittston, Pennsylvania), Connie Mack (East Brookfield, Massachusetts) and John McGraw (Truxton, New York). For the vast majority of these Irish-American baseball players, their birthplace — either small town or big city — was either along the eastern seaboard and its hinterland or Chicago, St. Louis, or San Francisco.

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Yet no town outside the major cities has produced so many Irish-American baseball professionals as Troy. Fourteen of the twenty-five major league players born in Troy were Irish-Americans, all making their debut in the majors between 1871 and 1920, including Hall of Famers Johnny Evers and Mike “King” Kelly. Bub McAtee was one of the first of a handful of American-born Irish players to play in the NA’s first season. Born in Troy in March 1845, Michael James McAtee had cut his baseball teeth with the local Haymakers, whom he joined in 1866. Jim Devlin, later expelled for gambling and taking bribes, was born in Troy on June 6, 1849. Tom Donovan, born in West Troy on New Year’s Day 1873, played nineteen games for the Cleveland Blues in 1901. His brother Jerry, who was born three years later in September 1876, also played one season in the major leagues with the 1906 Phillies. Bill Fagan, Hughie Hearne, Henry Killeen, Mike Lawlor, Dan Minehan, and Darby O’Brien were the other Irish major leaguers born in Troy between 1871 and 1920. However, there was one baseball player who outshone all his home-town contemporaries and — along with Morrissey, Heenan and Ryan — made Troy unique for its sporting prowess. His name was Mike “King” Kelly. Kelly had been born on New Year’s Eve, 1857, to parents Michael and Catherine, who had escaped Ireland during the famine.244 In his autobiography, Play Ball, Kelly only divulges that his father was a soldier who liked military life so much he remained in “Uncle Sam’s forces, and served his flag until the war was over,” while his mother “was desirous that I should receive a good education — a trait which runs through almost every parent who comes from the little green isle across the sea.” Indeed, Kelly’s childhood is slightly remote — his father’s service in the Civil War notwithstanding — from the dysfunctional instability of others, and it’s clear that he was well educated for his caste. Of his parents, Kelly remarks: “They may not have had the advantages for an education themselves — British misrule prevents that — but they know the value of education, and feel that their sons and daughters shall receive their share of it in this great country of ours.”245 His major league debut came with the Cincinnati Reds on May 1, 1878. In 1880 he was signed by the Chicago White Stockings, where he won five league championships, before being sold in 1886 to the Boston Beaneaters for a then record of $10,000. He joined the Players League, and as player-manager for the Boston Reds, took the pennant with a team containing such Irish-American legends as Dan Brouthers and Morgan Murphy. The following year he moved back to Cincinnati, this time playing for their American Association side, officially known as the Porkers. The influence of Kelly also saw the team become known as the “Kelly’s Killers” or simply the “Kellys,” suggesting a team that reflected the Trojan’s own personality. Club owner Chris Von de Ahe, a German saloon owner-cum-entrepreneur, who had previously run the St. Louis Browns, granted Kelly a free reign over selection for his team player. Mostly extensive boozers themselves in the Kelly mold, they played in whatever position they wanted, and to nobody’s surprise the Porkers ended in seventh place out of nine teams. Following the collapse of the American Association, Kelly moved back to Boston, being snapped up once more by the Beaneaters, where he won two more titles, playing the end of the 1891 season and the whole of 1892. His final season was with the Giants, before moving into minor league management with Allentown of the Pennsylvania State League and Yonkers of the Eastern League. Kelly was without doubt America’s first baseball superstar, and along with John L. Sullivan one of America’s first sporting stars. A flamboyant individual who was dashingly handsome with a huge mustache, and often accompanied by a Japanese valet and a black monkey, he breached the sexes in his appeal.246 He is also cited as the first person to sign autographs

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for doting young fans, agreed to advertising deals for shoe polish, pocketed an extra three thousand dollars in order to circumvent a salary cap in a move to Boston “for the use of his likeness” in a photograph, opened a saloon in New York with the umpire John Kelly, starred in vaudeville — one play was rumored to be called “The Irish Adonis” when his body was past its best — and wrote a book on the game called Play Ball.247 In the game he was seen as an innovative if underhanded professional who sought ways of bending the rules. He is credited with inventing finger signals on what pitches to be thrown, as well as the hook slide, prompting the term “Slide, Kelly, Slide!” He also allegedly took shortcuts when the umpire was distracted, tripped players, or claimed he had substituted a player after catching the ball by jumping from the bench.248 Nor was he shy about intimidating umpires. One day in 1891 in St. Louis he was the center of an “exhibition of temper … that [spectators] won’t forget for a long time.” In response to an unfavorable decision he threw a ball over the fence, and as he went to bat, he became abusive towards the umpire, James “Jumbo” Davis. When threatened with a twenty-five-dollar fine, Kelly replied with undisclosed arrogance: “Fine away. Make it $100, it’s all the same to me.” When expelled, he smirked: “If I go, my men go too.” As he gathered his team together, it was only through the intervention of Von der Ahe that the game continued.249 Not for the first time, and definitely not the last, a sportsman’s social life — or rather the fluids that he consumed during it — had been Kelly’s nemesis, taking him from this world at the young age, even for the nineteenth century, of just thirty-six. His demise was naturally a blow to the game. The New York Times observed that “but for his uncertain habits [Kelly] could undoubtedly have held his place in the National League among the younger players.”250 It also placed the spotlight on Kelly’s legendary lifestyle and once again raised searching questions not just about the drinking habits of sportsmen, or the Irish male, but also of where alcohol’s place should be in the country as a whole.

4 The Joint — The Irish Sportsman and Alcohol The term “joint” comes from “díonta: a shelter of any kind … protected.”1

Sports has always had a close relationship with alcohol. From the earliest tavern with card and dice games, to the modern sports bar showing several simultaneous events on TV, it’s impossible to detach the two. Alcohol was as much a product to sell through sports as something to consume with it, where in the words of William Oscar Johnson: “Whatever angle you view it from, beer and sport have come to be as inseparable in the American lexicon as mom and apple pie, God and country, ham and eggs, Jack and Jill, and, of course, suds and spuds.”2 The drinking house is the meeting place of participants, the venue for many sports, the business of sporting entrepreneurs or a sideline of a professional athlete. It has also been an intimate companion to the sportsman when he needs to, as Robert Stainback notes, “celebrate victory, relax and wind down, or console [himself ] after a loss or poor performance.”3 This has been a traditionally male-centered world for centuries, and only intruded into in recent decades by women. Known as the “Bachelor Subculture,” bars presented men with more than a place to drink. It was the venue to meet and find camaraderie with like-minded souls of the same gender, class and ethnicity: “The ritual of taking a drink with another man provided a means of demonstrating the tough-guy image that defined manhood. Alcohol played an especially important role in lowering inhibitions about social interaction and easing the bonding function of the unique style of male conversational discourse.”4 Yet for mid-century American moralists, this world was a dangerous counterculture created mainly by the Irish that widened “the cultural gap between native and immigrant by placing each as the opponent to the other’s way of life.”5 The temperance movement was something all ethnic groups could back. The Capuchin friar Father Theobald Mathew had founded the Catholic Temperance Society in Ireland in 1838, and had support among the Irish community and the Catholic Church in the U.S., where he visited in the summer of 1849. The more reasonable proponents of temperance argued that they sought solely to assimilate immigrants as good Americans, while at the same time solving poverty.6 However, the home grown movement in the States became deeply entwined with churches and organizations hostile to Irish Catholicism, exemplified by the anti-booze Ku Klux Klan.7 60

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Such noble aspirations in the face of a seemingly destructive social problem suggested that the United States was devoid of alcohol before Paddy arrived. The truth was that the United States was as soaked in booze pre–1850 as it was during the period of the Volstead Act. From the beginning of colonization, the place of the tavern and alcohol in the role of American leisure time was clear. Boston’s first “ordinary” licensed to sell beer opened in 1631. By 1648, there were thirteen places where people could legally drink various strengths of beverages, depending on the license held, in a town of 3,000 residents,8 while George Washington became a wealthy distiller after he retired from his presidency.9 While the United States was never wholly under the yoke of Puritanism, there was an apprehension over where leisure and sport would lead the people. The American colonies that seceded from British rule were, in respects to leisure, culturally divided into two views. In the more religiously orthodox New England and Pennsylvania, village social life was more restricted and Puritan antipathy to leisure time influenced the observation of Christmas or the Sabbath. John C. Miller observes that in 1640, the colony of Massachusetts fined anyone five shillings who fasted, feasted or refused to work on Christmas Day. As for the Lord’s Day of Rest, between sundown on Saturday and Sunday no one could cook, make beds, travel or perform any “unnecessary and unseasonable walking in the streets and fields.”10 This contrasted to the “wilder” Southern colonies, with scarcer village life among its farflung plantations. In addition, Virginian trade depended strongly on the sale and consumption of alcohol for the colony’s survival. Therefore alcohol wasn’t viewed with the hostility witnessed further north, but the Virginia State Assembly still occasionally promulgated laws banning gaming at cards and dice and regulating drinking, as it did in 1619.11 Nevertheless, while the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 undermined the power of English Puritanism, across the Atlantic, American society entered the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries dominated by a religious philosophy that had changed little from the mid-seventeenth century. “Brutal, riotous” sports like boxing, as Gorn points out, were repudiated as Old World decadence that were “patronized by effete [European] aristocrats and debased urban rabble … [and] symbolized the corruptions that a virtuous republic must avoid.”12 Irish immigrants were particularly associated with heavy drinking. In nineteenth-century Britain, this was personified by one “archetypal” Irish drunk, Jemmy Donovan, who made regular appearances in front of Bristol’s beaks between 1836 and 1861 when he wasn’t residing in Bridewell.13 Often the Irish preferred the pub to their own home, even after they were kicked out of them, and such was the “miserable state” of their house that they remained in the street.14 “Drink was the Irishman’s weakness, and drunkenness was the precursor of crime,” even if crime tended to be confined to drunk and disorderly, petty theft and vagrancy.15 A similar picture grew in America where Irish convictions for these crimes were twice the number of any other ethnic group, and teetotalism couldn’t solve their problems.16 As Miller suggests, American conditions increased Irish propensity to drink, with some arrested in Pittsburgh attributing “their habit to the uncongenial weather, lack of proper food and clothing, the need to assuage both the physical pain caused by work accidents and the psychological anxieties stemming from unfamiliar situations.”17 Unsurprisingly, the terms “drink,” “drunkard,” and “Irish” became synonymous.18 And while the factors that bred this subculture have mostly gone, a cultural legacy continues today and is cited as a key contributor to the current Irish-American male’s identity that, as Maureen Dezell observes, is manifested through a perverted pride in the ability to drink more than others:

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The Irish and the Making of American Sport, 1832–1920 Obnoxious caricatures of the “clever Jew,” “penny-pinching Protestant,” or “inscrutable Asian” have mercifully disappeared…. The Irish boozer still bobs about in media flotsam, not because some pernicious prejudice keeps the cliché afloat, but because Irish Americans endorse it. Drinking to wretched excess is a time-honored tradition on St. Patrick’s Day in the United States, an annual occasion on which a splendid heritage is reduced to Eiresatz.19

As marriages became increasingly delayed, an unholy alliance was also drawn up between the Catholic Church and the British state to counter any social meltdown by encouraging the all-male public house as a safety valve. Therefore the moratorium on sexual relations had its only shelter in the all-male group of the tavern, where he not only encountered fellow Irishmen and enhanced his status through varying exploits of drinking, fighting, sporting prowess, “whoring” and gambling, but also pursued “an ethnic predisposition to flee … the psychological problems involved in the transition from a rural to an urban environment” in drink.20 This became not just a means of keeping their minds off the girls, but a counterculture to “native” Anglo-Saxon values. But the American government was never in on this deal. The tavern also satisfied one of humanity’s other basic impulses: to socialize. In it were offered opportunities to meet others and to let down one’s inhibitions, both aided by biblically acceptable amounts of alcohol, and to compete for custom, attractions were introduced.21 Street gangs and volunteer fire companies also organized themselves from the saloon, bringing together males in a “common male aesthetic” cemented through bravery, tribalism and violence.22 Temperance proponents and their propaganda made hay with this so-called badge of honor. At Steinway Hall in March 1883, the Rev. Dr. Crosby gave a lecture to the Association of Master Plumbers, called “The Glory and the Shame of New York.” Though declaring that he welcomed foreigners, Crosby slammed the proprietors of the two-thirds of New York’s alcohol vendors in foreign ownership: “Suppose ten thousand Yankees should go to Dublin … and carry with them 10,000 rattlesnakes and insist on keeping them there?… I reply that ten thousand rattlesnakes would be far preferable in New York today to 10,000 liquor saloons…. Men would hate them and shun them, but your liquor saloons attract men to their ruin.”23 Nor was every Irish person in disagreement. There was a backlash against alcohol from the Irish middle class, disgusted by the reputation of the Irish as drunks in American eyes. And the main target of this combination of sport and saloon was the Irish pugilist. The Irish World, as early as 1871, spoke for lace-curtain Irish by distancing the respectable Irish from the prize ring. Naturally it blamed Perfidious Albion, claiming that Irish pugs “have unfortunately acquired some of the barbarous habits and customs of the Saxons, as they did their language,” fighting for fame and acceptance among his peers, if not for wealth.24 Most pugs were from “lower class Irish backgrounds, ill educated and worse mannered, and, after enjoying a brief moment of fistic publicity and notoriety, rapidly descended to the mire from which they had risen.”25 Although occasionally a “gentleman” or “professor” would turn up, the ring mainly attracted “the roughest elements of American society, including pickpockets, hustlers, drunks and bullies; abundant liquor abetted the release of inhibitions.”26 One report by the Philadelphia Press regarding the 1857 BradleyRankin mill noticed “a number of low groggeries opened around the ground, at which the crowd quenched their thirst and sharpened their appetite for the brutal exhibition.”27 Booze also defined much of the fight organizers. When Tom McCoy died in 1842, the New York Tribune declared that it was the “gamblers, the brothel-masters and keepers of

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flash groggeries who were the chief patrons of ‘the ring.’”28 It continued: “Yankee Sullivan is an Irishman, so is McCleeskey. McGhee, Shanfroid and other parties to this homicide are also from Europe…. The three seconds who ran were all keepers of drunkeries.” It concluded by condemning the issuing of grog-shop licenses to foreigners “of at best suspicious character” who then used them as a front for prizefighting.29 These establishments were, however, a great avenue of mobility for sportsmen: Yankee Sullivan opened his “resort of the pugilistic fraternity” in the Bowery, the Sawdust House, around 1841.30 John Morrissey, Owney Geoghegan, Mike McCoole, Joe Coburn, Paddy Ryan and John L. Sullivan were or became publicans, while the athlete-cum-wrestler Captain James Daly and baseball players John McGraw and Mike “King” Kelly also ran saloons or liquor stores, sometimes with dangerous repercussions. Daly himself was stabbed in the arm after refusing to serve a drunk one night.31 One later “restaurateur” was Tom O’Rourke, born in Boston in May 1856 and an acclaimed rower in his youth before promoting and managing pugs. He moved to New York to run a string of boxing clubs before becoming manager of Madison Square Garden, and his “hotel” on the corner of Broadway and Fortieth Street, the Delavan, was described as “the rendezvous of sporting men and those who knew their Broadway well after the sun had set.” But it doubled as a brothel, showing the broadness of O’Rourke’s interest in the entertainment industry.32 Whenever anything is banned, a new breed of entrepreneur surfaces to provide people with an illegal substitute. Tavern owners of dubious repute grabbed the opportunity to prove facilitators of this new underground culture of paid violence, and promoted clandestine prizefights and blood sports to entertain the so-called sporting crowd. Owney Geoghegan was a “dispenser of fluids that tasted like eternal punishment … [who] never drank a drop of liquor in his life,” according to the New York Herald.33 He opened the first of a string of kips on Twenty-Second Street and Third Avenue, which the New York Tribune hailed as the home “of some of the worst characters in the neighborhood,” before moving onto a similar “resort” closer to the gas-works at Twenty-First and First, which doubled as the headquarters of his “Gashouse Gang.”34 Finding too much aggravation even for this belligerent character, Geoghegan moved onto 287, the Bowery, where he opened another “sporting resort” while claiming to “have endeavored to keep an orderly establishment, and [to have] eschewed companionship with his former associates.” However, these troublemakers refused to stay away. One such tough, Big Johnny Murphy, “a noted rough and bruiser,” turned up and caused trouble at the “store.” As Geoghegan tried to kick him out, the pair began fighting and ended up rolling around the floor before throwing bottles and glasses at each other. Later at the First Avenue Police Station, Murphy appeared with a severe wound on the back of his head and another over his right eye, while Geoghegan didn’t have a scratch on him. Owney then moved between two neighboring dives on the Bowery, numbers 103 — which was called the “Old House at Home”— and 105. These saloons were so “disorderly” that he had no less than 102 indictments against him and his license was constantly revoked. Only political connections enabled him to remain opened.35 Then in the summer of 1877 he ran into a persistent Tenth Precinct police captain, Michael Foley, who began targeting his business, while being rapidly promoted in dubious circumstances that didn’t go unnoticed by the New York Times: “On the morning of that day he was a roundsman, and before nightfall he was a Captain. The haste with which he was promoted over the heads of officers of much longer service created a feeling of the most intense dissatisfaction throughout the force….”36 Foley showed his enthusiasm by raiding Geoghegan’s dive seven times by September, which included a visit by a U.S. Marshal who accused Geoghegan of running an

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illegal cigar factory, and getting fellow cops stationed outside the saloon to warn “greenhorns” away.37 Geoghegan petitioned to have this harassment curtailed, but even with his political friends he failed. He resorted to putting up a large billboard on fences nearby declaring: “THANKS TO THE POLICE: I take pleasure in assuring the public that my house No. 103 Bowery, through the kindness of Capt. Michael Foley, is under the protection of the Police of the Tenth Precinct of this City. All Persons desiring to patronize my establishment may be certain not only of my thanks and protection, but the protection of my friend, Capt. Michael Foley. OWEN GEOGHEGAN.”38 On one raid Geoghegan was charged with “violating the Excise law and with keeping a disorderly house.” Foley’s constant persecution, “wantonly and without cause,” was preventing him from selling out to the proprietors of the American Museum and moving to San Francisco.39 Such was the mistrust of Foley that when Geoghegan shot James Morton, Owney used the feud with Foley not to succumb to arrest: “I would have surrendered myself last night, but for the knowledge that Capt. Foley would have been only too glad to have had the opportunity to imprison me, insult me, and generally take out the many grudges he has against me. He would gladly have treated me like a dog….”40 Then suddenly Foley found himself under investigation. In December he was charged with “neglect of duty” by not executing a warrant issued for the “pulling” of a disorderly house on Forsyth Street which had been issued in early September.41 Foley was gone by the end of February 1878, his “temererity” [sic] in raiding Geoghegan’s dive, according the New York Times, effectively costing him his job. Geoghegan celebrated the captain’s dismissal with a mock wake of his effigy attended by hundreds of his chums.42 He then wrote to the District Attorney informing him that “reported” plans of relocating to the West Coast were now on hold.43 The New York Times seethed that while Geoghegan “was about to abandon the business in this City and transfer his unwelcome presence to San Francisco … it is now announced that he is about to renew the nuisance created by such a resort as he alone can preside over.”44 However, in the winter of 1877-78, number 103 had been taken over by a certain Bill McGlory, a “blatant adherent of Tammany Hall,” according to the New York Times, who had beaten up his sister over a dispute about a watch he wanted to give to his mother.45 He had also gained “an unenviable notoriety about a year ago as the proprietor of the ‘Burnt Rag,’ a resort for thieves and prostates in Bleecker Street.” A local NYPD sergeant, Robert Webb, was so frustrated by this that he wrote a letter to Inspector William Murray, the future NYPD superintendent, that was forwarded to the Board of Excise, claiming that the two licenses granted to “John Flynn” and “Matthew Coyle” really belonged to McGlory and Geoghegan respectively, and that both saloons were nothing but “resorts of thieves and abandoned women … the scenes of frequent cuttings and affrays.”46 One policeman quipped that he counted fifty prostitutes entering Geoghegan’s saloon in one night, although others thought that figure was a conservative one. Geoghegan’s lawyer asked how the officers knew that these ladies were actually streetwalkers, something that the cops couldn’t substantiate apart from insisting they were always “cruising” round the neighborhood.47 The press had a field day: the New York Herald mocked the pair as candidates for the throne of Bulgaria, currently trawling the royal houses of Germany for a king. It printed a letter, apparently from “‘Arry ’Ill” claiming: “Howney’s a good ’un and would keep a bang up shop hout in Bulgaria, but hits my hopinion has McGlory can beat ’im at the throne game hall ’ollow. Send hout McGlory by hall means, and let ’im ’ave it hout with the Bashy Bezooks.”48 The New York Times relished two gentlemen with such similar temperaments and values attempting to coexist as neighbors and predicted “the existence of these rival

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establishments will make it very lively for the Bowery, and give the Police in the Tenth Precinct all the work they can attend to.”49 It proved correct: McGlory was equal to Geoghegan in sharp practice, with both establishments frequented by a similar clientele, with the male visitors “either ‘rough’ or strangers in the City seeing the sights.”50 Both men sold booze without bothering with licenses, or under assumed names, which saw the Board rescind the applications when they found out who they were for.51 War finally erupted when Geoghegan branched out into cheap cabaret, with “songs, recitations, and the production of low comedies” to boost profits. McGlory retaliated by opening a skylight overlooking Geoghegan’s saloon above the stage and hired a band to strike up the moment a performer opened her mouth. McGlory’s henchmen would also tell any of Geoghegan’s friends that mistakenly wandered into McGlory’s dive that they had got to the right place and would insist the boss was upstairs getting a rubdown. If they got impatient, the bartender would call through a tube: “Mr. Geoghegan, there’s some friends of yours down here to see you.” A “gruff ” voice would reply: “All right; I’ll be down in a minute,” thus reassuring the visitors to buy more booze. Only when the money ran out would they be told they were at the wrong place. McGlory would stand outside his joint declaring: “Gentlemen. Do you want to be robbed? Do you want to be knocked down with a sling shot and skull-dragged? If you do, just go into that den of thieves and robbers.” Geoghegan responded: “Do you dare come into a dacint man’s shop an ask afther that rooyun? Don’t ye dare to shtay in here if ye know that villin. But let me give ye the tip. Don’t go into his place with foive cints in yer pocket or ye’ll be drugged and murdered.” The pair came to blows on several occasions, while a barman of McGlory’s that Geoghegan had paid off to send people his way was beaten with an iron bar by his boss.52 From the mid-nineteenth century, sports moved out of the private localized arena into mass public participation. Individual sportsmen now had a following, and tapped into their popularity through vaudeville. Sports had gone national, even international, and thus a new breed of celebrity, the superstar, was born. With this popularity came intrusion into the private lives of these men. And these private lives, residing in a public Petri dish of popular culture, growing more malignant each day through alcoholic excess, was often not very pretty to watch. By the late eighties, the Puritans had the perfect caricatures of the Irish souse in the form of the two icons of the decade: Mike “King” Kelly and John L. Sullivan. Both were America’s first sporting superstars, whose reputations stretched from coast to coast, and while pugilism had a stink of debasement about it, it was baseball that provided even more boozers. Come the eighties, baseball was aiming to appeal further than the uncouth pug groupie. The business structure of the sport, with one franchise per city, meant everybody who came into the ballpark “counted.” Employers were concerned about their players who were all de facto possessions, investments and commodities. Underlining this was the “reserve clause,” or “the backbone of baseball,” as Clark Griffith called it,53 that prevented any franchise growing too powerful while undermining the players’ right to switch to the highest bidder. Mike “King” Kelly was already a superstar by the time Sullivan beat Ryan in 1882, having won two of his five National League championships with Chicago when Sullivan won his title. But like Sullivan, Kelly had the demon drink wrecking his life. All seemed cozy at first. Kelly’s reputation was enhanced within the macho world of the male baseball fan who frequented prizefights. His drinking was legend. Just over two months before his death, the Syracuse Herald observed: “He seems to stand in about the same relation to

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baseball that John L. Sullivan does to pugilism. He is not ‘used up’ physically perhaps as John L., but he wears evidences that his condition is owing to a struggle between King Kelly and King Alcohol to which the latter comes off as he usually does.”54 No doubt his drinking would’ve caused concerns had he underperformed, but his record remained stellar. He had the top NL batting average in 1884 and top overall in both leagues in 1886, but as with most drunken sports stars, it remains a matter of speculation what these stats would’ve been without the drink, and if these careers hadn’t ended so early. Long after Kelly’s death, Cap Anson, Kelly’s manager in Chicago, commented in his memoirs, with more than a hint of his renowned racial generalization, on Kelly’s alcoholism: “[Kelly] was a whole-souled, genial fellow with a host of friends and but one enemy, that one being himself. Time and again I have heard him say that he would never be broke, but money slipped through Mike’s fingers as water slips through the meshes of a fisherman’s net, and he was as fond of whiskey as any representative of the Emerald Isle….”55 The last time Anson saw Kelly in an Eastern hotel barroom, Kelly “threw in enough whisky to put an ordinary man under the table.”56 With drinking partners like Jim McCormick, Frank Flint and George Gore, the teetotal baseball sporting goods magnate and president of the White Stockings, Albert Spalding, was apoplectic. Spalding has been described as a raging Hibernophobe during this period, a man Charley Rosen lambasts as briefly having a “NO IRISH NEED APPLY” sign over the entrance to his ballpark, and who wanted to “purge the roster of Irish players and never even considered signing another one” until eventually forced to do so, all of which sits ill with his insistence on touring Ireland in 1889 and his relationship with John Tener and James E. Sullivan.57 In 1886 he hired Pinkerton detectives to Mike “King” Kelly, pictured in 1887 (Library of Congress).

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follow Kelly’s entourage “all over the tenderloin districts, through the whole roster of saloons and ‘speak-easy’ resorts.” Seven players stood out for attention, prominently McCormick and Kelly. Spalding accused the latter of being spotted in a bar after midnight drinking lemonade. Kelly apparently reacted angrily to the charge: “In that place where the detective reports me as taking a lemonade at 3 a.m., he’s off. It was straight whiskey; I never drank a lemonade at that hour in my life.” A few days later, Kelly and McCormick badly beat up a Pinkerton detective at a Chicago train station as he waited to board a train to Detroit.58 Kelly’s performances were beginning to “slide” like him, to the cost of Spalding, although “King” was clearly in denial, jokingly blaming one poor performance on “too much temperance.”59 By 1893 he was washed up as a pro and seen in one photo as morbidly obese. With his money spent, he relied on the stage for an income, and in late 1894 he was performing at a vaudeville gig in Boston, O’Dowd’s Neighbors, with Mike Murphy’s Burlesque Corps. While traveling by ferry to the Hub from New York he caught a cold that turned into “pneumonia.”60 He was taken to the hospital, and while what happened next is a matter of rumor, he either fell off a stretcher or was deliberately dropped, whereupon he was quoted as saying: “This is me last slide!” One contemporary reports Kelly’s gallows humor: “I guess this is my last trip,” he said as he lay dying in bed.61 “Pneumonia,” as Luke Salisbury suggests, wasn’t always a diagnosis you could rely on.62 Sometimes called “Irish Pneumonia,” this was often a euphemism for liver cirrhosis or alcoholic poisoning. The baseball player turned evangelist, Billy Sunday, took the pledge after finding the Lord in 1886 and in retirement became a star on the God Squad circuit.63 He recalls Kelly telling him: “Bill, I’m proud of you — religion is not my long suit, but I’ll help you all I can.”64 For others there was no happy ending: four boozing colleagues from the pennant-winning White Stockings between 1880 and 1882 — two Irish — joined him in an early grave through the bottle. Brooklyn-born Larry Corcoran, the 1880s’ top pitcher, died from the kidney disorder of Bright’s disease in 1891, aged 31. Philadelphian Frank “Silver” Flint, a man the New York Clipper described as having “few equals and no superiors as a hard-working and effective catcher,” and who had broken every bone in his face and both hands playing the game, passed away from liver failure at thirty-two a year later, nursed by his divorced wife, who had taken pity on him while spotting him in the street with “death stamped on his face.” Although his death was listed at the time as “consumption,” the only clue to a life of his intemperance was granted by the Sporting Life, which noted that despite lifetime earnings of fifty thousand dollars, the toll of “helping friends and holding his own end up always kept him close to the shore.”65 There were other casualties like Jocko Flynn, “the ultimate one-year wonder,”66 seen as a “rookie sensation” early in the 1886 season,67 until he found he couldn’t stay out of the boozing clique of Kelly, which may or may not have hindered his pitching arm that never recovered, ending his career at twenty-three.68 Billy Sunday remembered Flint telling the preacher as he lay dying: “There’s nothing in life of the years ago I care for now. I can hear the grandstand hiss when I strike out. I can hear the bleachers cheer … but there is nothing that can help me now and if the umpire calls me out now, won’t you say a few words over me, Bill?” The evangelist then claimed: “The great Umpire of the universe yelled: ‘You’re out!’” 69 Unsurprisingly, some players would go to great lengths to deny being souses. In the summer of 1889 the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that Jim Fogarty, along with fellow Quakers Joe Mulvey and possibly George Wood, telephoned for a carriage and then went on a drinking spree: During their various drinking shops the men loudly addressed one another as [Cinders] O’Brien, [Chief ] Zimmer and [Jimmy] McAleer…. Fogarty has played this trick several times … and

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Loftus smelled a rat, as two of the trio had never touched the devil’s buttermilk, while the third had taken the pledge. Meanwhile, the Cleveland Plain Dealer claimed a “more harmful or cowardly trick was never played. It had for its object the injury of three of the most reliable members of the Cleveland team and permanent injury to the game.” It would report them to their employers, sniffing that “the ‘funny’ men may find that their ‘joke’ was a costly one.”70 The players hit back, and for a change even had the support of their manager and club. Fogarty denied the charge: “Why, I wasn’t a square away from the hotel during our entire stay … save when going to and from the ground to play.” His manager Harry Wright added: “I am certain that none of the three mentioned … were mixed up in any drunken spree.”71 Writing to the editor of the Sporting Life, Fogarty seethed: “The recent scandalous article coming from the pen of Brunell, of Cleveland, charging Messrs. Wood, Mulvey and myself with drinking and impersonating three players of the Cleveland Club is false in every particular.”72 The allegations were dropped when the Sporting Life editor, Francis C. Richter, claimed the charges were more “not proven,” principally because the editor wouldn’t name the players who spotted Fogarty inebriated.73 Two years later, at just twenty-seven, Fogarty died from tuberculosis.74 It could be argued that perhaps Spalding’s iron rule of the White Stockings encouraged an environment where employees sought comfort in drinking. But even amateur athletes, or those who ran for prize money without employers, were susceptible to alcoholism. John Hughes’s defeat to Daniel O’Leary in October 1878 came as he gave up halfway through the six-day race and promptly got drunk.75 As much through fact as stereotyping, the Irish-American Athletic Club was viewed by many as possessing what Graham Kent succinctly described as a “boozy, easy-going ethos.”76 Indeed, this “ethos” was taken up enthusiastically by the “Whales,” whom Dan Ferris would later recall never really took training seriously: “The moderns train hard and lift weights to develop their muscles. The whales never trained at all and they never lifted anything heavier than glasses of beer, something they did quite expertly.”77 And while few “pedestrians” and runners were tainted by alcohol, some would occasionally let themselves down. Pat Ryan, of whom the New York Times wrote in his obituary that he had “a pugnacious face and is of the fighting type when aroused,” got into such trouble. Needing “to blow off steam one Saturday night after working in construction,” Ryan exercised his generous stature by exhibiting “his capacity for throwing six policemen around.”78 Naturally, a trip abroad always aids in dropping inhibitions, and when the American team participated in the 1906 Intercalated Games in Athens, the lace-curtain Irish-American team manager Matt Halpin was aghast to discover Martin Sheridan and Ralph Rose indulging in the local alcoholic delicacies. This was small fry compared to when he had to get an “unnamed Irish-American athlete” out of trouble following an incident in a Naples hotel.79 Halpin later divulged in the New York Times that he rescued the athlete “from serious difficulties with the police” and jail: “He got beastly drunk at the Hotel De Napoli and smashed furniture, insulted women and otherwise conducted himself along lines of a rowdy…. The damage done on this occasion in this particular hotel was paid for by me out of funds of the American Olympic Committee.”80

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Irish athletic clubs were heavily reliant on alcohol sales for income. The 1893 Games of the NIAA of Boston at Oak Island was almost called off when a license wasn’t approved by the town of Revere. The problem centered on the event’s organizer, J.J. Sweeney, whom the local council failed to believe “was conducting the grove in a proper manner,” and who was acting against the license’s conditions that “intoxicating liquor should not be sold on the grounds….”81 In 1888, a new organization sought to rival and take clubs away from the NAAAA (the National Association of Amateur Athletes of America) that had been founded in 1879. Headed by the secretary of the Pastime Athletic Club, James Edward Sullivan, the son of Irish parents with whom we will deal greatly later, cited the hypocrisy over liquor sales at athletic meetings as one of the rebels’ major gripes. When the Manhattan and NYAC boycotted a meeting, he responded: “They make a loud cry against the use of intoxicating liquors…. [The New York Athletic Club] have a bar in their clubhouse, but the Pastimes have not. The Manhattans have a drinking saloon on their grounds and receive rent for it. We have nothing of the kind.”82 Indeed, the NYAC’s bar had previously seen its own scandal. William J.M. Barry, as a graduate of Queen’s College Cork, was caste-wise acceptable for membership.83 However, Barry was booted out following the cardinal sin of failing to settle a nineteen-dollar bar bill, although “one of New York’s most prominent amateur athletes” claimed it had more to do with his tapping fellow members for money while declaring he was an heir to “considerable property in Ireland, and that he was daily expecting remittances” to repay any debts.84 While male-only associations — such as gangs and fire companies — were a by-product of the saloon, they weren’t always destructive. By the 1880s they began to compete against each other in organized competitions. Perhaps it needed an idyllic rural town, fifteen miles from the squalor of Boston, to achieve this, but Natick produced one of the greatest athletic Irish fire companies ever: the “Natick Hook and Ladder Company,” whose sixteen- to twenty-man hose team was “virtually unbeatable” in its day.85 “A not altogether fire organization,” according to the New York Times, the Natick company included some top professional runners of the day, who “made a name that became worldwide,” and some of whom would go on to be celebrated and respected Ivy League athletic coaches. The fastest runner of the group, Edward “Piper” Donovan, would break the world professional and amateur record in the 100 yards at Brockton, Massachusetts, in 1895.86 At a cattle show in Worcester in 1888, the team won the competition that required men to run 220 yards dragging a wheeled fire truck and ladder before raising the ladder with a company member at the top twenty-eight feet high, achieving this feat in fifty-eight seconds.87 But baseball, through its almost unique situation of having employed workers, was the place where alcohol abuse was taken the most seriously. John McGraw had a strangely conflicted attitude to drink: he campaigned against wine and smokes and lectured aspiring ball players to “shake booze and cigarettes,” while opening a bar in 1897 with longtime friend Wilbert Robinson.88 But McGraw was an almost-teetotal player, who became surly “on those not-uncommon occasions when he had too much to drink.”89 Drink cost him his friendship with Robinson when he fired him after a heated shouting match over their respective performances. Robinson later threw a beer over McGraw’s head and wouldn’t speak to him for another seventeen years.90 McGraw was also a generous man, not only for finding and creating staff jobs for old colleagues, but as someone who thought he could reform drunks through a “touchy-feely” type of paternity. His biographer paints a picture of a manager who signed hard drinkers in the mistaken view that only he could get them to reach their true potential.91 One such

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player was the incorrigible “Turkey” Mike Donlin, who had more reason than anyone to find solace in the bottle. Born in Peora, Illinois, in 1878, moving later to Erie, Pennsylvania, he lost any chance of some semblance of a happy childhood at eight years of age when both his parents, John and Maggie, were killed.92 With no Social Security to protect him, Donlin was left on the streets to survive, suffering from tuberculosis before getting work as a candy seller on the railways. He set off for the California sun, where the better weather enabled him to run footraces and play minor league baseball around Los Angeles. A reputation as a prolific batsman got him spotted by a stringer with the Sporting News who sent clippings back to St. Louis, and midway through the 1899 season, Donlin was picked up by the local Cardinals for “little more than a train fare.”93 However, the fame of the majors proved a huge burden for Donlin. Within two years he had moved across to the Orioles, severely testing McGraw’s patience. On the playing field, “Turkey” was outstanding, with the second best American League batting average of the 1901 season.94 Off it, he was an utter disaster. A drinking spree in 1902, in which he switched from beer to absinthe, culminated in an assault on a chorus girl, Mamie (or Minnie) Fields. Friends queued up to claim it was all Johnny Barleycorn’s fault, with Wilbert Robinson telling the Baltimore Sun: “I think Donlin made a bad break. As a rule he is as nice a fellow as you could find, but he is somewhat different when he has been drinking.”95 Two years later his private life was once more his undoing, leading to an incident during 1904 spring training in Augusta, Georgia, where his drunken singing in a bar provoked a fellow drinker to pull a gun on him.96 The playing season did nothing to dampen his thirst. After a session in St. Louis he was dropped by his manager Joe Kelley in Pittsburgh after turning up drunk. When Kelley told him he’d be suspended if it happened again, Donlin dared him to do just that. Kelley promptly put “Turkey” on a thirty-day suspension and his management backed him. A reporter for the Pittsburgh Press, covering for an unnamed Cincinnati newspaper, takes up the story: “Donlin at once went to the Pittsburg players … and told his troubles, announcing in a loud tone of voice … that he was through with Kelley and that he would not play for at least a month after the manager chose to reinstate him. Then Mike went forth and got more fire water.”97 Donlin was then offloaded to McGraw’s Giants, where he announced that “he had decided once and for all to cut out the ‘fire-water’ and cease being an Indian.”98 The promise was empty: he was arrested drunk in upstate New York in early 1906 after punching a pair of train staff and pointing a gun at them.99 His life should’ve smashed on the oncoming buffers, but two things slammed on the brakes. First, “Turkey” met the “stunning musicalcomedy sensation” Mabel Hite, who got him off the booze, per“Turkey” Mike Donlin, pictured with his wife Mabel Hite forming with her onstage and missing three seasons in the process, in happier times (Library of Congress).

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before her death from cancer in late 1912.100 Second, McGraw made Donlin captain for the 1908 season.101 Ned Hanlon took over the Baltimore Orioles in 1892, creating a team forever connected with the roughhousing Irish baseball of the 1890s. The Orioles were to contain the type of “work hard, play hard” type of Irish ballplayer, men like John “Sadie” McMahon, who in Hanlon’s first season went on an away day with the bottle, then insulted Harry Von der Horst and Hanlon on his return. His tenacity and brilliance, and the fact this was his only slip, meant he stayed in the Charm City, while similar players, like Curt Welch, were shown the door.102 Dan McGann, a teetotal Kentuckian, was a key player in McGraw’s project to bring chaos to the game through intimidation, whose inclusion in Bill James’s list of notorious drinkers is ridiculous, as there is no record of anything hinting of a misdemeanor outside the ballpark, except for a bout of depression.103 Ten years younger than “King” Kelly, and one of seven brothers — of whom five became professionals, making them the largest bunch of siblings to have played in the major league — Ed Delahanty was born in Cleveland to James from near Graiguenamanagh, Kilkenny, and Bridget from Waterford.104 Delahanty clocked up 1,835 games in sixteen continuous seasons, and was the 1899 batting champion with a third-place team. Unlike his brother Jim, he never won a pennant, but with a fourteen-year spell at Philadelphia’s National League franchise, interrupted by one season back in Cleveland in the Players League, he showed consistency, coming second in the pennant race in his final season before being transferred to the Washington Senators. However, like Kelly before him, Delahanty had a major problem with the bottle. At first he was merely, as his biographer details, “a young man who enjoyed a night out and a few laughs with his friends.”105 For most of his career alcohol was never an issue, but in 1900 he started missing games through illness that were clearly down to liquor. His manager at the Phillies, Billy Shettsline, shone some light on the problem by saying Del rarely drank, and if he did it was “only under stress or some trouble real or imaginary.”106 Indeed, Delahanty’s life was beginning to fall apart. He was upset with his wages and had threatened to strike, causing him to be offloaded to the perennial strugglers of Washington. He was bitter that a move to the Giants hadn’t come off, had mounting financial problems, and had a suspicious paranoia of a wife in such ill health she couldn’t accompany him on the road.107 The sequence of events that would end in tragedy began on Thursday, June 25, 1903, during a trip to his home town. After what would be his last game, the following morning’s papers announced his failure to secure a move to New York. Del reacted badly to this news by going on a bender that made him unfit to play in the second game. When his teammates returned to the hotel, he was painting the town red, lashing out at everybody, with only his mother able to calm him down. With more bad news in the press, Delahanty went on an even worse binge, grieving for his wife while storming into his teammates’ rooms.108 The Sporting Life described this outburst as “a sensational tank act.” In the colorful, literary style of the time, Delahanty was described as “filled with enthusiasm, and he doesn’t take his with sugar in it, either, as was shown by his making several scenes and threatening other players and himself with a knife.”109 He missed the subsequent double-header that Saturday, but looked after by Jimmy Ryan, he was sufficiently sober when the team traveled across Lake Erie to Detroit for the Senators’ next game. But the bad news kept coming: reports of another impending “baseball war” between the National and American Leagues exasperated Delahanty, making him even more incoherent while believing his colleagues were plot-

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ting against him. He threatened his players again with his knife before collapsing from exhaustion, his body shaking and saturated with sweat. A doctor and his mother were summoned. They managed to get Ed into some form of shape, and with the help of a local priest, made him promise to make amends for the previous week’s carnage. The following day, Wednesday, the Detroit Times carried the headline “Del Mighty Hitter, Signs Pledge: Confronted by his mother, wife and child here, Big Fellow decides to cut out the booze.”110 Delahanty found this story humiliating, and suddenly decided to go to New York. A letter to his wife Norine contained an insurance policy and remarks that he hoped the train would crash. He booked himself into a Pullman sleeping berth that entitled him to attend the buffet car where he got quietly drunk, got caught smoking in a non-smoking section, caused damage to the carriage, dragged a female passenger out of what he thought was his own bed, and finally, brandishing an open razor, he terrified fellow passengers. All this tried the patience of the conductor, who finally ordered him off at Bridgeburg, Ontario. What happened next is still debated, but theories claim sometime before midnight on July 2, Delahanty walked down the track to cross the International Bridge into New York State. There he either fell off or jumped into the Niagara and was swept over the falls. He was found bloated, mangled and decomposed, with a leg ripped off, a week later on July 9, 1903.111 While Delahanty demonstrated the tragic culmination of a heavy binge, and Kelly the medical effects of long-term alcoholism, both cases were the exception, not the rule. While many of the baseball players from the period didn’t live long lives, dying from tuberculosis, pneumonia or influenza, most still lived clean and fruitful lives when the bats were put down. However, the notion that baseball players were primarily Irish and drunks was a latenineteenth-century stereotype, hard to shake off, and the perception remained that you didn’t have to be Irish to be a drunk … but it helped. While a visible minority of players either had a drinking problem or high-profile incidents involving booze, it should be remembered that the high number of Irish-Americans playing baseball also inflated this perception. In 1897, the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, without pointing fingers at any nationality, cited Kelly as an example that ballplayers “love” to drink: It is strange too, but one seldom can find a ball player who has not at some time in his life been addicted to the liquor habit. They play ball so long, and become so hardened that they soon began to think their constitutions can stand anything, and oftentimes they never realize until too late what inroads the liquor habit is making on their constitutions…. Ball players, as a rule, die young, and there is no reason for this beyond the fact that too many of them are prone to dissipate.112

Richard Peterson has been highly critical of the stereotyping by certain baseball historians, especially Bill James, whose The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract included a list of “Drunken Men” for each decade from 1870 to 1920, heavily laden with Irish.113 While in James’s defense, many Irish-American males wouldn’t find this insulting, James’s list of Irish drunks eased as the Irish became less prominent in the sport while drunkenness (and later drugs) itself continued with other non–Irish baseball players.114 Indeed, there were also Irish players in the period before World War I, like Connie Mack, Jesse Burkett, Jack Barry and Eddie Collins, who were teetotal, and didn’t, like Cap Anson, pontificate about drunkenness while simultaneously getting drunk.115 James also mistakenly places non-drinkers among his souses. Marty Bergen was cer-

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tainly a troubled soul, but there is little evidence that he was a boozer. Tim Murnane claimed that he was “temperate in his habits and always in the pink of condition,” although when he first met him, Bergen had a “tobacco heart … smoked excessively and chewed a great deal.” He cut down this unhealthy habit immensely with Murnane’s help.116 “Wild” Bill Donovan was put on a list of six boozers,117 a surprising inclusion for a player who one historian notes “was a popular evening companion because of his fun-loving personality [but more] importantly … did not drink alcohol,”118 while a Herald-Tribune reporter, Heywood Broun, claimed Donovan had never “taken a drink in his life.”119 Perhaps James got carried away with the “Wild” soubriquet, which was picked because of his reckless pitching style in his early matches, rather than for any kind of penchant to smash up hotel rooms like a wired rock star.120 Boozers could be put into three camps: those who couldn’t handle their drink, often on very limited occasions; those who drank through trauma or depression, usually over their career; and those whose drinking interfered with work and were disciplined or sacked. Curt Welch is one of those players you could place in all three. Reportedly illiterate and famed as the man who made the “$15,000” slide under the nose of Mike Kelly in the seventh and deciding game of the 1886 “World Series,” Welch was a base stealer par excellence of his era. But he too was crippled by the bottle. As Hubbard and Johnson point out, in a St. Louis Browns team with a fair share of drinkers, Welch must have been some performer to stand out.121 Certainly dedicating a season to the beer, and thus ensuring he’d be held in high esteem by bachelors, did his dubious reputation no harm.122 Like so many others, he performed despite the drink. He hid beer behind the center field fence while at Toledo, and sipped his stash during the game.123 The Sporting News reported that at the 1888 Fourth of July game in St. Louis between his current and former clubs, a keg was put behind the bulletin board for his own refreshment. But the alcohol failed to stop him from “making those circus catches” for which he was known: “There has been a great deal said and written about Curt Welch, and among other things it has been said that ‘boozing’ has no effect whatever on him. A great many people have doubted that assertion.”124 It couldn’t last. First, his boozing led to irresponsible incidents, such as when he and Denny Lyons received “a knowing glance” from two probable Louisville hookers who then relieved him of his diamond pin.125 Further brief spells at the Orioles, Cincinnati, and Louisville saw his alcoholism worsen, eventually curtailing his career in the majors. In June 1892 in Pittsburgh, Ned Hanlon suspended Welch, with the Baltimore Morning Herald explaining that “the cause of the trouble is only a matter of surmise here.” The paper added that Pittsburgh was an “unfortunate” place for Welch: “At the time of the club’s former visit to the Smoky City there were rumors of lively carryings on, in which the name of Welch was somewhat prominent. The present case is likely a repetition of the old trouble —‘too many cigars.’”126 A week later Welch was released, to the local baseballing public’s regret, including the local press. The Baltimore Morning Herald wrote of Welch’s popularity: “His heart has been in the game, and his work has been characterized by an entire absence of that perfunctory per diem manner which has been all too prevalent on the diamond. When Curt Welch is himself he is a tower of strength to any team.” But there was a fly in the ointment: “Curt is addicted to the worship of Bacchus, and this habit has so grown upon him and impaired his usefulness that it has finally, now brought about [his] severance…. The management have been disposed in the past to deal somewhat leniently with the center

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fielder’s weakness, and has shut its eyes to conduct that would have caused the release of a less able man.”127 His tenure in Cincinnati lasted just the rest of the season, and a stay in Louisville was even shorter; he was moving on to the Ohio-Michigan League with East Liverpool before the summer was out. The Sporting Life reported the fall of Welch with much tut-tutting: Among the announcements recently made in the news columns of trade depression was one that the pottery hands is [sic] an East Liverpool yard had their wages reduced to $1.25 a day for 10 hours. Among these laborers who thus suffered was Curtis Welch…. The St. Louis officials were glad to pay him as much an hour for his work then as he earns now in a week. But like many other brilliant players who have wrecked their own lives, Welch took to drink, and his downfall was rapid.128

Three years later, aged thirty-four, Welch was dead, from what was diagnosed as “consumption,” which such quotation marks may suggest was the infamous Irish variant that finished off “King” Kelly. The Sporting Life concluded sadly that Welch, “a wreck from drink,” had “the besetting weakness of many another gifted ball player, and to that unfortunate weakness his untimely death may be attributed.”129 In contrast, his namesake, Mickey Welch, was a poor candidate as a souse and it seems he barely covered any of the bases mentioned. He wasn’t into spirits; just his love of beer compelled him to write loads of poems about his favorite beverage, and recite them to fans and journalists. Such verse included: “A mug of ale without a question / When drunk on top would aid digestion,” and “Pure elixir of malt and hops / Beats all the drugs and all the drops.” These samples lay bare the fact that Welch, who became a Hall of Famer in 1973, was better at baseball than poetry.130 Such homage endeared him to bachelors, but Welch led a clean life, not smoking or swearing, and marrying and settling down with a Holyoke colleen called Mary Whelihan, although the Sporting Life quoted him as admitting he married too young and that “if he had to do it over again, he could follow Tim [Keefe]’s example and remain a bachelor.”131 Another player whose love of the bottle resulted in an early death was Charlie Sweeney. An early exponent of the curve ball, he set a record of striking out nineteen batters of the Boston Beaneaters in June 1884. But his erratic performances that season, and an unhealthy rivalry with one of the great pitchers of the era, the non–Irish fellow boozer Charley Radbourne, split the team into two camps. Sweeney turned up on days he wasn’t pitching, sloshed and with a woman on his arm.132 On July 22, 1884, with Radbourne suspended for threatening to leave for the Union Association’s St. Louis franchise, Sweeney’s answer was to get drunk the morning before the game. He then “kept his buzz by swigging on a flask between innings.” Sweeney made it to the seventh inning, when his manager Frank Bancroft subbed him with Joe “Cyclone” Miller. He immediately got abusive, replying: “Nothing doing. I finish what I started.” Released that night, it was Sweeney and not Radbourne who ended up in the Gateway City, winning a somewhat easy 1884 Onion League pennant.133 His incessant drinking ended his career prematurely at just twenty-four, and as we will see later, destroyed his life. The half-French, half-Irish Walter James “Rabbit” Maranville picked up his nickname not because of his protruding ears, but because the daughter of a family he knew while playing in the New England League said he reminded her of a rabbit hopping and bounding around. Born in Springfield, Massachusetts, the consummate joker, bordering on someone with Tourette’s Syndrome, got involved in two incidents in “Bible-Belt” Macon, Georgia, while in spring training with the Boston Braves in 1915. First, he antagonized his manager

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George Stallings by dressing up as a bellboy and delivering him a fake telegram. Failing to recognize his shortstop when he refused to leave, he enquired why the boy was still there. “I’m waiting for my dime, you cheap skate,” Maranville replied. Stallings leapt out of his bath and chased Maranville through the hotel, throwing a chair after him. Days later, along with another Irish-American, Sherwood “Sherry” Magee, he disrupted a street meeting of local Pentecostals with some horseplay that was culturally alien to temperance America. A riot erupted and the local police were called, as the livid “Holy Rollers” chased the two heathens through the town. They were saved when they bumped into a Salvation Army band marching down the sidewalk. With Maranville grabbing a tambourine and Magee a drum, they managed to melt away unnoticed.134 As already alluded to, concern over drunkenness from capitalist owners wasn’t solely down to health reasons. Like Henry Ford, who thought of alcohol as only fit for the fuel tanks of cars, they saw alcohol abuse as damaging productivity. As Spalding’s Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1889 commented in a paragraph titled “EVILS IN THE PROFESSIONAL ARENA,” two items stood in the way of the professional baseball player’s path to success: women and wine. The saloon and the brothel are the evils of the baseball world … at the cost of the loss of thousands of dollars to clubs who blindly shut their eyes to … intemperance and dissipation in their ranks. We tell you … the sooner you introduce the prohibition plank in your contracts the sooner you will get rid of the costly evil of drunkenness…. The prohibition rule from April to October is the only practical rule for removing drunkenness in your teams.135

A particular disdain of alcohol began among the National League club owners which went hand in hand with their objections to Sunday baseball. William Hulbert imposed “almost draconian measures for a coalition trying to attract a sporting crowd: no beer or whiskey allowed in the ballpark … or public drunkenness by its players.”136 At the first NL meeting at the Grand Central Hotel in New York, Hulbert declared war on Johnny Barleycorn: “No longer would drunkenness … be tolerated.”137 The 1880 annual NL meeting amended the constitution that “provides that any club found guilty of … permitting the sale of liquors or beer on such grounds at any time will forfeit membership.”138 At the following year’s meeting at Saratoga Springs in September 1881, ten players were banned for what Hulbert’s underling, Albert Spalding, claimed were “gross acts of intemperance or insubordination, [which] were subversive to discipline and good order.” The accused included Edward “The Only” Nolan and the Syracusian-born Mike Dorgan.139 Both were banned for the 1882 season, but while Nolan kept his head down when he returned, Dorgan saw it as business as usual and had to be sent home in July, felled by “heat and liquor.”140 Others who saw their careers curtailed by the booze included the Irish-born Jimmy Hallinan. Finding himself possibly out of pocket when the troubled 1877 Cincinnati Reds looked like they were going bust, he went out and got drunk and ended up in a brawl with a printer from the local paper, followed by a night in “the city’s celebrated hoosegow.” In the morning he was visited by a Chicagoan sports hack called Louis Meacham, who paid his bail, got him drunk at a nearby saloon, and got him to sign for Hulbert’s Stockings, all with the president’s knowledge.141 As if there were some divine justice for Hulbert, his investment was released because “his habits were such that the management could not depend on him.” Hallinan was dead at thirty, killed by gastritis, aggravated by his alcoholism.142 If “wine” was killing off young players, few died from “women.” One exception was John “Jiggs” Donahue, who was a key member of Comiskey’s 1906 world champions with

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his defensive catching. An undisciplined first baseman, Donahue spent countless nights of carousing that saw Commy’s patience run out. He was sold to the Washington Senators in May 1909, ending his career that season, before contracting syphilis in 1913 and dying in the psychiatric wing of Columbus State Hospital the same year. The Chicago Tribune noted in its obituary that his passing was through “paresis.”143 Even men in authority weren’t immune. Umpires turned to liquor to cope with the abuse that went with their job. “Honest John” Gaffney, known as “the king of umpires,” had in 1893 become totally incompetent and was sacked by the NL for his drunkenness, or what the Sporting Life claimed was his inability to “restrain himself and retain his usefulness.”144 He returned for the 1894 season, but was soon noted to be up to his old tricks by the Life. The paper claimed he was not only getting loans off the clubs where he was officiating, with all the suspicions that this would attract, but was also “having another round with ‘King Alcohol.’” The newspaper added that “so offensive” were his recent shenanigans that the NL president, Nicholas Young, wrote him a final warning: “Dear Mr. Gaffney — I am pained to read that you have been on a drunken spree with a party of League ball players. I am sorry for your weakness and I am sorry for your family. The next trip of that kind will end your career as a League umpire forever. I will be sorry to part company with a man who has so many good qualities…. I write in kindness, but this is your last chance. (Signed) N.E. Young.”145 Gaffney failed to turn up for a number of games that summer, prompting the Life to predict he would be shown the door soon.146 Meanwhile, Tim Keefe, a former professional pitcher who gained praise as an arbiter with a good knowledge of the rules, found his gentlemanly demeanor ill suited for the post of umpire. On July 25, 1895, at Pittsburgh, Keefe sent off Hughie Jennings, provoking John McGraw to accuse Keefe of being drunk, shouting: “Look here, old man, you sent for a bottle yesterday.” Keefe misjudged where this was all going by admitting this was purely because he was sick: “Sick?!” screamed McGraw, amidst hysterics from the players. “Drunk, you mean. You were drunk all last week in Chicago.” The Sporting News defended Keefe by describing the accusations as “groundless,” describing the umpire as next to Bob Emslie, the best arbiter in the National League, while “the inability of the Birdies to run the game in which he officiates is responsible for McGraw’s break.”147 Keefe resigned within a year.148 Other Irish umpires weren’t immune to these boozehound slurs. When Silk O’Loughlin was taken sick at an Eastern League game in Syracuse, he was advised by some of the crowd to give up the drink. The Sporting Life’s correspondent chuckled at this display of umpirebaiting: “This was very amusing for the reason that O’Loughlin never drinks intoxicants and has not missed an assignment as umpire in the Eastern League for three seasons.”149 Managers also found solace in the bottle. Tommy McCarthy, Von der Horst’s replacement of Charles Comiskey at St. Louis Browns in 1890, and one part of the “Heavenly Twins” of Boston, was fined twenty-five dollars by his boss after deciding to break curfew in Rochester to dance the “Razzle Dazzle Quadrille” until three in the morning with four other players. They eventually staggered into their hotel exhilarated, according to the Sporting News, “with dancing and Syracuse larger [sic] beer.”150 His own friendship with the other half of the twins, Hugh Duffy, with whom he ran a saloon and billiard hall in Boston, was ruined when Duffy “got the temperance bee” and wanted to sell just soft drinks. McCarthy responded that if they weren’t such good friends he’d have “smote him right there.” He bought out Duffy and moved to a South Boston establishment, refusing another partner in case he’d one day get the “bee” too.151 Despite advertising by Coca-Cola, which claimed in one ad “alcohol is fatal to good

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ball,” Hughie Jennings took up drinking. This was blamed on a number of near-fatal accidents. In 1897 he was almost killed when he was hit in the head by a baseball, then while studying law at Cornell University, he jumped into a swimming pool after the caretaker had emptied it, fracturing his skull. Finally, in December 1911 near Gouldsborough, Pennsylvania, he was traveling with a priest when he suffered head injuries and a broken arm in a car crash.152 At the Detroit Tigers, one of his players, Davy Jones, recalled that he was drunk almost all the time: “He didn’t even know what was going on in the ball game. Didn’t even know our signals. He’d come out there sometimes and he’d be in a complete stupor. He’d raise the cane, you know, and call people names. Oh, the language he’d use to some of the ballplayers.”153 Then there was Pat Moran, a man not known “to turn down a drink when it was put before him, nor did he mind if his players made their way to barrooms after games as long as they were in bed on time and ready to play at game time.”154 Known as “Dot Irisher” to Cincinnati Germans, and “Old Whiskey Face” to the rest of the baseball world,155 he possessed a laid-back approach to his players’ lives, his big red nose proving a clever front for a manager who insisted that players eat properly and exercise correctly, and who demanded obedience to build a strong team.156 His crowning moment should’ve been leading the Reds to the 1919 World Series, but unknown to him, his opponents conspired to help Cincinnati win. Within five years, Moran was dead at just 48, yet another victim of Bright’s Disease.157 Not all owners were against alcohol as a means of boosting revenues. In heavily German cities like Cincinnati or St. Louis, they were deeply resentful of any sort of interference from the NL, while Henry Von de Horst’s Orioles were an offshoot of his brewing business. Pat Moran, known as “Old Whiskey Face” for good reason (Library In 1880, the Cincinnati Red of Congress).

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Stockings refused to cease selling alcohol at games and were consequently expelled from the NL. They returned to the majors in 1882 as one of the key founders of the rival American Association. Known as the “Beer and Whiskey League” because of its more laissez-faire attitude to liquor, the league made alcohol a key weapon in the fight with their rivals. Clearly this was an economic imperative, where certain “professional leagues flouted social prohibitions by having Sunday games, or selling beer and liquor at the ballpark” in an effort to attract fans.158 Yet the clubs were still businesses, run by capitalists, and drunken players were not tolerated. “Rowdy” Jack O’Connor, also known as “Peach Pie,” was dismissed by President Kramer from the AA, for “habitual drunkenness, disorderly conduct and insubordination,” only resurfacing in Cleveland after the A A had folded. 159 O’Connor was described as “having a mind of his own and a good capacity for beer and such,” but with a penchant for violence that will be discussed later. All this wasn’t lost on those ambitious Irish-American sportsmen wishing to cross the line from slave to plantation owner. One of the most successful who did so was Cornelius “Connie Mack” McGillicuddy. He was born three days before Christmas in East Brookfield, Massachusetts, the third of seven children of Michael from Kerry and Mary, a Scottish-born Belfastwoman. By the time he had moved into the majors in 1886 with the Washington Nationals, such was the reputation of baseball for drunks that Mary took a dim view of Mack’s joining them.160 She only relented in her opposition when her son vowed to abstain from ballplayer “vices”: “‘Promise me one thing,’ she said, ‘Promise me that you won’t let them get you into bad habits. I’ve brought you up to be a good boy. Promise me that you won’t drink.’ I promised her, and that promise I shall keep to the end of my life.”161 Davis writes that Mary told Mack: “You’ll find drinkers there. Hard drinkers. They’ll be wanting you to join them. They will be men saying things to you to want to make you fight. I’ll not ask you to make any promises, but you will never get anywhere drinking and fighting.” In fact, Mack didn’t keep his word, but instead moderated his alcohol intake.162 When Mack moved into management, he became associated as a “true gent,” the antithesis of the tough guy of John McGraw, as Bruce Kucklick explains: “An important segment of the middle class wanted in this Progressive period to shun effeminacy but also to demonstrate a well-mannered virility…. Mack embraced this most acceptable conception of manliness.”163 In the years up to Prohibition, Mack’s reputation was strengthened by his antipathy to alcohol. “Old Man Booze has put more men out of the game than all the umpires together,” he was quoted on a handbill distributed by the Pennsylvania Women’s Christian Temperance Union in Harrisburg.164 He succinctly answered questions on whether he drank in his autobiography: “I have seen the abuse of alcohol do too much damage to otherwise great players,” before reiterating his promise to his mother.165 He was also helped by Philadelphia’s blue laws that forbade alcohol sales at baseball parks long after the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment.166 Alas, Mack was also a noted miser, and another reason he forbade players boozing in the baseball season was that it cost him money. While the Athletics weren’t keen to sit back and have Sundays denied to them, it seems that management, which included Mack, weren’t as keen in getting the booze ban lifted.167 The same was true of another skinflint, Charles W. Murphy, the owner of the Chicago Cubs from 1905 to 1914, who in 1912 announced a “total abstinence” rule for his players. “Booze, cigarettes and late hours beat us out of the pennant this year,” reflected Murphy, but he was determined they wouldn’t beat his team again: “I have spotted the men who are not taking care of themselves, and they will obey

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the commandments, or get off my team. I cannot afford to lose any more pennants…. The day of the booze-fighter in baseball is gone.”168 Defending his decision in the Chicago Tribune, he claimed Barney Dreyfuss, the Pittsburgh owner which had beaten the Cubs to the NL flag in 1909, had chastised him about his players’ drinking habits. Deeply embarrassed over this, Murphy remembered an unnamed “star” player who had misjudged a “fly ball that a messenger boy could have caught” in the Philadelphia game during the 1910 NL championship. He later claimed: “I did not learn until we had traded this player off that he came into the hotel drunk at 8:30 o’clock in the morning of the day we played that game.” He added, “Certain saloonkeepers [in Cincinnati] … and other individuals with bohemian tastes were in the habit of taking … members of the Chicago club to roadhouses at night and getting them intoxicated.” What also miffed Murphy was that Comiskey’s team was far more temperate than his boys: “Persons who have travelled with both Chicago teams tell me there is not nearly so much drinking among the White Sox as among the Cubs. Does any sane person think that such news is pleasant for me to hear?” A separate dispatch from Philadelphia in the paper gauged the players’ reaction to the charges over breakfast. The “staff correspondent” observed: “As soon as Johnny Evers read that, he went to the bar in the hotel, and no one else had the nerve to go and see what John ordered.”169 Yet the saloon was also the place where sportsman and fan interacted together. As the twentieth century progressed, the distance between athlete and spectator grew immensely as their respective bank balances parted. But in the late nineteenth century, with baseball salaries still within spitting distance of the man in the street, players with a taste for a social drink would still go to the local hostelry. The Third Base on Columbus Avenue near Ruggles Street, not far from Boston’s South End Grounds, was one such place. Cleverly playing on the notion that this was the last stop “before home,” it was the original sports bar, bedecked in photos of players and ballparks, lights in “frosted globes made to simulate baseballs,” and a full-sized mannequin called “the Baseball Man” dressed in a Braves uniform.170 It opened sometime in the 1890s by Michael T. “Nuf Ced” McGreevey (or McGreevy), the “Grand Exalted Ruler of Rooters Row,” described in later years as “powerful of voice and dynamic in personality.” He ran the saloon for over thirty years to finance his sporting obsession rather than to make a living.171 In adulthood he ticked all the boxes as a bachelor. He may not have bothered with a wife, but he enjoyed gambling and was also an accomplished amateur player in both baseball and court handball. He would endorse this status every winter by jumping into Boston Harbor with others for a swim, all just “to show their mettle.”172 McGreevey’s legend as a superfan has gained almost mythical status. He acquired the nickname “Nuf Ced” by breaking up heated discussions in his bar by shouting, “’Nough said!” This would quiet down things just long enough for his patrons to recharge their glasses and get back to arguing.173 He became a public figure who, as Roger Abrams argued, had battled against strong competition “to attract steady patrons and keep them loyal to his establishment.”174 Crucially, the Third Base was home to Boston’s Royal Rooters fan group, and regulars there included the Braves’ Irish baseball players. The Rooters would hear their complaints about the tightfisted practices of owner Arthur Soden, and while these players earned more than most of the fans, they knew that their wages were being artificially suppressed in the NL monopoly while the fans were simultaneously being overcharged twentyfive cents for admission. They knew that the Reserve Clause — of which Soden was a key architect — prevented players going elsewhere, and if any injury curtailed a player’s career,

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his club would leave him to fend for himself. These complaints struck a chord, and the Rooters’ switch of allegiance to the American League was hatched over these discussions.175 When it came down to alcohol and sportsmen, it wasn’t the class-struggle discourse in saloons, but a Bostonian boxer who exhibited the corruption of sport by the bottle. As Michael Isenberg points out, as more states went dry, John L. Sullivan became “temperance enemy number one.” He was a high-profile sporting celebrity with a high-profile drinking problem. His fondness for the devil’s buttermilk made him few WASP friends, and unlike Heenan, while he was an American patriot, he never severed his Irish identity. His ethnicity became “a convenient dustbin that his critics could sweep him into when all else failed.”176 Still, Sullivan was Irish-America’s most revered figure of the 1880s. A creation of, and hero to, the bachelor subculture, he breathed life into a sport that had been dogged for decades by controversy.177 The son of a Kerry father and Athlone mother, Sullivan was born in Roxbury on October 15, 1858, and despite being a promising baseball player, he moved into the ring by his late teens. Most of his fortyseven contests were sparring four-round fights, but in his few prizefights he remained unbeaten, from his heavyweight championship of America defeat of Ryan in 1882 to his loss to Jim Corbett in New Orleans a decade later. He had been drinking since adolescence, and Isenberg suggests Sullivan entwined alcohol with manliness: “By watching the behavior of the predominantly Irish males around him, he took on basic notions of what it meant to be a man and, conversely, what the proper roles for women should be. He learned as a rite of passage, to drink and drink heavily…. He drank so much and did it with such joyous abandon that by his early twenties he had become an alcoholic.”178 Labeled by the more John L. Sullivan: “A son-of-a-bitch of the first water — if he ever drank highbrow WASPs as “a any” (Library of Congress).

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son-of-a-bitch of the first water — if he ever drank any,” his drunkenness was worse for the way that it didn’t remain in the saloon.179 In June 1884 he turned up at Madison Square Garden drunk to spar with Charlie Mitchell, someone he deeply despised, and much to the disgust of the six thousand people present he could barely get into the ring unaided because he was as “full as a goat.” The New York Times commented that “Bill Sykes’s bulldog was a beast with a face that was human as compared with that … who reeled across the ring in Madison Square Garden last evening.” On stage, the master of ceremonies, Billy O’Brien, told the audience that Sullivan was ill, but was suddenly interrupted by the swaying, slurring pug, who confessed: “I ain’t in no condition to fight. But here’s Mr. Mitchell, an’ Dominick McCaffrey is a goin’ to give you a good set-to.” Police braced themselves for a riot when patrons were refused refunds, but despite some anger they left quietly.180 The following day he quietly departed for Boston with the New York Times describing him as not “looking well when he left, and he wasn’t feeling well…. His eyes were red and swollen, and there was a deep huskiness in his voice, which seemed to come from some subterranean cavern with great effort.” A reporter managed to interview Mrs. Sullivan by her husband’s bedroom, who quickly denied Sullivan had been drunk. “He was sick. He hasn’t eaten a mouthful since last Friday until today, when he took a little soup…. Why, he fell down twice while we were dressing him to go…. The only drink he took yesterday was a little brandy about 3 o’clock.” Sleeping off his hangover with the aid of a bandage and some cracked ice around his head, Sullivan rolled over and boomed in “his deep voice”: “I’m sick.” He conceded his vomiting of blood was down to his life of dissipation: “It’s drink that’s bested me. I’ve been going it more or less for a year, until my stomach has gone through…. No, sir, I’ve had enough of it.” The manager of the “fiasco,” Al Smith, was more forthright when asked if Sullivan was hammered: “Of course he was, but I didn’t think anything of that, for he was drunk the whole nine months we were on the road, but always braced up when before an audience.” Mitchell was found at Billy Madden’s saloon and offered his opinion of the proceedings: “Sullivan ’as been drinkin’ ’eavy, and comin’ to train found ’is stomach wouldn’t stand it. It wouldn’t do to be bested. So ’e says to ’imself, the best way to do is to keep on drinkin’, you see? It might ’urt ’im to ’ave people know ’e was drunk, but not as much as to ’ave people see ’im bested — see?”181 Sullivan wasn’t the only pug with a drinking problem. Mike McCoole’s fall from grace was hastened by the bottle, starting after his defeat by Tom Allen. One Minneapolis “thumper” reminisced that the McCoole he knew kept a saloon on Fifth Street, St. Louis, that “was nightly filled with admirers, and it used to be considered an honor to shake hands with him.” McCoole was just “a big, ignorant, steamboat roustabout,” until he got lucky in his fight with William Blake and a reputation was born. While a spot of boxer’s dementia could be blamed for his confusion with some dates, the pug was adamant that McCoole had soon downsized his “splendid bar … supposed to be worth about $50,000,” to a kip in of the less salubrious parts of St. Louis. “In a few months more he had to give up his little gin shop, and when next heard from he was hustling with cotton bales on the New Orleans levee.” It was a case of a hurt ego and he listed a number of mostly Irish sportsmen — the wrestler J.H. McLaughlin and the runner Daniel O’Leary — whom he suggested had embraced Johnny Barleycorn after some humiliation or other.182 When confronted by cops after going into a Chicago saloon looking for Jere Dunn and pulling a gun on everybody who walked in, Jim Elliott protested “that when he was not drunk there was no danger that he would do anything wrong.”183 Others with a drinking problem included James Dunne. After being fined for assaulting a Brooklyn property clerk, the Brooklyn Eagle said Dunne

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should “let liquor alone, it is his worst enemy; it is worse than the newspaper insects that buzz at him or sting him.”184 Joe Coburn was blighted by alcohol, with reports of his shenanigans regularly making the press. In August of 1870 he went “on a spree” with an acquaintance named McIntyre. They hired a coach from Dwyer’s Stable on Sixth Avenue and sometime during that summer evening, the driver got drunk and Coburn and friend “carefully deposited him on the sidewalk” before continuing their evening with his horse and coach in tow. With no sign of the animal and vehicle by the next morning, Coburn was arrested. In court, the case was thrown out by the judge, who opined that the coach driver was “the real culprit.”185 Later that year Coburn shot his wife in the back during a drunken quarrel.186 He was finally put on trial for the attempted murder of two policemen outside his saloon at 1286 Broadway, which the New York Times described as “the resort of roughs of the most desperate character, who found a hospitable host in the proprietor. Frequent rows occurred in this place and on the sidewalk in front of it, and the Police were on a number occasions, compelled to interfere to prevent bloodshed.” So bad was its reputation that the notorious Captain Alexander “Clubber” Williams had instructed his men not to allow crowds to congregate outside it.187 Following his release from prison in July 1885, Coburn got drunk with several friends after visiting Paddy Ryan’s place in Coney Island. On the train home he burnt a woman’s face with a cigar, causing a fight with her escort, who threw Coburn off the train. The man was then beaten up by Coburn’s friends, while Coburn assaulted a railway policeman, Officer Owen Cooke, cutting his left eye with his rings.188 The group made their escape, but such was Coburn’s fame, warrants were issued immediately. A New York Times reporter caught up with him at his Thirty-Sixth Street saloon, which he acquired despite being refused a license.189 Interviewed about the fracas, he scoffed: “Here I am. Why don’t they come and do it[?] Of course there ain’t no warrant out for me. I was dead right in what I done down there, and if they did arrest me they couldn’t hold me.” He then mixed “himself a stiff drink, poured it into his system, and lighting a long cigar … sat down to commune with himself.”190 The following year Coburn was once more drunk when he was arrested for assaulting a judge’s son. He made “an abject apology … with tears in his eyes” the next day, squealing: “This is all a horrible mistake. I was drunk and didn’t know what I was about. I want to apologize to you and hope you will accept it and not prosecute.”191 In 1887 the New York Times reported him as the “proprietor” of an “oyster and drinking saloon” at 470 Sixth Avenue when he was arrested for allowing “music and dancing in violation of the law in a place where liquor is sold.” Coburn denied the accusation, saying instead he was merely the dive’s manager. It all began when three African Americans were spotted in the dive performing some early form of Riverdance; one was playing a harp, another a guitar, while the third was “dancing a jig.” Coburn, displaying a lack of racism prevalent among his peers, stated they had merely popped in “to get something to eat” and that they started dancing when another customer suggested the idea.192 On his release from Sing Sing in 1882 Coburn celebrated his freedom by drinking soda-water, declaring at a later benefit to help him open another saloon: “All of [my] troubles were due to [alcohol].”193 Coburn never stuck to any “promise” and died in December 1890 of consumption, aged fifty-five.194 By 1905, drink had also taken an immense toll on Sullivan. In March of that year he claimed he took the pledge while sitting in a bar in Terre Haute, Indiana, where he poured champagne he had ordered into a spittoon, declaring: “If I ever take another drink as long as I live, I hope to God I choke!”195 Those who knew him were skeptical, as he had done

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likewise as far back as 1892, when he was confronted by an ex-alcoholic, Francis Murphy, in Tacoma, Washington, only to “repair” to the nearest “dive and got roaring drunk,” before appearing at a local theater slurringly urging others to abstain.196 But alcohol destroyed Sullivan’s marriage, consumed at least half a million dollars, and wrecked what remained of his boxing career; reputedly he gave as much money away as he spent on drink.197 In the summer of 1915, previewing the opening of his “Crusade for Temperance” at Asbury Park, New Jersey, Sullivan declared: “If we can teach our drinkers to stop drinking and teach our boys never to start drinking, we won’t need any prohibition laws.”198 Booze was formally banned throughout the United States on January 16, 1920. Various forces had pushed through Prohibition in the previous forty years, from state governments, to groups such as the AntiSaloon League, led by the demented Carrie Nation. Meanwhile opposition was dealt a blow when one of the Joe Coburn, whose noted incidents included shooting his wife biggest pro-alcohol constitu- (Library of Congress). encies, German-Americans, were sidelined by the First World War. In those years Sullivan and Coburn both wasted much of their wealth through their bladders. For others, money didn’t even stay long enough to be consumed. In addition to wine and women, yet another parasite was sapping the finances of the Irish-American athlete, which had been illegal in most states either side of the thirteen years of Prohibition: gambling.

5 Racketeers and Suckers — The Irish Sportsman and Gambling The term “racketeer” comes from “ragaireachd: organized crime as business … a scam.”1 The term “sucker” comes from “sách úr: a fresh ‘fat cat’ … a prosperous person.”2

Gambling has a long tradition in American sports even though it has been legally restricted in most forms throughout the country’s history. Sport was more than a visual spectacle. It was also an opportunity to earn some easy money, although for most it was an easy way to lose cash. During the early settlement years of America, gambling was more common than would’ve been thought. The Virginia Company of London was given the royal permission to run lotteries to help finance Jamestown, and eventually all thirteen colonies had them. Indeed, the right to partake in such lotteries was one of the gripes of the colonists as they railed against royal interference to limit gambling to that of the crown. Furthermore, lotteries were used to finance the Revolution and early public works, although crooked ones eventually saw them outlawed in all states except Delaware, Missouri and Kentucky by 1840.3 Puritans were more hostile to gambling, and the main objection to sports was the relationship between the two. Even this was tinged with hypocrisy, because gaming was only a relatively small moral problem until it became associated with “wasting time, losing large sums of money, or neglecting duty.” As Bruce Daniels points out, both cockfighting and horse racing were major betting sports, but Puritans despised the “unsavory promoters, bloodiness, and rowdy crowds” of the former while mildly disapproving of the latter because it contained none of cockfighting’s “social ills.” The five original New England colonies all banned “gaming,” especially at taverns, although fines were small except for the establishment’s owner.4 Lotteries may well be a poor man’s tax today, but even the greatest moralist of the post–Independence America could see that the odd wager in aid of the nation’s fight for freedom or development was acceptable. By mid-century, public attitudes about gambling had softened considerably, with even coffee houses a front for the “vice.”5 Americans weren’t opposed to gambling per se: they disliked the cheating that often 84

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went hand in hand with it. Increasingly, American sports, particularly the ring, became prone to cheating, either by those participating actively in manipulating the result, or by crowd violence having a result overturned through intimidation. Some bouts were abandoned because the gamblers backing the losing pug would join “the fray by swinging their fists, flashing bowie knives or brandishing pistols” in an effort to have the fight stopped and their bets declared void.6 Moralists within the press were outraged. In Maryland the Baltimore Sun declared that if “the spirit of gambling be not innate in man, it is at least extremely difficult of expulsion after it has once taken possession” of the gambler: “This spirit shows itself and carries on its operations in various ways, from the ‘hells’ that send forth their ruined victims armed against their own lives, and ready to fling themselves into the suicide’s grave, to the interrogatory of ‘what will you bet.’”7 Gambling, the New York Herald noted in the aftermath of the Morrissey-Heenan fight, was an integral part of prizefighting: “The crowds around the various newspaper offices labored under an intense state of excitement at every false alarm which was circulated concerning the all absorbing topic of the day.”8 Moralists saw gambling corrupting every aspect of sport, and it was the Irish underclass male and his “cultural tradition more forgiving of the sins of the flesh” that was to blame. And exposure to the American “success ethic” had turned “‘vice’— especially drinking, prostitution and gambling, three of the most heinous activities in the Victorian canon — into a lucrative business” for a few Irishmen.9 One such man keen on intimidation was Owney Geoghegan, who used every trick in the book to gain an advantage on opponents during his ring career. When he fought Con Orem in May 1863 in New Jersey, Geoghegan arrived with a partisan crowd of nearly a thousand screaming for him to “cut the damned cur’s throat.” For most of the fight Orem held his own despite immense intimidation. The New York Times reported: “The Friends of each man were present with revolvers and slung-shots, and several side issues of the main fight were settled on the spot.” Every time they came together, Geoghegan spat in his opponent’s face, and then accused Orem of having a set of hidden knuckle-dusters. Opening his hands, Orem left himself vulnerable: Geoghegan attacked “his enemy and knocked him senseless before he could guard against the attack.”10 Finally, in the nineteenth round, Orem struck Geoghegan on top of his head. This blow drew cries of “foul,” and a scene “of confusion ensued which beggars description,” wrote the New York Times: Knives, pistols and clubs were drawn … and a general free fight, and perhaps bloodshed, seemed inevitable. As the blow was not in reality foul, … the referee appeared undetermined to decide the fight in favor of Geoghegan, when one of the latter’s partisans walked across the ring and presented a loaded revolver at his head. Deliberately cocking it he said, “Are you going to decide this blow foul?”… The referee had no alternative but to give the fight to Geoghegan, or take the chance of a bullet through his head. Choosing the least of the two evils, he decided in favor of Geoghegan, amid the cheers of his friends and backers.11

A decade later when Bryan Campbell, seconded by Geoghegan, and Harry Hicken, aided by Ned O’Baldwin, met at Collier’s Station in West Virginia, the New York Times described this event as “anything but a cheerful day for fighting,” although this was initially a comment on the weather conditions rather than how the fight ended. A relatively mundane “mill” was abruptly concluded at the beginning of the twenty-fourth round when “pistols were drawn from all sides of the rope.” O’Baldwin’s life was in peril as the crowd immediately jumped on him, beating him with billy clubs and kicking his head and ribs. Meanwhile, the referee disappeared with rumors that he “reserves his decision.”12 A West Virginian source, the Wheeling Register, noted that Geoghegan had struck O’Baldwin to start the

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melee. As O’Baldwin was about to retaliate, Johnny Murphy of New York, “backed by a few stalwart friends,” hit O’Baldwin with a pistol and battered him. The Register continued: “Pistol shots were fired, and a general stampede ensued…. The referee refused to give a decision, and the fight broke up in a general row…. The Baltimore and Philadelphia sports vow vengeance upon the New Yorkers.”13 Years later at Geoghegan’s wake, Frank White “sorrowfully” recalled the incident: Hicken was slaughtering Campbell, when Owney made a rush. He knocked O’Baldwin senseless with the butt end of his gun, and then he grabbed [referee] Siddons. He takes Siddons under his arm and jumps into a coach with him, and drives out two miles away from the crowd as fast as the horses can go. Then he got out of the carriage with Siddons who was scared half to death. He put Siddons down on the ground and folded his arms and looked him straight in the eye, and Siddons trembled so he couldn’t speak. Owney said to him: “Campbell wins this fight, don’t he?” and Siddons groaned out: “Yes, Sir.” Siddons gave the fight to Campbell, too, although Hicken won it, just because he was afraid of Owney.14

Once Siddons was safely out of Geoghegan’s clutches, he decided the fight in Hicken’s favor.15 Partly because of this, prizefighters handed over their stakes to a mutually approved and trusted independent arbiter, such as Richard Kyle Fox, owner of the National Police Gazette. Before the Marquis of Queensberry and closed indoor arenas, fights would be held ad hoc with little opportunity to collect gate money. Bets therefore provided most, if not all, of the wages in a winner-takes-all “purse.” But prizefighting didn’t survive purely for gambling purposes. It was more than just mere speculation or an opportunity to get rich fast, although material rewards were the most important aspect. Gambling interconnected sports with the saloon and the bachelor subculture, often being as much an ethnic statement as gang membership or churchgoing: “A man who put his money on a fighter gained status among his peers because he revealed his willingness to lose all in an effort to win big; gambling was a mark of courage.”16 A professional sportsman placing a stake on himself was seen not just as making a declaration that he was the best, but a declaration that he was an honorable man and wouldn’t flinch from turning up to conduct business. As Benjamin Rader writes, many nineteenth-century sporting occasions “arose from spirited arguments over the merits of a horse, a prize fighter, or a runner.” And so the process to dominate and the thrill it entailed was often as important as the sport itself: “In wagering, one risked not only money but one’s self esteem as well. By choosing to bet on a particular team, the bettor might be making a statement of ethnic or occupational pride.” 17 Without the stake, prizefighting would probably have ended up as popular as judo or karate, and contemporary newspapers, especially those hostile to both gambling and the prize ring, agreed. The New York Times wrote after the death in the ring of Daniel Donovan near Syracuse in 1893: [I]t is to be remembered that [prizefights] … are now the center and source of an immense amount of gambling, and derive their chief importance from that fact. The number of men who are interested in them as contests of strength, endurance, and prowess is utterly insignificant compared with … [those] interested solely in the betting. Were the fights not for a prize, but for such “honors” as could be gained in them, the persons engaged might not enlist our admiration, but they would not seem quite the same; but the betting would still probably be quite as eager and feverish and demoralizing as it is now.18

Nothing was immune. Betting before the international boat race between the Superior Club of St. John, New Brunswick, and the Bostonian Maid of Erin was “very active for several days past, and a considerable amount of money changed hands on the result.”19 It

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extended further than sports, where even elections and the laws being made were betted on. In 1841 the Baltimore Sun wrote: People bet on horse-races, boat-races and man-races; they bet on cock-fights and boxing matches; and nothing is more common than betting on elections … [whereby] the most distinguished men in all the land, are treated in this respect like a pair of prize-fighters. At present the object of this betting propensity, this gambling practice, is the President’s course in relation to the Bank bill. Will he veto it, or will he not?… What folly all this!20

The 1876 presidential election saw widespread betting that led the Albany legislature to outlaw poolrooms, yet elections continued.21 Gambling stretched from the placing of one’s honor in a down payment into a destructive addiction that provided many opportunities to have pockets emptied. And the cheapest way of facilitating gambling were the rat pits that flourished because they lured clients with the promise of an easy route to getting rich. A New York Times report of an 1867 cockfight in Hoboken noted a number of prizefight patrons, “[their] general appearance … suggestive of gin cocktails and brandy smashes,” congregating where only the birds were “worthy of our respect and consideration.” The paper’s correspondent, however, noticed that “the interest in the contest was entirely dependent on the sums at stake. The excitement was altogether mercenary”: “To a novice, the noble carriage of the game cocks, their courage and unwavering pluck, fighting bravely to the last until death closed the scene, was an exhibition of qualities which can never fail of exciting admiration, but among the habitués of the place, the only question seemed to be which would win and whose were the stakes.”22 This was no proletarian Death in the Afternoon, the only “art” where the “artist” is in danger of death. Nobody turned up for the “beauty” of this “sport.” Dogfights were particularly susceptible to cheating: their food was laced, or poison rubbed on the parts of the body that were likely to be bitten. Such suspicions led to one comical scene. Mr. McLaughlin’s dog Connaught Lad was due to fight at a lesser-known dive on First Avenue, when McLaughlin decided to “taste” him in the parts of his body likely to be poisoned to check for foul play. However, the mutt was angry at this intrusion and attacked his owner, clamping his teeth on his cheek and ripping his flesh. Only after choking the dog did McLaughlin manage to free himself. 23 Gambling within these venues was all interrelated, with the patrons of one usually spotted at another. Michael Phelan sought to eradicate gambling from the billiard parlor, and his books talked extensively about the problem in The Game of Billiards. He submits that those “giant plague-spots of society, as at present constituted, gambling and intemperance, seldom dare to show their features in the drawing-room.”24 He continues to bemoan that he has “often heard gentlemen regret that they could not have a billiard table in their own houses, on account of the prejudice which their wives entertained…. No illusion could be more baseless … the game is no more a gambling one than chess — its intellectual interest suffices without the natural stimulus of a bet.” Yet for all Phelan’s encouragement of women playing, he couldn’t hide the fact that even he conceded that women should only ever play the game at home.25 As they came within reach of most urban Americans, the billiard hall became harder to distinguish from the dive. Even Michael Phelan failed to eradicate gambling, not least because he also regularly placed stakes down with opponents. One of his final matches in 1859, against John Sereiter, involved a ten-thousand-dollar bet which was then increased

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to fifteen thousand bucks.26 While he argued that he had little time for gambling, Phelan defended the practice as “a matter of necessity, to pay each player for his time,” and claimed it was “purely of a business character.”27 He claimed playing billiards for money was generally “prohibited” in the country’s halls, but this “innocent, harmless, and gentlemanly amusement … [was] sometimes desecrated to purposes of gambling, contrary to the true intent of the game.”28 Phelan and Collender were noted for refusing to sell anyone a table if it was to be used for gambling. But Phelan’s attempt at distancing billiards from the stake was also hindered by his invention “pool.” The word for this smaller version of billiards, designed for the tavern, originally referred solely to gambling. Situated in the “entertainment” neighborhoods, such as the Tenderloin district of midtown Manhattan, the “poolroom” doubled as a betting shop where clients congregated and gambled on horse racing and baseball. It was at such establishments that the likes of John Morrissey and his cronies were regular gamblers, winning between three and five thousand dollars on one particular night.29 Such a feat naturally suggested that rich pickings were there for the taking, which of course ignores the intimidation and skullduggery in use. “Old Smoke” was one of the most successful gamblers of his generation, hailed as “the Gambling Czar of New York State,” who according to Elliott J. Gorn, helped form an industry that by 1870 had a turnover of $75,000 a week with three thousand employees: “He was one of a small group of Irish-Americans who took gaming out of the hands of footloose confidence men and reorganized it into a complex, stable business. The new gambler-businessmen maintained close ties to respectable backers for investment capital, to local politicians for protection, and to saloons, brothels, hotels, and restaurants for support services.”30 In California, Morrissey cut his teeth in an unorthodox customer service of dealing with irate suckers. Following one accusation of house cheating and being insulted, he found the threat of a butcher’s cleaver seemed to render matters solved.31 After moving back East, and completing his career in the ring, Morrissey expanded his gaming business. In 1859, he bought his first place at Broadway and Great Jones Street, adding another at 12 Ann Street, before acquiring New York City’s longest-ever-running joint on Barclay Street, another “celebrated resort” at 818 Broadway, and a third at 5 West Twenty-Fourth Street. By 1864, one source claimed his empire extended to sixteen joints, all favored by politicians and the wealthier class of fool, with the Barclay Street house netting a staggering million dollars in its first five years.32 Morrissey had his problems with what the Chicago Tribune called his “gambling hells.” The resort on Ann Street was raided in January 1862, and police found a trapdoor where the gambling implements — a faro bank, a dealing box, and “checks and cards”— could be got rid of quickly in any raid.33 During his expansion, in early 1861, with Mrs. Morrissey’s encouragement, he had moved back to Troy, taking with him “his roulette wheels, his faro layouts, his suave dealers and his strong-armed attendants.”34 He established the Club House with the help of some wealthy chums: William R. Travers, John R. Hunter, and Winston Churchill’s grandfather, Leonard Jerome. Then in early 1866 he founded the American Jockey Club at Saratoga Springs, twenty-five miles north of Troy, for those like Ulysses S. Grant, Cornelius Vanderbilt, John Rockefeller and Mark Twain, weary of hearing of the Civil War and rich enough to do something about it.35 Following the Union’s victory, a horse racing revival granted him more opportunities, and Old Smoke was, as we will see, a man with aspirations well above his station. And what better than the “Sport of Kings” to put enough space between him and the “low-lifes” he

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had been forced to rub shoulders with in New York? The track in the North had suffered a decline since the depression of 1837, but now there was optimism of a revival. The New York Times predicted it would be “the most brilliant and successful of its predecessors in the records of American racing,” while in an ironic observation it claimed the turf ’s previous decline had been brought about at “the hands of men devoid of honor and honesty, who prostituted the sport to the advancement of their own selfish purposes and pecuniary gain, and as a legitimate consequence, lost the confidence and patronage of the public.”36 Despite continuing legislative interference in the track, sometimes not always to the track owners’ disadvantage,37 more Irish names moved into racing, while some jockeys of Irish descent, such as Marty and Joe Bergen, Jimmy McLaughlin and William F. Fitzpatrick, prospered.38 Daniel Maher was an American jockey who eventually made his money in England, riding there for nine years until his retirement in 1914. In 1899 he was accused of pulling up his horse. The New York Times asked: “Did gamblers buy the boy?”39 Maher, while apologizing for beating his horse, denounced the “lies” that claimed he wasn’t trying to win: “I was never connected with any jobbery in my life and I never will be. Of course, in regard to hitting the horse over the head I am sorry. I was awful anxious to win and I suppose I lost my head when Banastar wheeled and did not break with the other horses when the flag fell. I would have given anything, almost, to win that race.”40 Maher was exonerated by both the Coney Island stewards and the Brooklyn Jockey Club, but finding racing options curtailed by the legal restrictions, he departed for England.41 There he rode three Derby winners — Rock Sand, Cicero and Spearmint — and retired as a “country gentleman” on his pile near Newmarket with a fortune of three-quarters of a million dollars before dying of tuberculosis in 1916.42 The big Irish names were, however, horse owners, but the track had room for some down-at-the-heels aficionados. This led to the publication of the “records” of names “interested” in New York’s racing world by the city’s top criminal detective, the Dublin-born Thomas Byrnes: “These are some of the men the public is asking to have confidence in and who are supposed to control ‘honest’ racing. There are other men with shady reputations who are posing as the owners of racing stables whose records I will make public in due time.”43 Top of the list was Jeremiah Dunn. Born somewhere in Ireland and moving across the Atlantic when aged two, he had a classical dire childhood in Oswego, New York, getting little formal education due to having to help the family out in childhood when his father died.44 At eighteen he enlisted in the Union Army, serving most of his three years’ enlistment in the Civil War, which had a profound change on his character. According to the Baltimore Sun’s obituary: “When he returned home he was so changed in appearance that even his mother didn’t recognize him. This served as a basis for Maurice Barrymore’s characterization of Captain Davenport in Augustus Thomas’ play, ‘Alabama.’”45 “Jere,” “Jerr,” or “Jerry” Dunn’s colorful life eventually covered many of the bases of the Irish-American sportsman: he was a gambler, saloon owner, jailbird, promoter, political heavy, horse owner and a man with a long history of violence that culminated in the deaths of others on at least three occasions.46 Even his name is a mystery: the press listed aliases of “John Matthews” and “Hawkshaw,” and he used to impersonate police detectives in order to rob or blackmail vulnerable victims like prostitutes.47 The Chicago Tribune claimed he was “the only man who ever appeared before [John L.] Sullivan who did not act as if he was afraid of him.”48 He made his initial fame in Chicago’s gambling industry, arriving through a combination of being on the run for the murder of James Logan, and being attracted by the city’s

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illegal horse races on the lakefront that entrapped gullible, cash-laden travelers passing through. In an interview with the New York Times he confessed that he gambled “a little and purchased an interest in a liquor-saloon.”49 The Baltimore Sun later recalled that Dunn rarely lost: “They tell a story of his largest play at ‘the bank’ with the possible exception of a night in Chicago, when he spent 36 hours at faro in Cale Mitchell’s place in Saratoga in 1891. The limit was raised from $50 and $100 to twice those figures and then again doubled to accommodate the player, who was losing. Finally the tide turned and he cashed in about $52,000 on the total play.” Ominously he acquired his own horse, buying the filly Lady Alice. This wasn’t good news for her, as Dunn had a previous conviction for animal cruelty, and she ingloriously died on a race track in Michigan.50 Following his acquittal for the murder of Jim Elliott, Dunn ended up back in New York via New Orleans. He ran a stable with John P. Greene in 1886, stacking up some notable nags, including La Clair and Chickahominy, that boosted the wallets of both men. The partnership was to end in acrimony a year later when Greene accused Dunn of swindling him. What was odd was that Greene admitted that when they went into business, Dunn was penniless, and yet he granted the murderer a third of the firm’s profits.51 Entering the world of the Sport of Kings was one route Dunn sought to respectability. Another was to join the Masons, which ended in his being expelled in 1887 after his attempts to rise sharply through its ranks almost caused a mass exodus among the funny-handshake brigade’s more respectable membership.52 Dunn’s private life was also chaotic. In 1888 he married Louise Nagle, the “paralytic” daughter of Bostonian “liquor dealer” Garrett Nagle, contrary to Nagle Senior’s wishes, who thought he was after her inheritance. Following her death, Dunn was threatened with charges of bigamy if he sought to get his paws on any of Louise’s or her mother’s estate.53 Trouble arose when Helen Bronson, a widow from Mobile whom he had met at a Cincinnati track in 1883 and subsequently “married,” sued Dunn in 1890. He had “borrowed” ten grand, then took a further five thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds when he first left her in 1885, later returning to her before dumping her for Nagle.54 Bronson swore that they had lived together and behaved like a married couple, despite Dunn’s arguing that “conventional marriage” was a “nonsense.” The old romantic had instead proposed that they spend a night at the Leland Hotel in New York and “register themselves as man and wife,” thus tying the knot.55 The Chicago Herald wrote that Dunn fooled her with a claim that New York marriage laws necessitated a simple night in the sack; he handed her a receipt from the Leland with the words “Mr. Jere Dunn and wife” on it, suggesting: “You want to take care of that, Helen. That’s your marriage certificate.”56 Dunn remained in the horse game until 1903 when the New York Times announced his retirement from racing, and listed his entire stock as being for sale.57 But he returned to Saratoga the following year as owner of Sunny Sky and Sunny Shore (or Slope) at the 1904 $50,000 Republic Stakes.58 He moved to San Francisco, owning three horses that raced out of Oakland, but was now dying of cancer of the esophagus. He had an operation that fitted a silver tube above his rib cage to take in food and water. He lost everything but his old New Jersey house in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and returned to the Garden State to die in Elizabeth. The Baltimore Sun remarked: “He was by no means in absolute want, but his state was far removed from the days when he could count his wealth in the hundreds of thousands, most of it in actual cash.”59 More representative of Irish-American owners were the Dwyer Brothers. Michael and Philip Dwyer were a pair of “urban buccaneers” who were born “not only on the wrong side

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of the tracks but on the wrong side of the river, in Brooklyn.”60 They had made their money as butchers and then as wholesale meat suppliers. They purchased a trotting horse in the 1870s, before establishing a Brooklyn thoroughbred stable in mid-decade.61 In 1883, the Dwyer stable was said to have collected more winnings than any other in the world, and were ready to “compete with racing’s social nabobs.”62 But then they began losing money. To recoup their losses they built a racecourse, opening it three years later along with the Brooklyn Jockey Club, at Gravesend in the Flatbush district of Brooklyn.63 What made the Dwyers’ resort different was its remarkably proletarian feel. With social standing the major concern among the racing fraternity of the Gilded Age, the Dwyers’ track was decidedly working-class, which was its major advantage.64 However, the Dwyers’ mutual relationship somehow soured in 1890, forcing them to sell their stables and stock.65 Philip Dwyer continued as president of the BJC, while Mike teamed up with Boss Croker. By early 1893 Michael Dwyer had opened another stable, and both continued as highrollers of the turf. But not even they were immune to the pitfalls of gambling, and in a much-repeated refrain, “The thrill of owning fast horses was in their blood.”66 Michael especially couldn’t cope with his compunction to gamble; the New York Times noted: “Philip Dwyer prospered, as did Michael, but the difference was that Michael was a plunger, whereas Phillip held aloof from betting. Michael’s plunging, within a few years has all but wiped out his fortune, while Phillip is still a very rich man.”67 His reputation as “perhaps the greatest plunger that the race tracks ever knew” was no understatement. He once bet $60,000 to win a tenth of that figure, then placed $50,000 on similar odds and lost the lot as the winning horse was then disqualified.68 He also bet on poker, dice and roulette, speculated on Wall Street, and then involved himself in another type of high-risk “rich man’s sport”: slander. The plaintiff was a Mr. Gideon, whom Dwyer had accused at a racetrack clubhouse in front of witnesses, of being “no sportsman,” and of having “to leave Nashville on account of a turf fraud you committed there. President Clark of the Louisville Jockey Club wanted to rule you off for your crooked practices there, and warned you off the turf there, and you had to leave town.”69 The pinch also hit Philip Dwyer. By July 1900 he started to offload his horses,70 then in 1901 he sold both his champion thoroughbred Gold Heels and a black colt, Major Daingerfield, to his associate “Diamond” Jim Brady and his partner Fred C. McLewee.71 Born above his father’s saloon in Cedar Street in August 1856, James Buchanan Brady accumulated in today’s money $50 million in his diamond collection alone. Starting off as a messenger with the New York Central Railroad, he made his money supplying the rail expansion with rolling stock through financial services and his vice-presidency of the Standard Car Company.72 Not known as a “plunger” and unlike the Dwyers, not given to compulsively gamble at the casinos,73 Brady knew well the narcotic-style perils of betting: “From my own bitter experience … I say it is beyond human power to beat the ring. Betting is, after all, a question of figures, or rather of mathematical proportion. On a moderate estimate, I should say that there are thirty-two chances against the backer in every race that is run.”74 If Burns’s rat pit and Morrissey’s illusions of grandeur represented the lower end of gambling, then “Diamond” Jim epitomized the growing amount of money among the Irish. Described by the New York Times as “the best-known man in the night life of Broadway, an indefatigable first nighter, and a tireless dancer,” Brady never drank or smoked, and he remained a bachelor until his death in 1917. Although he was a member of a local Baptist church, his funeral was at St. Agnes Catholic Church on Forty-Third Street.75 Another impressive colossus of American industry was Marcus Daly. Born in Bally-

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jamesduff, Cavan, he came to the U.S. aged fifteen in 1856, moving from New York to California and then to the Nevada mines, before clawing his way up to become the head of Anaconda Copper in Butte, Montana.76 He moved into buying horses and setting up stables in Bitterroot Valley, southwest Montana, and through being a shrewd judge of good stock, he produced winners like Montana, initially a 40–1 debutant, who won the Suburban Stakes in 1892 at the Coney Island Sheepshead Bay track.77 This win would’ve collected forty thousand dollars for Daly had he not left his betting slip in his coat in a mining shack that burned down.78 Another nag of his was Tammany, noted as one of the fastest of its day when it beat Lamplighter at Gutenberg, New Jersey, in September 1893.79 Like Brady, Daly was also one of that rare breed who knew how to keep his money, even coming close to being the man who broke the bank of New York’s bookies. He won one million bucks, and he would’ve won five times that amount but for a communications error when placing a bet on his horse, Ogden, which had been secretly trained at Saratoga.80 Track bettors were, as Steven Riess argues, “considered sportsmen interested in improving the breed,” while gamblers in poolrooms were merely out to make a quick buck: Betters who could not afford to visit the track or take time off from work took their business either to neighborhood bookmakers found at such male bastions as newsstands, barbershops, or saloons, or to off-track betting parlors. These poolrooms, distinct from billiard rooms, were located in vice districts like the Tenderloin in New York … and accepted bets as small as one dollar, which bookmakers at the tracks would not accept.81

Facilitating and “protecting” poolrooms required a number of skills, contacts and savvy that could only be found in people like Tim Sullivan and Frank Farrell in New York, and Michael C. McDonald in Chicago. Sullivan was a “towering, bigheaded and gregarious Irishman with a loquacious manner.” Here was a gangster, pimp, and future congressman who ran a syndicate of illegal pool halls, such as the Hesper Club on Second Avenue, usually with first- and second-generation Ashkenazim Jews who had run books at racetracks in their youth.82 As local racing was intermittently banned throughout American states, poolrooms became an important venue for gambling. If a visit to the track was illegal, punters could wager on legal races elsewhere, with results sent back by telegram. Sullivan’s business was labeled the Gambling Trust and included other Irish-American sporting figures as partners, such as the leading New York gambler of the age, Frank Farrell.83 Farrell was another colorful Irish-American bettor who rose from the gutter. While little concrete is known about his origins, one curious take on Farrell is given by Roger Abrams, who argues that he was in fact Jewish. He claims that Ban Johnson had picked a joint Jewish-Irish partnership for the Highlanders (later the Yankees) baseball club as “cleverly [covering] his ethnic and urban bases,” without lending this assertion an ounce of evidence.84 Farrell certainly associated himself closely with Jewish gamblers, but since he started work as a bartender and then saloon keeper, Steven Riess’s belief that he was Irish is more plausible.85 His funeral at the Church of the Blessed Sacrament on Seventy-First Street and Broadway confirms an ancestry from Brian Boru rather than King David.86 By 1900 Farrell’s syndicate was bringing in three million dollars a year.87 In October 1901, Justice William Travers Jerome, in response to Farrell’s pushing Henry W. Unger as candidate for district attorney, labeled him “vice itself in the person,” while the New York Times accused him of being the “Poolroom King” who wanted a district attorney “who will not make trouble for him”: “The business to which he owes is bad eminence … carried on

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in violation of law. His gambling places have enjoyed the protection of the police, we presume, on the usual terms. He is an intimate, personal friend of Mr. W.S. Devery, the Deputy Police Commissioner of New York…. It has often been asserted that the ‘gambling combine’ is the real controlling power in Tammany Hall.”88 Consistently shy of the limelight, in late 1902 he was unsuccessfully sued for nonpayment of rent by George Dussell — it took “less than a minute” for the jury to find in Farrell’s favor — but not before Farrell denied he had ever stepped inside a poolroom.89 The following spring he was back defending a charge of cheating from a disgruntled client, Rogers L. Barstow. Replying to a question from the plaintiff ’s counsel as to whether betting on horses was, in his opinion, a form of gambling, Farrell sniffed: “No, certainly not. Not any more than I consider dealing in stocks down in Wall Street to be gambling.”90 That year he became co-owner of the Highlanders with the now disgraced Bill Devery, after buying the Baltimore franchise for eighteen thousand dollars.91 Both remained silent owners for the first four years of the Highlanders’ history, fitting in much with Farrell’s reluctance to have his face in the public eye.92 All big cities had their equivalents of “Big Tim,” and the most notable was Chicago’s own “King Mike.” Michael Cassius McDonald, credited as the man who actually invented the phrase “there’s a sucker born every minute,”93 was born in 1839, two years after his Cork-born tanner father had landed in Niagara Falls, Canada, in 1837.94 “Sure-thing Mike” arrived in Chicago in 1862 aged twenty-five and took the road from gambler to politician in much the same way as “Big Tim” had. He opened his own “famed four-story casino” in 1873, becoming the head of the city’s equivalent of Tammany Hall by the time of Carter Henry Harrison’s election as mayor six years later.95 T.J. English, with dry humor, hails McDonald as one of the most influential Irish wise-guys ever: “If there were a Mount Rushmore for the founding fathers of the Irish underworld, Mike McDonald’s mustachioed face would be right up there alongside Old Smoke Morrissey.”96 He converted to Judaism when he ditched his wife Mary for Dora Feldman, the daughter of a rabbi, a marriage hardly made in heaven: Feldman caused him huge embarrassment when she later shot her fourteen-year-old lover/artist Webster Guerin, believing he was cheating on her.97 During her trial “King Mike” suffered a fatal heart attack, and on his deathbed he renounced his conversion and declared that his first wife, Mary, was the only woman he ever legally wed.98 Among his gambling associates were John L. Sullivan’s future manager and poolroom owner Pat Sheedy, and the Chicago billiards entrepreneur, Tom Foley. Jere Dunn was also a member of McDonald’s circle, who, according to his biographer, had convinced him to come to Chicago following his release from Sing Sing, in the early seventies.99 Through his work as a prizefight promoter, Dunn provided “tips” to McDonald on upcoming fights so as to knobble the betting odds. By 1873, the Chicago Tribune had already marked Dunn’s card, calling him “director of the bunko establishments into which strangers are coaxed and plundered … a man with ability and energy, and for that reason all the more dangerous.”100 Following on from Morrissey, politicians became a crucial part of the “Horsey Set,” the turf granting a high status to men who craved it and had lots of spare cash to pay for it. One “boss” with a taste for the nags was Richard Croker, head of Tammany Hall between 1886 and 1901, who bred thoroughbreds and was a good friend with one half of the Dwyer brothers, while sending over a consignment of horses to Lacy’s stud in Newmarket in 1895.101 Gambling cut across all classes, too. William Barry was booted out of the NYAC after racking up a slate of between six and seven hundred dollars with fellow members. The NYAC were dismissive of his habit as having nothing to do with their decision: “This personal indebtedness did not influence our action in the slightest degree,” responded a club

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member to the New York Times. “We have no card rooms here and do not permit gambling in the clubhouse, consequently we have no so-called ‘debts of honor’ to adjust … [although s]oon after his arrival it became known that [Barry] was fond of card playing.” As stated in the previous chapter, the National Irish Athletic Association in Boston almost couldn’t host their 1893 games, not only because of violation of a ban on the sale of booze, but gambling too. At a previous “Scottish picnic” days earlier these requirements were “violated, inasmuch as an arrest was made for gambling … and a conviction followed,” and it seemed the fears were that the Irish were likely to be worse on both counts.102 As with alcohol, lace-curtain Irish-America was in uproar, denouncing the prize ring for its “worthless, gambling, class of lodgers.”103 One man willing to take on gambling in New York was Thomas Byrnes. Born in Dublin in 1842, migrating to the States as a child, he fought in the Civil War and worked as a fireman before becoming a policeman, eventually rising to the rank of head of the Detective Bureau between 1880 and 1895. Byrnes was no squeaky-clean Eliot Ness. He was ousted by Theodore Roosevelt’s resolve to clean up New York’s cops and was said to have been as corrupt as anyone, although the pimps and prostitutes that he chased out of New York to London packed their bags for the Big Apple upon the news he had gone.104 His stance against gambling is, however, still remarkable in that the department was an arm of City Hall — and therefore Tammany Hall — which was willing not only to turn a blind eye to gambling, but to the opportunity for individuals to profit from it. In 1891, as “Acting Superintendent” of the NYPD, Byrnes declared he had managed to close all the poolrooms in the city and swore he’d “jump with both feet on the neck of the first man who opens one.” Byrnes now turned his eyes onto the track and horse owners themselves. The New York Times, in the middle of its own crusade, was ecstatic: “Inspector Byrnes has set his teeth against horse racing … and he says that so long as he is Acting Superintendent of Police the lot of professional horsemen in this city will not be a happy one.”105 In an interview with the New York Herald he called for the abolition of horse racing, claiming, “Where two evils are presented to choose from, the rule is to choose the least.” Continuing from his war on poolrooms, Byrnes declared that “the craze for betting” was having a devastating effect on the city: “It begets poverty, unfits men for steady occupation, creates shiftlessness, leads to drunkenness and dissipation and very often to crime. Not a week goes by that we don’t have to hunt up young men who have stolen money from their employers in order to play the races.” Adding that he was too busy with other crimes to investigate the track, he chipped in that horse owners were mostly a bunch of crooks with a “marked decadence in the character.”106 He told the New York Times that the majority of the punters and owners were nothing more than “a gang of criminals,” including “swindlers, thieves, blackmailers and murderers” who should be in jail: “There is hardly a criminal class that is not represented among the men engaged in it. More young men have stood here at this desk confessing their first offense against law and ascribing their downfall to their infatuation for poolroom gambling than I would care to attempt to estimate.” As with drugs today, the emphasis was clearly on blaming one addiction as the source of most crime, while paying no attention to other factors. Byrnes continued: “But the city poolroom betting is no worse that the whole racing business. Under the fostering wing of the Ives Pool bill this city has become the center for a lot of so-called race tracks that are a disgrace to civilization. They have infested this city with sharps, confidence men and thieves…. Race courses, such as are around New York, and I except none, are the most fruitful kindergartens of crime.”107 He singled out the Dwyer brothers through some gossip from a man called Heffner,

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who claimed that they once pulled a horse up to lose a race: “Time was when there were many men who bred and raced horses because of love of sport. They were men of respectability and public spirit and the strictest integrity. They are nearly all either dead or retired from the turf.” Those left were men interested in going after “the almighty dollar, and they are not over scrupulous about how they get it.”108 Byrnes shrugged to a reporter of the New York Herald: “There are but few respectable horse breeders who will run horses now in anything save the great racing events.”109 The Dwyers were initially incandescent, and threatened to sue. Michael Dwyer told a New York Herald-Tribune reporter: “Every one knows what my character is … and people know all about Heffner.”110 Then they tried to take the accusations in their stride, refusing to believe Byrnes uttered the remarks, claiming he was a good policeman whom they had known when they were butchers: “He has known us ever since, and I cannot bring myself to believe that he even made any such unpleasant remarks about us.”111 But Byrnes refused to let go: “There is a direct charge coming from Mr. Heffner and the public should know of the mysterious transactions referred by him. It seems to me that Dwyer, if he is not afraid, ought to court such an investigation. So far as I am concerned, I personally know nothing about the business of either of the two gentlemen, nor am I interested in their controversy one way or the other.”112 The reporter then got a quote from a “gentleman who is intimately connected with the management of two of the largest race tracks in this state,” who claimed that Dwyer’s memory was shorter than his nose.113 Not so accommodating was Jere Dunn. He was said to be plotting to dispose of the cop, with the New York Herald reporting that an apoplectic Dunn had taken Byrnes’s words as a personal slight, what he called “an uncalled for and despicable means of undoing all the good” that he had done over the previous decade to stay out of trouble. Someone had snitched they heard Dunn in the barroom of the Hotel St. James loudly shouting that he was going to shoot Byrnes. The Herald’s hack, though, dismissed the story, having an assurance from a source “whose word is as good as his bond” who was present at Dunn’s outburst, confirming that firearms or “serious threats” weren’t aired: just epithets that Dunn was “not at all choice” with, telling the hotel that his wife had been hysterical since the report was published and that he’d tell Byrnes “what a ____ ____ he is.”114 The Racing Board of Control, the body in New York responsible for licensing trainers and jockeys, made a declaration within weeks stating that various jockey clubs in the city, Brooklyn, and Staten Island would “hereafter … not receive entries from persons who may not be acceptable to the Board of Control.” The New York Times reacted with great excitement: “This looks as if the members of the board had decided to look into the moral character of horse owners, especially of the men to whom Inspector Byrnes recently called attention in his tirade…. It gives track owners a chance to reject entries of Jere Dunn … or any other men who may be deemed objectionable owners, and may result in driving them out of the business.”115 Whatever action was taken was clearly temporary: Dunn, after a brief sabbatical as a boxing referee, was back at the track by 1896, by which time Byrnes had left the NYPD.116 The success of the Saratoga resort allowed John Morrissey to focus on another sport perfect for gambling. Quite when he moved into baseball is lost in history, and it isn’t clear whether or to what extent he actually owned the Union club of Lansingburgh, near Troy. There were claims he was the owner, although it seems he was merely its “chief officer,” or just a member of a New York gambling cartel that “controlled” it.117

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Beyond doubt is that Morrissey held a keen interest in the club’s results, and by 1868 the Lansingburgh Haymakers, as they were known, were one of the strongest in New York State.118 For Morrissey, the club wasn’t a hobby or pastime or an act of civic duty to his adoptive town, but another pie of corruption to have his fingers in. His team was to play not only to win, but to gain the result that Morrissey wanted, and it often lost at his command. Yet, like all good members of the sporting fraternity, Morrissey was a winner, and he wanted his team to be champions. To achieve this, he’d bribe opponents too. The most scandalous attempt occurred in August 1869, when Morrissey bet seventeen thousand dollars on Troy to defeat the unbeaten Cincinnati Red Sox. To ensure this happened he got one of his players, Fletcher “The Bird” Rice, to try to bribe the umpire, John Brockway. This attempt was immediately met with outrage, threats of assault and a declaration that all close calls would be awarded to Cincinnati. Undeterred, Rice approached Cincinnati pitcher Asa Brainard, who, without saying anything, took two envelopes containing a total of five hundred bucks.119 Brainard looked like he was going to comply, beginning the game shakily, but even his wayward playing was insufficient to sway the score. With the result level going into the sixth inning, Brockway called a catch by Craver “not-out.” Immediately Troy’s “president,” James McKeon, called his players off to a waiting omnibus. The umpire declared the game a Cincinnati win, on account of Troy’s refusal to continue, and Reds fans stormed the Trojan bus with shouts of “None of your New York tricks with country boys,” “Howd’ye like country Hoosiers?” and “Go back home.” The Cincinnati Enquirer wrote: “Upon one issue there was no difference of opinion — every body indorsed the Umpire, and denounced the Haymakers.” The local newspaper blamed the abandonment on “Eastern friends backing [the Haymakers] too heavily on the strength of the first inning.” It also claimed “a rumor … put in circulation” that suggested McKeon had received instructions from Morrissey to abandon the game if the proceedings were too close to call by the fifth inning. McKeon refuted the accusations: “There isn’t a dollar bed in our club. At home we are all businessmen and have reputations to take care of.” Speaking to a reporter from the Cincinnati Enquirer, he claimed that the umpire’s decisions were against his team from the start. When an early decision went in favor of Andy Leonard, costing Troy four runs, he told his captain “that if the Umpire gave any more such unjust decisions as that,” the game should be abandoned: “We quit the game as gentlemanly as possible, but in coming away from the grounds we were abused and insulted, our omnibus was stoned, and had it not been for two policemen … it is doubtful whether we could have got to our hotel without injury.”120 Whether Morrissey collected is another matter, but the New York Times reported the Cincinnati reaction to this “most contemptible trick to wrest from the Red Stockings” victory: “It is more than hinted that this action was taken in order to save numerous bets … which had been staked upon [Troy]. That no measures were too disgraceful for their backers to attempt in order to win their money, or, failing in that, to save it, is evidenced by the fact that bribes were offered to members of the Cincinnati Nine to induce them to lose the game.”121 The Haymakers’ chief rival in corruption was another politically connected team of the early years of baseball, the New York Mutuals. Part of Morrissey’s political bedfellow William “Boss” Tweed’s empire, only they, it seemed, could surpass Troy when it came to “hippodroming.” Established in 1857, the Mutuals already had a huge advantage over their rivals, with Tweed able to bankroll the club from the New York City taxpayer, while simul-

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taneously providing bogus jobs to players in an era of amateurism. 122 Also, when they were often heavily favored to win, they suddenly lost to an unfancied rival. Such eyebrow-raising was confirmed on September 27, 1865, when they fell to the Brooklyn Eckfords at Hoboken in front of four thousand spectators. Here a gambler called Kane McLaughlin had paid the Mutuals player William Wansley one hundred dollars to ensure the Eckfords won. The Mutuals officials met after the game and found Wansley guilty of “willful and designed inattention” in causing the club’s defeat. However, Wansley wasn’t alone. Shortstop Thomas Devyr sent the club a confession letter, before a further investigation uncovered a third member of baseball’s first gambling scandal: Ed Duffy.123 Edward Charles Duffy was born in Ireland in 1844, and had been with the Mutuals since 1864 after playing the previous season with the Eckfords.124 Duffy had accepted thirty bucks as a “subcontract” to spread the errors around in order to minimize suspicion of a “job,” and spent three subsequent seasons officially banned, until reinstated in December 1869. The Mutuals had tried to play Duffy in September 1868, hoping that the storm had subsided enough for no one to notice. The New York Actives complained about Duffy’s inclusion, and the National Association judged that the club had violated rules by reinstating Duffy, declaring all victories of games the Irishman had played in null and void. The Mutuals were also expelled for a period lasting only minutes at the New York State Base Ball Convention in Albany. Duffy played the whole of the 1869 season for the Mutuals, and performed in the NA’s initial season as a major league.125 However, the survival of the National Association was to be undermined by gambling, with its final season in 1875 considered “the most scandal-ridden of all.”126 Everyone seemed to know when a game was thrown, and fans rioted as they searched for their bookmakers. June 24 saw yet another match-fixing scandal, with the White Stockings losing to Philadelphia, but not before it was noticed that the victor’s third baseman, Mike McGeary, had made five serious errors. In what was discovered to be a farcical series of double-crosses, despite McGeary’s best efforts, certain Chicago players, angry at their cut, decided that Chicago wasn’t going to win.127 The following season, the first of the National League, McGeary was again the center of controversy when his St. Louis Brown Stockings met the Mutuals at the Union Grounds. He made a number of throwing errors, including chucking one ball “at least ten feet over the catcher’s head.”128 He was subsequently suspended, and in a letter to the Philadelphia City Item on June 1, 1876, the Brown Stockings’ vice-president, C.O. Bishop, announced a reward of two hundred and fifty dollars for any proof that McGeary “was directly or indirectly interested in any pool, wager, or money consideration on the game alluded to.”129 Nothing ever surfaced. The founding of the new National League, or “a startling coup d’etat,” as Henry Chadwick labeled it in the New York Clipper, was in part encouraged by the desire to clear baseball of cheats: For the past year or two we have been calling the attention of professional club-managers to the importance of doing something to put a stop to the growing abuses connected with their class of baseball fraternity, the most prominent of which is the evil of fraudulent play in the form of “hippodroming” or the “selling” or “throwing” of games for betting purposes, practiced by knavish members of the club-teams, and countenanced by still worse club officials.130

At the inaugural meeting of the new league, the Chicago White Stockings’ owner, William Hulbert, declared that the National League would “keep careful surveillance of its players and anyone caught consorting with gamblers would be banned for life…. Pool sellers and

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bookies would have to be kept out of the ballparks. Private police would be hired by the new league to rout gamblers from their seats and throw them into the streets….”131 His speech was met with stunned silence that apparently lasted for several minutes, probably an indication that those in attendance didn’t believe he could deliver. In 1877, the Louisville Grays stormed through most of the summer as league leaders. One of its stars was the pitcher Jim Devlin, who looked assured of an outstanding career until he suddenly started throwing poorly. The Grays, needing six wins to win the title in the final run, began losing games. William Hulbert may have been a hypocrite, with whispers that he too “ran with a fast crowd … [and] piled up some gambling debts,” but even he didn’t resort to cheating.132 He also didn’t just talk the talk when it came to others’ peccadilloes. After becoming suspicious of the Louisville collapse, he demanded that the club’s president, Charles Chase, investigate matters. Chase sought and got authorization from his players to obtain their recent telegrams from Western Union, in which he uncovered evidence that Devlin and three others — William Craver, George Hall and Al Nichols — had received money to throw the season.133 Devlin immediately confessed when shown his correspondence. He told the Louisville Courier-Journal that he was introduced to a man called simply “McCloud” by Richard Tobin, the paper stand owner at Earles’ Hotel in New York, who told him if he ever needed to make some extra cash, to let him know by telegram using the codeword “sash.” He then listed a number of games that he had deliberately thrown.134 The players blamed their temptation to cavort with gamblers on their employer’s stinginess, something that would rise again. The biographer of the scandal, William A. Cook, opines that Devlin’s participation was in part due to a dispute over back pay,135 while St. Louis papers were also suggesting that the expulsions were part of a scam by the Grays to “cheat” Devlin and Hall out of $500 wages: “Both had, it is said, spoken frequently about the managers of the club being delinquent. Their expulsion would prevent their receiving their dues, which, by the League rules, are declared forfeited in such a case.”136 The Louisville Courier-Journal concluded that had the players “locked their jaws” and played dumb or continued lying they’d have still been playing baseball. Instead: “Hall and Devlin … like two true-blooded numskulls, became possessed of the idea that some of their ‘secret-service’ manipulations had been brought to light, and on their first appearance before the directors immediately began squealing worse than two stuck pigs.”137 Hulbert decided to make an example, banning the players for life. Devlin pleaded for reinstatement, claiming he was “living hand-to-mouth all winter” and his wife and child “have not got a stitch of clothing.”138 Jimmy Woods, manager of the Chicago White Stockings in 1875, would later claim that he had opened telegrams for his players at the clubhouse offering money to throw their home games against Louisville that summer: “Well, I tucked those messages in my pocket and never said a word to any of the players. When the Louisville team arrived, I kept my players under cover. I didn’t want that Hall-Devlin-Craver crowd to meet my boys and to discover that the message never had been delivered.” Gamblers believing they had managed to bribe the players lost a shed-full of cash as Chicago won the games.139 Devlin appealed every year to have the decision overturned, but to no avail. In 1880 he attended the annual League meeting at Buffalo, as the Sporting Life reported, “armed with indorsements of good character, etc., from prominent parties in Philadelphia,” where he now lived. There he told of his current hard life with his sick wife, begging to be given another chance to prove he was honest. When Devlin finished, Hulbert got up: “Jim, we pity you in your trials and troubles, but you have no one to blame but yourself, and you

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never can play ball again in the National League. You must be a living example to those whom gamblers may try to mislead in the future.” Devlin began to sob. Hulbert, someone the Life described as “liberal to a fault in helping a fellow creature in distress,” was visibly shocked by the scene unfolding and immediately passed the hat, beginning with twentyfive dollars himself, with other magnates chipping in.140 Another story claims Hulbert once placed a fifty-dollar bill in Devlin’s hand and told him: “Devlin, that is what I think of you personally; but damn you, you have sold a game, and I can’t trust you. Now go and let me never see your face again; for your act will never be condoned as long as I live.”141 The Chicago Tribune would later claim Devlin squandered a payment he received from the National League in 1878 on a poker game, “in less than three hours” of receiving it, an incident it judged as revealing the “character of the man,” adding: “While professing honesty he was engaged in dishonesty.”142 Devlin worked the remainder of his days, ironically, as a Philadelphia cop before dying of consumption in 1883, aged thirty-four.143 Hulbert was later accused of double standards, refusing to investigate the poor performance of one of his own players at Chicago, the Irish-American Paul Hines. Instead he just threatened to inform his father about his suspicions.144 Rumors of game fixing continued to hang around for the next three decades and players were often reported for their gambling habits. The Sporting Life, writing in 1900, focused on Chicago’s Tim Donahue as “[a]mong the heaviest bettors during the world’s championship series,” who won “heavily” on the post-season Chronicle-Telegraph cup.145 Not all result manipulations were betting stings. “Rowdy” Jack O’Connor was instrumental in one infamous episode whose sole objective was to prevent Ty Cobb, a universally detested professional, from getting the 1910 batting title, and thus the Chalmers 30 car that came with it. The Detroit Free Press called the game “the most farcial [sic] and unsportsmanlike exhibition of baseball ever recorded in the history of the sport.”146 Ban Johnson fumed, telling reporters: “O’Connor has failed to report according to instructions, and I propose to drive him out of organized baseball if he does not comply with my request within 24 hours.”147 While O’Connor was cleared of corruption, he was booted out of the American League. It’s perhaps unsurprising in baseball that players fixed matches for extra money. Cheating was possible because a player was crucial to the result, although in a team game, more than one corrupt person was required. But gambling also impinged on the lives of the baseball player, who himself was wrapped in the bachelor subculture where he often lost great sums betting. On the eve of the 1872 season, the New York Times commented that the baseball professional, “except when compelled to play during the summer season, … keeps himself modestly out of sight in those quiet retreats connected with bars, and not free from a suspicion of rat-pits, where the sporting men of the Metropolis meet for social improvement and unpremeditated pugilism.”148 Even the owners were often gambling men. In addition to Frank Farrell, there were other Irish-American baseball owners with gambling interests or habits. Two of the original owners of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Charles H. Byrne and Joseph J. Doyle, co-ran a gambling den in downtown New York.149 In Detroit, Frank Navin ran the Tigers as a tight ship, keeping his players’ wages down, while splashing out on the horsetrack in his spare time, reportedly making “wagers that exceeded the yearly salaries of some of his players.”150 The tragic man of Irish-American baseball, Ed Delahanty, was a gambler whose demise stemmed from his inability to come to terms with the debts incurred. According to the Sporting Life, the Phillies were “a hotbed of horsey-boys, with Captain Delahanty the ranking

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chief.”151 He visited the numerous racetracks of nearby New Jersey, bet on the 1892 presidential election, lost a pile backing his teammate Joe Corbett’s brother, Gentleman Jim, in his defeat to Bob Fitzsimmons in 1897, and spent the winter break of 1899 in New Orleans because of its long racing season and copious other opportunities to squander money.152 Jerrold Casway puts a lucid argument about the likely seeds of his downfall: “To Del’s way of thinking, success at the horsetrack, and the prospect of a contract war among the rival leagues, gave him a false sense of security and prosperity. Delahanty had no idea that he was setting a course that would make him the victim, not the master, of his fate.”153 With all the visual trappings of a high roller, like expensive suits, jewelry, and a large cigar in his mouth, Delahanty “enjoyed the fast and savvy racing crowd” and boasted of big wins. In reality he lost heavily and became easy prey for the new American League to poach.154 Thus the more he lost, the more he bet in a desperate attempt to recoup, and he needed money as never before. Moving from the Phillies to the Senators, he was barely there a year when he considered contract jumping as his only salvation. A bid came from his racetrack buddy John McGraw at the Giants, with John T. Brush advancing him four thousand dollars, which Del swiftly handed over to the bookies. The fact that he still had two years of his contract left in D.C. was immaterial.155 Disaster came with a call from the American League president, Ban Johnson, who, having failed to get the unanimous agreement of his franchise owners (Chicago’s Charlie Comiskey was the lone dissenter) to boot out Delahanty, reminded him of his contractual obligations and ordered him to return the advance.156 Despite initially standing his ground, he worked out a loan with the Senators to pay back Brush that enabled him to remain in baseball for the few months left of his life.157 John McGraw was probably the highest-profile Irish baseball gambler who was “never willing to put as much distance as he should have, between himself and elements inside and outside baseball that could, and often did damage the integrity of the sport.”158 Despite being a prominent member of the baseball Hall of Fame, some believe he should also be included in a Cooperstown Hall of Shame along with the likes of Devlin, Duffy and the eight men found guilty of throwing the 1919 World Series, claiming he was involved in a number gambling scandals. Charles Alexander paints a picture of a lifelong gambling habit, one that was more taxing than destructive, leaving his wife only moderately well off despite the money he made from baseball. He also had an equally bad habit of associating professionally with men of dubious character that soiled his reputation.159 When he moved to St. Louis in 1900, after being waylaid through a spiking by “Dirty” Jack Doyle and a dose of boils, he used his enforced absence to bet on anything and everything, enjoying “what gamblers called the ‘action’— the ambience, the gambling confederates, the thrill of putting money on an unpredictable outcome.”160 So bad had his gambling habit become that when he did manage to play he’d try his best to get ejected at every game at St. Louis’ Robison Field, so that he could go to the race track across the road.161 By 1904 he had been arrested at spring training in Hot Springs, Arkansas, for unlicensed gambling, specifically running his dollar pitching game on the grounds of a local hotel.162 In 1906, his gambling began to affect his team’s performance, as illustrated by two incidents: he was spotted with Joe McGinnity at the Belmont Park racetrack three hours before a game at the Polo Grounds; then, before a visit by Pittsburgh, McGraw sent some of his players to put down a 10–1 bet on a horse up in Yonkers. He won $500, and his players lesser sums, but the Giants were thrashed.163 He was now even a gambling tourist: in July 1904 he popped across the Ohio River from playing the Reds in Cincinnati to Covington, Kentucky, where

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he won several hundred bucks after a tip from a local sport.164 Nearly ten years later, on the 1913-1914 world tour, following a canceled game between a White Sox selection and McGraw’s Giants, in Nice, France, Muggsy popped down with twenty others to Monte Carlo.165 McGraw never got into debt through betting and did what all smart gamblers do if they get the money: he bought an establishment where he was free to lose his money at will. His first venture into the gambling industry was a team-up with a young local gambler called Jack Doyle and the jockey Tod Sloan — whose own gambling faux pas had got him kicked out of racing in 1901— in opening a “billiard room and cafe” at Forty-Second Street and Broadway in 1906.166 His ownership lasted a year, after which time the loss-making outfit was sold off. McGraw bought another pool hall in 1908 with some new partners at the Marbridge Building next to the Herald offices. Despite his having to shell out three hundred dollars a month to New York’s finest as “protection money,” this second dive was far more profitable.167 If this wasn’t exactly in the spirit of William Hulbert, the whispers of a “silent partner” by the name of Arnold Rothstein, whom we will come to later, were to send the dead president’s cadaver into a spin.168 As one historian observes, with considerable understatement, this gentleman was “hardly a suitable companion for McGraw — or for anyone else involved in baseball.”169 McGraw eventually invested in a hippodrome in Havana with another dubious acquaintance, Charles Stoneham, owner of the Giants and a business partner of Arnold Rothstein. They got it for a knockdown price from a Texan, Harry D. “Curley” Brown, who was about to embark on a prison term for shooting the son-in-law of a powerful local politician. However, McGraw had to dispose of the Cuban-American Jockey Club, which included a casino, two years later, after a directive from Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the new baseball commissioner.170 Landis had arrived in baseball with the proud reputation as the man who got Jack Johnson prosecuted on the shamefully trumped-up charge of transporting a “prostitute” across state lines. However, the reason he was there wasn’t thanks to one black world heavyweight champion, but to eight “Black” Sox baseball players. The 1919 season finale is undoubtedly baseball’s darkest hour, when eight members of the Chicago White Sox fixed the World Series to lose to the Cincinnati Reds. The reaction of a shocked nation that woke to the news on September 28, 1920, was epitomized on the steps of Cook County Courthouse by a young urchin who confronted “Shoeless” Joe Jackson with the immortal line: “Say it ain’t so, Joe.” Author of Studs Lonigan and Sox fan James T. Farrell was left confused and disillusioned as a fifteen-year-old fan: “My interest in baseball changed after this. For years I had no favorite team. I was growing up, and this marked the end of my days of hero-worshiping baseball players. Many fans felt betrayed. I didn’t. I felt sorry. I wished it weren’t true. I wished the players would have been given another chance.”171 The teens had been full of “crusades” against the gambling menace by baseball owners. At the 1911 annual convention of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues in San Antonio, Texas, gambling was deemed “the greatest detriment to the game,” and owners sought to petition the Attorney General and the legal authorities within the states “to exercise their power to stop pool selling, lotteries and other gambling devices affecting baseball.”172 The suspension of New York’s turf in 1911 and 1912 exacerbated the problem, with course owners liable for any, now illegal, gambling on their tracks that could cost them their liberty. Poolrooms merely concentrated on baseball.173 The New York Times noted:

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Since the abolition of horse racing, gamblers have been trying to make baseball their stock in trade…. Now that the police have come in touch with the practice, it is believed by league officials that this form of gambling will also be killed. At all the baseball parks signs are prominently displayed which read, “Gambling is positively prohibited.” Club owners are exercising all their influence to kill the practice in the parks.174

This was classic “we’ve got them on the run” rhetoric, and with gambling in baseball older than the National League, it was unrealistic. We won’t preoccupy ourselves with the Black Sox scandal. What is relevant is that with the possible exception of one Fred McMullin, none of the culprits were of Irish origin, although the sting itself was organized by a Jewish gambler with very close relations with the Irish underworld of New York and John McGraw. Also of huge significance was that the man the baseball players blamed for their greed was Charlie Comiskey. “If the public looked up to them,” argued Asinof and Gould, “admired them, chased after them, this very prominence served to exacerbate their sense of helplessness. Their taste of fame whetted their appetites, but there was no meat and potatoes to satisfy them. All they’d been eating was Charles Comiskey’s garbage.” Journalists, the usual outlet for complaints, were all in Comiskey’s pockets.175 But this time the Irish were the good guys, with Eddie Murphy, Eddie and “Shano” Collins not part of the conspiracy. Indeed, this was a locker room divided since 1917 not only between cheats and honest men, or by ethnicity, but also along class, regional, and education lines. Collins went to Columbia, Murphy to Villanova, while “Shoeless” Joe Jackson could hardly write.176 Such is the vitriol that is heaped on Comiskey that there is even the story that the nickname “Black Sox” originates long before the scandal, when he refused to pay to have the players’ uniforms cleaned, demanding instead they cover the costs themselves.177 The Old Roman’s stinginess was lore, despite Comiskey Park’s having been the best attended park in both leagues for the past two seasons. He promised a bonus for winning the 1917 AL pennant: it turned out to be a case of cheap champagne, which was met with fury by the entire squad. After winning the World Series, the players were rewarded by being paid the same or in some cases less for the following season. While Eddie Collins earned fifteen thousand dollars, one Black Sox player, Oscar Felsch, got less than four for the year, while another, Eddie Cicotte, took a pay cut.178 Of course there are those who excuse Commy. Donald Honig claims he was a victim of his times, and it’s by these times he should be judged: “Comiskey was no different from most employers of the day. Meager pay checks, execrable working conditions, endless workdays, management tyranny — they were the standard lot for labor then. And while ballplayers were earning, generally, an income above the national median, ownership was earning a whole lot more….”179 And yet this was how Comiskey viewed the worth of his players: not by how much they made him, but how much they’d make in the real world.180 More of concern was that as early as mid–October 1919 he knew that half his team was on the take, but decided “to tough it out and wait for the stench to disappear.”181 He was visited by his concerned manager, Kid Gleason, fully aware that Jackson had received five grand, before giving raises to many of the Black Sox for the 1920 season, often doubling their salary, the priority being to keep this mucky little event out of the news.182 There had been suspicions about the credibility of the 1914, 1917, and 1918 World Series, with one notorious Irish-American Boston bookie, Joseph J. “Sport” Sullivan, rumored to have fixed the 1914 series, when Connie Mack’s heavily favored Philadelphia Athletics lost four straight games to the Braves. One of the privileged fancy who cleaned up thanks to “Sport’s” having been his

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betting broker was George M. Cohan, the Irish-American all-round entertainer who penned the ode to Tod Sloan, “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” and was known as “the man who owned Broadway.”183 “Sport” Sullivan was back again in 1919, but the man providing the cash to make the credibility of the series a farce was Arnold Rothstein, who started his own career as a protégé of the gambling magnate-cum-politician “Big Tim” Sullivan.184 In every major Northern city of the mid- to late nineteenth century, every joint, from Burns’s dump to the Dwyers’s racetrack, needed political padrinos. This uneasy relationship uncovers, not for the first time, one personality of Irish-American sport that was omnipresent from John Morrissey’s burning his backside on a coal fire until long after this book ends: the machine politician.

6 The Heeler — The Irish Sportsman and Politics The term “heeler” comes from “éilitheoir: one who demands or charges … one who visits in a friendly manner.”1

Big-city government in mid-century America was wrong-footed by the changing ethnic demographic landscape. Immigration had created an immense strain on cities, with interethnic tensions leading to riots in many cities. The changes were dramatic: New York between 1845 and 1851 contained twelve percent of the country’s Irish-born population, with the U.S. Census of 1850 reporting 133,730 Irish-born residents (26 percent of the city’s population). The state’s census five years later listed 175,735 people born in Ireland (27.9 percent) in the city.2 Boston, Lowell, Massachusetts, and Jersey City also had Irish-born populations of twenty-six percent by 1860. Ironically, the site of Irish America’s biggest foe, the Republican-led New York state government in Albany, was a city thirty-seven percent of whose population was Irish-born in 1860.3 None of these figures included the American-born Irish. Unsurprisingly, the Irish, as a potential political voting bloc, appeared to be attractive pickings for established parties. Oliver Allen describes how local politicians, by 1828, were fully behind cultivating a child-like allegiance of the immigrant as soon as he arrived: Immigrants would be met at the dock, given assistance in finding lodging, tutored in United States customs and in the requirements for filling out naturalization forms, provided jobs (especially in city government) and hustled through the citizenship mill. Eventually, having been duly proclaimed as citizens (or before), they would be shepherded to the polls on Election Day, where they could return Tammany’s kindness.4

Conversely, the Irish reacted positively. With no actual nation-state of their own and a deep hostility to their own rulers, the Irish had little objection in substituting their detested British subjecthood for American citizenship that granted a generous right to vote in elections, compared to Ireland.5 The Irish were also far from political ignoramuses. They were a sophisticated group and had experience of campaigning on a number of issues, from the disestablishment of the Anglican Church, Land Reform, and the demand for the repeal of the Act of Union. In America, the Irish faced different issues; they found themselves discriminated against in work and housing and threatened by the “natives’” violence on regular 104

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occurrences. Be it through gangs, organized crime or politics, the Irish quickly discovered that collectively they were greater than the sum of their parts. The Irish-American political scene was split between the “Old” and “New” Worlds. The former sought financial aid and support from the disaffected Irish of the United States for Irish independence, with the Fenian raids of Canada between 1866 and 1871 the high point. Since 1798, America had become the refuge for many Irish political exiles. Thomas Emmet and Thomas F. Meagher had ended up there, and the 1848 Young Irelander Rebellion saw another wave of political prisoner escapees at the same time as the famine migration. This included the billiards duo, Michael Phelan and Hugh W. Collender. The billiards authority John Creahan wrote, “Both [Collender and Phelan] … were among the prominent leaders in that memorable, but futile attempt in the cause of their country, but, like millions of their race, only found liberty and freedom in America.” Of Collender, Creahan observed, with a hint of exaggeration, that he had “the honor and distinction of having a reward set on his head by the British Government.”6 Whatever his role was, something stopped him from ever seeing Ireland again; one visit to his family in Waterford involved meeting them in France instead.7 Following his death in 1890 the Sporting Life’s billiards correspondent, Simon Wasp, declared: “Like so many others of his countrymen, [Collender] was obliged to fly from his country, inasmuch as that the British government offered a reward for his head, which reward was hung, like the sword of Damocles, over Collender’s head from that day up to the time of his death.”8 Probably fearing that he’d be booted out of the U.S. or just keen to leave his past behind him, Collender kept a low profile in politics after arriving and concentrated instead on his business, eschewing any opportunity to get involved with nationalist organizations. He later became a good friend of President Ulysses S. Grant when he installed a billiards table in the White House and presented him with a book on the game. 9 However, rumors of connections with Irish “Physical Force Politics” never left, with one report claiming they were involved with fundraising for the Fenians. Creahan again led the accusations in 1909 on the news that a monument to the Irish Republican Brotherhood’s founder James Stephens had been erected in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, by claiming: “In the billiard world of today in this country, A.F. Proescher, Thomas Foley, Benjamin Garno, Timothy Flynn and John Miller, of New Orleans, should be quite familiar with the Fenian movement.” Creahan then divulged that Phelan had paid a visit to London, probably in the sixties, before being arrested and given two days to get out of the country or be sent to Australia.10 Creahan would repeat the story on numerous occasions in later years. The death of Jeremiah Donovan Rossa reminded him once more of the anecdote: Michael Phelan … took a trip to London during the Fenian excitement in this country, with the view first, of selling Fenian bonds in the London market, and then give the English a sound drubbing with the money…. It is scarcely necessary to say that no one but an Irishman would have had the temerity of carrying out such a transaction. That he was not successful detracts nothing from the daring of the enterprise. The Scotland Yard detectives anticipated Mr. Phelan’s arrival and were not slow in notifying him that he would get but three days time to leave that country. Mr. Phelan although physically a very large man, evidently came to the conclusion that he could not lick the Britishers…. He wisely decided to return to his American home. 11

As early as August 1861, Jones Wood hosted “one of the largest gatherings of holiday and folk and others … it has ever been our good fortune to witness … to do honor to the

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brave sons of Erin who fought in the ranks of the gallant Sixty-ninth.”12 This was part of a growing trend of huge outdoor events called “picnics” that would involve athletic events. Soon the New York Times mused that the city’s inhabitants were “becoming a Nation of PicNickians”: “Sunday schools, churches, target companies, brothers of every name and degree, Germans, Irishmen, Frenchmen, and colored persons, one and all, spread themselves and their table cloths regularly once a year in the open air, where, to the merry music of blatant brass and deafening drum they dance and celebrate their souls.”13 The most important of these events until the foundation of the third I-AAC were those organized by the Clan na Gael or the AOH. Clan na Gael was founded by Jerome Collins in 1867. By 1875, John Devoy, along with Dr. William Carroll, a Donegal-born Presbyterian, had become its main driving force, ensuring it was nationalistic yet not necessarily sectarian, making it the most important Irish-American “physical force” organization until Noraid.14 Between 1913 and 1916 the Clan sent over as much as $100,000 to the IRB.15 Its appreciation of sports was little different from that of other European cultural-sporting organizations in the United States, such as the German Turnverein and the Czech Sokol Movement, that sought to improve the fitness and patriotism of its youth. And while not everyone was willing to share the mixing of sports and Irish politics — the Emmett Club of Chicago declared they were “essentially an athletic organization, first, last and all the time, and refuse to have anything to do with politics, either Fational [sic], local or even Irish”— this was the exception.16 Darby argues: “Of all the nationalist groups that were associated with the GAA in the late nineteenth century, Clan na Gael had perhaps the clearest vision about how best to harness the mobilizing power of Gaelic sport to generate support for their militant agenda.”17 On August 17, 1870, Clan na Gael hosted its first New York Annual Games under the guise of the Fenian Brotherhood of the District of Manhattan. Five thousand gathered at Jones Wood, for years the setting for Irish festivals in the Big Apple until Celtic Park was opened, but there was no report of any sports.18 But things changed the following year. The Clan was described by the Irish American Weekly as an association “composed of Irish Nationalists, many of whom have proved their love of country by their sufferings at the hands of Ireland’s enemies” and wanted “to prove their steady adherence to the ‘old sod’ by assembling their friends to witness the manly sports and athletic games that delighted our forefathers, ere Ireland’s woes began.’” The picnic boasted races of various levels and types and value of prizes.19 The picnics grew as the Clan expanded during the seventies. Devoy had seen that the intercommunal wars of Ireland had been rehashed in the United States, even if many of the Irish-Catholic community’s enemies were ardent Anglophobes. Yet the clan’s appeal was limited: Despite getting American citizenship, Devoy always saw himself as an Irishman in exile, who “respectfully decline[d] the honor of being classed as an ‘American,’” which put him at odds with most Irish-Americans, who had burned their ships.20 The 1880 event, interrupted by a torrential downpour, was noted for James C. Daly’s throwing the 16-pound shot 46 feet, 4 inches, and the cannonball a distance of 20 feet and two inches.21 In 1876, Chicago hosted its first Clan na Gael picnic, and by 1892 it had been held for a decade at Oswald’s Garden on Halsted and Fifty-Second while now attracting some three thousand patrons.22 The other of the two biggest and most important Irish political groups in the United States was the Ancient Order of Hibernians. The largest Irish-American organization in the United States and known today mainly as the organizers of the Big Apple’s St. Patrick’s Day parade, the AOH was founded in New York in May 1836 and “developed in the nineteenth century as a provident association devoted to the advancement of the interests and welfare

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of Irish immigrants.”23 In the next two decades it began to spread, “tapping the economic and social grievances of canal and railroad laborers, and the nationalist sentiments of [Irish] workers everywhere.”24 While today the AOH is conservative, it was strongly working-class in the nineteenth century, and were backers of the Irish labor struggles, such as the “Molly Maguires’” industrial guerrilla war against coal magnates in Pennsylvania. It was also exclusively Roman Catholic, exhibiting the changing tone of Irish nationalism from the multidenominational secularism of Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmett and Isaac Butt to an exclusively Catholic nationalism. Now Catholic Irish immigrants were facing the same threats in the New World, both by Nativism and by transplanted Orange societies. Soon a form of paranoia grew within Irish America, with disastrous results. What Tim Pat Coogan calls the conferring of “the accolade of serious recognition on the AOH” was gained by an “attack” on the society’s Fourth of July Parade in 1853, which was in fact the result of no more than a horseman, Adam D. Hawthorne, losing control of his animal. As the Hibernians charged, witnesses heard the AOH Grand Master demand marchers to “kill the damned son of a bitch,” leading to Hawthorne’s almost being murdered. In the subsequent riot two Irish policemen “turned on their officers, and took part with the rioters.”25 For years the AOH stood on the edge of using this sort of violence, culminating in the “Orange Day” riots of July 12, 1870, and 1871, that cost seventy lives.26 The AOH and Clan na Gael were closely linked, with minor differences in their politics and a large cross-membership. However, in contrast to the AOH, the Clan was more susceptible to splits that Brendan Behan claimed were the first item on any Irish organization’s agenda. By the 1890s Clan na Gael had been divided along personality lines between Devoy in New York and William Sullivan in Chicago, reduced, as Terry Golway concludes, from having “struck fear — and terror — in the heart of the world’s most formidable empire … to little more than two rival factions led by men with revolvers in their pockets.”27 The Clan was a keen supporter of the Gaelic Athletic Association and its promotion of Irish sports, although one Devoy biographer suggests it was done in the 1880s and 1890s more as an attempt to retain some relevance to Irish politics while the constitutional “Home Rule” route of Parnell and Redmond were in the ascendancy.28 But Devoy was often indifferent to sports outside the realm of the GAA or AOH/CnG picnics. He rarely spoke on baseball or the prize ring, despite their huge Irish-American appeal, preferring athletics, later writing a letter in 1924 confessing: “It is one of my pleasant memories to stand in Celtic Park watching John [Flanagan]’s splendid figure whirl the hammer and sent it flying into space … so long as Ireland produces John Flanagans there is hope for the future.”29 His Gaelic American reported on the Olympic Games between 1904 and 1908, on matters unconnected to athletic achievements. In St. Louis, Devoy railed against the controversial theatrical performances at the exposition’s “Irish Village.” In Athens he commended Peter O’Connor for his act of defiance in replacing the Union Jack with the Clan’s Irish flag, symbol of political rivalry, while rounding on the American press for their reliance on “the Devil’s News Bureau” and their failure to report the incident: “The venom and prejudice of the English news agencies has never been more clearly demonstrated than in the cabled reports of the Olympic Games. While the success of McGough, who, by the way, is an Irishman, is credited to Scotland, the achievements of the great Irish athletes are credited to Great Britain.”30 In the wake of the 1908 London Olympics, Devoy was uncontrollable in his anger within an editorial called “John Bull In His True Colors”: The utter disregard for the rights, interests and feelings of others shown by the English in the management of the Olympic games in London is characteristically English…. John Bull knows

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no law but the intense selfishness and inordinate opinion of his own importance which has characterized him since “the Empire” began to grow. He is only a sport for gambling purposes and the character of “fair play” which he has given himself is like his religion, a label carried on his sleeve of his hat front to deceive those who don’t know him.31

The AOH also organized athletic meetings, usually on St. Patrick’s Day in New York, when the annual march would make its way to the Jones Wood stadium for an address by some of the order’s figures, local dignitaries and clergy. The 1893 games witnessed A.J. Walsh of Xavier AA take the field “with a bunch of shamrocks pinned on his sweater,” whereupon the watching crowd went “nearly wild with delight” as Walsh kept them in “excellent humor” with “his rich brogue.”32 Brooklyn’s Ancient Order of Hibernians hosted its first sporting event in 1855.33 New York had its inaugural annual “picnic and Irish national games” twenty years later. However, as was observed at the 1885 event, the weather of mid– March was unsuitable for athletics, and the New York Times noted “a half inch of mud on the track prevented anything like good records.”34 There were also military displays at these events: the 1897 Clan “picnic” at Brommers Union Park featured a drill by the Irish Volunteers,35 while the 1902 games had “a sham battle” between the Leo Military Cadets and the Leo Naval Battalion.36 Other festivals were organized across the country, from the Irish stronghold of Boston to small-town events in places like Buffalo; Pawtucket, Rhode Island; Omaha, Nebraska; and Dayton, Ohio.37 Washington D.C.’s Benning Racetrack was the venue for a Gaelic football match between two separate divisions of the AOH in September 1909.38 The AOH in Philadelphia held its first annual picnic in 1887, while the St. Louis AOH 1889 picnic combined athletics “of all kinds” with horse, mule and donkey racing. A promotional ad promised “a hundred or more rabbits will be let loose for the children to capture.”39 The following year’s event included what the St. Louis Republic termed a “potatoe [sic] race,” which proved “quite a humorous affair, as the contestants, in their anxiety to capture the ‘taters’ in a hurry, usually fell to the ground amid cheers from the crowd.”40 Smaller towns hosted events, like Lake Maranacook, Maine, where Division 1 of the AOH held its “Annual Excursion and Athletic Tournament” in September 1886.41 Small towns’ picnics particularly granted opportunities for everyone to participate. The Omaha Clan picnic in 1900 at Waterloo, just outside the city, included a “young ladies” race, a “fat men’s race,” a “married ladies race,” and races for under-11 boys and under-12 girls, as well as standard athletic events.42 The Pawtucket picnic of 1913, held at the town’s Crescent Park, included a baseball game between the Moose and Journal teams, the former captained by former Chicago second baseman Jim Connor.43 Other Irish societies organized gatherings across the country. Philadelphia hosted its first “Irish Nationalists Games” in 1869. Atlanta, Georgia, had an Irish picnic in May 1894 at Maddox Park, hosted by the Hibernian Rifles’ Association, with transportation supplied by a six-car train taking passengers on two journeys from Mitchell Street. The picnic included a five-inning game of baseball between members of the AOH and a military nine, ducking of the kettle, a greased pole-climbing competition, a “greased pig chase,” a tug-of-war contest between the local AOH, and various other games of the sort “that made famous the days of Dannybrook [sic] fairs.” The Atlanta Constitution claimed that organizers anticipated that “young and old” would take part in these “old Irish games” and “make the woods fairly ring with merriment.”44 The standard at many AOH/CnG picnics were of the highest level, with the Irish American Weekly suggesting after the 1878 New York picnic “that at no distant day, we are satisfied, that [the AOH] will be able to choose a team from their body able to compete

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with any athletic club in the country.”45 The following summer the same newspaper would crow: “If they but continue to progress in those exercises, as they have done for the last few years, at the next annual games it will go hard even with professionals to carry off many of the prizes to be contested for.”46 Both organizations’ events were held under AAU’s rules and utilized Celtic Park in New York when it opened. Spectators frequently witnessed world records being broken: in July 1906 at the Boston Clan na Gael Games, Dennis Mahoney smashed James S. Mitchell’s world record for the 56-lb. weight, “Irish style, with one hand and unlimited run,” on his second attempt, after losing control of the weight with his first, which landed, luckily without injuries, among the spectators.47 At the following month’s AOH games at Celtic Park, Denis Horgan broke William Read’s eighteen-year-old record in the 28-lb. stone event.48 Watched by fifteen thousand spectators, Ralph Rose joined John Flanagan as he broke Matt McGrath’s world record in the 16-lb. hammer event at Celtic Park in August 1908.49 The 1909 Connecticut Clan na Gael games at Savin Rock witnessed John Flanagan bust the world record for 16-lb. hammer,50 before breaking the world record in the 56-lb. at the Irish games at Rocky Point, Rhode Island, later that month.51 Melvin Sheppard broke two sprinting records at Clan events in 1910, including Lon Myers’s twenty-nine-year record in the 100-yard handicap.52 Such was their prestige that James E. Sullivan was the referee of the 1910 New York Clan games.53 Other Irish gatherings were also fortified by top athletes. The Gaelic Society’s games of 1891 included I-AAC athletes Michael Kennedy, J. Bradley and D. Linehan.54 James S. Mitchell’s quest to break his own record floundered —“thrice his mighty shoulders cracked in the attempt”— at the 1897 Irish National Alliance of Greater New York event at Ridgewood Park, Brooklyn,55 while at the Gaelic League games at Celtic Park in 1911, four thousand watched Martin Sheridan compete in the discus throwing, and John J. Daly run the two-mile steeplechase.56 If these games were initially modeled on ethnic exclusivity, then organizers would frequently drop this for a more mainstream athletic event where professionals and even English athletes competed.57 Non-Irish competitors were invited to the 1880 Clan games, where H.M. Wagner, J. Hess and H. Fredericks of Pastime Athletic Club and E.W. Johnson of the Caledonian Club won events.58 In 1884, T.C. Herbert of England won two races, while Norman “The Pie-Eater” Taylor also competed.59 Non-Irish newspapers began to cover these events; writing about the Clan’s 1880 “picnic” that attracted a thousand patrons, the New York Herald observed: “Bagpipers groaned on every hand and the confusion of melody was at times truly heartrending.”60 All picnics included dancing, usually arranged to end the day’s proceedings. Eventually these “picnics” became a seminal event in “Old World” Irish politics, bringing together the likes of John Devoy and John Boyle O’Reilly with “New World” Irish politicians. At the 1907 New York Clan games, the New York Times noted that there were more state “senators, assemblymen and various grades of leaders” in attendance than athletes. J.B. “Tom” Foley, the Democratic candidate for sheriff, presided as referee for the games, while other Tammany candidates for jobs, ingratiating themselves with the undecided or indifferent, looked on.61 However, the “Old World” was no match for the new. As Irish-Americans, particularly the lace-curtain branch, became more sensitive about their loyalty to the United States, they preferred to emphasize “their ethnic identity through non-political means.” Consequently, the Clan and the AOH declined in membership and importance, especially following the alliance of the U.S. and Britain in the First World War.62

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For most immigrants, Ireland had been hell. Kerby Miller elaborates on this by suggesting that Irish immigrants avoided telling their children anything about Ireland, quoting one immigrant, Agnes Kelly, as not discussing the country or encouraging her children to visit: “When we left there, we left the old world behind, we are all American citizens and proud of it.” Her view of Ireland as representing poverty and “backwardness” was common, what Kerby describes as a “conscious suppression of acute homesickness combined to shape decisions not to pass on their own ambivalent feelings to American offspring.” Meanwhile, the lace-curtain Irish, now so distant from their turmoil, were “so impressed with the necessity to alter totally their personalities in America, that they contemptuously rejected Ireland and Irish ways.”63 The immigrants’ children, having little chance of seeing Ireland until the late twentieth century, grew up with an abstract view of Ireland that could never compete with the realities of American life, except in cultivating a hatred of Britain that was, until the mid-twentieth century, not out of sync with general American thinking. John Boyle O’Reilly, despite his debt to Devoy for getting him out of the hellhole of Fremantle, had a better perspective of the Irish-American future. A former British soldier born near Drogheda in 1844, he was arrested in July 1866, convicted at a court-martial of “plotting mutiny,”64 and eventually sent to Western Australia in late 1867. Spending over a year there, he escaped in February 1869, arriving in Philadelphia seven months later. He settled in Boston in early 1870, and while there met the aging newspaper owner Patrick Donahoe. Impressed, Donahoe employed him as a journalist on the Irish-Catholic voice of Boston that he founded, The Pilot.65 One of Boyle O’Reilly’s first editorials was to condemn Irish-Americans, Catholic and Protestant, over that year’s Twelfth of July riot: What are we today in the eyes of Americans? Aliens from a petty island in the Atlantic, boasting of our patriotism and fraternity, and showing at the same moment the deadly hatred that rankles against our brethren and fellow countrymen. Why must we carry, wherever we go, those cursed and contemptible island feuds? Shall we never be shamed into the knowledge of the brazen impudence of allowing our national hatreds to disturb the peace and the safety of the respectable citizen of this country?66

Over the next decade, Boyle O’Reilly became an influential and politically astute voice in Irish America. In 1876 he became editor of The Pilot and sought reconciliation with the Brahmins of Boston. He saw rebellious action in Ireland as merely “ill-prepared militancy and quixotic posturing,”67 and most controversially championed the causes of African Americans. He was also an advocate of physical exercise. As his biographer notes: “The popular image of the literary man is of someone who is mainly sedentary, thoughtful, and generally physically inactive. But O’Reilly was strong and athletic, proficient at fencing and especially devoted to boxing…. He was a familiar figure in the Harvard gymnasium, where … he taught fencing to the students.” He regularly played in field sports, sponsored the annual O’Reilly Hurling Cup, was a member of the Boston Union Boat Club, and served as an official for the IACB, the NIAA, and the Boston Athletic Association.68 To overcome the problems in their new country — poverty, jobs, housing, violence — the Irish needed to get into the positions of power. An alliance that shaped the next century’s political relations came about simply by cynical local politicians looking for new votes. The Irish didn’t need to form their own political party; they were wooed by, infiltrated, then took over the first party that recognized their worth. The Democratic Party was the first political group that identified the value of the Irish vote. Through local Democratic “machines” like Tammany Hall in New York, every major city in the Northeast with a substantial Irish minority, except Philadelphia, consistently brought in a Democratic local

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government and mayors for a century. And as the Irish began to dominate local Democratic machines, they took over the reins of power, kicking out the WASPs they had first entered into an alliance with, like William Tweed. The Democrats, despite their “liberal” credentials of today, were an odd companion for the Irish. They were the party white Southerners voted for overwhelmingly in every presidential election from 1876 to 1948, except in the campaign by the Irish-American Catholic Al Smith in 1928. Central to the Irish-Democratic marriage was a former New York “Nativist” and anti–Catholic organization called Tammany Hall. Although its original xenophobia was directed at the British, its constitution declared it as a society for “American brethren,” and only U.S.-born men could hold office within it. Only “political expediency” led Tammany to “deliberately seek the support of ethnic peoples just in from the docks.”69 The turning point was in 1817, when a group supporting the election of Thomas Addis, the former New York State attorney general and the Irish-born son of Robert Emmet, broke into a meeting of Tammany’s Central committee. Thereafter Tammany Hall began to warm to the benefits that newcomers’ votes would give them, with the extension of the franchise to all white male citizens clinching things.70 In the stable, established democracy of today, there are few opportunities for underthe-table corruption. In the fast-growing cities of nineteenth-century America, there was little control over the money being thrown around to quickly complete public works contracts. Subsequently, politics was an attractive avenue for the greedy and criminal to make easy money, either as contractors or as politicians. Once in power, they had the right to decide who they employed, who had the contracts to build the streets, the drains, the transport systems, and who got public-sector jobs. In city government, the Irish voting bloc became kingmaker in deciding who got into local urban legislatures and reaped the financial rewards that were there. The Democrats secured the Irish vote with the “scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” quid pro quo of jobs and political posts, leading to what the state senator and Tammanyite, George Washington Plunkitt, called “honest graft”: Some papers complain that the bosses get rich while devotin’ their lives to the interests of the city. What of it? If opportunities for turnin’ an honest dollar comes their way, why shouldn’t they take advantage of them, just as I have done? As I said … there is honest graft and dishonest graft. The bosses go in for the former. There is so much of it in this big town that they would be fools to go in for the dishonest graft.71

To these Irish “winners,” there were losers: the so-called Native Americans, disenchanted and disempowered old stock who mostly lived in old Eastern cities, almost universally Protestant, and often descended from Irish immigrants themselves. “Nativism” emerged in the mid–1840s as a reaction to illegally naturalized immigrants who had taken all the public-sector jobs. This was a loose movement of former Tammanyites and Whigs that found its most fertile ground in the lower middle and working-class old-stock Americans. Fueled by the collapse of two-party system in 1854 with the implosion of the pre–Republican Whig Party, the American Party, also known as the “Know Nothings,” was born to fill a political vacuum. “Nativism” was no longer a patriotic aversion to similar “others” like the British; it was now a reaction to religious and cultural imports which led them to advocate prohibition and Sabbatarianism. The American Party was in the long term a political failure, not least because their main policy — anti-immigration — was doomed in a country desperate for manpower. Even in Ohio, where the party attained some lasting success, it only did so through alliances with Protestant immigrants from Scotland and Germany. But before their

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collapse, they took the mayoralties of four of the five largest American cities in 1855. Although they came third in Gotham to the Democrats’ Fernando Wood,72 elsewhere the “Know-Nothings” elected mayors in New Orleans, Baltimore, Boston, Washington, D.C., St. Louis, San Francisco and Chicago, and — with a joint nomination with the Whig Party — Philadelphia. They also took the governorships of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Delaware and California, before putting forward former President Millard Fillmore as their candidate in the 1856 presidential campaign. Perhaps their most enduring success was the introduction of the explicitly anti–Irish literacy tests in Connecticut in 1855 and Massachusetts two year later, and later introduced as part of the Jim Crow discrimination practices in the South. Sports and leisure were important aspects of city life, but because of legal restraints over what could be built, sold, and exhibited, sporting entrepreneurs had to turn to local government for licensing. While what could be built was always a straightforward proposition, what could be sold and exhibited, and when, were subject to various legal minefields and native opposition. In a sporting context, through their alliance with the Irish, the Democratic Party was seen as the facilitators for weakening restraints on sports, alcohol and gambling, all born of an unholy Hiberno-Democratic alliance that “nurtured ignorance, irrationality and superstition,” hellbent on destroying Protestant America’s “liberty, reason, industry and order.”73 Irish urban Democratic politicians supported sports for a number of reasons. First, prizefighting — and later baseball — was where many a politician had cut his teeth. As early as Tom McCoy’s death, the New York Tribune voiced concerns of the growing political influence of the ring and questioned “what terms of mutual consideration and service exists between the most lawless and dangerous combination of our city on the one hand, and our highest Executive authority.” The question arose, the paper said, because for three years “the banded ruffianism” of New York City had “been dealt with most gingerly” by the city’s police.74 Thirteen years later the same newspaper ran an article titled “Pugilists and Politics” which attacked the city’s politicians who “surpass themselves in protestations of virtue, while they test the resources of the vocabulary in opprobious [sic] epithets to hurl at the” pugs if it entailed garnering votes. The hundred or so of professional fighting-men … are bad enough; but are they worse than the unscrupulous “respectable” men who have for years kept them in ruffianly employment? Had there been no ambitious and successful office-seekers to hire them, they never could have reached the tithe of their present importance. Had party leaders repelled their mercenary advances … these bullies would never have been heard of beyond the Criminal Court and the State Prison. But they were hired to do villainy, and protected after the act, by the very men who now desert them only because they have got into office, and the bruisers are no longer useful.75

Steven A. Riess writes that sporting occasions provided opportunities for the politician to mix with his constituents, and to show off his own credentials as a bachelor: “Machine politicians, gangsters, entertainers and other members of the sporting fraternity attended sporting events together, bet with each other, and socialized later into the evening after sporting contests.”76 Finally, sports provided financial pickings for politicians; from the prizefighter needing to be let off in court, to the humble poolroom needing “protection” from police interference, to a baseball franchise having a tram line extended to transport fans, sports granted huge opportunities for “honest graft.”

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Politicians held sporting interests, or sought to control all the major sporting franchises in their cities. Tom Foley became an alderman in Chicago, the future athletics “czar” James E. Sullivan was nominated for office as the county clerk in New York on the Democratic ticket,77 while Charles Comiskey was courted by both Democrats and Republicans in Chicago to run for mayor, but declined saying he’d much “rather win a pennant.”78 The prize ring, while completely beyond the pale of legality, still retained friends in politics that kept it on life support during its dark ages, a relationship that didn’t go unnoticed by the New York Times in July 1858: “[The] ring is now the surest path to public situations of trust and emolument…. We remember that under a government less pure and enlightened than ours … men of this calling would never venture forth into public notice from the stews and slums … unless dragged before a police magistrate on their way to the penitentiary.”79 Nevertheless, once in a while, political help was simply not enough. The Irish-born boxer and serial thug, Joe Coburn, was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment in May 1859 for stabbing a New York policeman, even though the popular feeling in court was that his political connections meant he would be “let off easy.”80 Perhaps had Coburn stabbed a civilian he’d have fared better. Certainly Tammany never forgot him, and when he and McCoole were locked up in Indiana in 1868 for forty days following their aborted fight in Cold Spring Station, the New York Tribune reported the “loud complaints in the Democratic ranks” because the pair were to miss the Pendleton procession on July 4 where “the brave champions of the ring” were to act as “leaders.”81 For decades after, politicians were on standby to help out a sportsman in trouble. When “Turkey” Mike Donlin and two other players were arrested following a “riot” on a train near New York in February 1906, the trio were freed on bail after sympathetic members of the New York state legislature were contacted to pull strings in gathering the money together from “local sporting men.”82 Even amateur athletes were aided; the hammer thrower Pat Ryan’s spot of bother while “letting off steam” was cleared up through the intervention of Tammany politicians who persuaded a magistrate to go easy, although Ryan didn’t help himself. The judge needed to be stern and admonishing. However, a half-inebriated Ryan, when asked if he had anything to say, replied: “You can go plumb to hell. This case is all fixed,” leaving Ryan to another night in the cell.83 The trial of Jere Dunn in the spring of 1883 for the murder of Jim Elliott in Chicago was probably the most blatant piece of political maneuvering achieved by any Irish “sport.” Political connections obtained the best lawyer — and indeed a jury — that money could buy. Mike McDonald worked to “pack” the jury with men who would be sympathetic to Dunn while ensuring witnesses remembered the facts “correctly.”84 He also testified in court that he saw a gun in Elliott’s pocket an hour before the incident.85 Many sportsmen and politicians had started out as comrades of quasi-political gangs that were instruments against the widespread terror of the “native” thugs, with July 12 a day to avoid long before the New York Orange Day riots of 1870 and 1871. The Orangeman’s day of 1824 erupted in serious violence after Irish Presbyterian laborers marched through Greenwich Village, leading to many injured, including a pregnant woman who joined the fray, although only Catholics were sent to jail.86 In 1829, riots erupted in Charlestown, just outside Boston. Five years later, on August 11, 1834, a group attacked and burned down an Ursaline convent in the Ploughed Hill area of the town. As Nativism grew, Kensington, Philadelphia, witnessed a riot that lasted three days in May 1844, with two Catholic churches destroyed and sixteen Catholics dead, after a Protestant community meeting held to discuss

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immigration went out to confront the Irish. One Irish Protestant observer noted that this was more than intra-Irish sectarian rivalry, involving “native [born] American citizens forming themselves into a body to deprive all foreigners of their rights and privileges guaranteed to them by the Constitution.”87 Like other defensive fighter organizations, these gangs quickly took on other, less honorable roles; but members who were good athletes, but not good enough to become professionals, or had more sense, often went into politics. Richard Croker and Charles Francis Murphy in the Big Apple and T.J. Pendergast in Kansas City were three such promising “couldabeens” that moved into urban machine politics. Murphy and Pendergast were both promising baseball players, while Croker was a rated pug. Thomas Joseph Pendergast, who apparently looked like “a powerful baseball ‘slugger,’”88 sighed before his trial for tax evasion in 1939: “I might have been better off, happier today, if I had gone into professional baseball.”89 Tammany boss Richard Croker began his political affiliation as a party brawler, rising to the leadership of the Fourth Avenue Tunnel Gang, on account of “his command of his ‘mauleys,’” excelling in swimming, wrestling and pugilism.90 He fought a number of “amateur” fights in which it was agreed his teeth were his greatest asset, chewing the ear off one opponent, possibly Pat Kelly, in his saloon on Thirty-Fifth and Third. At an impromptu scrap during a political picnic at Jones Wood in 1866, Croker fought a professional pug and “notorious bully” called Dickie Lynch and “pounded his adversary into such shape that he had to be carried from the Ring.” Other opponents, according to an exposé by the Evening World in 1894 which Croker took great exception to, included such nobodies as Denny Leary and Matt Green. Croker stormed up to the newspaper’s offices to give the reporter a telling-off in time for the final edition: It says here that as a pupil of the East Twenty-seventh street public school I first developed my fistic prowess. That is not so. I never had a quarrel with anybody while I went to school…. Then it says I fought Reddy Haskins in a cellar…. I don’t know “Red” Haskins; never heard of him before in my life. I am credited next with having beat Pat Kelly in a Third Avenue saloon. I deny that. Pat Kelly and I were intimate friends from boyhood up, and I never had a hard word with him during our acquaintance…. I never had a row with Denny Leary either. We never had a harsh word pass between us in our lives. Now, I want to say about the Dickie Lynch fight … I had a little row with a young man named Lynch at a festival…. That is all I want to say now, except that these stories were started by my political enemies, and they have kept them alive ever since.91

In November 1901, Tammany received a battering at the local elections, with “fusion” candidate Seth Low voted in as mayor. Croker soon called it a day and moved to Europe, first to England and finally to retire back to the land of his birth. In Epsom, England, he won the 1907 Derby Stakes with Orby, but unlike most previous winners he wasn’t invited back to Buck House to meet His Majesty, Edward VII. As the New York Times put it rather indiscreetly: “[Croker] was not the proper person to be invited there. The same sort of feeling, it must be admitted, pervaded the upper class of the Englishmen who witnessed Mr. Croker’s victory. In their view he was not a proper person to win the Derby, and his presence at Epsom Downs as a competitor was regarded by them as extremely undesirable.”92 One of Croker’s earliest line-ups was Owney Geoghegan, who was a member with the “Gashouse Gang” that Herbert Asbury described as having around two hundred members, “adroit footpads, and in their heyday averaged about thirty holdups a night.”93 Geoghegan never held any office, but that isn’t to suggest that his contribution to the democratic process

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was negligible. He worked as a “ward heeler” for Jimmy Irving in the Eighteenth Ward, and as was the case with all ward heelers, Geoghegan’s fistic trade was brought to the fore at election time where “persuasion” of a more hands-on approach meant being “active in many a fight at the polls.”94 Such violence got Geoghegan arrested during a local Democratic primary election in 1872, when he and his accomplice “Clipper” Hennessy assaulted Michael McNally, an electoral inspector and Democratic Party member, with the butt of a revolver outside Tammany Hall; Geoghegan kicked him on the floor as Hennessy fired a shot at him.95 Another example of the low-level political knucklehead was John Flood. Known as the “Bull’s Head Terror,” he barely made it as a professional fighter, proving an early and ineffectual opponent of John L. Sullivan, who beat him in New York in 1881. Flood started on his own road to fistic fame as just another Tammany hoodlum turned contender, or as Isenberg puts it, a “ragged bully from the notorious Five Points district [who] seemed … little more than a simple minded physical tool whose prime function was to entertain motley assemblages or sporting dandies, gamblers, lower class ward heelers and workingmen.”96 Yankee Sullivan’s political career in New York centered on stuffing ballots and shoulder-hitting as much as punching out opponents.97 Along with Country McCleester, and later John Morrissey, he was a foot soldier for Captain Isaiah Rynders, a political henchman and former pistol and knife fighter on the Mississippi, whose Protestant Irish mother, Asbury claimed, compelled “his love of the Irish and hatred for the English to upset his judgment.”98 A previous resident during the gold rush, following his defeat to Tom Hyer — when his “former friends who lost bets on that battle forsook him”— Sullivan returned to the West Coast in 1854 with devastating consequences for him.99 Nearly two and a half thousand miles from Washington, D.C., and fifteen years from having a railroad connection with the East, San Francisco and California weren’t called the Wild West for nothing. In its brief history as a part of the United Sates since the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, California had witnessed a huge upheaval that few political components could survive unscathed. With its population soaring from 459 in August 1847 to close on 25,000 at the end of 1849, San Francisco was a powder keg waiting to explode.100 Enter Yankee Sullivan: Worming himself into a job as an electoral inspector in the Presidio district, he got a former resident of Sing Sing, James Casey, elected with the aid of rigged ballot boxes. In May 1856, while Casey was convicted of murder — for killing in a duel a business opponent who exposed his criminal past — Sullivan was set upon by the city’s Vigilance Committee, a “Nativist” lynch mob that had been organized to clean up the city’s criminals and corrupt politicians, like Sullivan, who had for years been “disturbers of the peace of our city, destroyers of purity of our elections, active members and leaders of the organized gang who have invaded the sanctity of our ballot boxes….” Sullivan, as a foreigner, was to be kicked out of the U.S., with the warning that if he came back, he’d be hanged.101 However, on the morning of May 31, he was found bled to death in his cell. A report in the San Francisco Bulletin suggested that suicidal thoughts were brought on by a nightmare of his own hanging. A prison guard’s assurances failed to convince him: “Sullivan, however, was too much frightened…. About two hours later, when Sullivan’s breakfast was being carried into his room, the prisoner was found on his bed dead…. He had cut his left arm at the elbow joint, on the inside, to the bone.” The wound, cut with his food knife, had slit his brachial artery, causing massive bleeding. The Bulletin concluded that Sullivan had already stated that if branded and exiled he’d kill himself and assumed that a “guilty con-

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science would not allow him to wait the course of events.”102 Sullivan’s death remained suspicious: he was permitted to be buried in a Catholic cemetery, lending credence to the idea that the Church believed he was murdered. His death was met with resignation back in New York. The New York Times shrugged: “Like many of the ‘fighting men,’ Sullivan had enough in him to make a smart man; but as it was, he was smart and shrewd only in a bad way.”103 Being good at baseball or athletics never afforded the same opportunities into politics as pugilism. For one, many of the best baseball players came from small towns, without the same level of political violence of the large cities, even if the players themselves were equally up to the task of brawling. Three of the very few who did go into politics when they retired were Frank Dwyer, “Big” Mike Sullivan and John Kinley Tener; from athletics, James B. Connolly ran for the “Bull Moose” Progressive Party, losing in his bid for Congress in 1912 to a fellow son of Galway, future Boston mayor and Massachusetts governor, James M. Curley.104 Frank Dwyer was born in Lee, Massachusetts, and had an innocuous baseball career, principally in Chicago and Cincinnati, before managing the Detroit Tigers for a season in 1902. He moved to Geneva, New York, where he became a coal merchant, a Democratic politician and a police commissioner.105 Michael Joseph Sullivan was born in South Boston in 1870 to Irish immigrants Patrick and Winifred, and managed to crawl out of poverty to study law at Boston University. He had postponed a legal career by becoming a pitcher with seven teams between 1889 and 1899, before being elected a Democratic warden in 1897.106 He became a representative in 1898 — continuing to play a game for the Beaneaters — and finally a Massachusetts state senator, at the second attempt in 1901.107 As a member of the 13th Division of the AOH, he was key in getting March 17 a public holiday in Boston — it was known as Evacuation Day, commemorating the lifting of the siege of Boston in March 1776 — while his “zealousness for his party caused him to be brought before the bar of the senate and … [he] was ordered to make an apology and … suspended from voting for one week.”108 He died at thirty-nine from a brain hemorrhage in June 1906.109 John Tener was the most prominent baseball player-cum-politician. Born the seventh of ten children in County Tyrone in 1863 to well-heeled Protestant farmers, George and Susan, he moved to the U.S. shortly after George died in 1873.110 Tener suffered further heartbreak with his mother’s death, with the family staying together through the efforts of his elder brother. Becoming a keen baseball player in Pittsburgh, Tener spent a less than impressive three seasons in the majors: two with Cap Anson’s Chicago White Stockings and a season with the Pittsburgh Burghers of the Players League. He did, however, tour with the White Stockings on the second World Tour, showing his administrative skills as its treasurer and the man chosen to explain the game to Albert, the Prince of Wales. A career in banking saw him rise to become director of a number of banks, along with insurance and streetcar companies, as well as the “Grand Exalted Ruler” of the Elks of North America and the executive director of the organization’s magazine.111 He finally entered politics, but unlike the vast majority of his fellow countrymen in the States, Tener was a Republican.112 He was elected a member of the House of Representatives for the TwentyFourth Pennsylvania District, before becoming governor of Pennsylvania in November 1910.113 The Sporting Life claimed that Albert Spalding had predicted his rise following a disturbance by the Giza Pyramids that Tener had sorted out, telling the Tyrone man: “Young man. You will be Governor of your own State some day.” He remained governor of the Keystone State until January 1915, when he took up the National League presidency full time.

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In the years following the Civil War, the practice of “shoulder hitting” at elections decreased as patronage and kickbacks moved in.114 While “shoulder hitters” often became good prizefighters, and failed prizefighters sometimes made successful politicians, few made it in all three “professions.” The most noted exception to this rule was John Morrissey. After arriving in New York, he began working for Rynders. His “interview” centered on a rather rude intrusion into the Captain’s Empire Club looking for “Dutch” Charlie Duane. After offering the chance for others to take him on in Duane’s absence, Morrissey was beaten senseless by Rynders’ toughs. But the Captain seemingly liked his “pluck,” hiring Morrissey as an emigrant runner at the docks, before moving him up to breaking up opponents’ meetings.115 Morrissey’s enemies were Rynders’ sometime rivals, the Nativist gang; the Bowery Boys, whose members included Tom Hyer; and William Poole. When Sullivan took on Hyer in 1849, the New York Herald feared that whatever the result, the fight promised “to lay the foundations of a terrible feud between their several adherents in this city, that may break out, one of these days, into some fatal riot or row.” There were local elections coming up and both fighters had “led their processions, arranged their public meetings and supported their pretensions.”116 Some years later, Morrissey entered the respectable side of politics, chiefly to protect his gambling interests. He served two terms in Congress, elected to the Fifth District in 1866 with a 2,700-vote majority, before being sent to the New York State Senate in 1875 and 1877.117 Sadly, he also held illusions of grandeur that entailed rubbing shoulders with the rich rather than hitting the shoulders of the poor. His colorful past could never allow this to materialize. During his attempt to enter Congress, one political rival, John D. Townsend, told a New York Tribune reporter of his reservations, pointing to Poole’s murder while reminding readers Morrissey was indicted on various charges of assault and battery with intent to kill. “This nomination,” he added, “must have the worst possible effect on young men.”118 Morrissey refuted the allegations in a reply in the New York Herald, claiming his conviction for burglary, when sixteen, was because he had kicked in a door during a gang fight.119 Growing tired of Boss Tweed’s authoritarian rule and corruption, Morrissey eventually turned on his chief patron, testifying at the Woodin Inquiry in 1877.120 He battled and lost to Tweed’s successor, “Honest” John Kelly, in 1872 to see who would become the Tammany Hall “boss,” persuading Morrissey to form his own party, Irving Hall Democracy, which secured Tweed’s old seat in Albany. However, through his senile dementia, a result of his many fistic encounters both inside and outside the ring, a physically weakened Morrissey contracted pneumonia in the spring of 1878, passing away in May, aged only 47.121 He left behind an estate worth more than $2 million. Twenty thousand mourners, including the whole state Senate, attended his funeral in Troy. The New York Times, his chief critic in life, cried enough crocodile tears to wash Manhattan into the Atlantic: “The ex prize fighter and gambler is remembered only as the true friend, the honest, clear headed, right minded legislator, the loyal, whole souled, generous man.” The newspaper continued with anecdotes about Morrissey’s good character, including one about how he returned the money that a young clerk had lost at his gambling den with the advice to his mother “to keep her boy away from sporting houses.”122 The New York Herald’s editorial also wept tributes: There is, perhaps, no other example in our history of a man having risen to so much political distinction against such formidable obstacles…. The marvel is not so great that a man of Mr. Morrissey’s antecedents … could secure elections to Congress and to the New York Senate …

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but that, by a steady growth of confidence in his integrity and ability, he at last achieved the honor of an election from one of the most wealthy, respectable, moral and refined districts in the metropolis without renouncing the business by which he gained his property.123

Another pug who moved into politics was “Bulldozer” Jim Dunne. Elected alderman of Brooklyn’s Sixth Ward in 1870, Dunne was arrested the same day for “interfering with and assaulting” a U.S. Deputy.124 We will come to “Bulldozer’s” colorful clashes with the law later, but he managed to serve two terms, and then took the post of “Keeper” of Brooklyn’s City Hall in 1883, having for several years “led a quiet life, which he says he means to continue to do if he is left alone.”125 The New York Times suggested that this was more graft, with the appointment being made at “the dictation of Boss McLaughlin, who Dunne had been a faithful follower [of ] for many years,” adding his “turbulent career is known to every man in the country who reads the newspapers. It is said he has permanently reformed and given up prize-fighting, but the fact has not escaped attention that he was one of the chief pall-bearers at the funeral of the murdered pugilist Elliott.”126 He’d later desert the Democrats in 1905 to become a brief if “ardent supporter” of William Randolph Hearst’s Independence League, returning to the Democrats when William J. Gaynor ran for mayor five years later.127 Dunne’s main partner and friend on the handball courts was Phil Casey. Known as the “Father of American Handball,” Casey also became a local Brooklyn politician. He had run as an “Independent Democrat” in the Brooklyn local elections in 1879, and was returned as alderman of the Tenth Ward. When he took his seat, envious voices, especially within McLaughlin’s Democratic machine, began a whispering campaign against him. At the time, a foreign-born candidate needed to be a citizen for three years. Casey stated he had been an American citizen since 1868, while opponents argued he took out his naturalization papers in 1877 in the New York Superior Court and therefore was ineligible to run for public office.128 Almost a year later, Casey was arrested and charged with fraudulently registering papers, and was bailed by the U.S. Commissioner for $1,000.129 He managed to keep his electoral post when any meaningful evidence of fraud was unforthcoming. Reports, which he stringently denied, surfaced in 1883 that he was jumping to the Republicans and supporting Mayor Seth Low,130 and he subsequently didn’t seek re-election in 1884.131 The removal of Tweed in favor of “Honest” John Kelly promised an era of “honest” politics in New York City. Reality was that it was business as usual. No politician was more crooked than “Big” Tim Sullivan, whose fiefdom was much of Lower East Side Manhattan. Elected at twenty-three to the State Assembly in 1886, he moved up into the state Senate in 1893, later becoming a U.S. Congressman, before returning to Albany due to a lack of kickbacks in D.C.132 Like Morrissey, Sullivan was heavily involved in gambling. Yet he was keen to help out his constituents: like the original Robin Hood, he’d grandstand and organize massive Christmas feasts for the poor of the Bowery even when he was too unwell to attend.133 After escaping the attention of guards at his brother’s house while suffering what were probably the effects of syphilis, Sullivan died in 1913, mown down by a New Haven & Hartford Railroad train, and then lying unknown in city morgues for thirteen days. The New York Times disclosed, “For a year he had been waging a fight against disease which threatened him mentally as well as physically….” Big Tim was hailed for his generosity to the poor, with the New York Times writing on his death: “One question that was asked hundreds of times yesterday was as to the probability of the continuance of the Bowery charities of ‘Big Tim’ particularly the big Christmas dinners and the free distribution of shoes.”134 If Sullivan and his ilk elsewhere protected gambling, prizefighting was another matter. This was no “idle pastime” like baseball, and its bloody brutality ensured it could never

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The King of the Bowery, “Big” Tim Sullivan (right), with Larry Mulligan-Hicks, 1913. The woman’s name is not known (Library of Congress).

rely on urban politicians’ turning a blind eye when fighters were dropping dead all over the place. Despite politicians’ having considerable local power, the ring was one area of sports where local government couldn’t deflect outside interference. July 1886 proved a turning point that saw the New York City government — previously slack when combating boxing — call off the Sullivan-Mitchell fight at the Polo Grounds and the Jake Kilrain-John Ashton fight at the Metropolitan Baseball Park days later. Mayor William R. Grace, New York’s first-ever Irish Catholic mayor, overruled sympathetic judges who had previously given consent for these “sparring contests” that bore a sanitized semblance to the bloodsplattered prizefight. He even told the press that wrestling, baseball, and billiard matches “will soon be crushed out of sight.” It’s doubtful he was serious, but the New York Times applauded Grace, predicting that the mayor “will receive the thanks of all good citizens for his prohibition of the prize fight…. The mayors of Sodom and Long Island City would undoubtedly have held the fight to be an improving form of entertainment.”135 “McKane’s Sodom-by-the-sea” was Coney Island, located in Gravesend, an independent town until subsumed by Brooklyn in 1893. The local political chief, Antrim-born John Y. McKane, had been notoriously elected by six thousand ballots in a town of eight thousand men, women (who still had no vote) and children.136 He had made himself a pile buying up cheap agricultural land and then making it “infamous as an area of low-life amusements” and leasing to unscrupulous businessmen for kickbacks.137 McKane certainly had a keen interest in sports, allowing the Dwyer brothers’ racetrack to operate with protection from any anti-gambling laws.138 Also on his patch was the Coney Island Athletic Club, one of the top boxing venues in the metropolitan area, established in 1892. McKane operated as the owner, ensuring that no bout went ahead unless he got a cut of any profits. Only people

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power proved an obstacle, preventing the CIAC from hosting the Jim Corbett versus Charlie Mitchell bout in 1893 when the sport was still illegal.139 McKane was eventually sentenced to six years of hard labor at Sing Sing in 1894, convicted of eleven felony counts, including assault and violation of election laws.140 Two months into his stretch, Gravesend was swallowed up by Brooklyn, and into the political vacuum stepped Hugh McLaughlin. A man who reputedly shunned ostentatious displays of wealth associated with the track,141 he took over the protection of a newly constituted CIAC.142 In June 1882, his protégé Jim Dunne had been arrested along with other local politicians as “aiders and abettors” of a scrap between two local pugs, Leonard Tracy and Alexander Brown, at Billy Thom’s hotel along the Coney Island Road.143 The Brooklyn Daily Eagle complained: “In order to thoroughly appreciate the character of this disgraceful performance, it ought to be borne in mind that one of the backers, Mr. [Daniel] O’Connell, is an Alderman, representing a large ward in the Common Council; another, already notorious for deeds of violence, James Dunne, has served the public in the same capacity.”144 Warrants were issued by the end of the month for both politicians’ arrest, and Dunne was brought to trial almost a year later, pleading guilty.145 The rise of the boxing club coincided with the sport’s improving reputation across the Atlantic. The Marquis of Queensberry rules in the late sixties changed the sport, making it appear less brutish, thus opening up boxing as a commercially viable entertainment. When boxing was finally legalized in Louisiana in 1890, New Orleans’ own colorful Irish politician, John Fitzpatrick, was able to operate as a boxing referee legally. New Orleans was already known as a “fight-happy town” and the ring capital of the world from the end of the Civil War to the nineties, due to the lack of any state legislation against the ring until 1882.146 Fitzpatrick had already refereed many top mills clandestinely fought in the South, including the Boston Strong Boy’s fights against Paddy Ryan at Mississippi City in 1882, and Jake Kilrain in Richburg, Mississippi, in July 1889. Recently elected mayor, Fitzpatrick was the special guest among a host of the city’s political class in September 1892, as ten thousand fans packed into the New Orleans Olympic Club for “The Carnival of Champions” to witness James Corbett take John L. Sullivan’s world heavyweight crown.147 Philadelphia had its own version of Fitzpatrick in William McMullen. According to his biographer Harry C. Silcox, McMullen was a youth who quickly possessed a reputation as “a street fighter, a scoundrel, and lawless thug.” He ran with a local fire company, and allegedly, according to the Sporting Life, once drove a rival into the Delaware. He was implicated in the shooting of the Protestant “martyr” George Shiffler, during the May 1844 “Bible Riots” of church-burning and general sectarian outrages in the heavily Irish Kensington district of the City of so-called Brotherly Love. He’d eventually become alderman and Fourth Ward boss from 1856 until he died in 1901.148 McMullen was also known among other sporting circles in Philly including billiards, but as a keen follower of the sweet science, and as promoter, stakeholder and referee, he made the arrangements for the Mace-O’Baldwin fight of 1872, having been favored as the man in the middle in Mace’s abandoned fight with Joe Coburn the previous year.149 Back in New York, Big Tim, a state senator since 1894, was working hard in Albany to legalize boxing. He succeeded in March 1896 through the passage of the Republican George S. Horton’s law, and within two years he had reputedly monopolized New York’s boxing. The Chicago Tribune hinted he’d dictate which fights would go ahead there: “Few

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persons realize the enormous profits put into the pockets of owners of boxing clubs, who are in most cases politicians.”150 Reform arrived in 1900, when the Horton Act was repealed and replaced by the Lewis Law, which outlawed all fights except those restricted to properly constituted athletic clubs in which money wasn’t offered as prizes and admission wasn’t charged.151 Sporting men were said to be “dazed,” having taken for granted that Big Tim’s “influence would defeat it.” Sullivan remained upbeat: “It’s pretty tough, because we have leases that run over until next year, but I suppose we shall have to stand it.” Others in the fight business, like Tom O’Rourke, were less despondent. He told the Chicago Tribune: “I can’t say what the fighters will do after September 1. I know a lot of bums who have been shining around as pugilists will have to go to work. It may prove a good thing after all. We can hold four-round bouts under police permits.”152 Tim Sullivan mourned the repeal of the Horton Act by organizing the most grandiose “outing” ever laid on by New York’s Democratic machine. Six thousand friends and constituents of the senator attended the bash on Long Island, which included among the amusements prizefights and “every variety of gambling imaginable.” Sullivan was escorted around by the Dundalk-born “Sailor” Tom Sharkey and other pugs like Kid McCoy, Joe Bernstein and “Terrible” Terry McGovern. Sharkey, arguably the greatest Irish fighter not to have held a title, having fought Jim Corbett, Jo Choynski and James J. Jeffries, “gave his admirers the liveliest time as he ran amuck through the long line of gambling tables and in other ways let his friends know he was present.” Worse for drink, Sharkey further entertained friends by banging his fists on the gambling tables and sending money flying. The patrons in attendance were of course taking “this in good part as they had great respect for Sharkey.” He finished the proceedings by throwing champagne glasses at other celebrities, while a policeman nonchalantly told concerned onlookers: “That’s all right. I’ll see Tim and he’ll fix things.” On the return to Manhattan, the event was closed with a procession through the Bowery.153 Much of the cost for this outing was financed by saloon keepers, who needed to keep on the good side of Sullivan to keep their businesses in business.154 Still, there was good reason for O’Rourke’s optimism. He was a business partner of Sullivan with a similar shady reputation for mixing sports, politics, and brothels. Stephen Fox depicts him as at “various times … accused of fixing fights, making illegal side bets, and bribing politicians to keep boxing legal in the state.”155 But even O’Rourke had his limits of how far his political patronage could get him, which came to a crashing conclusion in March 1906 when he was declared bankrupt.156 His “sporting resort,” the Delavan, started to attract the concerted attention of the “Tenderloin Police” in the spring of 1905, when O’Rourke threw out an unruly patron called Inspector McLaughlin, who took revenge by making constant raids.157 These initially ruined the sale of the hotel. Jim Corbett looked like a prospective buyer as the price fell, while O’Rourke remained sanguine, telling the New York Tribune he was leaving to concentrate on producing a pneumatic drill that he had invented which “will revolutionize the business.”158 With business slumping due to the constant raids, he was reported to have sold the concern at the end of the year to a Mr. J. Boag.159 Sullivan continued to control “private bouts” through a “boxing trust,” with the more meaty fights effectively forced out to western booster towns or San Francisco, such as the Jeffries-Johnson fight of July 1910, to which Sullivan was the stakeholder. California state law still permitted “licensed” sparring matches up to twenty rounds, in which the bribing of local Democratic machine politicians, especially “Boss” Abe Ruef, was just one part of the endemic corruption under San Francisco’s mayoralty of the Irish-German politician

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Eugene Schmitz.160 In New York, a series of judicial decisions, including one by James T. Tighe, also permitted fights to continue locally.161 In the following twenty years after the Horton Act was repealed, boxing was legalized and criminalized on two more occasions. In 1920 the son of a former Irish-born New York politician, a “smart talking former Tin Pan Alley songwriter,” and minority leader of the New York State Senate, Jimmy Walker, successfully secured his “Walker Act.”162 He ran up against an obstructive Al Smith, who was both worried that support for boxing would wreck his chances of going to the White House and resentful of the close relationship between Tammany Hall and the sport. He told Walker he’d only sign the bill if he managed to enlist one hundred Protestant ministers to contact him indicating their support. Walker collared a colleague, Anthony Biddle, to enlist his Bible society, whom he had given substantial financial help. Six hundred telegrams and letters were dispatched to Smith’s office.163 If prizefighting and boxing seemed at odds with local government, baseball was a perfect partner. American cities proved ideal markets for a commercialization of what was “the national game,” and offered avenues for politicians to get rich. For as Steven Riess has observed, while baseball embraced all “the finest American beliefs, traditions and values,” the men who owned or controlled these franchises “symbolized all that progressives and small-town Americans believed was wrong with American society.”164 Local government became closely entwined with baseball franchises, which were often run by new-wealth businessmen, often of Irish origin, and often politically connected themselves, like Henry Killilea or James E. Gaffney. By their nature, baseball teams were rarely organic clubs, but contrived franchises as part of a monopoly within a city that politicians, as Allen Guttman explains, were quick to see “as a profitable business” for gaining votes: Franchises made money. They offered employment to groundskeepers, ticket-sellers and refreshment vendors, and there was no reason why these jobs should not have gone to loyal voters. Since economically viable franchises required land for a ballpark, and some means of mass transit to bring the fans to the game, there were bids to be accepted, deals to be cut, and opportunities for “honest graft.”165

One example of businessmen active in both politics and sports is the case of construction magnates Edward J. and Stephen W. McKeever, sons of Irish immigrants William and Bridget, who had both got rich through gas plumbing, sewage works and supplying all the ballast of the New York Central Railroad.166 Stephen was born in October 1853 and ran away as a nine-year-old to join the Union army as a drummer boy at the outbreak of the Civil War. He returned to work as a tow-boy on the Brooklyn Heights streetcar line at ten, helping horses pull cars up the hill from the Fulton Street Ferry. At thirteen he began an apprentice as a plumber.167 His younger brother Edward was born in March 1859 and attended the St. James Parochial School in Brooklyn until fourteen, when he went to work at a brass goods company.168 Neither could be said to be well educated, but they proved what would be noted by thousands of great businessmen: that it took more than an MBA to be successful. Edward had built up the Hudson River Broken Stone Company with his partner, Michael J. Daly, before going into partnership with Stephen, who had had a contracting business since he was eighteen.169 Steve then served on the Brooklyn Board of Aldermen and had been nominated for the State Senate by the Democratic Party, but had turned down the offer.170 The brothers’ entry into politics, according to Glenn Stout, showed the need for political connections among any ambitious construction company. Early in their careers, despite offering the best bids for huge construction projects like the Brooklyn

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Bridge, the McKeevers knew they couldn’t operate unless one or both became politically active.171 In sporting terms, their first interest was in horse trotting, but in 1912 they bought a fifty percent share in the Brooklyn Dodgers from Charles Ebbets, a political chum of Stephen in the former Brooklyn Democratic machine, and financed the ballpark that was named after Ebbets.172 The brothers were, however, true fans, even if the money they poured into the franchise was clearly an investment. After watching games sipping milk, Steve McKeever would, along with Charlie Ebbets, hold court with fans from their own private benches underneath the lower tier of the main stand, and argue with them after a defeat, while Ed preferred to sit in silence or quietly slip off home.173 A similar ascent surrounded John J. “Sonny” Mahon, “the scion of [Baltimore’s] Democratic machine” and last owner of the Baltimore Orioles, who like the McKeevers was a building contractor.174 A keen boxer in his younger days, Mahon had risen through Baltimore’s city government, from precinct runner and sergeant-at-arms in the council, to become the youngest councilman the Charm City had known.175 With Sidney S. Frank’s resignation in February 1902, Mahon was elected club president, sharing control with his “co-partner” and son-in-law, Orioles legend Joe Kelley.176 Rumors soon surfaced that the AL was leaving the city, an accusation that Ban Johnson firmly rejected: “As president of the American League I control the lease of [the Orioles]…. That control makes me safe in the assertion that an American League team will be maintained in Baltimore…. If anybody should want to sell out all the players of the Baltimore team, the American League would immediately organize another club and put it in operation there.”177 Despite this, Mahon, Kelley and McGraw conspired to mutilate the club into a shell to be packed off to New York. By mid– July 1902 the politician had bought McGraw’s slice, and sold 201 out of 400 shares to Giants owner Andrew Freedman for fifty thousand bucks. Immediately the Irish-American quartet of Joe McGinnity, Dan McGann, Roger Bresnahan and Jack Cronin “packed their grips” and left on the evening train to the Big Apple, while Kelley was off to manage the Cincinnati Reds. The general perception was that the club would be disbanded but rise again with new finance. It became instead what is today the New York Yankees.178 Charles Murphy, the press officer of the Chicago Cubs, also secured the purchase of his team in 1905 with a hundred-grand loan from his former publisher in Cincinnati, Charles P. Taft, elder brother of future President William H. Taft, who became a minority owner of the club. His interest was short-lived: with Murphy’s investment an immediate success and the franchise making $165,000 profit in the pennant-winning 1906 season, he was able to repay the loan by the end of the year.179 During the 1908 World Series, Murphy was suspected of collaborating with scalpers, reflecting the strong ties between sports, urban politics and organized crime at the time. One scalper pocketed 630 tickets, leaving few tickets for the home games for the general public.180 Such was the scandal that even the Republican mayor, Fred Busse, was left without a ticket and threatened to halt the series with an assortment of building code violations at West Side Park if he wasn’t accommodated. Naturally Murphy relented, but not before he denied involvement in any underhanded dealings: “It may have been a matter of neglect that the regular force of ticket sellers was not augmented for the sale of tickets for the World’s Series, but it was impossible to secure at short notice competent and responsible men to handle tickets and money.”181 In other cities baseball served as a method of “boosterism” by promoting civic unity. In the fast-growing nineteenth-century American city, a top baseball team or the staging

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of a major title fight enhanced the conurbation’s status.182 Jonas and Wilson point out that boosterism had a long tradition in the “civic culture of contemporary capitalism” of America, which included attempts at wooing jobs and factories183: “Wannabe cities have an edgy insecurity about their role and position in the world that gives tremendous power and energy to their cultural boosterism. The desperate scramble for big-name architects, art galleries, and cultural events is a fascinating part of the ‘place wars’ in the United States amongst cities aiming for the top of the urban hierarchy.”184 The franchise system also guaranteed that baseball teams were run on purely civic, rather than ethnic, class or neighborhood lines, uniting everyone in the city. Despite their numbers in urban machine politics, the Irish were too shrewd to use sports in exclusively ethnic terms and allow a baseball club to be associated solely with one ethnic group. T.J. English notes, in his work on the Irish in corrupt politics and crime, that by having the advantage of being English speakers, they were “designated as political leaders by generations of non-naturalized citizens.” In return his fellow immigrant became part of the Irish machine politician’s constituency, and was ignored at his peril.185 Yet only politicians had their hands on enough money and power to promote a team, and they increasingly obtained the political craftiness to see the advantage of being connected with the kudos of their city’s winning club. For instance, the Brooklyn Atlantics, a team with reported Irish connections, were backed by the local Irish Democratic machine, allowing the Brooklyn Eagle to claim: “If we are ahead of the big city in nothing else, we can beat her in baseball.”186 Despite being the birthplace of the modern game, New York was without a quality baseball team for three seasons between the demise of the Mutuals in 1876 and the founding of the Metropolitans of the AA. In 1883, the National League entered the Big Apple with the Gothams, becoming a victim to increasing Tammany interference, culminating with its takeover by a loyal Crokerite, Andrew Freedman. Allowing a Jew to run their baseball team proved again that Tammany was far from finding it expedient to keep things among the Irish. The city was expanding, with growing suburbs on Long Island, Staten Island and the Bronx, and baseball was a multiplying entertainment business, requiring low-skilled labor and “concessions rights” to sell drinks, food and later the tacky souvenirs. If only the market could accommodate two or three teams, there were two or three times the opportunities to make money. When, in 1898, Brooklyn’s citizens narrowly voted for consolidation with its larger neighbor across the East River, New York gained its second baseball club — the Brooklyn Superbas — by default. It would be inaccurate to paint every Irish urban politician as a cynical criminal. Many with hands on the city’s cash were genuine followers of sports, and either sought, bought or invested heavily in the franchise as a bona fide fan with civic interests at heart. Their influence was, however, a major factor in gaining the necessary finances from outside interests. While it would’ve been unthinkable that “graft” was absent, the motives were more than an attempt to line their pockets.187 One early example of this kind of benevolent politician with a passion for baseball was John Joseph O’Neill, who became a U.S. Congressman for St. Louis. In 1881 he invested in Chris Von der Ahe’s Brown Stockings proposal to enter the upcoming American Association, and two years later he replaced John Peckington as its vice-president.188 Arguably no politician had a more sincere love of baseball than Boston’s John Francis “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, the maternal grandfather of President John F. Kennedy; the game was to him and his political supporters “nearly as important as being Irish-Catholic or a

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John Francis “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, mayor of Boston (center, wearing top hat), shakes hands with the Braves’ Hank Gowdy during the 1914 World Series. There was no bigger baseball fan amongst the political class (Library of Congress).

Democrat.”189 Fitzgerald certainly used baseball as patronage and as a member of the Royal Rooters he could count on a loyal voting corps among Boston’s baseball fraternity. 190 “Every one of the 300 tickets [was] secured by Mayor Fitzgerald after a hard fight….” commented the Boston Journal on the eve of the Rooters’ 1912 World Series trip to the Polo Grounds.191 But he saw baseball as an avenue to promote Boston regardless of which club was successful. Ted Kennedy remembers his grandfather as “an equal opportunity fan of Boston baseball,” who supported both the Braves and the Red Sox.192 Fitzgerald started his political career as an apprentice for his local ward “boss,” Matthew Keaney, when his medical education was curtailed following his father’s death.193 It ended in disgrace when it became known that he shared the transgressions of many a politician with regards to corruption and the fairer sex. As English writes, “Honey Fitz” was the “quintessential Irish pol, who sang ‘Sweet Adeline’ at campaign stops and seemed invincible until he was forced to relinquish his hold on the mayoralty because of a sex scandal.”194 Like his son-in-law and grandson, his inability to keep his trousers buttoned was part of his downfall. In January 1915 the “Toodles Scandal” exploded when his relationship with “a blonde, fullbosomed woman in the overblown style of the period” called Elizabeth “Toodles” Ryan was exposed.195 He told a meeting of the Roslindale Knights of Columbus: “I never kissed ‘Toodles,’ nor do I remember ever seeing any more than a picture of the Ryan woman.”196 He also possessed a penchant for voter fraud. When this was found out, his 1918 election to

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Congress was overturned in favor of another Irish-American politician, Peter F. Tague. Once more “Honey” pleaded innocence, claiming Tague’s “injecting the Irish issue to stir up the prejudice of the many small and bigoted natures in the House was unworthy of a man of Irish blood.”197 In 1904, Mike Sullivan became the front man for a syndicate that just barely failed to buy Red Sox.198 But this unsuccessful attempt to place a Boston baseball franchise into the hands of the Irish community left Fitzgerald as the next most feasible singular head to get the finances needed to buy the club from its absent Irish-American owner Henry J. Killilea, and an opportunity to enhance his profile before the following year’s mayoral elections.199At the beginning of March, Fitzgerald heard the club was up for sale and contacted Killilea, visiting the Boston owner in Ban Johnson’s Chicago office.200 Killilea told Fitzgerald, in an opening gambit, he wanted $150,000. Fitzgerald didn’t even try to haggle, merely replying: “Yes.”201 Johnson was also agreeable, keen to see absentee “foreign” owners like Killilea replaced with locals. A week later the three men met in New York and, according to Tim Murnane, “practically closed the deal.”202 However, news reached one of “Honey’s” political enemies, William McNary, who feared that the purchase would make Fitzgerald a sure bet to win the mayor’s job. With a combination of whispers and threats, McNary convinced Johnson it wasn’t a good idea and the AL president vetoed the sale.203 On March 26 Tim Murnane disclosed in the Boston Daily Globe that Johnson had telegraphed Honey with the message: “I will not ratify the sale of the Boston club.”204 The following day he told the Globe that Killilea had no intention of giving up ownership but Fitz pressurized him into selling the club: “Congressman Fitzgerald was out here to see Mr. Killilea some time ago, and he kept after him to sell the Boston club until a proposition was made by Killilea.” Meanwhile, Fitzgerald wouldn’t go into the details of his own efforts to buy the club, but was keen to underline that the club was owned by an outsider: I believe that an enterprise in Boston that is so popular, should be controlled by Boston people. Boston has been rather slow, I think, in allowing outsiders to step in and reap harvests from enterprises of all kinds in this locality, and it is about time to stop it…. It reflects severely on this city, the best baseball center in the world, that outside brains and capital must be called in to run its most popular enterprise. New York interests control our steam and street railways, and other quasi-public utilities. The time will soon come when we shall apply for a guardian to take us in charge.205

He threatened a “suit.”206 The Boston American’s attorney, Joseph C. Pelletier, released a statement claiming: “Mr. Johnson rejected the proposition for business reasons…. That politics have played any part whatsoever in the matter are so absurd that they should not be considered even long enough to deny them.”207 One of the accusations hinted at was that Johnson — a Presbyterian — was anti–Irish-Catholic, something that does not stand up to scrutiny with Irish-Catholic owners in the American League such as Killilea or Mahon.208 “Honey” would continue to publicly slam foreign interference in Boston baseball. When Robert McRoy, the Boston secretary who had originated in Chicago, messed up the Royal Rooters’ tickets for the penultimate game of the 1912 World Series, Fitzgerald launched a tirade against these outsiders: “[Secretary] McRoy of Chicago should be retired from all connection with the Boston Baseball Club, and a Boston man who understands conditions here given the place.”209 The Boston NL team was also tainted by these “outsiders” when, in 1912, Tammany’s James E. Gaffney, a building contractor with political friends in Tammany who headed the company that excavated both Penn and Grand Central stations that made him a multi-

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millionaire, bought the club. As a bitter rival of Frank Farrell, he was motivated to buy more out of a desire to run a winning team before the New York gambling magnate did.210 He joined up with former baseball player and president of the Players League, John Montgomery Ward, to pick up the Rustlers from the corpse of its previous owner, William Hepburn Russell.211 The new era entailed a new nickname for the former Beaneaters, with the “Braves” granted in clear honor of Tammany, something that didn’t seem to irk Beantown’s political establishment too greatly.212 Gaffney bought out Ward’s stock that summer, bringing in George Stallings as manager for the following season, and within two years the Braves were World Series winners. Although Fitzgerald and the other Royal Rooters had turned their backs on the Beaneaters to support the Red Sox, he led two hundred Rooters, themselves backers of the World Series winners just two years previously, to support the Braves against the Athletics in Philadelphia and Boston.213 For the second game, they boarded trains for the City of Brotherly Love, then paraded through central Philly before the game; after the match, Fitzgerald led a victorious brass band around Shibe Park.214 They did the same for the two final games of the whitewash series at Boston, with the Boston Globe reporting the march into the grounds: “As usual, the Royal Rooters, headed by Ex-Mayor Fitzgerald, … Congressman James A. Gallivan and others followed the band into the grounds while the Athletics were having their final practice…. Cheers were given for the home team and the same unprejudiced cheers were given for the ex-World’s Champions.” After the game, Fitz led Rooters onto the field behind the band, as Mayor Curley stood cheering on the roof of the Braves’ dugout. They then moved onto the streets where Fitzgerald, “at the behest of Mr. Keenan,” went back to Fenway Park to gather some of the Braves players, returning with Hank Gowdy and Johnny Evers, who marched at the front of the procession with Gallivan, Fitzgerald and Keenan, to its conclusion at the Copley Square Hotel, where Honey Fitz called for cheers “for about everybody,” including the beaten opponents.215 One could make the accusation that this was cynical vote garnering, and indeed this was partly true. But Fitzgerald and his Red Sox cronies saw the Braves’ World Series campaign to make Boston the top sporting city in America as much more important than suffering the one-upmanship and bragging rights any victory over the Athletics would entail. Once more civic pride was above everything else, and any intra-urban animosities such as ethnicity, class and politics were left behind in the optimism of a Boston on the rise.216 Fitzgerald, for all his faults, knew this, and valued the commodity of baseball as an institution that united his city. Such was the respect that the baseball fraternity had for Fitzgerald that Ted Kennedy opined that the Braves wouldn’t have moved to Milwaukee had “Honey Fitz” still been alive in 1952.217 The I-AAC and IACB were also connected to both local Democratic machines and to Old World politics. As Paul Darby writes: “The Irish Athletic Club of Boston was clearly composed of Irish nationalists who sought to bolster support for the broader struggle for Irish emancipation by encouraging and promoting a vibrant Gaelic culture in America.”218 As in Ireland, clubs would take sides in the Parnell crisis of 1890, and some, such as the Chicago’s Innisfails, still provided “every means in their power, financially and otherwise, to sustain Mr. Parnell in the gallant fight in which he is at present engaged.”219 Elsewhere, athletic clubs provided other financial aid, as when the newly founded Irish-American Athletic Union of Boston pledged aid for “evicted league tenants of Ireland.”220 When Irish politics moved from the parliamentary efforts of Parnell into the open

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revolt of Padraig Pearse et al., the I-AAC down in New York was on hand to help with dollars. The 1914 “Field Day” at Celtic Park commemorated the nonacentennial of the Battle of Clontarf by collecting proceeds for Pearse’s St. Enda’s College in Dublin, with the promise that the future GPO martyr “will deliver an address” sometime at the games.221 Two years later the proceeds from a triple-header Gaelic football event held by the I-AAC in July 1916 were handed to the Irish Relief Fund, while a “flag of the Irish Republic which was carried in the recent Irish rebellion in Dublin attracted much attention at the park.”222 More politically neutral “Irish Relief Fund” benefits stretched back to 1880, when Madison Square Garden hosted an athletic tournament organized by the New York Herald and attended by members from the I-AAC to the Knickerbocker AC, the Union Boat Club and the Scottish-American AC.223 One man who combined the Old World politics with the New was Daniel Florence Cohalan. The eldest of five sons of County Cork immigrants, he became a lawyer, a jurist, a New York State Supreme Court judge, and the sort of Clan member who “walked a tightrope between respectable and revolutionary politics.”224 A Gaelic speaker and regular visitor to Ireland, he shared a close friendship with Devoy, becoming a key figure in bankrolling the Easter Rising and sending Roger Casement to visit Berlin while clashing with Woodrow Wilson over his antipathy to Irish independence. In 1921 the British accused Cohalan of conspiring with the Germans to gain Irish independence after the States had entered the fray.225 In sporting terms he had played for the college baseball nine when he studied law at Manhattan College, and later served on the GNYIAA’s board of directors and as the “power” on the club’s finance committee.226 He also part owned the Gaelic American, an important promoter and conveyor of news from Celtic Park, as well as being the mouthpiece of Clan na Gael. Gaelic sports certainly couldn’t escape the attention of political intervention. Visiting politicians from Ireland like the four-man IPP delegation of John Dillon, Thomas Patrick Gill, William O’Brien and Timothy Daniel Sullivan, who attended the I-AAC and the Sarsfield Club game at the Polo Grounds on Thanksgiving Day 1890, would make an effort to attend games. The Evening World had claimed that O’Brien and Sullivan were “said to be keen old football-players, and to have expressed a desire to see a game played under the rules of the [GAA]….”227 And it wasn’t just Irish politicians that saw the appeal of a visit to a large gathering of the Irish. On his 1906 campaign trail to become governor of New York, William Randolph Hearst was given a “riproarious” reception at Celtic Park by fifteen thousand spectators who had gathered to watch a game between Cork and Tipperary. The Sun describes the pandemonium when the crowd noted his presence: The instant he appeared the jerseyed football players dropped the game and made a rush for him. The whole crowd lost interest … and surged around him, sweeping the police off their feet and dragging the candidate from grand stand to field and back again…. Hundreds of husky Irishmen, yelling at the top of their voices, broke through the thin police hedge around Hearst, knocked the cops to one side and amused themselves by slapping the candidate on the back, good hard slaps, that made Mr. Hearst wince a bit….228

Also, in order to circumvent the amateur restrictions, local political “machines” were also instrumental in getting the sort of “work” for sportsmen that would later be utilized by Eastern European governments during the Cold War. While all political machines were involved in the development of professional sporting enterprises, New York found itself with a successful Irish-American Athletic Club on its patch, while most Irish “shamateur” athletes resided there. Most of these “patronage jobs” were therefore granted by Tammany

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Hall; being “powerful tools in the recruitment and retention of talented athletes,” with posts as sanitation workers, firemen, and policemen granted to gifted athletes, a disproportionate number of them ended up entangled within the all too familiar orbit of Tammany.229 The favorite place of work was the NYPD, which would go on to employ some of the most important names in Irish-American sports. However, the close relationship between police officers and Irish athletics was already there to see at the first I-AAC’s picnic in June 1879, when cops were prevalent among participants.230 The great wrestler and future head of the New York State Athletic Commission, William Muldoon, was one such athlete who sought a job within the NYPD for purely sporting reasons. Born in Belfast, Allegany County, New York, the son of Irish immigrant farmers from Galway,231 the “Irish Terror” had been a veteran of the Civil War, boxing as his unit’s representative at army meets. He tried his hand as a bare-knuckle fighter, but eventually concentrated on wrestling instead due to the greater prize money on offer out of Harry Hill’s “nefarious saloon” on New York’s Houston Street.232 In 1871, Muldoon signed up to fight in the French Foreign Legion during the Franco-Prussian War. He turned up too late, but he did make acquaintance with James Gordon Bennett Jr., the French-educated publishing heir and sporting aficionado, who, having seen Muldoon wrestle, convinced him to take part in the famed Greco-Roman wrestling of Europe. Back in the U.S., aided by Bennett and John Morrissey, he became a policeman, enabling him to work while training to wrestle. He was finally crowned world champion in Greco-Roman wrestling in 1880, beating the “Alsatian” Thiebaud Bauer at Madison Square Garden, where his victory caused an “excitement [that] was simply uproarious, [as] friends carried him on their shoulders to his dressing-room amid wild applause.”233 Eventually the NYPD and Tammany Hall saw no benefit in bankrolling him to train, and by 1885 Muldoon had resigned. For the next decade sportsmen employed by the department were policemen first and athletes afterwards. Bill Devery, co-founder of the Highlanders, worked or “grafted” his way up to be the head of the NYPD, despite being tried twice on corruption and extortion charges. His most notable contribution to sports was his reluctance to clamp down on prizefighting, prompting the New York Times to complain about his attendance at the Fitzsimmons-Jeffries fight at Coney Island in 1899. He defended himself, claiming he came to see that “the letter and spirit of the law relative to such contests are obeyed.” The Times accused him of not being “a man of his word … a bad officer, and perfectly untrustworthy,” who had disgraced himself and his uniform with his neglect to stop the fight: “Yet who knows how far we can go in blaming Devery? … Can we doubt that he had his orders from the superior authority and that he obeyed them faithfully in permitting the law to be broken?”234 He was finally removed from his post in 1901.235 Meanwhile, James Gaffney, from the East Side Gashouse District where “kids grew up to be burglars, cops or firemen,” also chose the nightstick before going into politics. He eventually sold the Braves to a syndicate of Boston bankers in January 1916, with one source claiming he made over $300,000 profit.236 He left the team with Braves Field, then the largest baseball stadium in the world, and a lease paying him $45,000 per annum.237 Ostensibly he got out to snap up the team he truly loved: the Giants.238 But as Kaese argues, more than likely it was just to make a profit.239 Gaffney probably also suspected loss-making seasons ahead with the war in Europe, since the war with Spain had dented gate receipts. And despite Gaffney’s edifice, the Braves were to continue being out-supported by the Red Sox. Fans needed to be more than mere customers to keep coming back, and Braves Field was seen as too big and uncomfortable, with the wind blowing in from the River Charles freezing

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fans and covering them with locomotive soot.240 Fans also needed to be fanatical about their team, to identify with it, sometimes for it to be the most important thing, even the only thing of importance, in their lives. Sports entailed pleasure, but it also needed pain, and it’s arguable which is the more addictive. And in Boston, containing a population over onethird ethnically Irish by the time the Red Sox arrived, any venture into baseball needed to attract the city’s Irish population. For all the events on offer here — picnics or baseball — the one thing that made them so successful was the people who attended them. The “fans,” “cranks,” or “patrons,” as those who paid to watch sporting events were known, were key to the success of American sports, and it’s to the paying customer that we now turn.

7 The Crank — The Irish and Fan Culture The term “crank” comes from “crancaire: a boaster, a jester, a talker.”1

From the early days of American sports, promoters sought ways of capitalizing from paying spectators, who initially came to gamble, but now watched sport for its aesthetic sake. This new reason for attending sport was more than just an admiration of either the spectacle itself or the skill and grace of the athletes. Such high-brow neutrality was best left for the theater, after all. Instead this was a battle where spectators were required to take sides. Fans would eventually become the biggest source of income of any sporting business by the dawn of the twentieth century. No longer could people watch quality sports for free, and they would never do so again until the era of television. And once inside the arena, the spectator became a customer, who could be relieved of further cash through the sale of drinks, food and merchandise. The package of emotions that sports threw out included loyalty, love and passion for one’s favorite team or sportsman, which in turn ran parallel with envy, hate and bitterness at opponents. It was the County Clare–born baseball player, manager and sporting entrepreneur Ted Sullivan who coined a new word in 1883, derived from “fanatic,” to describe the passionate follower of any sporting enterprise, in every country across the globe: the fan.2 But the decision which side you were on often required three simple factors: race/ethnicity, locality, and success. The glory-hunting “success” aspect of sports came much later, as “brand” products were built up involving such teams as the University of Notre Dame, the Boston Celtics, and the New York Yankees, leading to a more heterogeneous following that extended far outside the immediate locale of the team, cultivated by radio and television.3 Yet as John E. Dreifort argues, there is one component missing in this: the American male — Irish or otherwise — still didn’t follow these sports primarily for the sake of it. He followed them because, in the case of baseball, he loved it, and he loved it because he played the game: “The fact is that for every club or professional player we can identify from the late 1860s to the early 1880s, there were almost certainly a hundred nonprofessional players on organized teams and a thousand on unorganized ad hoc ones….”4 Irish women also found sport enticing. Female fans have a limited history in early American sports, but even here they are present, although they were restrained from attending 131

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early prizefights. The record of the Lilly-McCoy fight in American Fistiana recalls a group of three or four Irishwomen, including McCoy’s mother, “clustered on the stoop” of a dockside pier, bidding McCoy “God speed in battle,” with one of the party commenting: “The women stick by us to the last!”5 Baseball clubs sought to attract women through “Ladies’ Day,” which allowed free admission either on a set day or when accompanied by a male, raising the reputation of the sport.6 “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” written by the Tin Pan Alley songwriter Jack Norworth in 1908 and one of the most recognizable tunes in films and television shows concerning baseball, recalls an Irish colleen called Katie Casey, who “was baseball mad / Had the fever and had it bad….” Norworth later changed the heroine to Nelly Kelly, who was “sure some fan / She would root just like any man….” James T. Farrell also recalls the enthusiasm that his Westmeath-born grandmother had for the game after visiting Comiskey Park: She never quite understood all the change that was going on…. Baseball was part of the excitement and strangeness of her new country. But once she saw a game, she wanted to see more, and as a little old woman, in her Sunday black dress, she went to ladies day games alone in the early 1920s…. Baseball to her was part of the new world of America, but she saw it with the wonder of an unlettered peasant woman who had run the fields of Ireland as a girl in bare feet.7

If one takes into account that Irish sportsmen in both prizefighting from the 1840s, and baseball come the 1880s and 1890s, was exceptionally high, and that most of the baseball franchises were in cities with high Irish minorities, it’s unsurprising that spectators were also hugely Irish. The New York Tribune observed that the spectators present at the McCoyLilly fight were homogenous in being “foreign”: “In the first place we rejoice to know that the originators and fosterers of pugilism in this country are almost entirely foreigners by birth. This species of ruffianism is not native here, nor is our atmosphere congenial to it.” 8 While gambling on a particular fighter was a sign of ethnic fraternity, so too was fan support, and the passionate cheers often escalated into threats and acts of violence. Crowd trouble was often motivated by a desire to manipulate the result, but it was also equally a means of identifying with one’s team or man. The first sporting event to bring this unwanted and dangerous aspect into the ring was the Burke-O’Rourke fight in 1836. When Burke punched O’Rourke’s second, the signal was given for what the New Orleans Picayune described as a “general scrimmage” as O’Rourke’s fellow countrymen joined him in his battle: “[They] handled Burke and his friends with fists and sticks, made of anything but dough and molasses…. Burke was followed by crowds of Irishmen with shilalahs [sic], draypins, whips, and what not. Had the president of a life insurance and trust company seen him at this particular juncture, no insurance could have been effected on his life.” Despite a brief, if foolhardy attempt to stand his ground and pick off individuals, Burke was persuaded to “run for your life” by his second, Jim Phelan, on a horse prepared in nearby woods by someone with foresight. Phelan was “cruelly beaten by the infuriated friends of O’Rourke,” with initial reports suggesting he was dead, while Burke hid in a local theater.9 O’Rourke’s followers continued on the rampage until the late hours. The New Orleans Picayune described the lawlessness in the city: During the afternoon, large numbers of malcontents, principally Irishmen, were congregated in the vicinity of the Union House and Armstrong’s…. Several serious and disgraceful fights took place, in some of which the rascally mob beat and otherwise maltreated a number of innocent and unoffending individuals…. Reports … of loss of lives, and of the results of the wild spirit of anarchy and confusion which existed this afternoon are so various, so contradictory, that we cannot comment on them. The whole affair was disgraceful in the extreme.

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Much of the trouble occurred around Camp and Tchoupitoulas Streets in the Second Municipality of the NOPD, and such was the fear for life that Mayor Denis Prieur eventually had no option but to call out the militias. O’Rourke was eventually thrown in jail, not for his involvement in a prizefight, but for triggering a drunken, impromptu scrap in a street.10 The Hyer-Sullivan fight, thirteen years later, was a far more important milestone in interethnic sporting animosity, because while Burke and O’Rourke hyped up their fights, bringing in false ethnic differences, this fight mirrored genuine political grievances and party affiliation within a volatile intercommunal enmity. The fight was to prove far more explosive than any previous Anglo-Irish prize mill. Previously such sporting conflicts involving the Irish mirrored the colonial/imperial master and serf. In the United States this developed into a new caste system of immigrant and native, bringing ethnicity and American sports together in a disturbing and previously unseen fashion. The fact that, according to the New York Herald, “Sullivan being an Irishman tends not a little to foment the bitterness and increase the excitement of the affair, especially among the low and vulgar of both those different people,” was significant. The paper feared that “unless the disgraceful and blackguard exhibition is prevented by some legal process … there is all probability of it resulting in a general row between the friends and backers of the respective combatants and perhaps in a scene of great bloodshed and murder.”11 Once the “Articles of Agreement” were signed, amid “a general bumper” of champagne, it appeared for “a moment, at least, two men in the ring would do the work for many in the streets.”12 Both trained extensively while their supporters’ enthusiasm threatened to descend New York into mob violence. In the end a farcical conclusion was assigned to what can be described as a farcical sporting occasion. Despite the interest of all “classes of society — the rich and the poor, the high and the low, the elegantly dressed denizens of Wall Street and Park Place — all shades of our heterogeneous society, were as desirous to know the result as the loafers of Chatham Square or the rowdies of the Bowery,”13 and the huge support that had traveled from New York, the local authority’s efforts meant that this monumental clash was witnessed in the end by just a couple of hundred people. The tens of thousands who had a stake in the outcome — mostly through gambling — had to wait outside newspaper offices as the result came in through the telegraph wires. Meanwhile New York’s citizens “drew a long breath of relief at having escaped the danger of a street slaughter which had so long been threatened.”14 Violence within the bachelor subculture itself was common, and it was inevitable that it extended into sports while “respectable” citizens were fearful of the arrival of the “fancy.” The Baltimore Sun described the typical pre-fight disorder that Baltimore faced when, in 1872, “sportsmen” flocked to the city to get boats to watch the English pug Gypsy Jem Mace take on Ned O’Baldwin in nearby rural Virginia: [P]eculiar looking strangers from different parts of the country began to arrive, and there were seen upon our streets yesterday many strange faces, some of them not over prepossessing, whilst the garb of the new arrivals was of every conceivable cut and style, from the flashy cashmere, indicating the well-to-do “sport,” to the rough and well worn shoddy of the hard-hitters. Yesterday every train from New York and Philadelphia brought additions … several saloons were liberally patronized throughout the day, and although inebriety prevailed there was no serious disorder, the chief annoyance being the blocking up of the sidewalks, and the indulgence in expressions not at all agreeable to ears polite.15

Often the toxic cocktail of alcohol, gambling, and ethnic pride would culminate in death. The fight between Pete Madden, possibly Irish or of Irish descent, and the Irishman

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Jim Carney, near Louisville, saw the former’s supporters, far outnumbering Carney’s, and upset at how the bout was going, deciding to “create a row outside … [then beat] an inoffensive Irishman nearly to death with clubs.” Knives and pistols were also “freely used,” according to the Baltimore Sun, and Carney himself was shot at and promptly called it a day. Another man, saloon-keeper James Welsh, was killed after arriving at Louisville.16 This trend continued; the Con Orem and Owney Geoghegan fight of May 1863 (see Chapter 5) ended with Geoghegan’s supporters surrounding Orem’s second, none other than Kit Burns, who promptly fled.17 At another fight involving Geoghegan a decade later, this time in his role of second, his opposite, Ned O’Baldwin, who was aiding the English fighter Harry Hicken, ended up beaten badly by Geoghegan and the mainly Irish crowd supporting Bryan Campbell.18 The referee’s decision on Mike McCoole’s fight with Tom Allen, in 1869, was only made when he was safely back in St. Louis because of the violent intentions of McCoole’s supporters, who pointed “[s]everal pistols … at his head”19: It is also quite a general belief that McCoole’s friends acted in the most shameful manner, displaying knives and pistols with a view of intimidating Allen, and in other ways showing that they intended to have everything their own way…. The conduct of the whole affair was so outrageous that it is denounced by many of the roughs themselves, who say that prize-fighting is sunk so low that it is a swindle and a cheat, and a mere struggle for spoils.20

Four years later near Scranton, Pennsylvania, Jack Conway’s supporters beat the referee almost to death when they felt he was about to make an unfavorable decision against Conway in his fight against Billy Costello.21 Jim Elliott’s fights tended to awaken the worst in crowd behavior. One of the filthiest fighters around, of whose bouts the New York Herald had claimed “the much vaunted rules of the London prize ring, or any other rules, appeared to have been thrown to the dogs,”22 he seemed to get away with his tricks because the referee was either bought or scared senseless to rule against him. His first attempt at this failed against Jim Dunne when the referee ruled he had hit Dunne on the floor and declared the fight in Dunne’s favor: the fighting among the fancy lasted thirty-five minutes.23 When Elliott took on Jim Dunne again, at Bulls Ferry in New Jersey, the New York Times described how the local sheriff approached the organizers as they were preparing the ring, and “urged the ‘roughs’ to advance a few rods on the road, which would place them within the precincts of another county.” Finding his friendly suggestion had fallen on deaf ears when he returned as the fight was about to start, he jumped into the ring, “announced his office, and stated that he hadn’t with him a sufficient force to compel them to observe the law, but demanded that they should not disturb the peace.” The crowd was incensed: “Cries of ‘Pitch him out,’ ‘Give him a clipper,’ &c., were instantly raised, and before the Sheriff could count ten, he was launched on all fours at a distance of fifty feet from the stakes. About half a dozen policemen in disguise were present, but they made no attempts at interference.”24 Following the 1867 clash with Bill Davis, Elliott’s followers fought with rivals on the boats back from the mill, with one spectator reportedly having his ear and nose bitten off.25 Elliot’s confrontation with Charley Gallagher in November 1868, attended by what the Chicago Tribune described as a crowd of four thousand onlookers, “including many thieves, who robbed friend and foe alike,” typified the criminal elements among his support. Elliott, battered black and blue, was waning badly around the fifteenth round. His only option left was to rush Gallagher and try and gouge his opponent’s eyes out. The Tribune noted that as the pair fell the cries of “Foul!” went up, but the referee waved for the scrap to continue as Elliott struggled to poke his fingers into Gallagher’s eyes: “From this time to the end of

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the twenty-first round, Elliott repeated the same game, and Gallagher claimed foul each time … but the referee announced that he could not see any foul and ordered the men to fight on. Gallagher refused … and while [he was] talking with the referee, Elliott, before time was called, struck him from behind….” As the fighters brawled, onlookers broke into the ring, and in the mayhem Elliott claimed the fight, with the referee gladly agreeing. The Chicago Tribune’s man on the ground could only look on in moral outrage: “The latter half of the rounds were characterized by the worst sort of brutality and the scene presented was most disgusting…. The whole affair is regarded as being as much of a swindle as it was brutal.”26 The reporting of the death of Andy Kelly by the New York Times also provides us with an insight into the world of the prize “fan.” The “Moonlight Excursionists,” as the sporting crowd called themselves, had no sooner landed at Palisades and assembled the ring, when some of its more lowbrow punters immediately set about indulging in what we would now term as “antisocial” behavior by “[surrounding] a house near by, cutting up and sawing the wood in the yard and otherwise ill-behaving.” The Times continued: They would have broken into the premises and helped themselves to the edibles had not John S. Austin forced them to desist by drawing his revolver and threatening to shoot the first man who attempted to…. Some of the rascals then went off and made a foray upon the neighboring orchards and farm-yards. They returned to the ring with their arms filled with plunder. This aroused the indignation of the more respectable persons present, who, assuming a threatening attitude compelled many of the rogues to restore their booty to the place from which they had taken it.27

The report clearly paints a “crowd” full of criminals, but also demonstrates a prizefight wasn’t an excuse for all and sundry to go around fleecing innocent smallholders, and a respectable element had enough firepower to keep some form of law and order. While the threat of violence was ever-present in determining results, it was also an excuse to postpone fights, as when Barney Aaron, the manager of English heavyweight Joe Goss, called off the bout with Paddy Ryan in May 1880 near Buffalo. Discovering that Ryan’s followers now outnumbered his man’s by around ten to one, he raised complaints about his safety and that of Goss, accusing Ryan of arriving with the Troy AOH and Emmet Guards.28 He told the New York Times that these followers were “a gang of murderers and cut-throats who were determined that [Ryan] should win at all hazards.” Goss, he argued, didn’t stand a chance: “The Ancient Hibernians were out in blooming force….” The New York Times was unimpressed, claiming Aaron had “always borne the reputation of a trickster and an unprincipled schemer.” The fight was canceled and Aaron deserted Goss, while Ryan had to intervene in telling his fans to leave Goss alone, escorting him out through an angry crowd.29 In the end the fight went ahead on June 1 near the town of Colliers, West Virginia, and is remembered “for its stubbornness and the terrible punishment received by both men,” with Ryan victorious.30 The poor reputation of the prize ring extended into the supposedly more respectable glove era. A fight between the Australian Irishman Frank Slavin and Jake Kilrain was contested at a “big frame building” on mud flats near Hoboken, owned by an organization called the “Granite Association,” who included Jere Dunn and “other such fellows … [whose] constituency included most of the men in and around New York whose movements the police deem it most necessary to watch.” The New York Times recalled that a “more disreputable gang was never seen around a prize ring.”

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Where those who saw the fight got the ten and twenty dollar bill that were required of all who entered, unless they had a “pull,” is a question that if answered might account for many stolen pocket-books and picked pockets. Fully 5,000 uglies hung around the outside unable to gain admission. It was reported that in several instances this outside gang assaulted and robbed men who came to see the contest. This conduct on their part, however, was in entire harmony with the plan on which the Granite Association ran the “show.”

Baseball umpire “Honest” John Kelly, who would become a boxing referee, was the timekeeper to Jere Dunn’s refereeing. The fight predictably ended in pandemonium as Slavin was given the decision by Dunn fourteen seconds after knocking out Kilrain. Of course the crowd of uglies present had to make their protest. Many of them jumped into the ring and declared the decision unfair and for a while it looked as though there was going to be trouble. The doors were opened however, and the police began pushing the crowd out. The evicted ones took possession of every beer saloon along the road to the ferries, and made Hoboken a place for decent people to avoid until a late hour in the morning.31

As the public’s interest in the participants grew, and the athletes’ own celebrity status expanded, sportsmen sought other sources of income. Vaudeville acts, usually poorly performed shows in which the only appeal of an otherwise dour evening was the appearance of our sporting hero, offered opportunities for athletes. As Dean Sullivan describes, for years “this trend accelerated in the 1900s as theatres generated more profits than ever….”32 The list of these vaudeville performances and their leading men is almost endless, with a specially crafted moment for the athlete to take center stage and even show off an odd punch or swing of the bat. A typical example was Paddy Ryan’s “own drama” Terry the Fox. The Sporting News described it being set within “peasant life” of Ireland, with Paddy, as a nineteenthcentury land-war Clark Kent, “always on hand at the right time to thrash the process servers when they attempt to evict tenants.” Naturally the play ends in a “Donnybrook.”33 One Chicago Tribune critic was scathing of this new development of the stage: “It has come to be the fashion of the American pugilist to step from the arena on to the dramatic stage … to be the sufferer from these histrionic ambitions. There are at present time no less than a dozen … exhibiting themselves through the medium of plays and in nearly every instance the exhibition is to their disadvantage.”34 Vaudeville captured a profit from the heat of recent athletic fame by staging pointless rubbish, such as Johnny Hayes’s return from the London Olympics, who appeared “in a short monologue dressed in the running suit he wore in the Marathon race.”35 When it came to samples of appalling theatrical displays, special mention should be granted to James J. Corbett (Gentleman Jack), John L. Sullivan (A Trip across the Atlantic, and Honest Ears and Willing Hands), Mike “King” Kelly (O’Dowd’s Neighbors), and “Turkey” Mike Donlin (Stealing Home). Added to this list were songs like the vaudeville comedian J.W. Kelly’s ode to King Kelly (no relation), “Slide, Kelly, Slide,” that is often cited as America’s first “pop” song. 36 There was also poetry, with by far the most famous of this genre, “Casey at the Bat.” Written by Ernest Thayer in 1883 and making its first appearance in the San Francisco Examiner of June 3, the poem became a subject of a song, vaudeville, and six films between 1899 and 1946,37 and included characters with names such as Cooney, Flynn, and of course Casey. “The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine that day: / The score stood four to two, with but one inning more to play, / And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same, / A sickly silence fell upon the patrons of the game.” The poem’s prominence at the height of the “emerald age” of Irish baseball was understandable, capturing a moment in time when the Irish

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baseball player seemed omnipresent. But its relevance was lost within twenty years. The Sporting Life noted in 1911: Time was when base ball was restricted to the O’s and Mc’s. Ernest Thayer, a Yankee, did write the imperishable epic, “Casey at the Bat,” but in it he employed three proper names. These were Casey, Flynn and Blake, Irish all. It was a Yankee game and a Yankee poem, but the Irish made both. Just what would have happened to base ball had the Finns taken it up before the Irish we can not very well tell; only it is sure that Olaf Hordorski would never have made rhyme, meter or reason in “Casey.”38

Perhaps nothing better illustrated the growing cult of celebrity of the sportsman than death. Two pugilistic funerals in the eighties highlighted a growth in the attraction to the passing of a fighter that encompassed a number of emotions. Jim Elliott and Owney Geoghegan, as former residents of New York, had huge homecoming funerals. Elliott’s murder in 1883 saw him buried in the biggest funeral the city had seen since the death of William Poole. But it took the intervention of Jack Stiles, “the keeper of a resort for pugilists in the Bowery” and one of Elliott’s few real friends, to pull it off. He “snapped at the opportunity of burying the veteran fighter with all the honors which sporting society could suggest and telegraphed ‘Parson’ Davis directing that gentleman forthwith to send the pugilist’s body to this City,” where his mother and sister still lived. Indeed, Elliott’s fellow fancy in Chicago were reluctant to bury him there, since he had died “as he lived”— penniless — with little for the vultures to fight over.39 But as Stiles moved in, they felt Elliott deserved a send-off. For nearly two hours an “almost constant stream of people” walked pass Elliott at the undertakers before he was dispatched to the Michigan Central depot for New York.40 Large crowds gathered along the way; at Pittsburgh, onlookers were given the opportunity to gawp at the pug as the coffin’s lid was removed. By the time his remains arrived in the Big Apple a large crowd had gathered; the New York Times, which ran a commentary of disdain until Elliott was interred at Calvary Cemetery, looked on aghast: “All the pugilists, great and small … the stars of Harry Hill’s Theatre, Theodore Allen’s Mabille, Owney Geoeghgan’s ‘Old House at Home,’ Billy McGlory’s Armory Hall, the ‘Burnt Rag,’ the ‘Flat-Iron’ and the ‘Black and Tan’ called to pay their respects, and it was noised about that Mr. Sullivan had telegraphed that he would come from Boston to pay homage to the memory of the dead fighter.” Funnily, it appeared that the crowd had mistakenly thought they were attending “an old-fashioned ‘wake’ with plenty of liquors, pipes and cigars as free as the mountain air….” They were to be disappointed. The Times caustically warned that Stiles “keeps an establishment where man and beast are compelled to pay for all that is served to them.”41 The funeral itself turned into little more than a thieves’ day out, as criminals from as far away as the outer reaches of New Jersey poured in. Stiles declared: “It will be a great funeral. Elliott’s friends are coming from all about the country, and four horses will draw the hearse.”42 Meanwhile, sports of what “may be called the higher class, if there can be such a thing,” gave the funeral a wide berth. These even included John L. Sullivan, Owney Geoghegan, and Joe Coburn, although Sullivan sent $100 to Elliott’s mother.43 One “gentleman, having an eye of the black and blue description” standing among the throng, sniffed: “That’s a ’orribly tame h’affair.”44 While pickpockets had a bumper payday, the only occurrence that came close to threatening the peace was when a man hung out of a window on the fourth story of the house adjoining Elliott’s sister’s pad, “as though from a pulpit, and spread his hands in a gesture of silence.” An attempt at a speech was greeted with undignified

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laughter before he disappeared, returning with a prayer book and reading from it, while gesticulating wildly. This caused howls of derision as the crowd thought he was a minister pouring scorn on the deceased. Then someone dropped a big chunk of snow from above him on his neck, which caused the crowd to laugh and almost knocked him out of his apartment.45 There were also rumors that some of the fancy were going to pay Harry Hill a visit after the funeral, with the intention of “laying ‘Harry’ out.” Hill assured people he was “not alarmed,” but still had two policemen keep watch on his dive.46 Refusing not to speak ill of the dead, the Times gave its own eulogy for poor Jim: “Elliott never murdered anybody, we believe, but he left no other kind of crime untried….” But what miffed the paper more was why these large crowds were honoring such a despicable character. This was the “startling evidence of the extent to which this City has become the home of habitual criminals, and of the proneness of the foreign-born multitudes who swarm into the tenement-houses of that part of the City to make heroes of such crime stained villains as Elliott.” It added that the mourning was largely insincere, and more a case of a cross between ghoulish voyeurism and event junkyism, concluding: “The crowds were made up of that class of men and women who flock around the Tombs on the morning of the hanging of a notorious criminal.”47 Owney Geoghegan was another pug honored in death. New York City’s fancy had promised that his funeral would eclipse Elliott’s, although those who feared a repeat of its underworld attendance were relieved.48 The threat of violence, though, was greater this time, with a legal tug-of-war over his estate turning nasty. The Good Lord had taken Geoghegan in Hot Springs, Arkansas, where he spent his final days at “Patsy” Hogan’s “sporting house” before succumbing to “dissipation” in January 1885. As the Toronto Daily Mail sighed: “He never was whipped in his life, never drank a drop of intoxicants, and never touched tobacco in any form, a record that few if any other pugilists possess. It is the temperate life that he has led that puzzles his physicians in assigning a cause for his paralysis.”49 On hearing the news, the New York press couldn’t resist the urge to mock. The New York Herald lamented: “Another redoubtable name will never more afflict the Excise Board or figure on the criminal calendar,”50 while the New York Times sniggered: “There is mourning in the Bowery … and desolation in the dance halls of the slums.”51 Two rival hearses jostled for his corpse, one paid by his sister’s cop husband, Patrick McGinley, and the other hired by Geoghegan’s alleged wife, Miss Duffy Rose, aka Katie Ross, aka Mrs. Catherine Geoghegan, aka Catherine Scott. Rose was apparently sent down by Jack Flynn, the current proprietor of the Old House at Home, who wanted Geoghegan laid out for his former clients to pay their drunken respects. It was McGinley who finally got the body “without making any disturbance,” but Rose, who carried a black handkerchief to wipe away the odd tear, was furious: “I don’t see that I can do anything about burying poor Owney. His sisters have got the body, but I had more right to it than they have. They won’t even let me go to see him for the last time before he is buried.”52 When Rose turned up with her daughter Mary and a neighbor to see the body, her daughter was knocked over by Geoghegan’s sister, while the police took Mrs. McGinley’s side.53 Ultimately, the funeral attracted only a tenth of the number of Elliott’s mourners.54 The reason was that Geoghegan’s professional associates weren’t in sympathy with his relatives, Hannah McGinley and Mary Ryan, who both accused Rose’s daughter of being the product of a liaison with one Andrew DeWitt.55 They were made aware early in the morning that friends of Rose were going to make trouble at the funeral, but Mr. McGinley, being a policeman, “was not very much worried at the prospect, but on the contrary seemed to

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anticipate such an event with some pleasure, and preparations were made for the emergency with much enthusiasm.” Visiting the body was like the Who’s Who of fistic luminaries. Joe Coburn came this time, and so too did Charlie Mitchell and Billy Madden, the latter tearfully hailing, in his cockney patter, the impending Donnybrook: “How Owney would ’ave enjoyed that. I believed he’d a died easy if he’d believed there’d be a scrap at his funeral.” Anecdotes of glorious days passed were recounted as McGinley’s son Owen Geoghegan McGinley, who, unlike so many other Irish-American children, had parents who wouldn’t stop his dreams of entering the ring, listened on. Rose then turned up at the house for one last look at her “husband.” Dressed in black, with her daughter in tow, she missed her chance, arriving as pallbearers were bringing the coffin down the stairs, causing her to turn to the wall and sob uncontrollably. Most of the crowd waiting outside and lining the route to the cemetery were on her side. Geoghegan’s sisters’ carriages were repeatedly stoned, while at the chapel on Long Island, Rose took the seats reserved for the family, then almost caused a fight at the grave. When Hannah McGinley wept: “Oh, Owney, Owney, why did you die? Oh my dear brother that lived the respectable life he did, and to be made a show of at his grave!”— the accompanying crowd began laughing at her.56 Of course once Geoghegan was dispatched six foot under it was time for the real “scrap” to begin. Miss Rose brought in the family doctor, Dr. George E. Morgan to testify that the pair were married. Attending to the former pug in 1883, Morgan recalled Geoghegan telling him: “Call my wife,” whom in court he identified as Rose. Morgan had also remarked to Geoghegan that Mary looked like him and Geoghegan replied of course she did.57 Other witnesses queued up to testify that Rose was Geoghegan’s missus. A pug called Frank White claimed he was offered a grand not to testify in favor of her but then was taken sick, which changed his mind: “I was dying and I was anointed for death by a priest. At that time I took my oath that if God Almighty would let me live I’d do nothing wrong against Mrs. Geoghegan.”58 The case lasted almost two years. Rose confessed no proper marriage ever took place, while McGuiley claimed Geoghegan wanted to “get away from her and her class, get married and settle down in some remote place where nobody knew him.”59 Finally Rose, Scott, Ross or whoever she was, was deemed as never having married Geoghegan; her daughter was illegitimate and was immediately left without a bean.60 Such growing interest in sportsmen also encouraged the press to justify greater coverage outside the crime pages. Specialist sports papers were the first to cover the prize ring and then baseball, with one entrepreneur standing head and shoulders above all others in his efforts to promote the ring. In 1876 Richard Kyle Fox, a native of Belfast, revamped the National Police Gazette into the most popular journal of the “manly art” of its day.61 Fox had only arrived in the States two years previously and wasted no time in finding a job with the finance newspaper the Commercial Bulletin. He supplemented his income by also selling ads with the now crumbling Police Gazette. Eventually granted control as payment in kind, he turned around a dour publication into a voyeuristic scandal rag like the National Enquirer that “needed to shock and titillate as much as inform.” He expanded readership through lurid crime stories, sex scandals, and other forms of sensational gossip. To do this he was rumored to lock his staff in a room on a Saturday afternoon with four bottles of whiskey to combat any writers’ block. 62 The rag’s extensive coverage of the Ryan-Goss fight for the world title in 1880— sales topped 400,000— popularized the fighters and made them into household names across the country. To commemorate the fight his sports editor published what Michael T. Isenberg

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describes as “an interminable (and inaccurate) ‘History of the American Prize Ring.’”63 However, he did more than just report fights. He changed the lamentable chaos of the ring. Boxing was in turmoil, illegal, and without much credibility, and a place where any chancer could move in and make money if he had enough chutzpah. This was aided by its disorganized and clandestine status coupled with the absence of any governing body, which not only contributed to a vulnerability to corruption, but a crippling neglect of the lower weight divisions. As Patrick Myler caustically observes, this was a period when finding out who were the best fighters was a polemical task: “It seemed that if one was Irish, could fight a bit and shout a lot, his demand to be recognized as American champion was sure of some support.”64 Seeking to begin the difficult job of organizing the ring so that fighters were categorized by weight, decisions were fair reflections of the fight, and a fighter’s claim to a shot at a title depended on his fists rather than on his mouth, Fox standardized the ring for the first time. There were proper weight divisions, of which his paper, by declaring itself neutral, sought to fill with authentic champions. By becoming an important and impartial promoter, organizer and stakeholder of fights, who handed out belts — usually diamond-encrusted — to the champions of various weight divisions,65 Fox pushed prizefighting into becoming an increasingly “corporate concept.”66 Most of these belts and awards were held in Fox’s trophy room in the Gazette’s building on the corner of Dover and Pear Streets. When it opened in 1883 it stood out along the New York skyline and was a place where the sporting public could come in and wander round in awe.67 Inevitably, the Gazette gradually lost ground to the dailies as they expanded their own sporting coverage, but not before Fox had bestowed a huge influence on the direction that prizefighting took in the late nineteenth century.68 Irish “picnics” were also great attractions and presented a greater opportunity for displays of ethnic pride that were dampened at the ballpark. They were initially a continuation of previous “picnics” like the one of the AOH in Jersey City in 1870, which ended in a riot; as the New York Times gleefully reported: “The scenes of ancient Donnybrook were reenacted in all their fighting details, but although many countenances were battered, no brains were scattered.”69 Keen on keeping their patrons away from the liquor stall, by 1880 these picnics were purely athletic events attracting over a thousand patrons as spectators.70 Boston’s Irish Athletic Club’s fifth annual outing, in 1883, was attended by “twelve car loads of humanity” that steamed out of the NY&NE depot at quarter past twelve up to Highland Lake Grove. With “not one single disturbance,” the Globe quoted one Sergeant Ellis, claiming he found it all “but easy work to control the good-natured crowd.”71 Other games needed police on hand to calm things down, with New York’s finest at their most vigilant, according to the New York Times, at one Clan picnic in 1880 where “some turbulent characters … were kept under subjection by an efficient police force, composed of stalwart members of the society.”72 By the turn of the century New York’s annual Clan “picnic” was held every Fourth of July in a bid to take advantage of the holiday. Here the 1904 games attracted fifteen thousand spectators to Ridgewood Park for competitions among many clubs, diverse in both class and ethnicity, from around the New York area, a crowd that outstripped most baseball games within the major leagues that year and was almost double the Giants’ average.73 At their height in 1913, twenty thousand attended the Brooklyn and Long Island Clan na Gael games, when the event was disrupted by a blinding sandstorm from the dirt hills that surrounded Celtic Park. “[It] first appeared in thin clouds … [which] grew rapidly thicker and heavier and in a few minutes the players on the field were enveloped

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in them completely.” Lasting ten minutes, ruining many a female patron’s dress, the storm still failed to “discourage the stout hearts of the Irishmen, who decided they would enjoy their annual picnic, rain or shine.”74 Five thousand patrons were in attendance in July 1906 at the Irish Counties Association Games, although the New York Times claimed that the “reason for the drop in box office receipts was the determination of the management to raise the regular admission to 50 cents, and the determination of the patrons who had planned to take in the carnival not to pay it.”75 The inclusion of hurling and Gaelic football proved a huge attraction. In 1906, at the Monaghan’s Men’s Association games held at Celtic Park, twenty thousand witnessed Monaghan defeat Cavan, Cork beat Mayo and Kerry beat Kilkenny.76 And sometimes passions boiled over: in December 1892, the New York Times declared: “Hurleys Serve For Shillalahs [sic].” In what it also labeled as “An Irish Fair Scene Enacted At Ridgewood Park,” in memory of the infamous Donnybrook Fair, it detailed how a hurling match at Ridgewood Park between the Irish-American AA and the Wolfe Tones was peppered with skirmishes. As the teams had a “bitter rivalry” between them, with a large following, trouble was expected. Three hundred spectators watched the match, with a third of them observed carrying hurleys: “The nearest approach to Irish fair squabbles in this country arises from [Gaelic team sports]. Broken heads are common incidents of these games. There was one of these real old-fashioned hurling matches yesterday.” Keen to concentrate on the invasion of un–American values, the Times divulged: In Ireland the game of hurling is often played between teams made up of members of rival factions and when the game becomes hot a “ruction” is in order between the followers of the contesting families. The scene yesterday was somewhat similar … and heated arguments as to the respective abilities of the two teams took place. Several of the men who argued backed up their opinions with their fists, and at the end of the first thirty minutes’ play the end of the field near the Irish-Americans’ goal resembled a veritable Donnybrook fair. In the absence of genuine shillalahs [sic] the men were armed with hurleys, but they were not used to advantage, the combatants preferring to use their hands.77

The 1895 championship decider between the Shamrocks and the Kickhams at Ridgewood Park ended with the sister of the Kickhams’ captain, Pat Buckley, setting off like a demented banshee, charging into the Shamrocks and punching them before being dragged away. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported the woman, known only as “Miss Buckley,” as picking up a huge stone and chucking it at the head of one of her brother’s teammates. When the player, Twomey, confronted her she started laughing and taunting him.78 Following a mass brawl between the teams, Buckley once more “broke loose,” according to the Boston Daily Globe: “She was very excited, and punched right and left into the Shamrocks. During the struggle her hair became disheveled and some one pulled her away by the end of her braid.”79 In 1907 the I-AAC annual Indoor Athletic Carnival at Madison Square Garden, the biggest crowd ever assembled at the garden for an athletic event, culminated in what the New York Tribune labeled “Riot At Irish Games.”80 The Sun described this athletic celebration as being “topped off with a free for all fight.” As part of the program, Tipperary met Kilkenny for an exhibition Gaelic football match. Because it was inside, both teams agreed that any ball crossing the back line would count as a point. One of the Tipperary subs was unaware of the rule change and greeted the award by jumping onto the pitch and punching an opponent on the nose, which kick-started a riot. A police inspector and four of his detectives foolishly tried to stop the fighting, but as they were in plain clothes they got thumped as

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badly as the next man, until one of his men managed to get a roundsman and eight policemen from outside to call for reinforcements: “The eight cops soon had the fight stopped and turned the crowd out of the building.”81 The Chicago Tribune reported in September 1909 on the “side attraction to the Gaelic hurling and football contests at Gaelic Park,” where rival fans of the Dalacassians and Brian Borus fought each other at the end of their match: “Blood flowed freely, fists were used in reckless fashion and one hurling admirer was knocked unconscious.” Apparently it started when a member of Chicago’s finest thought he could cool already fraying tempers by striking one of the “debaters” in the temple, “flooring him and knocking him senseless” for around ten minutes; he woke up only to ask if the fight was over. The mayhem lasted a further five minutes and only a priest, Father Cahill, and several cops stopped the disorder. The local GAA assured reporters that “action at a meeting tomorrow night will be taken to suspend members” who were involved.82 For an athletic club, Celtic Park was notorious for crowd trouble and arrests. In April 1909 a riot preceded the culmination of a marathon event when a fourteen-year-old boy, Thomas B. Daly, who had been climbing along with friends on the wooden perimeter fence, was shot and seriously wounded by a special officer, Charles Haas, after making a “tart reply” to a demand to get down. Haas was chased by angry spectators for a quarter of a mile to a house, where he was later arrested.83 The Sun noted that after one event in September 1911, a group of youths “who were amusing themselves by ripping up a fence” were arrested by a squad of plainclothes police.84 Other disturbances resulted from protests over high admission charges. July 1906 saw patrons refusing to pay fifty cents to watch the Irish Counties Athletic Games. The gates were smashed down and only fifty dollars was collected from the five thousand present.85 In 1915 emerged what the New York Times hysterically labeled the “well-known ‘Celtic Park Gang.’” If this was indeed a “gang,” its numbers were phenomenal, numbering up to a thousand individuals. They crashed the New York Post Office Clerks’ Association Games in May, ripping a huge gate from its rotting wooden post before disappearing among the thousands who had paid. The reporter did recognize that the “gang” only appeared when they were asked to cough up fifty cents: “Their limit is a quarter … there is always trouble when they are compelled to pay more. Last year, they burned down part of the fence surrounding the grounds when they were denied entrance to a certain set of games, because they refused to pay a fifty-cent toll.” The Times was scathing in its criticism of the “special policemen” whom the gatecrashers “did not give the slightest heed to” as they marched in: “As a matter of fact, there was no necessity for these well dressed gentlemen of the peace,” it sarcastically wrote.86 By 1920, the grounds’ reputation had declined sharply, witnessing a riot at the games of one of New York’s top Scottish-American clubs, the New York Caledonia Club. Six drunken Irishmen led an attack after there was general disgust among some Irish that six hundred men in kilts had been allowed to take over their turf: “Small parties of Irish began to drift into the park and several fights took place. These were subdued without the police being called in, but by 6 o’clock fighting throughout the park was general.” A “riot squad” from Hunters Point, headed by Inspector Ryan and Captain McNally, was called and dispatched. “The police used their clubs freely, but it was some time before [things were] under control,” reported the New York Times. “Two ambulances were called from St. John’s Hospital but the physicians worked with several doctors in the crowd and broken heads were patched up without the necessity of [transport].”87 Other sports involving the Irish were also marred by crowd rowdiness. A soccer “inter-

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national” organized by the New York Foot Baller’s Protective Association between “America” and Ireland in February 1916, which the Irish lost, was described by the Sporting Life as a game of “high class soccer, which, however, came near being spoiled by the interference of some fire-eating spectators who invaded the field in an effort to use persuasive powers on the referee at the close of the game.”88 The defeat by Daniel O’Leary of Edward Weston in November 1875 was also witnessed by a crowd that the Chicago Tribune described as containing “the best and worst elements of society, with very little of the intermediate thrown in … it represented wealth, standing, … thieves, gamblers, and roughs.” And while most were “good-humored,” the more downmarket element at the base of the judges’ stand soon began assuming a “mob” mentality: “[It] was largely composed of the bummer, political, and gambling elements, scattered through which was a still greater portion of thieves, rowdies and pickpockets, etc., who, no doubt, by pretended crowding on many occasions, plied their nefarious vocations.”89 Later Weston would create a stink of sour grapes by accusing spectators of throwing paper in his face and even threatening to shoot him.90 Instead the Chicago Tribune dismissed the allegations, blaming his defeat on his tendency to “joke, sing and chaff ” with the crowd: “Notwithstanding the fact that the sympathies of the crowd were with O’Leary as a Chicagoan, the race was a fair one, and no obstacle was thrown in the way of Weston. He has only his own overconfidence in himself to blame for his defeat.”91 During this brief period, pedestrianism took America by storm, and its summit was probably reached in March 1879 on the night that the cream from Britain took on the Americans at Gilmore’s Garden, in one of the last major sporting events to take place there before the arena was returned to the Vanderbilt family: One of the most interesting features of this match is the great crowd that, without hope of obtaining admittance, haunts the outside of Gilmore’s Garden. In Madison-avenue they line the curb opposite the main entrance four and five deep, and patiently wait for hours…. On Twenty-sixth-street crowds of street boys continually hang about … and work industriously to dig holes through the thick panels with their jack-knives and, after cutting them, fight for a chance to look through them.

More crowds occupied Madison and Post Office Squares, looking at bulletin boards to see how the progress of the race was going. At one o’clock in the morning of March 10, 1879, the race commenced, but there was soon a riot outside requiring an “unavoidable charge on them by the Police.” The trouble went on for two hours after the race began, and the Times commented on the “many women who were inside the building [who] found themselves in a state of siege, they not daring to venture out among the angry thousands still smarting from the effects of their recent clubbing by the Police.”92 With many of the runners Irish, it was unsurprising that a large segment of the crowd was made up of their fellow countrymen. The following days passed off without much incident until the following Saturday, at around half six in the evening, when a drunken Irishman suddenly jumped onto the track and, “with a curse,” went to punch the English runner, Charles Rowell. Two policemen immediately grabbed him and marched him away. Hearing the commotion, the lead runner, John Ennis, slowed to allow Rowell to catch up and then shook his hand, before shouting to the crowd: “Gentlemen, I don’t know whether you are friends of mine or not. If you are, you can best show your friendship by respecting this man.” As he pointed his forefinger at Rowell, a loud cheer went up, and when the applause died down, Ennis cried out: “You see this man. I want all of you to understand that if this man is injured I will leave the track and not walk another mile. He is an Englishman, and

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I’m an Irishman, but [Rowell] has done the square thing ever since the walk began. If he wins, it will be because he is the best man. Give him fair play gentlemen. If you don’t I’ll give you foul play by leaving the track.” At the end of the six days, the gate receipts totaled sixty thousand dollars, entailing a huge payout for the organizers.93 Ennis would later race on ice, becoming world champion for 100 miles until beaten by the Newburg-born Irish-American skater Joe Donoghue at Stanford, Connecticut, in January 1893. Ennis would also save at least thirteen people from the ice while out skating.94 Irish fans were also prominent supporters of baseball, but in the late nineteenth century there was still no baseball equivalent to the Irish American AC. However, no one can overestimate the popularity of game to the Irish, and the collapse of a crowded grandstand in 1886 in Waterbury, at a game between the local side and Meriden, shows just how prevalent their presence was. After an hour of going through the wreckage, four men were found who couldn’t move unaided. They were John Gullfoile, James Casey, Frank Kenna and Patrick McKinsley, all of whom had Irish names.95 With the exception of soccer, there were no ethnically Irish professional clubs in the higher levels of sport. However, this didn’t stop clubs’ being identified as Irish in the loosest of terms. As early as 1860, newspapers were making the connection between crowd trouble and the Irish when the Brooklyn Atlantics played the Brooklyn Excelsiors. The “riot” that followed the game, according to George B. Kirsch, “was symptomatic of the nativism and social class antagonism that troubled many communities,” and when national/ethnic or social differences entered the ballpark — as in “the Irish working class Atlantics versus the Excelsior gentlemen”— there was always the potential for crowd trouble. 96 The clubs had agreed to play a three-game series in 1860 to decide “the best baseball team in America.” In the final game, predictions were for a huge attendance, and some twenty thousand turned up at Putnam Club Grounds on Broadway and Greene Avenue. Events were proceeding smoothly when the crowd became agitated about a dubious decision to call McMahon out in the fifth inning, something of which he challenged strongly. Getting restless, the New York Clipper suggested that McMahon’s strop ignited “the disturbance by the betting fraternity who, of course took advantage of so favorable an opportunity of gratifying their rowdy feelings….”97 The New York Times observed that “the rowdy element … now became almost insupportable in its violence and shouts from all parts of the field arose for a new umpire.” A brief lull temporarily calmed matters, after the Excelsior captain Leggett threatened to walk off. However, the “hooting was again started with increased vigor, and the Excelsiors immediately left the field, followed by a crowd of roughs, alternately groaning the Excelsiors and cheering the Atlantics.”98 The New York Clipper in its coverage claimed “the crowd began to get uproarious in the extreme” in its protest: “[S]o insulting were the epithets bestowed on the Excelsiors, that Leggett decided to withdraw his forces from the field, and we certainly think he acted wisely in so doing, and we only regret that he was not supported in his course by the Atlantic nine.”99 The Excelsiors’ charabanc left to a hail of stones pelted by irate Atlantics fans. The two teams, each of which disbanded in 1871 in the face of organized professional baseball, never played each other again.100 In terms of later crowd violence, this was small fry. But it gave a glimmer of what lay ahead, and was undoubtedly an important point in the history of the baseball fan. William J. Ryczek claimed: “The Atlantic-Excelsior debacle brought the game to a critical crossroad. Would it degenerate to the unsavory level of pugilism and horse racing? Would it die out

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altogether?”101 Some of the sporting press of the day sought to blame the Irish. The Brooklyn Eagle demanded: “[U]ntil rowdyism is suppressed in some way or other, such important matches as that of Thursday last had better not be played, unless on grounds in some locality where the blackguard portions of the community can be kept at bay.”102 The New York Clipper, which initially blamed the antisocial behavior on gambling, a week later dismissed this as “a mere accessory evil.” More menacing, what it called “the chief conspirator,” was “Faction,” which “exerts its influence in creating such riotous proceedings.” This was a “spirit of faction that characterizes a large proportion of the community, in which the foreign element of our immense metropolitan population, and their native offspring especially, delights to indulge.” There is little doubt that this paper was pointing fingers at the Irish. After all, this was the only prominent foreign group in the city at that time, let alone one that actively partook in baseball. But the paper wasn’t singling out one religious-ethnic group. In what became a mild premonition of the events of July 1870 and 1871, the Clipper’s report is intriguing to read: This factional spirit is the bane of every community wherein it is once allowed to obtain a foothold. It largely prevails in the politics of our country…. It is the great curse of our noble fire department, and is the sole cause of the evils that have led to the almost total abandonment of the self-sacrificing and manly volunteer force of the department; and it is a great element of discord wherever it uprears it [sic] hideous head; and its poisonous breath permeates through the lower strata of our heterogeneous population, with a pernicious effect that destroys every noble instinct of humanity, and imparts rapid growth to those human fungi known as “Dead Rabbits” in New York, “Killers” in Philadelphia and “Pug Uglies” in Baltimore, &c. It even invades the sanctuary of religion, imparting sectarian jealousies where peace and brotherly love should alone prevail. In short, whether it is “our country,” “our party,” “our company,” “our club,” or “our church,” the same evil spirit rules the actions and paralyses the virtuous tendencies of all who succumb to its baneful influence … turning every source of pleasure with which it comes in contact into a cause of feuds and quarrels that end in disgraceful and riotous conduct.

It was clear that baseball itself was now moving from the gentility and exclusivity that the game’s pioneers had sought to keep, to being a game for the masses, attracting a similar crowd to the prizefight audience, with its ethnic composition and its ulterior motives of gambling and result manipulation. The Clipper concluded that clubs needed to exert “selfcontrol” and “a strict adherence to the rules that guide the actions of a man of honor and a gentleman,” while those that are unable to comply with this “line of conduct had better leave the manly recreation of Baseball to others who can and will, or else the sooner the game becomes obsolete the better.”103 Baseball parks were soon segregated along economic lines, where blue-collar immigrants occupied the cheaper “bleachers,” the cheap whitewashed wooden benches that had no shelter from the elements, be it rain or the scorching summer sun, while clubs employed ushers, private security, or deals with the local politicians to have a battalion of police sent over to ensure the lower orders didn’t leave to sit with the better sort of client.104 These sections holding the rabble increasingly became christened with Irish names: New York’s Polo Grounds were referred to as Burkeville around 1894 by the Evening World in honor of Giants second baseman Eddie Burke.105 At one Temple Cup game against the Orioles, a reporter came back with an exposé of life among the “denizens” of “de roost”: “When the Giants are in the van they are generous, good-natured and a rollicking devil-may-care lot, but otherwise it wouldn’t be the nicest place for a lady to be in, for parliamentary rules and etiquette don’t count for much in Burkeville, when things are not running smoothly…. As a general rule strangers are not welcomed in Eddie Burke’s corner….” While the reporter

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makes no mention of the ethnic make-up of Burkeville’s rooters, his imitations of their speech, what he called the “unique expressions [that] have to be heard to be appreciated,” answer the question: “Git at ’em,” “Naw! De Empire’s naw good,” “Dat mug couldn’t ketch a balloon,” “Look a’ dat, de bases full an’ he goes an’ strikes out,” “Git er op’ry glass, so’s you kin tell a strike when you see it,” “Dere’s Scrappy (McGraw), old boy. Oh, wouldn’t I just like to get at him wid an axe. I’d carve holes in his ’natomy.”106 Other such areas were christened Kerry Patches, with the most prominent being at Sportsman’s Park, home to both St. Louis franchises of the AA-NL years. It was named after the infamous Irish neighborhood to the north of the city that was the birthplace of a number of professionals including Jimmy Burke and Rowdy Jack O’Connor, an area the St. Louis Republic claimed, along with Goose Hollow, “produced more famous ball players than any other similar amount of ground in the United States.”107 It was also home to Jack Ryan, the man who was labeled by Alfred H. Spink in his The National Game as the “hotel clerk known by every professional baseball player as the greatest wit and best booster of the game living.”108 The Sporting News wrote of the ferocious Irish identity found among the denizens of the Sportsman’s Park’s cheaper seats when describing the lack of respect John Parnell Cahill encountered when he was there with the Maroons in 1886: It appears strange that within the confines of Kerry Patch a man blessed with the name of John Parnell Cahill cannot get a square deal. Where are the good men of Kerry who, when Tom Dolan was in trouble shouted: “Shall Tom Dolan die! Shall Tom Dolan die! Then all the byes in Kerry Patch shall know the reason why.” Is the old spirit dead, or but dormant? If it but slumbers then arise again boys and shout: “Shall John Parnell Cahill die! Shall John Parnell Cahill die! Then twenty thousand Kerry men shall know the reason why.”109

Sometimes, fables were concocted of these “Irish” sections: Mike “King” Kelly was unsurprisingly a favorite visitor to St. Louis, and legend has it that on a visit in May 1886 with the White Stockings he exchanged some audacious banter with the Gateway City fans. He pretended to be an Orangeman and whistled the Loyalist ditty “The Boyne Water” before goading the bleachers: “So yer Kerry Patchers, eh? Well this is the twenty-fourth of May. God Save the Queen [Victoria]! I’m coming up yer way tonight and start an Orange Lodge. I expect all of yez ter join up.”110 An undoubtedly funny anecdote except that the Maroons were losing their third consecutive game to the Giants on Queen Victoria’s birthday, 1886.111 Needless to say, relations between fan and player weren’t always so amiable. Both the Orioles and Spiders, the two worst-behaved sides of the 1890s, would depart from opponents’ grounds under a shower of stones, bricks and household waste, and come the new century, with McGraw managing the New York Giants, baseball fans had a new target to throw their garbage at. However, some players weren’t willing to put up with this one-sided arrangement and proved just as good at returning the compliment. McGraw led the way when he punched a fan at the end of the 1912 World Series who had insulted him.112 Six years previously two Irish-American Giants were arrested in Philadelphia in 1906 when they loaded a horsedrawn carriage with rocks while waiting for a hostile crowd to turn up outside their hotel. After a riot of sorts, Mike Donlin and Roger Bresnahan were arrested. Both were eventually freed after McGraw intervened.113 Another of McGraw’s foot soldiers who sorted out disagreements immediately with fans was Art Devlin. The son of Irish immigrant locksmith Edward, Arthur McArthur Devlin was born in Washington, D.C., and attended the city’s top Catholic university, Georgetown. While playing for the Giants in June 1910, he almost started a riot at Brooklyn when he went into the crowd and punched a Bernard J. Roesler, knocking him clean out.114

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It all started when a gang of Superba cranks repeatedly shouted “Yellow dog!” at Devlin. The Sun reported: Provoked by the verbal assault Devlin was an angry man when he went to the field in the sixth inning, and showed it by word and manner. The box occupants renewed their abuse at this, waving to Devlin to come over…. When the inning was finished, he threw aside his glove and headed for the box. One of the men who had been shouting … got up when [Devlin] got to the rail of the box. Devlin swung right and left to his annoyer’s face and immediately the stands were in uproar. The man opened the gate and went out at Devlin and the latter let him have it again.

John McGraw and others all tried to pull Devlin back, being almost felled by flying bottles, although the New York Times insisted that Larry Doyle and Josh Devore also “took an active part” in the “small-size riot.” Rumors circulated that Devlin, Doyle and Devore had been arrested, but the cops had declined to get involved and had escorted the players out of Washington Park to avoid further trouble.115 The following day Roesler appeared at the Myrtle Avenue magistrate, with one side of his face swollen, declaring that he was knocked unconscious for nearly five minutes and that he was suing Devlin for five grand.116 Despite news that Devlin would stand trial, the case was dropped and Roesler’s suit failed.117 There was some support for Devlin’s actions. The Sporting Life quoted the Philadelphia Times as pointing to the provocation he received: “A fellow who will sit in a box and apply all sorts of vile epithets to a hard-working and painstaking player is generally some piker who could not be on the level if he tried…. [T]hat he takes advantage of a ball player because the latter has no form of redress … shows that he is a cheap chap.118 Devlin was eventually given a short suspension of just ten days.119 It seemed that most clubs’ top fan, the man whose fanaticism came to the attention of the club’s owners and opposing teams players, was Irish. Pittsburgh’s “King of the Rooters” was J. Levi Kelley, who in 1905 announced his retirement from winding up opponents. The previous year this had led the Chicago Cubs to complain about a fan located to the right of the “scorer’s coop” where “often players and visitors imagined that the bits of sarcasm, etc., were wafted from….” For example, the Cubs’ Jimmy “Shorty” Slagle was continually teased “Back to Kansas City!” and Jack O’Neill was mimicked with an Irish accent. Reporting Kelley’s departure, the Sporting Life noted: “Possibly nowhere over the circuit could be found a rooter who tied up the tempers of certain players better than J. Levi.”120 Yet for all that could be said of the Irish in New York, Chicago, St. Louis, and Philadelphia, there was no city with a more visible and passionate Irish baseball support than Boston. James T. Farrell explains it extended much further, citing his grandmother as a Sox fan, even though she lived in Chicago: “She was convinced that the best of all baseball teams was Boston because many of her relatives from the old country had settled in that city. They were fine people and if Boston was their home, then the Boston baseball team had to be the best of all, just as Westmeath was the best county in Ireland.”121 While the Irish in New York were instrumental in the popular support of the teams there, Boston saw the Irish create and set the pace for the fanatical fan culture known today throughout the world. Boston also, unlike New York, has had at least one team in the majors ever since its National Association debut in 1871. By 1887, when Mike “King” Kelly arrived from Chicago for the unheard-of fee of ten grand, such was the hysteria of Boston’s fanatics that they acquired him two grey horses and a smart carriage, just so Kelly could arrive at the South End Grounds in something more befitting his station. When he returned from his stint in

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Cincinnati, more generosity came with a house, farm and horse in Hingham, which was rumored to have been mortgaged to the hilt within days.122 Kelly may well have been in debt, but for the cranks this generosity was a shrewd investment. The decade witnessed success for Boston baseball, with Kelly, for all his problems, helping the Beaneaters win National League pennants. Such a fanatical baseball support led in the summer of 1897 to a group of two hundred and fifty, mostly Irish, cranks, setting up an association, soon called the Royal Blue Line Rooters.123 Shortening their name to the “Royal Rooters,” they remained essentially a fan club known as “a classic American story” featuring sons of Irish immigrants from Roxbury, while their name “humorously played off the contempt most Irishmen felt towards the British crown,” even if that wasn’t the original intention.124 Coming from Roxbury, Boston, the Rooters represented diverse social and — despite “a decidedly Irish stamp to them”125— ethnic backgrounds, with the only unifying aspect apart from their love of baseball being their support for the Democrats.126 The men most responsible for pulling the group together were four Irish-Americans. At the forefront, the figurehead so to speak, was the owner of the Third Base saloon, Mike McGreevey, who provided the premises for the fans’ socialization. Behind him were what Abrams described as “widely known ‘sporting men,’ or gamblers,” which included John Keenan, owner of a saloon on Howard Street in downtown Boston, who was the “organizer, manager and financier” upon whom the success of the Royal Rooters depended. Political clout was given by John Francis “Honey” Fitzgerald (See Chapter 6), while the club’s “secretary” was Michael J. Regan (or Reagan).127 A native of Waltham further up the Charles and a Bostonian furniture wholesaler who would be later known as the “King of the Royal Rooters,” he was never far from controversy. He was at the center of a scandal in 1909 after seducing seventy-year-old Harriet N. Brown into a sexual affair so as to swindle her estate. While the widow left a dollar each to her three sisters, the rest, all one hundred and fifty thousand bucks of it, went into the pocket of her “loving friend” Regan.128 Two years later Regan was arrested in Providence for the “larceny” of thirteen bonds of the Florida & Southern Railroad belonging to Brown, worth a thousand dollars each, in a case that the district attorney thought pointless to bring to court.129 The Rooters would soon be commented on in the Beantown’s press, itself full of fans, and newspapers elsewhere, with some members becoming as famous as any baseball player.130 What marked them out was that they were the first fan group to travel on the road. The Boston Journal described them on the eve of the fourth game of the 1903 World Series as possessing “large wads of money and will back the team, faithfully, but expect to receive two against one for their money.”131 The extreme end of this type of obsessive supporter was undoubtedly Regan, who was once bestowed the accolade of the “the undisputed champion baseball rooter of the world” by the Sporting News.132 Dispatches from the Boston press would report him popping up at towns hosting spring training.133 Bob Dunbar of the Boston Journal wrote of him: Mike Regan … who travels from one end of the country to the other, following his beloved game, certainly knows baseball as few of us do. I have observed the game closely for nearly twenty years, but when it comes to being there with inside information, dope dreams of the future, etc., I bow and scrape to the genial Mike…. Surely, Regan, you must dream baseball, eat baseball and stow it away in your cranium daily.134

Undoubtedly loaded, and a self-publicist without peer, he wrote to the Sporting Life in September 1907 from Dublin, where he was attending the Irish International Exposition.

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Suggesting he was as important as the players themselves, he assured readers he’d be home to watch the World Series.135 A previous visit to London led him to remark: “They don’t play base ball over here and cricket is too jarring on the nerves.” He went to the 1908 Olympics with actor-friend John Kelley, and Tim Murnane claimed he paid “a big price for the next box to the Queen,” while horrifying the English spectators with his “Indian yells” as Hayes completed the marathon.136 Regan was also part of the failed syndicate to buy the Braves in 1906, and was reported to have pledged ten thousand dollars to the deal. He also bought a hundred tickets to a benefit game for the victims of the San Francisco earthquake in order to distribute them to poor kids.137 He regularly attended league meetings of both the American and National Leagues, even complaining about both being hosted on the same Mike “Nuf Ced” McGreevey (courtesy of the Trustees of night, and stating that he’d have to the Boston Public Library/McGreevey Collection). “slight my American League friends” in favor of the NL.138 The irony was that he apparently couldn’t play baseball: “A great man for the game until it comes to putting on a uniform,” offered J.C. Morse of the Sporting Life, “as a base ball man he simply isn’t.”139 Such passion was prevalent through the two decades of the Rooters’ existence, drawing admiration from rivals everywhere. When they visited New York for the 1912 World Series the Sporting Life reported they “made as much noise as the 39,000 Giant rooters,” with “Honey Fitz” forgetting his “dignity” so much that he took a megaphone in order to “lead the Boston rooters in their singing before the game.”140 Lawrence J. Sweeney of the Boston Daily Globe wrote after the sixth game: 30,000 New York baseball fans today sat in mute admiration of the unwavering loyalty and ceaseless efforts of the famous Boston Red Sox rooters to turn defeat to victory. For although the game was hopelessly lost after the first inning, the staunch 300 Boston sympathizers, augmented by perhaps 150 more followers of the American League champions who came to the game individually and in groups, rooted for everything in sight. Not until the last Red Sox batter was retired in the ninth did the cheering cease and then only momentarily, to be renewed again when the players scampered from the scene of battle.

“‘The gamest bunch of rooters that ever followed a team’” was an “almost continuous comment” used by Giants followers, he noted. Crowds greeted the Rooters at New Haven, New London and Providence on the train journey home, while Sox fans sang songs as their

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traveling brass band played. Sweeney commented: “To New Londoners it must have appeared as if the rooters had gone daft, for they acted more like winners than losers.”141 Nothing could stop them from following their team: Even Ban Johnson’s discouragement of travel to save fuel to help the United States war effort during 1918 fell on deaf ears.142 Their first trip to Baltimore in September 1897, where the Braves secured the National League pennant, involved around one hundred and thirty fans.143 Made up of fanatics with political connections useful for getting time off from public jobs, the expedition made an arduous four-hundred-mile-plus journey, taking a train to Providence, then a boat on the Fall River Line to New York, followed by a change onto another boat to Jersey City, before another four-hour ride on the tracks to Baltimore.144 When they arrived, the Boston Daily Globe reported that they now “owned” the town: “There’s a hot time in the old town tonight. The Boston rooters have fairly captured the city. The Eutaw house is their headquarters and they have hired a brass band which gave a concert there from 8 o’clock until midnight.” Fitzgerald announced that he had retained the band’s services for the game the following day: “After seeing the rooters today, I feel sure that everyone in Baltimore will be out tomorrow with a fish horn, so I thought the band would help us out.”145 The Rooters remained in the Charm City for the Temple Cup’s first game, staying at top hotels with a tour of Washington, D.C., organized by Fitzgerald for his honored constituents. The trip was ostensibly beyond the means of most baseball fans, yet it all cost a total of twenty-five dollars: adjusted for inflation, around $550 today.146 Nash describes this trip as “unknowingly [lighting] a fire of fan frenzy that endures today.”147 Baltimore supporters were almost flummoxed by the sight of this small group of noisy Bostonians, despite being outnumbered nearly 200 to 1, shouting things like telling Hugh Duffy to “Go git yer shoofel.”148 The Rooters stood solidly behind the Beaneaters until 1901. Then, with the formation of a new American League franchise in Boston, they switched allegiance to the Americans, a desertion that would be viewed today as a callous and treacherous sell-out to a local rival. A number of reasons were cited for the move. First, Irish American players such as Jimmy Collins, the best third baseman of his era, followed a season later by Bill Dineen, had also jumped ship to the Sox, or had left the club. In addition, the new franchise charged half the admission fee of the Beaneaters, a key attraction for many cranks on low wages. The third reason was that the American League also allowed Sunday baseball and the sale of alcohol in its grounds, ensuring there were financial spin-offs from the mainly Irish and Germans fans who drank.149 Perhaps the most compelling reason was the arrival of “syndicate baseball” in the National League, where a clear conflict of interests was created by owners’ owning stock in more than one team. First operated by Ned Hanlon, who used the Orioles as a farm team to the Brooklyn Superbas, the Beaneaters were equally implicated as their owner Arthur Soden also owned stock in the New York Giants. With a mutual ethnicity that cemented the fans as more than merely sympathetic to the players’ complaints over wages, the rooters also held a high degree of class consciousness and trade union militancy, reflected in the Third Base regulars’ organizing benefits for striking steelworkers. The American League promised reform.150 Ban Johnson was aware of the Rooters and knew he needed a sizeable chunk of them to switch to the American League to succeed in Boston, and it was thought that up to fifteen percent of the Beaneaters’ South End Grounds was made of them. 151 When the AL

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franchise debuted in 1901 at their new home at Huntington Avenue, the Boston Globe declared: “American League Men Given Royal Welcome by 11,500 Rooters.” The new fans contained “clergymen, business men, professional people, ex-ballplayers, old-time fans and an army of fresh recruits and many who had not seen a game in years.” The Globe added that two “tally-ho coaches” drove across the field, one of which was carrying the former Beaneater outfielder, Tommy McCarthy, with his party of “live sports.” Playing the same day, the Beaneaters could only draw 5,500 customers, many of whom were non-paying schoolboys.152 The Rooters also took on the tune of “Tessie” from a musical comedy called The Silver Slipper as their official song early in game five of the Red Sox’ 1903 World Series victory, a decision that Tim Murnane would rightly claim “will go tunefully tripping down the ages as the famous mascot that helped the Boston Americans win [the World Series].”153 According to Gay, McGreevey had dispatched a pianist crank to a music shop in Pittsburgh “to find a catchy tune for the Rooters to sing in the stands.”154 Perhaps “Tessie’s” advantage was that it was so irritating. Clark Griffith later recalled his 1905 season with the Highlanders claiming: “You can’t play ball in Boston with that infernal ‘Tessie’ ringing in your ears. I was ‘Tessieized’ out of a pennant in 1905. That song certainly gets the goats of the visiting teams.”155 Such was the swift transformation of baseball relations in the hub and the association of the Red Sox with the rooters, the Democrats and the Irish in general, that the Braves were designated, incorrectly, as the Boston franchise that represented “the entrenched establishment and the non–Irish immigrant wave of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.”156 However, the Rooters were more than a fan club, and were above such intra-civic animosities. When in October 1914 the Rooters declared their intention to travel to Philadelphia to support the Braves, a total of 200 tickets were taken up, with Johnny Keenan leading the “proposed assault on Connie Mack’s breastworks.” Another band was hired, this time from the 9th Regiment, who were to dedicate “a march to the ‘Royal Rooters’” with its drum major promising “to spring many novel evolutions with the baton for the benefit of the Quaker fans.”157 Soon it was evident that more Rooters proposed attending. The Braves president James Gaffney contacted Connie Mack for a hundred more tickets, as both clubs struggled to accommodate the visiting fans, and many were left disappointed. A special train left Boston’s South Station with 230 passengers, including the brass band, with each crank “bedecked with a new pennant and other insignia, and carrying noise-producing instruments of every description … and some of the battle songs will be rehearsed in the station for the edification of those who will be unable to make the trip.”158 Back in Boston for the penultimate game, the Rooters were in full voice. Fitzgerald attended in a frock coat and a silk hat, pictured surrounded by other fans wearing traditional Native American headdress, while “Tessie,” so synonymous almost a hundred years later with the Red Sox, was omnipresent. Lawrence J. Sweeney noted, “[T]he rooters and the members of the band cared little whether they were playing ‘Tessie,’ ‘Sweet Adeline,’ or ‘Michigan,’ as long as they were playing Tessie.”159 The final game on October 13 witnessed “Sweet Adeline” push “Tessie” for airplay. But as Sweeney opined, “The staunch and loyal Royal Rooters are anything but fickle, and the battle song that has stood them in such good stead in the past was good enough for the finish.” The group remained paragons of sporting virtue throughout, giving “Chief ” Bender an ovation when he warmed up for the sixth inning. The only the exception was a rogue infiltrator who shouted at the Athletics’ Rube Oldring: “You’ll be carrying the hod next year, Rube!” and was immediately made to

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apologize to the player. Sweeney highlighted that the Rooters were far from done by the game’s conclusion: It was all well enough to “root,” cheer and “play the hunch” when the Braves were fighting for top honors, but when it was all over — when the greatest honors in baseball could not be taken away, and further encouragement from the Royal Rooters was not needed — the tired, sorethroated stalwarts had a little celebration themselves. No one was especially bidden, but every one was welcome to assist in the jubilation, and before the celebration was over about half of those who witnessed the rout of the Athletics were participants in the fun frolic.

Afterwards five thousand fans went on a procession, passing Boylston Street, where “every window in the big apartment houses and the private residences was filled with cheering spectators,” until the procession stopped at the Copley Square Hotel where the Athletics were ensconced.160 In the multi-soccer club cities of Europe and South American, the Rooters’s support is probably confusing. Yet this ignores the paramount civic loyalty that they all held for city above any team, which transcended anything divisive — particularly religion, ethnicity, politics, or neighborhood — that existed in Boston. The Royal Rooters were also in the attendance at the opening of Braves Field in 1915, with their brass band fighting with the one provided by the Braves’ management to be heard.161 It was something that the Red Sox themselves failed to understand, and thus they weren’t above taking the Rooters for granted. This happened at the 1912 World Series. As it went to eight games, the tickets for the seventh match — the fourth at the recently opened Fenway Park — were thrown open to general sale, with the Rooters’ loyalty dumped in the process. Sweeney was scathing, pointing to the fact that they had already made two journeys to New York “to lend their moral, vocal and financial support, if necessary,…” but were now “ingloriously humiliated … literally ‘frozen out’ and treated … with the utmost discourtesy.”162 While McGreevey and company thought their usual spot would be reserved for them, the club treasurer Robert McRoy pointed to a “pesky little detail that was never communicated to the Rooters, nor anyone else, for that matter”: that as the Series’ games were sold in packs of three, the fourth game was to be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. McRoy thus rewarded every glory hunter in the city at the expense of the club’s most loyal fans.163 It was only when the raucous rooters turned up a quarter of an hour before the start, accompanied by a brass band, that they found their section occupied. The Rooters were moved to the standing area, where not even Fitzgerald could clear enough space. Sweeney described the scene in the following day’s Globe: “That a riot was not precipitated was due only to the coolness and presence mind of the leaders of the rooters … [who] did their utmost to still the turbulent rooters, already incensed by the indignity of being deprived of seats, and made more wrathful by the epithets hurled at them by those whose visions they hampered.” Then, like “the imbecile who cries ‘fire’ in a theatre, someone in the crowd yelled for everybody to leap the fence.” The fans broke open a gate onto the playing field and streamed on. Mounted police on horseback persuaded the Rooters to move to an area over behind the left field bleachers, where another fence was demolished as fans were trampled in the relief of the crush. Meanwhile the Rooters and the police were now being pelted with peanuts and score-cards by fellow Sox fans, as Keenan desperately bellowed through a megaphone: “Never mind, fellows; show them that we are game losers and not dowdies. Now all go back behind the fence, the police are not to blame in this matter, and don’t get Captain Tom Goode in bad because the management has blundered.”164 Amazingly, this seemed to dampen the crowd’s antagonism towards Boston’s Finest,

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Mounted police try to control the Royal Rooters at the 1912 World Series (courtesy of the Trustees of the Boston Public Library/McGreevey Collection).

preventing what Donald Hubbard called “the second Boston massacre.”165 Still, the Rooters were spotted cursing the Red Sox management in general and McRoy in particular. Heinie Wagner then ran onto the field and began a discussion with Keenan, concerned that any other invasion would cost the Sox the series. The game started an hour late with the Rooters silently indignant. “This time there was no ‘rooting’ by the Royal Rooters,” commented Sweeney. “They felt the slight keenly, and not once was a united effort made to cheer the home team, fighting against tremendous odds from the very outset of the game.”166 This mistreatment proved disastrous for the Sox, with John Keenan comparing the abysmal treatment to the wonderful welcome they had received at the hands of the Giants: I can only say that on behalf of the Rooters I want to express my sincere thanks to the management of the [Giants] for the kindly, courteous treatment extended us on our two trips…. In New York our section in the grandstand — not in the bleachers — was roped off and reserved for us by special policemen until we were ready to take them. We were given a cordial reception in New York. We were not even treated decently in Boston, our home city, and I blame no one but … McRoy.

After the game the Rooters marched across the field to the grandstand, where William Shea sarcastically called for three cheers for McRoy. Sweeney noted: “Instead of the familiar ear splitting yell, three long, doleful ‘boohs’ echoed and re-echoed in the stand.” McRoy claimed it was a misunderstanding, while slamming the fan group for not picking up the tickets earlier: “There was absolutely no intention on my part to be discourteous to the rooters. I have tried my best to please everyone, and if the Royal Rooters don’t like it, they should take their medicine like the rest of us. Their tickets should have been called for before 9:30 a.m. as had been the custom.” Then the Rooters went to Jersey Street and began singing songs of support for their team’s opponent, along with cries of “The Hell with the Red Sox” and “Who gives a damn whether they win or lose!”167 John Keenan told the Boston Journal:

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“The action of the Red Sox management should be condemned by every fair-minded baseball fan in this city. Here we have made trip after trip to New York to offer what little support we could for the team, and at great expense. We have lost as much sleep as the players…. We are through with the Red Sox … we will not attend the final game tomorrow as a body.”168 Sweeney rightly predicted a mass boycott: “The … Royal Rooters of 1912 are a thing of the past. They have passed into history, for today, if any of them attend the final game, they will do so individually. There will be no Royal Rooters’ band … no parade, no flying of colors, singing of songs or cheers.”169 The final game was watched by just over seventeen thousand fans, half the full capacity of Fenway Park and the smallest crowd ever for the final game of any Series.170 The lesson given out by the Rooters was taken neither on by the Red Sox nor indeed by most other sporting clubs across the world over the next century. Honey managed to get an apology of sorts out of McAleer, but McRoy wasn’t fired.171 Even Ban Johnson was piqued: “You can say for me that the entire American League regrets the incident, and that steps will be taken to prevent a repetition. Mayor Fitzgerald has done a lot for base ball in Boston and the American League appreciates it greatly.”172 And of course the Rooters had few other ways to spend their leisure time. Three years later an argument over an allocation of tickets was once more on the agenda, and it threatened to cancel the 1915 World Series. The Phillies’ president, W.F. Baker, was unwilling to accommodate a request for four hundred tickets to out-of-towners that were denied to Philadelphians.173 Joseph Lannin, remembering the trouble of 1912, took up the fans’ case, declaring in the New York Times: “Fandom is bigger than the owner of the [Phillies], and is bigger than the National Commission. Either I will secure for Boston rooters the necessary space allotment through the [Commission] or there will be no world series.”174 Despite regular customers at the Phillies ground, Baker insisted that the best on offer were five dollars. In fact, he went further and suggested that due to the overall costs of traveling to Philadelphia, “it seems strange that 600 persons are willing to pay car fare, hotel bills and incidental expenses, [yet] they should balk at a couple of dollars more for seats.” John Killeen of the Royal Rooters responded that the expense wasn’t the problem, highlighting the fact that they weren’t made up of the poorer orders: “[If ] Mr. Baker thought that the price would stop us, he will find himself mistaken, for expense has not figured in trips of the Royal Rooters in the past and it will not now.” Instead, it was “the fear that by giving us the box seats the Rooters would be stretched clear across the field from first base to third base, thereby robbing us of a great deal of our effectiveness….”175 The National Commission backed Lannin, declaring that the Series with a Boston team “would not be a World’s Series at all without the Royal Rooters.” Two hundred tickets would come from the commission with Lannin and Baker adding a further hundred each. With “the irony of fate as it were,” as Sweeney put it, Lannin and Killeen were notified of the Commission’s decision by Robert McRoy, now Ban Johnson’s secretary. In New York he told reporters: You bet I know who and what the Royal Rooters are and what factor they are in such an exciting time. You can hold me personally responsible for the seats for the first two games in Philadelphia. This time I will take all the responsibility. Three years ago I was blamed for all the trouble, and I did not try to shirk the responsibility; but now I want to say to the Royal Rooters that I was not wholly to blame on that occasion.176

Not everyone within the sporting community was happy. The Chicago Tribune’s baseball journalist, I.E. Sanborn, writing in the Sporting Life, was particularly caustic:

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Some day the Boston base ball promoters, newspapers and public will wake up and put the kibosh on the Royal Rooters…. They have caused more trouble and made more useless noise than anything I can think of except possibly an old-fashioned Fourth of July. Just why a flock of Boston fans should expect to have a portion of the bleachers set aside for them even in Boston is beyond reason. To demand such a privilege in Philadelphia is a huge joke. How about the unorganized royal rooters of Philadelphia? How about the boys who have been coughing up their two bits to see the Phillies play and rooting for them all the season and who are going to stand in line at the bleacher gates in Philadelphia for hours and hours for the sake of seeing a World’s Series game? How would they like it to have a section of the bleachers set aside for a lot of Boston bleacherites just because the latter happened to be organized? The Royal Rooters certainly are no particular credit to Boston…. The foundation of Americanism is a protest against special privilege. All men are supposed to be equal, and when a flock of Bostonians tries to obtain special privilege on the strength of loyalty to anything it grates on the real American’s nerves…. A base ball team belongs to all the fans, not to any clique.177

Still, an upbeat Lannin decided to cement his popularity with the fans by opting to travel with his wife to the first game in Philadelphia on the Rooters’ train, arriving at the South Station half an hour before departure in order to shake hands with several hundred wellwishers.178 Meanwhile, Keenan, making up the rearguard, told reporters: “Our crowd will be right on hand, shouting for the Red Sox from the drop of the hat.”179 According to Sweeney the trip cost thirty-seven bucks, which included “railroad tickets, automobile transportation to and from the games in Philadelphia, pennants, souvenirs, etc, and grandstand seats in Philadelphia and Boston for the first four games.” Two nights’ accommodation at the Elks’ Home on Forty-Third Street, in New York, would be included in the price. On the day, the Rooters met their hosts after marching along Forty-Second Street from Penn Station onto Seventh Avenue in the pouring rain, before some took in the theater. An early rise to catch the eight o’clock flyer to Philadelphia meant the Rooters had to arrive at the Broad Street terminus by eleven, although the bad news was that Keenan was ill, and there were fears he’d miss the rest of the jaunt. His doctor, Richard Daily, who also made the journey, treated him. When he made it to Philadelphia, Keenan went straight to bed. While he lay prostrate, other Rooters took to “‘doing’ the Quaker City. Cabarets, theatres and other places of entertainment are being played across the board,” while the cranks’ traveling band, directed by Jimmy Coughlin, entertained the burghers of both cities on the Continental Roof Garden. Keenan did eventually go to Baker Field.180 The Rooters returned to Boston tired but had left an impression on the people of Philadelphia. The New York Sun wrote that what stood out most was “the striking proof of the sportsmanship” of the Rooters: “They cheered as heartily for the fine plays of the home team as they did for their own idols and failed to make light of the misplays of the Phillies. There was no insinuation of gloating in their … celebration of victory — no gibes for the defeated, no predictions of slaughter in the days to come. The behavior … reflected the greatest credit on the city of culture.”181 Wherever they stopped, the band “left the car and convinced the people close to the depots that Boston is some town, has some team, and that the Royal Rooters with Tessie are a pretty regular bunch.” Back in Boston, Keenan recovered to attend the two final games.182 John W. Moran Jr. would write of game four “that at no time in years has a pitcher in Boston been bombarded with so much noise of the strictly legitimate form” as was Pete Alexander in the ninth and final inning: “The … Rooters took rather seriously the fact of showing that they too had figured to a more or less extent in bringing home the bacon.”183 But for all this support, the Rooters were running out of steam and possibly money. The Sporting Life was to note of the final game in Phila-

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delphia: “Very few of the Royal Rooters came over from Boston … whatever rooting was done in the Red Sox favor was isolated. The Brass band and its ‘Tessie,’ which spurred the Carrigan brigade throughout the first four games were missed.”184 The Red Sox’ disposal of Babe Ruth in 1919, and the subsequent fall of Boston as one of the great baseball cities, coincided with the original rooters’ fading into the autumn of their lives: Fitz’s political career was imploding, while Prohibition rendered the Third Base a soda parlor. What is particularly puzzling is that there was never a new generation to take over. Perhaps there was a feeling that the Rooters’ kind of ostentatious support was passé. Perhaps, too, the purely bachelor brotherhood that the Rooters stood for entailed that any sons were never encouraged to join until adulthood, by which time they had formed their own tastes and possibly had little time for baseball. McGreevey and Fitzgerald had already resigned by 1919 with only Johnny Keenan left to oversee the Rooters’ decline. Poignantly he denounced the sale of Ruth, declaring: “Ruth was 90 percent of our club last summer. It will be impossible to replace [his] strength…. The Red Sox management will have an awful time filling the gap caused by his going.”185 The curse was born: they had won five of the first sixteen World Series, but it wasn’t until 2004 that the Sox got number six. In the meantime, sports had battled for its right to exist, to be open for business on whatever day clubs saw as the most lucrative, and their customers found most convenient. Sports battled to sell alcohol, on any day or indeed at all — things that today’s sports fan takes for granted. It’s time to look at the constant legal interference in sport, both good and bad.

8 Buccaneers — The Irish Sportsman and Fighting the Law The term “buccaneer” comes from “boc aniar: a western playboy or rogue.”1

With growing concerns at the growth of what “moralists” considered the unsavory aspects of sports, it wasn’t long before they resorted to the courts to restrict sports. This legislative interference stood ill at ease with a country that separated church from state, because many of the laws being utilized and the language used to justify them, had their origins not just in xenophobia but in religion. Such meddling was to infringe greatly on the Irish male’s leisure activity, turning Irishmen into its foremost opponents, with local Irish politicians, not only in New York and Boston but also New Orleans and Chicago, working hard to circumvent and finally change laws.2 All this did nothing to stop gambling: One of the reasons for the vigilantism in San Francisco that culminated in Yankee Sullivan’s death was the view that gambling was backed by the corrupt local politics. But Prohibition just pushed gambling underground, to be serviced by organized crime or moved onto other cities of vice, like Reno in the neighboring state of Nevada. East of the Mississippi River, gambling continued despite its prohibition in nearly every state. New York outlawed gambling in 1819, with further laws in 1851 and 1855 banning lotteries and bookmaking.3 The impotency of these laws was proved by John Morrissey’s opening Saratoga Springs in 1861, and by the Supreme Court of Brooklyn’s dismissal of the case against Philip Dwyer, arrested “on the charge of contriving, proposing and maintaining a lottery, in arranging for and conducting the Brooklyn Handicap.” The court ruled that lotteries were a game of chance, while horse racing required skill.4 Irish Democratic politicians further undermined the law by passing dubious laws in state legislatures that sought to soften prohibition, such as the Ives Pool Bill of 1887, which was allowed through the argument that it would improve the breeds of horses. The New York Times declared that “the speculatively inclined … will have the pleasure of knowing that when they are making a wager they are now doing nothing illegal.”5 The Percy-Gray Law, passed in 1895, was ostensibly anti-gaming, making a wager on the horses a felony everywhere but at the state’s numerous racing clubs.6 Thomas F. Byrnes foresaw the day when the power of race track owners would force gambling to be legally 157

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restricted to the track. In his interview with the New York Times three years previously, Byrnes had been asked if it were true that the race track owners were “taxed” by an unnamed gambler the previous year to “fix” it with the authorities to close all the poolrooms and send the betting to the tracks. Byrnes agreed: “When it was first rumored I asked that question flatly of a part owner in a race track. He admitted after a little urging that a fund of nearly $60,000 had been raised for this purpose…. It passed into the hands of a professional gambler whom I know and whose name is familiar to the public.”7 In all probability the man Byrnes was referring to was Tim Sullivan. Result manipulation in the nineteenth century was universally linked solely to gambling. But while we currently live in a time contaminated with doping scandals, few athletes resorted to artificial performance enhancers, save the use of brandy by pugs during fights. One exception was James “Pud” Galvin, a noted pitcher from 1875 to 1892 in St. Louis, Buffalo and Pittsburgh and another product of St. Louis’s Kerry Patch, who is known as the game’s pioneer “juicer,” the first to use performance-enhancing drugs. The nineteenth century was awash with “quacks” marketing tonics — known universally as “snake oil”— that promised outlandish cures for all manner of afflictions. Drug historian Richard Davenport-Hines wrote that the late nineteenth century also saw an almost surreal climate, where liquid morphine, laudanum and a 99.9 percent pure cocaine product called “Ryno’s Hay Fever and Catarrh Remedy” were easily bought.8 In fact, when it came to drugs, the only time there was consternation among the moralists of the day were their attempts to rid the big cities of its opium dens, a move that was more in opposition to the Chinese monopoly than the dangers of the drug itself. In his search for eternal youth, the physiologist and respected medical pioneer Charles Brown-Séquard deserves a special mention. In 1889 he disclosed to the Societé de Biologie in Paris that he had discovered that injecting himself with an extract of animal testicles made him regain “all the force which I possessed a number of years ago.”9 Among sportsmen, there was little enthusiasm for the “tonic.” John L. Sullivan quipped: “It may be some good, but I doubt it.”10 Galvin, however, wasn’t so reticent. On August 14, the Washington Post reported that he had been a medical guinea pig of Brown-Séquard’s elixir at a Pittsburgh medical college, and following the first game Galvin played in afterwards, the reporter had no doubt of its potency: “If there still be doubting Thomases who concede no virtue in the elixir, they are respectfully referred to Galvin’s record in yesterday’s Boston-Pittsburgh game. It is the best proof of the value of the discovery.”11 With a growing backlash against alcohol in the United States, it’s valid to ask why a newspaper was waxing lyrically about a crude steroid. For athletes themselves, this question was evidently “no question.” In an epoch when the population suffered hugely from many debilitating and incurable diseases, anything that could be seen as elevating health was deemed positive. By the standards of the time he lived in, Galvin was no “drug cheat.” He certainly didn’t hide the fact that he’d taken this tonic, nor was there any uproar from opponents regarding what can clearly be seen as an improvement in his performance. In discussing the cleanup of the sport’s “drug cheats” in 2007, Tom Deignan of the Irish Voice suggests how this “monkey juice helped Galvin become the first pitcher to ever win 300 games.”12 It didn’t: Galvin took the elixir when he was thirty-two and past his best, and primarily to regain his youth. Any advantage Galvin had was short-lived, and didn’t keep him from aging quickly and eventually dying penniless, aged 47, of “catarrh of the stomach” that may well have been caused or accentuated by steroid abuse.13

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Sabbatarianism was the third hugely contentious issue affecting the Irish leisure pursuits, once more pitting Puritan America against the Irish immigrant. Blue laws were the ordinances that not only prohibited, with the exception of churches passing around the collection plate, business on the Lord’s Day of rest, but also travel. Initially they surfaced in Puritan New England in the seventeenth century, the “blue” being the color of paper that New Haven’s laws were printed on.14 But by the mid-nineteenth century various versions had spread as far south and west as Colorado and Texas. As Robert F. Martin writes, these laws divided America, involving “class, cultural, geographical, economic and political variables … [pitting] rural folk against urbanites, older American stock against the more recent immigrant groups, the middle and upper classes against the lower, and sometimes, Republicans against Democrats.”15 Religion was a crucial component of this crusade: When it came to sports, the competition for Sunday leisure time clearly piqued churches, with William J. Baker quoting one Minnesota Methodist as lamenting: “With the attraction of Sunday baseball, theatres, saloons, and excursions to the lakes, the churches are somewhat lonesome.”16 Roman Catholicism didn’t actively encourage the breaking of the Sabbath, but neither was it high up on the list of sins entailing an extended stay in Purgatory. Sabbatarians saw this as even more evidence of Catholic corruption. John Wesley Hill, pastor of the Metropolitan Temple, a religious nightclub among New York’s many, told the New York Times in 1907 following one of the many City Hall– sponsored clampdowns on Sunday entertainment : “Disregard for the Sabbath means National decrepitude and ruin. When the Sabbath goes down, the Republic goes with it. Sabbath-breaking is dissoluteness. What is the matter with Italy, Spain and France? No Sabbath. The nation that forgets God must perish.”17 Disobedience took on many forms, but one of the most common involved retailers turning themselves into drugstores, which remained open on Sunday to sell medical supplies, then adding groceries and alcohol to their shelves. Unsurprisingly, this sort of lawbreaking was hardly high on the police department’s list of priorities, particularly in New York, which, even by today’s standards, had a high murder rate.18 During the baseball days of amateurism and the National Association, the playing of baseball on Sundays was governed solely by local ordinances. The National League, aiming to clean up a game that was bedeviled by gambling scandals and drunkenness of players, sought what Robert Martin claims “respectability and acceptance” and banned Sunday baseball.19 By 1880 William Hulbert had turned his attention to Sunday baseball. Clubs were reluctant to see a total moratorium on Sunday games, as attendance on the Sabbath exceeded all other days by up to five times, but the pious Hulbert preferred Sundays that went along with sobriety, and thus reasoned “a league associated with such godliness would eventually be a profit maker.”20 In response, the league’s other seven franchise heads got together and voted for an amendment at their AGM on December 4, 1880, in Rochester, banning Sunday baseball and sales of “every description of malt, spirituous, or vinous liquors” at any NL ground. Any team that refused to buckle would be kicked out. Cincinnati did exactly that and two days later found Hulbert meant business. Despite protests from Cincinnati’s Bank Street Grounds, the Reds were out of the NL.21 Such resentment fueled the creation of the American Association, which became known as the “Beer and Whiskey League.” Voight observes that the league felt the full force of Puritan America in allowing its members to also decide on whether to open on Sunday, with the NL denouncing the AA as “immoral and corrupt.”22 Hulbert wrote to the AA’s president, H.D. McKnight, claiming that Sunday baseball could never succeed, adding with

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breathtaking arrogance and snobbery: “You cannot afford to bid for the patronage of the degraded.”23 Only in 1891, almost a decade after the death of Hulbert, when the National League swallowed the American Association, were all teams allowed to make the decision themselves — if local legislation permitted it — with regards to playing on the Sabbath. While sabbatarianism was weakest in the Midwest, where there was no longstanding Puritan tradition among the German and Irish populations of Cincinnati, Milwaukee and St. Louis, resulting in a more relaxed attitude to Sunday baseball, the East Coast was a different matter.24 It was perhaps amazing how sabbatarianism was so hard to remove in cities under politically hostile local governments such as New York and Boston. Despite 76.9 percent of the population by 1900 being of foreign, non–Protestant origin (mostly Catholics, but also Jews), the detested blue laws remained in the Big Apple until 1919. Boston had to wait until 1929 to witness permission to play Sunday baseball.25 Oddly enough, some smaller towns were more receptive. Patrick Thomas Powers was a pioneer willing to get Sunday baseball accepted in the Eastern heartlands of the game. Born in 1861 in Trenton of Irish parents, he grew to become baseball’s most influential figure outside the majors. When Powers was appointed manager of the Giants in 1891, his sister shared her memories of his childhood baseball obsession with the local Trenton Evening Times: “Before Pat was 9 years old he became so wrapt up in base ball that his parents had quite some trouble to get him at school…. Whenever Patsy was wanted he would be found on some of the vacant lots of the neighborhood playing ball.” While he learned fine wire drawing at the Trenton Ironworks, he studied the game and knew about every player in the States “of National reputation.” His first job in baseball was as manager of the Trenton club in 1884, after which he worked for a number of other minor league sides in Jersey City (where the Trenton club was moved to), Buffalo and Rochester.26 A year later he took Pat Powers, champion of Sunday baseball and minor leagues up the post of the Eastern (Library of Congress).

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League’s president, lasting until 1910, spending much of his career trying to circumvent the blue laws. He recognized the potential of baseball on the Lord’s Day of Rest, and his first attempt — an Atlantic Association contest between his Jersey City and Worcester in July 1889 — ended with the eighteen players’ being brought in front of a local judge, who fined each of them a buck. As ever, hostility was greater outside the legal chambers. The New York Tribune mocked the whole show and demanded future attempts at Sunday baseball be suppressed “promptly and effectually”: A new departure was witnessed in Jersey City yesterday. It was a silent game. Instead of the customary yells and cheers, there were only hoarse whispers and an energetic pantomime. There is no demand or necessity for Sunday baseball in this part of the country. The laws forbid it and they should be obeyed. To conduct a game in quietness and to subject the players to a nominal fine is simply bringing law into contempt.27

At the Rochester Broncos, which became a member of the AA in 1890, he sought to avoid the city’s blue laws by playing Sunday games at Irondequoit on Lake Ontario. However, the “Law and Order Society” managed to get these games shut down, enlisting the local police to abandon one game. A near riot was only stopped by the intervention of Powers, who then got the players “arrested” on the complaint of an acquaintance and dealt with by a “friendly” judge, infuriating the Sabbatarians into greater action to shut down Rochester’s involvement in the majors. Powers continued his crusade when he became the Eastern League president in 1893, adding cities which could play Sunday sports, such as Newark and Jersey City, until all eight teams were immune. When he bought into the Newark Federal League franchise, based instead in Harrison, he succeeded in getting Sunday baseball within a “short train ride” of Manhattan. This wasn’t lost on the New York Times, which commented: “Sunday baseball also stamps Newark as an advantageous place to locate.”28 Even amateur sports weren’t immune. Chicago’s new Gaelic Park, on the salubrious Thirty-Seventh Street and Indiana Avenue, was purchased by Thomas Murphy and an attorney, Michael E. Ames, in what Paul Darby describes as “a largely Protestant upperclass part of the city,” where houses started at ten thousand dollars. They received assurances from Mayor Hempstead Washburne that Sunday sport would be permitted; not unreasonable, as Sunday baseball had been previously played there.29 As they were waiting for their amusement license, a campaign to thwart them was afoot. Residents of the area, in particular Christopher Weatherson of nearby Prairie Avenue, had complained to the courts about the GAA’s Sunday program. Enlisting another resident, C.F. Daniels, to represent them, they demanded that the mayor and city clerk refuse any Sunday license to the GAA. Daniels told the Daily Inter Ocean that he had heard the noise coming from Gaelic Park, and with Sunday attracting “the largest crowds and hardest characters,” he added “that the grounds with these attending evils were a nuisance” and nothing more than an “outrage” on the good folk of the area. Another campaigner, A.C. Mason, claimed things were so bad he was considering moving out.30 Weatherson, whose residence was adjacent to the grounds, insisted the games created “a nuisance in the neighborhood.” The Chicago Tribune had reported the complaint, stating: “Each Sunday a large crowd assembles on the ground and they yell and cheer to such an extent that they can be heard for a distance of several blocks. This noise is extremely obnoxious, and is mixed up with indecent language.” Weatherson added that “such entertainment” deprived him and his family of “peaceful rest on the Sabbath.”31 Mayor Washburne refused to grant the license. But spectators defiantly turned up for the Davitt versus Wolfe Tones game, as the police moved to shut down proceedings, but with their “deep rich Irish mote in [their voices, they had] but little terror for [their] brother

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Irishman. Consanguinity lessens the brilliancy of authority.” The organizers claimed the game was a practice match and had admitted everyone for free. Afterwards the “true and law-abiding citizens of Chicago” within the Illinois GAA selected a committee to take on the mayor, who was allowing other sports but a few blocks away without interference.32 The following Sunday a further contingent of sixty-five officers turned up at the grounds, led by an inspector and a captain, demanding that the game between the Emmets and the Innisfails clubs be called off. As the players lined up, Inspector Koch and Captain Madden approached the teams dressed in civvies, and were met by GAA officials, including Ames and the club captains. Madden shook hands and continued: “I am here to deliver an order by the city executive forbidding you to play any games on these grounds this afternoon. It is my duty to see that that order is carried out to the letter. I hope that you will understand the situation and that you will refrain from playing so that there will be no occasion for me to interfere and make arrests.”33 The two teams then got into single files, held hands and marched off the field to a speech on Indiana Avenue that “assumed the proportions and general temperament of an indignation meeting.” It was all, as the Daily Inter Ocean wrote, a “large pyrotechnical bluff, with Gothic trimmings and Moorish fretwork”: The sun rose and crossed the zenith in silence; the waves of the lake lashed the Hyde Park shore, and everything on the South Side was as it has been for many Sundays. But the Gaelic Association did not play. The delirious yowl of triumph from the winning clubs was absent. The deep subterranean thud of the player who kicked at the ball and missed it was wanting. The low, passionate breathing of that artistic kicker, who has so often hit the ball in savage glee…. The players did not play.34

Outside, Ames addressed the crowd of a thousand and criticized the local government and blue laws, suggesting, to ripples of laughter, that it even prevented a husband from kissing his wife on a Sunday. Afterwards, the former captain of the Old Wanderers Cricket club, John Schofield, who had shouted remarks of support as Ames spoke, was invited onto the platform and claimed that when he played cricket, there were no objections from the church, which encouraged the game.35 The general perception among the GAA was that the blue laws were anti–Irish. Frank Ryan, the Davitt club’s president, wrote to the Citizen chiding the complaining residents as “ignorant Know-nothings” and comparing the treatment of the Association with that of baseball: “Are we not as much entitled to carry on our Sunday games as are the different clubs of the City League Baseball Association, or is there a special city ordinance prohibiting us from playing our games, while the baseball men are allowed to play unmolested?” The IGAA passed a resolution that the Sunday ban was simply “hostility to citizens of Irish nationality” and turned to the courts to challenge the injunction secured by Weatherson. By the beginning of November, Judge Oliver H. Horton dismissed any arguments based on Sunday church attendance and dissolved the injunction on the GAA.36 When the GAA opened its season in April 1893, optimism abounded that they’d be able to host a season of games on Sundays unmolested.37 But there were still threats; Chicago didn’t have specific blue laws against amateur Sunday sports — the censure on the GAA was brought by an individual’s objection — but some conservative elements in politics wanted to introduce them. The Sporting Life reported that an unnamed legislature — either city or state — was considering passing stringent blue laws that “will knock out the Gaelic Athletic Association,” and all the other sporting associations that wished to play on Sunday.38 This was also a bluff, but Darby underlines Irish suspicions that the ban on Sunday sports was Puritan prejudice:

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The political landscape in which the GAA operated in the early 1890s was clearly difficult. Gaelic games were not immune to the broader anti–Irish sentiment that re-emerged in the Midwest and beyond in this period, and this affair created a feeling among GAA members that they were victims of Anglo-Protestant discrimination. The perception that they were being treated unfairly because of their nationality and religion was clearly not groundless paranoia…. However, rather than weaken the resolve of the GAA to continue to promote Gaelic games, the bigotry that they felt underpinned the actions of the mayor and protesting residents actually strengthened their desire to cling to and nurture pastimes that allowed them to preserve their Irish Catholic identity.39

Perhaps “anti–Irish prejudice” played a part in Mr. Weatherson’s campaign, and there is plenty to suggest that he was influenced by religious observance. But the blue laws affected all Sunday sports, professional or amateur, and had done so for decades, and legal battles carried on for years afterwards. While many Irish males worked in the public sector, police, or transportation or were self employed, and could manage their working lives to watch sports on any day of the week, for others Sunday was the only day to go and watch sports. As seen, for most of the nineteenth century, prizefights became increasingly scarce, clandestine affairs, with the sport lying around like a dormant strain of influenza waiting to return. McCoy’s death proved to be a false dawn for those who wished to see the ring banished, such as the Baltimore Sun: “[McCoy’s death] had the effect to open the eyes of the people to the fearfully demoralizing enormities of the system.”40 Deaths continued: in September 1856 there was more grist for the anti-ring mill, when Kit Burns was involved in a tragic “lightweight” clash between two ethnic Irish boxers, Andy Kelly and Charley Lynch. Kelly was born in England and had only been in the States for two years, already impressing the fancy with his “scientific” fighting attributes, while Lynch was American-born and reportedly owned the notorious “drinking crib … ‘The Band Box,’” an establishment described by the Times as “a resort for the vicious of both sexes, and the source of much annoyance to the police,” and which Burns later acquired. The contest was fought out at Palisades on the New Jersey coast, the two men “remarkably small for prize-fighters and very young too. Neither of them were much over five feet high, and the ‘catch’ weight of Kelly, when in the ring, was not more than 110 pounds.” They fought eighty-six rounds over two and a quarter hours. Victory was finely balanced between the more skilful Kelly and the brawnier Lynch right up until the end, when tragedy once again struck. While Lynch’s face was being beaten to a pulp, he still had managed to cause Kelly pain by throwing the lighter man down twice and falling on him. The Times reporter takes up the final dramatic round of the fight: “Kelly sprang down from his second’s lap to meet Lynch, but had scarcely advanced a foot, when, turning deadly pale and tottering a moment, he fell heavily backwards and never spoke again. The fight was ended! Lynch had gained the victory, and he with his backers left the dying pugilist to the care of his friends.”41 Kelly’s entourage covered him with a coat and placed him on a steamboat back to Manhattan’s Thirty-Fourth Street quay, where he was placed in a butcher’s cart and brought to the Brown Jug porterhouse on the corner of Thirty-Third Street and Second Avenue. Instead of being tended to by a doctor, maybe even a priest, he was taken to a house in an “insensible condition,” before being dumped at Bellevue Hospital under the false name of John Williams, with the story that he had been beaten by boatmen.42 Kelly was mourned by Mary and Catherine Gunning, two aunts he had lived with, and a mysterious prostitute; described as “young and fair, though fallen … of Water Street, who was deeply attached to

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him … when informed of her lover’s death, she exhibited the most frantic sorrow, and could not be pacified.” She had to be consoled in case she contemplated suicide.43 Lynch and those involved in organizing the fight were issued arrest warrants, but it was clear that the indicted would’ve been less disinclined to show their faces had they known their cases would be heard in New York City, where judges were easily bought. The law in New Jersey was more strictly adhered to concerning prizefights, persuading all concerned to disappear. The coroner, Frederick W. Perry, thought similarly. If the jury were to find that the pug died of injuries from the prizefight — which they did, listing a number of men who had been “aiders and abettors”— Perry believed that “the persons implicated … will have reason to congratulate themselves, as it is a difficult matter … to convict a person charged with any other crime than theft” in a New York court.44 Indeed, there is no proof that anyone ever faced a trial for Kelly’s death. While, as Benjamin Rader observes, these poorly educated combatants received “quick rewards in a society that placed a high value on material success,” 45 it could also be argued that McCoy’s death enhanced prizefighting as more a macabre entertainment than a sport, fit not just for the low-life spectators found at fights, but for the curious tut-tutting middle class readers of newspapers and their voyeurism for crime. Of course such advertising of a criminal event, prior to its taking place, disgusted many. Following McCoy’s death, Philip Hone, the former New York mayor, slammed James Gordon Bennett’s New York Herald for giving the fight such extensive coverage, claiming: “The amusement of prize fighting, the disgrace of which was formerly confined to England … has become one of the fashionable abominations of our loafer-ridden city.”46 The newspaper defended its reporting as a public duty, and would no doubt have been struck deadpan by the suggestion that any enthusiasm of the masses was an opportunity to sell more papers. Later, following Yankee Sullivan’s final scrap, in an editorial titled “The Prize Fight,” the New York Times also tried to justify its coverage: To pass it unnoticed, or to refer to it in other than the strongest language, would not only be a dereliction of duty but abnegation of it that we have no disposition to commit. As faithful chroniclers of everything that transpires in our midst, be it robbery, a murder, or a prize fight, we have … placed before our readers the details of one of the most sickening, brutalizing exhibitions which has of late days fallen with the pale of civilized life.47

Following McCoy’s death, New York’s forces of law and order began a concerted clampdown, proscribing the sport in March 1859. This left the ring, as Elliott J. Gorn explains, almost fatally wounded: “The sport was completely illegal; the courts hounded boxers, and when fights did occur, they were roundly condemned in the press. Only a few dozen fights occurred before 1842, and then no matches at all were staged for a few years after [the McCoy-Lilly fight].”48 Fights moved to even more secluded locations without much success. The Owen “Owney” Geoghegan and Ned Touhy fight, scheduled for April 18, 1861, on Staten Island, was just about to commence when “the cry of ‘Police’ was most lustily and to them aggravatingly shouted on all sides…. The valiant members of the PR … considering that discretion was at all times paramount to valor, took to their heels….” Shots were fired and twenty-two people were arrested, while spot fines of three dollars asked more questions about police corruption than it answered about their determination to eliminate the ring.49 Between 1860 and 1890 virtually every prizefighter at one time or another was arrested or had a warrant against him, with even the money men as far up as Richard K. Fox feeling their collars pinched. Promoters looked for innovative ways of evading the law, by hosting

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fights in remote hamlets or on large barges, on disputed land or rivers bordering two or more states, or countries; in later decades, Western states, with no laws proscribing the ring, were chosen.50 The Hyer-Sullivan fight showed the difficulty that the fancy now had if they wanted to watch a scrap. Thousands of them made their way to Baltimore and onto ships that would take them to the venue. The Baltimore Sun set the tone for the moral outrage of the hosts by calling the upcoming mill “[t]his great contest of man’s brutality” and castigating the steamboat operators, “parties claiming to be good citizens,” who were chartering their vessels to “professed violators of the laws of God and man”: We have also heard it roundly asserted that one at least of the parties is not only assured of gaining a victory, but expresses himself as confident of “killing his man,” thus coolly premeditating that which, under other circumstances, could not fail to secure his prompt arrest. What action our State authorities are taking … we have not heard, but hopes are entertained by all having the credit and good name of our commonwealth at stake that it will not be permitted to come off within out limits.51

The Maryland government was in no mood to allow the fight and prevented the boats from leaving the city harbor, while the fighting party was chased round the Chesapeake by a posse of constables and military that had been rounded up by Captain Gifford of Baltimore County. They thought they had arrested Sullivan in the middle of the night at a lighthouse on Pool’s Island, when Sullivan had a gun pulled on him as he tried to escape. But this was instead a second called Thomas O’Donnell dressed in Sullivan’s clothes. The real Yankee had been carried out on the shoulders of another second called McGrath, who waded out into the Chesapeake to a waiting schooner.52 The Baltimore Sun noted: “Nothing effectual towards the prevention of the fight was accomplished,” although the rest of the party was stranded on Pool’s Island. But with authorities nearby, it became imperative that the fight took place as soon as possible whether it was in “Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, or Hell.”53 Gifford refused to give up, and while Sullivan escaped back to New York, Hyer was arrested in Philadelphia.54 The fight coincided with efforts by the New York legislature to prevent fights and punish anyone involved, including the “sending or acceptance of a challenge to fight.”55 Baltimore was particularly hard on prizefights, even though the city never hosted any major scrap. It was the base for fight fans to take excursions to isolated spots further down Chesapeake Bay, and local citizens were sick of America’s lowest passing through their city. War was declared in 1872 under the leadership of Deputy State Attorney Frederick Pinkney, a veteran of chasing Sullivan and Hyer, and there was considerable short-term success, leading to the prediction of a “Death Blow” to the fistic art. The authorities resorted to “an unrepealed law of old standing on the statute books which gave the State authorities the right to protect the interests of sister states when any combination to violate the laws was discovered.” Virginia, the fight’s host, was seen as being in danger from the invasion of the fancy, and Maryland wouldn’t stand idly. The fact that the commonwealth itself was doing little to prevent excursions leaving from its own cities, and that the fight venue’s sheriff on the Cone River was willing to turn a blind eye to the mill, didn’t temper Pinkney’s resolve: “I have been fighting against fighters ever since [Hyer-Sullivan] and if you attempt to violate the law, either here or in Virginia, I’ll have you just where I had them.” Pinkney’s tactics included arresting fighters and getting them to pay two thousand dollars in bail bonds, while threatening the steamer owners and agents with arrest.56 His success led disappointed sports to drown their sorrows in the saloons of the Charm City, denouncing Baltimore as

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“an old fogey Bible backed” town: “There were curses and execrations, loud, long and deep and the indignation of the fancy at what they unanimously decided was an outrage upon them found vent in language more emphatic than refined. ‘What is to be done next?’ was the general question asked.” The Baltimore Sun reported, after the aborted Mace-O’Baldwin fight of 1872, that the fancy indulged “in bitter vituperation” towards the fighters: “The disappointment to this class in not witnessing a brutal and bloody exhibition seemed as great as though they had each missed some rare and beneficial enjoyment, and the famous fighters were denounced as cowards, being flatly accused of not desiring to fight.” 57 Mace was feeling a sense of déjà vu. His fight with Joe Coburn off the shores of Lake Erie had been interrupted the previous year by William L. Wilson, chief magistrate of Norfolk County, and his accompanying policemen, when they climbed into the ring shouting: “Gentlemen, this thing cannot be allowed to go on any longer.” Whether any “gentlemen” were in attendance is countered by the cries from frustrated onlookers of “Put him out!”— while in the progress of clearing the vessel, Wilson was relieved of a gold watch.58 With harassment continuing, fight organizers increasingly began to move fights further away from New York. The Goss-Ryan fight in 1880 witnessed the police on both sides of the American-Canadian border coming together to prevent it.59 John Sullivan’s scrap against the Cleveland-born Irishman John Donaldson in Cincinnati in December 1880 was eventually brought off despite police vigilance, but watched by a mere thirty to forty spectators in a back-street tavern. Police had looked out for any sign of a large crowd as members of the fancy hurried around the city center looking for the venue like British rave crowds a century later, but were tricked into thinking the fight would take place outside the city.60 The following day, the proprietor was arrested and had his license revoked while the cops searched for the fighters and spectators. Arrested, in court the pugs were dismissed by the judge, who contended that the state had failed to show it was a “prize fight” with money at stake.61 Jere Dunn had remained in Chicago following his acquittal for the murder of Jim Elliott long enough to be re-arrested on the charge of “aiding and abetting a prize fight.” The fall of 1884 saw Chicago clamp down on pugs living in the city. Spearheading the charge was the CPD’s Lieutenant John D. Shea, who declared his desire to drive out the sluggers. When the Chandler-Files mill, managed by Dunn, was followed by a fight on a farm in mid–October between two local pugs, Shea had the green light he wanted. While failing to stop either fight, Shea arrested Dunn, and he was only released when a former gasfitter friend stumped his $1,200 bail.62 The first trial collapsed after witnesses failed to turn up. Dunn was immediately re-arrested but charges were later dropped.63 Finding that all the hoodlums, politicians and sports who had stood by him during the Elliott trial had disappeared, Dunn took it as the sign to move on. He looked south to New Orleans, “attracted … by the wide-open policy” of the Crescent City, according to the Times-Picayune, and teamed up with the wrestler William Muldoon, arranging Sunday wrestling and boxing by renting a baseball park on Canal Street.64 The most successful event he promoted was the fight between “Nonpareil” Dempsey and Charles Bixamos — who also wrestled with Muldoon — where the New Orleans Picayune noted that for “the first time a number of the fairer sex looked on at such a contest here.”65 It wasn’t until the state of Louisiana allowed boxing under the Queensberry Rules in March 1890 that prizefighting became legal in New Orleans. Dale A. Somers explains that as the ring encountered strong Northern opposition in the mid-sixties onwards, the city became crucial to its survival:

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[T]he sport’s rise to national prominence in the late nineteenth century was closely related to developments in the Crescent City…. The American prize ring prospered because fighters and fans flouted laws prohibiting the sport and because one city ignored the prevailing national sentiment…. New Orleans, long renowned for its moral laxity, became the national center of prize fighting as local fans, promoters, and pugilists openly encouraged the sport. They either ignored objectionable municipal ordinances and state laws or persuaded officials to repeal or amend them.66

However, there is no such thing as a free meal; while the law still banned prizefighting, the mayor issued permits allowing fights, but with the lack of any alternative city, these didn’t come cheap. As Jere Dunn was to encounter, it was barely worth the hassle, and he soon found himself “starved out by the rapacity of the public officials…. It is needless to say that none of this money reached the city Treasury. The Mayor has directed the police to break up any enterprise that Dunn may connect himself with,” as the New York Times reported.67 He finally called it a day the following year, when the World’s Fair came to town, and moved back to New York.68 Meanwhile, the city’s future mayor, John Fitzpatrick, had also got into trouble with the law as arbiter of the John L. Sullivan-Jake Kilrain fight at Richburg, Mississippi, in July 1889. It was originally scheduled for New Orleans, but the threat of state militia intervention by Governor Francis Nicholls saw the fight moved from the Big Easy. Not that prizefighting was legal in Mississippi, but there was a feeling that there was more reluctance and less capability to prevent a fight, an impression that proved misguided. With Mike Donovan and William Muldoon representing Kilrain and Sullivan respectively, the local county sheriff appeared, “commanded the peace and retired,” an action the Atlanta Constitution commented was the “only effort on the part of the authorities to interfere with the fight.” Kilrain’s choice for ref was Pat Kenrick, also of the Big Easy, but Sullivan declared he had “only one name to present for the position of referee, and that one is known throughout the state as an upright, just and honest man,” John Fitzpatrick. While Kilrain’s second, Charlie Mitchell, continued to object, Fitzpatrick told the fighters and seconds he wasn’t an expert with the rules of the ring, “but the battle was to be a test of the manly art to a finish and I promise to do the best I can,” before clarifying that the thirty seconds between rounds will begin when one man falls.69 Sullivan won the fight after seventy-five rounds, but the exhausted bruisers were later arrested and sentenced to prison terms of one year and two months respectively, later reduced to fines on appeal. The New York Times reported: “About town, among the men who frown on prize fighting because of its brutality, the feeling was that Mississippi had done right in making of the Sullivan-Kilrain fight an example that would discourage such contests in the future.”70 From 1890 on, for three years Louisiana came under pressure to proscribe boxing from the usual suspects. People like the Reverend Clarence Greeley of the International Law and Order League, who argued that if the Northern press could close down the Louisiana State Lottery, it could close down boxing too.71 There then followed a court case involving the state attorney general, who demanded the forfeiture of the New Orleans Olympic Club charter, because it had hosted fights that were clearly more violent than “sparring matches.” He lost the case and the appeal, and it took another stiff from the ring to bring success. There was one last hurrah when the case, sent back to the District Court, got a reprieve from Judge Rightor, who summing up explained he saw no difference between a glove contest and a prizefight: “The [law] … neither defines the crime of prize fighting nor does

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it provide any penalty for the crime…. That a glove contest is as brutal and as dangerous as a prize fight was settled in the case of Lavigne vs. Andy Bowen. I find that prize fighting in Louisiana is a glove contest, and that a glove contest is a prize fight. It logically follows that there is no prohibition of glove contests in this State.”72 Two months later the Louisiana Supreme Court overruled Rightor. Justice McEnenry claimed that prizefighting at the Olympic was more than just bare knuckles: “[In] a prize contest for a purse, with or without gloves, there is, despite the customary shaking of hands, and the preliminary courtesies … an intention to do an injury and to break the public peace.” McEnenry also suggested that there could be no “reasonable objection” to boxing per se. “It is a manly, healthful and vigorous training and encouraged in some of our most respectable institutions.” Indeed, interference “by the legislative power would be a great stretch of authority bordering upon an infringement of personal liberty.” However, the decision, making the distinction between an “exhibition” and competitive punching, effectively killed off any form of professional pugilism in the Pelican State for another thirty years.73 In New York City, Mayor William Grace’s fallacious blustering over banning certain sports was the sort of pandering to the moralists that his job often entailed, while local Irish machine politicians worked on two fronts to aid prizefighting: the police, and their negligent aversion to enforce the letter of the law; and the courts, with their reluctance to hand out anything other than small fines. Gorn notes that boxers were now operating their trade “surreptitiously” in the environs already mentioned: “As long as belligerent parties were discreet, magistrates usually left them alone. When overzealous police did interfere, political influence and bribes often got fighters out of trouble.”74 As early as 1847, the New York Tribune spotted indifference in combating the ring, claiming: “It would take gaffs as long as pikes to prompt [the police] to their duties….”75 If the legal system in New York was going to turn a blind eye to the prize ring, there was even less inclination for it to clamp down on other Sunday sports. Police action was sporadic and smacked of the “call from above,” usually a reminder to hand over cash to the Tammany Orphans’ Fund, or pressure from loudmouthed lobby groups. Newspapers ran the occasional disclosure that the authorities were finally getting tough: “Entertainment, as it has come to be understood in this city, will be limited next Sunday. Besides attending church adn [sic] Sabbath school, New Yorkers may ride on the rapid transit lines or stay at home,” declared the New York Times in December 1907, following Justice James Aloysius O’Gorman’s “sweeping decision” concerning the Hammerstein Case, which eventually proved nothing more than hot air.76 Over the first two decades of the twentieth century, Celtic Park became one of the most notorious battlegrounds in the war over Sunday sports. In October 1902, the manager of Celtic Park, Joseph McKane; the president of the Association of Irish Athletes, Andrew J. Dargan, who was hosting the event; and a GNYIAA athlete, George Goerwitz, were arrested for violating of the Penal Code after a campaign by a group called the Law and Order Society.77 Two Irish-Americans — a Long Island City magistrate, Luke J. Connorton, and New York State Senator Victor J. Dowling — secured what the Sporting Life optimistically described as “a decision that will materially affect the athletic clubs and other organizations of this State that are in the habit of holding their members’ games on Sunday.” In Long Island City’s court, Connorton dismissed the case, contending: “Athletic games on Sunday, when participated in by members of an organization such as amateurs … would cause no breach of public peace, and as there was no disturbance in the neighborhood the games

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were entirely within the law.” The Sporting Life remarked: “It is possible now that this decision will prohibit further interference with cross-country runs, golf matches, bicycle races and other events that are usually scheduled on Sunday for those that are unable to take part in such club pastimes during the week.”78 It didn’t. The following year, in November 1903, a Gaelic football referee, Charles O’Connor, was arrested at the Irish Volunteers Annual Field Day at Celtic Park: “The moment … O’Connor, as umpire, put the ball in play, Police Officers Kennedy and Donnelly of the Seventy-Fifth Precinct placed the umpire under arrest for violating the Sabbath Law,” wrote the New York Times. Present that day was Connorton, who promptly held a court session and paroled O’Connor until the following Thursday. Although there was no attempt to play the game, the Volunteers held an “indignation meeting” where they slammed the NYPD commissioner, while the GNYAA claimed that as no admission had been charged, no law was actually violated.79 In 1905, Mr. Hooper of the Sabbath Observance Society, and New York’s Finest came to Celtic Park seeking to criminalize athletic pursuits on the Lord’s Day of Rest. Once again athletes were targeted, with sprinter Lawson Robertson, club coach Ernest Hjertberg, and a ticket seller, Charles J. Barron, arrested on charges of “alleged violation of the Sunday Laws.” Once more Connorton dealt with the case, and once more he dismissed it. He was also scathing in his comments, being particularly miffed at the reply he got when he asked where the headquarters of the SOS was: “Let them stay over there [in Manhattan] and attend to their own business.” He also slammed the Queens Borough “authorities,” by suggesting that they “could attend to any violators of the law in that borough without assistance” from such societies.80 A year later, in April 1906, a riot almost broke out when Kennedy and another IrishAmerican “detective” by the name of Pendergast went to Celtic Park to stop a Gaelic football benefit for the victims of the San Francisco earthquake. Sauntering across the field, they arrested the referee and the two captains, provoking the crowd to make “a rush for the cops with the tender morals” and only the intervention of “some men of prominence who advised letting the law, as exemplified by the two fellows, take its course” saved them. The Evening World wrote with undisguised sarcasm: “‘What?’ said these conservators of the city’s morals, ‘a football game on Sunday? And for charity? Fie, fie!’ Accordingly they hied themselves to Celtic Park, passing in the great and viriuous haste several saloons that were open in violation of the excise law.” At the Long Island City police station, Connorton once more dealt with blue law infringements and he was far from happy. According to the Evening World, he “gave vent to a few remarks” about “the overwhelming intelligence” of the police in arresting the players, when there are theatrical performances all over the city.81 Meanwhile, back at Celtic Park, the game continued as soon as the cops had left. Following O’Gorman’s declaration in 1907, the I-AAC had to reconsider when to host games: “The Sunday athletic exercises at Celtic Park make a fine, clean show. But the decision cuts it out,” Police Commissioner Theodore Bingham declared.82 This clampdown withered away eventually and it was eight more years before there was another high profile, if farcical, attack on Sunday sports at Laurel Hill. This time Jeremiah Gorman, a schoolboy athlete from the Holy Cross Lyceum on Forty-Third Street and one of a hundred and fifty competitors of a “novice road race,” was stopped and handed a summons by Sergeant John Casey while a number of Irish-American politicians, including Congressman Peter J. Dooling, State Senator Thomas McManus and State Assemblyman Charles D. Donohue, watched. The school had already got wind of police interference and it was decided that Gorman would receive the summons and be represented in court by a lawyer.83 In court

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Magistrate Krotel threw out the case, declaring “that the individual athlete could not be held responsible if there was a violation of the Sabbath law, and that if an arrest was deemed necessary the officials of the race should have been apprehended.” But his decisions still left the I-AAC, in the view of the New York Times, “as much in doubt as ever regarding their right to promote road races in the city streets on the Sabbath….”84 Krotel was perhaps being pedantic with the facts, but if he was hostile to the blue laws he was clearly not alone. One of the most notorious anti–blue law judges was Francis X. McQuade, who would later become a part owner of the Giants in 1919.85 Two years earlier he was the local magistrate up in Washington Heights presiding over a case against John McGraw and the Cincinnati Reds’ manager, Christy Mathewson, for contravening the blue laws. McQuade not only dismissed any charges but even commended the pair for giving away all proceeds to the dependents of the Sixty-Ninth Regiment: “It is my opinion that there was no infraction of any statute. Playing ball on the first day of the week, when not amounting to any serious interruption of the repose and religious liberty of the community, is not a violation…. There is not a scintilla of evidence of any one … being disturbed.”86 O’Gorman’s 1907 pronouncement proved largely toothless, provoking a united front that included German-American leaders who threatened to mobilize their political strength, trade unions, and theaters that resorted to injunctions to protect themselves from police interference. The problem for the likes of Mayor Grace and Justice O’Gorman was that hostility to the blue laws extended further than the odd magistrate. In the Northeastern immigrant-filled cities there was growing dissent from Grace’s constituency, even extending to some on the wing of Christianity most hostile to Sunday sports, like the YMCA. The Reverend C.M. Eyster from East Baltimore’s German United Evangelical Church saw no theological objection to “unpaid sport,” telling the Baltimore Sun: Under existing conditions [Sunday sportsmen] know that if they engage in those innocent sports they will make themselves liable to arrest. Incensed at such a restriction, when men of wealth seek their country homes or clubs, play golf and indulge in similar restrictions, our boys and youths leave the city for resorts at Back River and other places of like character. There they are subjected to temptations of the worst sort.87

As far back as 1888, James E. Sullivan, not exactly a radical himself, criticized the boycott of the Pastime AC by the NYAC that led to the destruction of the NAAAA, sniffing: “They say the Pastimes were rejected by the [NAAAA] on account of Sunday games…. We preferred the Amateur Union, because it was more enterprising than its rival.”88 There were also the double standards. As “Big” Tim’s biographer Richard Welch highlights, the poorer immigrant population knew full well that much of this campaign against Sunday recreation and alcohol sales was “hatched in private clubs that were immune from the strictures of early closing and Sunday blue laws.”89 These exclusive joints, offering the rich sports like tennis and golf, were able to play host to Sunday sports with little fear of the law come knocking. Within politics, “Big” Tim Sullivan worked in the New York State Senate on removing the blue laws and the statutes outlawing boxing, while simultaneously protecting moneymaking theaters that operated on Sunday. In 1907 “Dry Dollar” argued: “The best way to ruin a cosmopolitan city like ours, which virtually lives off our visiting strangers, is to enforce or keep on the statute books such blue laws which don’t belong in our age.”90 Thus was boosted his reputation as a representative of the downtrodden immigrant. His cousin, “Little” Tim Sullivan, as the Tammany leader of the Board of Alderman, fought successfully in late 1907 to have the city ordinances forbidding Sunday baseball and other forms of entertainment removed.91

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Assaults on the ban on the ring came thick and fast from reformers over the years. The Horton Law legalized boxing in New York, making it the only state in the U.S. to allow the sport, although still banning sparring bouts for money, a requirement that was universally ignored by way of under-the-counter payments.92 The sport’s growing popularity among the immigrant working class, coupled with the gambling “menace” and Tammany’s support, saw the Albany legislature come under pressure to repeal the act. The Horton Law was replaced with the Lewis Law in August 1900, which outlawed boxing except for three-round “exhibitions” in private clubs with supposedly strict membership rules. Irish faces dominated these establishments: the National Sporting Club, with only 300 members, was “controlled” by Frank Farrell and James Gaffney, while Tim Sullivan ran the National Athletic Club. The obvious drawback to mass spectator participation was overcome by members applying at the door. Despite denying they did this, the NAC grabbed three thousand extra members this way.93 The Lewis Law forced the big fights out to Nevada. The Frawley Act of 1911, introduced by James J. Frawley, added a formal organization, the New York State Athletic Commission, to oversee the sport, complete with licensing, doctor’s examinations, and a ban on alcohol sales at fights.94 One last attempt to eradicate the sport from the state was made in 1917, when a returning Republican administration in Albany, following the death of Young McDonald in a nearby ring in January 1917, repealed Frawley’s law. Governor Charles S. Whitman lent his support, telling the New York Times: “In the interest of public morals, I deem it my duty … to ask for the repeal of this statute.”95 Meanwhile, the case against McGraw and Mathewson was the final attempt to prevent Sunday sports in the Big Apple. New York’s blue laws were voted out of existence by the city’s aldermen on April 30, 1919, by 64 to 0. The Brooklyn borough president, Frank L. Dowling, declared: “I am going to add a commandment to the ten, making it eleven, and it is, ‘Thou shalt play ball on Sunday, a healthy regulation, but thou shalt not be disorderly.’”96 In an era of growing labor discontent which included the Haymarket bombing in Chicago of May 1886 by anarchists, baseball players of the mid–1880s were increasingly drawn into the world of labor agitation. As sportsmen, they were unique. In contrast, prizefighters were still paid a cut of a purse, and made money on side bets for a job that was almost universally illegal, yet “retained the freedom associated with artisans, who were rapidly losing ground to industrialization.”97 Other sportsmen remained strictly amateurs, although they too would rail against exploitation. In what became hyped as a “mutiny” by the journalist John F. Kieran, Pat McDonald and the swimmer Norman Ross led American athletes traveling to the 1920 Olympics in protest of the awful conditions of two weeks spent on board the USS Princess Matoika, which almost didn’t make it in time for them to have proper training before the games.98 Here the male competitors endured the troop quarters and prehistoric training facilities, almost causing McDonald to miss the games after he strained ligaments in his right thumb throwing a medicine ball in foggy weather on deck.99 In contrast to both of the above, baseball players were the only athletes in the United States in the late nineteenth century who worked for businesses. Teams were no longer “clubs” with “members,” but “franchises” with “employees,” and “employers” weren’t shy of resorting to the law to combat their underlings. It was William Hulbert, desperate to close down the instability caused by sportsmen exercising their right to sell their labor to the highest bidder and jumping from one club to another for better pay or conditions, who introduced the detested “Reserve Clause” that lasted almost a century. Initially this allowed

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each club to “reserve” five players whom other teams could not approach or sign. By 1883, teams from both the NL and the younger AA League could reserve up to eleven players, increasing to fourteen in 1887.100 Initially this “gentleman’s agreement” was to prevent the rich clubs — ironically including Hulbert’s White Stockings — from cornering the market in players. But Hulbert’s enthusiasm betrayed another advantage: the clause drove players’ wages down. As Benjamin Rader explains, unhappy “reserved” players had two unattractive options: hold out and lose money and hope to get a better contract, or quit professional baseball altogether: [T]he reserve clause … remained the backbone of management’s control of the players. Containing a provision that bound a player to his team for a year after his initial contract had expired, the clause in effect allowed the club that first signed an athlete a lifetime option on that player’s services…. The reserve clause also made it possible for clubs to buy and sell player contracts, or, in non-legalistic parlance, to buy and sell players. 101

Ostensibly, the reserve clause was legally questionable: common law declared a contract could be deemed void if one of the parties didn’t agree to it, or if it was deemed unreasonable, such as by binding “the employee for a long period or ‘perpetual servitude.’” Later changes from strict mutuality to “sufficient exchange of consideration” saw the courts reluctant to side with the players, as their salaries — twice those of the average craftsman — offset their lack of contractual freedom. Troublesome players were informally blacklisted as professional leagues worked together to create unofficial cartels in agreeing to share their own disciplinary punishments, while the paying public, often poor themselves, were unsympathetic.102 Only upstart leagues — the Union Association or the Federal League — proved a threat. The Secretary of the UA in 1884 refused “to be bound” to the reserve clause, claiming his league’s stance had assured “us of the good-will of every player in the country.”103 However, as Voight notes: “[R]egardless of their humanitarian claims, these intruders were also profit-makers,” and if a deal could be struck about accommodating the “Onions” as a major league, out would go any proposal to dispose of the reserve clause.104 Things were coming to a head in 1886: as the season started, the two major leagues set a wage cap of $2000, while the number of games increased each year.105 At the end of the 1885, secret meetings of several players from the Irish-dominated New York Giants had agreed to the founding of a players’ trades union, the Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players, on October 22, 1885. Led by the non– Irish John Montgomery Ward, a trained lawyer, and assisted by six Irish colleagues — Roger Connor, Tim Keefe, Mickey Welch, Mike Dorgan, Danny Richardson and Jim O’Rourke — it was the first labor association of any sporting profession.106 Tim Keefe, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on New Year’s Day 1857 to Irish parents Patrick and Mary, Players’ labor rights champion Tim Keefe (Library of Congress).

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became the Brotherhood’s first secretary-treasurer and wrote the union’s constitution. When Tim was four, his father, working on a construction project in the South during the Civil War, was interned by the Confederate government for refusing to fight against the Union army that two of his brothers had joined and later died for. This harrowing episode changed Keefe Senior, and on his return he cajoled the young Timothy to study hard. Like many another aspiring immigrant’s son, Keefe’s interest lay with baseball, which angered Patrick. But he went on to have a successful career, becoming one of the game’s top pitchers and league leader in various categories for most of the 1880s.107 He developed a sidearm pitch that was fast and didn’t damage the arm through constant repetitiveness, and was also credited with inventing the “slow ball.”108 The complete opposite of so many of his coethnic contemporaries, he was “reserved and studious, not given to drinking or raucous partying,” and it was his strict upbringing that in the end moved Keefe, who had never attended college, to better himself. His intelligence and consciousness of not only his class and ethnicity, but also how the baseball magnates were abusing baseball players, moved him to embroil himself in the Brotherhood. Another of these informed athletes was James Henry “Orator” O’Rourke, one of a pair of brothers who played in the majors. His brother John had been one of those “troublesome” players Hulbert had kicked out of the game: while John was playing three seasons for the Boston Red Caps and the New York Metropolitans between 1879 and 1883, a good job on the railways and his trade unionist militancy managed to price him out of the game. Jim O’Rourke, meanwhile, became a future Hall of Famer by attaining the twenty-second highest number of runs scored in the majors, and performing in four separate decades — from his debut for the Middletown Mansfields in 1872 to one solitary game for the Giants in 1904, aged 54. Like Ward, O’Rourke became a lawyer; a graduate of Yale in 1887, acquired his nickname through his noted colorful rants. He was also an innovator, in that he was credited in the late 1870s as one of the first catchers to wear a mask, principally so as not to look like a prizefighter.109 When baseball legalized the overhand pitch in 1884, he was player-manager of the Buffalo Bisons, where, along with Deacon White, he developed a thick rubber chest protector to protect the catcher’s body from fast balls.110 Before long, chapters of the union were founded in all eight National League cities, with Irish-Americans like Ned Hanlon in Pittsburgh, Dan Brouthers in Boston, and James Fogarty in Philadelphia, making up some of Ward’s top lieutenants. It was the offloading of “King” Kelly to Boston in 1887 that proved part of the catalyst that forced the union to act. Kelly had no say where Albert Spalding sent him, nor did he receive any part of the ten grand transaction fee, although he got a $3,000 “photo fee” from the Beaneaters, and the generosity of local baseball cranks.111 Then Ward found out from Spalding that new wage limits were to be introduced, as well as a grading system for players that depended not only on playing abilities but also “personal habits.”112 Both Ward and Keefe eschewed strikes, seeing “profit-sharing” with sympathetic venture capitalists as the answer. Keefe claimed that the Brotherhood was founded to merely gain basic rights for its members, “rights” as he insisted “that every laborer in the land is entitled to.”113 He wasn’t anti-capitalist, having set up a sporting goods business, Keefe and Becannon.114 He later designed smart new uniforms for his team with the help of his wife Clara, “a statuesque sculptress and suffragette,” and her sister and Ward’s wife, the actress Helen Dauvray.115 When Spalding refused to talk to the Brotherhood until after the season ended, Keefe could not contain his anger. Recalling it years later, he saw the snub as “the crowning point to the arrogant despotism of these dictators, and the players revolted at this

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contemptuous disregard of their rights as men and laborers.”116 On November 5, 1889, the Brotherhood announced that they were deserting the majors and seeking businessmen willing to buy stock in a new league. O’Rourke, Hanlon and Brouthers joined Ward and Chicago’s Fred Pfeffer on a committee to draw up a statement for public consumption. Meanwhile, the baseball magnates were enraged, and according to the New York Times, would “spare neither pains nor expense to kill the movement and punish the ringleaders.”117 It’s easy to mistake the Players’ League as perhaps the nearest thing to a socialistic utopia that American labor history has ever seen. Its sporting Paris Commune, Munich Soviet, or for those who find this all too, well, communist, its own Prague Spring. The reality was different: it may well have been “a unique experiment in American labor relations” in which the players, despite being employees, shared in the partnership of running of the clubs and leagues.118 But “the Great War to End All Baseball Wars,” as Mike Roer mockingly calls it, while at first glance “a class conflict between labor and capital,” had much more in common with the other five baseball “wars,” as a another conflict between rival team owners.119 The Brotherhood’s plan had one major, and ultimately fatal, flaw: the Players’ League’s solitary season will be remembered as being “undermined in large measure by the new group of owners brought in by the players to help finance the operation … [who] found that they had more in common with the National League owners than they did with their own players.” It also proved “that there is more to winning than having the law on one’s side.”120 The players had got into bed with men who weren’t interested in workers’ rights, or even baseball, but just making money. To prove this, Spalding and his fellow magnates’ success at breaking the league hinged on making deals with the PL backers as much as rogue players or lawyers. Of course, they went the cheap route first, seeking to bust the new league by using the courts to enforce contracts, or by using U.S. Marshals to harass and intimidate players, like the one who accosted Keefe as he was about to leave New York for Princeton.121 They then sought to strangle the PL by playing games at the same time as their city rivals, but failed as the PL still drew 100,000 more fans.122 Then the National League dangled the carrot of increased wages to those who would come back. According to Spalding’s memoirs, the potless “King” Kelly was offered ten grand, and after taking a long walk around Chicago, no doubt thinking about the debts that could be cleared and the lemonade he could drink outside the hours of darkness, Kelly declined, declaring: “I can’t go back on the boys.”123 Finally, with everybody losing money, the NL started “picking off ” the PL capitalists “one by one and dismembering the enemy league piece by piece.”124 Ward and Keefe both suspected a growing treachery, but were powerless to act. In the end the New York Times observed the lack of mourn- Ned Hanlon, the man who put knives into the ing of the PL’s death: “As a rule baseball men Players’ League’s back (Library of Congress).

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are as silent as oysters, but yesterday they made a new departure. They were very comunitive and as happy as clams. They told of the downfall of the Players’ League without shedding tears….”125 Ned Hanlon, the Brotherhood’s man in the Steel City and probably the biggest IrishAmerican name in management at the time, was one of those sticking the knives in. The Montville, Connecticut-born son of an Irish carpenter, Hanlon had been a player-manager in Pittsburgh since the beginning of the 1889 season, having started out in Cleveland in 1880 before crossing Lake Erie to the Detroit Wolverines, where his leadership as captain was cited as the key factor in their 1887 pennant success.126 He was described as “a shrewd Irisher” by the baseball author Fred Lieb, and a horse-trading genius in the mold of Edward Noyes Westcott’s character David Harum, with Lieb claiming: “The custom of earlier Connecticut traders in disposing of wooden nutmegs to guileless victims was nothing to some of the trades Hanlon worked off on unsuspecting National League club owners and managers.”127 In 1890, Hanlon secretly met with the Allegheny’s treasurer William Kerr to cover his bases. While only the foolish would believe the PL capitalists would behave any differently, it was sickening to see a fellow “brother” gaining an assurance that should the PL fail, he would get his old job back as well as a seat on the board of directors.128 As the debris settled, he could feel satisfied that he had had a good war. Hanlon returned to the renamed Pirates, who had merged with the Burghers, but was let go mid-season after a player rebellion over his demands that they lay off the booze. Ned was replaced by the Boston-born Billy McGunnigle as he went onto huge success at Baltimore.129 Meanwhile other PL franchises in New York, Chicago, and Brooklyn, merged with their NL neighbors, while Connie Mack’s Buffalo Bisons were out on their own. Like many other players, he had invested a minimum of $500, his entire life savings, for a meager two and a half percent share of the Bisons stock. Now it was all gone, and all he was left with was a pregnant wife of eight months.130 Norman L. Macht writes: “Mack was poorer but wiser about the business of baseball. You could lose a lot of ball games in a season; that he already knew. As part owner of a club, you could lose a lot of money too. That was a new experience for him.”131 Ted Davis adds: “All of the franchises lost money, and when the venture was abandoned at the end of the season, Connie had lost everything. At 28 years of age, he found himself with as much as he had when he started out in pro ball six years earlier: nothing.”132 Charles Comiskey had left St. Louis and an eight-thousand-dollar salary to manage the Chicago PL team with no assurance of being paid, merely delighted to be back in his hometown. Now he was on his way back to the Gateway City with his tail between his legs for one last season. He too had also learned the harsh lesson that the “player and promoter could not travel in the same harness.”133 There’s no doubting there was an air of idealism within both men, but the experience perhaps provided the final irony, ultimately turning this particular pair of innocents into two of the biggest penny-pinching owners of the type they had once fought so hard to unseat.

9 Big Shots — The Irish and Sporting Management The term “shot” comes from “seód: a warrior, a hero, a valiant person.”1

Baseball’s failed experiment in socialism returned the players back to impotency. A huge influx of staff from the minor leagues had filled the gaps left by the top players deserting to the PL, and with the latter now seeking to return, the owners could pick and choose who they wanted back. The number of games was also increasing: from seventy in 1876 to 139 games 1891, with 154 set for 1892.2 For the National League, there was to be no humility or reconciliation; Spalding smugly declared through his own private mouthpiece: “Out of evil cometh good, says the Scriptures, and the saying is emphasized by the eventual outcome of the revolutionary period of 1890 and 1891….”3 For Connie Mack and Charlie Comiskey, both seeing out their own playing careers, the most important lesson learned was “that if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” As Steven A. Riess explains, baseball ownership “was for the new urban folk … primarily men of new affluence, often Irish Catholics or German Jews.” Clubs were franchises with exclusive rights within a league, where competition was eliminated through either fair means (success and well treatment of customers) or foul (political interference). But as Riess also acknowledges, while making money was important, baseball allowed these owners to gain “acceptance, status, and respectability.”4 The first baseball magnates were WASPs like William Hulbert with few Irish — like John Morrissey — having the finance to buy a baseball club outright, or seeing that it was expedient to do so. In Chicago, the billiards professional Tom Foley helped organize the original White Stockings in 1869 through his desire to end the dominance of the Cincinnati Reds. Already heavily involved with the early roots of the game in the Windy City, being listed as the Excelsior club’s chairman in 1867, Foley managed the side and took the star-filled club into the NA. The White Stockings did overtake the Reds but lost the initial NA pennant to Philadelphia. The final month of the season saw the Great Chicago Fire decimate the club, destroying uniforms and the club’s Union Grounds. Chicago would sit out of the National Association for the next two seasons, and would have to wait for the birth of the National League in 1876 to win its first title.5 The Reds were owned by the less colorful character of “Colonel” George B. Ellard, who like Morrissey and Foley was also born in Ireland, seeing his first light in 1829. He 176

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arrived in Cincinnati in 1852, eventually setting up the largest sporting goods shop in the West.6 Ellard was probably of Protestant stock, as evidenced by his being both a prominent local Freemason, and by 1867, the president of the Union Cricket Club.7 In 1866, he had helped found the Resolutes Baseball Club, and by the following summer he had become manager of what would become known as the Cincinnati Red Stockings.8 A decade later in 1883, the year the Brooklyn Bridge was completed, a “feisty IrishAmerican,” Charles H. Byrne, his brother-in-law Joseph J. Doyle, and friends George Taylor and Ferdinand Abell, saw an opening for a baseball club in America’s biggest city yet to have one: Brooklyn.9 With his property background, Byrne was perfectly positioned to provide the land for the ballpark between Fourth and Fifth Avenues, and smoothed the team’s transition to the National League in the 1890 season.10 The Brooklyn Daily Eagle remarked on his death in 1898: “The history of modern base ball is contemporaneous with the active life of [Byrne]. Those qualities which make base ball a national game and give to it all the allurements of a fascination, were indirectly attributable to the endeavors of Mr. Byrne.”11 In contrast to Doyle, who ran a gambling house on Ann Street, Manhattan, Byrne was a former law student of Francis Xavier College, a journalist, and a former employee of the Union Pacific in Omaha before moving into the real estate business.12 He bought a franchise in the Interstate League, put Doyle in as manager, and employed most of the players from the disbanded Camden Merritts.13 By the end of the year the quartet had clearly seen that their baby was too big for the minors, at which time Byrne sold his franchise and replaced it with one in the American Association. Top-grade baseball was returning to Kings County for the first time in two decades. Named predictably the Atlantics, the side took on various nicknames before being known as the (Trolley) Dodgers.14 Byrne also ruthlessly oversaw the purchase and ultimate obliteration of the New York Metropolitans in 1886, and the absorption of the Players League’s Brooklyn Ward’s Wonders. Unlike many other owners, Byrne had steered his own club through the PL season by matching whatever the rebels were offering their players, gaining “the support of the players, who refused to transfer their allegiance because of Mr. Byrne’s generous treatment at all times.” 15 In an era of tightfisted club presidents, Byrne was a progressive employer, the club becoming “famous amongst base ball people as a place where employees received better care than anywhere else.” While moving to the remote Eastern Park proved a poor decision financially,16 Byrne managed the team for three seasons before recognizing his shortcomings, with the Brooklyn Eagle writing: “It was an open secret that Mr. Byrne was a hard loser….”17 He handed over managing to Bill McGunnigle in 1888, who then won two pennants (1889 and 1890) in two separate leagues, plus the “World Series” of 1890. Doyle died in 1896, while Byrne, the “Napoleon of Baseball,” passed away two years later. 18 Despite all this, his funeral was poorly attended by the baseball fraternity, with just five baseball players and a “smattering” of club owners turning up.19 The legacy of both Doyle and Byrne became part of the controversial experiment of “syndicate baseball,” as Harry Von der Horst and Ned Hanlon picked up the remnants of the club. For Hanlon this meant having a finger in two teams, a ten percent stake in Brooklyn and the manager’s job with a controlling interest in Baltimore, where exchanging players was unhindered and no money changed hands.20 When Van der Horst sold his share to Charles Ebbets, an embittered Hanlon spent three years challenging Ebbets’s control of the club, eventually selling his stock and going back to manage the Cincinnati Reds. He had failed to acquire his own club, and only briefly returned in 1914 as part of the Federal League’s Baltimore franchise.21

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How Connie Mack, John McGraw and Charles Comiskey remained in the game, and moreover became the most famous Irish-American baseball personalities of the twentieth century, is partly thanks to Ted Sullivan. Timothy Paul Sullivan was born in County Clare in 1851 and played just four major league games when acting as manager for the Kansas City Cowboys in 1884. He started in the majors as the AA’s St. Louis Browns manager, before moving to the local Maroons of the Union Association and laying the foundation for a massive 94–19 championship season total for the Gateway City side. Sullivan wasn’t the first Irish-born baseball manager in the majors — Tommy Bond had managed the lastplaced Worcester Ruby Legs for one season in 1882 — but he remains, out of the eight Irishborn managers in the majors, the only one to have won a pennant.22 Sullivan’s chief talent lay in scouting and organizing leagues, remaining one of the most important pioneering administrators of the game. He was, according to Alfred H. Spink, “the best judge of a ball player in America, the man of the widest vision in the baseball world, who predicted much for the National game years ago, and whose predictions have all come true.”23 He was a student of St. Mary’s College near Topeka, Kansas, and it was there that he first bumped into Comiskey. Although eight years older than “the Old Roman,” Sullivan had apparently furthered his studies while helping out in the athletic department.24 The pair became lifelong friends, with Charles marrying Sullivan’s wife’s sister.25 Sullivan moved to Dubuque, Iowa, taking over a news agency. Bored, he moved into baseball promotion, founding the Dubuque Rabbits club in 1878, where he offered Comiskey fifty bucks a month to play. He also created the Northwestern League, which Spink claims was “the first minor league ever known.”26 Comiskey was born on August 15, 1859, in the booming city of Chicago, the third of ward politician “Honest” John and Annie Comiskey’s eight children. John Comiskey was originally from Crosserlough in County Cavan, and worked himself up in the lumber business in New Haven before moving to Chicago and eventually becoming alderman of the Tenth Ward, serving two terms before and after the Civil War.27 In 1882 Comiskey joined the St. Louis Brown Stockings of the new American Association. Sullivan, with his own experience of running a league, had been one of its principal founders, and such was his influence that Alfred Spink goes as far as stating that it was mostly through him that the new league finally took off.28 Comiskey’s recommendation to the Browns’ owner Chris Von der Ahe helped Sullivan get the post as the club manager, but his tenure was short-lived; he departed in 1883 to help establish the Union Association, leaving the young Comiskey as his successor. At just twenty-three, Comiskey was one of the youngest managers the major leagues have ever seen. Sullivan saw the potential of taking the game out of the big cities of the Northeast and Midwest and into smaller urban areas, like Cleveland, Milwaukee and Kansas City, that would one day be part of the major leagues. He is also credited with establishing or reviving other minor leagues: he was involved in reforming a brief Western League in 1885 with teams stretching from Kansas City and Omaha to Toledo and Cleveland, and then reviving the Northwestern League the following season. It was renamed Western Association in 1888, and he cheekily placed a team in Chicago, as well as other major Midwest towns ignored by the AA and NL, until its death in 1892.29 Others included: the Texas League in 1895; the Atlantic League in 1900; the Northwest League and Texas League again in 1901 and 1902, respectively, and in 1904 the Virginia League. Minor leagues are now little more than feeders into the majors, but a century ago, with the NL restricted by transport and geography from expansion, minor leagues were

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important, if volatile, baseball organizations in their own right; and Sullivan was critical in the era before radio, let alone television, in making baseball into a truly national sport, by bringing the professional game to many outposts of America.30 As Neil Sullivan, author of The Minors, explains, Sullivan “was perhaps the principal figure in minor league baseball during the nineteenth century. No one was more responsible for spreading professional baseball beyond the Northeast. He provided the skills that organized baseball in the South and Midwest, stabilizing the game into thriving leagues.”31 With transport and communications improving and small towns blossoming into cities, minor league magnates sought to upgrade. A second Western League was revived in November 1893, picking some teams from the wreckage of the Players’ League and the American Association, strengthening itself into a position that would eventually break the NL monopoly a decade later.32 This “American League” was planned as early as 1898, and Sullivan was crucial to its success, energetically touring and scouting for cities in the Northeast and Midwest as suitable sites for franchises. In late 1898, at an “obscure” hotel in Chicago to avoid alerting what Spink termed “an unfriendly press,” a meeting was organized and attended by Sullivan and others to launch this new major league. Also invited was the head of the Western League, the man who would become the newer, equally energetic, and charismatic successor to Sullivan, Ban Johnson. And beside him was Charles Comiskey.33 Comiskey had first met Johnson, the sports editor of the Cincinnati CommercialGazette, when managing the Reds. It was said both had discussed reviving the Western League while in the Ten-Minute Club, a drinking den on Cincinnati’s Vine Street where the hard-drinking Johnson felt at home, due to its “ten minute rule” of either ordering a drink or being shown the door.34 In 1894 Comiskey was still under contract in Cincinnati and the new league was obviously a step down, but it offered him one thing the NL couldn’t: his own franchise. At the end of the year he bought the poorly supported Sioux City Cornhuskers, with forty-two thousand annual customers, and moved it to St. Paul, Minnesota, turning down a better contract at the Reds and “a sure thing, for the dubious privilege of becoming his own boss.”35 Comiskey hardly made a mint with the Apostles, but the experience of running on such a tight budget, in a league that within two years was looked upon as the “strongest minor ever,” proved priceless.36 Both men turned up in Chicago deeply concerned about the impact on the WL franchises. But it was Sullivan who convinced the pair that the Western League was perfect as a major league. Comiskey had long noted that there were many cities in the land mass between Chicago and Omaha and Kansas City to the west, as well as smaller cities, like Detroit and Buffalo, going east without a major league team, eager for top-level baseball. The Southern League (along with the Texan League) collapsed mid-season in 1898, due to the Spanish-American War, leaving even more geographical space.37 A further meeting was proposed at Chicago’s Great Northern Hotel and within a year the new league was given the working title of the American Association of Baseball Clubs.38 War was declared. Also present was another future Irish managerial star, John McGraw, now a twentyfive-year-old player, and Hanlon’s man on the field.39 Within three seasons of Hanlon’s mov ing to Baltimore, he had dumped the deadweight boozers and assembled an obdurate team that was to win three pennants on the bounce between 1894 and 1896. This was the team that the umpire and future head of the National League, John Heydler, described as “mean, vicious, ready at any time to maim a rival player or an umpire, if it helped their cause… .”40 With a combative playing style and a tendency to resort to violence and intimidation

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that would be known as “Irish” baseball in the most negative use of the adjective, the conductor of this mayhem was McGraw. Hired by his predecessor Billy Barnie, McGraw impressed Hanlon as an “intelligent, competitive youngster with a fanatical will to win.”41 Under his wing Hanlon groomed McGraw into one of the greatest baseball leaders, advising him: “If you can bridle that Irish temper of yours you could develop into a real manager.”42 But McGraw’s desire to attend the 1898 meeting had been stoked not only by a desire to move up the ladder. Other issues included being hassled by the NL over his behavior and his own disgust at “Syndicate Baseball” that had rendered the Orioles the de facto farm side of the Brooklyn Superbas. For the players wishing to get into ownership, the Players’ League gave them their first opportunities, and their first The incorrigible John McGraw, pictured in 1913 (Library of bitter taste of baseball own ership. Unlike Comiskey or Congress). McGraw, Mack’s career since the PL had been virtually anonymous.43 In the following decade, while regaining his reputation as a manager, Connie Mack craved owning his own team. Yet despite his losses in the PL, he wasn’t put off by the necessity of investing more money. In 1896, after three innocuous seasons as manager, he was sidelined by the Pirates for Patsy Donovan. Out of the game for four years, Mack saw the American League as a godsend, helping him to get back into the majors. When a letter arrived from Johnson asking him to come to Chicago to discuss running the WL’s Milwaukee franchise, owned by two lawyers-cum-politicians, Henry Killilea — described once in the Sporting Life as “a big, jovial, warm-hearted Irishman [who] set a rapid pace at the bar”— and his brother Matthew, he wasted no time deciding.44 Without the AL it is doubtful that Mack would have forged that formidable managerial career that saw him inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame’s second year. The Killileas had confidence in Mack, telling him: “You’re in charge. Handle the club as if it belonged to you. Engage the players you think will strengthen the team without consulting me or any directors of the club.”45 In later years Mack recalled his time by Lake Michigan as doing “most everything up there” but sell tickets: “We didn’t have the luxury of a road secretary or a business manager. Managing … was only part of my job; I signed the players, made the trades, arranged our transportation, found hotels and paid all the bills. It certainly was a valuable education.”46 The American League ultimately succeeded where the Union League, Players League and American Association had failed. Desperate for people with both knowledge of the game and a hunger to become successful, Ban Johnson offered opportunities to own teams. Between 1901 and 1920, seven out of the AL’s eight franchises had been under Irish or Irish-

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American ownership, complimenting the five out of eight NL franchises National League the Irish owned.47 Jimmy Collins claimed in 1904: “Just as Irish ball players have contributed their share in placing baseball where it is today, so have men of Irish blood risked their money in promoting the game.”48 Johnson finalized the plans for the Western League to finally go major in Chicago on October 14, 1900. Three of the four cities that were dropped by the National League at the end of the 1899 season — Baltimore, Cleveland, and Washington, D.C.— were included, while Johnson announced a direct challenge to the NL in Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston. Chicago naturally went to Comiskey, but on the proviso that he stayed on the South Side, while Killilea got Milwaukee. As for Mack and McGraw, Muggsy and Wilbert Robinson were granted Baltimore, while Connie Mack’s management contract meant he had total control over Philadelphia and the opportunity to buy a quarter of the team.49 Curiously, though, there was no initial challenge in New York. John McGraw barely lasted more than one season in the AL, clearly out of sorts with Johnson, who owned such “exotic views” as wanting a baseball league devoid of rowdyism. Midway through the 1902 season Muggsy returned to the NL, signing as the manager of the New York Giants after a public spat with Johnson.50 But that was just part of the story. The American League needed a team in the Big Apple, and with Milwaukee gone to St. Louis, Baltimore was next to be sacrificed. McGraw wasn’t so bothered about the Charm City losing its major league baseball, admitting years later he had done much of the legwork for the AL New York franchise: “[I] built up the contacts, scouted around for grounds, and was to get a piece of the club. Naturally, I assumed I would be manager.”51 The problem was that McGraw got wind that he’d play no part in the new club, although what proof he had is debatable; despite his own behavior on the field, and his suspensions, he still had an amicable relationship with Johnson. It seemed more likely that the temperamental McGraw decided to get his retaliation in first, explaining his decision thus: “Someone would be left holding the bag, and I made up my mind it wouldn’t be me.”52 Both Mack and McGraw had had pretty awful small-town American childhoods. McGraw lost his mother and four siblings in a diphtheria outbreak in the winter of 1884,53 while Mack’s father was an alcoholic war veteran.54 Both lost their first wives as young men.55 Yet here the similarities end: Mack was the stoic, pseudo-temperate gent, a man the lace-curtain Irish could accommodate, while Muggsy, always insulting or injuring opponents and umpires, was the opposite. He once dubbed Mack’s Athletics a “white elephant” in the Sporting Life.56 Mack responded by “cheerfully” adopting the animal “in all its ironic glory” and having a banner with the animal hosted above Columbia Park.57 Tris Speaker’s biographer, Timothy M. Gay, notes that today Mack is remembered as a relic of a simpler and more innocent period, which is clearly in contrast to the Connie Mack, whose demeanor typified “the mien gaudy Comiskey or the rowdy McGraw: “[Mack] conjures up the image of Ichabod of a small-town preacher” (Library of Congress).

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Crane, an Adam’s-appled anachronism sadly out of synch with the world around him. The funereal garb, the stiff collars, the straw boaters, and the silver hair stubbornly parted down the middle all conspired to project the mien of a small-town preacher — the perfect rube. He was anything but.”58 Soon, to make more money, an end-of-year play-off “World Series” with the NL champions was proposed, based on the one run sporadically between 1884 and 1890 between the champions of the NL and the AA. The series was the final and reluctant admission by the NL that the AL was a major league. During the first seventeen sets of games between 1903 and 1920, the series was won ten times by Irish-American managers, first by Jimmy Collins in 1903 with the Boston Americans. As for pennants, out of a total of forty titles between 1901 and 1920, Irish managers won twenty-three.59 But one man unimpressed by the idea was John McGraw. His grudge against Johnson, which he held for the rest of his life, meant he had no interest in taking part in the World Series against the Americans/Sox, much to the anger of the players, fans and Gotham’s press. One small-town Connecticut paper, the Meriden Daily Journal, declared: “The public doesn’t care anything about Muggsy McGraw’s arguments with Ban Johnson. McGraw has figured in too many unsportsmanlike tricks to expect to gain the sympathy of patrons of baseball when he takes a stand against the American league’s chief official.”60 As early as July, he told the Sporting Life: “The reasons for my decision are that Ban Johnson has not been on the level with me personally and the American League management has been crooked more than once.”61 Johnson replied: “The true caliber of [John T. Brush] is disclosed when he attempts to take refuge behind such an irresponsible character as McGraw.”62 When asked later by the New York Times, Muggsy hid behind the notion that the series devalued his NL pennant: “When I came to New York … the team was in last place. Since that time … I have worked to bring the pennant to New York. The result is known. Now that the New York team has won this honor, I for one will not stand to see it tossed away like a rag.”63 The following year McGraw relented, taking on the team he had previously dubbed a “white elephant,” humiliatingly losing the series four games to one.64 Jimmy Collins was the biggest loser as a result of McGraw’s tantrum. Born to an Irishborn railroad cop Anthony and his wife Alice in Niagara Falls on January 16, 1870, Collins moved as a toddler to Buffalo. He started out in Louisville, but it was in Boston, first with the Beaneaters and then with the Americans/Red Sox, that his immense defensive qualities made him a name as one of the best third basemen ever. “A personable and handsome bachelor, friendly with the fans,”65 he was immensely popular with the Boston cranks and his move to manage the AL franchise was one reason the Royal Rooters left the Beaneaters. His managerial career, however, was short, if sweet. He managed the Boston Americans for six seasons, winning two pennants in 1903 and 1904, before being fired in August 1906 following a poor season, although he continued as a player.66 He moved to the Athletics, playing two seasons in the City of Brotherly Love, but despite a good record, he never returned to managing in the majors. He sought the purchase of his hometown Buffalo Eastern League outfit, but the price was too high, so he worked three seasons as a player-manager with minor league teams in Minneapolis and Providence.67 Collins wasn’t the last Irish-American to manage the Boston AL team, known as the Red Sox from 1908, to World Series glory. Bill Carrigan, regarded as the toughest player in the American League, took the third and fourth World Series of the franchise in 1915 and

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1916 against the Phillies and Brooklyn Robins respectively. 68 Nicknamed “Rough,” William Francis Carrigan was a native of Lewiston, Maine, where one report has his father, John, running a grocery store and sponsoring a local baseball club, while another has him as the local deputy sheriff.69 His appointment as manager in 1914 came at a time of turmoil for the Red Sox: club president Jimmy McAleer was maneuvered out of his post by Ban Johnson and the locker room was beset by sectarian divisions, while there were threats that the Federal League would open in Boston.70 Carrigan’s victory in the 1915 NL pennant race and the subsequent World Series was all the more a remarkable achievement, helped in part by a young slugger from Baltimore by the name of George “Babe” Ruth. His second World Series in 1916, which made him the only manager to win consecutive World Series not to be in the Hall of Fame, was helped by trading the leader of the “Protestant faction,” Tris Speaker, a departure that ultimately made for a more harmonious team.71 At the end of the series he turned down a new contract and a job coaching at Harvard, due to his pregnant wife, and took up banking interests back in his native state.72 His hometown paper, the Lewiston Evening Journal, declared: “There are more things to life than money, more than fame, more than the position of leader. Carrigan has satisfied one ambition. He wants to fulfill another.”73 The man who lost to Carrigan in the 1915 World Series, Pat Moran, was born in 1876 in Fichtburg, one of the many growing small mill towns that littered Massachusetts. He was a late starter in the majors, joining the Braves in 1901 at twenty-five from the Eastern League’s Montreal Royals. He followed his stay in Boston with a hardly distinguished playing career with the Cubs and the Phillies. In 1915, after he hung up his bat, the Philadelphia club made him their manager, an appointment he paid back with a pennant. Two more seasons as runners-up to Brooklyn and the Giants was followed by a measly sixth place. Asked to join his good pal McGraw in New York, he chose to go to Cincinnati after Christy Mathewson went AWOL in Europe. Once more Moran won the pennant in his first season, triumphing in the World Series against a White Sox handicapped by nine traitors. Moran came to be recognized as one of the “deadball era’s” most successful managers, taking two mediocre teams and turning them into winners.74 He therefore was extremely hurt by the disclosure of the Black Sox scandal, although he had already found out that at least one of his own players, Ed Holler, had been offered five grand to throw the game.75 Normally docile, Moran snapped: “The best team won the series, and don’t you forget it. We had the jump on them in every game. If they were fixed they are the best actors I ever saw….”76 Irish-Americans were strongly represented in the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s as players, but it was as the centuries changed that their managerial presence became markedly superior. Dick McBride, probably of Ulster-Scots background, became the first Irish-American manager in the majors. Born in Philadelphia in 1845, he steered the Athletics to the pennant in the National Association’s first-ever season. While Ban Johnson had relied on young, ambitious Irish managers to run his teams, who were later joined by Jimmy McAleer in Cleveland and Hugh Duffy in Milwaukee,77 the NL also started recruiting Irish-Americans. By 1910 Irish-Americans were providing seven out of nine American League managers and two of the eight National League bosses, with Irish-Americans making up just under two thirds (65 percent) of the total number of bosses in both leagues. Some assumed that this was the peak and the only way now was down. In 1913 the Sporting Life noted: “The only Irish managers left to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day were McGraw, Mack, Jennings Huggins, Evers, Dooin, Callahan and two or three

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others. Outside of this the diamond reign of the Irish is beginning to sag.”78 But the 1915 season saw half of NL managers — Pat Moran, Roger Bresnahan, Miller Huggins and John McGraw — and five out of the nine AL — Bill Carrigan, Hughie Jennings, Bill Donovan, Joe Birmingham and Connie Mack — as Irish-American.79 Hugh Ambrose Jennings was born on April 2, 1871, according to his biographer, Jack Smiles, in “an unpainted shanty in the Brandy Patch section of Pittston,” a small mining town in northern Pennsylvania.80 The ninth child of Irish immigrants James and Nora Jennings, Hughie would have looked forward to a grim and dangerous life in the collieries his father worked in, had he not taken up the bat. The red-haired Jennings played in thirteen consecutive seasons between 1891 and 1903, starting out with the Louisville Colonels before joining Hanlon’s Baltimore Orioles. In 1907, he was appointed player-manager of the Detroit Tigers, winning three consecutive AL pennants while playing sporadically as late as 1912 at the age of 41. He spent fourteen seasons in the Motor City and two years as McGraw’s substitute at the Giants. Jennings was a maverick, almost deranged, manager, someone who despite his small stature and smiling personality was fiery and unpredictable. Tigers owner Frank Navin had hired him as much to spite Ban Johnson, who had wanted a league devoid of any of these “colorful” characters, as to spice up interest in the Tigers, who were the lowest pullers in the AL.81 Often coming to work drunk, he became famous for his shouts, whoops and jigs, his picking of grass, and finally his trademark shriek of “ee-yah.”82 He’d bring along to the dugout a bell, a horn or a tin whistle. In 1907, Jennings was suffering from laryngitis and unable to speak, so he took along a policeman’s whistle instead and began to blow it incessantly. The umpire, Silk O’Loughlin, demanded that he hand over the instrument, but Jennings was defiant, pointing out that there was nothing in the rules against using a whistle. O’Loughlin evicted Jennings, who was then suspended for ten days. His appeal to Johnson proved pointless, but he took revenge by then learning to whistle through his fingers in a way that, according to witnesses years later, was “just as ear-splitting as the policeman’s whistle.”83 Like Jennings, William “Kid” Gleason learned to play in a tough coaling town, going on to have twenty-one uninterrupted seasons in the majors from 1888 to 1908, with the Quakers/Phillies, St. Louis Browns, and Orioles at their most Irish, before being traded to the Giants for Jack Doyle. Born across the Delaware from Philadelphia William “Kid” Gleason, one of the toughest scrappers in baseball in Camden, New Jersey, on (Library of Congress).

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October 26, 1866, the more successful of two brothers who reached the majors, he played in 1,966 games, and like many of his contemporaries, Gleason’s small (five-foot-seven) and youthful appearance hid a determined personality and a combatant temper that David Fleitz describes as “perhaps the best pound for pound fighter in the game.”84 While at St. Louis, he found his wages short a hundred dollars, he stormed into the office of Chris Von der Ahe, telling his boss: “Look here, you big fat Dutch slob. If you don’t open that safe and get me the $100 you fined me, I’ll knock your block off.”85 Gleason was also a joker: in 1913 he handed a Chinese laundry list to George Hildebrand instead of the lineup card, pointing to the lack of a rule that demanded the card had to be in English.86 Gleason had joined the coaching staff of the White Sox between 1911 and 1914, working under Nixey Callahan. In 1916 he was rehired by Comiskey as assistant to Pants Rowland, a move that many felt should’ve been the other way around. Here was the type of tough, disciplined manager that Comiskey enviously saw in John McGraw, yet he passed him up for a younger, inexperienced, and personality-wise far weaker individual in Rowland: “[Gleason] was … as feisty and gritty as ball players could be, knew the game inside and out and had years upon years of experience in playing with and handling ball players. It was Kid Gleason’s presence that cast Rowland in the role of an underdog, a lesser light standing in the shadows.”87 The Kid, along with the captain, Eddie Collins, was considered the brains behind the White Sox’ 1917 World Series win over the Giants.88 The 1918 season had seen Gleason refuse to work for Comiskey, with whispers that it was because of a failure to get the right terms, and more crucially the right wage.89 On the final day of the year, Comiskey announced that Gleason had finally got the hot seat in Southside baseball, with Collins remarking; “Kid Gleason, manager of the White Sox! That’s the best New Year’s present I could think of….”90 Gleason immediately won the AL pennant and lost the World Series 5–3, but being someone who had no flies on him, he was too cute to believe that this was above board. He had his suspicions, helped strongly by a batch of gamblers’ telegrams from New York to Havana, telling him of the sting. When he spotted two of his players, Eddie Cicotte and Swede Risberg, laughing in the lobby of Cincinnati’s Hotel Sinton after the opening game defeat, he flipped, screaming at the pair: “You think you can kid me? You busher, Risberg! You think I don’t know what you’re doing out there? Cicotte, you sonovabitch. Anybody who says he can’t see what you’re doing out there is either blind, stupid or a goddam liar.” 91 After the fourth game he tore into his players at a team meeting, accusing them of throwing the series. As they sat silently, two players took exception. Chick Gandil suggested to Gleason: “You’d think we wasn’t trying,” while Fred McMullin offered to punch anyone that suggested he was crooked.92 Twenty-two months later, both men were kicked out of baseball forever.93 The Killilea brothers sold their Milwaukee franchise in the league’s first winter, and it was relocated in St. Louis; two years later Henry Killilea was offered the Boston franchise as its absentee owner. It was hardly a happy time for him: despite an AL pennant and the first World Series, his popularity was undermined by his tightfistedness and blind loyalty to Johnson. Cashing in on the team’s popularity and success, the following year he sold the franchise, in yet another craven sop to Johnson, to John I. Taylor instead of “Honey” Fitzgerald.94 This wasn’t the end of the club’s Irish owners. In 1912 Taylor acquired a partner in Jimmy McAleer, the former Cleveland Spiders centerfielder, whose tenure lasted one season.

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Four Irish presidents: Frank Navin (top left), Frank Farrell (top right), Charles Comiskey (bottom left) and Joseph Lannin (bottom right), with Ban Johnson (bottom center). Also pictured is Benjamin S. Minor (back row center) (Library of Congress).

He had upset both the Royal Rooters and Ban Johnson, who maneuvered behind him to bring in the Canadian-born property tycoon Joseph Lannin as his new boy. By 1914, Lannin had acquired the stock of McAleer, his partner Robert B. McRoy, and Taylor. McAleer refused to ever speak to Johnson again.95 Born of Irish parents in Lac-Beupont in Quebec, by fourteen Lannin was orphaned, and he moved south to Boston seeking work. He took a job as a hotel bellboy, learning quickly about property and commodities before moving on to own property, hotels and golf courses by buying up real estate throughout the Hub.96 Lannin was also a keen sportsman, playing golf and lacrosse, and as a baseball fan, he had a minority interest in the Braves. The man who would also own at different times the Buffalo and Providence minor

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league clubs, was trying to buy the Phillies when Johnson came knocking with the offer of the Red Sox: “He fit Johnson’s desired profile for a club owner to a tee: He was wealthy, loved baseball, and could be easily controlled.”97 During his reign, Lannin oversaw the purchase of Babe Ruth, and managed to fight off the threat from the Federal League. Like Killilea before him, having tired of Johnson’s interference, he disposed of the club for a profit in 1917 to Harry Frazee, instead of Joseph P. Kennedy’s group.98 The Sox’ local rivals, the Braves, were owned by the Tammanyite James E. Gaffney from 1912 to 1916, while the New York Highlanders were snapped up on January 9, 1903, for eighteen thousand bucks by Frank Farrell and Bill Devery.99 In September 1907, another loyal Johnsonite, Frank Navin, one of nine children of Irish immigrants from Adrian, Michigan, and a tall, bald and bespectacled former bookkeeper, became a full partner of the Detroit Tigers, a reward for his work as club secretary, later succeeding William H. Yawkey as team president in 1908.100 Described by Charles Alexander as “a colorless, taciturn man who viewed the world impassively [from] behind his horn-rimmed spectacles,” Navin oversaw the construction of a new ballpark named in his honor in the former Irish neighborhood of Corktown, and garnered four World Series defeats and a solitary victory six weeks before his death in 1935.101 In the Windy City, Charles Webb Murphy bought the Cubs in 1905 from James Hart for $105,000. “Chubbie Charlie,” as the press christened him, was born in Wilmington, Ohio, and although a pharmacy graduate, he moved into journalism, finally becoming the sports editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer, then assistant city editor of Cincinnati Times-Star, before leaving the Queen City to take up the post as the New York Giants press agent.102 He was about to take up a similar job with the Cubs when, in a “fine example of baseball’s incestuous relationship with sportswriters,” he found out that the Cubs’ president, James Hart, wanted to sell.103 Murphy proved to be a tightfisted, unpopular owner, overseeing a team that won more games than any other under a single boss; he was also intensely disliked by his fellow owners for the damage his arrogance had done to the game.104 The Chicago Tribune opined that in just over eight years, Murphy had “gained more notoriety than any club owner ever had in the history of the game.”105 The normally acquiescent president of the Cincinnati Reds and the National Baseball Commission, August Herrmann, observed: “He talks too much for his own good and the good of baseball. He is continually trying to cause trouble and strife and to cause hard feelings between the club owners of the two leagues.”106 Sacking Johnny Evers as manager in 1914, and installing former umpire Hank O’Day as his replacement, stirred up “an unprecedented flood of criticism.” Murphy responded with swipes at all and sundry, the biggest being at Ban Johnson, who demanded that Murphy be kicked out for good. Following a four-hour “conference” in Cincinnati in February 1914, the seven other NL owners and John K. Tener discussed the mess, before making a statement: “[A]n agreement has been reached by which Mr. Taft has purchased the stock in the Chicago club which has been heretofore held by Mr. Charles W. Murphy.” Murphy had resigned all posts and was out of the sport for good.107 He refused to disclose the amount he was paid, but the New York Times quoted him smiling broadly that it was “more money that I ever thought was in the world for my 53 percent,” adding that he was “the happiest man in the world” tonight.108 Rumors were his knees “went weak when he heard the offer.”109 Certainly it’s hard to detect any resentment in his words when he wrote to Baseball Magazine in 1919 refuting F.C. Lane’s claims that he had been forced out: “Imagine a man being forced to take $500,000 for a baseball franchise, with a war on and money being sunk by everybody

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concerned in large gobs. One or two baseball politicians shouted with glee over my retirement, but I think events have since shown that the laughing was all on my side, because I got out at the psychological moment.”110 Back in New York, Brooklyn Dodgers part-owner Henry Medicus sold a half share of the franchise to the McKeever brothers in 1912 to financially back the building of Ebbets Field.111 Across the East River, after being part-owner of the Baltimore franchise, John McGraw had to wait a further sixteen years to become a partner in the Giants, having been disappointed that Brush never left any stock in his will in 1912. The purchase of this slice was to prove awkward, especially as McGraw was broke. To help finance the move, he sought backing from various associates including George Cohan.112 He insisted he was still part of negotiations when he picked up the papers of January 15, 1919, and found that the Giants were now the property of a triumvirate that included Charles Stoneham, a dubious businessman from Jersey City who was the son of a Welshman and Irishwoman and who had made his money in brokerage and mining; the magistrate Francis X. McQuade; and the Little Napoleon himself, in a deal pulled together by the Black Sox mastermind Arnold Rothstein.113 In what was dubbed the “Biggest deal in baseball history” by the New York Times, the price reportedly exceeded one million greenbacks. The man selling, John T. Brush’s son-in-law Harry Hempstead, claimed: “It is fitting to say that in releasing the club that it continues in the hands of Mr. McGraw.” Muggsy was in ecstasy: “There were no less than ten different people after the club, but some of these had no chance whatever of getting the property.”114 He became vice-president but held as little as two percent of the club’s stock, relying on a sub from Stoneham to buy shares, and began his first day at work with a debt of $50,000.115 In January 1920, New Yorker Samuel Breadon purchased the ailing Cardinals in St. Louis.116 His initial investment was a five-hundred-buck punt, going on to the eighteen thousand dollars that got him onto the board of directors, and eventually he became president. One of eight children, he dropped out of school in the fourth grade to help earn money for his family when his father died, and he moved out to the Gateway City on the advice of friends, two brothers who were mechanics. There he invested the thirty-five dollars he made selling molasses-coated popcorn at the 1904 World’s Fair into an auto business, gradually working himself up to owning a distributorship in Pierce-Arrow vehicles.117 Breadon wasn’t the first fan who bought a baseball team, but he was possibly the first owner who did so because he enjoyed cavorting with the baseball players, not as wage slaves, but as idols. Together with his future partner, Branch Rickey, he tried an experiment that would lead to the overhaul of minor league baseball. The relationship was indeed a “stark contrast between personalities,” according to Rickey’s biographer, Lee Lowenfish: Breadon was an Irish Catholic from a tough part of New York, who liked whiskey and singing in barbershop quartets and “who never lost his ‘dese, dem, dose’ New York accent,” while Rickey was a teetotal Protestant who loved hymns.118 But Rickey also found a man who was willing to listen to his “dream” of a chain of affiliated minor league teams “of various classifications, a kindergarten, grade school, preparatory school, and a university of baseball, which eventually would graduate shining Phi Beta Kappa students of the game….”119 Between the two they invented what we know today as the “farm system” by acquiring minor league clubs as feeder teams. Charles Comiskey looked to have cracked the nut of running a successful baseball business. He had turned his White Sox into the best-earning franchise in baseball. He also put

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a mirror up to the American capitalist intrusion into the national game, and things looked far from pretty. His physical legacy is one of the most famous baseball parks in America, a testament to the contribution he made to Chicago baseball that was finally closed in 1990. The psychological legacy was to bestow on America proof that sports was far from honest, with the lesson that baseball players were human, often all too human, and when not treated well in the workplace, they became rotten, turning to other, illegal means to earn more money. Comiskey became one of the most controversial figures that the game has ever witnessed. When he bought the Chicago AL franchise, he named the side after the famous club of Kelly and Anson. He was aware of the heritage, and immediately set out to brand his own stamp on this club. In its first nineteen seasons it had won four American League pennants, and behind his jovial business mind was a man who constantly counted the pennies. He was hardly alone: Connie Mack was labeled a skinflint, with Norman Lee Macht claiming he was keen to keep the state of his finances a secret, using “terms like ‘broke’ and ‘poverty’ when talking about his personal finances to make the legitimate point that he was not taking as much out of the game as was sometimes depicted.”120 Another biographer points to someone who had lost everything once and was fearful of losing it again. Even the decline in a winning team’s attendance was an excuse to cut back: “Mack’s troubles arose from frugality and misjudgment about what it took to bring together a good team. Some called him a cheapskate or skinflint, but his thrift was explicable. He did not have other income to offset baseball losses. Although ultimately a wealthy man he weighed matters closely and conservatively and was always sparing, at least in dealing with his players.”121 The dismantling of the 1914 American League champions, when Eddie Collins was sold to the White Sox, was a decision described as “a cost cutting measure.”122 But as Charley Rosen writes, Mack never had “the financial resources” that, say, McGraw enjoyed in New York: “Consequently, McGraw was never compelled to break up any of his championship teams for monetary reasons; Mack had to do it three times.”123 Henry Killilea was little better. The first-ever World Series almost never came off when he drove his players to revolt after demanding fifty percent of the profits. The players stood firm, and Boston’s opponent Pittsburgh also refused to help him out. No doubt realizing that some money was better than no money, he relented on the subject and took only twentyfive percent for himself.124 Shortly after winning the 1903 World Series, his players, some still hung over from celebrating, received the news that their earnings per head ($1,182.34) for winning the Series was less than their opponents’ ($1,316.00), where Barney Dreyfuss hadn’t taken a cent for himself.125 Another miser was Frank Navin, who emulated Detroit’s famous Irish son, Henry Ford, with a stick on labor dissent, with none of Ford’s philanthropy carrot. He ran into conflict with the city’s carpenters’ union while renovating Bennett Park in 1908.126 In May 1912 he broke a players’ strike (a walkoff in support of the suspended Ty Cobb) by ordering Hughie Jennings to play a side in Philadelphia made up of students and semi-professionals — including Irish one-game wonders Jim McGarr, Dan McGarvey, Vincent Maney and Jack Smith — from the southern Pennsylvania environs, granting them a glimpse of the majors. Unsurprisingly, the team was thrashed and his regulars were back at work within days.127 He managed one of the lowest payrolls of the majors, often convincing players, “in the interests of the club,” to accept lower wages.128 Yet as already seen, while he used “frugality with the ball club … [he had a] passion for horses and gambling,” and was observed at one Kentucky Derby by the Chicago Tribune forgetting about box scores.129

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Nor can we omit Charles W. Murphy from this list, either. Another skinflint, he balked at spending money on players and kept salaries low, while trading several local heroes without a drop of sentiment or regard for fans’ attachment to them.130 It seems he only remembered one bit of advice from his days with John T. Brush: “All the personal popularity in the world gets the club owner nothing if his club is a loser.”131 Murphy was certainly neither popular nor a loser, reportedly making $1.26 million in profits between 1906 and 1915 and winning four NL flags and two World Series.132 Meanwhile he refused to improve the ballpark, and there was resentment at the way he had treated his manager, Johnny Evers, after he had asked for a bigger salary in 1913. Murphy saw this ungratefulness as a resignation letter and didn’t wait the obligatory ten days’ “cooling off ” period to show him the door. The Chicago Tribune saw that with the Federals willing to raid both established leagues and “to fight to the death,” Murphy’s actions were the last straw. His ham-fisted approach caused a drop in the number of people passing through West Side Park’s turnstiles in 1913, while also boosting the Federal League’s Chi-Feds/Whales’ profits in 1914 and 1915.133 Even Sam Breadon loathed wasting money, liking “the idea of signing players cheaply and watching them develop until they were ready ‘to ripen into money.’”134 As one historian claimed, he “typified the image of the hard-boiled, uncommunicative, tightfisted owner.”135 Despite having one of the highest payrolls of any NL franchise, he complained about high wages.136 Only McGraw came anywhere near the stereotype of the feckless, ultra-generous Mick with the family finances seeping cash like Hans Brinker’s dyke hemorrhaged water. The Chicago Journal described him, during the close run 1908 season, as a man with deep pockets: John J. McGraw spends his big salary, it is said, in horse racing. He does — a few dollars of it. Fifty percent … goes direct to the support of sick, crippled, helpless dependents, mostly people who have no claim on him but were brought to his notice by sympathetic friends. The little manager has a charity list that would make most millionaires look like pikers. He has charity toward all, malice toward none, and will go miles out of his way to help an invalid woman or crippled child.137

McGraw certainly handed jobs out to his old pro chums, bringing the fifty-something Jim O’Rourke out of retirement to play for him in September 1904. No one gets rich by being generous, but it was the ostentatious behavior of Comiskey that rankled many. Nothing illustrates this more than his Wisconsin “vacation complex,” Camp Jerome. When one of the galley slaves, Oscar “Happy” Felsch, inquired, like Oliver Twist, if he could hang out there for a few days, he was swiftly cut down with the words: “No ballplayers allowed.”138 Nowhere does Commy get away from the accusation that he was the main reason that eight White Sox players threw the 1919 World Series, and that his business philosophy stained “the national game.” The sports editor of the St. Louis GlobeDemocrat, Marion Parker, observed the differences between the flamboyant Comiskey, “who lives a Baronial life [and] Mack, [who] was only assumed by writers to have a pile stowed away, based on his salary and half ownership in the Athletics.”139 Comiskey had slashed wages in 1918 because of the war; then, with the postwar boom years in full flow by the middle of 1919, the “Old Roman” still would not budge. The only thing that united the Sox was that every player despised him. Kid Gleason pleaded with Comiskey to reward his players properly, but this fell on deaf ears, gaining the memorable retort: “A contract is a contract.” The following day Gleason broke the bad news, and the players threatened to strike. Only Gleason’s blarney about the possibility of a “fat World Series check” quelled this dissent.140

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The ring by 1920 was perhaps in better moral shape than baseball, as much a reflection on how far baseball had fallen as how far prizefighting had risen. It was still illegal in most states and was tarnished by racism in a manner different from baseball’s segregation. But the sport now called boxing had become an acceptable form of martial arts, used by the military in the training of the doughboys sent to France to help them “burn off sexual energy” while providing entertainment for the troops.141 As early as the 1860s, retired pugs moved into coaching, promotion, management and ultimately running the organization that would become its national governing body. The ring’s initial organizers were drawn from the saloon-keeping caste, but as the sport developed into a more formidably organized business, Irish professional managers, often from the world of entertainment, moved in. Billy Madden and Pat Sheedy were both managers to the Boston Strong Boy. Madden, a Londoner welterweight of Irish parents born in 1852, had moved to the United States as a teen and started his boxing career at fifteen, losing to Dick Hurley on Long Island in 1867. Manager of such luminous late-nineteenth-century ethnic Irish fighters as “Nonpareil” Jack Dempsey, Charlie Mitchell, Jake Kilrain, Peter Maher, Jack McAuliffe and Paddy Slavin, he was credited with coining the term “knockout” following John L. Sullivan’s waylaying of Paddy Ryan in February 1882. Madden had first met John L. in 1881, and managed him for the next three years.142 Fiercely loyal, even after their friendship had been strained, he developed the Strong Boy’s celebrity cult, coming up with boxing tours and showcasing Sullivan against all comers “even if they weigh a ton” for four rounds. He even boxed Sullivan in these exhibitions despite being considerably smaller.143 In contrast, Sheedy was little more than a Chicago pool-seller and professional gambler, a “loud-talking, brassy promoter … every inch a hustler and a dandy,” and “Central Casting’s idea of the glad-handing fight manager with the heart of stone.”144 He was a “devoted admirer” of Jere Dunn, and along with Mike McDonald had stumped up for Dunn’s lawyer at the Elliott murder trial.145 Hired by Sullivan in 1884 as a second manager, he had one thing in common with the Strong Boy: a mother with hopes he’d become a priest. Sheedy would remain with Sullivan for three years, successfully revitalizing his stained image with a sparring tour of Ohio in aid of flood victims.146 Finally he had had enough of Sullivan’s moods, his incessant drunkenness, his short-changing, and being expected to pick up the tab for Sullivan’s huge training bills; a row over the cancellations of bouts in the Northeast forced Sheedy to walk. According to Isenberg, Sullivan had grown to detest the Chicagoan’s “flamboyance and play for credit in the press,” something that the Strong Boy’s ego was always going to find tough to stomach.147 Jere Dunn was another of Sullivan’s “managers.” As a frequent visitor to his Chicago tavern, Sullivan allowed Dunn to be his agent in the Windy City.148 Running a dive enabled him to rub shoulders with various “sports,” and he also looked after the coast-to-coast engagements of the wrestler William Muldoon. After his acquittal for killing Jim Elliott, Dunn went on to organize and even referee the odd fight; the most notable scrap was the Slavin-Kilrain fight of 1891, his reputation as a murderer probably an asset. Tom O’Rourke ran a stable of pugs, managing the likes of “Sailor” Tom Sharkey, in his quest to defeat James J. Jeffries in November 1899, and the world light heavyweight champion, the Clareman George Gardner, in his victory over Jack Root in 1903. He also looked after some of the top black fighters of the late nineteenth century, like the Canadian-born George Dixon.149 He first saw Dixon in 1888, drawing with the much bigger Paddy Kelly at Boston’s Tremont Club.150 He managed him to an eventual meeting with

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Cal McCarthy in February 1890 for the featherweight championship of America, before getting him a shot at the world title against Edwin “Nunc” Wallace in London that June, a victory which made him the world’s first black boxing champion. O’Rourke had also picked up the great Barbadian welterweight, Joe Walcott — who, along with others, he’d hail as the greatest pound-for-pound fighter ever to have lived — while he was clearing up victories at Jack Sheehan’s gym in the Hub.151 He managed him to his failed attempts to grab the world lightweight championship from “Kid” Lavigne in San Francisco in 1897,152 and the welterweight title a year later at the Lenox Athletic Club, New York City, that was retained by “Mysterious” Billy Smith.153 Sam Fitzpatrick was an Australian-born former welterweight “with a reputation for hard hitting” who had arrived in California in the late eighties. His one moment of fame in the ring was when he and his opponent, Patsy Meeghan, simultaneously knocked each other out at the Californian Athletic Club. A journalist would later recall the incident: “The double impact was heard all over the clubhouse merged in a single sound, and both fighters dropped as though they were pole-axed.” The referee, Paddy Carroll, in front of nonplussed patrons, refused to go past nine in the count. Both fighters were eventually given a share of the purse.154 Later Fitzpatrick managed the nationally reviled Jack Johnson, until he was fired on a boat back from Oz. He also bossed another famous black fighter, Peter Jackson, along with white pugs like Kid Lavigne.155 The significance of managing black fighters will be discussed later, but high in consideration was the money to be made. Al Palzer, whom O’Rourke managed, later revealed bitterly: “I know why George Dixon died a pauper.”156 One of Fitzpatrick’s successors with Johnson was the colorful Tom Flanagan, younger brother of John Flanagan. Tom was born in Kilmallock, County Limerick, and like his sibling was a talented athlete. He first turned up at a meeting of the Newton AA, near Boston in June 1897, described by the Boston Herald as “the new importation from Ireland.” The paper added that Tom was “a genuine wonder in the hammer throw, and is liable to beat his own world’s records at any time,” although it’s possible that they mistook him for John.157 The Chicago Tribune predicted Tom would one day excel his brother: “Young Flanagan bids fair to become a marvel at hammer-throwing, and the knowing ones who saw his style yesterday predict that the fame of his brother Jim [sic] at this specialty will be short-lived.”158 Nicknamed “the big nose,” he eventually settled in Toronto in 1898, instead of the States, reputedly breaking two world records in the 12-lb. hammer at a meet in Embro, near London, Ontario, and capturing first place in the 16-lb. hammer and the 56-lb. weight at the PanAmerican games on July 4, 1901.159 He then moved into sports administration, “practically single-[handedly]” setting up the Irish-Canadian (or Canadian-Irish) Athletic Club in 1907 with, among others, a Meathman called Andy T. Hernon, who had moved up from New York.160 His first big-name athlete was the Native-Canadian Tom “Longboat” who would cause controversy at the 1908 Olympics. But in 1910 Flanagan began working as Jack Johnson’s “road work” trainer.161 After George Little was acrimoniously sidelined in June 1910, Flanagan took over as “business manager,” with Johnson issuing a statement about his thoughts on Tom: “While not a prize fighter, he is one of the best-known amateur athletes who has ever competed, and is respected for his honesty and integrity by the press and the public the world over…. I am sorry that I cannot have Flanagan with me for a longer period, but his business interests in Canada require his attention, and he would not consent to absent himself from them any longer.”162 He oversaw Johnson’s victory over Jim Jeffries in Reno in what was one of the most racially charged events of the twentieth century. The Toronto

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World commented: “The Indians raised Tom Flanagan to the rank of chief because of his success with Tom Longboat and it remains to be seen what the colored population will do for Jack Johnson’s manager, remembering that there’s nothing too good for the Irish.”163 From the start, Johnson and Flanagan had an easygoing relationship. One incident stands out from a night in Las Vegas, New Mexico: before Johnson’s fight with “Fireman” Jim Flynn, the two of them went around with a pair of scissors each, cutting off the bottoms of reporters’ ties.164 Tom remained a friend of “Papa” Jack in later times of trouble, and sheltered Johnson when he was a fugitive from charges of “white slavery” by putting him and his wife, Lucille, up in his Toronto hotel.165 Naturally, managers and promoters of the ring were there to make a buck. The Californian filmmaker William Aloysius Brady, father of the tragic thirties film star Alice Brady, was a man who stumbled into boxing promotion following a career as a vaudeville actor and theatrical producer. Mistaken by some as a member of the Hebrew faith,166 a possibility on his mother’s side, Brady’s origins are full of the usual fog associated with anyone born in mid-century San Francisco. Brady was probably born in the city’s Mission District, and his parents divorced when he was two. His Dublin-born father, who had arrived in Frisco in 1856 and became a local newspaper editor, kidnapped young William, taking him to New York, and forcing him to sell papers on street corners. When he died, Brady got some money from working at the New York Press Club, and returned home to the West Coast to launch his acting career.167 Patrick Myler describes Brady as the epitome of the term “promoter.” He was a “quick thinking, fast talking theatrical agent, manager, producer, a discoverer and developer of talent … a sharp operator who never missed a trick when it came to getting good publicity for his protégés, or putting one over their rivals.”168 Of course his theatrical background was of immense help in pulling off major fights, especially the Corbett-Fitzsimmons fight of 1897, which ended up being staged in “free and easy” Carson City, Nevada.169 He also managed wrestlers like Yousouf “the Terrible Turk” Ishmaelo, and had the added advantage of also enticing boxers with vaudeville tours that every fistic artist was willing to jump on.170 He remains the only man to have managed two undisputed world champions: James J. Corbett and James Jeffries. Another Friscan was John L. Dorgan, better known as Ike, who managed Harry Ebbets and one of the “White Hopes,” Frank Moran. He was also, along with the promoter Tex Rickard and journalist Nat Fleischer, a founder of The Ring, himself a former scribe with New York’s Evening Journal and brother of cartoonists Tad and Dick Dorgan. Ike became Rickard’s “publicity man,” creating what the New York Times described as “the public image of Mr. Rickard as a flamboyant, daring promoter of sports events.” He was reputed to have coined many boxers’ “euphonious descriptions,” such as Dempsey’s “Manassa Mauler,” Luis Firpo’s “Wild Bull of the Pampas,” and Jack “Lil’ Artha” Johnson, as well as Rickard’s rejoinder to critical pressmen: “I don’t care what you say about me as long as you spell my name right.”171 It was his brother Thomas “Tad” Dorgan, who also worked at the Evening Journal and invented many catchphrases and slang words such as “Yes, we have no bananas,” who was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame for his services to the sport, following his cartoons and sporting reporting. A childhood friend of James Corbett in San Francisco whom he ended up living next to in Great Neck, Long Island, Dorgan took up drawing following a factory accident that left him with only a thumb and first finger on his right hand. He began his career at the San Francisco Bulletin before moving to New York in 1905.172 Jack “Doc” Kearns was one of the last Irish managers of the period. He managed Jack

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Dempsey’s defeat of Jess Willard in 1919. Born John McKernan in Michigan, he settled in Seattle as a child, where a boxing career of sorts saw him lose to two eventual welterweight champions, Honey Mellody and “Mysterious” Billy Smith, while playing baseball in the Pacific Coast League with Seattle. He started promoting fights and managing pugs in the gold-rush saloons of Klondike, and as a “serpentine hustler” who granted himself a doctorate, he was the sort of ostentatious manager fond of jewelry and “powerful cologne” that would appear with monotonous regularity in the twentieth century.173 He appeared happy “exhausting” the careers of a string of pugs on the West Coast, all of whose names had the prefix “Fighting,” before his luck changed with the discovery of the young Dempsey in 1916.174 Another avenue for the Irish to enter the higher echelons of sport was through the growing number of bodies set up to administer various sports. On both sides of the Atlantic, previously random games were being organized with rules, first through elite clubs, like baseball’s Knickerbocker Club or cricket’s Marylebone Club, and later by established multiclub national federations. By the turn of the century, with the exception of boxing, nearly every sport had at least one national body with regional, racial or gender-based autonomous groups below it. The Irish headed such associations for sports ranging from athletics and baseball to less important sports such as cycling, with Thomas F. Sheridan the first-vice president of League of American Wheelmen.175 Soccer was one such “minority” sport and a popular, if unlikely, center of Irish activity. One of the key figures in organizing soccer in America was Thomas W. Cahill, known as “the father of American soccer.” Originally born to Irish parents in Yonkers in 1864 or 1865, he moved to St. Louis when a child and settled in the Kerry Patch. A noted middle-distance runner, he played soccer for the first time following a visit to the city by a Canadian XI in 1884. By 1890, while working as a railroad switchman, he was already “football editor” for the Sporting News, leaving trains for writing in 1901 when he began working at Albert Spalding’s St. Louis store. In his spare time he put himself into promoting sports, including baseball and boxing, and was the head of a St. Louis side put forward to join a proposed professional league which Comiskey and other baseball owners were offering their parks as venues.176 By the end of the decade Cahill was the most important man in American soccer, organizing the first English tour of the States in 1909, by the Pilgrims. Nine years later he transferred to Newark, becoming involved in the local game there and editing Spalding’s Official “Soccer” Football Guides that had been printed since 1904.177 In 1911, he helped establish the American Amateur Football Association, following the secession of the New York State FA, as a rival to the AFA; and he all but privately funded his own attendance at the FIFA annual congress in 1912 that gained the AAFA international recognition. In April 1913, he became secretary of the AAFA’s successor, the United States Football Association. He was also the U.S. national team’s manager on their first tour abroad, to Sweden and Norway in 1915.178 Cahill wasn’t without controversy: he was a hardheaded man with what one reviewer called “a forceful manner … which he made both progress and enemies.”179 Partial to hyperbolic statements, he once claimed that the Americans had overtaken the “cradle” of soccer: “I believe that I could pick a team of American-born players that could defeat any allBritish team today.”180 Following incessantly the Holy Grail of an American league, he announced his resignation from the USFA in November 1920 in order to organize a professional league, a move that probably caused the decline of his influence in American soc-

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cer.181 In 1915 Cahill almost committed heresy by criticizing a sport which David Wangerin claims he never had much time for, American football, letting loose with what the New York Times referred to as “several uncomplimentary things regarding the … game of football, as played in this country.” Cahill lectured that there was hardly a game played without someone getting severely injured: Football should be such as to create good feeling between opponents, and the games should be such as can be looked upon with pleasure and enjoyment…. In soccer football a small fellow has just the same chance of gaining his place on the college or school team as a big fellow — and why should he not? He is just as interested and just as enthusiastic in the welfare of his school and city…. Why should so many students and young men be lamed and rendered unable to study and unfit for business simply because they play college football? The men are fit and in proper condition. Then the only reasonable and honest reply must be that the game is not fit, and that it ought not to rank as a prominent American sport. I cannot believe American sportsmen conscientiously want a game which entails so much loss of life and accidents.

He also passionately believed that these injuries would make soccer ultimately succeed as the most popular football style in America.182 Boxing was one of the last sports to be regulated, having to wait until 1920 for any overseeing body. The first man to establish any uniformity and stability within the ring was Richard Kyle Fox. However, Fox was a newspaper proprietor, a businessman, a one-man show, and like so many of his ilk, vulnerable to egotistical ranting and petty vendettas. The most public of these spats was against John L. Sullivan; the pair formed a mutual enmity upon meeting. Billy Madden claims he introduced the pair in 1881 at the Gazette’s office, where Sullivan considered Fox a pretentious toff with his top hat, while Fox, a man most pugs usually fawned over for a plug in his rag, was affronted by Sullivan’s nonchalance to his status.183 To make matters worse, Fox was further incensed that Sullivan had bypassed him in his victory over Paddy Ryan, and spent the next decade unsuccessfully trying to line up fighters to teach Sullivan a lesson. His animosity came to a head when Sullivan turned down the opportunity to fight Fox’s “favorite charge,” the Baltimore Irishman Jake Kilrain, choosing instead Charlie Mitchell. Fox immediately declared that Sullivan had forfeited his title, and announced that Kilrain was champion of the world, presenting him with a speciallymade diamond-studded belt. The move backfired, and after “a popular referendum of sorts,” Sullivan was the champion of the people who mattered: Fox’s readers. Sullivan would eventually meet and defeat Kilrain in the ring in 1889, but Pat Sheedy meantime gathered enough money to get his fighter a belt that would embarrass Fox: “The $10,000 Belt” consisted of “a base of flat gold … a centre panel consisting of Sullivan’s name spelled out in diamonds; eight other frames contained his likeness, the United States seal, and various American eagles and Irish harps; an additional 397 diamonds studded the symbolic ornament.” Receiving it at the old Boston Theatre in August 1887, Sullivan remarked with typical disdain that he “wouldn’t put Fox’s belt around the neck of a goddamn dog.” The belt was eventually pawned for $175 after Sullivan had removed all the diamonds.184 In an era of growing spectator interest, the need for bigger sporting arenas increased. The consistent season-long drib-drab of baseball games ensured that clubs could own their own ballparks, but the same couldn’t be done with individual athletes, such as pedestrians or prizefighters, no matter their appeal. Promoters needed to hire premises, and as boxing became more sanitized and finally legalized, the impromptu ring in some God-forsaken

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hamlet would no longer suffice. In New York, one place grew to become synonymous with indoor sports: Madison Square Garden. It was an Irishman with no connections to sports who laid the foundations for this arena’s greatest sporting nights. Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore was instead a band leader who leased the site for his Gilmore’s Garden from the New York and Harlem Railroad. Born in County Galway on Christmas Day, 1830, he spent his early years close to Athlone, before arriving in Boston as a nineteen-year-old. There he carved out a career as a musician, serving in the Civil War and penning the ballad, “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.”185 In May 1875 he took over the lease of the building from P.T. Barnum, and soon the New York Times was reporting the “work of transforming the unattractive Hippodrome into a lovely spot, where one can stand or sit amid green grass, fragrant shrubs, or thick foliage, has certainly been carried out with success.”186 The constant police interference over the sale of alcohol on Sunday and the legal interpretation of “sparring” proved troublesome.187 Inspector Alexander “Clubber” Williams stopped one such session at the NYAC’s Winter Games as they “were so much more in the nature of fighting a l’outrance that it was deemed undesirable to permit any further displays of the kind.”188 Finally Gilmore gave up when the building’s owner Cornelius Vanderbilt died, and his grandson took back the premises. He moved out to Coney Island, where he organized the Great Jubilee of 1884, before settling in St. Louis, dying of heart disease in 1892.189 It was only after James J. Frawley’s “Law” was passed, that a body was set up to oversee boxing. One of the act’s demands was that a state athletic commission would license not just boxing fights in New York State, but other sports, although with the reintroduction of boxing through the Walker Act, this was eventually restricted to wrestling and other forms of martial arts. The first New York State Athletic Commission was founded to administrate boxing in 1911. Governor John Alden Dix appointed James E. Sullivan as its first chairman, with a former Columbia varsity baseball captain, Frank S. O’Neil, as one of two other commissioners.190 Sullivan, as a noted dictator, naturally did what all dictators say on appointment to power: he claimed that it was all, reluctantly, a matter of duty191: It was really too bad that Bartow S. Weeks, owing to his legal interests, could not accept the Commissionership. I have only accepted this commission at the earnest solicitation of Senator Frawley, and officials of the [AAU] throughout the country that I have wired for their opinion. They think it would be a good thing for the [AAU] and for sport in the State … because the law is clear and distinctly states that amateur boxing must be held under the auspices of the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States, and all felt some one should go on the commission to look out for the interests of the amateurs, and the [AAU], and my work on the commission will be mainly with the amateur end.

Supporters of the law also wanted the NYSAC to control athletics in the state. Sullivan wasn’t going to allow the opportunity of this power base to fall away from him, seeing it as a stepping stone to power at the highest level: “Time and again I have publicly stated that the day is not far distant when we will have city, state, and federal control of athletics, and eventually a seat in the Cabinet for such a department, to be known as the Department of Health, Recreation, or Athletics…. We have State Departments of Education, Agriculture, Charity. Why not Athletics?”192 Sadly, he lasted less than a month in the job, citing that an injury sustained in a train crash at Fort Wayne was confining him to home. O’Neil took over the chair, telling the New York Tribune: “It’s easy to see that unless the law is enforced it will inevitably be wiped off the statute books at the next session of the Legis-

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lature. The promoters are very short-sighted not to see this. They are only killing their own game.”193 Frank S. O’Neil’s tenure was bedeviled by controversy, and he was eventually removed in 1915 by Governor Charles S. Whitman. Problems started when a reporter from the New York Morning Telegraph, W.B. Masterson, claimed that he was “prejudiced against the National Sporting Club.” Having a conflict of interests in being a part-owner of the Madison Square Garden, O’Neil demanded an excessive number of complementary tickets, which he passed on to pals who were often the sort of persons “not regarded by the police or public as a desirable citizen.” Masterson concluded: “Altogether I feel justified in declaring Mr. O’Neil’s conduct as unbecoming an officer of the State of New York and a gentleman. I do not believe that Mr. O’Neil is a fit man to be in charge of boxing in this city.”194 There was already a lawsuit by Al Palzer and Tom O’Rourke. In 1912 O’Neil had allegedly taken eight hundred dollars for getting a fight between Palzer and Jack Johnson at Madison Square Garden passed. Friends point out that the Commission had specifically barred Johnson from New York, while O’Neil claimed he wouldn’t have touched a dime as Johnson would never be able to hold his gloves up within the city in the first place: “Everybody knows that … O’Rourke [was for] a long time the sole financial backer of the National Sporting Club. When the commission prevented that club from participating in the Garden fights, O’Rourke became my bitter enemy.”195 The final straw was the growing number of licenses piling up in his office, which even included that of his own Madison Square Garden. 196 Added to the reorganized office was the former Detroit Tigers manager Frank Dwyer.197 O’Neil’s reputation was further sullied three years later when along with two others he was put on trial for “conspiracy to obtain the release of draft registrants for pay.” The accusers were wealthy fathers, desperate to keep their conscripted sons out of the German artillery’s range, who allegedly paid O’Neil to give them clerical jobs in the Quartermaster’s Corps. One charge was that he accepted six hundred dollars from Herman Schneider to get his son Samuel out of going to the front, but poor Sam ended up in the trenches anyway and his fate is unknown.198 That O’Neil took money was never in question. His counsel claimed that he had violated no law in taking cash for what he claimed was merely presenting appeals to the District Draft Board for exemptions, just “very poor judgment in accepting such cases.”199 The jury acquitted the trio of all charges.200 The first head of the post–Walker Act body was an Irish-American who combined a professional career in the wrestling ring with training boxers, including John L. Sullivan: William Muldoon. Now in his seventies, the “Strong Man of Sport” was promoting health through physical exercise in retirement, gaining disciples among the fistic community that included the future world heavyweight champion, Gene Tunney.201 In 1920, New York Governor Nathan Lewis Miller saw him as the only person fit to become chairman of the reorganized Commission, whose raison d’etre would be simple: it would eliminate what Miller described as boxing’s “idle class which lives by its wits to the detriment of society in general.”202 He had previously been tapped to take over from James Sullivan in 1911, when the New York Times declared him to be “the type of man” who can rescue boxing: “Muldoon is generally credited with being well up on all the ins-and-outs of boxing…. It is further conceded that promoters and the like would pull no wool over his eyes … the consensus [being] that he would brook no interference….” Muldoon told the New York Times that boxing was “a fine game” if properly regulated, “but when people are fleeced by being made to pay $7 for $2 seats … action was necessary, and not of the conciliatory kind.” He

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continued: “At present the number of licenses issued seems too many. Then, again, it appears that proper investigation has not been made into the safety of spectators. If I were a member of the committee no club would get my say-so until the Fire and Building Departments had put their OK on the places in which the contests were to be held.”203 Leaving aside the opportunities for abuse and graft from local government officials, Muldoon’s ideas were to be welcomed. Dubbed now the “Iron Duke” by the press for his dictatorial rule, Dwyer also returned to the commission. Muldoon’s autocracy was nothing compared to the absolutism of James Edward Sullivan. Known in the Dictionary of American Biography as “the first sports Czar,” he was a founding member of the AAU that wrested control of amateur athletics from the National Association of Amateur Athletes of America in 1888.204 He became the AAU’s secretary from 1888 to 1906 during a period when Pierre de Coubertin was re-establishing the ancient Greek Olympics as a modern tournament. By the time Sullivan was in Paris as the U.S. Olympic team’s assistant director in 1900, the AAU had seen off all rivals with the exception of the universities.205 Sullivan was born in New York in 1862, the son of an Irish construction foreman on the New York Central Railroad.206 Although a small-time athlete with the Pastime AC since fifteen, he had built a successful career as a sports journalist by founding the Athletics News in 1880. He had also worked his way up from the Pastime presidency in 1885 and was the club’s delegate to the NAAAA, and then vice-president of the association in 1886 and 1887.207 As Stephen Hardy concludes, Sullivan “was to the AAU what Spalding was to the National League.”208 A more apt comparison would be to William Hulbert, since Sullivan became a despot of his fiefdom where underlings were torn between cowardice and sycophancy on issues such as female athletics. He was also incredibly arrogant, contemptuously describing Pierre de Coubertin after the Paris James E. Sullivan, the “Athletics czar” and Olympics as “a powerless, pathetic figure in American sports’ most controversial figure charge of an inept committee,” while believing (Photography Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Phothat the Olympics should stray no further than tographs, The New York Public Library, track and field sports.209 Increasingly megaloma- Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations). niacal, Sullivan, who wasn’t even the American delegate to the International Olympic Committee, sought to snatch control of global athletics through a rival international track and field body under his control. He failed miserably to do this through his attempts to unilaterally declare the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition athletics as the 1901 Olympics, a move that infuriated de Coubertin.210 Sullivan was rapidly dampened and perhaps humiliated when reminded by Casper Whitney that his rule extended no further than the members of the AAU. He had no control over college athletics, a group more to the liking of the aristocratic Frenchman than the plebeian Sullivan, and in a rare meal of humble pie, he eventually succumbed meekly to the Frenchman’s dictate.211

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Despite these antics, the U.S. got the 1904 Olympics, though crucially it was for Chicago and not Sullivan’s home town. Sullivan put on a brave face and in a cringing letter to de Coubertin went as far as to say that: “The papers say [the Chicago organizers] are raising a lot of money out there…. If that is so, it is simply marvelous. They could never get that much money in New York.”212 He headed the committee that took charge of the games when it was finally switched to St. Louis as part of the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Two years later he took up the post of president of the AAU which included his visit to the 1908 Olympics in London, returning to the secretary’s chair the following year. His behavior at White City, which will be referred to in a later chapter, reflected what John Lucas described as “a blunt, no-nonsense pragmatist who avoided compromise and subterfuge, preferring an honest directness — no matter who it hurt.”213 Yet nowhere can Sullivan’s unbending patriotism be more obvious than his work on Spalding’s crusade to determine the “true” American origins of baseball. Having already spent two years with Spalding’s American Sports Publishing Company, Sullivan was chosen principally as the safe pair of hands to come up with the “facts,” yet his evidence has since been dumped in the dustbin of historical inaccuracies along with the notion that the world is flat.214 Perhaps what was so striking about Sullivan’s career wasn’t his autocratic rule — most sports “czars” behaved in such a manner — but the conflicting aims of his sporting project. A great educational man, he wanted, like Muldoon, physical exercise extended to all men: “The workingman is being neglected, and in this respect England and Chicago are far ahead of us. Athletics should be for the masses, not the classes.”215 And yet he also was a staunch defender of amateurism, ensuring Jim Thorpe was stripped of his Olympics medals. Not only did he have little time for athletes unable to combine a top unpaid sporting career with a job, but he also held at best an indifference to women and non-white ethnic minorities. No better is this confusing mindset explained than by S.W. Pope, who alleges that while on the one hand Sullivan’s mission wasn’t “a class specific one,” he used his movement as “a status vehicle for rubbing shoulders with select elites.”216 During Sullivan’s reign he was aided in regional and minor bodies by other Irish administrators, including the Irish-born John J. O’Connor. While it’s uncertain when he moved to America, O’Connor attended Washington University, and competed for various St. Louis athletic clubs, such as Hibernian AC, Missouri AC, Pastime AC and Irish-Nationalists AC.217 He became chairman/president of the Western Association and one of the vice-presidents of the AAU by at least 1901. Re-elected after an acrimonious meeting in 1908 in which he was accused by his rival, Edward Cochems, of “unfair methods,”218 he remained the AAU representative of the Irish-Nationalists AC and was also the main organizer of the Irish sporting festival at the 1904 Olympics.219 He was joined by Frederick Joseph Delany, who hailed from Maryborough, County Laois. A salesman for Judkins McCormick Company, he had the Church Athletic League and was on the Board of Managers of the AAU.220 Small-town teams in the eastern states were equally important to baseball, and the leagues they played in were a significant center for the honing of the baseball player. While only one became a major league, others, like the WL’s opposite number on the compass, the Eastern League, were happy just to play second fiddle in the cities the majors had passed by. However, as the American and National Leagues raged a baseball war in which they refused to recognize the National Agreement, the minors sought to protect themselves from raids. In September 1901, the big minor league clubs and leagues met in Chicago and formed the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, which today runs under the more

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succinct title of Minor League Baseball. In the process they elected the well-connected Pat Powers as the first president. Powers had been since 1893 president of the Eastern League, while promoting sports in the New York leisure circuit.221 Starting out with a “Wild West show” in Ambrose Park, Brooklyn, in the eighties, he diversified into other sports, including baseball.222 By November 1891, Powers’s success had got him rumored as the Giants manager for the following season. The Sun wrote that he was “one of the shrewdest men connected with the game” and was “thoroughly acquainted with metropolitan tastes and ideas”: “Powers is successful in bringing out fine players and his ability in this respect will be very valuable to the local team at the present time. Powers recently had an offer to manage the [American] Association team in Philadelphia, but after some talk … he decided that Philadelphia would be a very unhealthful spot for a manager with ideas of his own.” He cited the Athletics’ owners, the Wagner brothers, as the obstacle, telling the Sun reporter that “he would not take charge of any team unless he had complete control.”223 Meanwhile, The Day suggested that this was a man who would bring players such as Jack Doyle into line: “He is well and favorably known. A strict disciplinarian, thoroughly temperate, he understands the points of the game and will be a general favorite with the players and public.”224 A disappointing eighth convinced Powers to bail out, and by the end of February 1893 he had resigned, although not before the New York Times had opined: “It would be a difficult task to find a man to take his place.”225 In the mid-nineties, to keep the dollars coming in when the baseball season ended, he and partner James C. Kennedy, a former Irish-American reporter turned small-time boxing manager and promoter, tapped into the passion for the bicycle with six-day international races at the Madison Square Garden. These events stretched the body to the extreme, forcing the New York Times to suggest: “An athletic contest in which the participants ‘go queer’ in their heads, and strain their powers until their faces become hideous with the tortures that rack them, is not sport, it is brutality.”226 His penchant for the frivolous and unorthodox was common throughout his sporting life. One example occurred in December 1898, when the Chicagoan Charles W. Miller won $2,650 in a six-day bike race at the Madison Square Garden. Miller had also previously tried to get his fiancée, Genevieve Hanson, to marry him. Hanson had insisted she’d only agree if he won the race. Powers got wind of the idea and came up with a plan to have the pair tie the knot at the Garden shortly after Miller came in first. A little after an hour and a quarter, the wedding began with Powers leading the procession and patrons screaming themselves hoarse.227 An expert on rules in the governing of sport and a skillful negotiator, Powers was instrumental in getting the two major leagues to recognize the rights of the minors.228 It wasn’t an easy ride. He slammed Ban Johnson in the press during negotiations when Johnson failed to turn up through sickness: “Johnson may be sick, and then again he may not”: We have heard other stories coming from the American League which turned out afterward to be pipe dreams. We will not put off our business to wait on him. He has been delaying this agreement ever since the peace meeting last winter … and we have decided to act without him…. I do not think he wants an agreement. He gets so many of the players for his organization by taking them without leave … that he may be afraid to enter into any sort of a legitimate agreement with the owners of the clubs in minor leagues.229

He negotiated a new “National Agreement” in 1903, creating the stability that allowed the minors to grow over the decade from fourteen leagues in 1902 to fifty-two in 1910. Included were many of today’s current minor league standards such as the rating system, a player draft and “territorial” protection, which meant — in theory at least — that league expansion

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would “promote” the top minor league club in sought-after cities into the majors, rather than setting up new teams or moving in loss-making franchises.230 Cities like Newark, Jersey City and Baltimore, itself discarded by the American League, were added to Powers’s Eastern League. Pat returned to club ownership in 1905, purchasing the Providence club, then selling it two years later.231 However, for Powers the clouds were gathering. He was ousted in a humiliating coup from the Eastern League in December 1910, after trying to resign the day before. His fellow presidents insisted it go to a vote, and five of the eight club presidents conspired to replace him with Toronto’s Ed Barrow. Afterwards, Powers commented with typical defiance: “I feel like a bird that has been let out of its cage.”232 The following September, Powers and his Madison Square AC were subjected to an investigation by the New York State Athletic Commission, headed by Frank S. O’Neil. Allegations of violations arose following the Garden’s first event — a lightweight fight between Valentine “KO” Brown and the Englishman, Matt Wells — the day after the introduction of the Frawley Bill, centering on overcrowding, tickets with no price printed on them, and tax irregularities. The New York Times reported that the NYPD were satisfied about arrangements outside the venue, and complaints of overcrowding were rebuffed with: “Similar crushes … had occurred at political meetings, and were a frequent occurrence at baseball games.” Any disorder only occurred when the Garden’s management announced that a tax of two bucks and up were to be added to the face value of tickets, requiring fifty extra cops to control angry patrons. Powers merely shrugged he didn’t expect so many people to turn up.233 In return, O’Neil was bellicose: “The Horton law died in the Garden; everybody knows why…. Public opinion will not countenance a repetition of those affairs.”234 He wanted to know who got the profits of this “club,” how the club could obtain a year’s lease on a property that was going to be pulled down the following February, and whether tickets were sold at above the advertised price. When Powers was called to explain himself he demanded a lawyer accompany him, and became coy about certain questions.235 O’Neil’s reaction was to immediately suspend operations at the Garden until alterations — more water buckets; seats fastened to the floor, presumably so that they couldn’t be used as missiles; and “sufficient” aisles built — proposed by Fire Commissioner Joseph Johnson Jr. were implemented.236 Returning from Albany, O’Neil asked reporters what Powers was “afraid” of telling: “Every manager and officer of a club ought to be willing to submit to the commission every legitimate business matter that concerns the regulation of the boxing law in this State. If a club has nothing to conceal and wishes to assist the commission … there is no reason why information cannot be given to the commission.”237 By the end of the month the NYSAC had revoked the MSAC license. When the lawyers stepped in, Dix suggested that the Frawley Law should go too.238 Plans to demolish the Garden were shelved, and a new company, rumored to be silently run by Frank Farrell and Tim Hurst, took over to address all problems, with Frank O’Neil as another “partner.”239 Powers was down but not out. He immediately set to work on arranging a fight for Jack Johnson in New York for March 1912, despite clear indications that Papa Jack wasn’t welcome. Visiting him in Chicago, he found the world champion grinning wildly at an opportunity to take on the NYSAC and get his revenge on O’Neil. It turned out to be a bluff.240 Powers remained in the sporting wilderness until he teamed up with the oil tycoon Harry Sinclair in 1915 to turn the Kansas City franchise into the Newark Peppers of the Federal League.241 His dream was, however, to get the Feds into New York,242 and a syndicated UP article by Hal Sheridan laughed at Powers’s optimism:

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Now comes Patrick Powers, or Pat if you don’t like the disguise. Mr. (that is Pat) Powers vociferates with much positiveness that the Federals will have a team in New York in 1916. That was said in 1915. But Pat always had a convincing way. Mr. Powers divulges that the New York club is already organized. All it needs is a park, some players and a crowd. The mazuma, which is a synonym for dough, glue or good base ball teams, as you please, is subscribed, asserverates the Fed magnate.243

By July, the Newark venture was crumbling.244 The Federal League saw the end of Powers as a sporting mogul, leaving his interests restricted to staging receptions at big fights, like at the Jack Dempsey-Fred Fulton fight in Harrison in July 1918 where he just shook hands “with every one in the expensive seats.”245 The National League had two Irish presidents by 1920. The first was Thomas James Lynch, the first-ever Irish-American president of any of the majors. Born in 1859 in New Britain, Connecticut, Lynch had been known as the “King of the Umpires.” One of the greatest arbiters of the nineteenth century during the worst period of baiting, and the first umpire to officiate more than a thousand games, undoubtedly he’d have umpired more had he not been forced out by abusive players, managers and owners. Lynch’s infamous fight with Jack Doyle was his lowest point, while his failure to send off Orioles outfielder Ducky Holmes in July 1898, after he swore at the New York crowd and called Freedman a “Sheeny,” saw him finally called out.246 Out for about ten years managing the Russwin Theatre in his home town, Lynch was voted in as the NL president on a dark-horse compromise ticket that followed the inability of owners to decide between the former PL president John Montgomery Ward and Louisville’s Robert W. Brown. When his name was put forward, the New York Times described it like someone “touching off a big charge of flashlight powder in the meeting room. The relief from the tension of the past week was welcomed by every club owner, and they were all on their feet in an instant, and in one voice seconded the nomination.”247 Yet problems lay ahead: the post had become vacant only because Harry Pulliam had blown his brains out that summer; clearly the job wasn’t for the fainthearted. Through the multitude of bickering egos compared to the united AL, the Nationals had lost ground. Lynch failed to bring the league under control, continually battling with Charles Ebbets and Barney Dreyfuss over umpires and his crusade to clean up the “rowdyism.” But at least he didn’t leave the job in a hearse. By late 1913, Lynch had lost the backing of John T. Brush, and accepted that he wouldn’t be re-elected. A Sporting Life correspondent from New York concluded: “The base ball public would give more consideration and more patronage to the Federal League with Lynch at the head than they would otherwise….”248 Lynch, though, dismissed any suggestions that he’d lead the Feds, claiming he was a “National Leaguer.”249 As his successor, the new owner of the Phillies, William Baker, proposed the Irishborn governor of Pennsylvania, John Tener. Lynch was reticent when asked about the news: “My conduct of the affairs of the league for the last four years couldn’t have been so bad when they had to get one of the most prominent men in the country to run against me.”250 When Tener’s appointment was officially announced, Lynch rounded on the club owners: “In choosing your next president, gentlemen, you have gone on record as wanting a man who will lend dignity and prestige to the National League. In your selection of [Tener] … you have the right man, but I hope that [he] will inject some of that same dignity expected of him into yourselves and be a help instead of a hindrance.”251 Like Lynch, Tener was never a baseball magnate, but as a top politician it appeared he’d probably have more success in

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dealing with the owners. The NL offered Tener a four-year deal, with the governor agreeing to work part-time unpaid until his spell in Harrisburg ended in January 1915. However, when he was asked the sensitive question of salary, Tener snapped: “I do not believe that the public is interested in that, and besides it is a private matter between the league and myself.”252 Certainly the press admired him. The Sporting Life wrote with much knee scraping: You don’t need any identifications or credentials when you see Governor Tener approaching. Of course, you may not know his name, but you will instantly and naturally realize that you see a leader and a chief. If Governor Tener walks down the aisle of a dining room, the waiters will scramble to find him the one best table the instant they see him drawing near. Had he lived 20,000 years ago, in the days of club and fang, the primitives and cavemen, in caucus assembled, would have declared him their king even if they had never seen him till after the opening of the meeting. In short, John K. Tener is “QUITE SOME MAN….”253

In the end, Tener had even less luck than Lynch. Clearly, his response upon his election to the suggestion that the NL needed help, perhaps betrays that he may well have underestimated the challenge ahead: “You ask me that question as if you had brought a patient to a new doctor. The trouble is you have no case. The patient is a strong, healthy, civic institution. It needs no doctor.”254 His use of such rose-tinted spectacles continued: in February 1916 an extensive letter to the press by Tener declared: “Another thing — the game is absolutely honest. Everybody in the country who is not super-suspicious knows in his heart that the game is straight, absolutely on the level.”255 It was a quote that was to come back and bite him within four years. Soon Tener was stuck in the quicksand of baseball business and was swimming frantically, finally resigning in the middle of the 1918 season, John Tener, the Tyrone-born orphan who grew up to be governor of Pennsylvania with the “Scott Perry Case,” the straw that broke his resolve. Perry had jumped from the Braves to (Library of Congress). Connie Mack’s Athletics via a “rogue league,” and Tener had refused to continue serving on the National Commission in protest. When he demanded that the NL break off relations with the AL, he received a frosty response from his magnates, leaving him little choice but to grab his coat.256 If Tener’s term of NL presidency betrayed a certain naivety, one should reflect that even Ban Johnson, who ruled his league as a despot, was powerless to prevent the 1919 Black Sox crisis. The stakes were too high in the game, and the prizes too great, for baseball owners to fall into line. Neither league could curtail violence, an often intricate part of the culture of the Irish-American sportsman. The inability of Lynch and Tener to bring discipline to the game was the reason both were unable to continue.

10 Sluggers — The Irish Sportsman and Violence The term “slugger” comes from “slacaire: a beater, bruiser … a mauler.”1

When John Carmel Heenan became American champion, like so many sportsmen after him, his private life came under closer scrutiny. In 1859, he had apparently “married” the scandalous vaudeville actress Adah Isaacs Menken, who had dumped her first husband, Alexander, to seek out the muscular fighter. Their honeymoon was supposedly occupied by the Benicia Boy teaching his bride “to hold her own when they sparred good-humouredly.”2 Menken, who had earned her infamy in the raucous melodrama Mazeppa, in which the New York Times claimed she was required “to be very much undressed,” soon disclosed that the lessons were needed, because Heenan was apparently using the pregnant actress as an after-dinner punching bag.3 Heenan’s fame came at a time of growing interest in celebrities’ lives. As Renée M. Sentilles notes: Sensational scandal was clearly linked with the celebrity phenomenon; just as celebrities allowed the public to enjoy intimacy without risking rejection, sensation gave the public thrills without danger, and scandal proved an easy link between them. Readers and journalists alike seemed to understand that Menken and Heenan were public property, and therefore their personal lives, which would normally be labeled private, were also public property.4

But eyebrows were raised as the nuptials were announced in the New York Tribune in January 1860, as Heenan crossed the Atlantic.5 Within days, Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times refuted any suggestion of a wedding,6 provoking an emotional response from Menken, filled with “the sentimental language popular in women’s magazines and novels, [in which] Menken … likened a woman’s reputation to a delicate flower,” pleading amidst threats of libel: “Remember that a woman’s reputation is like the camellia, ‘wound it with a single touch, and you can never recall its bloom.’… I beg that you will do me and John C. Heenan the justice to correct this grievous mistake, which has caused me the deepest trouble.”7 Then Josephine Heenan wrote a letter to Alexander Menken, stating that she was the rightful wife of the champ: “My husband as soon as he learns of this woman’s audacity, will, through the medium of the press, refute her lies, and make known his marriage with myself.”8 Alexander sued for divorce on April 7, 1860, in a Cincinnati court, citing Adah’s adultery with Heenan 204

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“on or about the 5th day of October 1859 at the city of Hoboken” along with another spot of extramarital sexual congress “on or about the 15th day of September 1859, at the house of a person whose name is unknown to said plaintiff….”9 While newspapers were never sure if a “legal,” rather than a “ceremonial,” marriage had occurred in September 1859, and Heenan continued to deny the marriage, Menken successfully sued for divorce in 1861 in Woodstock, Illinois, claiming that Heenan had scrounged off her earnings “in order to support him in his dissipated and licentious habits,” thus depriving her and their now dead child of luxuries.10 She went on to marry twice more before her death at thirty-three in Paris in 1868.11 Heenan, meanwhile, gradually faded into obscurity; spotted at the aborted Coburn-McCoole fight in Cincinnati in May 1868, he was back in court four years later pleading innocence regarding electoral fraud, and was eventually found in October 1873 dying from tuberculosis on a train to San Francisco near Ogden, Utah, aged thirty-eight.12 Such behavior was hardly surprising given Heenan’s profession and the culture of the pug. While not all boxers were wife-beaters, the ring was a brutal occupation demanding violence for success in a world equally violent outside. As Gorn suggests, the ring gloried “brutishness [as] part of a man’s fate.”13 Despite the latter-day belief that the fairer sex was treated with nothing but deference in the nineteenth century, domestic violence was common. Ergo, in a profession that centered on pain infliction, some boxers’ wives became targets. In November 1870 Joe Coburn escaped jail after shooting his wife. One morning a respectably dressed woman was seen staggering along Broadway screaming that she had been shot. Running over to help her, witnesses discovered she was Johanna Coburn, and that she had a wound in her back. Coburn was arrested at his home and admitted that although he was drunk, and an argument had occurred, the gun’s discharge was an accident, something Mrs. Coburn was unwilling to disagree with.14 John L. Sullivan also invited his beloved to “put ’em up.” He married his first wife Annie Bailey in May 1883, and Isenberg describes the union as “not a marriage made in heaven.” Mrs. Sullivan was “loose” and a reputed drinker, and was “imposing … [and] readily gave as good as she got….” With the bed still warm from consummation, the gloves were on, and after she fled to relatives near Providence, Sullivan, once sober, would pursue his wife, the pair would make up and return to Boston, and the fighting would start over again.15 Things came to public attention in June when, as the New York Times sarcastically called him, “Professor Sullivan” smashed up the furniture in his Boston pad and “knocked the good woman out in one short round,” before hiding out with friends near Providence.16 Annie herself denied many stories — though not this one. The couple separated shortly after their son was born the following year and remained married for the next twenty-five years in name only.17 Even the so-called gentlemen of the sport were prone to inflicting the sweet science to the damsels. Sullivan’s successor, “Gentleman Jim” Corbett, was a serial philanderer. In 1900, a scandal hit the papers when his second wife, Vera Stanwood, aka Jessie Taylor, aka Jessie Davis, aka Vera Stanley, aka Hattie Clark, announced she was suing for divorce with allegations of cruelty. The year before she had created a scene on New York’s Eighth Avenue when she appealed to a passing cop to protect her from Corbett, who she claimed was trying to kill her. She was now reported in the Baltimore Sun as saying: “I have kept it a secret that Mr. Corbett and I have not been living together for about six months. We separated by mutual consent. I have already begun an action for divorce. Once he held the glowing

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end of a cigar against my cheek while it seared the flesh deeply and I screamed in agony. The whole story will be told in the divorce papers, which are being prepared.”18 Stanwood was no frail flower. She had broken up Corbett’s marriage to Ollie, née Lake, in 1895, and was described in the press as a femme fatale who grew up in poverty in Omaha, the daughter of a railway switchman who “barely earned enough to keep the wolf from the door.” Working in local “resorts” to support her family, as soon as she was old enough she “caused many a man’s heart to flutter with admiration as he munched the viands which Jessie served,” according to the Boston Globe. One such man was Alonzo George, a “hack driver” who would frequent the cafe she worked in: “Not that he was hungry, but he would jam down pie by the cut and sip coffee by the hour, while he poured into Jessie’s auricular appendage his tale of ardent love.” Jessie/Vera succumbed, wed, got pregnant, gave birth to a boy who died before his third birthday, and found out her husband was a feckless fool: “Alonzo then gave up holding the lines over the span of a public conveyance and became a mixer of cocktails and gin fizzes in a second-class saloon.” Their son’s death cited as the reason he ended up “a confirmed drunkard, and his treatment of his girl wife was cruel in the extreme.”19 Rumors later surfaced that Stanwood had her own record of violence, stabbing a friend, Grace Lee, after she had mocked her for kissing a lithograph of Corbett on a restaurant wall.20 Despite the accusations of matrimonial turmoil, Vera and Gentleman Jim reconciled and remained together for the rest of his life; Vera even put up with Jim’s odd straying from the marital bed. Owney Geoghegan was another violent fighter, but his treatment of his spouse was significantly better than that of some of his contemporaries, with his doctor claiming: “To me they always seemed to be living in concord and happiness.”21 Geoghegan was nonetheless one of the most violent men in New York City. While he slammed his neighbor’s saloon as being a dangerous place to order a drink, Geoghegan’s dive on the Bowery was no safer. In January 1878, at between four and five in the morning, Geoghegan shot and mortally wounded a former convict, James Morton, aka “James Woodward,” aka “Jim Rose.” One witness claimed the row started when a drunken Morton ordered drinks, then refused to pay. Patrolman Michael Johnston heard the pair of shots while on his beat and called for help, but while waiting for assistance, he saw Morton slung out onto the pavement outside, resulting in a broken arm and a leg fractured in numerous places, in addition to a bullet hole near his knee. Twenty-three patrons, men and women and mostly drunk, were arrested.22 Morton died in Chambers Street Hospital five days later and Geoghegan gave himself up.23 Despite Johnston’s later claiming he saw “the flash of a pistol coming” from the hand of Geoghegan, and Morton’s widow claiming Morton had told her it was Geoghegan who shot him, other witnesses swore Owney never carried a weapon. 24 Even Morton denied Geoghegan was the gunman, with the coroner, a Dr. Flanagan, deciding that no further action should be taken.25 The city judiciary had other ideas. A grand jury indicted Geoghegan, who pleaded not guilty in a case that was eventually shelved or lost.26 That December he was arrested, accused of shooting a quartet of prospective patrons, Dennis Sullivan, Dennis Gillespie and two others. Apparently Geoghegan was questioned about the price of the drinks and “without warning” shot at the entourage. Naturally Owney denied any involvement, blaming the incident on the above-named pair’s drunkenness. A man called McManus, who knew the couple “to be bad characters,” and warned a drunk who was being followed by the pair to the toilet, was beaten senseless until Geoghegan intervened. The couple then pulled revolvers on Geoghegan but received their wounds by firing at each other instead. The police were unimpressed and took Geoghegan into custody.

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The following day the pair refused to press charges and Geoghegan was released.27 Four years later, Geoghegan knocked out a horse-tram driver on the Belt Line in lower Manhattan. He had been standing on the front platform after returning from Coney Island, when the driver, Peter J. Quinn, warned him that he might fall off. Owney replied that “he could take care of himself.” When Quinn pointed out that the rules prohibited such riding, Geoghegan sent him sprawling, which consequently forced the horses to bolt. Owney was arrested by a cop from the Twenty-Seventh Precinct and taken down to Liberty Street Station.28 It wasn’t just prizefighters who assaulted women. On the evening of March 13, 1902, the night before he was due to leave for spring training in Savannah, “Turkey” Mike Donlin’s almighty bender finally came to an almighty halt. After urinating in the lobby of the Baltimore Academy of Music on North Howard Street, he staggered onto the pavement outside and assaulted a chorus girl, Mamie Fields. The Baltimore Sun described the incident as “all the more outrageous by reason of the fact that she is physically frail and delicate and of petite figure.” First taking a successful swing at a fellow resident of her hostel, Mr. E.M. Slayton, who had gallantly demanded Donlin let go of her arm, he punched her with such force that “she fell and lay quivering and senseless on the pavement. Blood gushed from her mouth and nose, and the side of her face became discolored and swollen.” Slayton picked up a black eye for his troubles.29 Fields was said to have vomited blood and become unconscious when she returned to her lodgings on North Howard Street, while her face was so badly bruised that she was unable to go on stage for a few weeks. Donlin was immediately recognized by his scar and took flight to the nearby Diamond Café, pursued by Fields’s friend, Margaret Kingston, who was barred entry by Donlin’s boozing chums.30 Donlin was initially suspected of fleeing north to Philadelphia, presumably, according to the Sun, “in the hope that the affair will blow over in a few days” when the actors moved on to their next engagement.31 Instead he headed south to Washington, surfacing two days later following a scuffle on a tram, and was dragged back to Baltimore and released on bail for two thousand dollars.32 The Orioles immediately announced that Donlin was to be kicked out of the club and the AL.33 In court, he claimed he had no memory of the assaults nor of going to Washington: “When I read in the papers there what I had done I wanted to come back, but I was ashamed to do so…. The accident would never have happened had I been in my right mind.” He pointed out he had been drunk for four weeks. Meanwhile his advocates pleaded for mercy due to his good character when sober and his recent sacking. This fell on deaf ears, with the assault costing him six months as a guest of Maryland’s governor.34 The editor of the Sporting Life demanded the episode should end Donlin’s career, “which has been marked by one long series of rowdy acts upon the field and nasty brawls in private since his entrance to the major league arena. Donlin belongs to the class of players whom it has been sought for some years to weed out for the good of the sport.”35 Donlin wasn’t the only Irish-American baseball player who would attack the fairer sex. Newspapers reported in 1898 “Bad Bill” Eagan tried to kill his wife, and then attempted suicide. He was witnessed one morning bouncing around a Camden barber shop drunk, showing his revolver, and telling onlookers he was going home to kill her and then “blow his brains out.” The police were informed, and two cops arrived in time to see a screaming Mrs. Eagan running out of the homestead while her “rum-crazed” husband was firing shots at her. They wrestled the gun from him, and carted Bad Bill off to jail and then an asylum.

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The Tribune had little sympathy: “William Eagan, or, as he is known in the baseball profession, ‘Bad Bill Eagan,’ is a player of national reputation. He is an ignorant man, and stories of his badness are told all over the league.”36 Baseball finished with Eagan that year and he was to die penniless at thirty-five from “quick consumption” in Denver, after being sent there to recover. The Denver Free Press claimed: “He was his own worst enemy … his habits alone preventing him from taking a much higher rank in the game than he ever attained.”37 Tragedy of a different matter, mental illness, touched the lives of Frank “Terry” Larkin and Marty Bergen. Larkin was a heavy drinker who ended up being dropped as a professional because of a damaged arm in 1880. He bounced around the minors in New York while constantly resorting to the booze. In 1883, and five months married, a wrecked Larkin had been trying to get back into the game with Boston, but his love of the bottle had put the club off employing him. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported that “his abuse and cruel treatment of his young wife Kate, almost since the day of his marriage, aroused the ire of his neighbors,” and had escalated to the level of threats to kill her, forcing his landlord to insist Larkin move back with his father. Larkin continued “with an insane jealousy against his wife,” carrying a gun, even firing off a couple of shots into the ceiling of his wife’s abode on one visit. He threatened his father, who wanted him arrested, and neighbors, usually by displaying his “shooting iron.” Getting drunk and thinking that the wife of her landlord, Mr. Murray, was hiding her, he ran into Murray’s grocery and raised the gun to shoot him before Murray summoned Kate to calm Larkin down. Kate agreed to go upstairs with Frank if she could have the pistol, but then Larkin locked the door and started shouting at his wife. When a policeman, Officer Phelan, arrived, Larkin asked him to go outside, where he planned to shoot him through a window with another weapon. Warned by women across the street, Phelan then heard shots coming from the locked room, and when he went upstairs, Larkin shot him in the face through the door. Managing to get inside, neighbors and another policeman found Mrs. Larkin lying on the floor “apparently dead, with blood flowing copiously from her mouth,” while Terry Larkin stumbled around with a large gash in his throat where he had tried to kill himself.38 Kept under armed guard at St. Catherine’s Hospital, Larkin began to get violent again after believing that he had murdered his wife, trying to kill himself again by cutting himself and banging his head against a steam register, before begging a policeman: “For God’s sake hit me in the head and put an end to my suffering.”39 There, according to the Brooklyn Eagle, he blamed his behavior on malaria, only turning to booze when other medicines proved useless.40 Recovering from a broken jaw, Larkin’s wife stood by her man. Within days it was reported they were acting like “lovers and seem very affectionate toward each other.”41 She accompanied him to his arraignment in front of Justice Nacher weeks later, and a reporter from the Brooklyn Eagle observed that Kate Larkin “spoke in the most affectionate terms of her husband, and said she knew he was not in his right mind when he discharged the revolver at her head.”42 The case goes cold with the press at this point, but the following February, he was back. The New York Times labeled him a “bad man to be at large,” claiming he was released a week previously, with his father the only person willing to look after him. He rewarded this kindness by going home drunk, dragging his father out of bed and threatening to shoot him. A Brooklyn police source was quoted as saying: “If allowed to go at large, [Larkin] will certainly murder someone.”43 Despite this, Larkin managed to return to professional baseball with the American Association’s Richmond Virginians, batting in forty games, and spent the whole of 1885 out of the news.

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However, the old demons returned in early 1886 when he threatened to shoot his employer James McEnery or McAnany, who had fired him from his saloon.44 Larkin returned with two pistols and challenged McEnery to a duel. While they were walking their ten paces, McEnery bolted outside and locked Larkin inside. Arrested and brought to court, Larkin argued that McEnery was in no more danger than he, and only wanted “a square fight.” The case was adjourned for a week “so that he could get the liquor out of him.” 45 At his trial, the jury failed to find Larkin guilty of any crime, and he left court with a flea in his ear from the judge: “You have been trying for the past three years to get into State Prison, Larkin, and if you persevere in the path you are now following you will succeed…. Perhaps it would be well for you if you did not try so hard.”46 Little is known of what happened to Larkin afterwards, but most assume he was confined to asylums. He pops up again in the Sporting Life in early 1893: in a small paragraph titled “The Old Sad Story,” Larkin is described as “suffering from the delirium tremens.” He had “through his love for liquor … become a vagrant,” and had recently asked for lodgings at the Bedford Avenue Police Station.47 The Brooklyn Eagle in June 1894 disclosed that a police officer had found him on Brooklyn’s South First Street “suffering from alcoholism” and took him to the Eastern District hospital.48 He died on September 16, 1894, with some reports claiming he slit his throat.49 His wife passed away two years later.50 Marty Bergen, elder brother of Bill Bergen, was born in North Brookfield on October 25, 1871, the eldest son of Irish immigrants Michael and Catherine. In contrast to Bill, Marty’s career lasted a total of four troubled seasons with the Boston Beaneaters, where his increasingly erratic behavior culminated in a bout of undiagnosed psychiatric illness. His mental health began causing concern following the death of his son Martin in April 1899. His relationship with his colleagues grew strained, as he began accusing them of maliciously “plaguing” him over the death, and at the end of the 1898 season he threatened to kill some of them. One day he slapped teammate Vic Willis for no reason in St. Louis while he was eating his breakfast. “I feared Bergen would do something horrible, and I pitied his wife and family,” recalled Ted Lewis of the incident: “I remember one morning in the dining room of the hotel at St. Louis he was talking in an The “troubled” Marty Bergen, who tragically wiped out his whole family (courtesy of apparently friendly way with Willis, who sat the Trustees of the Boston Public Library/ down in the chair next to him, but in an McGreevey Collection). instant, however, he drew back his arm and struck Willis in the face, and told him if he brought his college friend around he would do the same to him.” Many of Bergen’s teammates threatened not to play if he remained.51 Bergen played his final game on October 15, 1899. On the morning of January 19, 1900, his father Michael trudged through the snow to

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Bergen’s nearby farm for a pail of milk. With dairy farmers needing to be up early, Michael became suspicious when he saw that the shades were still down on the farmstead. About to leave, he decided instead to investigate. Both the front and back doors were closed, so Bergen Senior forced open the window, whereupon he let out a huge scream. Blood was everywhere, and among it all were Marty Bergen, his thirty-two-year-old wife Harriet, and his two children, Florence, five, and Joe, three.52 He had axed his family viciously and repeatedly before cutting his own throat with a razor that almost decapitated him. His wife was found “lying on the bed, with her hands raised as if in supplication or trying to ward off a blow.”53 The Bergen massacre shocked the country. But only Connie Mack and one of Bergen’s teammates, Billy Hamilton, represented baseball at his funeral, while his colleagues were quick to testify to the press about Bergen’s mental problems.54 Kid Nichols told the Sporting News: “It seems to me that the fact that he was all the time thinking that everybody was working against him … showed that his mind was unbalanced.”55 James Sullivan told the Boston Globe that Bergen threatened “to do away with” both himself and Hugh Duffy: “And when I think of it now it looks as though Martin meant what he said.”56 The tragedy was that the evidence given by his teammates clearly indicated that Bergen loved the people he slaughtered. Tim Murnane remarked that his “great desire was to finish his work and return as often as possible to his cottage home, to the two little tots he loves so well … whose simple smiles were more to the champion’s soul than deafening applause of a baseball multitude.”57 On road trips, Bergen would insist on going back to his farm, where he’d meticulously stay if Boston were playing at home. If his manager, Frank Selee, refused, he’d disappear anyway. Ted Lewis remembered that he’d talk incessantly of his “pretty little wife” and his children: “For hours he would … say that he loved to be home on Sunday afternoons and sit on the bank of the brook and watch his children wade in the water.” One day on their way to Cincinnati, Bergen was spotted “brooding and apparently thinking about something” in the corner of a carriage. When the train stopped in Washington, he jumped off and took a train back to Boston.58 He told Tim Murnane that the constant catching had wrecked his nerves: “I have asked for a leave of absence simply because I thought I would go mad if I worked another day without rest.”59 As if to illustrate how bad things had got for him, he told his physician that his only recollection of the 1899 season was of a man congratulating him and handing him a cigar, which he didn’t smoke for fear it was poisoned.60 Finally, after another bout of what Murnane labeled “French Leave,” the writer visited Bergen at his home in July 1899 to hear his case: “I made up my mind that Bergen was telling me the truth, or was slightly demented. In either case he was entitled to the undivided sympathy of the baseball public, as well as players and directors.”61 Certainly mentally ill baseball players were few in number, but Irish-Americans seemed to be strongly represented. In 1903, at a crucial point of the season, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ pitcher, Ed Doheny, deserted the club and eventually ended up in a mental asylum that he never escaped, after attacking his nurse, Oberlin Howarth, with a poker.62 Doheny first showed signs of paranoia when he deserted the Pirates in Cincinnati, claiming he was being pursued by detectives; he briefed his manager Fred Clarke about this, before telling him he had had enough and “was going to give the detectives the slip….” The Pittsburgh PostGazette claimed it was all because of the heat.63 Clarke allowed Doheny to return, but by the end of the season the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette described Doheny as “a nervous wreck.” He was being looked after by a Dr. Conroy, but one Saturday he informed him that he no

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longer needed his attention, something Conroy thought was a joke until Doheny threw him out of the house. Howarth then intervened and managed to calm Doheny down and finally get him to sleep. But Doheny suddenly jumped out of bed and attacked Howarth. He then stood at his doorway, “only in his night clothing,” and began threatening his neighbors and promising to kill the first man who attempted to get near him. “For more than an hour the madman held the crowd at bay, but finally Chief of Police Frye and Officer Mills caught him off his guard and overpowered him.”64 With Boston battling to victory against the Pirates in the World Series, Doheny’s absence was hardly helpful. Despite this his colleagues agreed to grant Doheny a share of their prize winnings.65 Johnny Evers suffered a nervous breakdown when his partner in a Troy shoe shop swindled him as his career was threatened by a leg injury. Evers’s friend Matt Larkin told the Chicago Tribune: “It ought to be all right in a few days. Barring locking up the store and turning on his heel, I don’t think Mr. What’s-his-name did any particular harm, but that’s enough to worry the lad.” In fact, he helped himself to ten thousand bucks.66 Evers also had another store on Monroe Street, Chicago, painted entirely in green, which had opened two months earlier to riots, but surprisingly was eventually shut down a few months later due to lack of customers. The Chicago Tribune cheekily remarked of the initial disorder: “It isn’t often that the police have to be called to disperse a mob that is trying to buy shoes….”67 Evers returned from injury, but shortly after being sent off against Cincinnati in May 1911, he fainted when he entered the clubhouse. He “remained in bed all day in a weakened condition,” and eventually missed much of the 1911 season.68 He suffered another “nervous breakdown” in 1915 and threatened to retire from the game. J.C. O’Leary of the Boston Globe described him as “blue and discouraged and far from well,” and complaining about being “roasted and held up to the public as a ‘roughneck’” following an incident in Pittsburgh.69 Pointing fingers at Barney Dreyfuss and Charles Ebbets, Evers told the New York Times: “I have been criticized before many times during my career on the diamond, and guess I can stand a few more jabs, but I don’t propose to allow a lot of people to drive me to any asylum, as they have other ball players I might name. My personal welfare is my first consideration.”70 Later Evers’s great-grandnephew would claim that the death of his daughter in August 1914 had caused his wife to become depressed, pointing “an accusatory finger” at Evers by claiming he was never around immediately afterwards until she left him in 1915.71 However, the most tragic athlete to be committed to an institution was a golfer. The first winner of the U.S. Open, John J. McDermott was nineteen when he took the trophy at Wheaton, Illinois, where his headstrong confidence wasn’t without its consequences. He had upset the British press when he boasted that he’d win the 1912 British Open before finishing eight strokes behind Ted Ray.72 With this still in his mind the following year at the Shawnee Open, Pennsylvania, in August 1913, a month before he defended his American crown, the sight of Ray and Harry Vardon, according to Mark Frost, caused “the chesty little bantamweight to puff up like a blowfish.” Both men had been unbeaten since embarking and McDermott was up for some mixing. Like a boxer boosting ticket sales, he issued “one bold forecast of victory after another to any reporter who’d listen.”73 But this wasn’t the ring. McDermott was rubbing shoulders with unconverted snobs on both sides of the Atlantic, and while they were prepared to laugh at a teenage snapper bragging in Atlantic City before the open in Wheaton that “the foreigners are through,” they were less forgiving when he became a champ.74 At the presentation ceremony after winning the Shawnee Open, McDermott puzzled onlookers by hauling out the Open trophy, which he had dragged along to show off. Responding to calls for a speech, he jumped onto a chair and began a

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monologue that was clearly directed at the two Britons present. “Mr. Vardon, I understand you won this baby once before,” he concluded, putting a possessive arm around the trophy, “but let me tell you this: you are not going to take our cup back!”75 This outburst caused monocles to drop — Frost describes how you could hear grass growing — and uproar in the press. McDermott was gently removed by Shawnee and USGA officials before Ted Ray got near him, while Tom McNamara led a queue of people who apologized to the British pair. McDermott was forced to apologize to the duo — which he did — but here myth and truth separate. While Frost notes that the two Britons were “prepared to write the whole thing off as an unfortunate burst of youthful exuberJohn J. McDermott, committed into psyance,” McDermott repeated the line: “But, you chiatric care at the age of 22 for the rest of are not going to take our cup back!” Vardon had his life (Library of Congress). to physically restrain Ray from throttling McDermott, as golfing officials once more dragged McDermott away.76 However, the Shawnee club president, A.W. Tillinghast, later claimed that McDermott apologized and that Vardon and Ray had accepted it; he also asked reporters present not to write about the incident.77 Most didn’t, except, of course, for one “over-zealous reporter”: Seeking fame or fortune, he disclosed the incident that became, The American Golfer would later write, “colored beyond recognition, and immediately it blazed its way everywhere, and from every quarter came censure.”78 The USGA were forced to publicly apologize to Vardon and Ray and warned McDermott his Open entry was under threat. Mike Brady and McNamara also “quietly” canceled any further appearances with him before the open.79 Writing for the New York Evening Mail under the pseudonym of Jigger, Grantland Rice described McDermott as little more than a working-class semiliterate who “couldn’t write many treatises upon other subjects [than golf ].”80 McDermott was astonished by the criticism: “I have been horribly misquoted and am being censured right and left.”81 His only defender was The American Golfer, which published “A plea for McDermott,” claiming that people made no allowances for McDermott’s lack of years: “Ill-timed and ill-considered [his remarks] were. There’s no doubt about that. But, as expressed at the time, and in the circumstances, there was really no sting, no venom intended — merely a touch of youthful boastfulness….” The USGA’s public dressing-down had, according to the magazine, “the effect (not unexpected or unlooked for) of breaking his spirit.” It also noted that he was isolated at many post-golfing functions, at the so-called “nineteenth hole” or the “alcohole.” Poignantly, the magazine added: So much so that he is obsessed with the insane idea that everyone is against him. ’Tis a pity, a great, grievous pity that any man should be reduced to such a pass by reason of such slender cause…. The lesson he has received, a severe one, will not be in vain. Of that we are quite sure.— But a helping hand is needed now to rehabilitate him in his own esteem, his self-respect, on the part of all true lovers of the game.82

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McDermott never recovered. There was a photograph taken by Tillinghast which shows four golfers, including Ray and Vardon, grouped together while McDermott stands apart, “evidently brooding,” suggested Tillinghast, “over the occurrence.”83 He suffered a mental breakdown from the combination of the backlash, immense losses on the stock market, and a disastrous trip to the 1914 British Open, where he nearly had his throat cut by a barber when his ship, the Kaiser Wilhelm, was clattered by another vessel.84 He was subsequently committed to a psychiatric hospital for the rest of his seventy-nine years, ending his career at just twenty-two years of age. Johanna Coburn died the May after her husband shot her, as the result, many believed, of the shooting. But with her body barely cold, Coburn’s reputation was in the news again, as he was in court accused of wearing a stolen watch and chain.85 But this was just a minor detail in his long history of violence. In early December 1858, along with two accomplices, he almost killed Officer Samuel Davidson of the NYPD with a knife, going on the run immediately.86 Surrendering later that month, he was in trouble again for smashing a door of a house after the owner refused to lend him five dollars.87 Coburn pleaded guilty to Davidson’s stabbing and was sentenced to three years. The highlight of the court’s proceedings was the melodramatic and incessant screaming of Coburn’s sister, who shook her fist at the judge in the wake of her brother’s sentencing.88 Coburn was out by 1862, challenging Heenan and claiming his title when the Benicia Boy went to England, but his name made regular appearances in the “Police Matters” columns for years to come. In 1874, Coburn was accused of assaulting a Third Avenue horse-tram conductor named Thomas Clougher with a car-hook.89 The following year, he was back in court for shoving a pistol into the chest of saloonkeeper Patrick D. Burns and threatening to shoot him through the heart. Burns, who had previously killed a man in a “disreputable house,” was struck with amnesia when asked in court about the incident, claiming he had “no recollection of having seen a pistol in Coburn’s hand” that evening and adding he had made the complaint while drunk.90 With such a record, it comes as no surprise that Coburn went too far. In the early hours of February 16, 1877, he shot two policemen. The New York Herald spoke of Coburn and how he “frequently figured in the police courts of this city as defendant in cases of assault and battery, and hitherto has escaped the punishment he so richly merits.”91 Officer William E. Tobias gave evidence that it all started when he enquired about a cab outside Coburn’s saloon on Broadway around one o’clock. This provoked a barrage of “offensive language” from Coburn, who “came out on the sidewalk, bareheaded, accompanied by five or six friends” to continue his tirade. Tobias claims he tried to defuse the incident by telling Coburn: “I excuse you because you are in liquor, but if your friends do not take you in, and close up the place, I will close it as a disorderly house.” Coburn’s friends agreed to this, and while Tobias chatted with them, Coburn returned, grabbed Tobias by the throat, shouting: “I will give it to you anyhow.” Tobias then clubbed Coburn, with a second officer Jerfies coming to his assistance. Coburn broke free and pulled a gun, shooting Tobias twice, once in the chest and another in the arm, while also hitting Jerfies. Luckily for the pair Coburn’s gun was useless.92 Initial reports in the New York Times, which must have had some impact on the jury, accused Coburn of premeditation because of police harassment over the tavern’s disorderly reputation. He had threatened to “get square” by killing a couple of coppers, with Tobias top of the list.93 Coburn was interviewed by the New York Herald resplendent in a white

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bandage that “gave evidence of the terrible beating he had received at the hands” of the two cops: “My head pains me awfully, and nothing remains on my stomach. The clubbing they gave me would have killed any ordinary man.” At his trial he countered that Tobias had entered his saloon and become abusive over a patron called Lynch who had insulted him a couple of nights previously. Coburn went outside and spoke to Tobias, asking that he not cause any disturbance, with “language … kindly meant.” Tobias responded: “Damn you, I don’t want any more talk,” then clubbed him with a blow “that knocked [him] almost senseless.” When he arrived at the police station, Coburn claimed the “Czar of the Tenderloin,” Alexander “Clubber” Williams, “applied language to me you would not care to print” before punching him in the face. “They treated me in the most brutal manner,” Coburn sniffled.94 In court Coburn denied owning any gun. Another witness claimed Tobias was far from polite, offering to “lick Coburn,” before hitting him when he turned the other cheek.95 On the fourth day of the trial, another “friend” of Coburn, a lawyer called Hiram B. Ferguson, overheard “Clubber” tell his men that it served them right if they were shot, as “they should not have brought such a man in alive into the stationhouse; they should have killed him.” Two other witnesses claimed that Coburn was beaten first before any shots were fired, while others testified that he had come out onto the street being abusive.96 Despite Coburn’s counsel’s concern about the swiftness of the trial, and the rapid response of the police, the jury took forty-five minutes to decide the ex-pug was guilty of “felonious assault to kill”; the second charge of shooting Jerfies was dropped, as there was reason to believe that Coburn was still shooting at Tobias.97 Coburn was sentenced to ten years in Auburn Prison and subsequently Sing Sing, serving six and a half years, and receiving nine months’ additional commutation as a reward for assisting the prison authorities in “maintaining discipline.”98 While observing a public show of temperance to the welcoming crowd on his release, Coburn was to regularly return to police custody. In May 1885, he was arrested after a Charles Carer had accused him of robbing him of $950, but later became “confused” as to whether it was indeed the pug.99 That summer he was sought for the assault of a female train passenger, before being arrested for punching a judge’s son on a street car the following year.100 Like Coburn, John L. Sullivan was also prone to assaulting the public. He broke the jaw of Charles Robbins in April 1882, but with his bail posted by an anonymous ward heeler, the case never went to court.101 Towards the end of June 1886, he had to be pulled off a gambler, Michael Meehan, he had shaken “as a terrier would a rat” in a Boston “hightoned liquor store” on Tremont Street called the Perkins. Sullivan decamped to New York until all calmed down.102 Fueled by excessive drinking, Sullivan became worse. He almost tore the nose off “an unoffensive guest” at the Vanderbilt Hotel, before moving onto the Metropole, where he was thrown out.103 There were also the obligatory clashes on public transport. While traveling through Maine on a vaudeville tour he kicked a one-armed lawyer, Max L. Lizotte, in the groin and choked the advocate so hard he left his finger marks on his neck.104 Lizotte sued for five grand, receiving a tenth of the figure, while Sullivan was released by twenty minutes past seven the following evening.105 In August 1894, Sullivan decked a New York cabbie on Broadway who pointed out that he had had the pleasure of his company eight years previously. Sullivan replied: “I’ll just dot you one for each year.” He was found “speechless and overcome” on the sidewalk beside his victim, before friends took him into the nearby Coleman House.106 Two years later he was fined twenty-five bucks for punching a streetcar con-

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ductor in front of a police station, which he was immediately escorted into.107 Isenberg claims this was the inevitable fallout of “a temperamental young man contemplating a brutal trade, [who] was part of a cult of masculinity that produced a considerable portion of the nation’s criminal activity and violent behavior.”108 One former sportswriter chum observed: “[Sullivan] is simply a big foul mouthed, ignorant loafer, a miserable hulk and should be put away. He’s no good and has hurt pugilism irreparably.”109 Another Irish fighter, the Laois-born American middleweight champion Mike Cleary, was arrested in Philadelphia in 1883 for almost kicking to death William F. Sanders, the owner of a dive on North Ninth Street. Drowning his sorrows since being beaten by Charlie Mitchell two weeks previously, he had, along with a wrestler friend, James Freeman, tried to get into Sanders’s joint at 12:30 in the morning; getting no response, they saw a light in the place and began pounding. Sanders had told them he was closed but the pair threatened to break in and assault him. Together with his assistant John Wurtz, Sanders came out and they were set upon by the pair. Police, hearing the cries, came along and arrested Cleary and Freeman. Sanders’s injuries included a fractured skull and broken ribs which had penetrated his liver.110 Cleary and Freeman were arraigned in court on May 4. While Sanders was said to be out of danger, he failed to turn up in court.111 Jim “Bulldozer” Dunne, or Dunn, may have become an elected politician in Brooklyn after getting out of the ring, but his tenure was littered with charges of a number of violent acts in office. On the day of his election to the post of alderman of Brooklyn’s Sixth Ward, he was arrested for “interfering and assaulting” Deputy U.S. Marshal John Sherman, who had tried to arrest a repeater. At Dunne’s trial, Sherman claimed that Dunne had asked what he “was doing … or words to that effect.” Sherman testified: “I made no reply, when he made a strike at me; at that I struck him with the club; he struck out at me with his right hand and his arm came round my neck as he did so; I hit him with the club then … crowds came around us; he let go his hold then, and I took him by the collar; I waited till Officer Herkenbracht came up, and we both took him to headquarters….”112 Dunne seemed to get away with this charge, but further visits to the courtrooms loomed. In 1872 he was accused of stuffing ballot boxes; he was finally tried almost two years later, being acquitted on a technicality.113 He was then arrested in 1874 for beating up Patrick Garry, a contractor, and John Reilly.114 In 1877 he assaulted Thomas H. Sidebotham, the editor of the Brooklyn Sunday Review, a rag that the Brooklyn Daily Eagle labeled “a filthy paper.” Dunne had been libeled by Sidebotham, whom the Eagle considered “a tool of others” and as having “mental feebleness,” and who “recklessly assail[s] the private character of citizens whose names are in any way before the public.” Accused by the Review of “killing a man in the Atlantic Market a few years ago” and of electoral fraud, Dunne confronted Sidebotham outside the court and repeated his demand to know who “inspired” the accusation. When Sidebotham declined to answer, Dunne beat the newspaper proprietor to the ground.115 Dunne wasn’t punished for that indiscretion: Sidebotham offered “an abject apology” two weeks later in court and withdrew the accusation of assault, in response to which Dunne dropped the libel case.116 Nor was he punished for threatening a fellow pug turned politician, Robert “Bob” Furey, behind Brooklyn’s City Hall later that year.117 And he also escaped punishment, while deputy coroner, for kicking and beating a former Judge who had acquitted him in 1874, Samuel D. Morris, in a restaurant. Dunne targeted Morris because he had demanded voters no longer elect a man who was “representative of the criminal classes,” after Dunne’s choice, James Troy, was elected district attorney over Morris. One witness

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claimed Morris’s cries of being murdered were answered: “I intend to kill you.”118 Seven years later, and now the “Keeper” of Brooklyn’s City Hall, he was accused of trying to find and kill “Tom” Carroll and William H. Muldoon, a journalist who would later become the city editor of the New York Times. Dunne was furious at Muldoon’s revelations that he was party to securing Jim Elliott’s release from prison in 1879.119 In the ensuing scuffle he punched Police Inspector MacKellar, causing a bloodied mouth, and ending up in court among “bums … who had feared his big fist for many years.”120 The Brooklyn Daily Eagle suggested Dunne was a victim of the devil’s buttermilk: “Anybody who knows ‘Jim’ Dunne knows that although he is ordinarily a quiet man, he is a good deal more than a brute when under the influence of liquor.”121 Once more he escaped custody, pleading guilty “in order to releave [sic] the city of the expense of trying the case,” and was slapped with a $250 fine, although his exclamation of “How much?!” thankfully went unheard by Judge Andrew Walsh.122 The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported: “His face bore a very rueful expression as he counted out the money, and it was evident to all that he had expected to get off with a much lighter penalty.”123 Despite his middle-class air of respectability, Jim Corbett also took the fight beyond the ring. On Independence Day 1894, while in Birmingham, England, Corbett was walking with a member of his theatrical company when a passer-by made an insulting remark about the American flag she had on her coat. Corbett responded by thumping him. However, as Myler concedes, what most people would’ve seen as an act of chivalry was “condemned as the act of the bully,” the unwritten code being that a champ never assaulted anyone outside the ring.124 In August the following year, Corbett and Bob Fitzsimmons met at Philadelphia’s Green’s Hotel while on their respective entertainment tours. Fitzsimmons had just arrived when a drunken Corbett confronted him at the front desk in a manner that the “Gentleman” would later dismiss as the sort of Ali-style baiting seen nowadays. He told the Morning Times that he had previously said that he’d pull Fitz’s nose the next time they met: “I says to him: ‘You big monkey, what do you want at that register? You know you can’t write.’… All this time I was only sort of in and just stringing him, but Fitz began to get mad. Then I reached out and pulled his nose for a kind of a joke.” Posturing followed, before Corbett’s brother Joe grabbed hold of Fitz and told him he could “lick him,” punching him in the mouth. Gentleman Jim admitted: “I couldn’t get at him so I leaned over and spat in his face and said to him: ‘You’re a cur the world over and I wouldn’t have that scared look on your face for a thousand dollars.’” Wiping phlegm from his brow, Fitz replied sardonically: “That’s a nice thing for a man to do; you’re a gentleman, you are.” Corbett thought this riposte hilarious: “Now that was a nice thing for him to say, wasn’t it? If he’d have been a man he would have punched me. You would have punched any man that spat in your face, wouldn’t you?”125 In the fracas William Brady was said to have also “attempted to brain Fitzsimmons” with a chair, while Fitz suffered a cut on his hand believed to have been inflicted by a penknife. The fight was eventually broken up by the police after the hotel staff were unable to curtail the brawl. Corbett and company left while the San Francisco Call noted the Cornish boxer made an attempt to eat: “Fitzsimmons sat down to have his luncheon, but he was too excited to enjoy it, and after partaking of a small portion of it he gave up the attempt and went out for a walk. His clothes were somewhat disarranged and his shirt torn.”126 Pugs were fortunate that they rarely faced anyone — unarmed at least — as dangerous as themselves. Not so were baseball players like Mike Donlin: he once started a fight in a St. Louis saloon with fellow Cardinal Gus Weyhing, which ended up with his throat being

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stabbed. The pair were drinking with what the Sporting Life described as a pair of “newlyfound friends,” an elderly man with “long red whiskers” and a smaller, younger companion. Donlin began to make fun of the old man’s “chin willies” and “lilacs,” which seemed to be taken initially with good stead. When the pair left, they were followed by the other men, and Donlin again started at the whiskers, sticking his fingers in them. A fight started, and while Donlin held off the irate elder of the pair, the younger man slashed Donlin from behind. Turkey Mike received a number of wounds, “two cuts across the throat, one along the right side of the face, running vertically down his cheek close to the ear, one across his cheek under the eye, a slight gash across the nose, and the fingers of both hands are seriously slashed and cut”; he was out of the game for a month.127 Following his attack on Mamie Fields, his manager John McGraw tried in vain to get the Orioles to have him suspended. Instead, while in his cell, he was snapped up by the Cincinnati Reds as a free agent.128 A sucker for a wayward professional, McGraw brought Turkey to the Giants in August 1904, after the Reds got tired of him, but if he figured Donlin was ready to reform, he was in for a shock. Shortly before his marriage to the actress Mabel Hite in 1906, Donlin was arrested for “assault in the second degree,” along with two minor leaguers, after what the New York Times described as a “riot” on a New York Central train to Albany. A number of players were en route to a function in Troy, when trouble started, as it usually does, after far more of the grape was consumed than advisable. Things got out of hand for the killjoy train staff as the train pulled out of Poughkeepsie, and “very soon balls were flying, and suit cases were used to help along the disturbance.” The conductor and porter tried to placate Donlin, who punched the conductor in the face and then pulled a gun, “throwing the other passengers in the car into a panic.” It took a number of players to wrest the weapon from “Turkey.”129 Ralph S. Davis of the Sporting News was less than amused and launched into a savage attack against this “rowdy, ungovernable character” whose behavior problems were “even more numerous and inexcusable off the field” than in the stadium: Donlin has never given any evidence of being a brave man. On the ball field, his attacks have been against the defenseless umpires…. Off the field he has apparently taken delight in such escapades as that of last week, when he made a poor, unarmed Negro hold up his hands at the point of a gun. It seems a pity that base ball contracts do not remain in force the entire year round, and that … the leagues can not control the players during the winter season. The league rules provide that the president of the league has the power to punish a player for rowdy conduct off the field … but this, of course, applies only between April 15 and October 15. Men of the Donlin type will never help to elevate the national game. It is a pity that something can not be done to keep them out of the game altogether….130

Most observers argue that Donlin stayed out of trouble during his marriage to Hite, but in September 1909 he was arrested after jumping from his car to attack two gentlemen pedestrians walking down Broadway, after believing they had made a gesture to her.131 After her death, Donlin failed in a court case against an undertaker over the loss of his wife’s ashes. One night in late 1915, a coatroom boy at Murray’s Restaurant on Forty-Second Street dumped a package in a bucket of water after a mysterious man told him to take care of it or “it will blow up the place.” The proprietor was taking no chances; having fired a number of foreign cooks, he feared they, or European “spies” from England to Montenegro, wanted to bomb his eatery. The man was, however, Ray Frye, an undertaker entrusted by Donlin to look after the ashes that were now dissolving in water.132 After the trial, a hurt Donlin got into a scrap with persons unknown, proving for some that “Mike Donlin was, indeed, a Fighting Irishman.”133

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Even amateur athletes weren’t immune to throwing the odd punch. During a wrestling match in 1890 at the Bowery’s National Theatre, between Ernest Roeber, “a protégé” of James Daly, and a Russian grappler called Malakov, one Sergeant Horbelt stepped into the ring and called a halt to proceedings because he suspected gambling was afoot. “Scarcely had the policeman finished his statement when Daly struck him a stunning blow on his mouth, splitting his lips and knocking a tooth down his throat.” Daly was later arrested, protesting he didn’t know that Horbelt was an officer of the law, and that the wrestling bout was for a medal.134 Later in 1906, the Bostonian shot-putter, Dennis Mahoney, shot instead a Cambridge Street saloon owner, David J. Nagle, after he had refused Mahoney a drink earlier in the week, leading to a “disturbance” in which the athlete left amid threats. He later returned to make more “insulting remarks” to Nagle at his desk, and when ordered to leave again, Mahoney began shooting at Nagle with cries of “Die, damn you, die.” The following month, Mahoney was cleared by a jury “having reported no bill.”135 Already the world record holder for throwing the 56-lb. weight for height, he recovered sufficiently to break James Mitchell’s 56-lb. weight for distance record that summer.136 The bachelor subculture of drinking, violence and sports also extended into other areas such as street gangs. Often ethnically or politically homogenous, they defended neighborhoods and, along with volunteer fire brigades, prospered in Irish districts where the police invariably found it impossible to roam.137 Inter-gang warfare marred the Fourth of July holiday in 1853 as Nativist and Irish gangs belonging to William Poole and John Morrissey battled.138 Fire companies were another favorite pastime of the bachelor. The eve of Independence Day 1860 saw violence between two rival volunteer companies (one native, the other Irish), after they responded to a call on the corner of Wall and Broad Streets.139 However, while these groups clashed on numerous occasions when animosities were supposedly resolved through a prizefight, there was conversely a surprising amount of interethnic chivalry between rivals, quick to oblige financially when a pug had fallen on bad times. John Morrissey contributed two hundred and fifty dollars to Tom Hyer’s widow and mother at his poorly attended funeral in June 1864. Previously, along with Heenan, he promoted a benefit at Haynes Theatre for the widow of another infamous Nativist thug, William “Old Boss” Harrington, who amidst poor health and insanity suddenly disappeared in 1859. Here the crowd “cheered lustily” as Morrissey and Heenan sparred, the occasion being the reconciliation of the two Trojans, who expressed “a profound gratification at possessing each other’s friendship.”140 Death in the ring was certainly an occupational hazard, but — when the lack of medical care, proper licensing, and even the rules of the sport are taken into account — also still surprisingly uncommon. However dangerous an environment the ring presented, life outside for the pug was even more precarious. Disease, violence, and the effects of alcohol all took their toll. John Boyle O’Reilly placed the average life span for the nineteenth-century prizefighter at just forty-five, which isn’t much different from the average of the working white male for 1900 of 46.3 years.141 But as Isenberg points out, the pug started manhood as healthy and strong and was far better paid.142 Fighters’ life expectancy was reduced by violent deaths that had little to do with the ring. Yankee Sullivan died at the hands of vigilantes in San Francisco, while Ned O’Baldwin was shot and killed by his business partner Michael Finnell in 1875.143 With so many getting whacked, the only surprise when Paddy Ryan was “shot” in Chicago in August 1883 was that he hadn’t actually been shot at all.

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One story stated he had been spotted by kids in a carriage “done up” in bandages surrounding his abdomen, while another claimed a woman he “was intimate with” had poisoned herself, and that Ryan had committed suicide. When the Chicago Tribune reporter called on his saloon, “his inquiries received very uncivil replies” from the bartender.144 The following day, Ryan, who had been having a quiet drink with a friend, returned home with his wife to find rumors abounding about his shooting. He laughed off the incident: “We did not go into any house of ill repute, or get into any company where fighting was going on.”145 The story was possibly given legs by the murder of Jimmy Elliott a few months previously. Elliott’s fistic career had been cut short by a tendency to supplement his ring income, not through the vaudeville circuit, but with armed robbery. Having served two years at Trenton for his part in the fight with Jim Dunne in 1863, he returned to prison in December 1870 after being sentenced along with an accomplice, William Wilson, to sixteen years and ten months for assaulting and robbing a Hugh Dougherty, and shooting a Philadelphia police officer, Morris Murphy.146 He spent nine years at Philadelphia’s Eastern Penitentiary before his poor health earned him his release. Outside he immediately insulted the man who had got him pardoned from Trenton and paid his fine, the New York “resort” owner, Harry Hill. Altogether, Hill told reporters he spent $1,700 on Elliott, who in turn “proved himself an ungrateful cur … a bully and a blackguard….” When he met at the offices of the National Police Gazette to sign articles to fight John L. Sullivan, Elliott claimed Hill wasn’t “good enough to hold his money,” and refused to fight. Jere Dunn, who was arranging the match, was now financially crippled by Elliott’s pulling out. He labeled Elliott “a cur,” who “was so taunted for not having fought Dunn” that he vowed to return to Chicago to face him.147 A couple of weeks before his death, Elliott stormed the saloon of Clayton & Co. Cigars on East Madison Street, throwing open the doors of the private backrooms occupied by a better sort of patron. He eventually sat down behind the swinging doors separating the bar from the cigar store, and every time someone came in, he stood up and pulled out his revolver on startled customers. The Chicago Tribune suggested innocent patrons were in danger of getting killed: “[Elliott] was somewhat short-sighted, and he came very near perforating a man who looks somewhat like Dunn.” Luckily for Dunn, a Mr. Williams spotted him and managed to gesture him not to enter. Despite Dunn’s reluctance to “show any particular fear under the circumstances,” Williams managed to convince him to drink elsewhere, before reporting the incident to the police.148 With at least two killings under his belt, Dunn was hardly intimidated. His first victim was a deserter he was pursuing while in the army.149 His second was James Logan, aka Logan No. 2. Dunn shot him in January 1870 in Smiling Johnnie’s Saloon during a brawl, whose origins centered on either a dispute with Police Magistrate Dowling, who had employed Logan to railroad Dunn, or by Dunn’s insulting Logan’s mistress, Carrie Smith.150 Dunn fled the scene and was eventually arrested in St. Louis in the company of Tom Allen and Barney Aaron.151 He was sentenced to four years for manslaughter, serving two years and eight months, while Dowling, fearing reprisals, moved to Europe.152 So on the night of March 1, 1883, at Bill Langdon’s Tivoli Restaurant on Dearborn Street, “a handsomely fitted up establishment, patronized by the sporting fraternity and demi-monde,” according to the Chicago Tribune, Elliott was eating with his oarsman friend Fred A. Plaisted, when Dunn entered. The Tribune recorded that “the report of a pistol and the crashing of the glass globes of a chandelier were heard simultaneously” as Elliott tried to fight Dunn off with a chair when Dunn began shooting:

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The whole place was in an uproar. The women were screaming and men were rushing about, overturning chairs, and in their efforts to escape the flying bullets, creating the wildest excitement and confusion, Dunn and Elliott, still struggling and shooting, forced their way through the opening of the partitions to the front part of the restaurant. They stumbled against a table and both partly fell over. Then they crowded each other to a table near the cashier’s desk, and there Elliott fell mortally wounded, his right hand grasping a smoking revolver, while above him stood Dunn, he, too, with a weapon in his hand.

It was unknown if the gun was Elliott’s or if Dunn had come “doubly armed,” losing a revolver in the struggle. As Elliott lay dying, Officer Dan Coughlin and a Pinkerton sergeant, Mike Dennehy, disarmed Dunn, who had bullet wounds in the head and the arm. Also in the restaurant was Paddy Ryan, who asked the dying Elliott if he wanted a priest. A man ran to the nearest Catholic church, but Elliott died en route to the hospital.153 The inquest was postponed for four days until Dunn recovered. As he was accompanied by Pat Sheedy and the “same old crowd of sports and curiosity-seekers,” Dunn’s eyes were observed as “encircled by swellings and dark rings,” with his left arm in a sling. He apologized in court for keeping his hat on, as his doctor had insisted on it. The jury recommended Dunn tried without a jury, to which he shrugged that with the evidence on offer, he didn’t think there would be another verdict.154 The Chicago Tribune described it all as “a shocking homicide which startled the whole of the sporting world for the participants in the awful affair were among the best known members of the fraternity and the tragic event was wired privately and publicly to every part of the country very soon after its occurrence.”155 The trial was watched by what the Chicago Tribune noted was a “heterogeneous” audience: There were old men present, detectives from the Central Station, young girls, criminal layers — nearly every class was represented in the packed and suffocating room. There were law students in attendance to watch the close of a remarkable case; there were sporting men, absorbed in the fate of one of the fraternity; there were Indies gazing with a curiosity that was never satiated upon a man on trial for murder.

Two months later, despite strong evidence that his life hadn’t been in immediate danger, an extremely lengthy concluding address from Cook County’s state attorney, Luther L. Mills, to the jury that slammed Dunn’s defense as a “conspiracy … hatched by a band of gamblers headed by such men as Mike McDonald and Pat Sheedy [who] furnished a perjured statement, false as the home of Satan,” and a clear nod from the judge presiding that if Dunn’s life wasn’t in danger — and that it looked pretty clearly to him it wasn’t — there was no justification for killing Elliott, the jury unanimously acquitted Dunn. The Tribune aired its disbelief: “Dunn is now free — to kill other unarmed men in ‘self defense,’ if it shall please him.” Leaving the court immediately, Dunn slipped off to Clayton’s “Drum” on Madison Street, where he celebrated with congratulatory, if surprised, friends. His only words to the press were that they had got their facts wrong: “There is not a word of truth in the statement that I knew Elliott was in the Tivoli, and I had no means of seeing that he was there before I entered the place.”156 In the days following the acquittal, curious crowds followed Dunn as he wandered freely through the streets of Chicago’s Tenderloin like an untouchable angel. A rumor that he had been shot on Dearborn Street was promptly dismissed by the Chicago Tribune: “Of course there was no truth in the report.” Asked what his plans for the future were, he laughed that they entailed attending the Kentucky Derby.157 The Chicago Tribune played sarcastic tribute to Dunn’s future as Elliott was shipped off to his mother’s care in New York:

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In the meantime Jere Dunn will smoke fragrant cigars and drink costly wine at the expense of his friends and rehearse the story of his prowess in shooting down a man who, according to all appearances, unarmed and unsuspecting, was seated at the supper-table with a friend. In the eyes of his boon companions Jere Dunn is a martyr to the cause of physical courage and selfpride, but an unprejudiced community will always look upon him as little less than an assassin who took a mean advantage of his enemy.158

But Dunn never did become that “martyr.” He was out of Chicago within eighteen months with “friends,” feigning empty pockets as he struggled to pay bail for managing the Chandler-Files fight. Dunn’s reputation was to cling to him like a limpet for the rest of his days, and as he moved about in sporting circles, he never could take his safety for granted. Five years later, when he acted as “umpire” for “Nonpareil” Dempsey’s middleweight clash with Johnny Reagan, many of Reagan’s backers had been friends of Elliott. The engineer of the tug Garrett that was to take them to the fight’s secretive spot near Manhasset, Long Island, overheard a conversation “which was punctuated now and then by the display of slung shots and ‘guns’”: “The name of Jere Dunn was frequently upon their lips, and it became plainer after awhile that they sought the gore of the destroyer of Jimmy Elliott. This disturbed the engineer very much. He was not anxious to become a party to a murder….” When it came time to depart, the engineer went AWOL and the men failed to attend the fight. Dunn himself had already been tipped off, but remained, as ever, sanguine: “Well, if I have to die, I might as well go under there as anywhere else, but I’ll fetch some of the boys with me,” the Atlanta Constitution quoted him, claiming he then went away “and made an arsenal of himself.”159 Later, in New York, he diced with more death. In 1892 a report in the New York Herald contradicted a denial by the staff of the Hoffman House Hotel that Dunn and an actor, Harry Meredith, had engaged in a scrap, claiming Meredith had reportedly run into a saloon near Broadway and a pawnbroker on Sixth Avenue seeking a pistol to kill Dunn.160 Two years later, as far away as Chicago, appetites were whetted with rumors that Dunn would once more murder. “Starter” Caldwell was a Southerner with “a very brittle temper,” and the Daily Inter Ocean claimed he and Dunn had hated each other since they first met. Events escalated at the St. James Hotel when they simultaneously went to the bar. Caldwell whispered something in Dunn’s ears that provoked a hail of insults, leading to traded punches. Caldwell later tried to shoot Dunn at the house of a friend, Billy Edwards.161 “Tenderloiners,” though, found the quarrel all rather tame and disappointing, according to the New York Times: “Some irreverently declared they would draw sticks as to whether Dunn should have shot Caldwell or Caldwell shot Dunn, and by speculating as to which would have done the cleaner job of shooting they endeavored to assuage their grief that both men were alive and uninjured…. Some of the published stories yesterday gave the two men credit for doing a great deal more fighting than was the fact.”162 A similar episode concerned the killer of Ned O’Baldwin. At the trial of Michael Finnell in February 1876, Judge Barrett dismissed the case as self-defense, opining that in similar circumstances he might’ve acted the same, while slamming O’Baldwin as a “lawless ruffian” and a “brutal prize-fighter” who, “without provocation, using his demoralized skill and the strength which God had given him for nobler purpose, attacks the weak and inoffensive….” Barrett concluded that the “Irish Giant” must “take the consequences of his own vicious acts.”163 Prizefighters who died violently were deemed responsible for their deaths, and as long as it wasn’t in the ring, his killer invariably got off. In late October 1873, Mike McCoole shot and killed a fellow purveyor of the manly art, Patsey Mulroy or Marley,

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outside his saloon in St. Louis.164 He was released on bail for two thousand dollars and the case was eventually dismissed. But McCoole never fought again, the fancy having their own verdict on the case.165 He died at the Charity Hospital of New Orleans in October 1886 from kidney failure.166 Other sportsmen also suffered violence and early graves. Possibly the most prominent case involving a non-pug was that of Joseph Quinn, one of the rising stars of amateur wrestling coming to the attention of the New York press in 1885.167 Within two years, on the evening of July 5, 1887, he was gunned down on the corner of Second Avenue and Thirty-Eight Street outside Stehr’s Butchers, at the age of twenty-four. Quinn was the epitome of respectable athletics, working as a margin clerk at the Cotton Exchange and a member of the Pastime AC. His murderer, Daniel Lyons, in contrast, was “a typical ‘tough’ who seven months ago had been released from Sing Sing” for the burglary of a pet shop, and was now a “habitué of ‘Billy’ McGlory’s and resorts of a similar character on the Bowery.” The murder seems to have emanated from a quarrel over a girl called Kitty McGowan, whom both men seemed to be “intimate” with, while a previous scrap at a picnic had ended with Quinn giving Lyons a black eye.168 As Joseph E. Sullivan acted as one of Quinn’s pallbearers, Lyons went on the run and was arrested in McKeesport, Pennsylvania.169 At his trial it took four days to agree on the jury, possibly as many conscientiously objected to participating in a trial with capital punishment on offer.170 Lyons claimed self-defense, accusing Quinn of striking him first and adding he didn’t know the pistol he had borrowed from an acquaintance was loaded: “I wanted an empty pistol so that I could use it to scare Quinn when I met him.”171 The jury was unconvinced, and Lyons was convicted of first-degree murder and hanged.172 Later, in the November before he competed in the 1908 Olympics, Denis Horgan was almost killed in New York by an Italian fruit peddler called Clement Lugi. Lugi had attacked Horgan and his housemate, Martin Bourke, hitting the athlete with a sharp-edged weapon, causing Horgan a fractured skull.173 As the nineteenth century progressed, gamesmanship and violence increasingly crept into baseball to such a point that it seemed to many an integral part of it. Charley Rosen writes in his history of the Irish in baseball: “No matter how violent, marginally legal, or downright illegal an action might be, winning a ball game always justified the means. And early in baseball’s history, there was a name for this ruthless game plan: Irish baseball.”174 As Peterson himself argues, it was baseball economics that fostered what he admits is the undeniable fitting of the Irish stereotype with the early game that demanded a win-at-allcosts mentality: “Once baseball became a moneymaking opportunity, created ironically by the same class that had turned Irish immigrants into servants and day laborers, the Irish were among the first — and became the foremost — to seize upon the game as a means to rise out of the urban ghetto.”175 By the 1890s the chief culprits were the two teams that had the greatest number of ethnically Irish players: The Baltimore Orioles and the Cleveland Spiders. The Orioles were a small-town team in what was the sixth largest city in the nation by 1900, with few residents interested in watching them. By the end of 1898 it was pulling in the third worst attendance figures of the league despite having had one of the top two teams for the past five years. With no money available from other sources like radio or television, the Orioles battled hard to stay afloat.176 Arriving in late May 1892 and causing little excitement among the local cranks,177 Ned Hanlon went on to build a team that was to be slammed as the dirtiest and rowdiest in the league.178 He told the Baltimore Sun upon his appointment: “I want the

The Big Four of Baltimore. Top, left to right: Willie Keeler, John McGraw; bottom, left to right, Joe Kelley, Hughie Jennings (courtesy of the Trustees of the Boston Public Library/McGreevey Collection).

members of the Baltimore team to forget their past defeats and think only of making a better record in the future…. A club which is demoralized by losses cannot be reorganized in a day or a week, but can be steadily improved until the players are doing all that is possible for them to do.”179 One of the first crucial actions was to ditch the “drinkers, complainers and carousers” and replace them with more model professionals,180 starting with firing the Irish-American Jocko Halligan after he had broken the jaw of teammate, Cub Stricker, in a poker game.181 But if Baltimore was expecting to see a team of angels they were in for a

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shock. Hanlon wanted winners, and winning often entailed bending the rules. From 1893 to 1899, the club had some of the greatest Irish names in baseball: Hall of Famers such as Dan Brouthers, John McGraw, Willie Keeler, Joe Kelley, Hughie Jennings, and Joe McGinnity, along with other notables such as Tony Mullane, Duke Farrell, Jim Quinn, and “Gentleman Jim’s” brother Joe. It also had its fair share of tough guys, such as Kid Gleason, “Dirty” Jack Doyle and Dan McGann. Hanlon chose as his field general someone who saw baseball not just as a game, but as “life and death,” with the drive to achieve victory at any cost. As Burt Solomon notes, when “the gong sounded” for John McGraw, “all that mattered was winning.” He became the embodiment of everything that people hated about the Orioles: nothing epitomized the mix of a strongly Irish hard-drinking, hard-fighting baseball team better than the bawling, screaming McGraw. A short man of five-seven, at his first introduction to the Orioles, he was knocked off the bench by an unnamed tobacco-chewing veteran who had shuffled his hips. Picking himself up, McGraw responded by attacking the far bigger player with fists and shoe spikes, while trying to grab a bat to finish him off. McGraw was pinned down by his teammates until he chilled, but he had gained respect.182 One opponent, Honus Wagner, described the hell of playing against the Orioles: They used to call them the rowdy Orioles, and they weren’t fooling. I hit a long ball deep into the outfield and should have made an easy home run out of it, but when I got to first base, Jack Doyle gave me the hip and Heinie Reitz almost killed me when I rounded second. Hughie Jennings tripped me at short, and when I got to third John McGraw was waiting for me with a shotgun. I did well to get a triple out of it.183

Henry Chadwick slammed this newfound thuggery. Congratulating Boston and their manager Frank Selee in the Sporting News on the “very creditable manner” in which he had eschewed the art of kicking he labeled “Tebeauism,” he launched an attack on Hanlon and the Orioles and their indulgence “in ‘Tebeauism’ to an extent which has set every League club against them, except the Tebeauites themselves.” Only Willie Keeler, with his “refusals to disgrace himself and his club,” was untarnished. He concluded: “They have forfeited the respect of every lover of manly ball playing.” 184 There were also heckles from Irish America. Tim Murnane complained that the 1894 Orioles had played “the dirtiest ball ever seen” in America: “Not only Hanlon but the officers of the club have openly upheld them in this work and send home misleading yarns about the abuse the Baltimore men have to stand in other cities. Visions of the pennant have so worked on the revolving machinery of the Orioles’ brain that to maim a fellow player for life seems to them, apparently, just retribution for trying to stop them….”185 McGraw soon picked up his nickname Muggsy (or Mugsy), a contemporary cartoon and a small-time crooked Baltimore politician, from the Sporting Life editor, Francis Richter, who demanded these “tough mugs who want to fight on all occasions, and who use foul language at the slightest provocation, should be chased out of the business.”186 As Phil Morris argues, McGraw and his teammates “mastered … the ‘artificial system of social rules’” better known as “the baseball rule book.” McGraw wanted his charges to turn the negative attributes of aggression and hustling into, if not positives, then certainly “badges of merit,” and ultimately the most important factor of the game.187 As an Irish-American, McGraw saw sucking up as pointless. He had long grown to adopt a “No one likes us, we don’t care” attitude that was the antithesis of lace-curtain assimilation. Other Irish-American Orioles were queuing to get stuck into fighting. One was Kid Gleason, a player McGraw would credit as “without doubt the gamest and most spirited ball player I ever saw. And that

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doesn’t except Ty Cobb. He was a great influence on any ball club, making up for his lack of stature by his spirit and fight. He could lick his weight in wildcats and would prove it at the drop of a hat.”188 This was no boast: while managing the New York Giants in 1905, McGraw noticed a cocky rookie called Moose McCormick offering to fight Gleason, by now the oldest player in the league, outside. Immediately McGraw ran across, shouting at Gleason: “Don’t you hit him! You keep your hands off him!” Gleason laughed off the young man’s courage and offered to buy him dinner.189 McGraw’s rows on the diamond were made of legend, but it shows how strong the testosterone levels were among the Orioles that he found time to fight with his colleagues. One was the Brooklyn-born Willie Keeler, and the only Oriole smaller than McGraw. While not the sort of bar brawler that marked the Orioles, even he had his limits. One day in 1897 they were reached when McGraw, returning from a painful torn nail, asked Keeler in front of fans if he had recovered from “the clap.” Back in the locker room Keeler exploded and attacked McGraw, the pair wrestling on the floor. Only the intervention from the likes of Wilbert Robinson separated them. But this wasn’t to be the end. Later in the season, a failed play by Keeler provoked McGraw into swearing at Willie, blaming this one mistake on the Orioles’ defeat. Once more in the locker room matters were settled as the pair, both naked, once more rolled around the floor. Meanwhile “Dirty” Jack Doyle grabbed a bat to ensure spoilsports wouldn’t intervene, shouting that he’d lay 5–4 odds on Keeler winning. McGraw threw in the towel first.190 It was, however, for Doyle that McGraw saved his greatest contempt. “Dirty” Jack arrived in 1896 with rumors of grudges among the Orioles, not least Keeler, who had been “double crossed” out of his 1894 Temple Cup winnings by him.191 Things were tense at first, but it seemed that Doyle had gone some way to demonstrate he was “on-side” when the team — minus McGraw — ended up in one of their spring training brawls-cum-riots in Petersburg, Virginia, in 1896. Hughie Jennings had complained about the umpiring and was struck on the back of the head by an opponent, signaling fans to storm the field. The Baltimore Sun reported that the team was “mobbed and beaten in a brutal manner … [and] were extremely lucky to have escaped without any being killed or dangerously wounded.” Doyle managed to knock out Jennings’s attacker but got a fierce beating off a number of the Petersburg players. The team was escorted back to the hotel, where a second attempt was made to get to the players. Here the Orioles were better prepared and managed to get a couple of ringleaders, one of whom was sent through a glass door, cutting open the back of his head.192 Jack Smiles suggests that the fight “was just what [Doyle] needed to sell himself to his new teammates.” And when they got wind that he was first into the action, he was forgiven.193 McGraw was unimpressed, later claiming that he and Doyle came to blows during the following season. Certainly the Baltimore Sun knew something was up after the Orioles’ defeat to Cincinnati in July, when it wrote: But worst of all, the team is broken up by internal factional differences … smoldering for some time and are now coming to the surface. There have been personal differences in the club, but they never appeared on the ball field, and every one worked with an eye single to winning the game. Now there is a carelessness and indifference manifested by many…. The spirit of faction bids fair to destroy the success of the greatest ball team ever gotten together.194

McGraw recounted one incident while feigning that he’d never willingly fight a colleague: “All my scrapping has been with opposing players and not with members of my own team. That was Doyle’s game…. Doyle took a punch at my jaw in a cowardly manner. I am about

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half as big as he is, but I got a bat and would have broken his jaw or his arm if … Hanlon had not stopped me.”195 Doyle was dumped by Hanlon at the end of the year, the fourth of eleven transfers, with his continual disputing of Hanlon’s authority convincing Foxy Ned to get rid of him.196 Doyle and McGraw’s feud didn’t end there. In early June 1900, while McGraw was playing for St. Louis, Doyle, now at the New York Giants, spiked him so badly he was out of action for almost the rest of the month.197 Muggsy would love to point fingers at others for causing disharmony in the team, but one colleague knew where most of the blame lay: “[McGraw] had a mean way of nagging a man that worked against the success of the team.”198 In a nutshell, McGraw misused his position and power, often against those smaller than himself. He was a bully, except he sometimes came off badly injured by picking fights with “the wrong fellow.” In July 1913 he was knocked out by Ad Brennan of the Phillies after “a brief and one-sided” altercation.199 He had previously been involved in a humiliating fight with Jack Doyle’s replacement, Dennis “Dan” McGann, whom he initially liked; he bought him later to the Giants for his aggression, and there he’d often fight opponents, such as when he punched Fred Abbott of the Phillies for no reason in 1905.200 Inevitably the pair fell out. Breaking his wrist in spring training in 1907, McGraw was unimpressed when McGann returned in the summer out of shape. McGann, now thirtysix, was sold to the Braves, in a move that brought a player of equal age, Fred Tenney, to the Big Apple. When this was pointed out to McGraw he sniffed that unlike McGann, Tenney had taken care of himself.201 The following April, McGann faced his old teammates at Boston, with the Baltimore Sun reporting that McGann “has not reported for duty to the Boston club and … he has been making threats about what he would do to the New York manager when he came to Boston.” At the game, McGraw made a disparaging remark about McGann’s speed, comparing him to an ice wagon, and so McGann later waited at the Copley Square Hotel for McGraw’s return from the theater. Finding him in the billiards room, McGann grabbed him from behind and punched him. Muggsy, avoiding injury with Christy Matthewson pulling McGann away, swiftly made it to his bedroom, where he bolted the door. The New York American remarked: “Hats were spilled and there was a hot mix-up but no damage was done except to rile McGann’s Kentucky blood.” McGann was eventually thrown out of the hotel by the porters, but McGraw also had to worry about other former Giants, Frank Bowerman, Bill Dahlen and George Browne, who were also threatening to “square” their “accounts” with him.202 Violence for McGann, as in the case of Doheny and Bergen, was to become selfengulfing. Despite a successful career in the minor league American Association with Milwaukee, in December 1910, seemingly troubled by the deaths of three siblings — a brother and sister from suicide, and another brother from an infection following an accidental shooting — McGann was found by a maid in a Louisville hotel with a hole by his heart and a revolver in his hand.203 His sister protested that he had been murdered — an expensive diamond ring was apparently missing from the cadaver, but cash and a diamond tie pin remained — his death was ruled suicide.204 Nothing was more indicative of the roughhousing nineties than “umpire baiting” or “kicking.” In baseball’s early days an umpire was usually, as David Fleitz writes, “a respected and upstanding local citizen, selected by agreement between the captains of the competing teams”: “[Umpires,] mindful of their civic responsibility, wore top hats and Prince Albert coats to indicate their status. [An umpire] received no pay for his efforts, as the honor of

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serving in that capacity was compensation enough…. Arguments were rare, as it was considered unsportsmanlike to call the honesty or judgment of an honored citizen into question.”205 The Irish, often former major league players, had moved into umpiring the game. The Sporting Life noted in 1905 that with John F. Sheridan, Frank H. “Silk” O’Loughlin, Thomas H. Connolly, Thomas B. Kelly and John McCarthy “constituting the American League umpire staff it lacks only O’Hooligan and Fitz Shaughenessy to round out a branch of Clan-Na-Gael or a party on its way to a Hibernian picnic.”206 Three years later the same organ suggested that ninety percent of umpires in both major and minor leagues were of Irish descent, observing that the National League had Hank O’Day, James E. Johnstone, Clarence Owens and Stephen Cusack as its Irish representatives.207 A later report in the Philadelphia North American in 1912 claimed: “The list of American League umpires reads like the names of the victims of the latest eviction in Ireland.”208 Soon the need to win brought players and clubs into conflict with umpires as the ends justified the means. “Kicking” was first noted at the Excelsiors-Atlantics match in 1860, and it was clear that there were vested interests in it from the people who ran the game. Often this was “kicking for effect,” what Mike “King” Kelly had suggested was an important part of the game’s attraction, where “players know they do not gain any advantage and are liable to arouse the retaliatory spirit of the umpire and be put out of the game.” 209 Charles Comiskey’s Browns had gained a reputation that “would be unmatched until the Baltimore Orioles made life miserable for umpires and opposing players in the mid–1890s.”210 His mentor was none other than Ted Sullivan, who, when managing the Memphis Reds, attained such an “unenviable notoriety for ruffianism” that the Sporting Life demanded the Southern League punish him: “The Memphis Club which bullied umpires and visiting clubs at a terrific rate on their own ground, are now getting a little of the same medicine on their trip. In Nashville they were hissed and hooted almost without intermission. A comical incident was Ted Sullivan’s attempt to intimidate the crowd in Nashville by saying: ‘It only makes my boys worse to stir them up.’” In one incident in Atlanta, Sullivan got into a row and was “battered over the head with a chair.”211 Comiskey never played in Memphis, but just as he took on Sullivan’s business knowledge, he also took his views on gamesmanship. As David L. Fleitz opines, Comiskey was a “rule-breaking, win-at-all-cost roughneck” that only became a “pillar of civic respectability” through umpire baiting and intimidation.212 In 1889 he told the Sporting News that he didn’t endorse “leg-breakers, brutes, and ruffians … or indulging in profanity,” but accepted not so much taking advantage of an opponent but “getting away with it.” He expanded: When I size up a team I do not look at the players’ batting or fielding records. A winning team is made up of players who will “turn tricks” when they see a chance — men who study points and work every advantage to win. All is fair in love and in war, and the same may be said of base-ball…. I go on the field to win a game by any hook or crook. It is the game we are after, not reputations as society dudes.213

Together with another tough, uncompromising Irishman, Bill Gleason, Commy would stand beside the visiting catcher and continue, according to James A. Hart, the former president of the Chicago Cubs, to “comment on his breeding, personal habits, skill as a receiver, or rather lack of it, until the unlucky backstop was unable to tell whether one or half a dozen balls were coming his way.” Hart added that the chalk lines enclosing the coaching boxes were added because Comiskey “demonstrated their necessity.”214 Gleason was one of the many Irish toughs to have graduated out of St. Louis who specialized in intimidating, insulting or spiking opponents. But here, however, was no “feckless

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Mick”; he worked in the off season for the fire department to provide stability for his family, and was Comiskey’s rock, rooming together on the road to plan strategies. Following one incident with “Candy” Nelson of the New York Metropolitans, whom Gleason punched on the jaw, the Sporting Life suggested that he was “full of tricks of that kind, and if he should some day break a limb or his neck not a ball player in the American Association would feel the slightest regret.”215 Then there was Curt Welch. In June 1887 he punched the Philadelphia pitcher Gus Weyhing without any provocation except a basepath collision, provoking the Sporting Life to comment: “Neither the disapprobation of the spectators nor threats of fines have the slightest effect upon them. They play ball to win, of course, but they at the same time play the sort of ball that injures the game and deters the better class of patrons from attendance.”216 Less than a week later Welch almost caused a riot in Baltimore after steaming into the Orioles’ Bill Greenwood with fists and head, knocking out the second baseman. Immediately sections of the crowd ran onto the park to lynch Welch, and only the mayor’s secretary’s quick action in getting him arrested saved his neck.217 Such behavior was encouraged by owners who saw gamesmanship as perfectly acceptable, and while their philanthropy was usually thin on the ground, they usually paid players’ fines.218 Von der Ahe picked up the total costs of $4.45 for the Welch incident above, with two hundred bucks given for his bail. Another notorious umpire baiter was Mike Kelly. Pontificating in Play Ball, Kelly declared smugly: Many times I have been asked the question: “To what do you ascribe the great popularity of base ball?” This seems to me, can be answered in just two words, “The Excitement.” People go to see games because they love excitement and love to be worked up. That is one reason why I believe in “kicking” now and then on the diamond…. The People … want good playing, with just enough kicking to make things interesting thrown in.219

Certainly Kelly liked to bend the rules, but to be as proficient as McGraw and Comiskey required focus, which Kelly clearly lacked when drunk. In October 1889, following a night out with some theatrical friends, Kelly was benched for a crucial game in Cleveland. When a colleague was called out, Kelly accosted the umpire, Mr. McQuaid, accusing him of “stealing” the championship from Boston. Taking exception to having his integrity questioned by a professional who got inebriated the night before a crucial game, he immediately called two cops to escort Kelly from the field. In no mood to act as butlers, they roughly kicked him out of the park. Responding to protests that they were behaving as if Kelly were a murderer, one copper sniffed: “We’ve heard of this chap and think he’s a disgrace to the business.”220 By 1900, rowdyism was one of the reasons given in an article on the subject in the New York Times for the decline of the game: “[U]ntil kicking players are suppressed — and the club owners could suppress them if they would … the National pastime will continue to suffer.”221 By now the Orioles had taken umpire baiting to another level. In this poorly governed era, McGraw would “flower and flourish as an umpire’s nemesis without equal.”222 He led the way with in-your-face screaming that intimidated Jim Haskell into reversing a decision in the first of a series at Philadelphia in May 1901. He sent off McGraw the following day.223 There were also cutting remarks designed to simply humiliate the arbiter, like accusing Tim Keefe of being drunk in 1895. As McGraw’s biographer, Charles C. Alexander, writes: “Long after his death the image lingered of a fat little man charging across the field, waving his short arms and yelling in an umpire’s face, stamping his feet, and generally disturbing what might otherwise have been a peaceful afternoon.”224 When Keefe retired the

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following season, storming out of a Browns-Giants game in St. Louis, he attacked the state of the game: “My sole reason for leaving the field yesterday, and … [severing] my connection with the National game forever, is that baseball has reached a stage where it is absolutely disgraceful. It is the fashion now for every player engaged in a game to froth at the mouth, and emit shrieks of anguish whenever a decision is given which is adverse to the interest of the club to which he belongs.”225 Some demand that Tebeau’s Cleveland “Hibernian Spiders” be recognized as the dirtiest side of the decade, with its “fightin’ Irish” of Jesse Burkett, “Rowdy” Jack O’Connor, Jimmy McAleer, Chippy McGarr and Ed McKean. Their behavior further enforced the view of the Irish being brawlers, with both O’Connor and Burkett regularly insulting an umpire by calling him a “robber” or “lobster.”226 Burkett, from Wheeling, West Virginia, was the son of Irish parents, Granville and Ellen.227 In June 1896 he led several Cleveland players in attacking the umpire Stump Wiedman, after he called the game to their opponents Louisville on account of darkness. Wiedman, incompetent and weak, had already laid himself bare as a soft touch in the first game the previous day, being, as the Sporting Life’s correspondent noted, “apparently cowed by the bulldozing tactics of Tebeau’s men” and allowing himself to be grabbed by the arm by Burkett, who “shook him like he would a rat” before Jack O’Connor barged into his shoulder. In the ensuing melee at the end of the second day, Burkett and McAleer punched Wiedman, almost causing a riot, with their carriages departing to a shower of stones. Tebeau, McAleer, McKean and Burkett were later arrested by the police following complaints by the Louisville president. They were charged with disorderly conduct and slapped with fines ranging from fifty to one hundred dollars. 228 Such malevolent behavior proved costly to their hopes of overcoming the Orioles. Back in Louisville in August of the following year, Burkett was sent off for insulting William Wolf. Tebeau then refused to replace Burkett, which led him to forfeit the game. 229 The following day, Burkett began to argue with Wolf so violently, two policemen came on and dragged him from the field. The Sporting Life suggested: “It would have served him right if he had to lay in jail for a few days, and let his vile temper cool off.”230 “Rowdy” O’Connor was another of the Spiders’ star brawlers. His appetite for mayhem was first noticed when as a teenager with the Cincinnati Reds he was fired by Gus Schmelz after a clubhouse brawl. O’Connor recalled the incident in 1933: “I’ll never forget [Schmelz]. He had long whiskers and more than once I got my fingers in them — playful like…. I finally decided that I couldn’t get along with Schmelz and after a big fight he suspended me….”231 The Sporting Life disclosed how one day he “barely” escaped “a thrashing.” This was “an able player, but hard to control … prone to indulge in rowdy playing and is very ready with an abusive tongue, which has necessitated frequent ‘calling down’ and made him many enemies.” The paper recalled how he goaded “King” Kelly, “one of the most genial players” in baseball: O’Connor applied one of his favorite vile epithets to Kelly, which made the latter furious. “Nobody but a loafer would use such an epithet. I will give you $100 cold if you will get out of that carriage,” said Kelly. O’Connor thought there were a good many easier ways to make $100 than by accepting Kelly’s invitation. Then Kelly tried to get in the carriage to give O’Connor a deserved hiding, but friends pulled him off.232

Having been booted out of the Solons again by Schmelz for his drinking, he was picked up by Tebeau, a childhood friend in St. Louis. He kept his fighting mostly to the field, and took the pledge during the season, initially proving a paragon of virtue outside the League Park. In an interview to a reporter, Elmer E. Bates, he waved any suggestion that he was

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trouble: “I wish I understood why certain writers call me a rowdy ball player…. And I want to say that no man in the business appreciates better than I do the fact that the umpire’s lot is not a happy one. I may insist on our share of close decisions … but after the game the UMPIRE AND I ARE FRIENDS.”233 Not so reporters. In October 1896, for the second season running, the argument about who was better between the Spiders and the Orioles was answered when the Temple Cup went to Baltimore, and O’Connor wasn’t in the best frame of mind to break his booze fast. He was licking his wounds with Tebeau at the Kennard House when the pair spotted Elmer E. Pasco, a reporter from a local evening rag who had had the audacity to write not only about the Spiders’ antics in Louisville but a row between Tebeau and McAleer. As they met, Pasco called Tebeau a liar, who laughed and invited Pasco to share a drink, at which point the pair suddenly started brawling. Friends of Pasco weren’t denying that the reporter had been equally abusive and that Tebeau was provoked. Not so O’Connor; he had got his own opinion in while Pasco was dazed on the deck as the bartender pulled an unresisting Tebeau away. O’Connor contended he “was intoxicated at the time, and had no clear remembrance” of what had occurred, while Tebeau told the Leader: “When he did make another attempt to get at me, Jack O’Connor remarked that if he were looking for trouble, he could have all he wanted of it, and went for him. O’Connor gave him a terrible beating. Anybody would know that, to look at Pasco’s face.”234 The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that O’Connor acted like a “brute” and a coward: “He not only knocked down the half dazed man but then, it is said by witnesses, pounded him with his fists, kicked him and stamped on him in the most fiendish manner. In fact it is said [he] acted as if he tried to kill the man, and was only dragged away with the greatest of difficulty.” The newspaper wanted O’Connor kicked out of Cleveland, but Pasco never pressed charges and “Rowdy Jack” lasted another season there.235 O’Connor’s days of trouble didn’t end when he hung up his bat. While employed at Pittsburgh he worked as an American League agent for Ban Johnson, getting players to secretly jump league, in what the Sporting Life called a “rather low down business”: It is understood that steps will be taken at once to have O’Connor blacklisted, so that in future he will not be able to play in … any organization affiliated with that league. O’Connor’s offense is considered here a most reprehensible one. While in the employ of the Pittsburg Club, from the management of which he has received every consideration, including a good salary, O’Connor acts the part of the burglar, trying to steal the assets of the club for the club’s enemy.236

He then managed the St. Louis Browns in 1910, where the Ty Cobb scandal saw him booted out of the American League.237 A brief stint in the Federal League with St. Louis in 1913, before it became a major, also ended in disgrace with “Peach Pie” breaking the jaw of the umpire Jack McNulty before a game. He was kicked out of the league after McNulty announced he was quitting; O’Connor eventually paid him $1,500 in damages.238 He turned to running a saloon and promoting boxing in St. Louis, bitterly claiming in later years that baseball was “a game for sissies.”239 There was no mistaking that, despite sharing much ethnicity, the Orioles and the Spiders were sworn enemies with little love lost. However, both teams would be doomed by their behavior. While this mayhem appealed to their hard-core cranks, others in each city became war weary; by 1898 both teams had two of the worst attendances in baseball and were soon dissolved.240 McGraw continued roughhousing when he joined the Giants. In his team was Joe McGinnity, a tough Irish-American from rural Illinois, and son of a Dubliner coal miner, Peter, and the daughter of a Scottish Methodist minister.241 Making his major

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league debut at twenty-nine, he had previously worked in an iron foundry, hence his nickname “Iron Man,” before running a saloon in Springfield, where it was said that he never needed the services of a bouncer. Following a series of trash-talk exchanges with Heine Peitz in Pittsburgh, he punched the catcher in the eye. Both players ended up rolling around swapping punches before players and police separated the bleeding pair, and Hank O’Day kicked them both out of the ground.242 McGinnity was eventually fined one hundred dollars and suspended for ten playing days by the NL for “attempting to make a slaughter house out of a National League park.”243 Another Irish giant proving himself at home in McGraw’s side was Art Devlin. Despite being a “college boy,” he was no pushover, although his status meant others would test him out. When Devlin, immensely superstitious, asked colleagues not to hum or whistle, believing it drove base hits away, some refused to desist. He showed them that his fists were more convincing than any educated reason he had picked up.244 To be fair to McGraw, the worst depths of umpire violence were reached by other players. In 1901 the Orioles were back in the majors with the American League, and up to their old tricks. In August, during a match with Detroit, the English-born umpire Tom Connolly called out Jack Dunn, in what was a close decision. Connolly had a long history of biased officiating against the Orioles and inevitably things would end in violence.245 Joe McGinnity exploded with fury and flew over to Connolly, stamped on his toes and spat in the arbiter’s face, while Detroit’s Norman Elberfield tried to protect Connolly, only to be arrested by a plain-clothes cop. The Baltimore American called it all a “football mix-up scrimmage, in which players, policemen and spectators were in a sad snarl, and Connolly was lost to view in the struggling mass of men.” The umpire finally made it to the clubhouse, taking blows and kicks from Orioles fans who got through the police line. When the stadium was cleared, he was put into a coach with “outriders” and driven away, leading the Baltimore Sun to claim some joker suggested Connolly “would more than ever imagine himself a czar, and the crowd outside a band of nihilists.”246 The following day, all three players, plus a spectator, were hauled up in front of the judge with only the fan being fined. Ban Johnson blamed the trouble on the crowd and “certain player-managers who have allowed their partisanship to get the better of themselves.”247 He wanted McGinnity kicked out of baseball, but McGraw intervened with a mixture of contrition and pandering to Johnson’s vanity. Johnson settled for a personal apology to Connolly that saved the Iron Man’s career.248 At the end of the eighth inning one Thursday afternoon in Boston in 1897, four years before McGinnity’s spitting incident, another clash with the umpiring authority brought immense shame to Baltimore. The Orioles started complaining about a couple of decisions by Thomas Lynch, who grew impatient and sent Jack Doyle and Joe Kelley to the bench. From there Doyle got more and more abusive, culminating in what the Sporting Life called “the worst language a man can use to another,” until Lynch punched him: “In a twinkling it was all over.” Doyle responded by giving Lynch a bloody nose and a black eye before players and a solitary cop separated them. Doyle went to the bench, while Lynch bravely carried on umpiring the game, and the Orioles left town with the usual “shower of stones.” Lynch apologized but defended his actions, adding “he would allow no man to use language to him that Doyle did.”249 A couple of weeks later the Sporting News quoted Lynch as calling the Orioles a “vile lot of blackguards” and refusing to umpire any future game involving them: “When ball players forget themselves as to apply a name so vile to an umpire as to bring a response in the shape of a bullet if they were made off the field, it is high time that a halt should be called.”250 There was a fitting, ironic conclusion to the pair’s professional

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relations. Fourteen years later Doyle joined other former players and became an umpire. Lynch, as NL president, gained the sweetest revenge when in June 1911 he suspended “one of the most capable umpire abolishers in the business,” for “not knowing the rules.”251 Doyle was one of the few players to have played for both the Orioles and the Spiders; a solitary season in 1891 led Patsy to dispatch him for being too aggressive even for him.252 He got a dose of his own medicine when he player-managed the Giants in 1895. Following a night out to the Bayside “resorts,” a group of his players, including the now not-so“Silent” Mike Tiernan, returned to Baltimore’s Carrollton Hotel bar, being “not in a mood to be trifled with.” But the barkeeper upset the thirsty stars by refusing to drop everything for them. According to the Baltimore Sun, they became “disagreeable” and Amos Rusie insulted the barman: “A war of words followed, but the trouble was nipped in the bud. It was not stopped, however, before several guests of the hotel had been attracted by the noise and had heard a torrent of bad language.” The barkeeper told Rusie that he’d be outside when he finished in six minutes. He kept his promise, although Rusie went to sleep. Doyle was in the end unceremoniously hauled out of bed by the hotel manager to control his charges, and handed a curt note the following day that “the party would not be welcomed there the next time they came to Baltimore.”253 With such physical abuse and little in the form of support from the major leagues until Ban Johnson’s arrival, umpires needed to be tough characters. None was more belligerent than Tim Hurst. Only five feet five, this son of Irish immigrants from coal-mining Pennsylvania relied on a strong Irish brogue and “his pugnacious nature and quick fists” to umpire games, leaving behind a trail of destruction where he had suffered fools only by punching them. Hurst first learned to scrap when he worked as a slate picker in Ashland, Pennsylvania, earning extra cash in impromptu prizefights.254 Legends grew of “Sir Timothy’s” short fuse. He greeted an angry fan leaving one ballpark in 1892 by simply laying him out with his mask. When a police officer tried to arrest him, he did the same to him.255 Another anecdote speaks of Hurst’s altercation with three Pittsburgh players — Jake Stenzel, Pink Hawley and Denny Lyons — at Washington. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle noted how “the sturdy little Irishman who umpires ball and scraps with the players, isn’t afraid of any of them and doesn’t care what he says to them or they to him.” He called Stenzel out with the rebuke: “I called yez out, because I thought ye was out, and, begobs, I don’t care whether yez were out or not; I called yez out and it’s out ye are, and out av the game, too, if ye ain’t careful.”256 He then invited the trio to discuss matters after the game. Meeting them under the stands, he proceeded to beat them up, punching Hawley in the face, smashing his foot into Lyons’s shins and generally “rough[ing] up” Stenzel before Nick Young, the National League president, suddenly passed by asking: “Timothy, what is all the excitement?” Hurst replied: “Somebody dropped a dollar bill, Uncle Nick, and I said it was mine.” Young told Hurst he thought a riot was happening, and suggested that he leave the players alone and “Come and take a walk with me.”257 A great story, to be sure, except that this actual trio never played one season together for the Pirates or anyone else. Still, there was enough “fact” to suggest that “Sir Timothy” loved conflict. A news item in the Sporting Life of May 29, 1897, disclosed that one magnate, Washington Senators Earl Wagner, was refusing to have Hurst umpire any of his games: “He harbors ill feeling toward three of my players, and has made the threat publicly that he will get even with these three men every chance he can get.” Wagner claimed he had previously stood up for

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Hurst when he was fired “for associating with prize fighters and all-round toughs,” but would no longer defend a man who uses language “[that] would cost his life if it were not that he was protected by base ball law.”258 On Sunday August 1, 1897, he got into a fight with Heinie Peitz, hitting him in the chest with a mask and receiving one on the chin from the Reds catcher.259 Three days later a number of beer glasses were thrown at him by Cincinnati fans during their game against Pittsburgh. Hurst wasted no time in returning them, one hitting a fireman called John Cartuyvelles, leaving him with a wound above the eye requiring six stitches. Hurst got himself arrested, but was soon released as the Cincinnati treasurer paid bail. The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that the “sight of the rolling glass seemed to transform [Hurst] completely. He lost his head and flew into a fit of ungovernable rage. He snatched up the glass, and, turning, threw it with all his might into rooters’ row.”260 Hurst told the same paper his regrets, and swore he had merely aimed the glass at the backstop, but that two glasses flung at him “rattled me.” Indeed he was sick of the lack of respect for umpires, exclaiming “there are two things for which the average man has no consideration … a dog with a tin can tied to his tail,” and umpires: “To tell you the truth, I lost my temper. However, I thought the matter over and decided that the proper time to act had arrived. I did not want to be at one end of a glass-hurling match. So I picked up the glass that had struck my foot and cut loose … when I saw those two glasses thrown upon the field … I did not intend to stand idly by and do nothing to defend myself.”261 However, for Cartuyvelles there were fears of blood poisoning. Hurst, now in St. Louis, was rearrested, and blamed his actions, without a hint of his famous brogue, on his temper: “I am sorry that the man I struck is in a dying condition, but it is done and cannot be helped now. This trouble is all due to the fact that I lost my head or control of my temper.” 262 Machinations by various, mostly Irish-American, members of St. Louis legal and political community allowed him to remain in the Gateway City to finish umpiring two more Browns games, with Hurst apparently oblivious to the gravity of the situation: “As I said, I did not try to hit any one, but certainly had provocation to have done so.”263 The Sporting Life called it “the crowning disorder of the year” and Hurst’s “murderous throw of a beer glass.”264 He was back in action the following Saturday in Cleveland, where the Sporting Life dryly observed that Hurst “smiled a sweet little angelic smile when he walked out on the diamond to umpire…. Maybe he was glad to be on a field where beer glasses are never thrown; first because beer is not sold on the Cleveland Park….”265 Hurst was eventually fined one hundred dollars and the fireman recovered.266 He spent the following season managing the St. Louis Browns, where his combative style proved counterproductive, leading him to be replaced by, of all people, Patsy Tebeau. Returning to umpiring in 1900, he was dismissed from the NL after the Reds and Giants refused to allow him to umpire their games. This was more because he was unwilling to judge in favor of the home team, than being a lunatic who assaulted players and fans at the drop of a hat, landing a left hook on Brooklyn’s Deacon McGuire after a contested decision against Chicago.267 After a brief sojourn as a boxing ref, Hurst came back to baseball with the Nationals in 1903, then left for the AL in 1905.268 However, the autumn years of Hurst’s umpiring career saw him as feisty as ever. In May 1906, he squared up to New York Highlanders manager Clark Griffith, and only the players prevented Hurst from getting to him after Griffith had stood on his feet.269 Come 1909, Hurst was literally out of control. In May he was suspended by Ban Johnson for an altercation with Kid Elberfeld, a particularly nasty player who had been dragged off the park by police after attacking Silk O’Loughlin

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three years previously.270 Then on August 3, an argument with Eddie Collins culminated with Hurst spitting in the face of the second baseman, almost provoking a riot. 271 In the ensuing fallout Johnson had no choice but to fire him, claiming the dismissal was “a warning to other umpires not to commit such deportment on the ball field.” Hurst resolutely refused to apologize to Collins. He offered instead a succinct reason of why he left the Columbia University alumnus with a face full of phlegm: “I don’t like college boys.”272 Just like their fistic colleagues, baseball stars often got into trouble when they left the ballpark. The earliest bad boy in this mold was Charlie Sweeney, whose drinking and erratic behavior at Providence saw him retire at twenty-four and return to California. After a visit by the Giants to San Francisco, disturbing rumors circulated that a Giants player had to leave town on a train that night; he had beaten Sweeney in a fight, who had then sulked off home to get a gun.273 The story grew legs in July 1894 when Sweeney shot and killed one Con McManus during a fight in McManus’s brother’s saloon in San Francisco.274 The Sporting Life wasn’t optimistic about Sweeney’s fate: “Poor Sweeney! He has many faults in his makeup, but interspersed with the bad could be found good qualities. It will undoubtedly be many a day before he again breathes the free air.”275 He was eventually sentenced to eight years in San Quentin for manslaughter.276 With his health failing, he received a pardon four years into his sentence, and ended up as an umpire in the California League, where he attacked a player one day in Fresno for questioning his decisions. Arrested and bailed, Sweeney took flight. A sheriff tracked him down, and while getting drunk with his prisoner, allowed Sweeney to escape again.277 Another Irish-American player rumored to have blood on his hands was Sadie McMahon, a member of the Orioles from 1892 to 1896. In his home town of Wilmington on the Delaware, McMahon went on trial as a youth for the murder of an Italian fruit seller at a local circus. In court the Italian’s brother, through an interpreter, picked out the young McMahon. However, three English-speaking witnesses accused the Italians of the aggression, and claimed McMahon was no nearer than two hundred yards away when the vendor was attacked. By the trial’s end even the prosecutor was asking for an acquittal.278 Of course this was the extreme end of the scale. Most baseball players tended to avoid off-field trouble, and trouble rarely made the papers. Despite being a “college boy,” his notorious anti–Irish boss Cap Anson labeled Jimmy Ryan, the long-term Chicago outfielder from Clinton, Massachusetts, his biggest disciplinary problem. Ryan was no Hall of Famer, but neither was he a journeyman.279 But Anson balked at Ryan’s lethargic ways, claiming his “greatest fault was that he would not run out on a base hit, but on the contrary would walk…. I fined him repeatedly but this did little good.”280 Ryan, after twelve seasons under him barring one in the PL, grew to detest Anson immensely. At spring training in Dallas, Anson had barred his players from sampling the “gaudy saloons and girlie shows,” and enforced the edict by sitting in a chair by the hotel’s entrance. Somehow the players managed to smuggle a beer keg into the hotel, and when it was empty, rolled it out of a window to fall behind where Anson was sitting. The barrel exploded “like a small bomb, blasting Cap right out of his seat and sending him sprawling.”281 Anson suspected Jimmy Ryan and caught up with him: “Jim, I think it was you. I can’t prove it yet, but I’m going to and when I do I’m going to give you the worst licking you ever took.”282 Ryan was far from intimidated. One version of events has a conversation going like this. Anson: “Were it not for my position as captain I would smash you in the face.” Ryan: “It is a lucky thing for you that you think so well of your position. For if you ever lay hands on me, you big stiff,

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I will shoot you full of holes.”283 Ryan also took exception to journalistic criticisms and assaulted at least two reporters as result. He also had in 1896 the customary altercation with a railroad employee, knocking out a hapless Pullman conductor with a one clean punch after he tried to calm down a disturbance of Ryan’s making.284 Perhaps we can excuse his behavior, as he had been involved in a train crash three years earlier in August 1893 near Toledo, Ohio, while traveling back from Cleveland.285 “Rough” Bill Carrigan was another combustible player who Fleitz believes was “widely considered the toughest … in the American League at the time.”286 Another “college boy” who somehow gathered himself enough money to get himself through Holy Cross,287 he had a fight with George Moriarty in Detroit in 1909 that David Fleitz claimed the “stuff of legend.” The pair tangled as the latter tried to steal a base, while Carrigan spat on and punched Moriarty as he lay on the ground. Moriarty leapt to his feet and ripped off Carrigan’s mask and was about to hit him when Hughie Jennings pulled him away, as fans began to invade the field. The Sporting Life reported: “They thought that Carrigan had struck the crippled [Moriarty] … and 5000 men rushed at the Boston catcher.” “Wild Bill” Donovan got Carrigan to the bench, while President Navin, worried that Sunday baseball might be banned, calmed the crowd down. He finally persuaded the “fans” to open up and let Carrigan out over the roof of the Boston dug-out, and he was then taken to the office of the Detroit Club, where he remained for an hour and a half with a big crowd waiting outside. Finally he was disguised in a pair of overalls and Mr. Navin’s coat, in which he made his escape unrecognized. It being Sunday, there were no police at the park. No actual violence was done to Carrigan, the crowd being apparently a bit doubtful as to its real grievance. The Boston catcher was mighty scared, however.288

Like today, clubs had to contend with big egos that found it hard to gel; add in religious and ethnic factors and it was hardly surprising there were fisticuffs. One evening in 1895

“Rough” Bill Carrigan (right) pictured with Hubert “Dutch” Leonard (Library of Congress).

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in the dining hall of a Louisville hotel, Tommy McCarthy and his Beaneater colleague “Happy Jack” Stivetts sat at different tables. According to the baseball writer Oliver Perry Caylor in his syndicated column a month later, Stivetts, after entering, had stopped at McCarthy’s table and “relieved his mind to [McCarthy] in some forcible and offensive words.” McCarthy listened until “the inner man and ball player cried: ‘Hold — enough.’ … His appetite having been satiated resentment arose in hunger’s place…. [As] Mr. McCarthy left the dining room he passed … where Mr. Stivetts was reading to a colored man … from a menu card, and without first serving notice … smote the pitcher in the face with his fist.”289McCarthy knocked “Happy Jack” clean off his chair. As women screamed and men rose from their seats, their evening spoiled by two uncouth sportsmen, McCarthy calmly walked out, leaving Stivetts declining demands from others to follow him.290 Caylor added with humorous wit that it wasn’t in keeping with Kentucky etiquette: “Had Mr. McCarthy pulled his gun out and pierced Mr. Stivett’s brain with a bullet or bored a hole through his black heart with lead, Louisville would not have looked upon the affair as disgraceful.” He concluded that whatever the reason, the players should be punished: “Baseball players owe it to the profession to conduct themselves decently in public, and when they shock the sense of gentility … their acts should not be passed unreproved. The greater the fame of the offenders, the greater becomes the offense.”291 The incident probably stemmed from an earlier internal disagreement, not least the resentment by McCarthy that Stivetts had rubbished his friends in the press. 292 But at least one paper pointed to “religious differences.” An angry Frank Selee told the Cincinnati Enquirer: “An injustice was done the team in the statement that there was a religious war in our camp, and that the row between McCarthy and Stivetts was incidental to a difference in faith. Such a story is absurd. McCarthy and Stivetts have been the best of friends for the past seven years.”293 Sectarian conflicts were entering the clubhouse and were increasingly blamed whenever intra-club battles surfaced. From the start, Irish baseball players were far from unique in the stakes of tough, violent sportsmen, but they were still among the prominent ones. However, most Irish sportsmen, especially baseball players, were anonymous, model individuals and good role models, who never drank excessively, fought or swore, and it’s to this side of Irish-American sports that we now go.

11 Swells — The Irish Sportsman and Respectability The term “swell” comes from “sóúil: a wealthy person or gentleman.”1

The final decade of the nineteenth century saw a shift in attitude to professional athletes. Sports was gaining popularity outside the Irish bachelor subculture for reasons other than its mere entertainment value. Paramount to the change in attitude were concerns over the nation’s health. “Why not begin at the beginning of this great work, and make more strenuous efforts to develop the physical powers of our girls, encouraging them to more active exercise and athletic sports?” wrote the New York Tribune in 1859: “Why shall they not have gymnasiums and boat clubs, and lay off their cumbrous dresses, on the play-ground at least, and join their brothers in a game of base ball or cricket? We hear of the rosy cheeked English women, who walk five and ten miles without weariness. Will not some of them cross the Atlantic and teach our pale-faced country-women the true value of health?”2 This new philosophy argued that exercise was part of the Lord’s work. Through what became known as “Muscular Christianity,” reformists sought to harmonize “mental, physical, and spiritual dimensions” and improve the health and moral character of young men and women.3 Sports was no longer an idle pleasure but essential for maintaining health, and while Elliott J. Gorn concedes that the change in attitude didn’t replace the old “Victorian preoccupation” with hard work and “steady habits,” many previous critics, specifically the clergy, “now embraced sports as a means of teaching ‘Christian’ principles.”4 Coinciding with religious and scientific support for sports was the need for strong, fit men. During the Civil War, boxing in the military was confined to the Irish regiments,5 but by the First World War, boxing’s martial benefits had made it “ideally suited to the task of whipping raw recruits into shape and honing them for battles which may still require participation in forms of hand-to-hand combat.”6 While professional sports required strong competitors, increasingly the press began to publicize good role models who lived by the notion of fair play. At the same time a number of sporting “professors” emerged who promoted the positive value of all sports. Irish-Americans like the champion swimmer “Captain” Tom Riley advocated their own sport’s values. If you want to see what swimming will do for a man just attend a set of swimming races and take a look at the swimmers…. [At a recent meeting] Not only were they healthy looking, but they showed the effect of their good health in their manner and spirits for they were all good

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tempered and jolly. Instead of being disappointed or sore at losing, they were prompt to congratulate the winners with every appearance of good-will and sincerity.7

From Boston, Riley was already hailed as “the champion short-distance swimmer of America” at the 1881 IACB picnic, when he lost to New Yorker Dennis Butler in a three-day swimming event for a purse of three hundred dollars.8 By 1903 Riley was a lifeguard at Coney Island, where he combined the philosophy of healthy exercise with a far more important message: “self-preservation.” As more people took to swimming in the sea, Riley, in an article for the New York Times in July 1904 titled “THERE’S NO SENSE IN GETTING DROWNED,” advised staying close to shore and swimming in pairs in case one gets into trouble.9 When the General Slocum went up in flames and sank in the East River in 1904, killing 1,021 of the 1,342 passengers, Riley led the debate about the importance of learning to swim: When will people begin to realize how important it is that every man, woman and child in this country should be taught how to swim? It makes me sick at heart to read the account of last Wednesday’s awful loss of life, and yet to know that if one half the care were taken to teach everybody this easily learned accomplishment that is spent in teaching less useful things, fully nine-tenths of the passengers on the Slocum would have been able to save themselves.10

One of the first obstacles to this transformation was the shady reputation of the “poolroom.” Yet within a matter of years, through the efforts of Michael Phelan and Dudley Kavanagh, billiards was transformed into a respectable pursuit, with the New York Times commenting on the 1863 Kavanagh-Goldwaithe match: “The intense interest occasioned in sporting circles, and in many a private parlor, by this match, indicates very clearly the public confidence in the good effects of the game is on the increase, and that one more of the healthful recreations of life is removed from the exclusive possession of the ‘doers of evil’ and brought within the pale of honorable custom and social recognition.”11 Professionalism was another obstacle. The upper middle classes despised the lower orders’ getting paid for doing something as meaningless as hitting a ball with a piece of wood or punching another human. An article by the New York Times of March 1872 summed up the contempt and hostility the high-brow had for professional sports: There are undoubtedly those who find pleasure in the perspiring process of “fielding”; who enjoy the headlong run from base to base under a broiling sun; and who feel the pride of martyrdom when suffering from black eyes and broken finger-nails. This is … a free country and every man has the right to tire and bruise himself to his heart’s content, if he fancies…. Similarly, no one can properly object to the formation of base-ball clubs whereby the members acquire the inestimable privilege of arraying themselves in flannel suits and ingeniously ugly caps. The “national game” becomes objectionable only when what should be a healthy amusement, denigrates into an “event” for the betting fraternity.

The article concluded that sports itself was beneficial as long as people performed it for pleasure and not for profit: “Let our young men meet and play base-ball if they choose. They will thus improve their physical well-being without detriment to their morals. To employ professional players to perspire in public for the benefit of gamblers, is, however a benefit to no one, and furnishes to dyspeptic moralists a strong argument against any form of muscular Christianity.”12 But leisure time was on the increase. Audiences wanted spectacles such as sports, the circus or the theater to amuse them, and any such event didn’t come cheap, as “it helped to satisfy the urbanite’s growing appetite for commercial spectacles. It attracted support not

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only from those rowdy fans who had sustained the sport in the antebellum period but also from respectable citizens who had once scorned it.”13 Muscular Christianity had its origins in Victorian England, propagated most famously by Tom Hughes in his 1857 novel Tom Brown’s Schooldays. Soon it became “a catchall for the association of piety not only with sports, but with active participation in the affairs of the world, including social reform, foreign adventurism and urban settlement work.”14 In the United States it gained ground through evangelical preachers such as Dwight Lyman Moody and radical Christian organizations, the most prominent being the Young Men’s Christian Association, which opened gymnasiums and devised non-contact sports like basketball and volleyball. For sports like prizefighting, the notion of Christian values being adopted was laughable. It stood for everything contrary to Christ’s love of one’s neighbor and turning the other cheek. When Jere Dunn was acquitted of the murder of Jimmy Elliott, the Chicago Tribune suggested respectable citizens cared nothing for either. One had been got rid of through murder, and it was frustrating for the good folk of Cook County that the other hadn’t gone to the gallows: Both men were of the lowest and most degraded type, useless to humanity in themselves and dangerous to the public peace. So long as they confined their playful pleasantries of homicide within … their own class, so long as it was a case of “dog eat dog,” the decent people of Chicago cared little as whether Roderigo or Cassio fell, and only regretted that the tragedy of March 1 was not a double one.15

But for those who espoused healthy sporting activities, more people were asking the question: Could prizefighting be “reformed” and made safer, with proper checks and good protection? Could it, too, become part of the Muscular Christian menu for physical success? As early as the Hyer-Sullivan fight, the New York Herald began to question the morality of the sport. As a question of high and lofty morality, prize fighting can only be placed on the same level with dueling, either with swords or pistols … or with war, either in detail, or by wholesale…. All such exhibitions and contests are contrary to the law of God, to the gospel of Christ, to the principles of humanity as well as to the maxims of a high and sovereign morality. Still, however, it has been the weakness of human nature to indulge in such propensity, from the first fight — that between Cain and Abel … within listening distance to the murmurs of the waters of Eden — through succeeding ages and centuries, to the present day.

While the Herald wished to see the abolition of the ring, it could not help noticing the positive approach to health of the pugs as they trained: “If both of the combatants escape without loss of life, and … adopt, in later life, the system of living which they practiced while training … we say, in spite of their past life, they would be in … for a life of immortal happiness hereafter.”16 It wasn’t until 1888 that prizefighting was given a shot in the arm from an unlikely source, when John Boyle O’Reilly set out his vision, in his influential book on the subject of sports, “to bring into consideration the high value, moral and intellectual, as well as physical, of those exercises that develop healthy constitutions, cheerful minds, manly self-confidence, and appreciation of the beauties of nature and natural enjoyment.”17 One of the first theses ever written on the advantages of sporting exercise, Ethics of Boxing and Manly Sport, while tinged with Anglophobia and dependent on the scant medical science of the day, was

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more than a mere apologia for the manly art. It spoke about the history of pugilism in ancient Greece, contained a section on the martial weaponry and sports of pre-modern Ireland, and promoted better health through active leisure pursuits, good diet, and the great outdoors, especially canoeing. Some of his thoughts were quirky. O’Reilly demanded that one “go to sleep at ten and get up at seven” while discarding any head support in bed: “Never sleep on a pillow unless you are sick…. Nature never intended a man, or any other animal, in sleeping to raise the head higher than the shoulders.”18 Then there are his views on the dress sense for ladies: “Instead of lecturing a young woman on the folly of fashion, tell her, and prove to her, that her beauty will be murdered; that her eyes will grow dim; that she will die an old maid, sour and wrinkled, if she continue to outrage the laws of Nature by tying herself in the middle with corset-strings like a living bloodpudding.”19 A.G. Evans claimed it was “an oddity” for O’Reilly to write the book because he was so busy, yet managed to find the time to pen such “an authoritative encyclopedia on the history and evolution of boxing and a treatise on health and physical exercise … [that] would be applauded by all modern aerobics and physical fitness evangelists.”20 Gorn describes O’Reilly as believing boxing was “too valuable to be sullied by gangsters and criminals,” and that it could be salvaged from brutality to the benefit of millions: “Boxing leaves out nothing; it exercises the whole man at once and equally — the John Boyle O’Reilly, whose Ethics of trunk, the limbs, the eyes — and the mind.”21 O’Reilly Boxing and Manly Sport horrified lacecurtain Irish America (Library of Con- added that boxing would destroy bullying : “The boxer must take as well as give. It is only the bully gress). and the coward who want to give all the time, and escape taking; and if boxing were taught in every American school, as it ought to be, there would be fewer bullies and cowards sent out unpunished and uncorrected.”22 When O’Reilly wrote Ethics, boxing’s custodians had long known, from the 1870s, that the bare-knuckle fights of interminable length were doomed. The sport’s brutality, gambling, cheating and lack of any organization, goaded the Gilded Age to demand change, if only because there was more money to be made by a reformed ring. O’Reilly clearly didn’t let this go unnoticed: “Prize-fighting is not the aim of boxing. This noble exercise ought not to be judged by the dishonesty or the low lives of too many of its professional followers. Let it stand alone, an athletic practice, on the same footing as boating or football.”23 But as someone who had suffered under the British, O’Reilly blamed its desecration on Perfidious Albion: The chief reason why boxing has fallen into disrepute is the English practice of prize-fighting with bare hands…. The adoption of gloves for all contests will do more to preserve … boxing than any other conceivable means. It will give pugilism new life, not only as a professional boxer’s art, but as a general exercise. The brutalities of a fight with bare hands, the crushed nasal bones, maimed lips, and other disfigurements, which call for the utter abolition of boxing

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in the interests of humanity, at once disappear when the contestants cover their hands with large, soft leather gloves.24

Of course not wanting to admit it, John Boyle O’Reilly had a lot more in common with the Anglo-Saxon than he was willing to let on. Darby observes his efforts to promote Irish sport was “juxtaposed with the fact that he was drawing on a cultural form which, although undoubtedly Irish in its origins and intonation, was organized according to British philosophies and principles.”25 As we will see, there were already moves to reform the ring by the time he wrote Ethics, and O’Reilly moves himself further away from the conventional American Muscular Christian view of this now slowly mutating “sport,” to that belonging to England. O’Reilly stated he wasn’t against professionalism: Detestable and abhorrent is a brutal bare-handed fight, for the brutality is as unnecessary as it is repulsive; but you cannot have a prevalent manly exercise interesting to the majority of healthy men, without having professional boxers; and it may be said that the professional boxer who fights an honest fight, with high skill and courage and without the savagery of bare hands or cestus is not, thereby, a moral monster and an outrageous example.26

However, O’Reilly had forgotten that boxing was illegal in most of the United States and inevitably there was a backlash. In an otherwise favorable review, the New York Times claimed that O’Reilly “is the able and vivacious advocate of boxing rather than the judicial student of its merits and defects. That it has defects we all know, but we hear nothing about them from its apologist and partisan.”27 Within lace-curtain Irish, there was uproar: there may well be benefits to sparring, but to make money from pummeling another human was still beyond the pale. His ideas were given the same cold shoulder that his views on IrishAfrican cooperation were granted. But the most hurtful criticism was the vilification that came from his friends at Donahoe’s Magazine. Over two editions, “Peter McCorry” let rip into O’Reilly with a combination of stock Victorian fear of the ring, Anglophobia and Christian hostility to “paganism.” However, he began with a reference to a hill famous as being sacred to the “paganism” he sought to belittle: “From the sunlit summit of Parnassus … down to the shambles of the prize-ring, with its ropes and stakes and blood-besprinkled floor, is a terrible descent, but a possible feat, for one who, after a swim in the waters of Lethe, and eating his repast of Lotos leaves, has gained his ‘second wind.’”28 He then attacked O’Reilly in forthright terms, unambiguously comparing him with a promoter of vice and the advocate of the “praises of the resuscitated paganism of our day”: “But, alas! That one who promised better should now become the champion advocate of champion boxers, and try to elevate a barbarous practice into the category of decent sports…. It is impossible to conceive how Mr. O’Reilly can be considered in any other light than that of an earnest advocate of the prize-ring, and consequently all that follows from this low and murderously vicious practice.”29 Indeed, O’Reilly was a keen spectator of “slugging matches in New York City,” with The Pilot commenting for many years on the fortunes of Irish-American fistiana. Then McCorry turned to the Good Book for more ammunition: Conscience is of God, and God has revealed to us that man is not to be governed by his animal instincts, but by the dictates of the purest and highest reason, and these dictates absolutely forbid all prize-ring fighting, as such fighting, or boxing, has for its object the maiming, bruising, cutting and utter paralyzation of an opponent for a money gift or such like reward…. If this be true that our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit, how, we should like to know, is the “order” and “fair play” of the prize-ring to benefit those temples of the Holy Ghost? We leave this question for Mr. O’Reilly to answer. The plain and honest truth of the whole matter is this: Prize ring boxing is a resuscitation of paganism … as exhibited in the Roman arena. It

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is an idolatry of the flesh, a savagery that outruns the savagery of the benighted heathen, and poisons the sources of the decent society wherever it is known to exist.30

Finally, crossing both essays was an assault on Perfidious Albion, the creator of this abomination against humanity that poisoned Irish-American youth. “The blunting of the sensibilities by participation in prize-ring fights, and ‘man’ and bull-dog fights, and Lancashire wrestling, leads the participators into the practice of wife-beating, so prevalent in England.”31 McCorry adds that Sir Robert Peel and Evelyn Denison were followers of the sweet science: “It by no means follows that this pair of Englishmen should be the mentors and tutors of others in this so-called science of ‘ethics.’”32 In contrast, Ireland had produced a “nation of men, of moral men, athletic men, brave and courageous men, who never saw a nude statue in their lives,” who never needed dumb-bells and Turkish baths to attain their excellence.33 He concludes his first essay on Ethics: “It is indeed pitiful to see a man of genius, a poet of considerable merit, a teacher in journalistic circles, an athlete by inheritance, a patriot by instinct and judgment, a favorite in general, become a leader in those things that debase out nature and lead men to ruin.”34 McCorry’s assault proved a rethink from O’Reilly. He was caught commenting: “There is a large measure of truth in the statement that professional pugilists are nothing more than professional blackguards.”35 Two years later, he reprinted the book under a new title called Athletics and Manly Sport. The dropping of boxing from the title was significant. Yet with the exception of a new chapter about canoeing in the Dismal Swamp of Virginia and North Carolina that O’Reilly did in the summer of 1888, the book espoused the same views. What was missing was anything about the Sullivan-Kilrain fight in the summer of 1889, a bout that would eventually see bare hands consigned to history.36 Athletics and Manly Sport was barely published when John Boyle O’Reilly, exhausted from overwork and suffering from insomnia, passed away in August 1890, three days after he was “chief judge and referee” at the NIAA picnic at Oak Island-by-the-Sea.37 His death was attributed to either an accidental overdose of his wife’s medicine, or a deliberate bid to end his life. He was just forty-six. His death was felt mostly among Boston athletic circles, who were increasingly becoming fragmented through infighting: “For years he has encouraged and promoted games and pastimes,” wrote the Boston Herald, “and his presence as chief judge at many yearly outings given by the [Nationals] has more than once saved them from financial failure.”38 O’Reilly’s work aimed to separate the benefits of boxing from its dangers. Across the Atlantic, the sport had always had its snooty followers before Muscular Christianity arrived, although naturally the toffs never regarded pugs as their social equals. However, these aristocratic patrons gave prizefighting the get-out-of-jail card that enabled it to march under the Muscular Christianity banner. First blood was drawn by John Chambers, the Eton- and Cambridge-educated son of a Welsh landowner, and one of the most influential men in British sporting history, who in 1867 drafted up his “canon of boxing rules” that saw the introduction of twelve rulings that standardized everything from the ring size, the number of rounds, their length, and the time (reduced to ten seconds from thirty) that a fighter was allowed to stay down before being counted out, and finally insisting that gloves were to be always worn.39 Crucial to these rules gaining prominence was that Chambers persuaded an even richer and more prominent member of the social elite to sponsor his rules. His name was John Sholto Douglas, the Ninth Marquis of Queensberry. For the American prize ring, “Queensberry’s” rules changed the face of the ring sufficiently to eventually enable it to perform

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without interference from the law. But the TKO was given by John L. Sullivan, who may not have been the first champion to fight with mitts,40 but his move to cover his hands meant that the naked knuckles would be confined illegally to the margins of society. So the wearing of gloves by the most popular and famous pug of the nineteenth century “modernized the ‘manly art,’ sanitized and conventionalized the apparent brutality,” so that men fighting could be watched in settings before audiences with no former interest.41 And “sanitizing” is the key word here because what the Queensberry rules didn’t do was to make the sport any safer. Almost seven months after Sullivan lost to Corbett, prizefighting was given another pummeling from an important corner of Irish-American life: the Roman Catholic Church. Undoubtedly the most important institution of lace-curtain Irish America, its attitude to sports had been historically laissez-faire. It was largely apathetic towards Sabbatarianism, while clearly seeing benefits in championing its own creed of Muscular Christianity in Ireland. However, it drew the line at the ring: in April 1893, a Cleveland Irish-American fighter, Daniel Donovan, was killed by Joseph Dunfee near Syracuse, in a fight with the hallmarks of a mill from the old days, complete with a secluded venue and a local sheriff turning a blind eye. When Donovan collapsed he was carried to a nearby hotel where two doctors were “quietly summoned,” and both agreed that Donovan probably died of concussion, blaming his seconds for allowing him to continue.42 Once more the New York Times could not contain its disgust: The fight … seems to have been a more than usually brutal one, since the man who was killed was already hopelessly whipped, and when he stood up the last time could easily have been disabled by a light blow in a safe place instead of the savage blow under the ear which caused his death. But, though more brutal, the fight was no more unlawful than the series that has been going on for a long time near this city…. The law is plain, and no officer has any right to evade or to refuse to act on it, or to plead that public opinion does not sustain it. Public opinion does sustain it, and has grown steadily more firm and aggressive against this particular crime for years.43

Whatever the “public” thought of it, the Catholic Church had had enough. At Auburn, New York, Donovan was buried in St. Joseph’s Catholic Cemetery, but there was no clerical representation. The priests refused point-blank to grant funeral rites, with the New York Times claiming the Church “could not countenance prize fighting, which was looked upon very much as dueling was in olden times.”44 More boxers were buried and some were killed in the ring. In January 1897 one BostonIrish boxer, James Duffy, eventually died following a fight at New York’s Broadway Athletic Club, with his opponent George Justice, the fight’s referee, and the club’s principal owner, Tom O’Rourke, all arrested on suspicion of homicide.45 A coroner ruled that Duffy’s death was due to “excitement following the exhibition and accelerated by hypertrophy of the heart,” while witnesses stated that Duffy had walked back to his corner freely with nothing to suggest that he was dying.46 Many hoped that Duffy’s death would lead to a ban on fights in New York, but the city’s chief of police, Peter Conlin, was giving the calls little support: “The police cannot prevent boxing exhibitions as they are conducted under the Horton law. Of course, we will see there is no brutality. There does not seem to have been any brutality [here]….”47 All three men were acquitted of any involvement in the death, while O’Rourke reassured the clients at his next fight, between “Joe” Murphy and Patrick Kearney, that both boxers had “as a matter of precaution” been passed fit by doctors.48 The shift to a more respectable form of rules now gave the illusion that boxing had moved on from being a brutal exhibition to a “scientific” sport, and conveniently dovetailed

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with the New York Times argument about what was immoral — professionalism and gambling — and what was moral, by separating the rules for “competition” from “contests”: The former, “for amateurs, lasted three minutes and were decided by points,” so that it was regarded “as unsporting to try to score a knockout,” while the latter was for professionals and were “tests of endurance … where the two men fought until one could no longer continue.”49 But boxing still attracted the same sort of scoundrel as the ring. The New Orleans city council, alarmed at its use as a magnet for fights in the mid–1880s, banned all bouts, with or without gloves, as “contrary to good order,” although Dale A. Somers claims this was “an exceedingly equivocal course,” since the mayor often issued permits overriding local law.50 Bare-knuckle fights continued long after Chambers penned his rules, but the gradual growth of the sport’s respectability in the States saw the emergence of an era when fighters, both past and present and still mainly of Irish ethnicity, capitalized on this newfound respectability by taking on such titles as “Professor” and “Gentleman”: men such as the Wexford-born John McGraw of Baltimore; the noted middleweight Michael J. Donovan; the heavyweight contender Dominick McCaffrey; and the man who dethroned John L. Sullivan, James Corbett. The irony about prizefighting was that a bloody and dangerous business, polluted by all manner of criminals, craved respectability. As Gorn notes, the sport shifted from its association with “rough young working-class men who rejected all of the canons of bourgeois gentility then so powerful in America” to embracing all manner of pretentiousness. “The language of the articles of agreement was extremely controlled and legalistic,” he adds, and fighters were both “enjoined to conduct themselves ‘with order and decorum’ and to confine themselves ‘to the diligent and careful discharge of their duties.’”51 Indeed, such etiquette was taken on by other respectable athletes, like E.C. James Corbett, not quite the “gentleman” he was marketed as Carter’s “opportunity of disclaiming any intention on my (Library of Congress).

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part of participating in such contests” with Thomas Conneff, through a “card” published in The Spirit of the Times in 1888.52 The better pugs dressed as if they were top American industrialists, not representatives of the Irish underclass. No one was more the parody of the respectable bruiser, fighting to rub shoulders with the rich and failing to get the approbation he cherished, than John Morrissey. The New York Tribune could not have highlighted the obstacles of his past more clearly than when it questioned Morrissey’s quest for political respectability: “[W]hen he demands the privilege of selecting our law-makers and making up our courts it is not impertinent to inquire who he is, where he came from, and what is his business.”53 James Corbett was the first to successfully transform the image of the pug, even claiming he chose prizefighting over baseball, as the diamond had “too much libation and swearing” for his liking.54 He had grown up in a relatively sheltered Irish family; his father, according to the 1870 census, owned property and a livery stable in San Francisco.55 Young Jim attended school, and although prone to expulsion, he was the subject of the inevitable talk of a vocation in the priesthood, before he took a job at the Nevada Bank.56 Then one day in February 1884, Jim’s boss, John W. Mackay, called him into the office and asked him if he were interested in fighting at the Olympic Club, America’s oldest athletic club, rather than “brawling in the gutter for experience.”57 Within four years he was the club’s “professor,” teaching others and becoming the mentor “enhancing [the Olympic Club’s] entire amateur athletic program,” and thus part of a profession that mixed with company who were far removed from the stereotypical sports of the day. Corbett’s classes in self-defense themselves became so popular and oversubscribed that up to forty young locals per session were eager to learn from “Professor Jim.”58 Corbett’s choice to move on to prizefighting infuriated his father. Patrick Corbett was disgusted at what he saw as Jim’s squandering his “last chance of respectability,” in a job that had real social mobility. Even assurances and promises — which he’d soon break — that he’d not fight for money could not placate Patrick.59 When he finally fought the black fighter, Peter Jackson, in 1891, his father was indignant beyond all reason. In what Patrick Myler describes succinctly as a “hysterical outburst,” Corbett Sr. wrote to the editor of the San Francisco Morning Call claiming his son was bringing shame on the family: “I wish, in justice to my family, you would state in your paper that such a match cannot or will not take place, as I will not permit him to disgrace his family in this city in that way.”60 In a follow-up interview, Patrick Corbett told the paper: “I would rather see Jim in a coffin than in a ring with Peter Jackson. Jim shall not be permitted to disgrace his family by entering the arena to fight with a Negro and if he still persists … I should go before the grand jury, have him indicted and then bound over to keep the peace.” Corbett Senior added that he’d prefer to see his son “carrying the hod for a small salary and earning an honest living than making thousands as a boxer,” before concluding categorically, if somewhat contradictorily, that Jackson’s color had nothing to do with his objections: “I don’t blame John L. Sullivan for having drawn the color line, but it is not because Jackson is a negro that my son must not do battle with him. It is because I am opposed to his becoming a member of a class that is largely composed of ruffians and the scum of civilization.”61 Parental disapproval affected the majority of Irish-American athletes of the mid to late nineteenth century. Contemporary morals implied that this view was an asset in better society, with the Morning Call referring to Patrick Corbett as “one very dear friend and guardian.”62 The local fancy wasn’t so kind, some dismissing the outburst “merely an advertising dodge.” An unnamed director of the “California Club” suggested: “The old man is

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making a monkey out of him.”63 This certainly misses the point of how aggressively Irish parents were against a sporting career in the nineteenth century. Baseball players like Charles Comiskey, Ned Hanlon, Roger Connor and Tim Keefe, and the golfer Francis Ouimet, all had folks who were implacable in their opposition to a job in any sport, let alone prizefighting. Nonpareil Jack Dempsey was born John Edward Kelly and took his mother’s surname, as Myler argues, to save his family embarrassment from his career.64 This wasn’t the age of Sarah Palin’s “hockey moms” or “intrusive parents’ syndrome,” with overbearing fathers encouraging sporting sons, furiously pushing them in the hope they fulfill the dreams that eluded them. Instead, professional sportsmen were derided as little better than gutter flotsam, and any sport paid was deemed as either a sure route to nowhere, or in the case of prizefighting, a spell in the state pen. Indeed, politics with all its corruption was seen as more favorable. T.J. Pendergast claimed he went to college on an athletic scholarship by turning down a contract in the Western League, with “family opposition [keeping] him from becoming an early Babe Ruth.”65 As with many Irish-American lads of the day, Comiskey was captivated by baseball; but when he was caught playing for a local semi-pro club, his father shipped him off to boarding school in Kansas in an effort to prevent him from playing baseball. He was immediately picked to lead the freshman team.66 Ned Hanlon was another case of parental indignation: “His family was aghast when he quit school as a teenager to pitch for Norwich and New London teams.”67 Tim Keefe and his father quarreled about the benefits of the game, with Keefe senior dismissing it as “a waste of time and talent.” He wanted his son to study, something he eventually did in his spare time.68 In the obituary upon the tragic early death of Frank J. McGinn, a player who appeared in just one major league game, despite strong promise, the Sporting Life commented: “He played one game with the Pittsburg Club, and doubtless would have entered upon a professional career had not his folks objected.”69 Patrick Corbett was unlucky, as his other son Joe was a baseball professional, but Jim refused to be the good son and accede to his protests: “My father is very foolish and hot-headed in acting as he does in this matter. I’m in the pugilistic business to stay…. If my father is so foolish as to try to stop it here, I will go to any place on earth to meet Jackson.”70 Sadly, Patrick Corbett was to die in terrible circumstances, when on the night of August 16, 1898, he shot his wife and Corbett’s mother before turning the gun on himself.71 Corbett’s ascension to being universally acclaimed as a “Gentleman” was cemented in the wake of his defeat of Sullivan in New Orleans, 1892. But while newspapers found him an oddity in a profession full of uncouth drunks, the soubriquet was soon being utilized to insult or demean him.72 After Corbett defeated Sullivan, he impressed wholesome middle America by refusing to celebrate with alcohol, and as wine glasses were raised to his victory at the New Orleans Southern Athletic Club, he responded by holding aloft a glass of milk.73 Corbett actually hated the white stuff, but in the age of growing intolerance to booze he saw it as expedient for young people to reject the intemperate lifestyle of his predecessor.74 Not everyone appreciated the sanitizing of Corbett’s connections with the riff-raff, least of all himself. Armond Fields slams the “vilifying or deifying” of Corbett, which was centered on one “specific contest between the boxer and a particular opponent,” namely Sullivan. He believes Corbett hated being known as “Gentleman Jim,” feeling it was demeaning, and refusing to allow either his manager or agents to use it.75 When he became a silent movie star, he found it impossible to prevent film producers from marketing the name, and yet he conceded to touring in William A. Brady’s vaudeville act, Gentleman Jack, which sought to “exploit Corbett’s matinee good looks and his image of middle-class respectability”

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through a play where Jack was clearly Jim.76 The later biopic of Corbett, according to Aaron Baker, combined Corbett’s physical fight to heavyweight glory with “negotiating between different conceptions of masculinity, social class, and race. Through his ‘scientific’ boxing, mannered charm and stylish appearance, Corbett renounces the working class masculinity of his Irish-American family to define a more ‘respectable’ type of prizefighter.” Inevitably this entailed turning his back not just on his family, ethnicity, class, and other pugs, but ignoring the challenge of black fighters.77 The aristocratization of Corbett was finally cemented by a doctored poster of his European tour of 1894 that showed the Friscan in a large room surrounded by statesmen, leaders and royalty from ten countries. In a stunning assembly of contemporary glitterazzi spanning Queen Victoria, seated in awe on the left, to an admiring Abdul Hamid II of the Ottoman Empire to the right, Corbett is seen shaking the hand of William Gladstone. Corbett would later admit: “My manager’s object, of course, was to indicate that I had met all of these people over there, which I hadn’t.”78 Someone else who helped to bridge the gap between the ring and respectability was Mike Donovan. Being a middleweight probably saved him from being pigeonholed as a classic punch-drunk pug with cauliflower ears, rubbing his boneless schnoz, before lashing out if someone inadvertently rings a bell within earshot, with the lower divisions by the 1880s being classed by an increasingly technologically obsessed society as “scientific.” Donovan was born in Chicago in 1842 and fought in the Civil War.79 He was taught to box by his brother Jerry, himself a professional, becoming American middleweight champion after thrashing William McClellan in a New York fencing club in May 1878.80 In 1884 he got his first break into respectability that enabled him to rub shoulders and swap sporting punches with a future president. The New York AC needed professional specialists to bolster club standards in sparring, and Donovan was hired as the club’s “professor” of the sweet science; on retirement after thirty years of devoted service, he was granted the grand title of “Instructor Emeritus of the NYAC.”81 According to his ghosted words, the post entailed more than just teaching the pasty-faced sons of industrialists how to land an upper cut: “The position of instructor in boxing in such an organization as [the NYAC] naturally brought me in contact with a type of man that was far superior to what I had been accustomed. Many warm friends have I made among the best clubmen that, otherwise, I might not have had the opportunity to meet on such a familiar footing.”82 Of course the NYAC wasn’t about to sell out its amateur principles by staging prizefights. But in the era of both Muscular Christianity and increasing street violence — Donovan, looking like “a nice venerable little old gentleman dragging himself home to a supper of gruel and dry toast,” once had a “set-to” with some street toughs — the Irish-American proved a perfect mentor to toughening up men of “solid social standing” in a club where virtues of “courage and confidence, self-command and graceful bearing, vigor and decisiveness” were all fostered.83 Yet reading through Donovan’s memoirs, you can’t come to any other conclusion but that he knew his place. In the arena of social standing, certainly one could not imagine even the likes of Connie Mack doffing his cap in such a fawning manner, let alone John McGraw or John L. Sullivan: “As boxing instructor … I was continually brought in intimate personal contact with representative men of the city. They respected and honored me and I tried to repay them with hard and conscientious work with my loyalty and affection. My life was indeed laid in paths of pleasantness, comfort and comparative peace and gentleness.”84 Continuing in a similar vein, Donovan gushes: “To be intimately associated with the class of men I met … was a great privilege and one for which I felt thankful.” He adds

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with considerable understatement: “It seldom falls to the lot of a fighting man to have and hold the confidence and affection of such men as I count among my friends.”85 One of these beneficiaries was America’s twenty-sixth president, Theodore Roosevelt, who while at the White House, was elected an honorary member of the NYAC. 86 Nobody personified the combination of health, patriotism and the military than the hero of San Juan Hill, who had transformed himself from “a sickly house-bound teenager into the rough-riding, safari-going, big-stick-wielding Bull Moose legend” after taking up boxing.87 Donovan recalls the first time he met Roosevelt, “the fighter, untrammeled by legal restriction; the lover of fistic encounter, as I know him; the man of brawn and muscle, with genuine fighting spirit and the courage of two ordinary men to sustain its promise.” Having been invited to the then New York governor’s pile in Albany, Donovan was left in the old billiards room, which was now a gym, while Roosevelt changed into his boxing clothes: “It was the Governor of the State of New York who had left me. It was the fighting man who entered the room,” Donovan discloses. He continues, with his typical deferential respect for those above his station, that Roosevelt showed no signs of trepidation that usually accompanies an amateur fighting someone of his class. After a left jab and a “faint-hearted right that landed like a love-tap high up on his cheek,” Roosevelt dropped his hands and indignantly exclaimed that Donovan wasn’t being fair: “You are not hitting me. I’d like you to hit out.” Roosevelt proved that he was no novice, stepping out of the way of a swinging left and driving a right into Donovan’s ear which “jarred me down to the heels.” Donovan realized Roosevelt was “no ordinary amateur” and would risk his reputation if he underestimated him.88 Such swapping of punches with eminent opponents clearly impressed Donovan. However, for all this taking up of the “manly art” by the country’s young rich, true pugs were still likely to be Irish and from the lower classes who learned their trade in the gutter. While Mike Donovan spoke highly of one William H. Page — a varsity boxer who went on to be the club’s president — as one “of the most remarkable” boxers he had taught, it perhaps shows the dearth of fistic talent within the so-called solid social standing of the NYAC, Harvard or Yale, that Page does not register much of a mention in the history of American fistiana, and Donovan’s guidance may have helped Page, at most, kick a few malnourished employees about. Yet Donovan’s service to health and fitness “simply cannot be estimated,” as Walter St. Denis of the New York Globe claimed: “Think of the stomachs that Mike has “straightened out”; the rheumatism and other ills he has chased away; the ruddy glow of health he has put into dozens — yes hundreds — of faces; the paunches that he has cut away … these are a few things that Mike Donovan … has accomplished for the individual members of the [NYAC].”89 Other Irish-American retired pugs also took up posts at various posh athletic clubs and colleges. Donovan’s opposite at the Manhattan AC was Dominick McCaffrey, a former heavyweight contender who lost to Sullivan in August 1885. He held the post at the “Cherry Diamond” club from 1891, after boxing Joe Doherty in front of two judges, Walter Campbell and Walter Debaum, for the honor.90 The Dublin-born “Val” Flood, who had migrated to Australia in childhood and became the country’s middleweight champion, also moved to New York to teach the sweet science at Halcyon Hall, Millbrook, after a stint as a trainer with the Palo Alto AC in San Francisco. In June 1906 he was appointed athletic trainer at Princeton, granting him the respectability that was a pipe dream when he had traded punches with Peter Maher in Roby, Indiana, thirteen years earlier.91 Outside the Big Onion, there were Irish educators of pugilism in Baltimore, where the Wexford-born John McGraw —

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an accomplished pug who was once lined up to fight Jake Kilrain — fenced, wrestled, and lifted weights. He taught at the Baltimore AC and was also an instructor for the city’s police department until he lost his job because, it was said, “he was good severe with the men.” He was one of a new breed of sporting instructor: he had studied the scientific aspects of athletics at college after fighting in the Civil War, designed the BPD’s gymnasium equipment, and passionately believed in the benefits of promoting sports before his untimely death at sixty from blood poisoning caused by frostbite.92 The U.S. military also benefited from retired sportsmen taking up positions in improving the health of soldiers. The all-round athlete Thomas F. Lynch joined the military in 1882 and became the supervisor of sports and physical education of the Sixty-Ninth Regiment in 1890.93 After serving in the Spanish-American War as a battalion commander, Lynch succeeded Colonel J.J. Scanlan in 1899 as colonel of the Irish Volunteers, eventually becoming known as the “army’s strong man.”94 Meanwhile, Tom Conneff turned his back on an opportunity to compete at the Athens Olympics, and after a brief professional career he joined the U.S. Army. He became a sergeant, also serving in the Spanish-American War before drowning near Pasig, east of Manila, in October 1912.95 Another one-time prizefighter who became a “professor” was the wrestler William Muldoon. Acquiring the nicknames “The Irish Terror” and “The Solid Man of Sport,” Muldoon remained undefeated in a career that ended in 1890 with a bout against Evan Lewis, grappling foreign challengers such as Edwin Bibby and Tom Cannon from Ireland, and also bringing an “athletic combination” around the country.96 In retirement, Muldoon continued to train boxers and wrestlers, opening up his own health farm, the Olympia, at Purchase in New York State, where he worked on the rich, such as Ralph Pulitzer, and gained the title of “professor.” As a policeman, Bill Muldoon was in the best job to work as an amateur sportsman. He helped organize the Police Athletic Club in 1877, but it was disbanded in March 1878 following allegations of financial irregularities and fights with a detective colleague in which Muldoon suffered a gash to his head by a “slung-shot.”97 Muldoon resigned from the police in order to continue wrestling at the highest level. A new club spluttered along from 1882,98 before the enlistment of John Flanagan became the impetus to restart the dormant club. The New York Sun argued: “There are not many Flanagans on the force, but there are perhaps two score men who could be a credit to any athletic club….” These athletes’ names tilted heavily towards Irish ethnicity: Michael “The Lighting Cop” Cregan from Oak Street Station, William Ryan, Martin Reagan, A.J. Kenney, P.J.J. Dinan, James Prendergast, John McCarthy, Michael Hines and Jim McDermott, all of whom the Sun claimed “has some record and reputation in the athletic world.”99 Also mentioned were two other important names from Irish-American sporting history: Charles “Mile-A-Minute” Murphy and Richard Sheridan. Murphy, a cyclist, had gained fame after earning his nickname by cycling a mile in under a minute behind a Long Island Railroad train in June 1899 that was acting as his pacemaker. He was walking the beat on the other side of the East River while Sheridan began his thirty-eight-year tenure in 1901. Irish-American policemen who competed for the I-AAC included John J. Burke, John J. Joyce and William J. Keating.100 Two years later the New York World commented on the “star Athletes Members of ‘The Finest,’” which included the Sligo-born John Burke and the thirty-seven-year-old veteran Thomas Slattery.101 By 1907, according to one Pennsylvanian newspaper, New York was credited with having “more athletes on her police force” than any city on the planet:

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It seems now that the typical fat, sluggish policeman is bound to go. In his place will come the quick, agile officer trained to decide and act promptly when called upon…. It is generally admitted that the trained athlete is quicker witted and better adapted to cope with emergencies than the man whose only training has been obtained from books, or the man who has nothing except brute strength. The trained athlete has more control over his temper and his muscles.102

The NYPD’s athletic prowess was highlighted by “the Irish Whales,” although not all of them were cops, with Pat Ryan working instead as a foreman to a gang of Italian laborers.103 Matt McGrath joined the force in 1902: the story goes that he believed he was entering the countryside when he went strolling through Central Park, swimming in the “lake” and having “a wonderful time jumping and throwing boulders.” One day an Irish mounted policeman spotted him; instead of arresting him for violating ordinances, he let McGrath off, and from that day McGrath pledged to join New York’s finest.104 He eventually rose to inspector and took control of Manhattan’s traffic, but his police career was defined by combating criminality. In 1906 he received a citation for rescuing a suicide jumper from the freezing East River, and seven years later he captured a murderer, who was hiding in a river barge, by attacking him from a hideout “with a deadly rain” of bricks until he finally gave up and threw the gun away. His record was, however, blotted when, as the New York Times described it, he failed “to count ten before pulling the trigger of his revolver in some personal dispute with another man.” He was let off any charge, whereupon he was “mobbed by admiring friends and reinstated to good standing on the force.”105 When John Flanagan arrived in New York, he badly needed an income and a job that would accommodate and encourage his athletic promise; the police, which he had joined by January 1903, provided exactly that.106 Martin Sheridan joined the force in 1906 and was swiftly promoted, being assigned as bodyguard to the state governor whenever he visited New York City.107 Pat “Babe” McDonald enrolled in 1905 and worked as a traffic policeman out of Times Square, where his “figure and County Clare brogue became as familiar as the Knickerbocker Hotel, Shanley’s, the Victoria Theatre and Dowling’s.” He saved three people from drowning while off-duty, and eventually moved up to a captain of the traffic division.108 Unlike the prize ring, wrestling never had either the same omni-dominance by Irish combatants, nor the poor reputation among moralists. Harking back to classical Greek civilization that the elites of the late eighteenth century revered, it displayed not only all the noble attributes of Athens and Rome but also the Victorian WASP, in contrast to the barbaric, bloody and often murderous mayhem of the Celtic savage. Yet despite this, American grappling history was heavily influenced by the Irish, in particular the “Collar and Elbow” style that preceded the Greco-Roman version that Muldoon favored. Morton and O’Brien describe how it was in places like Green Mountain, Vermont, where this Irish influence first took hold: It was not on the American frontier … but in a quiet farming area of Vermont where skilful wrestling, collar and elbow or scuffling, was perfected. Eventually it was this style that would most influence the development of modern American wrestling, both amateur and professional. From the 1830s on, Irish immigrants began to settle in good numbers in the northwest corner of Vermont. They brought their traditional wrestling that had much in common with that advocated by Sir Thomas Parkyns as “in wrestling” and those styles called Cornish, square-hold or box wrestling. Back on the Old Sod the Irish, whom penal laws had long forbidden to wear weapons, developed self defense skills. It was not uncommon for a town or village to maintain a champion scuffler as an informal community constable. Bullies at times held towns in their grip until a new champion dethroned them in fights that could end in death.109

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The sport was “refined” in America, where it was promoted as a pastime more than a vehicle to settle scores. Mark S. Hewitt describes how this “Irish” style utilized skill at the expense of brutality, such as eye-gouging and biting: “Collar-and-elbow is a standing style of wrestling that involves grasping one another’s collar and elbow and through various hip locks, cross buttocks, grapevines and trips attempting to toss one another to the ground. A fall was called when one man touched the ground with either two hips and one shoulder or both shoulders and one hip.”110 Indeed, it was taken up by non–Irish grapplers, enticed by the emphasis on “skill over brutality” where “injuries were rare.” Morton and O’Brien also note the importance of ecclesiastical support for the sport: “The first priests sent to minister the new settlers were Irishmen themselves who had all, by chance, ‘fingered the collar’ before taking orders. They advocated the sport for youthful recreation and also as a controlled means of resolving the disputes that developed among members of their flock.”111 One such product of this part of rural Vermont was John McMahon, aka “The Green Mountain Boy,” and described by one recent writer as “one of the greatest exponents of collar-and-elbow style wrestling this world has ever seen.” Born in 1841 in Rutland, he first fought publicly against Peter English for a hundred dollars at Port Henry, New York, in 1861, and then fought the English champion Albert Ellis to a draw at Harry Hill’s Coliseum in 1873, beating him two months later at the same venue, and remaining unbeaten until 1878.112 McMahon’s chief rival was the Irish-American wrestler, Colonel James H. McLaughlin, a two-hundred and sixty-five pound “powerhouse” from Detroit who had wrestled since competing for his regiment in the Civil War. In 1878 he put down a challenge to “any man in the world.”113 Desperate to meet McLaughlin, McMahon disposed of Robert Wright, then challenged the Michigan man, and in November the pair finally met “for the right to be called the undisputed champion of America” at Chicago’s McCormick’s Hall.114 After two and a half hours McMahon won the championship belt, with McLaughlin putting his defeat down to “too much flesh” and adding the matter “was not settled yet.”115 The following month they returned to Chicago with McMahon losing, as the Chicago Tribune yawned that much “might be written about the grapevine lock, etc., but wrestling is not popular enough in Chicago to warrant going into technicalities.”116 A third match ended in a draw.117 Both eventually fought Muldoon in mixed collar-and-elbow and Greco-Roman bouts. McMahon’s battle at New York’s Terrace Garden Theatre in March 1881 was a controversial event which descended into wrangling between the pair over jackets, with the referee, John Killoran, declaring the match a draw and bets off, amid jeers from patrons demanding their money back.118 Despite this, wrestling kept its respectable roots by being anchored to clubs such as the NYAC. “Captain” James C. Daly took up wrestling, first grappling with the Scottish athlete Duncan C. Ross in Canada and New York in a series of matches in 1879.119 He fought Ross in August 1880 on a boat in a lake in Providence, Rhode Island, where both men, “greatly excited,” fell into the lake, continuing to fight in the water.120 Daly subsequently lost to the English wrestler Edwin Bibby in the Turn Halle in 1881, then to the “Japanese champion,” Matsada Sorakichi — who would also wrestle Muldoon — despite towering over him by seven inches, and finally to Ross twice in Boston for the “Championship of the World” in 1889.121 During the eighties a crop of notable Irish-American grapplers — Joseph Quinn, John J. O’Brien, J.C. Keane and T.J. Flynn — sprouted in New York principally at the Pastime AC. O’Brien first came to attention at the NYAC’s annual meeting at Tammany Hall in April 1884, when he beat the MAC’s F.R. Peixotto for the lightweight

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championship.122 The following year Quinn fought O’Brien to two draws: First at the inaugural annual exhibition of the Crib Club at Clarendon Hall, and then at the NYAC, where another evening of respectable violence was put on for the more discerning “sporting” gentleman.123 By March 1886, O’Brien was deemed the lightweight champion of America when he drew with “the Featherweight Champion” Flynn, in a “catch-as-catch-can” bout at Tammany Hall.124 Quinn then won the state championship in the catch-as-catch-can middleweight division in the spring of 1887.125 Other Irish-Americans were redefining amateur sports in two pastimes that America came to dominate for much of the twentieth century: Tennis and golf. Once regarded as an “effette” game for the rich sons of Eastern elites rather than the children of immigrants, tennis changed when Maurice Evans McLoughlin burst on the scene in 1909, earning an immediate place on the U.S. Davis Cup team.126 As Outing described him, McLoughlin was born in Carson City, just over the border from California in January 1890, the son an Irishman “from whom he undoubtedly inherits his physical characteristics, the red hair and the superabundance of freckles….” The crucial point was that unlike previous tennis champions, McLoughlin had learned his game not on the grass lawns of wealthy Eastern clubs, but on the asphalt courts of California.127 He was also the first great tennis player who hadn’t attended any tertiary educational establishment. Golf was another pastime of the affluent until four Irish-Americans ruled the sport at the turn of the teens. While an Irish-American golfer, Henry Chandler Egan, had taken silver in the 1904 Olympic golfing tournament that had just two non–American entries, both Canadians, there was little to dent golf ’s British supremacy. Nicknamed “the American triumvirate,” John J. McDermott, Mike “King” Brady and Tom McNamara were joined by Francis Ouimet as the American golfers who broke the British stranglehold on the U.S. Open, where the first sixteen winners were from across the Atlantic.128 McDermott, as the first American champion of the green, was a man whom Rhonda Glenn summarizes as possessing “good manners, didn’t drink or smoke and seldom missed Sunday Mass,” yet as a child caddy was branded brash and a bully: The “Golden Age of Sport” may have featured polished athletes like Bob Jones, but he was far outnumbered by scrappers like Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth, guys from tough backgrounds who slid into bases with their spikes high. United in trying to claw their way to a better life through golf, professionals had great camaraderie born of shared lean times and the bonds of golf, a game that fosters good will.129

At the seventeenth U.S. Open, held at the Chicago Golf Club, Wheaton, in June 1911, McDermott became its first American winner, with Brady as the runner-up.130 He had already shown promise the previous year at Philadelphia when he battled his way to second place, forcing the New York Times to describe him as the “sensation of the tournament … who surprised the experts by the quality of his golf.”131 He retained the title in 1912 at Buffalo, grabbing victory from McNamara, with Brady once more “blowing up” and coming fourth.132 Here were sportsmen who possessed the dogged, blue-collar disregard for the niceties of sporting Corinthianism that was still the rage among the better off, because if golf was to capture the imagination of American sporting fans, it needed, as Mark Frost would describe, a native “standard bearer.”133 William Kelly adds: “The legend of Johnny McDermott espouses the spirit of a young America — the spunky, brash teenager who finally beat the Europeans at their own game…. [H]is name will never be eclipsed … because he was

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the first, the first American, the first American to repeat, the first to break par and the youngest.”134 A professional at the Country Club of Atlantic City, McDermott epitomized golfers from the lower orders who had learned the game while caddying as kids at affluent country clubs. Born in West Philadelphia in 1891 to an Irish mailman, he learned his trade at the Aronimink Golf Club. Dropping out of high school at sixteen to become a professional, he worked at the Camden County Country Club and Merchantville GC in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, before taking up the professional post at Atlantic City.135 Mike Brady and Tommy McNamara were also from humble backgrounds. In contrast to McDermott, they had long and successful careers, but when it came to the U.S. Open, both suffered as the perennial bridesmaid who never married. Brady, born in Brighton, Massachusetts in 1887, was a bear of a man who looked more like a wrestler than a golfer. Mike Brady, burly and Irish to the core of him … is one of the veteran breed. The Western, the Metropolitan and many other coveted sectional titles have fallen before his gunning, but he has never been able to win a national championship. Twice he tied for the open crown and twice was beaten. He has lost out so frequently and by such narrow margins that he believes Fate looks at him with an evil eye. To see Mike Brady, with his shoulders and neck of a wrestler, you wouldn’t believe that he was temperamental. Yet, he is. Little things bother him.136

From his first U.S. Open tournament in 1906 to his final participation in 1932, Brady was runner-up on two occasions: once to McDermott in 1911, the other to Walter Hagen in 1919, on the very last hole.137 Tommy McNamara was runner-up three times. Born in 1882 in Brookline, Massachusetts, birthplace of Jack and Bobby Kennedy, he attained immortality as the first American to win the open in 1909, but this was dashed by George Sargent in the severe heat of Englewood, New Jersey. The Boston Globe wrote of his giving “promise as a native-born and native developed golfer of winning the championship of his country for the first time, lowering the colors of the golfers who have come from the other side of the water to teach the game.”138 For his third and final second place, he lost to Jerome Travers by one stroke in 1915. The great sportswriter John Kieran wrote that “for all his Irish ancestry,” he was a conservative player, although when paired with Walter Hagen, he was willing to abide with anything the Rochester man was willing to take: “He just wasn’t big enough to belt the ball the way his rivals did, but he had a smooth game and he could roll in the putts with the best of them.” Later he was credited with founding the PGA Tournament, inaugurated in 1916.139 John McDermott’s successor as U.S. Open Champion was another Irish-American. Francis Ouimet, who, like McNamara, was also from Brookline, was born in 1893, the son of an Irish immigrant called Mary Ellen Burke and a French Canadian handyman. He remained an amateur golfer throughout his career. A childhood caddy principally to expand the household income rather than his handicap, he became one of the greatest young golfers in Massachusetts.140 His 1913 Open win in his home town led the New York Times to describe him as “a stripling scarcely out of his teens.”141 His win elevated him to stand alongside Maurice E. McLoughlin, Harry Payne Whitney (polo rider), and the soon-to-be-disgraced athlete James Thorpe, in the pantheon of that year’s American blue-nose sporting heroes.142 Richard F. Peterson, in his contribution to Baldassaro and Johnson’s study on baseball and ethnicity, seeks to show that not all Irish baseball players were violent drunks. Here Bill James is his number one target, arguing that the baseball historian “obviously relies on blatant stereotyping in [his] association of baseball’s early rowdyism with the predominance of Irish players in the 1880s and 1890s.”143

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Peterson seeks to counter these generalizations by arguing that for every bum, there was a respectable Irish player. Indeed, Bill James concedes that there were countless Irish players with university backgrounds desperate to shake off their own ethnic reputation as brawlers and assume a more cerebral position in society: “People associated the roughness and unruliness of the players with their [Irish] ethnic background. The Irish have long been credited with that, but there is evidence that a good many of the players were thoroughly disgusted with the way the game was being run. By the middle of the [1890s] a good many college players had joined the majors.”144 However even Peterson admits that many Irish players often did themselves no favors, and reiterates Rader’s observation that for the Irish, “drinking, brawling and display were a conspicuous part of their male homosocial worlds.”145 Such stereotyping, Peterson argues, was evident in the first-ever baseball history, Alfred H. Spink’s The National Game, which gave the example of Jim Devlin as “further proof that the Irish were prolific in the late nineteenth century not only for their playing skills, competitive nature, and success on the field but for their alcoholism, hoodlumism, and selfdestructiveness.”146 Elsewhere, Jeremiah Fruin, “the father of baseball in St. Louis,” distinguishes between the “swell” Excelsiors and the Atlantics, “a rough and ready set made up almost exclusively of Irish-American players. [They] could fight as good [sic] as they played baseball.”147 However, Spink still spoke highly of a vast array of fine sons of Erin. The talk of the 1911 season, when The National Game was written, was Marty O’Toole, a “spitball” specialist who had just established a league record for strikeouts. Sadly, he didn’t live up to his promise as “one of the most talked of ball players of the day.”148 O’Toole became known as one of baseball’s biggest-ever flops, labeled the “lemon” Pittsburgh wasted a record price of $22,500 on.149 Despite all this, he retained his dignity, rejecting the opportunity to take it out on bystanders or turning to Johnny Barleycorn for company and then smashing up the place when he failed to deliver any answers. Moves to the Giants, and Columbus and Omaha in the minors, were no better, and he turned down offers of a grand a week in vaudeville to go logging in a failed attempt to restore his pitching arm.150 Still, Spink regarded him as “a youngster of exceptionally good habits.”151 The Pittsburgh Post commented in August 1911: This high-priced young man appears to pay little attention to the vast amount of publicity that is being heaped on him. At the same time it must be annoying but Marty takes in the situation sensibly and philosophically, being determined not to allow the limelight to dazzle his eyes…. From newsboy to millionaire, O’Toole’s name has become as familiar as though he was the sole owner of the United States, and so frequently has his photograph been reproduced in the newspapers far and wide that he is instantly spotted wherever he goes.152

A much happier story involves the softly spoken James “Deacon” McGuire, who was born in Youngstown, Ohio, where his Irish father worked in the local steel mills.153 Here was another player for whom Spink was fulsome in his praise: “He has played professional baseball for twenty-five years. He has never been fined … [and] has no enemies among the players or umpires.”154 He spent twenty-six years in the majors, a record only bettered by the twenty-seven of both Cap Anson and Nolan Ryan.155 George Davis was another “man of integrity, [who] could also hit.”156 A native of Cohoes, New York, the son of an Irish immigrant father, Abraham, and a Welsh mother, Sarah, the clean-cut youngster was shifted by Patsy Tebeau to the Giants for 1893 spring training, and Cleveland’s loss was New York’s gain, since Davis was to become one of the game’s greatest performers of the turn of the century.157

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“Long” John Reilly was also highly regarded for his manners: “In temperament, Reilly also excelled, having an excellent disposition and a temper that made him always a prime favorite with his fellow players,” wrote Spink.158 Spending his entire ten major seasons in Cleveland, this was a player, as Peterson explains, who “won public acclaim for his modest conduct and was widely regarded as a model for self-discipline and team play in an era characterized by its rowdiness.”159 So too was “Silent” Mike Tiernan, whose name in “the early days of the [New York] Giants … was on the lips of every baseball fan.”160 Called “the quietest Irishman in baseball, or perhaps the world” by James D Hardy Jr., he was one of the unsung heroes of Irish-American baseball. He got his name as an unruffled and stoic outfielder and slugger who “disliked publicity and always maintained silence and reserve on the field even when he disagreed with the umpire.”161 James S. Mitchell described Tiernan as a man “as honest as the sun, a sober, gentlemanly, professional player, he was a credit to his team, and possessed a record of never having been fined for disputing an umpire’s decision.”162 Along with Mickey Welch, he showed true, if some may say misguided, loyalty to his club and its owner, John B. Day, by refusing to jump from the Giants to the Players League.163 In retirement, he ran a café in New York, but like so many of his era, he caught tuberculosis and died aged fifty-one on November 7, 1918, in Bellevue Hospital, New York. The Pittsburg Press noted that Tiernan was “as silent in exiting this earth as he had been during his career as a devotee of the diamond,” entering the hospital under the false name of Joseph Egan so as not attract attention.164 Roger Connor was a tall, hard-hitting slugger and the second biggest player in the National League in the early eighteen-eighties after Dan Brouthers. Connor’s huge stature was cited as responsible for the New York Gothams’ getting their new nickname, when his manager Jim Mutrie exclaimed: “My boys, my giants!”165 Born in May 1857 in Waterbury, Connecticut, Connor was one of eleven children born to Kerry-born immigrants. Playing minor league with the Holyoke Shamrocks in 1878 and 1879, he used to entertain fans by sending the ball flying into the Connecticut River that ran beside the ballpark, which impressed Springfield’s boss Bob Ferguson to sign him in 1880 when he took over the Troy Trojans.166 He followed up this party trick when he moved to New York, being the first player to hit a home run by swatting the ball completely out of the Polo Grounds in September 1886.167 His huge presence and calm temperament were influential in defusing incidents, and as baseball’s labor relations soured, he joined the Players League and refused John B. Day’s immortal offer “to name your price” to return to the Giants. 168 The Sporting Life noted that no offer was actually being tabled by Day: “He did not get an opportunity, as the New York’s first baseman was as immovable as a mountain.” Connor was adamant that “he cared not what Tiernan or any other player did, that he had signed with the Brotherhood and he was going to stay by that organization until the last.” He earned the title “The Oak” from the Sporting Life, confirming a principled player eschewing the greed and weaknesses of so many of his comrades.169 The baseball men behind the Players League may have been seen as “outlaws,” but their reputations remained intact. But if players gained “respectability,” the success of the Players League was also undermined by the desire for it. The PL was never radical, remaining a “lace-curtain” league that eschewed Sunday games and alcohol sales, and refused to lower the admission fee to 25 cents.170 Both Jim O’Rourke and Tim Keefe became prominent pillars of respectability in retirement. O’Rourke studied law and graduated in 1887, while Keefe ran a sporting goods business with W.H. Becannon, rejecting his colleagues’ partying when on road trips to lock himself away in his hotel room and study.171 He later coached

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at three Ivy League universities — Harvard, Princeton and Tufts — investing his money in real estate, while O’Rourke’s former teammate at Middletown, Tim Murnane, became a sports reporter and ultimately baseball editor for the Boston Globe, serving as president of the New England League and the Eastern League.172 “Sir Tim” was followed by “Sir Hugh.” One half of the Boston Beaneaters’ Heavenly Twins, Hugh Duffy was a native of Cranston, Rhode Island. He had won numerous batting honors, and had thrown his lot in with the PL, writing to the editor of the Boston Globe to dismiss rumors that he was unsettled with the league’s Chicago franchise: “I have signed with the Players’ League for three years and will be the last one to go back on my agreement. The [NL] Chicago club treated not only myself, but several other men, unfairly last season and I have no earthly use for them. I am with the players to stick, and Mr. Spalding has not money enough to make me turn deserter and go back to the men who classified me last season.”173 Another contemporary of the PL battle was Jim Fogarty, who was born in San Francisco in 1864, and a graduate of St. Mary’s. Spink reminds us that the “people of the Quaker City who knew Fogarty best insist to this day that he was the greatest outfielder that ever lived,” while Peterson describes him as “one of the first outfielders to earn a reputation for his defensive play because of his great speed, powerful throwing arm, and ability to make sensational catches.”174 His last season was in the PL as player-manager of the Philadelphia Athletics, resigning after a run-in with the club’s president H.M. Love over his interference.175 He was backed by the money men, who decided “that Fogarty was of more value to the club than Love….”176 The following May, aged twenty-seven, he died from consumption after catching a heavy cold on his return east from Los Angeles. The Sporting Life wrote: “Like countless other athletes he prided himself upon his strong physique, and disregarded the advice of his friends, and persisted in going without an overcoat. The change from the genial climate of California to the harsh wintry weather that prevailed here, was too much even for his stalwart frame, and on Feb. 23 he was taken with hemorrhages at his rooms in the Girard House.”177 Michael Riley “Doc” Powers was a Notre Dame medical graduate born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The star of the Irish baseball teams of 1897 and 1898, who “seemed to exert a moral influence over those around him,” was also destined to die young.178 During the seventh inning of the inaugural game at Shibe Park on April 12, 1909, Powers ran into a railing, then began complaining of severe stomach pains. Although completing the game, he was rushed to hospital. From an initial diagnosis of “acute gastritis,” surgery was performed to part of his bowel after fears that gangrene would set in.179 With peritonitis appearing a week later, two further operations were performed to no avail. He was given the last rites and died just after nine on the morning of April 26, the Sporting Life commenting that he “bore his suffering with patience, looked Grim Death in the face with marvelous fortitude, and he died as he had lived — with dignity and courage.”180 From 1871 to 1920, approximately 19 percent of Irish and Irish American baseball players attended a college or university, mostly in Catholic institutions, suggesting that the game was moving back to its initial middle-class roots.181 However, education for most Irish males centered on what McCaffrey observed was the “aim to ‘civilize’ rather than intellectualize students” of the Catholic education system: Parochial schools concentrated on making students functional in urban America, culturally Anglicizing and religiously Romanizing them in the process, teaching them to read and write,

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to love God and country, and to obey the church. Before World War I, not many Irish Catholic youngsters attended secondary school, and before World War II a number of women intending to nurse or teach went on to higher education, but men tended to take a job after graduating from secondary school. Catholic secondary and higher, like its elementary education, concentrated on the practical rather than the theoretical.182

However, within the masculine culture of the ring or the diamond, there was a deep suspicion of “college boys,” although being “educated” didn’t always mean a man discarded using his fists. The most prestigious Irish-American player to come out of the non–Catholic universities was Eddie “Cocky” Collins, infamously spat at by Tim Hurst. Edward Trowbridge Collins was a native of Millerton, New York, a village near the New York-Connecticut border, the only son of an assistant general freight agent, John Rossman Collins. The elder Collins had been born in the Big Apple and had himself a typical Irish mid-nineteenthcentury New York upbringing, selling newspapers as a boy, joining a volunteer Eddie “Cocky” Collins, later labeled “anti–Catholic” fire company, before taking a job with (Library of Congress). the New York Central Railroad.183 He then married Eddie’s mother Mary Trowbridge, an Anglo-American widow with one daughter, who could trace part of her ancestry back to 1135 in England. While hers was hardly a background steeped in wealth, there seems to have been enough for a decent appreciation of schooling, and coupled with the usual sacrifices, to see Collins attend private school.184 Collins’s own “Anglican” religion became a shibboleth that was used against him later in life, amidst accusations of anti–Catholicism when he was general manager of the Boston Red Sox.185 But while at Columbia, Collins used the Irish name of Eddie Sullivan to protect his university eligibility while playing for the semi-pro team in Plattsburgh, New York. Newspapers exposed his participation and Collins was barred from the Columbia nine in his final year, then hired as the team coach with pay.186 He spent nine seasons with the Athletics before moving to the White Sox in 1915. When the story of the Black Sox broke, Collins was initially tarnished. But he emerged as one of the “clean” or “square sox,” where for him at least, writes Daniel Nathan in his cultural history of the scandal, the “Black Sox” corruption “enhanced [Collins’s] standing as a man of conviction and moral rectitude, as the very personification of the era’s ideal athletic hero.”187 The scandal was more than a battle won by good over evil, but was a victory of educated, middle-class values over the poor and ignorant. Collins therefore was feted as the hero, personifying “clean baseball and … middle-class standards of integrity and success,”188 an image that conveniently ignored the fact that Collins wasn’t party to the conspiracy because he declined, but because he was never asked in the first place. Undoubtedly helped by his role in the Black Sox drama, or lack of one, he was viewed until his death as “as the most intelligent player in the game.”189

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Collins was elected along with Willie Keeler into the Hall of Fame in the 1938 elections, making the pair the first Irish-American inductees in Cooperstown. Thirty-four more who debuted in the majors between 1871 and 1920 followed, although this list lamentably still does not include anyone born in Ireland. One of the earliest Irish-Americans inducted at Cooperstown in 1945 was Roger Bresnahan, a year after his death from a heart attack at sixty-five. Christened “The Duke of Tralee” by journalists who wrongly assumed that he had been born in Kerry — he often told them that this was the case — he reinforced this persona by his party-piece rendition of “The Rose of Tralee” in his strong tenor voice.190 Instead, he was born on June 11, 1879, in Toledo, Ohio, the seventh child of Kerry parents, Michael and Mary, who had both emigrated from Ireland nine years previously. In a career spanning seventeen seasons over nineteen years, “The Duke” played in every position for six sides.191 As seen from his arrest for throwing rocks in Philadelphia, Bresnahan was a fiery, competitive player. In the early hours of July 11, 1911, near Bridgeport, Connecticut, and now the player-manager of the Cardinals, he was traveling with his players on board a train from Philadelphia to Boston for a game. At around 3:35 a.m. their train crashed and plunged down an eighteen-foot embankment. When the dust settled, twelve people were left dead. The Cardinals had had a lucky escape because their car had been changed to the rear of the train, but Bresnahan, and his teammate Ed Konetchy, led the effort to save lives, rescuing many injured, with the New York Times reporting them “working like beavers, without taking time for more dressing than drawing on trousers over their pajamas. They never let up until nearly 7 o’clock, when the last person injured had been removed.”192 Bresnahan was also an innovator, experimenting with a batting helmet for his head that never took off, shin guards, and changing the padding in the catcher’s mask.193 He was concerned about safety after an accident in 1905 with a baseball left him unconscious and hospitalized.194 The protectors were cricket shin pads he had sent to him from his “old home in Ireland” already used by some college teams. When he wore them on opening day April 1907 against the Phillies, opponents mocked him, with the Sporting Life predicting: “It is doubtful if the fad will become popular.”195 Frank Chance chided him as “not game enough to stand up to the plate when sliders are sliding into the base for fear of bodily injury.” 196 Yet despite the negative feedback, soon every catcher was protecting himself in this manner. 197 Bresnahan ended his baseball career as player-manager with the Cubs before moving back to the Toledo Iron Men/Mud Hens. Three decades earlier, another Irish-American baseball innovator had introduced a piece of personal protection to combat the appalling toll that pitching was taking on catchers. Around 1875 Jim O’Rourke took to wearing a “bird cage,” somewhere near a modified fencing mask that had been worn first by Harvard catcher Warren Briggs. O’Rourke rejected any attempts at patenting his own model, and was merely a player who, as his biographer Mike Roer writes, “didn’t want to be or look like a prizefighter.”198 When overhand pitching was legalized in 1884, O’Rourke, now manager of the Buffalo Bisons, along with his catcher, James “Deacon” White, once more stepped into developing protective sportswear for the catcher to survive “90-mile-per-hour fastballs.” O’Rourke also sought an air-filled chest protector that would replace the earlier, mostly ridiculed “sheepskin” that was hidden under uniforms.199 Eventually a chest protector was patented by Bill Gray, a minor league player in Hartford. In 1904, O’Rourke was brought out of retirement by McGraw for one final season, along with one of the greatest sluggers of all time, Dennis Joseph “Big Dan” Dan Brouthers, supposedly to give “the New York fans a nostalgic thrill” in the dying days of

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the season. O’Rourke had a stint as catcher, while Brouthers played two games in his normal position of first baseman.200 Brouthers was born on May 8, 1858, in Sylvan Lake, New York, the third of five children of Irish immigrants, Michael and his wife Annie.201 Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1945, he is one of only a handful of players to have played four decades in the majors, debuting in 1879 with the Troy Trojans and returning after an eight-year spell playing in the Eastern League. However, his career almost never started. On July 7, 1877, while a teenager with the Wappingers Falls Actives, he plowed into another youthful opponent from the Harlem Clippers, John Quigley, fatally injuring him. Quigley was guarding home plate when Brouthers hit him in the left temple with his knee. Brouthers was exonerated at the inquest but resigned for the rest of the season, contemplating whether to continue in the game.202 By twenty, he was, at six-feet-two and two hundred pounds, one of the biggest baseball players of his era, a “veritable giant for his day … [who] cut a handsome figure at the plate: tall, muscular, with a neat handlebar mustache. To the opposing pitcher, however, he presented a terrifying visage: a towering demon who could rain destruction on a team with one mighty swing of his enormous club.”203 Brouthers totaled 100 home runs before 1900, and his lifetime batting average of .349 is the highest of any nineteenth-century player, ranked at number nine along with Babe Ruth. 204 His obituary in the New York Times reflected: “In those days when Brouthers came to bat, the stands would go into an uproar as the outfielders moved back against the fences. His decisive clout broke up many a baseball game. Not only did he hit the ball harder and more regularly than any other man in the major leagues, but when he did connect, the hit was usually good for the length of the park, if it didn’t sail over the fence.”205 Brouthers lived out his remaining days working from the Giants’ front office, employed first as a scout and then as the Polo Grounds’ night watchman, being kept on as one of the beneficiaries of the generosity of McGraw.206 Muggsy would never make any list of respectable Irish-American athletes, but writing about sportsmen reveals a very diverse list of people, where no one is totally evil and no one is ever a complete saint. The polar opposite of respectable baseball men like Mack or Collins, McGraw was everything lace-curtain Irish felt ashamed of: the hard-boozing, hardgambling “sport” with a cloud of corruption that hung over him after the 1917 World Series. McGraw’s biographer describes the difference that the more respectable Irish saw between him and Mack: “Mack projected a managerial image directly opposite to McGraw’s. Generally easygoing with his players, he preferred quiet, private lectures, as opposed to McGraw’s penchant for sarcasm and angry outbursts. Once the game started, Mack mostly relied on his players to know what to do; McGraw sought to command their every movement.”207 Mack “was to become, through the years, an almost starch upholder of Baseball ethics,”208 while McGraw was labeled an “irresponsible character” by Ban Johnson.209 In every way, Mack, “the tall tactician,” held the moral superiority of the two, based on their physical appearance, their manner, and especially their baseball attire. Mack always wore a suit and bowler hat while managing, years after it had become unfashionable — even persuading the manufacturers of his collars to continue making them when they decided to cease production in 1908.210 But there is one dark area of American sports, as troubling to its history as to the history of post-colonial U.S. itself, which gives McGraw some redemption: how he viewed those of a darker skin than himself.

12 Cronies — The Irish Sportsman and Irish Identity The term “crony” comes from “comh-roghna: fellow chosen ones … close friends, mutual pals.”1

Ever since the second-generation Irish priest Father John Carroll founded Georgetown University in 1789, Irish parents have been sending their children to Catholic seats of further education. There, as with the non–Catholic universities, some formed and participated in athletic societies that later competed against other colleges and universities. At first these were against fellow Catholic institutions, initially in intervarsity baseball competitions, before football brought some of them against local, regional and ultimately national non– Catholic rivals. College football (and indeed all varsity sports) contained one major difference from professional baseball. These organizations were organic entities, naturally formed, and not artificially made franchises that could be moved as a reaction to market forces. In contrast, the franchise system was crucial to every major and minor league, promising a monopoly of the sport in a specific area. Despite its image of the national game, baseball often suffered from small crowds, where even a city like New York could barely support two baseball sides. In its early years, baseball never had the same impact in America as soccer had achieved in Britain, with crowd figures disappointing compared with those across the Atlantic during the same period. Consequently many franchises, even pennant-winning ones, either went bust or moved elsewhere and were always worried about rival leagues taking customers through slight deviations of the rules, beer sales, Sunday baseball, or reduced admission prices. The lack of ethnic baseball clubs, particularly in the majors, reflected the baseball owners’ business philosophy, where overt ethnic connections or blatant use of ethnicity to denote a franchise couldn’t be used. Unless a rival made explicit claims to deny access to the Irish as employees both on and off the field, there was no point in an owner, or a team’s political or financial backers, playing the ethnic card. Undoubtedly America mirrored much of the prejudice Irish Catholic emigrants encountered in Scotland, with “Orange Riots,” nativism and “No Irish need apply” notices. But in sporting circles, baseball’s structure found it almost impossible to accommodate clubs like Glasgow Celtic or (Edinburgh) Hibernians 260

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in the majors, with baseball having no knock-tournament like the FA Cup for smaller teams to participate in. Only college football’s structure allowed obscure colleges like Auburn in Alabama to produce teams that became the best in the country. Colleges were also an expression of a community that extended further than students and alumni to include the local population and ethno-religious communities that had no connection with the university. Catholic colleges in big cities like Boston could rely on the ethnic pride of their supporters more than baseball, illustrated by how the city could have sporting teams from a number of institutions. College football finally eclipsed varsity baseball in the nineties, when, as Rader notes, its popularity began to acquire many aspects of “full-blown commercial sport”; entrance receipts now supplanted membership fees as the principal source of funding.2 But Irish baseball players also graduated from college nines, primarily from Catholic seats of education near the traditional Irish centers: in D.C., Georgetown, a university that Sporting Life noted possessed a huge number of students who could “trace back to the great State of Ireland and are full of shamrocks and sand,” the Hoyas provided seventeen players to the majors, including Art Devlin, Tommy McCreery, Tommy Dowd and Billy Maloney.3 Elsewhere, Dick Egan, Dave Shean and Hall of Famer “Big” Ed Walsh attended Fordham; Shad Berry and the man who would later become one of the greatest managers of the game, Joe McCarthy, went to Niagara College; Eddie Murphy and Denny Mack went to Villanova; while Hank O’Day, Fred Carroll, Jim Fogarty, Duffy Lewis and Joe Corbett all attended St. Mary’s College in Oakland. In Massachusetts, Holy Cross College and Boston College were the leading Catholic schools. Playing baseball as early as September 1868, with a match between “picked nines from the sides of the house,” Holy Cross produced more Irish college players in the majors than any other college.4 Starting with Tim Murnane in 1868, players like Bill Carrigan, Joe Dugan, Jack McCarthy, Jack Barry, Doc Powers and Tommy Dowd proved that the college was one of the leading varsity centers in baseball at the time.5 Another Jesuit-run institute, Boston College was more renowned for football. Founded late, in 1892, it was first organized by the future congressman Joseph F. O’Connell and his fellow student Joseph Drum. The pair’s efforts illustrate the hostility faced from university faculties over sports. They approached the college president, the Reverend Edward I. Devitt, about setting up a team, knowing previous requests to his predecessor, the Reverend Robert Fulton, had been refused. Devitt agreed, but only by demanding as a condition that no money be requested from the college.6 Four years later they played Holy Cross in an illtempered game. Both teams disputed the score before the Crusaders finally walked off and boarded their transport, abandoning the game, a contentious way to begin a long-running football rivalry that would last until 1986.7 Today, Boston College remains one of only two Catholic universities currently competing in the NCAA Division 1FBS.8 The other university, which they play annually for the Frank Leahy Memorial Bowl9 and the Ireland Trophy, in a fixture unofficially and controversially known as the “Vatican Bowl” or “The Holy War,” is undoubtedly one of the greatest college football teams of the twentieth century. For all we know about its “Fightin’ Irish football,” other Catholic universities have more right to the nickname. Georgetown, Fairfield, and Fordham were all founded by Irish clergymen and not by a French priest, Father Edward Sorin, a man who reputedly disliked his Irish students for being “not obedient by nature.”10 The University of Notre Dame du Lac started out as a school before becoming a college in 1844, and by the turn of the century, like other American colleges, had an athletic asso-

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ciation for which baseball was the most important sport. It provided seventeen Irish-American players to the majors before 1920, including Doc Powers and Red Murray, and surprisingly, Cap Anson. But the “fighting Irish” label came to prominence with the growth of football. Over the course of the twentieth century, the university acquired eight national championships and eleven “claimed” championships between 1924 and 1988, with twentyone seasons in total where they were nominated by various “selectors” as national champions, including 1919 and 1920. But for all its success, Notre Dame came late to football. Its first game in 1887 was an 8–0 defeat against a bunch of University of Michigan students who had come to South Bend to show how the game was played. It recorded its first win in 1889 by beating Northwestern University before dropping out of football for three years,11 and took a decade to beat Michigan for the first time and claim the “Championship of the West.”12 In 1913, coached now by Jesse Harper, they beat the Army, 35–13, using the first extensive use of the “forward pass,” with the New York Times describing the Irish as having “flashed the most sensational football that has been seen in the East this year, baffling the cadets with a style of open play and a perfectly developed forward pass, which carried the victors down the field thirty yards at a clip.”13 Along with the Boston Celtics, the two sporting concerns traded heavily on, or became synonymous with, Irish America in the twentieth century as no other team did. For Notre Dame itself, the origin of the sobriquet has been lost in the mists of time, although it’s far from unique.14 For some the name derives from the 69th New York Infantry Regiment, better known as “The Fighting 69th,” which earned its reputation in the American Civil War. For others it encapsulates a people who can’t settle anything except through fisticuffs. But “fighting” is also a positive attribute in a country where aggressive expansionism and foreign wars brought America to superpowerdom. “Fightin’ Irish” extended further than South Bend, where other sportsmen were positively described in such stereotypical terms. The Sporting Life spoke of Tom Clarke’s opportunity to finally shine at Cincinnati as “there ought to be enough of the fighting Irish blood in Tom Clarke to say to himself: ‘I’ll show ’em that I am able to hold my own as a topnotch catcher.’”15 According to the university, it was initially a term of abuse used by Northwestern fans in 1899: losing 5–0 at halftime, they began to yell “Kill the Fighting Irish!”16 Leaving aside the plausible proposition that someone mistook the word “fighting” for something more offensive, others believe it had its origins in the college’s star running back, Robert “Pete” Vaughan, who during halftime in the game with Michigan in 1909, shouted at his mainly Irish colleagues: “What’s the matter with you guys? You’re all Irish and you’re not fighting!”17 Already by 1904, the university’s student organ Scholastic describes the “game Irishmen” who had lost at Wisconsin; E.A. Batchelor of the Detroit Free Press recalled the game five years later: “Eleven fighting Irishmen wrecked the Yost machine this afternoon. These sons of Erin … not only beat the Michigan team, but they dashed some of Michigan’s fondest hopes and shattered Michigan’s fairest dreams.”18 The Chicago Tribune first used it when covering Notre Dame’s thumping by Yale in October 1914, juxtaposing the team’s alleged ethnicity with their gallant, if inevitably futile defense against greater odds: “In spite of the fact that they were outgeneraled and consequently outplayed, the fighting Irish met Yale at its own game and never, even when it was inevitable that defeat would be their portion, showed a sign of faltering.”19 Arch Ward, Knute Rockne’s publicist at South Bend and the future editor of the Chicago Tribune, used “fighting Irish” when writing for the South Bend Tribune and other papers.20 Not all newspapers were so generous: While the Detroit Free Press also referred to “the Catholics [having]

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a peculiar system of defense, playing four or five men back at all times,”21 the visitors from Indiana were often derogatorily labeled “Papists,” “Horrible Hibernians,” “Dumb Micks” and “Dirty Irish” by many a Midwestern paper, and as late as 1947, Notre Dame was still being called “Micks” in some small-town rags.22 Understandably, Sperber argues that the faculty were cool on any association with this label: “For many years, the Notre Dame administrators disapproved of the ‘Catholic’ and ‘Irish’ nicknames. President [Rev. James] Burns wrote that the terms are ‘discountenanced by the authorities of the University,’ but because often their ‘usage is in playful spirit, no offense being intended, this makes it the harder to deal the matter effectively.’”23 As the term became increasingly popular by the teens, one alumnus complained to the Scholastic that the nickname was misplaced, as few players were Irish, drawing one angry response that claimed most captains from the past thirty years were of Irish stock and that “you don’t have to be from Ireland to be Irish.” Another “disgruntled alum” demanded the critic should “cultivate some of that ‘fighting Irish spirit’ and … [stop] grumbling because Notre Dame is not called the Polish Falcon or the Spanish Omelet.”24 It’s hardly surprising that the university took this title considering the other insulting epithets they were enduring. Ward’s successor, Francis Wallace, who as a future sportswriter with the New York Daily News did more than most to popularize the term, touches on the ingrained prejudice in America against Irish Catholics with a conversation between the hero and a rival from University of California in his 1931 novel O’Reilly of Notre Dame: “O’Reilly, why doesn’t Notre Dame have a mascot?” “Just never got around to it….” “Well — Yale has a bulldog, Princeton a tiger, we have a horse — why don’t you try a pig? I should think Paddy’s Pig would be a good symbol for the Irish. Then there’s the old rhyme: They kept the pig in the parlor, and that was Irish too.”25

Prizefighting was from the start steeped in inter-ethnic rivalry, meaning the better the opportunity for inter-ethnic (Anglo-Irish) conflict, the more lucrative the fights became. Ned Hammond’s battle with Liverpool’s George Kensett on October 14, 1824, at the Union Race Course, in a secluded part of Queens, was the first recorded inter-ethnic prizefight in America. These mills, Gorn writes, “replicated in microcosm the long standing enmity between Irish and English,” and continued the tradition of matching English with Irish fighters for maximum commercial gain.26 Yet in contrast to later bouts, the scrap passed off without incident. Rival spectators were seemingly too exhausted evading a bayonet charge by the King’s County Sheriff infantry, so that the most excessive exuberance displayed was a “Well done Liverpool!” or a “Hurrah for the Irish” to every connecting punch.27 One of the last of these fights was in 1873 between the Philadelphia-based Englishman Harry Hicken and New Yorker Bryan Campbell. This bout ended in shots being fired, the referee being kidnapped and Hicken’s Irish second, Ned O’Baldwin, being badly beaten by Campbell’s team that included Owney Geoghegan.28 O’Baldwin was arrested and wrote a card of the events, dated “JAIL, AT STEUBENVILLE,” noting the hostility he had faced for supporting an “Englishman”: Long ere this you have learned how the Hicken and Campbell fight terminated, and the cowardly assault that the Irish assassins made to murder me, made by men with whom I have never had any personal trouble, and men who, in the morning, extended to me the hand of professed friendship…. I had committed the unpardonable crime of appearing as second for a man who was guilty of English birth. This crime and the dread of losing the battle money was the cause

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of their cowardly attack on me. Since “prize fighting” no longer deserves the name and the question at issue is not who is the best man, but where he was born, and his nativity does not suit what other means can be adopted, even to murder if necessary, to prevent his defeat. I abandon forever the prize ring to such men as Riley, Geoghegan and their cowardly tools.29

The Irish boxer became not only a professional brawler, but an ambassador for his race. On his shoulders were his community’s hopes and aspirations, and desire for revenge over their rulers. But while these fights were often boisterous affairs, the specter of a new inter-ethnic rivalry between the Irish immigrant and the “Native” American raised animosities further. Some of the first reported minor American fights often resulted from ethnic disputes. In 1823 an eighteen-year-old native butcher beat an Irishman before challenging any of his community to a “prize fight.” In response the Irish went away, raised the money, chose a man and brought the mill off within four days. Their man, who was beaten, was reported by the New York Evening Post as “the champion of Hickory Street.”30 Prizefighting became popular among the Irish and subsequent immigrant groups not because natives found “more profitable ways of using their physical advantages than standing up to be knocked about a twenty foot ring for a few scores of dollars,”31 but because a good prizefighter also became a more celebrated community hero than a member of an Irish sporting club that admitted “outsiders.”32 Prizefighters provided the pure and unadulterated ethnic hero, mixing politics with a tearful nostalgia for the “auld country.” Apart from his support for fellow fighters, political opponents included, John Morrissey was one of the best of these quintessential “ethnic pugs” who would redress the shame of emigration. In April 1863 he organized an exhibition of famous pugs, including Mike McCoole, at Hoym’s Theatre in the Bowery in aid of Irish famine relief.33 However, nothing illustrated the importance of ethnicity and community more than the Tom Hyer and Yankee Sullivan fight. In his intense research of New York sports in the mid-nineteenth century, Melvin Adelman argues that “[m]any prize-fighters actually originated in and took their symbolic importance from these political and ethnic differences.”34 These antagonisms were either settled through the chaos of riots, or in the prize ring. Prizefighting was a mirror of American urban society where native and Irish clashed on many fronts: in work, religion and political power. Thus, in Rader’s words, pugs “represented their respective ethnoreligious groups in symbolic contests for supremacy and honor.”35 But also one shouldn’t, as Gorn adds, lose sight of the real reasons behind prizefighting, and that was money: “As a grudge fight, barely sublimating profound economic and ethnic tensions between rival urban factions — some observers had even predicted murders at ringside — the contest focused amorphous social conflicts into the crystal-clear image of two great fighters battling for an enormous amount of money.”36 The hyping of fights was principally to increase promoters’ profits, and just as importantly wasn’t about just who our fighter was but who his opponent would be. Despite the brief glimmer of natives in the ring, Hyer’s reluctance to defend his title began an Irish dominance that returned stronger. In 1863, the New York Herald conceded: “It is a singular fact, with the exception of Hyer and Heenan, every man who has held the championship of America has been a native of the ‘Emerald isle.’”37 Speaking after the first “World Championship” in 1860 between Heenan and Tom Sayers, Bell’s Life In London refused to use the fight as a “way of shedding a light upon the question so often mooted as to the climate of America having deteriorated the blood of the Anglo-Saxon race” from which most contemporary Americans were descended:

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[We] emphatically deny, as do we also the fact that the mill can be truly considered a trial of strength and stamina between the two countries, seeing that both men are actually Irishmen by blood, and not Anglo-Saxon at all, and that neither is more than one degree moved from being an Irishman by birth; for, singularly enough, the parents of each were “raised,” as our Transatlantic friends would say, within fifty miles of one another in the Emerald Isle.38

Indeed it had to be said that including the second generation — English- or American-born fighters of Irish ethnicity — this was a heavyweight reign that would last for fifty years until James J. Jeffries won the title in 1899.39 While inter-ethnic tensions remained outside the ring, the only way to replicate them within the ring in an era of near total Irish dominance was through intra-ethnic fights, pitting one Irish fighter as a representative of the Irish community against another representing the “natives.” Initially these came in two simple options: Principally (though not always exclusively) through a fighter’s birthplace — with first and second generation fighters divided into “Irish and native” or “Irish and English”— or second, by party allegiance. The first of these “intra-ethnic battles” in the States was the Burke-O’Rourke fight, an all-Irish affair that mutated into an Anglo-Irish battle on the basis of the combatants’ birthplaces. The Sullivan versus Morrissey fight of 1853 also attempted to imitate this lucrative logic through dubious means. Despite both combatants’ having been allegedly Irishborn, it soon became clear that Morrissey’s “arrogance, youthful virility and enmity” with Nativism made Sullivan the Know-nothings’ favorite almost “by default” despite his fight against Hyer.40 Yet to confuse matters further, the records show that Morrissey’s own colors, at Boston Corners where the fight was held, were the Stars and Stripes, while Sullivan’s was a black flag, depicting “victory or death.”41 Despite Irish parents, Morrissey’s next challenger, John C. Heenan, was to prove a far less ambiguous American hero to Old Smoke’s “foreign legacy” and his connection with William Poole’s murder.42 The New York Times highlighted this, commenting: “Though the pugilists … are, as their names indicate, of immediate Irish extraction, if not Irish birth, yet one of them, Heenan, was by force of circumstances looked upon in the recent combat as the champion of that portion of the ‘roughs’ denominated ‘American….’”43 Highbrow America was nevertheless unimpressed, and the New York Tribune refused to recognize Heenan’s Americanism, seeing the fight instead as “metropolitan ruffianism … [against] provincial bullyism.”44 Soon America was tearing itself apart in its own intranational conflict, and things were perfect for a third element of bad taste: the use of fighters’ home or adopted cities as a surrogate for the Civil War. The Joe Coburn versus Mike McCoole fight contested in May 1863 was one shameless exploitation of the North-South conflict, ludicrously promoted as a microcosm of the conflagration. Coburn, although born in Middletown, County Armagh, was from New York, while McCoole, who’d grown up in St. Louis, worked as a deckhand along the Mississippi. The New York Times showed its disgust, declaring the comparisons absurd: Yesterday, the National struggle, in which the Army of the Union was engaged on the Rappahannock, assumed an importance quite secondary to that of the struggle in which Coburn and McCool were engaged…. It was infinitely more anxious to know if Coburn drew “first blood” than to learn the issue of Gen. Pleasanton’s raid on Gordonsville; far better pleased to hear of a successful “cross-counter” by McCool than of the capture of Fitzhugh Lee and several thousand rebels. Even the general public was tainted with curious desire to find out whether Coburn or McCool was the better man … with a concern that could not be wholly suppressed by a more legitimate anxiety as to the success of Gen. Hooker’s operations.

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The Times continued to deplore any attempt to convey what it called “the idea that this match was an affair between the North and the South” because of the fighters’ current home cities: “Both combatants are Irish-born, like nine-tenths of all the pugilists who have ever flourished on this side of the Atlantic. They were brought over here when very young, and are undoubtedly citizens, but neither of them can exactly claim to be regarded as an American champion.”45 With ethnicity so important in prizefighting, “colors,” often the flag of an ethnic group, would be worn around the fighter’s waist or hung at his corner. This was the age of what Rader rather dramatically calls the birth of pageantry in sports, when Harvard University first started wearing crimson handkerchiefs in order to differentiate them from their normally green-clad Irish opponents.46 Such overt exhibitions of ethnicity were used earlier in prizefights, such as when Sullivan’s colors were simply a green flag as he fought the Englishman Bob Caunt.47 In 1855 at one minor aborted inter-ethnic prizefight between a pair of “brutes by nature, bruisers by profession and villains by heart,” in which there was “something of a Know Nothing feeling mixed up with this match,” the American “signified his intention to fight under the American flag” while the Irishman fought “under the shamrock.”48 Fighters’ colors increasingly became more intricate, containing a combination of symbols representing Ireland and the American flag within a form of a coat of arms. Paddy Ryan, a member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, appeared for his aborted fight with Joe Goss displaying colors that were green “with a harp of Erin, an eagle and a shield in the center.”49 When John L. Sullivan captured the heavyweight title from Ryan, he fought under a white silk handkerchief with a green border and an American eagle in the center; American flags occupied the upper and lower left corners, and “Irish flags” adorned the upper and lower right. His opponent’s flag had a red, white and blue border with another eagle in the center on a star-speckled globe over the inscription “Paddy Ryan, Champion of America, AOH.”50 Upon the conclusion of the fight, these flags would become symbolic trophies to be snatched by the jubilant victor as the final humiliation of the vanquished.51 Often these colors were no more than flags of convenience. Irish fighters cynically changed colors depending on the opponent. While a fight against a native necessitated the green, an English opponent required the Stars and Stripes as the only symbol acceptable. Gorn notes “Yankee” Sullivan’s taking on his moniker when meeting the Englishman Johnny “Hammer” Lane in February 1841, was motivated as much by a desire to prove his allegiance to his new country, as by commercial opportunism: “A Yankee and a Sullivan, an American and Irishman personified the possibility of acquiring new identities and opportunities without giving up old allegiances…. [Sullivan became] the first in a long line of fighters who symbolically mediated the conflict between American nationalism and immigrant pride.”52 As the Irish dominance continued into the twentieth century and new ethnic communities arrived, some non–Irish fighters took on Irish names to enhance their career prospects, culminating in the most famous “fake” Irishman, the future world champion, Jack Sharkey ( Joseph Zukauskas).53 Even Frank Sinatra’s dad had an undistinguished career under the name of Marty O’Brien. Carmello Bazzano, talking about the Sicilian-born Giuseppe Carrora, who changed his name to Johnny Dundee, points out that ethnic names in the early twentieth century were still a financial liability: “The boxing promoters knew that traditionally boxers and their followers were Irish; a boxer with a foreign-sounding name was simply not in their

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best interest. Promoters were also familiar with the xenophobia permeating society and were not about to jeopardize their business promoting Italian boxers.”54 And it wasn’t just boxers who hid their true ethnicity. “Foreign” baseball players used Irish names to break into the majors.55 The Sporting Life commented in 1916 on Lee Magee’s name change when he announced he was getting wed: Nobody … blames Lee Magee for wanting to change his name. Any fellow with a handle like Hoernschemeyer would be glad to get rid of that mouthful. Fourteen letters Lee Magee, born Leopold Hoernschemeyer, whose “ancestors never saw the Emerald Isle or kissed the Blarney Stone” is over the limit for a name on a (Library of Congress). scorecard, anyway. Seemed sort of funny that one with a Teutonic heritage such as Lee’s should pick up a Celtic substitute. Magee sounds very much Ireland, but Lee’s ancestors never saw the Emerald Isle or kissed the blarney stone. Since a new happiness has come into the outfielder’s life he hasn’t the heart to [get his wife] to change that lovely name to Hoernschemeyer and before the march to Hymen’s altar Lee Magee will be legally entitled to vote as well as play ball under the name he has won fame, fortune and love.56

Jack Johnson couldn’t help noticing all these false names of convenience in his own autobiography, when he disparagingly referred to Tommy Burns as “the Canadian Jew with the Irish ring name.”57 Then there were the occasions when non–Irish sportsmen were mistaken as Irish-Americans with little evidence. The great American golfer, Walter Hagen, has been often thought of having an Irish connection even though his surname is German. In 1919, Golf Illustrated reported the words of “a certain canny Scot” exclaiming: “Look out for the Irish-Americans!” in response to their presence at the U.S. Open: “That this canny Scot … had lost none of his canniness, was proved when two of these Americans of Irish descent fought out a tie that for thrills equaled the famous triple tie of 1913. Walter Hagen and Mike Brady fully bore out the flattering remarks of this outspoken Scotchman…. Both possessed the qualities and skill that go to make champions.”58 But none of Hagen’s ancestors were from the Emerald Isle. His paternal grandparents, Joseph and Mary, were both from Germany, as was too his father’s wife, Louise, née Balko.59 A similar case is Knute Rockne, whose birthplace prevented the mistaken ethnic identity afforded Hagen but didn’t stop Arthur Daley from writing: “[Rockne] was born in Norway but he had the personality of a man born in Killarney. Maybe he became Irish by osmosis. He had the gift of blarney….”60 There was, however, a method in this insanity: Irish names were popular because the Irish by 1900 weren’t only in the mainstream, but were deemed the best participants in sports. More importantly they also provided the big-money gates. Only when Jews and Italians became established and their fan base flourished did the need for name changes dwindle. As the Irish dominance of boxing began to wane after 1920, Harry Krakow still wanted to change his name to something Irish like “Knockout” Hogan, but was persuaded

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by his manager to stick to a name representing his own ethnicity. He took on King Levinsky instead.61 When it came to matching Irish fighters with black opponents, ethnic differences among whites were quickly forgotten. Noel Ignatiev describes how America “was well set up” to teach the Irish the value of having a white skin and the importance of the “White Republic” that Irish-Americans were part of.62 To this the Irish-Americans held a special loyalty due to their contrasting treatment under the British. And like many of his race, it was for African Americans that John L. Sullivan reserved his greatest contempt. This promotion of the Irish to “white” was marching at the same time as Sullivan was fighting, and Isenberg reluctantly excuses his acquiring “the standard antiblack prejudices of his generation”63 by blaming a childhood in a part of Boston with only sixty black residents: [Sullivan’s] racial attitudes were fully consonant with his social background and time. His own self-image demanded that he declare, often and loudly, that he was ready to meet all comers, but unlike some of his fellow white pugilists, he could never bring himself to face a black in the prize ring. His reluctance had nothing to do with fear of any specific black fighters. He regarded himself as not only a champion but a white champion, and this attitude only hardened with time…. [He saw] blacks only in their menial roles as janitors, hotel porters, and washerwomen.64

Certainly Sullivan never underestimated the use of the American card, and in one solitary effort to emulate John Morrissey’s move into politics, he spoke of his fistic career in patriotic terms: But what I felt to be more important than all else is the work which I have been doing to keep up the reputation of America among other nations. The best men from everywhere have tried to beat me, but failed, and since I first began I have kept the pugilistic championship of the world in this country. There isn’t a self respecting American, no matter what tomfool idea he may have about boxing in general, who does not feel patriotic pride at the thought that a native born American, a countryman of his, can lick any man on the face of the earth.65

He avoided two top black contenders, George Godfrey and Peter Jackson, who had drawn with Corbett in 1891. When Sullivan bumped into Jackson at the San Francisco docks, he declared: “I can lick anything on earth, black, brown, white or yellow. See?” An embarrassed Jackson was lost for words, but “John Lush,” as the San Francisco Morning Call had christened him, found some instead: “Well, then, you go and dig up ten or twenty thousand dollars, and I’ll give you a rally when I come back from [Australia].” Understandably, since Sullivan, as the Call noted, was “three sheets to the wind,” he didn’t recall making such an offer.66 Instead he clarified the following March that he’d fight any foreigner who wasn’t black: “I include all fighters —first come first served — who are white. I will not fight a negro. I never have; I never shall.”67 Sullivan’s trainer William Muldoon would later disclose that it was he, and not Sullivan, who ultimately kyboshed a fight with Jackson because he feared the shame Sullivan would suffer if beaten by a black man. But the pair had drawn a racial line in the sand in an era where the races were encouraged to go their separate ways and “sought to turn a matter of personal convenience into what they hoped other whites would see as a matter of racial principle.”68 Writing later from London in 1910, Sullivan claimed: “Many times during my career I was urged by outsiders to throw reason to the winds and fight a black man. But I always refused…. Of course we shall all like to see the white man win, but wishes can never fill a sack. Should the Negro win there is not a white man in the world who could throw up his hat and dance with glee.”69 Not that “Gentleman Jim” thought much different. One

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Canadian hack reported back from Jeffries’s camp in Ben Lomond, California: “Corbett doesn’t like Negroes, and it is impossible for him to disguise the fact. He believes they are all yellow and he can’t keep from saying so when he talks about Johnson.”70 However, there were other reasons for fearing interracial fights than just losing the belt, fears that would be borne out in the first decade of the twentieth century. AfricanIrish fights were also inter-ethnic battles with the potential for greater mayhem than even the Hyer-Sullivan bout. While Irish Americans had been victims of various riots, they too had been the aggressors in clashes with black Americans, such as the 1863 New York City “Draft Riots.” With the decline of the Irish fighter, non–Irish boxers increasingly turned to Irish expugs to train and promote them. As Roger Lane explains: By the 1890s, just as they were finally replacing the Irish in the worst and heaviest of urban laboring jobs, the blacks were replacing them in the prize ring also…. To complete the transformation, it was remarked that the mentors, managers, and trainers of the rising black challengers, including Peter Jackson’s Sam Fitzpatrick and George Dixon’s Tom O’Rourke were themselves often retired Irish pugs.71

Unlike many of his co-ethnics, O’Rourke appeared to have little time for prejudice, even accepting Dixon’s marrying his sister, Kitty. There was, however, a change of wind in the air; after defending his world featherweight title against McCarthy and another Irish-American, Johnny Murphy, O’Rourke got Dixon a mixed-race title fight against Jack Skelly at the “Carnival of Champions” of 1892 in New Orleans. There white patrons betted heavily on Dixon and he in turn praised the crowd, while O’Rourke claimed it was better than in the North or West.72 Despite blacks’ now being confined to the gallery,73 a columnist with the New Orleans Picayune, “Bantam,” responded angrily to suggestions that Dixon was a victim of racial prejudice, quoting O’Rourke as thinking Peter Jackson would be happy to fight in the city again: “The treatment of [Dixon] by the large audience present must have pretty positively given the lie to the stories in the north of how we southerners shoot niggers for little or nothing….” And yet in the same issue the Olympic Club was reported “taking strong grounds” against mixed-race fights in their clubhouse, conceding it “will not again be the scene of such an occurrence, the members having resolved to permit no more matches to be fought there, which ignore or disregard the color line.”74 Dixon held onto his world title until 1899, when he lost to “Terrible” Terry McGovern, but further title fights proved impossible to find. As a result of this “color bar,” the heavyweight Peter Jackson, managed by Sam Fitzpatrick, was the principle loser. He held the world colored heavyweight championship between 1888 and 1896 and had come face to face with Irish racism when he tried to fight a young Kerry-born boxer, Jack “The Irish Lad” Burke, around 1886; Burke insisted he didn’t want to hurt his reputation by fighting a black boxer. Jackson pursued Burke until he walked into the ring in Sydney where Burke had just performed an exhibition. He goaded Burke who just “glared at Jackson, said nothing and quickly found his way out of the arena.”75 Fitzpatrick failed to get Jackson a shot at the title against Sullivan; Corbett, whom Jackson had previously fought, also refused to meet him when he became champion.76 The experience, however, helped Fitzpatrick succeed with someone who was to make matters virtually impossible for any black fighter to repeat his achievement until the late 1930s. Fitzpatrick had made contacts on three continents, earned a reputation of arranging fights others thought were impossible, and learned a lot of lessons in the space between

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Jackson’s draw with Corbett in May 1891 and Jack Johnson’s beating Tommy Burns on December 26, 1908, in Sydney.77 By utilizing a media savvy little known at the time, he finally arm-twisted Burns into the ring. Despite being broke, he and Johnson relentlessly pursued the Canadian from the day that Burns had beaten Marvin Hart across the Atlantic to London, and finally to Australia.78 Fitzpatrick’s success was helped by British and Australian newspapers, who were marginally less inclined to fear the fight in hysterical terms: “We are going to get a fight with Burns or make him quit the ring,” he told anyone listening as he got ready to board the Kronz Prinz in New York in April 1908.79 When negotiations broke down with Burns over his insistence on having between seventy-five percent and all the gate for himself, Fitzpatrick threatened that he’d have Johnson declared champion. Even though this would’ve washed with none of the mainstream press or the white public in the States, the proud Burns was stung by this criticism.80 It’s difficult to see if Fitzpatrick saw Johnson as anything other than a money-maker, a “highly trained circus animal, [rather] than a partner.”81 His relationship with Jackson may have convinced him to change American society, but Fitzpatrick also called Johnson racial insults and disapproved of his behavior with white women.82 He certainly invested heavily in Johnson at a time when any desegregation of boxing seemed impossible, with ultimately no guarantee to either make money once he became champ or ensure that his fighter didn’t inflame public opinion in the way he did. Certainly Johnson, someone with an awful reputation for being self-obsessed, appreciated his manager’s work, long after he thought he could do without him.83 Indeed, Johnson’s reign was a traumatic time for American boxing, when the Irish happily conspired with white America in its impatience to get the world heavyweight crown off Jackson through what shamefully became known as the quest for a “great white hope.” Irish-American fighters “Philadelphia” Jack O’Brien and Frank “The Fighting Dentist” Moran were two of these “hopes” that were to teach the “uppity” Johnson a lesson, before Jess Willard and the Mann Act finally knocked him out in the Havana sun. O’Brien and Moran both failed as badly as James J. Jeffries. William Muldoon acted as a part of Jeffries’s training staff, and it was also left to him to calm the crowd in Reno. Although it’s not known whether he was responsible for convincing the brass band, “with a true western delicacy of feeling,” not to play Ernest Hogan’s hit, “All Coons Look Alike To Me,” he suggested that the crowd be given nothing stronger than lemonade. He told them not to judge Johnson on his color but to accept the result, whatever it would be, in the spirit of fair play.84 Six years later the NYSAC drew its own color bar. Frank Dwyer backed F.A. Wenck in refusing to rescind the ban on “mixed bouts between white and negro boxers.” Despite lawyers advising Wenck that the stance was “unconstitutional,” Dwyer insisted that “the majority of people who have the best interests of the boxing game in mind were strongly opposed to permitting mixed bouts.”85 Still, boxing had a hint of a level playing field for black fighters. Baseball, in contrast, had been segregated, despite a few “experiments” in integration, in all the professional and semi-professional leagues since the founding of the National League in 1876.86 Few of the Irish thought that this discrimination was outrageous, although one unlikely person did try to eliminate it. John McGraw may have been a hard-faced bully, but Charles Alexander describes him as someone who “had no particularly strong racial views one way or another.” Coming from nineteenth-century rural northeast America, McGraw probably never saw a black man until he traveled south in 1890; he was “certainly … no crusader for

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racial justice, not one to challenge the national consensus that presumed the innate superiority of white over black.”87 But McGraw was a baseball manager and part owner: a businessman whose pragmatism would overrule racist views that, which as we will later see, as a white man of his times, he certainly held. In early 1901, McGraw spotted a Negro League player, Charlie Grant, of the Columbia Giants, working as a bellhop at a hotel in Hot Springs, Arkansas, where the Giants were spring training. McGraw obviously regarded Grant highly but knew he couldn’t sign him as a black man, even though he was fairly light-skinned. But as Adrian Burgos remarks: “The prospect of securing an exceptional talent by manipulating racial understandings proved too enticing” for Muggsy.88 The gambler in him thought he could pass Grant off as a “red Indian.” Native Americans had been, if not warmly “welcomed,” at least allowed into the majors to face racism. McGraw told Grant: “I’ve been trying to think of some way to sign you … and I think I’ve got it. On this map there’s a creek called Tokahoma [sic], and you’re a full-bloodied Cherokee.”89 But McGraw’s plan was destined to fail because, as Burgos explains, it depended on a collaboration of other white baseball people, a collaboration that was never going to be forthcoming, because “few … expressed interest in making a mockery of the color line by permitting players widely perceived as black to enter as Indians.”90 But it also failed because McGraw, for all his cockiness, “could not himself bear the obloquy that would be his if he signed” a black man.91 And while white fans, in a city with a racist history, came out to cheer Grant training as a Native American, black people weren’t about to play ball.

Philadelphia’s Jack O’Brien, a “White Hope” wheeled out to take back the Heavyweight belt for White America (Library of Congress).

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Grant was taken along to play the White Stockings in Chicago, where the South Side black community “lined up six deep along State Street with an Elks marching band to welcome the ‘Indian’ Grant.” Immediately his cover was blown. Tipped off, White Stockings owner Charles Comiskey declared that “the Cherokee of McGraw is really Grant, the crack Negro second baseman from Cincinnati,” who had been dressed in war paint and feathers: “I’m not going to stand for McGraw ringing in an Indian on [his] team. If Muggsy really keeps this Indian, I will get a Chinaman of my acquaintance and put him on third.”92 Back in Hot Springs, Grant denied the allegation, defiantly claiming his father was white and his mother a Cherokee.93 With the American League sticking their noses in, the game was soon up. Finally the Sporting Life announced Grant’s return to the Negro Leagues: “McGraw’s wonder, Tokohama, the Cherokee Indian, will play with the Columbia Giants of Chicago, again this season.”94 McGraw was chastened, but he wasn’t finished with trying to pass off black players as whites or Indians. One player he rated as the best of all colors that he had ever seen was Oscar Charleston.95 He toyed with the idea of changing Charleston into a white Cuban. Then he tried to pretend that José Mendez of the Kansas City Monarchs was another Native American,96 and was rumored to be the major league manager who was after the Harvard graduate Clarence Matthews.97 None of these ideas succeeded, but he did manage to discreetly hire one of the Negro League’s best pitchers, Andrew “Rube” Foster, to train Christy Mathewson between the 1903 and 1904 seasons.98 The question one must ask is why McGraw didn’t push the issue. In the world of Irish sports he wasn’t alone. John Boyle O’Reilly was himself a champion of integration, while by 1908 the Irish-American AC had admitted blacks as members. If one recognizes a continuing theme about McGraw, it’s his total reluctance to conform. He knew that the Irish themselves had been treated badly and surely recognized the same with African Americans. Instead he stayed silent. There is actually nothing that McGraw is credited with that suggests he called for the removal of the color bar in baseball. And the fact that he didn’t persist with Johnson, with whom he was on a collision course regardless, is puzzling. When sportswriters, such as Westbrook Pegler of the Chicago Tribune and Heywood Broun of the New York World-Telegram, began to attack racism in sports, one writer, Jimmy Powers of the New York Daily News, claimed that despite there being a “sentiment in favor of the idea” of baseball integration, with a number of officials and players displaying “a refreshing openmindedness” to change, one manager, he announced, remained totally against the idea: John McGraw.99 Black fans were left confused. Clearly they had forgotten, or not read about, the arrest of McGraw and the umpire Cy Rigler in Havana in December 1911. Probably tired and emotional, they were in a cafe when they started making derogatory remarks about their hosts, stating they were nothing but a bunch of “negroes.” A policeman was called, and when he attempted to arrest them, McGraw refused to accept his authority … because he was black. Two white officers eventually took the pair away and both were fined twenty bucks each.100 Commy’s own non-racist credentials were given a battering over Chief Tokahoma. He had previously refused to sign a petition drawn up by Cap Anson in 1887 not to play the black barnstorming side, the Cuban Giants. He hired out his park to black teams and employed black staff at his ground, including trainers.101 Gorn’s study of Chicago sports provides evidence that African Americans were regular visitors to Comiskey Park, being close to the city’s “black belt,” which for black males was “an experience of liberation and celebration, of taking part in the shared culture of Chicago civic life.”102 Connie Mack also gained praise from the black Chicago Defender, for funding the tuition fees of four Southern

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black children in Northern private schools; he even suggested that integration was blocked by the vast number of quality black players that would have to be let in to the majors.103 For years he spoke highly of black players, allegedly signing an unnamed African American while at Milwaukee in 1900. He acquired the first South American in the majors, the Colombian Luis “Jud” Castro in 1902, and a Native American, Charles Albert “Chief ” Bender, in 1903. This suggested a man who would prove favorable to integration. Cometh the hour, cometh the man? As we will see, African Americans were to be disappointed. The fact that racial prejudice was central to baseball should come as no surprise, as the game marketed itself as the American game, with little room for outsiders. The Irish were accepted probably because they already had a large foothold in the sport before it became hugely popular. The person responsible for creating one of the biggest myths about “the American Game” was James Edward Sullivan. He tried and failed to entwine his Irish ethnicity with an unstinting and often arrogant American patriotism tinged with prejudices similar to those directed at his parents’ generation. As McCarthy writes, he made “few if any overt statements on his own Irishness or on Anglo-Irish Affairs.”104 Few, but that isn’t to say he made none. Certainly if the ill feeling in many quarters wasn’t solely due to Sullivan’s Irish origins, his enemies were keen to use his ethnicity like a baseball bat over his back. Most damning was his associate at the United States Olympic Committee, William Sloane, who once remarked: “We all know Sullivan well, his great faults are those of his birth and breeding.”105 McCarthy adds cleverly that any historians’ doubts over the Czar’s Irishness were largely irrelevant, because the prejudice of his adversaries against him was the most important aspect of his Irish identity.106 In 1903 he took over as chairman of the Greater New York Irish AA, feeling at home at Laurel Hill, but his stay was brief. He accepted the post of “Director” of the St. Louis Olympics, with the title of Chief of the Department of Physical Culture. As in Paris, the 1904 Olympics were an add-on to an exposition, this time the St. Louis Fair commemorating the Louisiana Purchase centenary. There were a number of events that made these games unusual: a St. Louis elementary school meet; a public schools athletic league basketball tournament; intercollegiate contests; and a military athletic carnival.107 In the end, the difficulty in getting to the city meant only fifty-one athletes from outside North America bothered turning up, with Britain’s three representatives — John Daly, Thomas Francis Kiely and the I-AAC’s John Holloway — all born in Ireland.108 As the chief organizer of both the Pan-American Games and the St. Louis Olympics, Sullivan gave the nod for both events to be used to promote Irish and American sports. An Irish-American Gaelic football team was originally penciled in for the 1900 Olympics in Paris, playing teams from Ireland, but the project fell through when William Barry, the man enlisted with gathering a team, became ill.109 Sullivan had already proved through his involvement with the GNYIAA and organizing such events as the “Irish Games at the Garden” in December 1902 and the GNYIAA Winter Games in March 1903, that from a financial viewpoint “Irish athletics was [also] a mecca for many non–Irish athletes….”110 In Buffalo, he tried out his plans for the inclusion of Irish sports in the Olympics, where Gaelic football and hurling were complimented by standard athletic events.111 But poor attendance and organization — for instance, the “jiggers” couldn’t perform as the organizers hadn’t hired a fiddler — and not prejudice, were the reasons for a “lukewarm reception.” The Buffalo Evening News wrote of the opening day with a disparaging note: “There was a long delay yesterday

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afternoon in the Stadium before the Irish sports were run off, and when the games took place the sport was not of the wildly exciting kind,” with hurling being the only exception.112 The following day’s report opened with a similar salvo: “The Irish sports in the Stadium have been so carelessly managed that they attracted but little interest yesterday.” 113 Three years later in St. Louis, a more ambitious three-day festival of “Irish sports” was originally proposed, with the St. Louis Republic reporting: “Great interest is being taken in the sports to be held…. These contests will be next to the athletic events … in connection with the Olympic Games. No games held in St. Louis in many years have attracted the widespread attention that the Irish games have….”114 The festival was eventually diluted into just one day, July 20, although since it was run by John J. O’Connor, there was optimism that thousands of Hibernians would attend the festival. Certain events were marketed as distinctly Irish, unknown to much of America, as the Kentucky Irish American offered: “Throwing the forty-two-pound stone is practically unheard of … and was first presented at the games of the Greater New York Irish AC last summer…. Rising and striking the hurling ball is a new event to Americans.”115 “International” football and hurling championships promised about ten teams competing from “many parts of the country, both East and West,” with hurling sides consisting of the “Shamrocks of Canada,” the Irish Boys from Massachusetts, and “two of the best teams in New York City.”116 In the end these forecasts proved as wildly optimistic as in Buffalo, and heavy rain postponed the event for a day. On the morning of July 21, the St. Louis Republic wrote that there would be just a brief session of the AOH national convention as members were keen to get down to watch the twelve events contested.117 These included standard races from 100 yards to one mile coupled with Gaelic football, hurling, “Running Two Hops and Jump,” and putting and throwing various weights in the 16-pound shot, the 16-pound hammer, the 42-pound stone, the 56-pound weight divisions.118 Tom Kiely was “easily the star of the day,” coming in the top two in half the events, winning the 120-yard hurdles, the hammer, the 56-lb. weight, the 42-lb. stone and the two hops and a jump, while his fellow Tipp, John Holloway, came third behind him in the hurdles.119 Both team sports disappointingly had just two teams participating: the Chicago Fenians and the St. Louis Innisfails. Chicago won the Gaelic football tournament with the St. Louis Republic reporting it as “a walkover for the visitors, shutting out the St. Louis team by the score of 10 to 0. The visitors made three goals and secured one point from a penalty shot.” The results were reversed in the hurling event, where “St. Louis evened things in the hurling match,” although there seems to be some confusion in calling the victors “the Innisfails of Chicago.”120 Bill Mallon, in his documented history of the St. Louis Games, believes these games were merely adjuncts of the Olympics, failing three of his four principles for inclusion as bona fide events.121 McCarthy adds that because Irish international competition was heavily dependent on beating English or “native” opponents, any event limited to just “Irish” contestants was always going to be shunned: One of the constants in Irish and Irish-American Olympism during this period was that the level of nationalistic engagement in competitions increased almost proportionately according to the level of British involvement. Similarly, Irish-Americans were more attracted by the possibility of scoring triumphs over Ivy League athletes than over each other. With none of the “old enemy” or “new enemy” to compete against and defeat, the profile of the Irish sports at St. Louis was lessened anyway in Irish and Irish-American eyes.

However, these games were distinct from the only other “ethnic” amusement on offer: “[They] were intended as a homage to Celtic athleticism and had nothing of racism which

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surrounded the ‘anthropological days’ … which saw African pygmies and other tribes brought half way around the world for little more than fairground sideshow entertainment.”122 If anything, the “Anthropological Days” displayed another side to Sullivan’s prejudices and almost dragged de Coubertin’s dream down to the level of Barnum’s American Museum. What could’ve been at worst a light-hearted attempt at enlightening the games’ patrons with glimpses, however doctored or stereotypical, of cultures from far-off lands, was turned into a platform for Sullivan to promote a racist agenda that once more slanted sporting history in white America’s favor. In what has been regarded “as a bizarre aberration that highlighted a pattern of American excesses in the production of the [St. Louis Games],”123 Sullivan and the head of the fair’s Department of Anthropology, the Irish-American anthropologist and ethnologist William John McGee, came up with the idea of the “Tribal Games,” and George R. Matthews notes that even in 1904, there was uproar about these “racist and demeaning” exhibitions, leading to Mark Twain’s refusing to attend.124 McGee didn’t have the benefit of hindsight in seeing that social Darwinism was nothing but the snake oil of the bigot, nor witnessing Evonne Goolagong, Cathy Freeman or Mark Ella in action. But he did want to collect data and “calibrate physical abilities” of these nonwhites’ performance vis-a-vis whites, guaranteeing in his view “so far as measurements may — the relative physical value of the different races of people.”125 Yet there was plenty of unease at this plan. The New York Times headlined McGee as “Gathering Types and Freaks from Every Land.”126 Sullivan, though, viewed things differently: from someone who, according to Mark Dyreson, “consistently rejected the idea that Anglo-Saxons [i.e., the English] were the world’s greatest athletes,”127 he now “saw an opportunity to destroy the popular belief that ‘aboriginal’ peoples, living close to nature, possessed natural athletic talent, and to confirm the athletic, hence racial, superiority of Anglo-Saxon peoples.”128 Sullivan disparaged these “Savages,” stating: “We have heard of the marvelous qualities of the Indian as a runner; of the stamina of the Kaffir, and the natural all round ability of the savage in athletic feats, but the events at St. Louis disprove these tales.”129 He observed that “almost any winner of a school boy event” would’ve done better than the “Savage” winner of the 100-yard dash and claimed that Arthur Duffey or any of the American athletes could’ve given a “Pigmy” forty yards and still won.130 Then, despite not taking time out to find out the rules of these “tribal games,” he scoffed at the “uninteresting” shinny games provided by the “Pigmies” and the “Cocopa Indians,” adding it “showed conclusively the lack of necessary brain … for they absolutely gave no assistance to each other, and so far as teamwork was concerned, it was a case of purely individual attempts on the part of the players.” 131 Sullivan concluded that these events were successful in proving the physical superiority of the white man and that “scientific men will refer to [them] for many years to come.” He demanded that “lecturers and authors will in future please omit all reference to the natural ability of the savage, unless they can substantiate their alleged feats.”132 In the polemic that followed, McGee countered that the whole exercise was flawed. He blamed the poor results on a lack of instruction and training rather than any racial characteristics,133 while asking the question why white athletes didn’t compete with the tribesmen on their own terms, like tree climbing. He also observed that the “natives” were often not interested in many of the contests.134 Sullivan was having none of this and refused any funding for trainers to see how these athletes would perform given the same instruction that American athletes enjoyed. Arrogant as ever, he contradicted his expert publicly in Spalding’s Official Athletic Almanac of 1905, using his position as its editor to belittle McGee:

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Dr. McGee attributes this utter lack of athletic ability on the part of the savages to the fact that they have not been shown or educated. He thinks perhaps if they could have the use of a professional trainer for a short time that they would become proficient as many Americans. The writer doubts it…. The whole meeting proves conclusively that the savage has been a very much overrated man from an athletic point of view.

Sullivan then turned his contempt on the contestants themselves. The Pigmies were “full of mischief ” and “took nothing whatsoever seriously,” while the Ainus, “a very small tribe from the north of Japan were without doubt the most polite savages the writer has ever met, extremely so.”135 Of course, racism and discrimination had had a long history in American sports, and the Irish were the first on the receiving end of it, which makes Sullivan’s antics more saddening. One reason for the defeat of Irish-American racism was, as Sharon O’Brien explains, the color of the Irishman’s skin: “The project of upward mobility worked for those Irish-Americans who ascended to the middle class only because this ascent was linked with racial transformation; the Irish needed to be re-imagined as white if they were to succeed according to dominant American values.”136 The excluded didn’t just include black Americans whose forefathers had been in the country for a couple of centuries longer than Sullivan’s, but also “darker” Southern Europeans. Ironically, Sullivan’s attitude contrasted with that of his ultimate successor. Dan Ferris, the czar’s secretary since 1907 while still an active sprinter competing for the I-AAC, was born in Pawling, New York, to a Kilkenny-born farmer, John, and a Corkwoman, Hannah.137 Ferris worked to open up athletics to black sportsmen from the moment he moved into the AAU secretary’s seat, in a way no other sporting administrator of his age would contemplate. It was at the 1908 Olympics that the first black athletes competed for the United States, and he showed his no-nonsense stance to racism when he convinced the AAU to switch the venue of the 1927 National Championships from New Orleans to Lincoln, Nebraska, over the Crescent City’s refusal to allow black athletes to compete against whites.138 By the 1870s racist attitudes to the Irish in the mainstream press were beginning to subside. Baseball was operating its first major professional league and Jim “Orator” O’Rourke was one of its earliest Irish-American stars. Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1850, he made his debut in 1872 with the Middletown Mansfields in their only ever season in the majors, before signing as a free agent for the Boston Red Stockings the following spring. It has been said that Harry Wright, the English-born player-manager who brought him to Beantown, demanded Jim drop the “O” from his surname, to which O’Rourke stood his ground, exclaiming: “I would die first before I would give up any part of my father’s name. A million would not tempt me,”139 something his biographer doubts, pointing out that in the minors he was often listed as “Rourke.” The story came to light in 1906 when Tim Murnane claimed he was the one that had recommended O’Rourke to Wright. The Englishman apparently replied: “O’Rourke can have the job if he will drop the O from his name, as the public in Boston will not stand for the Irish.” Murnane would add that rather than defy his manager as the legend later stated, O’Rourke “for several years … was obliged to cut the ‘O’ off his name.”140 Certainly this asks a number of questions: Boston in 1872 was getting to be a better place for the Irish to live than it had been twenty-five years previously. Kerby Miller points to the new decade as the point where Irish America finally “began to emerge from the destitution and discrimination which had characterized the preceding quarter-century.”141 This was also the point when Boston’s Irish took over a floundering Democratic Party in the city, and “established it as a viable base for the political

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advancement of their people.”142 But the infamous Irish cartoons of Thomas Nast and others remained, with Harper’s Weekly recently publishing the German cartoonist’s “The Usual Irish Way of Doing Things,” where Nast draws a creature of Irish ethnicity sitting on a keg of gunpowder, waving a bottle of rum with one hand, while a lit stick is about to blow him sky-high.143 And the other question to be asked: Would the dropping of the “O” really have masked O’Rourke’s Irish roots? Baseball, as a growing, vulnerable business, had to look after its customers and look for new ones to come through the gate. Regardless, Wright himself took O’Rourke in as his boarding guest and “for his spunk, [O’Rourke] became a hero to the Boston Irish.”144 Even if Murnane invented this story, the bigotry of another manager of the 1870s was all too real. Adrian “Cap” Anson was one of the greatest players of the game’s early years, but also one of its most noted bigots, despite having studied at Notre Dame, then a boarding school, when he was fourteen.145 An example of his bigotry was exhibited during a match against the Detroit Wolverines in 1886, when he got into a spat with the umpire “Honest” John Gaffney. The Detroit Free Press in its match report portrayed Anson as “the burly braggart” who had met his match. Gaffney started fining Anson ten dollars for continuing to travel to second base when told not to. According to this report — which blanked out the insults — the Chicago player-manager called him “a very vile epithet.” Anson was fined fifty bucks, to which he began “multiplying his vile terms,” knocking up one hundred and ten dollars in total before giving up.146 The Free Press observed that for such a great “kicker,” Anson had “kicked a hole through his own pocketbook.”147 Two years later Gaffney recalled the incident to a reporter from the Philadelphia Press, claiming that when he fined Anson his first fifty dollars, he had replied by screaming: “Why you insignificant little Irish ____, what do you mean?”148 Anson’s Hibernophobia inflated in later years. With his White Stockings centered round the disruptive influence of “King” Kelly, he came to see every Irish player as the same. When the team finished third to New York and Boston in 1889, he let rip with an anti–Irish tirade, infuriating his Irish players, in particular Hugh Duffy, Jimmy Ryan and John Tener. Anson’s prejudice wasn’t going unnoticed even if his day-to-day conversations weren’t reported. In 1893, the Sporting Life commented on a Chicago reader’s letter which noted: “Anson in his efforts to gather a team of pennant winners should not lose sight of the fact that he is not injecting enough Irish blood, which is the kind that wins in base ball, into his team.” The newspaper added: “Come to think of it, there is really little of the Irish in Anson’s aggregation.”149 Duffy grew from adoring respect to abject hatred of Anson: the Chicago Tribune quoted him claiming Anson had “no use for the players who had Irish blood in their veins, and never lost an opportunity to insult those men who have played with him in the past.”150 Still, if the likes of Ryan and Duffy felt ill-treated, they could at least take solace that Anson didn’t want to prevent them from playing the game, where the only role in the game was as a mascot to ward off bad luck. But racism wasn’t confined to “natives,” and nothing exemplified this nastiness better than the way “Rowdy” Jack O’Connor and Jesse Burkett turned on their teammate Louis Sockalexis, one of the first ever Native Americans in the majors. It was originally Burkett, along with Chippy McGarr, who had begged Patsy Tebeau to sign Sockalexis in 1897 after they had coached him in the off-season at Holy Cross College. Yet despite his early promise, Sockalexis’s career was brief, due to his alcoholism, the effects of an ankle injury that some claim was attained from jumping out of a brothel

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while drunk, and the racism not only of opposing fans and opponents, but of his own players. By 1898 his teammates were sticking the knives in, blaming him for the club’s fall that year to fifth place. In June 1898, O’Connor, scenting blood, shouted disparaging comments about Sockalexis’s batting ability as he was about to face a pitcher in Washington. Burkett’s comments, possibly fueled by Sockalexis’s penchant for women and wine, had taken on a racist edge. He told Washington’s Charlie Reilly: “Don’t ask me about that beat peddlar [sic]. He’s a Jonah. Wait till I strike my gait and I will make him go back to the woods and look for a few scalps.”151 Very few nineteenth-century Irish-American players were willing to stick up for minority players or mix with them, because, as Jerrold Casway writes: “The Emerald Age of Baseball reflected the prejudiced society that it entertained.”152 Mike “King” Kelly, when asked if he was going to sign a new contract with the White Stockings, retorted: “Well, I should say no. I’m going to play with the [black and mixed-race barnstorming team] Cuban Giants.” Kelly, through his reputation, was probably being ironic.153 Much more plausible was Jim O’Rourke, who two years later signed Harry Herbert when he was owner of the Bridgeport Victors. When the club turned pro in 1896, he became the only black man “in professional baseball,” lasting four years at the club.154 Mike Roer comments that O’Rourke wasn’t out to necessarily “change the world”: “He was just colorblind. He wanted to win ball games and deliver the best sort of baseball to the fans. Of course, it is by millions of just such small actions that the world finally does change.”155 Frank Williams felt O’Rourke “believed in integrated baseball.”156 Indeed, many baseball owners secretly wanted black players, although they balked at the idea of their daughters bringing one home for dinner. The difference was that O’Rourke pushed the boundaries to the limit, and through his own undeniable force of personality, and operating in urban Connecticut, he was able, to a certain degree, to get away with it. Mark Dyreson claims James E. Sullivan “championed the cause of immigrant sporting stars,” even if this generosity “did not extend over the ‘color line.’”157 Undoubtedly he was one of many who were convinced that baseball would integrate the immigrant kid into the American way. No one visualized this more than John Tener. Ever the optimist, he saw baseball as more than a “passing attraction of a night,” but as a national institution, what he coined “the real mixing machine of American citizenship,” that was as significant as anything else in the Republic in assimilating and enhancing upward mobility not just of the immigrant but the poor “native” too: “Is there any place in the world, excepting a ball park, where you can hear a rich man asking a laborer to give him the correct score, or a laborer asking his new-found friend, the capitalist, what was the name of the pinch-hitter?”158 As Robert Elias writes, the sport promised the “myth of opportunity.”159 Two years later, Tener further elaborated on this somewhat shaky thesis: “It is the one sport that brings to it in a common bond of democracy all the red-blooded, sports-loving people of the United States. No other sport has the strong appeal of baseball. The poor, the rich — all classes of society — are drawn together by the love of the contested…. The baseball park is the one place where they all come together for the complete enjoyment of a fascinating sport.”160 During World War I, he further waxed lyrical of the virtues of baseball: “This is a war of democracy against bureaucracy. And I tell you that baseball is the very watchword for democracy. There is no other sport or business or anything under heaven which exerts the leveling influence that baseball does. Neither the public school nor the church can approach it. Baseball is unique. England is a democratic country, but it lacks the finishing touch of baseball.”161 In the two decades following the famine up to the birth of a professional league, playing

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baseball was seen as a statement of the Irish kid’s willingness and desire to embrace his new country and for the Irish to demonstrate “that they were no greenhorns but ‘real Yankees.’”162 Indeed, Irish baseball dominance between 1870 and 1920 was to have a huge impact on the sport’s own future identity and culture, and sportswriters were perplexed why it hadn’t taken off in Ireland. The Sporting Life asked in 1906: “In view of the fact that Irish lads in this country take to base ball as a duck does to water, it is rather singular that baseball has not secured a foothold in Ireland…. Professionally baseball could not be expected to grow in so poor a country as Ireland, but we should think that as an inexpensive amateur sport it would have found favor long ago in the Emerald Isle.”163 In this respect, baseball was the American game, and one had to be sufficiently acculturated — in the nineteenth-century United States at least — to be good at it. Despite the aggressive move to ensure the game’s “Americanism,” the sport could no longer run away from the reality of immigration and melting pots. The large Irish fan base often made many top teams appear as de facto Irish immigrant clubs, even when a club was non–Irish owned and its name American or neutral. The bigcity Irish community, its politicians, players, the area where the ballpark was situated, perhaps an antipathy for a city rival that had eschewed Irish players or an owner who had embraced aspects of “nativism,” all ensured that even Jewish or WASP owners were running “Irish” teams. The first example of this type of “Irish” baseball club was the Brooklyn Atlantics, who were deemed an “Irish club” in contrast to their rivals, the Brooklyn Excelsiors, who were “ranked second to none in social standing” by Protestant, old-stock American clerks and petty merchants.164 While clubs centered in the big northeastern cities, as well as Chicago and St. Louis, would have teams with strong Irish identities, others like the Highlanders that were owned by Irish-Americans could never take away the lure of the Giants to the Irish, not least because they didn’t have the same extensive Irish playing staff. When McGraw signed Tommy Corcoran in the off season from Cincinnati, the Sporting Life predicted three years left of his career “and [he] will come back strong on New York’s Irish team.”165 Years later, bolstered by the mixed-race Native American Jim Thorpe, whose grandfather was Irish, the Sporting Life called the Giants “this Irish-Indian team.”166 Nothing showed the importance of Irish identity to the Giants more than rebellion in the “auld country.” In November 1920, the death of the Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney, attracted a crowd of 40,000 to the Polo Grounds, where the speakers included Eamon De Valera.167 Eight months later, in front of Al Smith, General Douglas McArthur and the Sixty-Ninth Regiment’s band, the Giants donated “the entire proceeds minus the bare expenses” from a game against the Cardinals to the American Committee for Relief in Ireland.168 Some teams outside the Irish-American urban centers were also tagged Irish. The Louisville Colonels were described by the Sporting Life as having “a little Clan-na-Gael of their own now,” with players like Michael McDermott, Ed Flanagan, Jack Ryan, Dan Shannon and John Galligan, and suggested the club’s owner, John Botto, a self-styled “Colonel” of Italian extraction, “will have to trade his yellow clarinet for a harp of Erin.”169 The Baltimore Orioles and Cleveland Spiders had the largest Irish staff despite neither city’s containing significant Irish populations compared to Boston or New York. For the historian of early Irish baseball, David L. Fleitz, these teams were so infused by Os and Macs that he can’t make up his mind about which was more Irish. For the Orioles, he writes: “In an era when the influence of the Irish was at its highest, the Baltimore club was the most thoroughly

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Irish of all.”170 He notes of the Spiders: “In an era in which the Irish influence was at its highest, the Cleveland Spiders of the 1890s were one of the most thoroughly Irish teams in the National League.”171 Patsy Tebeau was a Franco-German from St. Louis, an “Irishman by choice, not by birth,” who spoke with a hint of an Irish accent picked up from construction sites in the Gateway City he had worked on since nine. It remained with him long after he married the daughter of Irish immigrants he had met in Cleveland.172 The Spiders became increasingly associated with things Irish in the American press; they were known as the Indians in the 1897 season, but certain scribes in the Forest City labeled the team the “Hibernian Indians,” until their inability to play on Sunday forced the club to spend the second half of the 1898 season on the road as the “Wandering Micks.”173 The Sporting Life began to describe the Spiders as the “All-Irish,” particularly in their clashes with the Orioles, such as in October 1897: “The All-Irish and Orioles are having a rich time of it…. Patsey De Hass Tebeau is CAPTAIN of the All-Irish team, and of course he has won everything in sight.”174 A week later it wrote: “THE ALL IRISH and the Oriole teams are doing better, financially, as they get farther West….”175 Other teams briefly took on the title of Irish when playing the “Germans” of the Cubs. The Sporting Life’s editor William Koelsch referred to the 1907 World Series between the Cubs and Hughie Jennings’s Detroit Tigers as “a victory for the Germans over the Irish, sure enough.”176 The Boston Red Sox and the Chicago White Sox are two teams that have retained strong Irish links, centering on the geographical location of the franchise, or in the case of Boston, being America’s largest Irish pro-rata population.177 However, the perception of the Irish baseball club in the Hub came late. While Boston’s prejudice against the Irish was initially stronger than elsewhere, the move by Irish cranks to follow the Red Sox of the AL was due to other factors. After all, the Beaneaters had always been a largely Irish club with some of the biggest names in the game passing through its locker room.178 The irony was that the Red Sox under the tutelage of a Southern plantation owner, Tom Yawkey, and the Irish-American Episcopalian Eddie Collins, came to be seen as anti–Catholic (and therefore anti–Irish) by the thirties, a perception both overstated that never caused a reversal of support back to the Braves.179 In Chicago both clubs had Irish roots and under Murphy and Comiskey both battled for Irish fans. The Sporting Life, commenting on Murphy’s signing of Roger Bresnahan in early 1913, observed dryly: “President Murphy offered a $5 hat to each one who would mention in his column that Bresnahan was born in Ireland. Why? Because the wise executive of the West Side Club wants to steal some of Comiskey’s popularity with the Irish.”180 The Sporting Life mentions at least three times before he arrived in Chicago that he was born with a sprig of shamrock between his ass, culminating in 1912 with the observation that “having been born in Ireland, it is quite natural to find a Gilhooley and Galloway among [Bresnahan’s] recruits.”181 On the South Side of the city, Commy announced that the cornerstone of his new park’s grandstand would be laid on St. Patrick’s Day, “while genuine Irish sod from County Cavan will cover the new field.”182 He told the Sporting Life that in addition to inviting a delegate from every state and territory: “The Irish sod will be there too.”183 As McCaffrey points out, the White Sox’ geographical location, the team’s prominent Irish owner, and rumors that his opposite, Philip K. Wrigley, wore a white robe in his spare time, entailed that they were Chicago’s “Catholic” team: “Many Chicago Catholics believed the bogus story that [Wrigley] … was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and that entering Wrigley Field

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… was equivalent to attending a Protestant church.”184 Wrigley’s father, William Wrigley Jr., once sued the rampaging Chicago attorney Pat O’Donnell when his “outing” periodical, Tolerance, wrongfully unmasked — if you pardon the pun — the gum magnate as a conehead.185 German-Americans were the only other immigrant group that challenged the Irish in baseball at the turn of the century. In 1897, O.P. Caylor dismissed any threat by other ethnic groups, by claiming “the Irish and Germans will always furnish the bulk of material for the professional teams.”186 Most of the time the players got along: managers would arrange Irish-versus-German games with their squads,187 while there was even a suggestion in the Sporting Life in 1897 that an Irish-German series should replace the Temple Cup: “Very strong teams could be selected to represent these nationalities, and instead of interest in the games being principally entered [sic] in two League cities it would be widespread and the result of the games eagerly looked for by everyone interested in base ball.”188 Chicago Cubs stalwart Johnny Evers, writing in 1910, claimed: Up to a few years ago March 17 was a great day in the training camps of all the major league clubs, for on that day the Irish and the Dutch met in the fiercest struggle of the season. But baseball has become too cosmopolitan. No longer can the Harp and the Carp monopolize the “great American game,” and the St. Patrick’s day contest has been generally abandoned because the Irish were forced to line up something like this: Dmitrius, 1f, Mike cf, Ole ss, Pierre 3b, Kzysxzki, 1b, Kicking Mule, 2b, Israel, rf, Colorado Madura, c, MacGregor, p.189

But as the Irish presence declined, the games between the two nationalities within the Philadelphia Phillies in Florida was canceled by 1915.190 There was the odd clash between cliques. In 1896, the Sporting Life ran an article about Connie Mack’s Pirates that said trouble had broken out between the Irish and German “elements,” with the latter being shown the door: “People who watched the Pittsburgs at work last season could not help noticing that there were little snarls…. Above all these fall outs a little story of factions, cliques, etc., materialized. There was the anti–German, anti–Irish coteries, and it was one grand round.”191 The Pirates’ management denied there was “a race feeling,” but this was merely to stall the news of the schism. Beckley was sent to the Giants midseason, Stenzel was swapped to Baltimore for Steve Brodie and Jim Donnelly in the offseason, while Lou Bierbauer went to St. Louis.192 Mack didn’t make it through the following season. Pressmen in St. Louis later suggested that Sam Mertes’ transfer to the Cards in 1906 was because of “the Irish element on the team,” despite his lasting only months if not weeks before retiring.193 The following season there were similar inter-ethnic divisions at the Washington Senators; as Paul W. Eaton of the Sporting Life claimed, the club planned “to paint the center field fences green”: [This] will be resented by the Teutonic element … as being another Irish trick. The pretzel brigade will hold out for red, white and black or quit the game. The Washington fence was in the Hibernian class last year, except in some spots reached by Charley Hickman’s drives. There will be sadness among the fans if there is anything in the indications that Hick may be confined to utility roles next season, as there isn’t a more popular player on the team.194

Some of the sporting press saw McGraw’s Giants as the Irish club, to rival the Cubs’ “Dutch” of 1904 and 1906. Others like William Koelsch couldn’t help poking fun at the suspect foundations of these sweeping statements. Speaking of the formal presentation of their world

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championship emblem eight months after they won it, he commented on the “innumerable” American and Irish flags along the base lines of the Polo Grounds, remarking dryly: “It was rumored that the Irish flags were largely in evidence as a tribute to Dahlen, Mertes and other sons of the emerald isle.”195 Grantland Rice was the opposite, happy to mark out differences, claiming McGraw harangued his men in the dressing room by asking if they were prepared to allow a bunch of “Dutchmen” to take the NL pennant: “Sure we’ll win that flag. Do you think a dozen Irishmen will stand to be cleaned up by a dozen Dutchmen?” Rice then wrote his poem “McGraw’s Exhortation to Battle”: “‘Read out the names,’ and McGann looked sore / While Bresnahan hung his head / ‘Read out their names!’ said McGraw with a roar / And this is the list one read.” Peppered with ethnic references concerning the Germans, the message left little to misinterpretation. McGraw’s Chicago list, it was suggested, hadn’t one Irish name, although Johnny Evers was there. It was instead a list of English, German and Swedish names that were “showing the Irish the way; leading old Erin a merry dance; they’re winning the pennant today.” Leaving aside Evers, Pat Moran, Pete Noonan and Tom Walsh in Chicago and Dahlen and Mertes at the Polo Grounds, McGraw’s “exhortation” was allowed to run a further twenty-six lines: “‘Will you stand for that?’ yelled McGraw, with a frown / ‘Will you be cleaned up by the Dutch? / Will McGinnity, Donlin, McGann bow down / To Steinfeldt, Slagle and such? / My grandfather fell on Vinegar Hill / And fighting was not his trade / But his rusty pike’s in the cabin still / With Hessian blood on the blade.’” With references to battlefields of the wars of the Spanish and Austrian Successions, McGraw concluded: “‘Will the Shamrock bow to the German flag? / Will Erin shrink from the rod? / Now which of the two will cop the rag / The Faderland or the Sod? / Well, we won’t brag, but here’s to the Flag,’ / Said McGraw, with a final nod.”196 The Shamrock did indeed bow, and it was arguably the point in time the Irish baseball player began to bow out too. The Cubs started their row of three straight National League pennants in 1906, and the Sporting Life chided: “John McGraw’s confidence in the ability of his Irish team to down Chicago’s Dutch bunch remained firm to the last, but late results have put a big crimp into McGraw’s theory that there was too much Dutch in the Cubs to win out.”197 The rivalry with Germans — many of whom were Catholic — was mostly lighthearted. More sinister was the ethnic and sectarian divisions within other teams that mirrored the Irish-Native rivalry of the mid-century American city. For some the Beaneaters’ failure to make it four NL pennants in a row in 1894 exacerbated ethnic tensions in a team divided between the Irish of the heavenly twins of Tommy McCarthy and Hugh Duffy, Jimmy Bannon, Jack Ryan, Cozy Dolan, Tommy Tucker and Jimmy Collins, and the Protestants of Bobby Lowe, Herman Long, and Jack Stivetts, culminating in the brawl between McCarthy and Stivetts in Louisville. 198 Rumors of sectarian friction was taken up as far away as Lincoln, Nebraska, where the Courier suggested deadpan that “the last place in the world to look for religious strife” was the baseball diamond: …rumor has it that the present trouble among the Boston players is due to the difference in religious views. The fight between [McCarthy and Stivetts] in the dining room of the Louisville hotel is said to be incidental to a religious discussion between some of the players. For over two years there has been trouble between the Boston players on this score. Duffy, McCarthy and Tucker are arrayed against Stivetts, Long and Lowe. Some of the others have also taken sides.

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Staley and Cliff Carroll when they were with the team also had trouble. It is queer that ball players can’t get along together without quarrelling about their difference in faith. It is probably the first time in the history of the game that religion has caused a disruption in a base ball team.199

O.P. Caylor in his syndicated column also reaffirmed rumors of sectarianism existing not only between the two men, but throughout the Braves: Cotton and nitric acid are very necessary and useful in their separate states. But unite them chemically and you have gun cotton, an agent powerful enough to destroy cities. So it is with religion and baseball…. Yet a baseball player should be entitled to his religious beliefs without being insulted or biffed in the jaw…. If Mr. McCarthy wishes to go to church two nights a week, he should have that unrestricted privilege provided he is back at his hotel by 11 o’clock. If Mr. Stivetts desires to hold that many are called but few are chosen, he should be entitled to the belief without having his face disfigured.200

Meanwhile, the Sporting Life reported that McCarthy was tight-lipped about the fracas except that his manhood couldn’t take accusations of hitting Stivetts from behind nor that he ran out of the room: “The cause of the row is hard to get at. One man told me that Stivetts had long taken particular delight in ordering meat on Friday before Mac and Duffy. The latter objected. It was Thursday in Louisville when Stivetts sat down at the table and ordering meat said, ‘Gee! I’ll have to eat it to-day, can’t have any to-morrow.’ This roused Mac’s ire and he soaked him.”201 On the other hand, Tim Murnane, quoted in the Sporting Life, doubted that religion was the basis for the trouble: “Long, Duffy and McCarthy have the greatest admiration for each other, and all think well of Bobby Lowe. As to Stivetts, he has found time to jolly Tommy Tucker a little more than some of the other members consider proper. There are no religious quarrels in the Boston Club, nor never were. The boys have too much common sense and know the management wouldn’t stand any such nonsense.”202 Besides, McCarthy never needed much reason to dislike someone, and manager Frank Selee had grown tired of his being overweight and over the hill, rather than following the same church as his wife.203 However, he had to turn to her, a former schoolteacher back in Ireland, to counter allegations of Hibernophobia when he arrived in the Windy City. In the Sporting Life he conceded that there were no Catholics in his team — something that seems highly unlikely — denying he was driving the Irish out of the Orphans: “My wife was born in Ireland and is a Catholic. I will give any player a chance, no matter what his nationality or descent if he can fill the bill all right.”204 Much less concealed was the ruptured schism within the Red Sox two decades later, a divide that had been held together ultimately by the players who had, as Mike Vaccaro explained, “kept the peace in the oldest, most reliable way possible: by winning early….”205 On the eve of the 1912 World Series the Sporting Life commented on the positives of the heterogeneity of the Red Sox: “In the make-up of the Boston team many different nationalities are represented. German, Swede, Irish, French, the Norseman, the English and American…. Not one hails from Boston. Wagner from New York and Krug from Cleveland are the only city-bred players on the team.”206 Prior to the seventh game, fighting broke out between Thomas “Buck” O’Brien and Joe “Smokey” Wood and his brother Paul, both incensed that Red Sox manager Jake Stahl had been persuaded to pick O’Brien for the sixth game by James McAleer. O’Brien had a stinker and trouble started immediately after the game when he was cornered by Wood, who told him: “If it hadn’t been for your bum work, we would have had the series clinched and the money in our pockets.”207 Later, Paul, who

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had lost cash on the game, caught up with O’Brien on the train back home, leaving him with a black eye. O’Brien blamed his performance on Hick Cady, deputizing for Carrigan; Cady overheard the slander and all hell let loose, with the mayhem being broken up by Stahl and Carrigan. A “noncombatant” player’s wife would recall: “It was the most disgraceful thing you ever saw.”208 There were now two cliques at the Red Sox: The Catholic “Knights of Columbus” or “KCs,” mostly Irish from northeastern cities and towns, and the Protestant “Masons,” many from south of the Mason-Dixon line. Clubhouse rows were peppered with sectarian abuse.209 Wood was from Kansas City, a “Southerner” by default, and a teetotaler, while O’Brien was the son of an immigrant, a practicing Catholic and a drinker, “a background and a religion abhorred by Wood and a certain faction of teammates.”210 On the Irish side was what Fleitz called the “toughest player in the American league at the time”: Bill Carrigan. 211 Despite winning the series in the final inning of the final game, the Red Sox came a disappointing fourth the following season, leaving no doubt to anyone of a fractured team, even if they claimed they were the best of friends. The most notorious of the “Rebels” was Tris Speaker, a bigoted anti–Catholic Texan who claimed he never resisted any opportunity “to renew hostilities over what he viewed as the ‘War of Northern Aggression’ whenever a Yankee (on or off the field), a Catholic or a black person offended his sensibilities. Like many in his generation, the Texas cowboy carried racial and religious prejudices, as well as a sharp chip on his shoulder, through much of his life.”212 He had already confessed to baseball historian Fred Lieb that he became a member of the so-called “second” Klan of Hiram Wesley Evans that encompassed a far more varied “know-nothing” agenda than crude racism.213 Fed up, McAleer eventually fired Stahl in July 1913, replacing him with his man Carrigan, but this came at a price. In a remarkable outburst, a “surprised and vexed” Johnson called the move “hasty and ill advised”: “There was no reason for relieving Stahl … and he was entitled to every consideration the Boston club and the American League could give him…. Stahl was an honorable and competent manager and was highly esteemed in our league.”214 Johnson’s interest was vested because Stahl’s father-in-law, a Chicago bank owner, W.F. Mahan, was one of the Red Sox’ principal shareholders, and Johnson was also a close friend of Jake’s.215 McAleer’s reaction when shown Johnson’s statement was to insist that the league president change his opinion: “I felt as badly as anyone but I had a duty to perform and went through with it. I hope that President Johnson stops off here on his way to Chicago, and he will learn that I never humiliated Jake Stahl or lost a real friend to the American League.”216 By the end of November he was replaced by Joseph Lannin.217 However, the bickering continued, with Carrigan putting the knife into Tris Speaker’s attempts at improving his income by telling hacks that his salary, at nine grand per annum, was sufficiently large.218 Speaker left for the Cleveland Indians in 1916, taking over as manager in 1919, and more trouble with the Irish continued. Following the sudden death of Ray Chapman from a head injury, Speaker got into an argument about the religious content of Ray’s funeral. Chapman’s wife Kathleen had revealed that Chapman had planned to convert to Catholicism. Not being prepared to accept this, Speaker got into a scrap with Steve O’Neill and Jack Graney. A compromise was made that saw the service convened in Cleveland’s Catholic cathedral, with burial at a Protestant plot in a local cemetery.219 As for “Spoke,” the greatest irony was that he eventually married an Irish Catholic, Mary Frances Cuddihy, at the same Cleveland cathedral “in the presence of not one but two monsignors of Irish descent.”220

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Such incidents showed that sectarianism was strong within turn-of-the-century America. Players’ backgrounds were brought up when discussing matters unconnected with ethnicity, such as when the Sporting Life asked: “It would appear as though not a club in the League cares to take chances on [Jack] Doyle’s fiery Hibernian temper?”221 Naturally sportsmen of such a disposition were excused if they were Irish. The Sporting Life accused Tim Murnane, when he became a journalist, of possessing the “characteristic Hibernian fervor, [who] is never so happy as when he has a fight on hand, or can find a head to hit with his shellala-like [sic] pen, with or without just cause for its use.”222 When Ed Walsh was benched in 1912 for five days for abusing Silk O’Loughlin with “a few things which are on the ‘ban’ list in the American League,” this was, according to the Life, after he “got his Irish up” from a wrong decision from Silk.223 It wasn’t all “drinking” and “fighting,” though: the same organ claimed there was “a tinge of the philosopher in that rotund little Hibernian, Pat Powers.”224 In 1913 the Sporting Life printed a poem by W.A. Phelon called “The Racial Traits”: “The Irish player rages on the field / Fights with the umpire, frequently is canned / Is worshipped by the bleachers, and, quite oft / Spends all his salary with lavish hand.” The scrappy and squandering Hibernian was compared unfavorably with the “methodic German who seldom kicks” or the Indian, “sad, morose, receives applause…. And, inwardly, thinks he gets even when / He draws big wampum from the pale-skinned race!” An “Answer to Query” in the Detroit Free Press of September 28, 1910, listed the players of Irish descent in the Tigers side, noting that Charlie O’Leary “is not of German descent and he probably would lick the man who suggested it,” before adding that while he and William “Germany” Schaefer, who had left for Washington the previous year, weren’t related, they had been neighbors and friends for “several” years.225 John K. Tener, as NL president, spoke of this positive Irish identity when remarking about “peace arrangements” in the majors in February 1916, claiming that this “happy solution” was partly down to the huge number of Irish that had entered the game: “You know that I am a native-born Irishman. Mr. [Percy] Haughton has just told you that he is half Irish, and then we have Moran, Mack, Callahan, Tinker and McGraw, of whom there is no doubt of their nationality.”226 Conversely, Irish identity would be used to flagellate oneself, as when Bill Carrigan shouted at himself: “You dumb Irish shit!” following his dropped ball in the second game of the 1912 World Series.227 Then there would be slurs that certain Irish players weren’t even Irish. In 1890 the Sporting Life reprinted a libelous article from the Rehoboth Sunday Herald which questioned Charles Comiskey’s ancestry: “It is generally supposed that Capt. Comiskey is of Irish parentage. He is not. His grandfather was a Russian nihilist and changed his name several times for political purposes. When the captain grew up he had such patronymics as Comoffski, Comequickski and Comehomski to choose from. He chose his original Russian name, Comwieckski, and softened it down to its present euphonious form.” Commy laughed off the matter by pointing out his parents were born in Ireland. The Sporting Life concluded: “He ought to know. If that doesn’t settle it let the doubters interview his father who is a well-known politician in Chicago.” Over two decades later a similar accusation was leveled at Comiskey’s opposite at West Side Park but with seemingly less levity: “Even in Chicago there are some benighted souls who really believe that Murphy’s actual name is Murphiwski, and that he hails from Russia. Had a red-hot argument myself with a leading magazine man not long ago who had to be pried away by force from the honest, though mistaken, belief that Murphy’s ancestors were in the wilderness with Moses.”228 Even an Irishman’s diet, which was the secret of his strength, couldn’t escape. The

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brief exposure to local grub was the reason for the Brooklyn Superbas’ disastrous opening performances in Cuba in 1913. The New York Tribune reported that once the Irish met up with a compatriot of the cloth, Father Monyhan, for some proper Irish food, fortunes improved immensely: Since the Cubans stopped feeding the Brooklyn Superbas on chili con carne and hot tamales and gave them a little ham and cabbage, there has been no stopping the team…. They lost their first two games, and then Father Monyhan … invited the men to an Irish dinner. Ragon [sic] and Moran, who had previously been starving on a lot of Spanish [sic] food, needed only one whiff of the delectable viands to get on their mettle, and since then have been going at top speed.229

Of course, chili con carne and hot tamales are as Spanish as they are American, while some genuine Spanish cuisine has much — cured pig, potatoes and cabbage — of what Moran and Ragan found so fortifying. But the truth didn’t fit in with the prejudices of the time. The Irish press would also hail “FBIs” (full-blooded Irish) among the sportsmen, such as when the Irish World described Johnny Hayes “as Irish as you find them, with black hair, blue eyes, and a good humored and freckled face and a ton of confidence in himself.”230 In An Olympic Victor, James B. Connolly’s short novel about Loues, a peasant lad from Marousi, near Athens (based on Louis Spyridon, who was from the same village), who wins the 1896 Olympic marathon, our hero is impressed by the other foreign athletes arriving in Athens. One nationality that didn’t compete in the 1898 marathon, even for Britain, but was included in the novel, was “the Irishman.” He is noted as a “droll man … a big man who declared that he should be throwing weights … anything but long distance running.” He laments to his hosts: “’Tis nothing but torture I’ve endured since I first set my two feet in this ancient country.” When defeat comes to him, he does not collapse in exhaustion like others, but is dragged away by some concerned compatriots “who had come out on the road to greet him, and finding him in such a pitiable condition, were bearing him off bodily.” He is forced into a carriage by his friends, and Loues witnesses him fighting to continue as he runs by.231 Instead the intelligent and courageous Irishman is contrasted with the boozy Frenchman who relies on cognac to complete the race and who coerces the Irishman to join him in many a tipple. When the Frenchman collapses drunk, the Irishman bids him farewell: “Good-by Frenchie … and good luck to you, though you and your cognachealths and your wild bog-leaping have been the ruin of me, I fear.”232 Yet the problem for Irish-American identity was that it was increasingly morphing into a parody. Unlike the second-generation Irish in Britain, most of these sportsmen never saw the land of their ancestors, and their identity became little more than a barricade against neighbors in their own country. “Rowdy” Jack O’Connor joked that he didn’t like wearing the “orange” uniform of the Cincinnati Red Stockings, because he was “an Irishman and he prefers green to ‘yaller,’” while “Lefty” O’Doul became “the man in the green suit,” an outfit he wore simply as a nod to his Irish ethnicity.233 This ethnic consciousness would always become secondary to an American patriotism, even for those born in Ireland like Tener. James B. Connolly wrote: “And it is such a tremendous country, this of ours, a country into which new millions are ceaselessly pouring; and while these new millions which to them, as yet, mean nothing, but which to us of older citizenship, when we do not forget, mean so much.”234 One of the few to contradict this generalization was John Flanagan, who, recalling his feats at White City, confessed: “If I have any regret at all now, it is that I was not competing for Ireland on that day.”235 On St. Patrick’s Day 1904, while in spring training in Georgia, Jimmy Collins gave an

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after-dinner speech to Macon’s Ancient Order of Hibernians in which he lauded “the great ball players of the past and present who came from Irish blood,” and the huge contribution of the Irish to his profession, “players of Irish birth or extraction [who] have taken a most important part in the development” of baseball: “Books could be written of the great ball players with Irish names…. In the few minutes allotted me I will try to recall a few of the famous ball players who cherish Ireland as their birthplace or the birthplace of their beloved parents.”236 Collins overdid the blarney, wandering close to Joyce’s parody of the “many Irish heroes and heroines of antiquity” of Ulysses by adding players with no Irish connections, such as Jake Stahl.237 But his speech illustrated that the Irish had arrived, concluding: “America needs baseball, and baseball will always, I think, need a few players with the Os and the Macs.”238 A few days later he told the Boston Journal: “By the way, I hope the people of Boston do not believe that I made the speech credited to me at a banquet in Macon….” Perhaps he was embarrassed that, in his own words, people “would think I did not have any use for a ball player not Irish. That is not so, and that report put me in a bad light. There were no speeches. It was simply a banquet.”239 Despite this, it still seemed that the “American Game” might’ve been, in many eyes, something that any self-respecting immigrant’s son would choose to play. But this wasn’t the complete picture of the Irish sporting experience in America. The Irish certainly came to the States with sporting prowess, but they also came with their own sports too.

13 Ballyhoo — Irish Sports and Games in the United States The term “ballyhoo” comes from “bailiú: a gathering, an assemblage.”1

With a sporting history stretching back millennia, it’s unsurprising that the Irish took their own sporting legacy to the United States. As Paul Darby writes, Irish “Catholics,” like other European immigrants, were reluctant to reject all their indigenous culture in favor of one from a society generally hostile to them: Thus they strove to come to a position of accommodation, rather than complete assimilation or acculturation. As pragmatists they absorbed those American cultural forms that would allow them to progress, socially and economically…. At the same time they sought ways to maintain their links with the “old country” and preserve and articulate their ethnic distinctiveness.2

Irish sports was such a culture they generally kept faith in, and attendance at these games sometimes exceeded anything that baseball could offer. But despite this, only handball and the hammer became popular outside the Irish-American community. Irish games in America predated the post-famine emigration. Hurling had been chronicled in the States as early as 1782, where it was also played on ice in the city’s Collect Pond as an early version of ice hockey.3 Brian McGinn states that during the American Revolution, Irish soldiers in the British Army played them, with an 1772 advert in the New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury by a tavern-keeper Thomas McMullin, for a game at the “back of the Jews burying place,” in present-day Chinatown.4 Another notice in the Royal Gazette of March 16, 1782, called upon “Sons of Patrick” to join together in “the ancient and favorite game of COMMON” on March 18.5 Post-famine, the Irish set up clubs that reinvigorated the sport in the States. The Irish Hurling and Football Club was the first such club, established in New York in 1857 and finding opponents as far away as Hoboken.6 In San Francisco, Irish sports were played in the Gold Rush years, with the Alta California reporting the Hurling Club of the Sons of the Emerald Isle was established as early as 1853.7 Yet it took almost forty more years for the representatives of the top teams in the city — the Emmetts, the Parnells, the Australians, the Oakland William O’Briens, the Port Costa Sarsfields — to meet at the Windsor Hotel and organize the game properly.8 In Boston, the IACB became the main source for “the encouragement of athletic exercise, and the preservation of the national games, sports, and pastimes of Ireland.”9 The Pilot listed a number of Irish sports organized 288

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by the club: goaling, also known as the “ancient and exciting game of ‘Baire,’” trap ball, and geathaidhe arda, “a game of fun, in which the ladies take the principal part,” were listed along with the more conventional “foot ball,” “heavy weight throwing” and hurling.10 Football and hurling matches increasingly tended to conclude annual picnics. The “[James] Stephens faction” of the Fenians hosted a picnic at Jones Wood in 1867 where “[s]everal games of foot-ball were played by members of the circles.”11 At the 1873 Irish National Games in Philadelphia, a “football contest between the ‘Red Branch Knights’ and ‘Irish Nationalists,’ … was carried out with commendable enthusiasm and ability.”12 The first picnic of the IACB in 1879 culminated with a match between “Easterners” and “Westerners,” presumably of the Greater Boston area. The Globe described the game in glowing terms: The contest created the greatest pleasurable interest, and the dreams of the dear old land and romantic days of youth caused many an eye to fill with moisture while the manly national game — the game of their fathers through the centuries — was brought back to them in the beloved home of their adoption…. So lively and hard fought was the contest that for twentyfive minutes the ball scarcely touched the ground.13

Future picnics saw hurling clubs battle for the John Boyle O’Reilly Cup, an “elegant and symbolic prize … to be contested for each season until held by a team for three years.”14 The impetus to move forward from ad hoc pastimes to proper codified sports was undoubtedly the 1888 GAA tour. The decade that followed witnessed a flourish of Gaelic football, and to a lesser extent, hurling. The tour was significant to promoting Irish sports in Chicago, with the Emmett Club’s founding, and by the time the Illinois GAA was set up in 1891, the Chicago Tribune listed eight clubs and an office on Randolph Street.15 In New England, a Gaelic Athletic Union (also known as the Irish-American Athletic Union), headed by John B. O’Higgins, was founded in 1895 with representatives coming from Worcester, Charlestown and Lynn, with invitations received from sides in New York and New Jersey.16 Regional GAAs began to acquire their own stadiums. In 1907, the ICAU in New York opened its ill-fated grounds in Wakefield, Yonkers, and the Illinois GAA purchased the lease on a new site at West Forty-Seventh Street and South California Avenue. This was the third such grounds called “Gaelic Park”; the first was listed in the Chicago Tribune in 1891 between Polk and Lincoln Streets, where on “gala days the grand stand shelters feminine enthusiasts, while the Gaels and the friends swarm out on the greensward.”17 The following year Murphy and Ames paid $2,500 for their Indiana Avenue plot, and by 1907, fifty thousand people had attended the IGAA’s summer program.18 Gaelic Park III was opened on May 4, 1908, and was hoped to one day rival New York’s Celtic Park. Two thousand fans watched a game between the state hurling champions O’Mahoneys and the Shamrocks, followed by a football match.19 Finally, eight years later, San Francisco Gaelic Park, between San Bruno and Leland Avenues, was built.20 The GAA also entered or hosted athletic events, particularly in St. Louis and Chicago. The 1891 annual Western AAU meeting at St. Louis’s Sportsman’s Park saw the Gaelic Athletic Club from Chicago attend, while five thousand came to the Gateway City’s GAA Field Day in 1906.21 Five thousand people also attended the Illinois GAA’s 1911 Annual Games at Gaelic Park, the biggest athletic meeting ever hosted in the city, according to the Chicago Tribune; over two hundred competitors, including Con Walsh, Melvin Sheppard, and the black high-jumper, Frank LeRoy Holmes, who competed for the association, had entered.22

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However, in 1888 the flourishing Irish American sporting club was still most likely to be in non–Irish sports. These included not only baseball and athletics but also rowing, soccer and even cricket, such as the Shamrock Cricket Club of Cambridge, Massachusetts.23 These were essentially amateur clubs, sports that failed to be lucrative enough to pay players, or the lower sections of professional sports. The first recorded club was an “Irish-American Rifle Club” that existed since at least 1874.24 But within a decade there was a proliferation of clubs. Along with the bigger “IrishAmerican” clubs, many small towns had athletic clubs with Irish names. A Shamrock AC was to be found at one time or another in Denver, Omaha, and Holyoke, Massachusetts, sometimes offering sports outside track and field.25 One of New York’s most patronized Irish clubs between the second and third Irish-American clubs was the Xavier AC on West Sixteenth Street. Mike Sweeney, its most famous athlete, describes a club “sponsored and guided by some of the authorities associated” with the Church of St. Francis Xavier on the same street: The club had a membership of about 1500, composed of some of the finest young and middleaged Roman Catholics of the city. It aimed to give opportunity … for healthful, mental and social activities. It had … reading and music rooms, indoor games and outdoor athletics, held entertainments of various kinds, and dances at stated intervals — all housed in an atmosphere of geniality, friendliness, and refinement that appealed to my growing nature.26

Elsewhere there were the St. Patrick’s AA and United Irish Society AC of Philadelphia; Celtic AC, Scranton; the Hibernian AA, Hartford; Hibernian AA, New Haven; and the Hibernian AA of Pittsburgh. St. Louis had the biggest collection of AAU affiliated clubs: The St. Louis Republic reported that an “Irish Athletic Club”— probably the Irish Nationalists AA — was being established in St. Louis in April 1904: “Its object the promotion of Irish sports which will be given at the [1904 Olympics] … during the summer.” The first organized event was a hurling match between the Innisfalls of East St. Louis and the city’s Shamrocks on April 24.27 Other St. Louis AAU affiliated Irish clubs included the Paulian Christian Brothers AC, the Gaelic Athletic Club, the Hibernian AA (or AC), and the Knights of Columbus AC.28 Initially there were numerous overtly amateur Irish baseball clubs around the country. Dale Somers records the presence of a “Fenian Base Ball Club” in New Orleans, countering the German clubs, the Schneiders and Landwehrs.29 Ralph C. Wilcox lists a host of clubs with Irish names in such diverse places as Augusta, Savannah and Charleston, in Georgia and South Carolina, to small New England towns like Geddes, New York, and Woborn, Massachusetts. Names ranged from the predictable “Shamrock,” “Celtic,” “Emerald,” and “Hibernian Green” to those with clear political connections such as “Fenian,” “Emmet,” “Owen Garvey,” “M.N. Nolan,” and “Dillon.”30 There were Shamrock teams in Grand Rapids, Michigan, of the 1891 International Association that became the Montreal Canadiens; New Orleans; Hammond, Indiana; Joliet, Illinois; Syracuse, New York; Anaconda, Montana; Burlington, New Jersey; and Pueblo, Colorado.31 The Cincinnati Shamrocks groomed local Irish-American future pros like Miller Huggins and Frank McGinn and was the team where Tony Mullane, banned for the 1885 season by the AA, spent his time.32 The following season they lost only two matches before beating the Cincinnati Reds, that contained Jack O’Connor, and Mullane, the following April. Their German manager Harry Baumgartner was quoted in the Sporting Life as saying: “I’ll bet I can take my Shamrock and beat the Reds any day in the week with this same team of theirs in the field….”33 Indeed the Sporting Life regularly carried team reports, calling them

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the “‘Sons of Erin’ (aided by a few German counts),”34 or later, “that team with an Irish name and a German make-up.”35 A Cleveland Shamrock side, probably the local team Ed Delahanty played for and what Jerrold Casway called the “infamous Shamrocks,” provided the Cleveland Blues’ first-ever opponents in 1887.36 In addition, a Shamrock side in St. Louis, “that could beat anything in that neck of the woods,” produced “Rowdy” Jack O’Connor and the Tebeau brothers, while the Fort Wayne Shamrocks lasted from 1897 to 1918.37 Of all these teams only the Holyoke Shamrocks of the International League and National Association played to a high professional standard.38 The Southern California Winter League McCormicks from Los Angeles were also known as the “McCormick’s Shamrocks,” “the Irish lads,” “the Irish aggregation,” “the Irish of the diamond,” or “the wearers of the green,” and seemed to be “Irish” purely on the basis of their manager Jim McCormick.39 When asked by a Los Angeles Herald reporter about the color his men would wear for the 1910 season, he replied: “Green, and the real shamrock color at that — no faded imitation goes.” As the reporter probed further about white trim, he was grabbed by the coat “in a most earnest manner” and asked: “Don’t you think that purity and insignia of peace color is a bum combination for the fighting Irish hue?… I don’t intend to have the boys handicapped with any flag of peace flying, labeled, ‘Excuse me, but may I talk?’”40 Who McCormick was, apart from one of the league’s “magnates” and onetime president of the California Summer League, isn’t clear, although it’s doubtful that he was King Kelly’s drinking partner from Chicago and was more than likely a well-known West-Coast racehorse owner or possibly a large property owner.41 In rowing, Irish clubs and crews were prominent in Boston from the 1850s. On the Fourth of July, 1854, the Hub held the first City of Boston Regatta between Irish longshoremen and the Brahmin “Beacon Street Swells.”42 Many of the Irish vessels had patriotic Irish names: the eight-oared T.F. Meagher won a hundred-dollar silver goblet for first place in the six mile-eight oar race, while coming in third was the General Sarsfield. In the following year’s regatta, most captains or owners were of Irish ethnicity, with names such as P. Driscoll (Flying Cloud), Tom Daly (Bella), P. Lynch ( J.D.R. Putman), J. McCormick (Ariel) and R. McCarthy (The Maid of Erin).43 The Maid of Erin and the T.F. Meagher raced three times at the Fourth of July regatta for a total distance of nine miles, with the Boston Advertiser observing: “As the names of the boats would indicate, the oarsmen are sons of the Emerald Isle — those of The Maid of Erin are from Bantry Bay, and we are informed that the crew of the T.F. Meagher are from Kinsale.”44 That September the Meagher took on the Superior Club of St. John, New Brunswick, in an international event, succumbing to the Canadians at the end of the ninth mile.45 By 1858 the Irish rowing clubs were giving “the Harvard boys their strongest pulls.”46 In June the university beat the Young Men’s Democratic Club’s Fort Hill Boy at the Second Beacon Cup Regatta, with the boats Robert Emmet and Shamrock third and fourth; the regatta’s chairman hoped these “hardy sons of Erin might always be represented in Boston” by such a club.47 However, the spirit of fair play was broken by Harvard’s the Reverend William R. Huntingdon, who penned two songs — before and after the race — in the Harvard Magazine, that mocked the Irish accent. The chorus of the first —“Michael to Patrick”— played to the tune of “Paddy O’Rafferty,” declared: “O ye b’ys, ye fops, ye lady pets / Twinty to wan, and our word that we pay the bets,” while that of the second —“Patrick to Michael”— wept to the tune “Lillibullero”: “Har-r-vard! Har-r-vard! O ye spalpeens! / Have n’t ye scattered my wages like smoke? / I can’t pay a quarter / The bets that I oughter / Divil fly off wid yer wondherful stroke.”48 Whether these Irish rowing clubs ever took up competing in the

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indigenous Irish canoe, the curach (or currach), is unlikely, nor did John Boyle O’Reilly make any mention of curach rowing in Ethics, despite detailing of other styles of canoeing.49 Despite the perception that it came to the U.S. in the 1970s, soccer had been popular since the mid–1880s.50 By the time of the AFA split in 1911, soccer was the most ethnically diverse sport in America, a truly “immigrant” game in its fullest meaning, with clubs representing not only Scots, Irish and Germans, but also Swedes and Norwegians. Irish soccer clubs were, after the Scots, the second oldest immigrant influence on the game, with a Shamrock FC in the Pennsylvania Association Foot Ball Union during the 1889 season, disappearing the following year.51 In 1890, the second I-AAC introduced a soccer team.52 In August, together with the Shamrock Foot Ball Club, it was named as a founding member of the New York State Football League, at Homeyer’s Hotel, Ridgewood, Long Island. The Shamrocks provided the league President Mr. McGeach with the I-AAC’s Patrick E. Powers as vice-president.53 But soon both Irish teams were propping up the five-team league, with the Sporting Life noting: “The Irish AA and the Shamrocks have good men, but they lack science in the playing of the game.”54 The West Side Shamrock FC was unconnected with the Shamrocks, and contained a different bunch of officials, with Peter Donnelly as president and P.J. Tierney the club secretary. By 1890 a practice match at Monitor Park, Weehawken, was advertised.55 The Sun announced the intentions of the club: “The West Side Shamrock Football Club, a promising local organization with rooms at 458 Ninth Avenue, will, from present indications place a first class team in the field. Candidates for positions are numerous.”56 Certainly they were an improvement on their namesakes. By December 1891, the Sun reported the club appears “to be very fortunate. They have only lost one game this season and that was to the crack Thistle team.”57 The Shamrock FC (not West Side) reappeared in 1892, while in 1894 the Sun announced that the “recently organized American Association Football League” included the West Side Shamrocks, who now played at Williamsburg.58 The number of Irish teams in brief multi-state leagues was minuscule, with only the Philadelphia Hibernians, who competed in the solitary 1909-10 season of the First Eastern Soccer League, standing out. In contrast, at lower-level, mostly amateur leagues, Irish clubs abounded throughout the American soccer landscape. The Spalding’s Soccer Guide of 19151916 lists two Irish-American football clubs, of the eighty-two of “the premier soccer clubs of the country,” competing in the USFA’s National Challenge Cup Competition: one from Harrison in New Jersey and another from Wilmington, Delaware, although this team folded mid-season in November 1914.59 Celtic football clubs were abundant: from the New York State Association Football League were the New York Celtic and Brooklyn Celtic clubs. Elsewhere were the New Bedford Celtics, the Rochester Celtics, the Paterson Celtics FC of New Jersey, the West Hudson Celtics, Wayne Celtic from Philadelphia, and Celtic clubs in Kearny and Newark.60 Further west there was a Celtic FC in the Michigan State Football League and the Seattle Celtic FC, while a Celtic FC of San Francisco competed in the California Football League.61 There were also Hibernians Football Clubs in Brooklyn, New York City, Chicago, Trenton, New Jersey and West Lynn in Massachusetts. An Irish-American FC in the Boston League and another — the Irish-American AA FC — competed in the North Massachusetts and New Hampshire State Football Association.62 There was a Shamrock Football Club in Philadelphia and another in Cincinnati.63 Other Irish sides included the Donegal (Celtics) FC of the NYSAFL. St. Louis had the highest concentration of Irish soccer teams and players, as the city’s

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Irish took to a sport which, in the words of the Irish community’s historian, William B. Faherty, SJ, “galvanized Irish Catholic parish loyalties.”64 David Wangerin credits the city’s strong soccer presence down to the Christian brothers’ schools in the city: In a city teeming with Irish Americans, the exceptional interest of the Catholic Church helped soccer attain a degree of popularity unique among America’s major cities. Other parts of the country may have been no less Irish, but they lacked the same ecclesiastical patronage; they may have pursued the game with similar enthusiasm, but not in such scrupulously organized competition — and certainly not with hordes of native-born youngsters.65

The Shamrocks were one of the major clubs at the time, and in an open letter to the Sporting News in December 1886 “Foot Ball” compared the poor crowd at Sportsman’s Park between two elevens of the Thistle FC with that between two Irish sides: “On the way back home I dropped into the Union grounds and to my great surprise found a very large gathering there, and a game being played between the Shamrocks and Hibernians. This sure enough counteracted the disappointment [of the Thistles game] I first experienced as I witnessed a good game.”66 Founded in 1907, the St. Louis Soccer League had teams not only with clearly Irish names like Innisfails FC, the Shamrocks FC and the Irish-American AC, but also parish sides such as St. Theresa’s, and St. Leo’s, the league’s champions from 1909 to 1915, while lower-down teams included Immaculate Conception, Hibernians, Agnes, and the AOH No. 6.67 Out of all these clubs, the Philadelphia Hibernians, from the Kensington area of the city, and the Brooklyn Celtic were the most successful. Winners of the FA of Pennsylvania League championship five out of six years between 1903-04 and 1908-09, the Hibernians were the only American team to inflict defeat against the English “Pilgrims” tourists, when on November 4, 1909, at the Germantown Cricket Club in front of two thousand spectators, the “Irishmen” won 1–0.68 Managed by Thomas McCamphill, who the Spalding’s Soccer Guide of 1914-15 labeled the “John McGraw of soccer,” the Brooklyn Celtics club won the NYSAFL between 1913 and 1917.69 The club lost the initial USFA National Challenge Cup final, played in front of what the Hartford Courant described as the “greatest crowd which ever saw an association football game in New England,” to Brooklyn Field FC 2–1 at Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in May 1914.70 A year later on May 1, 1915, at South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, they lost to local side Bethlehem FC, 3–1, in front of 7,000 spectators.71 Two weeks earlier at Bartell’s Park, Newark, the final of the American Football Association Cup — a competition competed since 1885, with the exception of the years between 1899 and 1905 — saw the “Irishmen” once more lose, this time to the Scottish-Americans of Kearny, New Jersey.72 Spalding’s Soccer: Official Foot Ball Guide 1915-16 noted: “Notwithstanding the Irishmen’s defeat in both cup competitions, they were one of the greatest soccer aggregations in this country and will most likely be a most important factor in determining the soccer championship for the season of 1915-16.”73 The following season, Brooklyn Celtic won their fifth championship on the trot while also defeating New York FC in the Southern New York Football Association final at Harlem Field 1–0, with the New York Times commenting: “The Irishmen continued to press at top speed until a long shot down the center by Broadbent was beautifully headed into New York’s net by Casey.”74 Sadly, this was the end of the club; it failed to compete in the NYSAFL 1918-19 season, being crippled by players’ volunteering for the war. The New York Tribune claimed that because “nearly half of the association footballers in the Unites States are Canadians, Irish, Scotch or English born, or descended from such stock, soccer football felt the effects long before the entrance of this country into the cataclysm.”75

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In addition to these clubs were a series “international soccer contests” organized by the New York Footballer’s Protective Association in 1912 to help out injured players. These annual games brought together the cream of New York’s talent with teams representing “America,” England, Ireland, Scotland, and “Continentals” made up of players from mainland Europe. Ireland’s first victory came in 1915. The final against the Continentals at the Lenox Oval, on the corner of Lenox Avenue and 145th Street, saw players from Brooklyn Celtic, Our Boys FC and an outside-left from the works team of the IRT subway win 4– 1, with “Celtic dash [triumphing] over pluck and endurance,” according to the New York Tribune.76 In June 1886 on Boston Common, America saw its first Gaelic football match played under GAA rules between the city’s Galway and Kerry clubs, and a month later the Boston Pilot published the new codified GAA rules.77 The 1888 “Gaelic Invasion” six-week tour that set sail from Queenstown on September 16, 1888, proved a financial fiasco, leaving the GAA with a debt of £700, while straying into the crossfire of the American athletic civil war involving their friends at the MAC and the NAAAA, against the NYAC and the newly formed AAU, went some way to ensure its failure. This was no attempt to proselytize to the New World, but the GAA recognized that it would “mistake much if they do not succeed in winning golden opinions in that country, and in creating among all who witness their exhibitions a genuine and lasting love for Irish sports and pastimes.”78 There was optimism in some quarters that hurling would eventually rival the “American Game”: one letter in the Irish World by “A Galway Man” hoped that “Irishmen and Irish-Americans … will give those athletes a befitting reception and help to show the American people that hurling is qualified to be ranked in line with their dearly and deservedly prized baseball.”79 At an exhibition at the Manhattan AC, “mainly for the purpose of introducing the visiting Irish athletes,”80 the Sun declared: “It was almost as if you stood on a bit of Irish soil yesterday out on the Manhattan Athletic Club’s grounds…. There were Irish games and Irish athletes and Irish spectators. A big crowd had assembled to see the fifty lithe-limbed, broad-chested representatives of the Gaelic Athletic Association, who came over from Ireland a few days ago.”81 Within two years, Gaelic games were adopted by the second Irish-American Athletic Club. At the newly opened Polo Grounds II on Thanksgiving Day 1890, three thousand spectators watched the I-AAC win the “Championship of the United States,” against the Sarsfield Club of Portchester.82 Interest in Gaelic sports, especially football, increased over the next two decades, with clubs founded across America. In the New York Metropolitan area, the Irish-Americans, the Sarsfields, the Meaghers, the O’Connells, the Garryowens, and the Kickhams were based on Manhattan; the Gaelic Society in Queens; and the John Mitchells, Emmets [sic], Wolfe Tones and Dalys in Brooklyn; to the north in Yonkers were the Rangers. In New Jersey, the Shamrocks, Mitchells and William Barrys represented Jersey City, while Elizabeth had the Sarsfield Club; elsewhere in the country the prominent clubs included the Shamrocks in Troy, and the Emmetts from Philadelphia; the Emmetts, Redmonds and Wolfe Tones clubs were founded in Boston; San Francisco contained teams like Robert Emmets [sic], Shamrocks, Sarsfields and Parnells; while Chicago had the O’Briens, Wolfe Tones, O’Connells, and Davitts to go with the obligatory Emmetts.83 But there was also a clear dearth of participation outside the big Irish populations, with one exception being Butte. The Butte Miners’ Union No. 1 celebrated their annual picnic in 1909 at Columbia Gardens on August 16 with a two-man drilling team contest

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along with Gaelic football complementing soccer and regular field sports, while a team to represent the town was proposed to play at the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle.84 But as the Kentucky Irish American commented, Irish sports were limited geographically. While this paper reported Louisville’s Irish interest in baseball, there were no reports of Gaelic football matches, let alone those of hurling: “[Hurling] is not practiced to any great extent in this country except in New York City, where they have several good teams. In Boston and Chicago hurling is the favorite game among the Celts. Syracuse also has a team that can compete with any in the States and it is their intention to challenge a team from New York next summer.”85 A 1909 report about the local AOH’s picnic by the Washington Herald pointed out that the game of Gaelic football, despite being “one of the most exciting and popular of ” Irish sports was a rare sight in the nation’s capital: “This will be a unique feature … as such a game has not been played in this section of the country for the past fifteen years.”86 In New York the Gaelic Athletic Association of America initially organized its own events, but with the foundation of the Irish Counties Athletics Union, Gaelic games came under the control of county associations with clubs amalgamated into or replaced by “county” sides. The Irish county societies had long operated their own athletic events and clubs, but on June 3, 1904, they met to organize a structure to the city’s Irish sports. The meeting culminated with the founding of the ICAU (later the United Irish Counties) in early September.87 The county teams had been in the ascendancy since 1898 when the Kilkenny football team was founded, increasingly replacing, renaming or absorbing the top clubs, while teams like the Harlem Kickhams, comprising solely of Tipperary males, were already de facto county sides. In October 1903 the GNYIAA could still announce that it was going to “open” the Gaelic football season at Celtic Park with a match between a club side, the Irish Volunteers, and a county team, the Kerry Men’s Association. But this would be the last time clubs would compete on the same level as the county sides in the city.88 By 1909, the ICAU contained twenty-four teams.89 The impetus for the county system, devised on a similar footing to the Irish model, came from the announcement that the 1904 Olympics would host four days of Irish games, creating the need for a more professional approach to organizing Gaelic sport in New York.90 In October 1903, the Gaelic American demanded that “the present disconnected, slipshod way of doing things” be done away with and that St. Louis offered a fantastic opportunity to showcase the sports: “Too much emphasis cannot be laid on the fact that the GAA in America today is a go-as-you-please affair, without any regular organization to govern or direct it. This state of things should be changed before the opening of the World’s Fair at St. Louis…. The time has arrived when, if the GAA is to prosper in the United States, reorganization is absolutely necessary.” John Devoy was impressed that the counties were becoming more involved in Irish sports and suggested, as in Ireland, they’d be the best for organizing their survival in the New World: “This is a healthy sign of a revival of Irish athletics in this city…. Now is the time to thoroughly reorganize the GAA in America. Who will ‘set the ball rolling?’”91 Matches were often played in conjunction with county, as well as other political or cultural societies’ events. The 1907 Roscommon Men’s Benevolent Society at Celtic Park hosted a series of four inter-county matches, while the same year’s annual picnic of the Louth Young Men’s Football Club hosted a game between Meath and Armagh, while Louth beat Kildare.92 Yet there was also a political element to the ICAU. Effectively there was a turf war going on with the I-AAC for the heart of the Irish sportsman in the Big Onion, despite

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some crossover of directors. The county associations resented what it saw as exorbitant charging by the I-AAC, and efforts to get a better rate from an organization that John T. Ridge described as mixing “patriotism and profit in varying degrees,” were unforthcoming.93 Martin J. Hurley, who wrote a column in the Irish American Advocate under the pseudonym of Liam O’Shea, would later describe the I-AAC as “some ungrateful scoundrels who, years ago, played the dastardly part of the grabber … [with] the most open-faced robbery ever rubbed into a decent race.”94 This rivalry was inflamed by a further “split” within the ICAU between the have-nots and the haves of the so-called “Big Four” (Cork, Kerry, Kildare and Kilkenny), who, as the big drawers, expected to keep the bulk of the gate money. In a mirror of twenty-first century TV revenue, they sought greater separation from the smaller counties, who in return wanted to smash both the “Big Four’s” power and their own dependence on the I-AAC by purchasing their grounds in Wakefield, Yonkers. Seeing the move as an unnecessary risk that made no economic sense, the Big Four naturally objected strongly. The Irish Advocate recorded Kerry’s dissent: “Kerrymen never stood aside when called upon to a charitable, manly, or national act…. The society will march on as it has done in the past and will not be bulldozed by any threats that may emanate from a few irresponsible men who claim all the virtues and find fault with men who differ from them….”95 Opened in 1907, Irish Park proved a disaster. First the counties failed to find even half of the $70,000 asking price and were saddled with a huge mortgage, before the Yonkers city authorities began invoking the blue laws. The ICAU also tried to force the big four to play in Yonkers by preventing members from going to Celtic Park for the 1909 season. Darby describes the hostility this “directive” was met with by the four clubs, who were “unwilling to play at a venue where they would receive lower gate receipts.” 96 The park was closed in 1910 with the counties losing all their money and the ICAU splitting in two. As Darby concludes, the union had been fatally undermined, and was “unable to oversee the longer-term health of Gaelic games in New York.”97 An alternative body in the city was needed. In February 1911 at New York’s Hunt’s Hall, attempts were made to create one singular governing body for the Greater New York area, all to no avail. Thirteen clubs met, and beginning with Armagh, “each delegate declared himself ready to abide by the action and decisions of the meeting,” even agreeing on the GAA of America being the name for the association.98 However, things began to promptly fall apart at a follow-up meeting, and the Irish American Weekly remarked bitterly: “Reports reaching this office indicate that the meeting held on last Sunday … for the purpose of effecting a permanent organization of the hurling and football teams in Greater New York was as void of practical results as any of the three preceding meetings. The scheme we understand has … been abandoned.” The differences served not “to aid Irish pastimes to any extent but rather to retard the growth of interest in them among the general public,” encouraging behavior among the players that was “far from indicating that high chivalric character that marked the great martial games of hurling and football when Ireland was a nation and encouraged the development of the best in the man.” The correspondent bemoaned the “petty or imaginary barrier” thrown up by either side, lamenting that this had led “the great pastimes of Ireland [to] lose in caste because there is no single power to enforce decorum on the field or punish dirty play by suspension or the ‘black-list.’” The writer concluded that he and the Irish American Weekly weren’t prepared to be party to these squabbles and admonished the rival parties in uppercase: “GENTLEMEN, FOR IRELAND’S SAKE, GET TOGETHER.”99 Other cities kept the club system and Philadelphia’s Emmetts were regularly opponents of New York county sides at “picnics.”100

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It was clear that American Gaelic games were ridden with Behanian factions and splits. The initial casualty to infighting was the Irish Athletic Club of Boston. Barely over a year old and the Boston Journal was reporting “quite a hubbub among the members … during the past few weeks, the exact cause of which it is difficult to determine.” Two “factions” claimed the original ownership while denouncing the other side. The heart of the matter lay in a new constitution with one side demanding the excess funds be carried over promoting athletic training, while the other clique wanted to spend the money on “purchasing arms for Ireland.” Calls were made for some members to be dismissed and there seems to be evidence that they attempted to set up a rival club, although John H. Walsh was keen to dispel any division in a letter to the Boston Globe.101 The Gaelic Athletic Association of America, founded in September 1891, was crippled by the schism following the fall of Charles Parnell and stumbled on virtually as an irrelevance to the state bodies.102 The biggest local flare-up came with the Illinois GAA split in 1910. This followed the sacking by the Clan na Gael Club of its manager, John Gerrity, while the GA A continued recognizing him, causing four clubs — football’s Columbias and Sarsfields, and hurling’s Shamrocks and O’Mahoneys — to “bolt.” 103 This separation was made worse when the GAAI’s treasurer James Cahill joined a new body, taking with him seven hundred dollars, the GAAI’s charter and the lease to Gaelic Park. Only the hard work of Father James K. Fielding prevented the sport’s collapse in the city, but the fallout damaged the IGAA’s reputation in the eyes of Croke Park and a planned American tour by Kerry and Kilkenny was dropped.104 In late 1914 came the announcement of a new “Gaelic Athletic Association of the U.S.,” which one historian claimed “was to New York what the Thurles meeting [of 1884] was to Ireland.”105 Its first conference for running the game “east of Chicago” was at Snow Hall on 119th Street and Eighth Avenue with twenty-two delegates from Philadelphia, New Haven, Boston and Newark. John J. Daly of the I-AAC was present and spoke “on the merits of the organization and the work it had done in bringing before the young Irish-Americans in the various cities their national games.”106 Instantly the “Big Four” boycotted the association; with their unflinching demands to restrict club income to fifty dollars of expenses, they set up a rival “Gaelic League of New York.” The GAAUS managed to convince the four clubs to return to the fold and the 1916 season saw attendance at Celtic Park often exceed 10,000 for games.107 Despite all this, a demand for intercity and inter-state competition grew. As early as 1892 a game at the New Jersey AC’s “Annual Fall Carnival of Sports” in Bayonne saw New Jersey’s William Barrys victory over New York’s Kickhams, granting the victors the “Gaelic-American Championship.”108 The New York GAA then challenged Illinois for a game at Ridgewood, Brooklyn, the following summer with the return at Chicago’s World’s Fair.109 Just as in Ireland, it was football — simpler, safer and less costly — that was to triumph over the more ancient, and arguably more attractive game of hurling.110 As late as 1912, the Baltimore Sun spoke in glowing, mythical tones about hurling¸ describing it as being “the national game in Ireland before a stone was laid … of the first house in ancient Rome,” and played “when Lugaidh Lamhfada (Lugee the Longhanded) … ascended the throne of Ireland” nearly 1,500 years before Christ’s birth: Hurling is a strenuous game and admirably adapted to the impetuous temperament of the Gaels…. Any person who watches a hurling match cannot fail to note the fearless impetuosity of the players, who rush in entirely oblivious of danger where bats that would fracture a man’s

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skull are fiercely brandished with seeming indifference as to results…. The game is exciting from the tossing up of the ball to the end of the match, and every one of the players on each side is actively engaged in the sport.111

An article in the Kentucky Irish American in 1901 compared it with American football: “A person not acquainted with the game often wonders why some of the players do not get killed, yet it is a fact that more serious accidents occur in foot ball.”112 But if the press were going to attack the “American” code over safety, it was hardly going to let a foreign sport off the hook for the same concerns. Therefore sympathetic newspapers, such as the New York Times, could no longer ignore the violence. The December 1892 hurling match at Ridgewood Park between the Irish-Americans and Wolfe Tones, covered earlier concerning its crowd disturbances, was also a subject of player injuries. At 4:30 O’Clock the ball was tossed into the field…. Immediately there was a scramble for it, and soon the center of the field became a mass of struggling humanity. The players threw their whole souls as well as their muscles into the game, and the quaint and many-colored costumes, darting across the field, gave the appearance of a wrecked rainbow. The hurleys, which were lifted over the shoulders of the players and swung at random with full force, sometimes came into contact with the pates and shins of members of the opposing team, and many a sore head and bruised limb was carried home.

An Irish-American player called Maxwell was struck during the game by a hurley and received a “hole half an inch in diameter stove in his forehead, but a little thing like that did not affect him, and after wetting a piece of paper over the wound he went into the field again.”113 Asked by a Boston Globe reporter if hurling required rough play, J.J. Cullen replied “maybe.” He explained that the rules forbid catching, tripping, pushing from behind or butting opponents, nor were players allowed to intentionally hit another player, although the referee was the man who would decide if this were the case. Cullen added that players would leave the field with “aching shins and any number of bruises,” giving little reassurance by adding: “The better the player, of course, the less likely is he to injure his opponents, but in the excitement of play it is not to be wondered at that some blows are accidentally given.”114 The Chicago Tribune, reporting a game at the 1906 GAA Irish Field Day, described hurling “from the standpoint of the uninitiated” as appearing to be a game where a rubber ball was hit back and forward “between excited players until it was pitched” over the goalline: “Ordinarily there would have been broken heads in great numbers, but in the delirious excitement … nobody seemed to care if his crooked stick inadvertently struck a player on the head, and the victim did not appear any more concerned about the matter than did the assailant.”115 By 1893, the Sun, also initially so supportive, was reporting the “disagreeable conduct” of one game of football: “Instead of batting the ball with their fists, several of the players took delight in batting one another in the face. It was really more of a contest at fisticuffs than a good game of Gaelic football…. One of the Barrys was exceeding aggressive. He was warned time and again to use his fists on the ball instead of his opponents’ face or body. Finally he was ruled off the field.” However, this wasn’t his last appearance of the day. When a fight broke out he ran onto the field to be greeted by “knockout blow on the jaw.” The referee had had enough and abandoned the game “for the sake of peace” with the final score the first thing both teams agreed about.116 Yet nothing portrays the opportunities missed in America than Gaelic football, where it could’ve proved a robust, less dangerous, alternative to the American code. In 1905 by November, nineteen people had been killed playing the game, including an eighteen-year-

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old daughter of a Maryland politician. Football was subsequently banned at Columbia University, where Professor Herbert Lord called it an “obsession” that had “become as hindersome to the great mass of students as it has proved itself harmful to academic standing, and dangerous to human life.”117 No longer could apologists argue that football wasn’t as dangerous as the ring. Initially in the wake of the “Gaelic Invasion,” the press was surprisingly receptive of the merits of both Irish games. The Irish American Weekly reported the favorable press coverage of an indoor “exhibition game” between the Gaelic Society and Portchester Sarsfields in December 1890, with the New York Herald claiming: “[T]here was all kinds of football … but the Gaelic game was the best…. Erin’s game was the smartest…. Twelve brawny Irishmen on a side kicked, punched, butted and ran with the ball. Meanwhile the people roared and screamed and cheered and clapped their hands and stamped their feet.”118 One of the earliest reports in the Boston Globe suggested that considering the number of Irish in the States, it was “a bit surprising that their national game has not become Americanized”: “Base ball is not better known and appreciated here than is hurling in Ireland, and yet until this winter there has been no systematic effort to introduce the game to this continent…. It bids fair now, however, to enjoy a considerable boom, and by another season there may be a hurling league, with championship contests and big audiences at the grounds to see the fun.”119 The Brooklyn Daily Eagle added: “Since the visit of the Gaelic athletes to this country … the public interest in foot ball as played under Gaelic association rules has been steadily increasing.” Standards were being raised by growing immigration, and the Eagle singled out one club for special praise: “Of the many notable New York teams none has played with such vigor and consistency as that dashing combination known as the Kickhams, who number several Brooklyn players on their list.”120 In 1895, the Sun commented: “Hurley [sic], as these men play it, is an ideal ‘open-play’ game, and there is more activity in it in one minute than there is in ten minutes of any of the American amateur sports.”121 Even outside the great Irish centers, as early as 1894, one syndicated article made it into a number of midwest backwaters describing Gaelic football: The game … although but recently introduced into the United States has rapidly pushed its way to the front and is now a popular pastime among youthful athletes who claim Irish descent…. [I]ts popularity is daily increasing. This is ascribed to its being distinctively a racial sport. There is a certain element of danger in it that excites enthusiasm and impels the player to run at the ball with hand and with foot, and with as much impetuosity as ever soldier of Celtic race rushed on the foe at the Heights or Fredericksburg, at Fontenoy or at Fuentes d’Onora.122

Speaking of the 1890 Thanksgiving game at the Polo Grounds, the Sun noted that the difference between the two codes of football was like comparing “daylight and darkness”: “No holding, pushing, tripping, or slugging is allowed. Nor can any player hold the ball in his hands and run with it. All that is allowable is the kicking of the ball and hitting it with the hand while the ball is in the air. The confusion is greater than in the college game, as the ball is always being kicked back and forth.”123 By 1893, the American press was increasingly hyping Gaelic football’s virtues in comparison to the “native” game, with Henry Chadwick a fan: Legitimate foot ball playing should not be charged with this sad load of brutality and death. The existing American college game is not foot ball; it is field hand ball playing, in which the features of slugging and wrestling are introduced. The only legitimate foot ball game in vogue is that known as the Gaelic game, in which the feet of the player are brought into play in kick-

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ing and driving the ball; as no player is allowed to hold or carry the ball. The fact is, we are in the midst of an era of brutality in sports, and college foot ball, affording as it does a prolific field for brutal sport, stands side by side with the boxing matches with their gloves — the new phase of prize fighting — in yielding bloody encounters in the ring as well as fatal injuries on the field.124

As the row over football’s deaths raged, the Washington Post could only argue that Gaelic football was unknown within America’s universities, yet “would probably appeal … more than the association contest does, because, although similar to the latter in many ways, it is more varied, and gives an opportunity for use of the arms as well as the legs.”125 Part of this favorable publicity was due to Gaelic football’s being sufficiently, yet not dangerously physical. In an increasingly industrialized society that didn’t need men turning up to work with broken bones, this was an asset. It was also safer than hurling: one “old time player,” when questioned by the Boston Globe if the game was dangerous, blamed injuries on unskilled players: “People have the idea that hurling is a very rough game, and that the men who play it are bloodthirsty fellows…. This is a mistake for the game is no more dangerous than lacrosse, foot ball or any other sport…. It is one of the finest of outdoor exercises, and should find a prominent place in the country’s sports.126 Outing, a periodical for the more discerning sportsman, highlighted Gaelic football’s positive virtues, a game that could be played on any grassland by any boy or man, thus boosting its prestige: “It is not a brutal exhibition, such as the Rugby rules bring out. In the Irish game the football cannot be lifted from the ground with the hands, and there is no throttling.”127 That Gaelic “rules” were “scientific” was a line that many a later newspaper was keen to attest: “Gaelic football is very much like the old American game,” the New York Times enthused after the I-AAC-Port Chester game of 1890, “except there is more scientific work in it.”128 The Brooklyn Daily Eagle promised that the Kickhams-Barrys meeting at the New Jersey AC Labor Day Carnival of 1892 “will be prepared to put up a game which, for science, speed, agility and daring, have never been equaled outside of the championships of Ireland.”129 The Pittsburg Dispatch claimed: “A game played under the Irish rules is more scientific, while just as exciting as one contested under the Association rules.”130 The San Francisco Morning Call described a game between the Emmets and the Sarsfields as being “played scientifically and without any rough play. When a man’s head came in rough contact with the soft sand he quickly got on his feet, shook himself together and was in the midst of the fray in a twinkling.”131 In December 1892 the same paper quoted Captain Hurley of the San Francisco Parnells as also highlighting Gaelic football’s “scientific” virtues: “We have got the game down to a science, and the public, who like to see real scientific and skillfully played football don’t know what they miss by not coming to see the games under Gaelic rules. The time is coming when Gaelic football will be as thoroughly appreciated as it deserves, and we are satisfied to wait patiently till that time comes.”132 The Hartford Courant in November 1895 was less generous. Finding it impossible to refrain from comparisons with rugby, it observed that the ball being propelled to the opponent’s goal by kicking or hitting of the hand was “the only scientific play of the game.”133 Irish regiments had a long history of playing Gaelic football, and its benefits to Irish doughboys were also propagated.134 John C. O’Connor declared: “We are going to see that all the Celts in Uncle Sam’s Khaki get a chance to see or indulge in their favorite pastime when abroad or in the training camps. There is no better sport in the world for soldiers than Gaelic football.”135 The Advocate, in its campaign to raise funds for the training camp of the Sixty-Ninth,

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enthused: “There are scores of football players and hurlers from every county in Ireland in the famous Sixty-ninth. Baseball, tennis and other such American sports do NOT appeal to these boys, consequently they will feel the loss of the Caman and Gaelic football unless the Irishmen and women of this city get up the necessary funds to supply them.”136 As a contact sport it still had its moments that made the press. In September 1894, James Foley of the O’Connells fractured his leg in a clash with Ward of the Garryowens.137 Six years later, in what the Brooklyn Daily Eagle described as “one of the hardest fought matches” between the Garryowens and the Emeralds at Celtic Park, “several of the players were injured, and one, Richard Moriarty … carried off the field unconscious.”138 Then in 1903, Patrick Carroll of the O’Connells had a collarbone broken in the championship game with the Kickhams.139 But many reporters remained smitten: “In the first place, no one can look on at a game of Irish football without howling. If you want to enjoy the game you must not mind losing your voice,” wrote one from the New York Herald following the O’Connells versus I-AAC game in June 1894. He added that for three days he only held “conversation with my fellow men by signs and in writing,” but that it was worth it: One inning alone is a fair equivalent for half a dozen ordinary voices. The rush for the ball, the tackling, the wrestling and tripping and the frequent skyscraping trips of the big black globe will raise your pulse beats from the normal seventy to the remarkable figure of one hundred or more to the minute. No wonder … that once in awhile some enthusiast gives some one — no matter who — a good belt in the eye.140

So what went wrong? The sport was hindered by such actions as those of the San Francisco Parnells, who failed to turn up to a match against the Emmets in November 1892. “The popularity of the game is now assured,” proclaimed the San Francisco Morning Call. “It won’t do, therefore, for Irishmen to throw cold water upon the game….”141 Similar disruptions were registered in New York in 1895 on the difficulty in traveling to watch games at Ridgewood Park, the discarded old baseball ground that had once been home to the Bridegrooms: “To reach it you must ride five miles … then walk up a muddy railroad track for a third of a mile … [then] wait with what patience you may for the arrival of the teams which may be anything from an hour to an hour and a half after the set time.” As the teams lined up to practice, spectators stood “in mire up to their ankles and [yelled] themselves black in the face in their devotion to the greatest of Irish-American sports.”142 But the biggest setback was undoubtedly the growing reports of player and crowd violence. The 1894 New York Herald article had a paragraph titled: “HOW THEY DID FIGHT!” about one match where it looked like “Donnybrook Fair was boiling”: Young fellows were calling one another — er — qualified non-truthseekers and all sorts of names. They “leapt” up in the air in their eagerness to give one another a clout in the ear. But the middle aged athletes held them back, so no harm was done. They remembered the row of the preceding Sunday in which Hayes closed Condon’s left eye, and there were ructions galore, in which Pat Condon smashed a chair on Hayes’ head.

Despite the young men “spoiling for a bit of ‘divarsion,’” after a period cooling off in the dressing rooms they were all friends again. Indeed, the reporter could see little difference with Yale’s Frank Hinkey, who the previous year punched a policeman at a game, “just because he felt happy.”143 Other newspapers alluded to the violent character of Homo hibernicas. The Chicago Tribune, noted for its anti–Irish prejudice when owned by Joseph Medill, reported spectators armed with sporting implements, ready for more than a last-minute call up to play: “Two or three hundred men who were not players carried ‘hurleys’ too and

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ordinary baseball bats were not scarce.”144 A column in the San Francisco Morning Call in August 1892 described one game as “an indiscriminate mass of sweating, howling, gesticulating, red faced young men … who kicked and scrambled and clawed and struggled for supremacy.”145 Almost a year later the paper bemoaned the decline of the game in the Golden Gate City: “Looking at the situation as it now stands, it is extremely doubtful if Gaelic football will ever become popular unless the belligerent members are weeded out and their places filled by intelligent athletes. The game is superior to all other football games when contested and governed strictly by the rules of Gaelic football, which permits no pugilistic encounters.”146 At the 1895 Shamrocks-Kickhams championship decider where the Kickhams’ captain’s sister went crazy, the Boston Daily Globe noted that the umpire, Mr. Maher, was “so severely punched” that he “will have to stay indoors” for a minimum of a week: “Maher is not certain as to who punched him. He believes there must have been at least a dozen players who hit him.” Meanwhile, Pat McIlroy of the Kickhams suffered a cut face, a broken nose and puffed lips, blaming Shamrocks’ McMahon “for his disfiguration.”147 Later that year the Philadelphia Record ran an article headlined: “GAELIC FOOTBALL ROW: Irish Players Equal the College Men in Brutality.” A game between the Kickhams and the “Garry Owens” at Ridgewood Park failed to finish after descending into a punch-up in the twentieth minute, where “fists and flying missiles played a conspicuous part.” McIlroy was once more injured, being waylaid by a kick in the stomach from the Garryowens Flaherty that required his being carried to the dressing room. The referee tried to calm a row between two players and got hit over the head by a bottle, stopping the game afterwards. Immediately, both teams “lined up around the field” and exchanged insults, before things settled down.148 It was the notorious alcoholic and possibly autistic baseball player Rube Waddell who observed: “In soccer … you kick the man if you miss the ball, and in Gaelic [football] you kick the ball if you miss the man.”149 In 1901, the Boston Globe ran an article with a series of cartoons of the violence at the South End Grounds during the Wolfe Tone and Young Ireland hurling game and the football match between Garryowen and Emmet that followed it for the Massachusetts championships. One was titled “Excited Contestants” and pictured two players being held back by colleagues as they simultaneously swung a punch. The hurling game was particularly marred with incident: “A number of players became excited during the progress of the games and the spectators had a chance to see some lively little scraps in addition to hurley [sic] and football. Two of the hurley players were forced to leave the game on account of being hit on the head and knee pan.”150 The same competition’s final in football two years later, between the Chelsea Emmets and the Brighton Shamrocks, was described in superlatives by the Globe: “No fiercer game of Gaelic football has been played in Boston on a long time….” The game started one hour and a half late and only three hundred spectators were present, but they were entertained by more than the thirty-four men kicking and catching a football around the park: There were some fights among the players and some damage was done. Lillis [of the Shamrocks] sustained a broken wrist, another player’s nose was twisted out of shape and Harrigan’s … jaw was broken…. In a “beautiful scrap” over against the right field fence a Shamrock player showed he was a bit of a fighter. Three of the Emmets went at him, and he gave as good as he received. One of the Emmets was knocked groggy with a left swing on the jaw that would do credit to the best of professional fighters.151

In June 1910 John J. Murphy, the Cork captain, broke his right arm at “the bottom of a scrimmage.” The New York Times observed: “Like all Gaelic football matches, this one

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teemed with rough play, and plenty of excitement…. There were many scratches and cuts, and enough black and blue bruises when the game was over to satisfy both teams.”152 By now even the Irish-American press couldn’t deny that there was a problem. The most self-critical observation of this propensity to violence came in the wake of the 1904 GNYIAA athletic “carnival” which hosted a hurling game between Brooklyn’s Dalys and Troy’s Shamrocks. One Daly player, according to the Gaelic American, “proved himself to be not only a cabóg caman wielder, but a blackguard as well, [making] himself conspicuous by his ruffianly attacks on several of the Troy team….” More than once, the report continued, “force had to be used to restrain him from using his caman on men who were more than his match in a hurling competition.” The newspaper had no option but to call for stronger measures, declaring Irishmen who make a 300-mile round trip to compete in a game should “deserve better treatment than being compelled to defend themselves from such murderous attacks.” It then exploded into an anti–Semitic rant: …as he proved himself to be, will do much to discredit and put a damper on Irish field sports, as well as give American athletes and patrons of field sports the idea that Irishmen cannot enter into competition in any manly pastime without finishing the game in a riot, and thereby giving the Jew newspaper proprietors and reporters a chance to ridicule and belittle Irishmen and Irish sports, as anyone may see by reading an account of the above-mentioned hurling match in the New York World of Monday July 5.153

In 1910 the Irish American Weekly admitted: “Gaelic football has recently gotten into disrepute on one or two occasions through the rough and unsportsmanlike conduct of some of the players…. The patrons of the sport, however, have inaugurated a movement for ‘clean football.’…” It enlisted New York’s two top teams, Kerry and Kildare, to show that the sport could be played without violence and serious injury with a match at the former’s annual outing at Celtic Park. The prize was a cup donated by Mr. T. Moriarty, and only “conduct on the field and scientific play” would be considered when announcing winners.154 While some of this could be excused as the fruits of any contact sport, violence for the sake of it was becoming an increasing by-product, especially attacks on officials. As early as 1892 it had been noted that a match between the Kickhams and the Gaelic Society had taken three days to find anyone brave enough to referee the game.155 However, in an era of continuous “umpire-baiting” at baseball matches, the rare attack on a referee shouldn’t have been deemed as particularly noteworthy, but the negative connotations of drink, gambling and violence with the Irish made it so. In 1900 Michael Kearns was officiating a match between the Kickhams and the O’Connells at the twenty-ninth Long Island Clan na Gael games when he received a “severe beating at the hands of several players” for his troubles. The assault was only resolved by a general “free-for-all fight” between both teams which allowed Kearns enough time to escape the melee and abandon the match by calling it a draw.156 At Madison Square Garden, the Baltimore Sun couldn’t restrain itself in its castigation of the violence of Gaelic football in an article titled: “Strenuous Games? Well!” It would be wise for the individuals who played in it to go to some good life insurance company before taking part in another game. The same can be said of the hurling match…. To see a player sent sprawling on his head or receive a blow on the body that doubled him on the ground and to see a player receive a whack over the shins with great force from one of the hurling sticks were frequent occurrences.

The Sun claimed that the sport appeared devoid of rules, since a player could use all sorts of “foul tactics” without being expelled, adding that a fight broke out between “two little

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men” that required four six-footer coppers to break up. It concluded, with undisguised sniping sarcasm, that the sports were games that “the spectators take part in, and to receive a smash with the ball is nothing,” and suggested fans should consider wearing baseball masks.157 Despite some brief navel-gazing, this criticism stung Irish-Americans. The Gaelic American responded to an article in the New York Times, which suggested that in Gaelic football, “you kick the ball, if you cannot kick the man,” with anger158: Irishmen are wont to play in all their games with earnestness, behind which is marked a burlesque of anger. But … for almost a quarter of a century, and how many players were maimed or killed in Irish football?… A hostile press has too long been attempting to belittle the Irish character, to convey, if possible, the idea that their pastimes flavoured of semi-barbaric character, but that day is past and gone forever…. The clean play which the Irish game fosters is emphasised by the costume of the players, who want neither ear or nose protectors, shoulder or hip pad, masks or leather.159

Even with the eyes of the world on the sport, violence let the game down. The PanAmerican Exposition was a perfect opportunity to showcase Gaelic football, but rough play led the Buffalo Evening News to write: “[It] has got the regulation college game scraped to a polish. Black eyes, bloody noses and cracked heads were much in evidence by the time the first half was over. The game resembled a free fight more than anything else.”160 Two years later, the 1903 Tailteann Games included a football match between the Irish Volunteers and the Kerrymen’s Association which descended into a “regular slugging match” after “an expert at tripping a runner, sent several of the Volunteers sprawling to the ground during a wild rush to get the ball. Then the Kerry player was pounced upon and would have been roughly handled had not the combatants been separated.”161 The 1909 “Championship of America,” supposedly the showpiece of the GAA in the States, was fought, literally, between selects from New York and Chicago at Gaelic Park and interrupted three times: twice through injuries and the third by “an impromptu fight.”162 The one Irish sport that did gain non–Irish popularity in America was handball. James Corbett replied succinctly when asked what he considered was the best exercise for a professional athlete: “Handball first, last and all the time.”163 Growing from an almost exclusive Irish pastime in the nineteenth century, it soon spread to the parts of the Union with little Irish community. By 1892, one paper in Denver claimed: “Handball, which at present is all the rage at the Denver Athletic club, may be called distinctly an Irish game, but it is now popular all over America.”164 However, the sport took a notably different route than Gaelic football or hurling in the American sporting conscience: it had a national championship twenty years prior to the arrival of the “Gaelic Invasion,” with an American codified version, even if drafted by an Irishman and similar to the Irish game. Finally, it was a professional sport, even obtaining its own Spalding Handbook. Indeed, despite its foreign origins, payment and blue-collar participation, it was popular among the press from the start, who were willing to advertise the game’s positive attributes as they had with other Irish sports. In a period when baseball still had its critics, handball provided a wholesome pastime to Brooklyn’s youth and was promoted across the country in various, often syndicated, press articles. The Wichita Eagle of April 9, 1889, wrote: “As a sport it has but few equals, and quick must be the man in his every movement who can play the game.”165 A year later Frederick R. Burton penned in the Pittsburgh Dispatch: “It will not be surprising if handball should gain much in popularity

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during the next few years. It is a gentlemanly amusement, and productive of the most beneficial physical effects.”166 The Brooklyn Daily Eagle described handball as being “nearly a century past one of the favorite pastimes of the Irish people,” which it noted was an “offshoot of the old [English] game of Fives”: One peculiar merit of the game, which commended it to the inhabitants of the Green Isle, was its simplicity and economy. A piece of clear ground by the side of a brick house, and a small ball, with four contestants, comprises all that is absolutely necessary to play a match … though a well fitted hand ball court would of course be preferable…. The game had become popular this season, especially with our Irish fellow citizens, who claim it as one of their national sports. It requires keen sight, plenty of endurance and great activity of movement as well as sound judgment.167

A year later the same paper noted: “What cricket is to the Englishman and base ball to the American, so is hand ball to the Irishman; it is his national game of ball. It is a game just suited to Irishmen, requiring, as it does, plenty of pluck, activity and endurance. In fact when played up to its highest mark it obliges him to dance round to the liveliest of tunes… .”168 As author of both reports, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle had good reason to be a keen promoter. As it would admit later: “Hand ball is the game that now engages the attention of Brooklyn’s muscular young men, because the champion of America is a native of this city… .”169 Brooklyn was home to two of the three first Irish-born “American” stars: The former prizefighter James Dunne and the greatest handball player of the century, Phil Casey. Casey would extol handball’s virtues in an April 1893 edition of the Salt Lake Herald: “The physical benefit of this game is that it develops every muscle in your body. It makes you wonderfully active.”170 Born in Mountrath, County Laois, in September 1845, Casey learned to play the sport while attending school.171 Within seven years of arriving in the States in 1861, Casey was American champion, defeating at the old Racquet Court at W. Thirteenth Street and Fifth Avenue sometime in 1868 Barney McQuade, the owner of a court at 404 Madison Street, Manhattan.172 No contemporary reports of the match could be found, but the Chicago Tribune covered the first leg of the 1872 doubles championship between Casey and his partner James Everett, and the Windy City duo of James O’Brien and William Foley refereed by Jim Dunne.173 It took two decades after defeating McQuade for Casey to win the world championship. Word had reached the then Irish champion, John Lawlor, of the Laoisman’s talent following a visit to Cork by “Bulldozer” Jim Dunne.174 Two twenty-one game matches were brokered to be played in Cork and Brooklyn; Lawlor took the first series in Cork, with the return at the Brooklyn Handball Club on Degraw Street watched by five hundred men paying an astronomical five dollars to witness Casey win the series. 175 The Brooklyn Daily Eagle described the clash as “the finest exhibition of the beauties of the exciting game ever seen” in the States: “The old English game … known centuries ago as “Fives” but which, for the past fifty years has been popular in Ireland and in this country under the modernized name of hand ball, and which has of late years lost ground in this city owing to the absence here of a suitable court to play in, promises to become as much of a favorite pastime with our Irish citizens as it ever was…”176 The rivalry would, however, descend into acrimony. A report suggested Lawlor made disparaging remarks about the opposition in America.177 A further dispute over the rules prevented any rematch in 1894, with Casey opining contemptuously: “It was not necessary for him to wait several years until I had begun to get old before challenging me.” Lawlor’s problem was with the two modifications Casey had made

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to the Irish rules, one of which concerned the initial serve, declaring: “Well, Casey is mistaken in thinking I will eventually come around and play him according to his own rules.”178 He added in another report: “Casey made a lot of rules just fitting his style of play, got a few friends to sign them, and now wants all the world to conform to them. I want to play Casey on some other court than his own and under the rules that have been in existence for hundreds of years.”179 There were no further matches between the two players.180 Casey’s contemporaries through to the end of the nineteenth century were overwhelmingly Irish: Along with McQuade and Dunne, there were Michael and James Burke, Miles O’Connor, Daniel O’Neill, James O’Brien, William Foley, Frank Burke, James McEvoy, William Carney, William McGurn and Tom Murphy.181 The sport spread across the country, with James O’Brien and William Foley in Chicago, while on the West Coast, San Francisco’s handball center was Phil Ryan’s court on Howard Street, where Casey and Dunne “played some exciting rubbers” there.182 When he finally relinquished his world crown undefeated in 1897, Casey informed any pretenders: “Now, boys, I have met all comers since 1868, and never have been beaten single-handed in all these twenty-nine years. I am now fifty-two years old and think it is about time for me to give some other man a chance. I relinquish the championship, and now you can fight it out among you.”183 By 1903, the professional championship still pitted Irish names, with Jersey City’s Mike Egan, the game’s first champion when the AAU took control in 1897, and Chicago’s Louis Keegan, described as “the cleverest men at the game to-day.”184 Casey, however, was more than just a proficient player in a relatively minor sport. He was a lot closer to the destiny and success of handball than Doubleday was for baseball, and not far off Naismith’s relationship to basketball. He founded the Brooklyn Handball Club and set up his own alley in the 1870s on Douglass Street, then in November 1887 opened a superior court on Degraw Street.185 His club’s rules became recognized as the American code for the game.186 By 1894 he’d declare confidently: “Every year handball is growing more and more in favor in America.” There are now dozens of courts scattered over the country from Brooklyn to San Francisco and I believe the day will come when nearly every sport loving man, boy and girl will participate in the pleasures and benefits of this great game. It is simple to learn, it is the very best exercise in the world, and years of play will add years of life to any devotee of the sport. I have been playing handball for 40 years, and I never had a doctor. At 50 I am in the very best physical condition, and I attribute my excellent health to the efficient effect of handball.

He gave a less patriotic spin to the sport’s origins than he needed to, telling reporters that it was played by the Romans twenty years before “the time of Christ.” And though it had been contested in Ireland for over a century, “the Spaniards claim to have introduced the sport to the sons of Erin.”187 As evidence of its positive virtues, Casey pointed out that both Corbett and John L. Sullivan were fans: “[Corbett] doubtless owes much of his phenomenal quickness on his feet to his faithful practice on a handball court.”188 As chief organizer for both the 1901 Buffalo Pan-American games and the 1904 Olympics, James E. Sullivan boosted Gaelic sports by including them in both events. From a financial viewpoint, Sullivan had long known that “Irish athletics was [also] a Mecca for many non–Irish athletes,” while his “Irish Games at the Garden” in December 1902 attracted three hundred entries, including Arthur Duffey.189 As early as the Chicago World Fair of September 1893, Irish athletics was given prominence at these events. Here an invitation had been forwarded to the GAA in New York for

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a team of Irish athletes to participate in the fair’s own “Irish Day.”190 For the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco of March 1915, as early as November 1913 San Francisco’s Gaelic clubs prepared to be present at the event.191 In the end Gaelic football and hurling accompanied a track and field event and intriguingly a horse show “under the direction of William H. Humphries of the Olympic club” at the exposition stadium on St. Patrick’s Day,192 and although further dates were set for three days between September 20 and 22, there is no record of any other events taking place.193 Tours of Ireland were also mooted, as in 1906 when the boast came that the game in the States was superior: “There are many fine teams playing Gaelic football on the other side of the channel, and the Americans will have no difficulty in securing worthy opponents.”194 The following year Kilkenny, the New York champions, and the Wolfe Tones of New Jersey met to decide who would play Kildare at Jones Road, Dublin, for the “World’s championship.”195 The planned visit fell through, although an All-American team of footballers would play six games in Ireland two years later.196 For all this, Gaelic games remained a minor attraction in the sporting minds of the Irish diaspora. When it came to team sports, the Irish-American athlete was drawn towards baseball and later American football, basketball and ice hockey, and even when it finally became an intranational sport, soccer. One attraction was money, but this does not explain why Gaelic football failed to be accepted within colleges and universities, especially the Catholic ones, until very late in the twentieth century when a more sophisticated, usually postgraduate student, arrived from Ireland. James E. Sullivan’s Pastime AC played the game, but outside the Irish-American clubs there were few takers.197 There were two other important factors that kept these games a minority ethnic sport. First, the American public, despite the initial good press, were lukewarm to foreign team sports, and of the four major sports in the States, while at least three have origins in Europe, all were codified in North America.198 The second reason, though, is the sole fault of the Gaelic Athletic Association itself. The GAA, as Bairner points out, became “the best example of a sporting organization formed for the precise purpose of producing and reproducing a sense of national identity.”199 But as Darby claims, from the outset, the “Gaels” saw Irish sports as a means “to conjure senses of Irishness that were rooted in romanticized, mythical and certainly ‘invented’ visions of Ireland as a rural idyll, populated by Gaelic speaking, manly and sport-loving Celts.” Inevitably this “constructed a sense of continuity between their Irish past and an American present.”200 The move in New York to county sides cemented the argument that it was imperative to have been born in, have family from, or lived in a certain Irish county to get onto a team — even if the reality of “qualification” wasn’t always so — thus limiting these clubs to those of Irish ethnicity or birth. Darby also considers that those that joined the GAA in America up to the foundation of the Irish Free State saw “involvement … as an extension of a belligerent, Anglophobic, politicized, ethnic version of Irishness, one that was fashioned by their experienced, real or imagined, of British repression in Ireland and of their experiences of exile in the U.S.”201 McCarthy, meanwhile, suggests that the GAA was immensely ethnocentric to the almost absurd: “The GAA’s efforts to revive athletic pastimes would see it shun the modernization and internationalization of sporting competition in part because it did not distinguish such modernization from Anglicization.”202 The GAA used Gaelic games to insulate the Irish from the rest of the world, being exclusive in its own rules regarding membership, with three bans on members’ competing for rival athletic associations.203 From 1896, the lack of cooperation with other Irish sporting

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bodies also cost many an athlete the chance to compete for Olympic medals.204 All this suggests that the GAA spent more time and energy in keeping people away than actually encouraging anyone to join in Irish sports. With such an uncompromisingly insular attitude, Gaelic games were destined to remain on the periphery of American sports and forever dependent on the fluctuations of immigration, although occasionally clubs would reach out to those outside their ethnic orbit, as in 1896, when the Chicago GAA played a game of football against the Scottish Thistles club in an early form of compromise rules.205 Arguably the most important athletic promotions of Irish identity were the attempts to revive the Tailteann games. Originally the games were named in honor of Tailté, the Iberian-born wife of the King of the Firbolgs, Eochaidh Mac Erc,206 and according to the Chicago Tribune, ran from July 6 to well into August. “Thousands of the men and women of Erin attended and throughout his life Lewy [sic] of the Long Hand held the celebration at intervals of three years”; these continued until after the Norman invasion of the twelfth century.207 The games’ history not only predated the Celtic invasion of Ireland, but also the Greek Olympics by 1200 years, operating just like the Pan-Hellenic games as much as a festival of culture and intelligence as one of muscle.208 As the 1908 Olympiad was wrapped up, the Irish World noted that that Tailteann deserved the same recognition as Olympia: The forgoing reflection suggests to us that of all places on the world the second of the … revived Olympian international games (the first having been held at Athens) should have been Tailtean [sic]…. But we think … Ireland after a hearing would get due recognition, and that before many years the annual event would be held at ancient Tailtean [sic], modernized … but still ancient enough to inspire the Gael to maintain his reputation against all comers.209

But in contrast to Irish attempts at a revival, the Irish in America saw them as not only as a means of showcasing Irish sports such as hurling, but as a rival to the popular Caledonian Games.210 Proponents of the Tailteann Games were keen to connect the two events. At a banquet held by the Knights of Columba at Donnelly’s Hotel, College Point, Long Island, following their “Outing and Games,” Thomas Lonergan spoke of “The Celt in Field and Track Athletics,” a speech “punctuated by applause from start to finish,” according to the Gaelic American: “From time immemorial the sons of Erin have played a most conspicuous part in every branch of athletic sports. The Celt takes to athletics like a duck to water. Nearly all the world’s champions and record holders in … athletics at present are Irish by birth or descent.” Lonergan was keen to stamp the legitimacy of Ireland as the mother of sports: When and where did athletic games originate? In Ireland, almost 2,000 years before the Christian era. The “Annals of the Four Masters” tell us that the Tailtan [sic] games were instituted in ancient Ireland at a place now known as Telltown…. Those games developed mighty heroes, the greatest of whom was Cuchullain, who has been aptly called the Hercules of Hibernia. The Anglo-Norman invasion put an end to the Tailtan [sic] games as a national festival, but foreign domination and persecution have been unable to destroy the physical vigor and scientific skill of the Celt, and to-day, after centuries of oppression, he stands out in bold relief, a champion in almost every branch of athletic sports, in Europe, Australia and America.

Irish cultural, even genetical, inheritance was “preserved” within the “Celt,” in “his individuality in every country and every age,” wherever he may be born: In modern times he has developed and cultivated, under adverse circumstances, his physical and mental powers to a very high degree…. During the past 3,000 years, civilizations, like

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individuals, have come and passed away. Empires and republics have flourished and perished. Races for a brief period of time, rose to eminence in peace and in war, then declined and very soon lost their identity among their people of the earth; but the old Celtic race still survives in all its pristine vigor, exhibiting to the world, in every walk of life, and in every department of human activity, the highest types of physical strength, marvelous endurance, superb courage, intellectual brilliancy, noble enthusiasm and lofty ideals.211

The first revival was attempted by the IAC in Boston. Through the efforts of John Boyle O’Reilly, the 1881 annual picnic was described by the Boston Herald as being “in some such form as that seen at Tailte in ancient Ireland.”212 Five years later the club marketed its annual picnic on June 17, 1886, at Oak Island Grove, Revere Beach, as a so-called “Aonach,” a word the Boston Globe described as a literal translation for a “fair” which had “originated in [the] funeral games, celebrated in pagan times” to honor of chieftains and returning warriors.213 In 1889 came the first “Tailtean [sic] Games” in the States. Hosted by “the Irish Nationalists of Boston” at Oak Island on July 25, the Boston Globe advertised it as “deserv[ing] more than a passing notice.” Further events followed, like the “Irish Olympics” hosted by the Gaelic Society at its Woodside grounds in 1891.214 But it took the opening of Celtic Park in 1899 to provide Laurel Hill as the Tailteann Games’ own Panithinaiko Stadium. In 1903 the Greater New York Irish AC announced that the “Tailtin [sic] games” would return once more for Labor Day. The New York Times suggested optimistically that: “Henceforth, every year will witness a set of these games until they become an annual institution.”215 The games were given extensive coverage in the press, with the New York Times commenting: “From the earliest records of Irish warfare it appears that the javelin was used at the battle of Magh Tuireadh, 1272 BC, by both the Firbolgs, Ireland’s primitive people, and the Tuatha De Daraans. It is stated that the accoutrements of a Firbolg warrior were a craisech or thick handled spear for thrusting, a javelin or light spear and a sword.” It also added that Cuhulin [sic] was “the greatest thrower of all” and could throw the javelin with such accuracy from more than a quarter mile straight through a man.216 Despite the Caledonian Games’ being held on the same day nearby, the event was a resounding success; three world records were broken with one disallowed,217 while members of the John Daly AC of Brooklyn and Emmetts Club of Buffalo contested the striking of the hurling ball, which “was dribbled by a stick resembling those used in hurling and when off the ground would be hit for distance.” A then record crowd for Celtic Park of eight thousand attended, a huge figure when compared with the 7,455 that turned up for the final game of the World Series a month later in Boston.218 The following year’s games, “the two thousand nine hundred and fifty-first celebration,” drew between three and four thousand, according to the New York Times, and ten thousand patrons were cited by the Gaelic American. According to the Times these “lovers of Irish sports filled every available seat and all the desirable standing room yesterday at Celtic Park,” to witness “the tailtin [sic] games, being the modern revival of Ireland’s famous athletic contests, as the Olympic games are the revival of the ancient Greek sports.”219 McCarthy writes that such was the Irish-American athletic enthusiasm for this event that many athletes made a “dash that very afternoon” from St. Louis to be present.220 The 1905 games’ crowd, however, shrank to two thousand, followed by an absence of three years when the Italian middle distance runner Emilio Lunghi was the star attraction.221 The 1910 games, watched in front of 10,000 people, were the most successful since 1903, and also had three world records broken with one disallowed.222 But this was to be the final Tailteann Games at Celtic Park; the following year’s event, also attended by 10,000 patrons

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who saw three world records broken, were known merely as the I-AAC Annual Games, while the 1912 event doubled as the AAU National All-Round Championships.223 Chicago took up the baton put down by New York in 1913, with Father Fielding attempting to establish a permanent revival, and other moves to rival the I-AAC. This effort got support from one of the Big Apple’s biggest athletes, Matt McGrath, who diplomatically predicted Gaelic Park could soon rival Celtic Park: “There are hundreds of Irishmen in this town who have the natural ability to become great athletes if the proper facilities for training and the desired competition obtained…. We are willing to impart our knowledge of weight throwing to any of them who care to listen to our instructions.” The initial tournament was finally scheduled for July 6 and included tossing the caber, tug-of-war and weightlifting, and an obligatory hurling game matching the city’s best fifteen with Detroit, while “Czar” Sullivan acted as the honorary referee.224 The games continued for two more years; the 1914 edition was won by the “Orphans,” a team made up of largely Illinois AC “stars,” with the Chicago I-AAC coming second, and the Knights of Columbus third.225 In 1915, the winners were the Danish-American Athletic Club, beating the CI-AAC by one point in front of 3,000 spectators.226 The American revival of the Tailteann Games had finally been incorporated into the mainstream, which didn’t help it survive. Despite its attempts at imitating de Coubertin’s Olympic revival, and the winning of the 1915 Chicago games by Danes, the Tailteann Games were essentially a parochial affair. It wasn’t a major international event, nor indeed did it bring together all of America’s ethnic Irish athletes; and hardly any athletes competed in New York who weren’t from the metropolitan area, as much because of political splits within the Clan na Gael as any travel difficulties. By 1920, American professional sports was still dominated by baseball. None of the other three games that would join baseball as one of the four major American sports had so far any significant success with their professional leagues, and their presence in the major baseball cities had bordered on negligible.227 Despite this, Irish clubs played a significant role in these sports’ infancy. While not a professional outfit — at least officially — the I-AAC had run an ice hockey team from 1912, entering it in the American Amateur Hockey League, hoping “the ice … will sustain their athletic standard.”228 Run by James C. O’Brien, former coach of the Columbia hockey team and “one of the oldest and most experienced players in the United States and an excellent judge of players,” this was one of the very few non-athletic sports the third I-AAC ventured into.229 While it never achieved the success of athletics, Spalding’s Official Ice Hockey Guide 1915 did suggest that it was not “until close to the end of the season that the rival ice demons succeeded in removing the O’Brien ‘Winged Fist’ aggregation as a menace to the leaders.”230 One report in the New York Times describes a game at St. Nicholas Ice Rink between the “green jerseyed Irish-Americans” and the Wanderers: No wonder there was a lot of noise. Jimmy O’Brien, the chaperon of the Irish club was so happy that he volunteered the information that his team would grab the pennant. Sure. There were some little accidents. Kilgour of the Irish and MacDonnell of the Wanderers got into an extremely complicated mix-up and tried to smash each other on the top of the head with their sticks. Both made poor shots and didn’t land…. Referee Billy Russell … said if they did it again they would both go to the Tombs.231

Of much more success was a small basketball team originating in the traditional Irish neighborhoods of southern Manhattan and initially playing mostly out of the Seventy-First

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Regiment Armory on Thirty-Fourth Street. Its name would one day come to dominate the world in its sports, but it would have to do it 220 miles up the coast in Boston.232 Founded and managed by Frank “Tip” McCormack, the New York Celtics started out in 1916 as a West Side settlement house team composed of Irish players who reflected “the ethnic composition of the neighborhood….” Joe Williams of the Brooklyn Eagle described the club as a “third rate light team from … Hudson Guild and ‘Hell’s Kitchen,’” containing local youths with names like Barry, Nally, Hart, “Specks” McCormack, Calhoun and Gargan.233 When McCormack entered the army in 1917 he handed the team over to two brothers, James and Thomas Furey, the latter a nightclub owner who envisioned the team filling his nightclub with cranks by capitalizing on the club’s Irishness. However, on his return, McCormack refused to concede the team’s name without a fight or financial recompense. In response, Furey got round this obstacle with an outstanding piece of chutzpah: he renamed the team, without any hint of irony, the “Original Celtics,” retaining its better players.234 The OCs spent the next couple of years barnstorming before taking up vacated positions in the professional leagues during the early twenties. Their successful run of results was impressive primarily because they possessed what Nelson cites as a stable, ever-present squad with a cozy intra-familiarity absent among others.235 It was something the sportswriter Tom Meany spotted when he wrote in 1948: “[The] Celtics were the first team, in the true sense of the term, in basketball; because, for the first time, five men played together, night after night, from the start of the season until its finish.”236 Furey further bolstered the OCs in 1920 by acquiring players without Irish connections, and in a pioneering move, became the first basketball manager to insist on “exclusive” contracts that demanded players could play for no one else.237 Yet Furey had a battle on his hands: it wasn’t baseball that was taking his audience, but newer leisure activities, such as the motion picture industry, that were distracting prospective customers. During the infancy of professional basketball the OCs’ stages varied from casinos to opera houses. With limited capacity, wages and hall fees, and small attendance, the money the brothers were making couldn’t have been significant. The Evening World reported in March 1920 that the Celtics were playing every Sunday afternoon at the Central Opera House with “4,000 fans … always on hand to witness its games” played by a team “composed of the pick of local talent.”238 Sometimes over ten thousand patrons would come, as when they defeated the Canadian champions, the Half Moon, at the Seventy-First Regiment Armory in December 1920, the largest attendance ever seen at a basketball game.239 Other games were watched by as few as 1,500 fans.240 Irish immigrants in a number of countries have been noted for founding successful sporting clubs that have reached the top. Clubs such as Glasgow Celtic and Hibernians of Edinburgh in soccer and London Irish in rugby are three such examples. To them must be added the Irish-American Athletic Club. But unlike these others the I-AAC no longer exists. In America, as noted, a number of top Irish athletic clubs were established stretching from Boston to San Francisco. However, without doubt it was the New York club’s third incarnation that made the biggest impact of any such organization in America. The I-AAC’s meteoric rise and fall was akin to a young movie actor or rock star bursting onto the stage and taking the world by storm, before being tragically taken away in his prime: this was the Marilyn Monroe, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix of sporting clubs. But as Alan S. Katchen puts it, the I-AAC was “far more than some Broadway stereotype of wild Irish characters, with their ‘tremendous, earthy humor,’ or worse, the incarnation of the Victorians’ Celto-

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phobic images of drunken, apelike Paddys.”241 The club sought to raise the reputation of the Irish in America, working closely with other interested parties in the community. In fact, organizations such as the AOH, CnG, GAA and I-AAC were so closely interconnected it was hard to see where one began and the other ended as Celtic Park became the home for every Irish “picnic” and athletic meeting. There were other more important matters of common interest. As Kevin McCarthy recalls, the Irish American described how a “movement to clean up the vile and vulgar caricatures of the Irish off the stage took recent and drastic forms in this city [New York] and in Philadelphia.” Productions of and similar to The Playboy of the Western World were infuriating Irish America with the demeaning “Stage Irishman.” Eight years before Playboy landed, a performance of McFadden’s Row of Flats at the New Star Theatre “received the attention from an organized effort carefully planned by members of the [CnG] and the [AOH], reinforced by members of the Greater New York Irish Athletic Association.” Performers fled the stage as a downpour of rotten eggs and “decayed vegetables” rained down. The Irish American concluded defiantly: “A boycott on all such theatres and players as offend in this manner will have a healthy and quick effect in putting a stop to the evil.”242 The club changed its name from the GNYIAA to the more succinct “Irish-American Athletic Club” in January 1905. In that year the club’s annual report underlined the financial stability of the club, stating “the excess of assets over liabilities amount to $33,473.02.”243 By then it was the best athletic club in the country, having broken the NYAC’s team stranglehold of twenty-odd years on the AAU Championships, a month before the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis.244 It elicited a stunning change of balance of power that would last — with the exception of the two years that they failed to attend, due to the championships’ being held on the West Coast — more than a decade. However, the success of the I-AAC relied on being more than an exclusively Irish club. While numbers grew, Irish clubs still didn’t have the facilities to compete with their elite rivals. The best Irish athletes, like Mitchell, Conneff and John Francis Cregan, Princeton’s “outstanding athlete of the nineteenth century,” had little choice but to join the likes of the NYAC if they wanted to further their athletic promise.245 As early as 1879, when the first Irish-American club was founded, the Irish American Weekly demanded an Irish club for Irish identity that was stifled elsewhere: “[Here] in New York and vicinity, where so many Irish and Irish-Americans have settled, no opportunity was afforded to develop their superior qualities as athletes, except in clubs where their identity as a nationality was entirely lost sight of, and some other nationality carried off the credit of their prowess.”246 But the Irish-American Athletic Club failed twice in the next two decades, and a radical approach to admissions needed to be made. Ironically, the success of the Greater New York Irish Athletic Association rested on its being derided as the “Poor Man’s Club” of New York athletics. As McCarthy notes, the “difficulties for the Irish in gaining acceptance among the elite of such as the [NYAC] led the immigrants to effectively set up their own club….”247 In its 1905 report the club admitted as such by acknowledging the financial challenges of its athletes: “The intensity of our feelings upon beholding our men struggling against the most adverse circumstances, impelled us to secure for them the best facilities possible, even if somewhat expensive.”248 The kudos gained were reinforced by Daniel F. Cohalan’s speech at the Astor in 1906, welcoming back athletes from Athens. Ignoring the contradiction of holding a banquet in one of the Big Apple’s top hotels, the judge hailed “a poor man’s club that had won 32 points of the 75 of the American team at Athens.”249 In Alan S. Katchen’s biography, Abel Kiviat, a Jewish two-time Olympic medalist, who won two American mile championships in the white vest

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with the club, recalled the wealth disparity between the club and the NYAC, which “the wealthier boys” tended to join250: “[The I-AAC had] very few college men. [It] was made up of guys out of grammar school or from high school or kids who worked. If you could run or jump, you could try out.” This lack of snobbery and exclusivity thus enhanced it in ways it couldn’t appreciate at the outset. Kiviat was clearly impressed by the club he joined in 1909, and not just because of its reputation as an “athletic powerhouse.” He felt at ease with the club’s administrators’ “democratic approach … [that] stood in stark contrast to … the NYAC.”251 It wasn’t just that the club gave an opportunity for every Irish athletic protégé in New York to become a top athlete, regardless of job or wealth. It gave every male athlete this opportunity. Indeed, there was a certain contradiction in a club that simultaneously held the exclusive title of Irish-American, yet welcomed athletes that were neither Irish, Catholic or even white. For respectability, the I-AAC could at least claim to be one of the earliest promoters of sporting integration. While the NYAC was cool towards recruiting non–Northern European Christians, the I-AAC snatched up Jewish athletes. After leaving Syracuse University, Myer Prinstein, a Polish-born Jew, joined. Other Jewish athletes followed, including Harry Hyman and Alvah Meyer. Non-American athletes visiting or settling in New York also opted for the Winged Fist vest. Swedish Olympic gold medalist John Eke, the original “Flying Finn” Hannes Kolehmainen, the Italian Emilio Lunghi, and the Scot Lawson Robertson also joined the club.252 No longer did top athletes moving to America, permanently or temporarily, need to ingratiate themselves with the snobs at the NYAC. Even English ex-pats like the Lincolnshire-born Harold Wilson, whom Mel Sheppard beat in the 1500 meters in London, joined in 1909, preferring the I-AAC to the more Anglocentric NYAC.253 Non-Irish Americans like Sheppard and Emil Muller also enlisted, and after the 1908 Olympics, the club was bolstered by others such as Harvey Cohn, Ralph Young, Edward Cook and John Eller. The club owed its success to its coaches, particularly the Swedish-American Ernie Hjertberg and Lawson Robertson. Hjertberg’s innovative techniques in training, expounded in his 1914 thesis, Athletics in Theory and Practice, were ahead of their time, while Robertson advocated a novel approach to a healthy diet and preparation. Combined with an “aggressive” recruitment policy, they ensured the I-AAC’s success.254 Graeme Kent celebrates, not without some justification, the I-AAC as a club with a “cornucopia of extroverted star athletes and relaxed atmosphere towards its members accruing ‘expenses.’”255 This was a sentiment echoed elsewhere in other, less successful, Irish athletic clubs, like when the Kerry-born Irish 56lb. champion, Pat Donovan, settled in San Francisco in 1908 and competed as an unattached athlete before opting for the San Francisco I-AAC rather than the more established Olympic AC.256 Described by the San Francisco Call as “a fine specimen of an athlete, big and symmetrically built,” he went on to have a huge local rivalry with the Olympic AC’s Ole Snedigar and then Ralph Rose, before taking on the 56-lb. world record holder, Con Walsh, in February 1912.257 Later that September he smashed Matt McGrath’s world record for the 56lb. weight for height after he had left the now failing Irish-Americans for the Pastime AC. He later broke the indoor 56-lb. weight record in 1914.258 Significantly, the most progressive move made by the club was the recruitment of black athletes. Excluded from baseball, African Americans were also stopped from entering top athletic institutions like the NYAC. Their only hope of competition was through varsity teams; while certain universities were more welcoming than others, the high educational standards and finances required handicapped most blacks, although once there, athletics offered the African American opportunities to compete with the best. In March 1907 the

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I-AAC made the decision to remove “the color line,” incurring huge ramifications for the club’s reputation and identity. John Baxter Taylor had just graduated from the University of Pennsylvania as a vet, having been coached by Mike Murphy. He became an instant hit with the Celtic Park audience, although the fact that he was still a student entailed that his running was initially limited. An intrigued Washington Post claimed in September 1907: “It may be said that there is no athlete more popular with the Celtic Park crowd than Taylor. In fact, it is hard to say whether even Martin Sheridan, well liked though he is, is more highly considered than the Negro lad…. Every man of the Irish contingent around the track roots himself hoarse to see Taylor win.”259 However, one report, if accurate, described the polemic that preceded accepting Taylor’s admittance, which the New York Mail described as “a fine burst of eloquence on the part of several members” of the club’s hierarchy. “‘We don’t want a naygur in oor club,’ said one. ‘We have enrolled on our lists the foam of the Irish aristocracy and it behaves us to draw the color line in self-respect.’” The Mail feared that there were as many in favor of keeping Taylor out as signing him up, “and it sure did look bad for the speedy smoke until President Conway, liberal minded, genial and democratic in the extreme, took the floor”: “Gintlemin,” said he, “the greatest runner we have in our club … is a Dootchmin [Bonhag]. The greatest broad jumper in the wurruld … is a member of our club, and a Jew [Prinstein]…. Now if our name was the Irish AC, these names might look inconglomerinous (whatever that is), but it is not. Our name is the Irish-American Athletic Club, and under that wurrud, American, comes our justifcableness in having these Dootchmin and Jews as our fellow-members, an’ where there’s room for Dootchmin and Jews, there’s no excuse in this wurruld for keeping out a man like this excellent naygur, more power to his lungs and speed to his legs.”

After this forceful speech, Taylor was unanimously elected amid “tremendous applause” with the members exiting to the bar “still cheering.”260 John B. Taylor’s stay at Celtic Park was sadly brief. Despite having an excellent 1908, going to the London Olympics, and becoming not only the first black athlete to represent the United States but also the first to win a gold at the Olympics, in late autumn he contracted typhoid fever and passed away on December 2, 1908, aged only twenty-six.261 But his recruitment, and the whole “anyone welcome” policy, became something that other Irish athletic clubs wished to emulate. Some of Boston’s Irish athletes wanted to mirror this egalitarianism when it sought to establish an Irish athletic club to rival the exclusive Boston A A, in 1911. Dr. John McDonnell, a former weight thrower with the by-now crumbling South Boston AC, echoed this, telling the Boston Journal: I have always been interested in the organization of an Irish-American athletic club in Greater Boston and believe in developing athletes who will stick to a club that has brought them from the novice state into the championship John B. Taylor, the first African American to win an Olympic gold, proved that the I-AAC had an open-door policy to all men (courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania Archives, 20020129003).

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class…. I will always be ready to add my mite in furthering the interests of a local club that will have among its prime objects the development of athletes who are not born with gold spoons in their mouths.

The Journal added that the New York I-AAC “numbers Hebrew and gentile in its ranks … and J.B. Taylor … also wore the winged fist.”262 It took, however, two more years before anything came of the proposal. Then the Journal reported that an athletic club was close to being formed to rival the BAA: “[T]he cause of amateur athletics should profit by a rivalry which will benefit both the wearers of the unicorn and those who will sport the emblem of the new Irish-American AA of Boston.” Promising a program of sports that mixed standard track and field with Irish games, the new club claimed its first scalp when William C. Prout, the BAA’s former captain, resigned to become the club’s first president, although he also continued as a member of the BAA. McDonnell was elected treasurer while a former colleague at the SBAC, Noble S. Ray, became the club’s secretary. Optimism was high, with projections offered of a membership of a thousand members by the New Year.263 Chicago’s new CI-AAC was replete with non–Irish surnames, such as sprinters O.V. Van Camp and F.V. Belote, the latter described as “equal, if not the superior of any in the country,” and who would compete at the 1912 Olympics, although it’s unknown if the CIAAC contained black runners.264 However, one of Taylor’s “colored” colleagues in London, the Brazilian-born Frank LeRoy Holmes, did compete for the Illinois GAA at its annual games that year, with Jack Proctor of the Chicago Tribune observing that he was “fast acquiring the Irish brogue.”265 Despite of the loss of Taylor, the year closed with the I-AAC at the summit of their sport. Within a matter of years Celtic Park would decline, passing through voluntary closure for America’s involvement in World War I, to being a notorious center for illicit boozing during prohibition where shoot-outs were common, and winding up as a venue for greyhound racing, that would ultimately culminate in its death. No one can overestimate the role the I-AAC played in defining the sporting identity of Irish America, or the role that Celtic Park played in being the home to Irish athletic events in the New York metropolitan area. But the I-AAC also had a hand in cultivating the sporting identity of the United States itself with regards to the rest of the world at a time when international sports was becoming a vehicle for nationalistic expression.

14 Skedaddle — The Irish Sportsman and International Competition The term “skedaddle” comes from “sciord ar dólámh: to flee or fly quickly.”1

Following General Lee’s surrender at the Appomattox Court House in 1865, the prestige of the United States grew over the coming decades. From the horrors of its own internal conflict, America emerged stronger if not quite as “united” as its name proclaimed, with the defeat of Spain in the Spanish-American War of 1898 sowing the seeds of a future superpower. Soon the question arose about what exactly it entailed to be an American. The country had become increasingly heterogeneous by the nineties, increasing what Nina Silber sees as the quest for a “new, secular, and tangible focus for American national loyalty” in a period when “older values” of the community and church were in decline.2 And as the States moved into industrialization, it assumed many of the symbols and practices of established countries. Dislocation destroyed old social orders, and elite groups were challenged, especially through the threat of class war. Increasingly, sports was used as a pillar of nationalism, not only by showing that the United States was culturally confident enough to devise its own sports, but that Americans were sufficiently athletic and intelligent to take on and beat the old world at their games. International sports would unite a country into, as Benedict Anderson suggested, an “imagined community” where no matter how small it was, no person could know everybody else in it.3 In 1865 there was, of course, a problem. Most American sporting representatives were Irish-born, and by 1880 they were still in the ascendancy in prizefighting, billiards, and pedestrianism. The greatest athletic internationals of the seventies and early eighties concerned not Americans but Irish and Scots. In July 1878 Thomas Lynch faced the Canadianbased Scot Duncan C. Ross for the professional “World’s Championship.” The nine-event match ended in a draw, and the replay took place in front of eight thousand spectators a month later at the annual games of the Emerald and Hamilton Rowan clubs, Jones Wood, with Lynch victorious.4 On Thanksgiving Day the same year, at Myrtle Avenue Park, James Daly competed in a series of athletic contests at the Brooklyn Caledonian Handicap Games against “the celebrated Canadian athlete,” E.W. Johnston.5 The following May saw the first multi-event athletic international in America: Daly and James T. Maloney represented 316

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“Ireland” against Ross and Johnston of “Scotland” at Darby Park, Baltimore. Initially there were twenty-one events scheduled, but the participants completed only sixteen due to failing light, with the “Scotch” pair winning one thousand dollars.6 As Kevin McCarthy writes, U.S. sports “lacked an international dimension” in this era. Opponents were still fellow “Americans” in the ring, while international matches for baseball and American football didn’t exist.7 What sports fans wanted was “internationalization” with their boys going abroad and “whuppin’” others in their hometowns. But what they got were foreigners coming to their country and lording over them instead. One of the earliest men to buck this trend was John C. Heenan, who in 1860 left for England with the shallow boast, seeing as how he had never beaten anyone for it, of being the American champion. Now he was the nation’s fistic ambassador to England, with the New York Herald hailing him as “the finest representative of American muscle which we have ever sent abroad.”8 There Heenan fought two fights in the first-ever display of international American jingoism at a sporting event. A prizefight between an American and English fighter was no longer just grist for a moralist’s mill to complain about foreigners and their children, but a statement of America’s desire to take its place in the world. Labeled the world championship, Heenan’s first battle against Tom Sayers saw sections of the press laud him as the representative of America’s virility.9 The famed English sense of fair play also came out badly. With Heenan clearly on course for victory, it was only a matter of time before the crowd broke though the ropes and forced the referee to declare a draw. The Herald’s editorial, in an exhibition of American drunken sporting nationalism, shrieked: [Heenan] like an American Eagle spread his wings to an enormous extent; his scream is like the combined whistle of ten thousand locomotives, he snubs the lion as if the latter were a spaniel dog…. The effete systems of Europe … fail to recognize muscle as the most important government basis. It has been left to the United States to give the pugilist and his associates the political supremacy which is their due.10

This diatribe was ahead of its time in juxtaposing sport and politics in a nationalistic cocktail, and was supported by a lithograph by the printers Currier and Ives depicting Heenan fighting the whole of England. The “Limeys” are ridiculed for their semi-cockney argot, with aitches dropped from words without vowels or added to those beginning with them, exemplified by one injured Englishman claiming: “Ho! My smeller! What a ’itter he his!!”11 In retaliation Bell’s Life in London disparagingly questioned Heenan’s courage, claiming he had “rushed away from the ring, and ran some distance with the activity of a deer, proving that … he was as fit as ever.”12 One can compare this with the Louis–Schmeling fight almost eighty years later, when the American press portrayed the black fighter, Joe Louis, not as an “uppity nigger” but the representative of freedom against tyranny. Similarly, here was Heenan, a member of a second-class community in a second-class “sport,” uniting America against a detested foreign nation. The contempt for the immigrant was let out of the bag by the New York Times: on the eve of his next fight with the new British champion Tom King in December 1863, the paper scowled that Heenan “may be said to be an Irishman, his parents being both Irish.”13 King would eventually overwhelm Heenan sufficiently that by the seventeenth round his “huge Cyclopean blows about Heenan’s head,” according to Bell’s Life in London, had swelled it up so much that Heenan looked devastated. From then until the final round, the rounds were too short for reporters to detail until the American’s seconds finally threw in the

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sponge.14 Heenan was taken to London for medical attention. No bones were broken, but an old lip wound had reopened, while his eyes were closed through the bruising. He never fought again in the ring. Perhaps we can track the spirit, if not the actual chant, of “Yoo-ess-say! Yoo-ess-say!” to this very event. But international sporting clashes between the best of America and Europe on the latter’s side of the Atlantic became rare for the next two decades. The high costs and time needed to travel were less important than the fact that few American-born fighters were good enough. Indeed, with so many Irish-born fighters in America, it could be argued that the best of Europe had come to its own back yard. In 1868, Ned O’Baldwin fought a “championship” fight at Lynnfield, Massachusetts, against the English pug, Joe Wormwald, when after just one round of anger the local police broke up the fight and arrested the two combatants.15 In all, Elliott, Coburn and McCoole all fought the English champions Tom Allen and Jem Mace and the Canadian-Irish champions Charley Gallagher and Johnny Dwyer for a “world” championship; but with the exception of McCoole’s victory over Tom Allen in June 1869, all failed in their quest. By the time gloves were adopted for international fights, America had a sufficiently proficient home-grown fighter — as Irish as Heenan — in John L. Sullivan, who spared no time in advertising the fact. America had moved on from nativism, and for Sullivan at least, his birthright was all that was needed to prove his worth. “Outwardly loathing the brutality and barbarity of the ‘sweet science,’ Americans who matured in the 1880s and 1890s were inwardly proud that they produced John L. Sullivan and James J. Corbett,” wrote Somers,16 and Sullivan rescinded with other declarations of patriotism. In March 1892, he indicated he’d rather fight any white non–American: “I prefer the challenge should be accepted by some of the foreigners who have been sprinting so hard after American dollars of late, as I would rather whip them than any of my own countrymen … and I intend to keep the championship of the world where it belongs, in the land of the free and the home of the brave.”17 Chief in his mind was undoubtedly his longtime enemy, Charlie Mitchell. But the irony was once more lost; like Sullivan, Mitchell was also a member of his nation purely by accident of birth. His parents were, like Sullivan’s, also born in Ireland, settling in Birmingham instead of Boston.18 And unlike Sullivan, Mitchell seemed less convincing in his patriotism, even if his hatred of Sullivan was genuine. The pair slugged it out on two occasions, the second in France, before a third bout at Madison Square Garden was canceled through Sullivan’s drunkenness. In the aftermath of losing his crown to Jim Corbett, Sullivan’s bitterness brought him to also question, prior to Corbett’s fight with Mitchell — whom he was now backing —“Gentleman” Jim’s patriotism: “He is a man without a country, and no one knows today whether he is an Irishman an Englishman or an American.”19 In 1823, James Monroe, the fifth President of the United States, declared that further European colonization of the Americas would no longer be tolerated. In the years that followed, Washington increasingly saw the Americas as its own sphere of influence, and nowhere was it more the case than in the world of cultural imperialism. Among this, baseball people began reasoning that the world should benefit from their game. Hadn’t the sons of its tired, poor and huddled masses taken up the game when given the chance? Students returning to Cuba in the 1860s took the game to the island, but for those promoting what they considered the greatest sport on earth, this wasn’t enough. To be a

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truly great sport, it needed to be played further away, and this theory was given a boost in 1872 when an American professor of English at Tokyo University introduced the game to the Japanese. Two years later came the game’s first missionary expedition, organized by Harry Wright as a fulfillment of a lifetime dream to spread the gospel of baseball back to the land of his birth: the Boston Red Stockings and the Philadelphia Athletics played twelve exhibition games in Britain. Wright knew that the teams would have a large Irish contingent and in a letter to the Athletics, he made the case to visit Ireland: “We must take in Dublin … for with all our Mc’s and O’R’s, a game there would surely prove attractive and pay handsomely.”20 Over three days in late August 1874 the American visitors “delighted the denizens of the Irish metropolis with their skill and gentlemanly deportment,” reported the Irish American Weekly. Poor crowds, though, epitomized a loss-making venture: “Baldoyle races and the horse show drew the Dublin sight-seers off in other directions. But even as it was, it is strange that the attendance … was not considerably larger than it actually was,” commented the Freeman’s Journal.21 Albert Spalding was a key part of that tour, and he reflected on its mistakes when he organized another tour in 1888. He sought the financial help of Leigh Lynch, the IrishAmerican manager of New York’s Union Square Theatre, and Lilly Langtry’s agent, who was a “giant of a man physically, and with a personality as broad as his belly,” and more importantly, he was also a huge baseball fan.22 Spalding was concerned as much about promoting his products as proselytizing baseball, but there was no doubting his patriotism. He also saw how, despite the Monroe Doctrine, nothing was stopping inroads into America by foreign sports.23 The party of twenty professionals departed from San Francisco on November 18, 1888, and visited New Zealand, Australia, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Italy, France, and finally Britain and Ireland. In England, Spalding tried to walk the fine line of not dissing cricket while claiming that baseball was “something more than a childish sport played by a childish nation.”24 And it wasn’t just comparisons with rounders that Spalding could never escape. In Australia, an Irish-born Member of the Australian Parliament, Daniel O’Connor, infected with the imperialistic bug, welcomed the party as brothers by stressing that both nations “were members of the Anglo-Saxon race and sprang from the old English stock, and their games were not really very different.” Spalding, far from an Anglophile, appears to have found O’Connor’s following diatribe on “the evils of Chinese immigration” far more persuasive.25 Of the twenty players on the tour, half had Irish blood. With the Tyrone-born John Tener, the Chicago squad comprised of Tom Burns, Marty Sullivan, Jimmy Ryan and Tom Daly, while the All-Americans included Jim Fogarty, Ned Hanlon, Fred Carroll, John Healy and James Manning. In Nice the players were enjoying the festival of the Battle of Blooms on the Promenade de Anglais, when Albert, the Prince of Wales, passed by on the back of a hansom coach. Traditionally flowers were thrown at the passing dignitaries by a lady as a gentle salute, but along with Mark Baldwin, John Healy was chosen to send some at the prince, and sought out bouquets more for their weight than beauty. When Baldwin’s hit the prince on the cheek, young Bertie turned around to be met by a “fastball” from Healy straight on the nose. Tour chronicler Mark Lamster claims: “For Healy, who took pride in his Irish blood, the blow was a particularly satisfying score against a colonial oppressor.” Later in London, the players were granted a tour of the House of Lords, and then the Commons, where they witnessed Sir William Harcourt’s speech, “The Treatment of Political Prisoners in Ireland,” a subject that, as Lamster observes, was “of some interest for the ballplayers of Irish heritage.”26

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In Ireland the tourists encountered not only a country with a sophisticated respect for sports, but one that, in seeking independence from Britain, viewed all British games as cultural imperialism. While cricket was ensconced as the country’s principal summer sport, baseball never had a better chance of gaining ground in any European country, especially with Irish and Irish-American sporting celebrities promoting it. 27 However, baseball was also dismissed as “an outlandish import.”28 The players arrived in Belfast after a nine-hour journey, with John Healy suffering, claiming “he simply wanted to free himself from all that was English before entering the land of his fathers.”29 The tour’s first game on Monday, March 25, 1889, was played in front of between 2,500 and four thousand people at the North of Ireland Cricket Club grounds, with the All-Americans beating the White Stockings 9–8. The Sporting Life wrote: “The spectators were cold half of the game, and there was little applause or enthusiasm, but towards the end … they applauded the fine catches, and spoke with high admiration of the fielding.”30 An early morning train took the party to Dublin, before they were met and escorted by the American Consul James McCaskil to Morrison’s Hotel, where eight years earlier Charles Stewart Parnell had been arrested.31 Two days after the Belfast fixture, Lansdowne Road hosted the Americans to what the Sporting Life described as “one of the most brilliant assemblages ever seen at an athletic event” in Dublin: “About four thousand people witnessed the game, among whom were many fashionably dressed ladies.” Those attending included the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, the commander of the military forces in Ireland, and the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Thomas Sexton.32 For the Irish players, this was an exercise to earn some off-season cash, with little interest in promoting the game. The party landed quietly. Tener, Burns, Fogarty, Daly and others jumped aboard a jaunting car and drove to a hotel, while Healy, Sullivan and Ryan walked. As they marched through the streets with their chests thrown out the people thought they were deformed. Every member of the party carried a bat, swinging it as the natives do a shillelagh. Tener, the only native Irishman among the number, was the instructor. Five of the Chicagos and five of the All-Americas are of Irish parentage, and are proud of the “ould sod.”

Instead, they used their spare time to visit ancestral roots and relatives, close or distant: Tener went to Donaghmore, Tyrone; Daly found his family came from Kildare; and Manning took leave to visit his parents’ home town of Callan, Donegal.33 Lamster describes the ovation the Kansas City shortstop received: “When he arrived at the station … he was swarmed. Everyone had come out to meet the hero … and everyone had to shake his hand. A parade of jaunting cars delivered him to the house of a long-lost uncle, its walls covered with newspaper clippings and photos of the town’s famous son.” Manning himself summarized the visit in one line: “Everything in Callan, even the scores of pretty girls, was mine.”34 Before leaving Queenstown for home, the Sporting Life noted that the players paid a visit to kiss the Blarney Stone.35 The tour converted few foreigners to the game, although Spalding was far from downbeat. When the players arrived in New York on April 6, 1889, he triumphantly told reporters at the Fifth Avenue Hotel: “The trip was a success financially and every other way. I didn’t make much money, but I have the proud consciousness of having established our game throughout the world, and feel certain that many countries will adopt [it].”36 With a hundred and twenty years of hindsight, we can conclude that Spalding was being more than a tad optimistic. He later confessed it would take “some little time and patience” to see any growth of the game in Europe.37

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However, if the tour failed in introducing baseball into Europe, it inaugurated, not without a little inferiority complex, the belief that baseball was “purely” American. A celebratory banquet at Delmonico’s Restaurant, attended by Mark Twain, Theodore Roosevelt and a host of luminaries, underlined that “patriotism and research had established the fact that the game which develops the lungs of the spectators, more than any other in the annals of the world’s sports, was American in its origin.” This declaration was greeted, according to the New York Clipper, with “staccato cries from some of the feasters of ‘no rounders,’” with the newspaper propagating another myth by claiming the tourists were “in every sense, representatives of American manhood and citizenship.”38 As the game progressed into the twentieth century, Spalding sought avenues to find the “origins” of baseball, not as a historical exercise, but to eliminate any morsel of a suggestion of foreign origin. The age of growing national confidence coincided with a need for an exclusive American identity: out was the established view of Henry Chadwick that baseball originated from English rounders, and by 1905, Spalding was appealing to the nation for any evidence to support the belief that baseball was as American as Mom’s apple pie. To help him Spalding enlisted James E. Sullivan to serve as secretary to a “commission.” Sullivan was a workaholic of whom Alfred H. Spink wrote: “No man living has done more to spread the gospel of baseball, to increase its areas and to build it up than James E. Sullivan.”39 He was also an ardent American patriot, a racist, and an Anglophobe, who must be granted the credit for ridding, the record almost single-handedly, of baseball’s English origins. Joel Zoss and John Bowman write: “It has since been suggested by more than one knowledgeable student of this episode that Sullivan took the occasion to disown any English influence on the game and give all the credit to indigenous American sources, Cooperstown and Doubleday. Thus did the Irish get back at the British and save baseball for the Americans.”40 The pair add that he was “a known booster of things Irish,” an immeasurably exaggerated statement to be sure, because if true Sullivan would’ve claimed the sport’s origins was one of the GAA’s pastimes, which still would’ve been a bit economical with truth, but better than the pack of lies he returned to his master. Shockingly, the most important piece of primary evidence that Sullivan rested his case on was one single letter to the Beacon Journal of Akron, Ohio, by a certain Abner Graves, a mining engineer from Denver who eventually shot his second wife in 1924 after believing she was trying to poison him.41 Briefly it stated: “The American game of ‘Base Ball’ was invented by [General] Abner Doubleday of Cooperstown, New York, either the spring prior, or following the ‘Log Cabin & Hard Cider’ campaign of General Harrison for President.” 42 Though it no longer exists, it’s clear that it was sexed up to include Graves as among those “present when Doubleday first outlined with a stick in the dirt the present diamond shaped Base Ball field” in 1839.43 Conveniently the commission failed to note that Doubleday never spoke about inventing the game, or was there any mention of it in his obituaries. It also ignores that Graves was five in 1839 and that Doubleday would’ve had to go AWOL from West Point to meet him. Nor did he have any reason to return to Cooperstown as his family had moved away two years previously. Nevertheless, in September 1907, Spalding brought to the public the “Doubleday Myth” for the first time.44 The following March, Sullivan presented his investigation which was released by a delighted Spalding: “The members of the Commission have spent several months in going over the mass of evidence collected, which has finally resulted in a unanimous decision … that Base Ball is of American origin, and has no traceable connection whatever with ‘Rounders’ or any other foreign game…. [T]heir decision should forever set at rest the question as the Origin of Base Ball.”45 It’s

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pointless going into further detail, nor the later destruction of the “Doubleday Hoax” into a tale with all the credibility of Santa coming down the chimney with a bottle of Coke. Yet it needs to be said that a few more folks than Sullivan desperately wanted baseball proved purely American. But it wasn’t enough just to settle on a stick game that had been modified in the country to its own peculiar version. Sullivan had to go one step forward and claim that it had originated with a military “hero,” and of course one from the winning side. It was baffling to Americans that the Irish were good at baseball in the States, yet took no interest in Ireland. Occasionally the American sporting press would report how the game was taking hold there and on each occasion it was a false dawn. In 1892 the Sporting Life’s Will C. Bryan wrote from Manchester: “If there is any soil outside the United States where base ball ought to take quick and firm root,” it had to be Ireland: [I]n Ireland everything American “goes,” and base ball would be “loved for the enemies it has made” in England. There is no love for cricket there, and the supple, athletic Irish lads are practically idle all summer. I have long had my eye on Ireland, and have been impatient of the time when some one would start the ball rolling…. There are thousands of ball players … who have friends and relatives in Ireland. If each of these men would lay down his paper after reading … and write to every friend, relative and acquaintance in Ireland, asking him to help to introduce base ball in the old country, it would be of the greatest possible advantage.46

Another fourteen years and further optimism was piled on the plates of the Sporting Life’s readership: “A cablegram from Dublin brings the news that base ball is crowding the Sasanach game of cricket out of Ireland. It is said that, although the American national game was but recently introduced, it has gained a firm foothold in the provinces which have little use for England.” Remembering the previous report, the paper was somewhat guarded, adding: “Base ball must have been Ireland’s national game one time. If you don’t think so, take a look at the various major and minor league averages and see”— followed by a list of Irish names cited in a poem which concludes with the line: “They were playin’ ball in Ireland in the days of Brian Boru.”47 Such presumptions certainly prodded the “Irish” baseball clubs to visit the “auld country.” In 1904 there was a proposal for an ambitious world tour by the New York Giants, taking in Dublin, where “many of the Irish lads have personal friends, McGraw and McGann especially.”48 The tour never took place. In 1907 the Sporting Life declared: “A Trip to Erin Should the White Sox Win Pennant Again.” Commy’s son, J.L. Comiskey, said that Mexico wouldn’t be a destination on account of the team’s being “thoroughly disgusted at the climate, their surroundings and everything connected with the trip.” Ever so generous, the Old Roman was instead offering a free jaunt across the Atlantic “for all who care to travel across to the old sod.”49 The following year, he reiterated his intention to go to Ireland should his team win the World Series.50 The White Sox finished third both times. In 1909, Hughie Jennings spoke of his intentions to take his Tigers to the land of his ancestors if they too took the world crown.51 They performed better, taking the AL pennant and losing the World Series to Pittsburgh. The next world tour — the so-called “tour to end all tours”— was organized by three of the most prominent Irish baseball men of the era: Comiskey, McGraw, and the man holding the purse strings with the title of managing director of the tour, Ted Sullivan. Comiskey and McGraw were an unlikely pairing and only Sullivan could bring them together for the project. Its chronicler, James E. Elfers, comments that it was “impossible to underestimate” Sullivan’s importance to the project: “Without some sort of mutual blind trust, it is unlikely that any tour could have taken place. Neither man would have revealed their

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financial situation to one another, yet without such cooperation, a tour would have been impossible.”52 Announced on the morning of February 2, 1913, following an all-night bender in Chicago by the two managers, or as Sullivan preferred to call it, “a long conference,” the plan was simple: the White Sox would play the New York Giants in a series of games beginning on the Pacific Coast straight after the World Series and ending in Dublin on Washington’s birthday, February 22, 1914.53 Efforts were made to insist that the tour wasn’t about money, since the outlay would “exceed by thousands of dollars any revenue collected at the gates for the exhibition games.” Those who knew Comiskey were choking on their breakfast reading this, but the hype continued, claiming the tour combined the “dual faces of missionary zeal and philanthropic largesse.” And by washing their hands of “the foul stain of money, Commy and Muggsy allowed themselves a not-so-subtle dig at [Spalding] and his lucre lust.”54 The satirist Ring Lardner had other ideas: “The purpose of the trip was twofold — to prove to the foreign element that baseball is better than cricket, roulette, hopscotch, baccarat, Parcheesi or any other sports in vogue abroad, and to convince Herman Schaefer and the rest of the heathen included on the roster of the two clubs that Ireland … is the greatest country in the atlas.”55 The Giants and White Sox, who had finished first and fifth in their respective leagues, of course contained Irish players, but although both managers were Irish, the tour was another reflection of the decline of the Irish in the sport. The visit to Dublin was abandoned (as was the game in Paris) due to poor weather, although it didn’t stop the Irish players and managers from wanting to travel there. The Chicago Irish players claimed they “would not dare return without having been in Ireland,” while Sullivan and Tom Lynch were reported to be going there “to push the cause of home rule.”56 The most hilarious incident involved White Sox manager Nixey Callahan, who went AWOL on arrival in London. Having left the party early in Paris, as the Sporting Life described it, “to look over the ‘ould sod’ … spend a few days ‘kissing the Blarney stone’ and looking for shamrocks,” he had promised to return to manage the Sox for their final game at Stamford Bridge.57 A worried Comiskey had to send a gang of the Boston Royal Rooters — Norris “Tip” O’Neal, Jim Mullen and some others — to Kilkenny in order to get him back.58 Callahan returned for the final game in time for a banquet; meeting King George V, he was a “changed man … won over by the King’s enthusiasm, the Irish rebel had been converted into a loyal subject.” Callahan was quick to claim that “there was no more enthusiastic rooter than King George.”59 McGraw, though, was having none of this kowtowing. He upset his hosts first by opining that the British would “eventually come to base ball,”60 then claimed that American troops were superior to the British soldier “because every American solider has learned to play base ball.”61 McGraw’s opinions had already alerted the Pall Mall Gazette, which sniffed: “A Mr. McGraw … has been good enough to enlarge in an ‘interview’ upon English loss of vigour, the part which the dull game of cricket plays in our national deterioration, and the desirability of baseball as a sort of racial pick-me-up. We would recommend Mr. McGraw to keep these impertinences to his friends at home.”62 Still, McGraw was sufficiently smitten with Britain to write to the newspaper thanking them for their “courtesy,” and remarking that the “primary purpose” of the tour of “better understanding and spirit between the lovers of every sport in every land” had been achieved.63 Once more a tour failed to be anything more than an expensive public relations exercise, but it didn’t put off Ted Sullivan. The following summer he was back attempting to arrange a tour between two teams selected on Irish and German lines. This was probably the last opportunity that both ethnic groups would be able to provide teams from the top layer of

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professionals, and due to the failure of the previous tour to play in Germany, France and Ireland, Sullivan wanted to give the first pair of countries “a treat of the great national game of America and at the same time celebrating the institution of the new ‘Home Rule’ of Ireland”: “It is my idea to take over … an Irish-American team and a German-American team for special games in Dublin. Both teams will, of course, be picked from the major league clubs of this country. After playing a few games in Dublin, it is the intention to take the clubs to Berlin, Paris and London for games and then home.”64 When war broke out on in August 1914, Sullivan was stranded through the suspension of trans-Atlantic sailings.65 Writing home, he joked: “[W]hen I asked the European Powers to take up the Americans national game they got into a war as to who would adopt it first.”66 Promoting American games abroad has been a failure, with only basketball coming close to anywhere near imitating the success of soccer around the world. Despite the evidence, John K. Tener, in a speech in 1916, remained myopically upbeat, suggesting baseball would’ve been taken up in Europe had it not been for that pesky Gavrilo Princip: “It is no strange sight nowadays to see baseball teams coming to this country from Japan, or teams from the United States invading foreign countries. It has been taken up in China, in the Philippines and Japan and, if the war had not prevented, there would today have been baseball leagues in England, Germany and Italy.”67 But taking on the world in neutral sports was another matter. Early competition was only international by nature of geography, such as the tug-of-war match between the West End Rowing Club of Buffalo and the Irish Catholic Benevolent Club of nearby Toronto in 1887, which the Irish club won.68 Ireland was an early opponent against the States: They lost to America in two rifle shooting matches in the late seventies, first in Dublin, and then in September 1878 at Creedmoor, North Carolina.69 Then a year later, the “Gentlemen of Ireland” cricketers toured North America, playing games in New York and Philadelphia. 70 Even an Irish lacrosse team visited in 1886.71 During the 1880s two teams of Irish athletes visited the United States. In 1885 an Irish athletic team toured Canada and New York. After competing at the AAA of Canada’s annual games in Toronto, the party continued to New York to compete at the NYAC Championships, then the de facto American athletic championship.72 With the headline “IRISH ATHLETES COMING,” the New York Times enthusiastically welcomed the visitors, some of whom had “gained prominence abroad by their feats of skill, strength and endurance.”73 William Barry smashed both the American amateur and professional records in the hammer, and the tour concluded with the Annual Fall Games of the NYAC, in which Edward Walshe’s victory in the running high jump was the only Irish success. 74 The team was granted a reception in their honor at the NYAC rooms on the eve of their return to Ireland. The Sun commented: “It is a great thing to have your hand shaken over a thousand times in an hour, eat a big dinner on top of it, and then be able to make a rattling speech afterward, but that’s what each one of the Irish-American [sic] team did last night.” The Irish athletes sat at the head of a long series of tables, with the flag of Erin intertwined with the Stars and Stripes behind them…. It took over two hours to travel through the menu, and the band played Irish tunes in honor of the guests all the time. Just as the feasters got down to the partridges … Athlete Barry of Queen’s College Dublin [sic] stood up in his 6 feet 2 inches of muscular development and sang the first verse of the “Wearing of the Green.” When the fact is stated that the two hundred American athletes who heard it stood up with one accord and cheered themselves hoarse, the vocal splendor of the performance will be at once apparent.75

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Three years later a number of American cities hosted a tour by the cream of the Gaelic Athletic Association which included James S. Mitchell and Ellery H. Clark. The tour is described as “deservedly one of the greatest in all athletic history.”76 Along with Doctor J.C. Daley (or Daly), a colleague of W.J.M. Barry’s at Queen’s Cork, Mitchell participated at the NAAAA Annual Championships at the Manhattan AC grounds, taking the American record in the 56-lb. event.77 In other sports, competitors were already making inroads into international sports, but as with the prize ring, the first competitors were Irish-born. Michael Phelan’s stature as America’s leading billiardist led to a  challenge from the English billiards master, John Roberts, in 1858. The New York Times questioned its validity as billiards had various standard rules throughout the world: “[A]t any of the prominent rooms on Broadway a spectator may possibly witness the American, French, English, Russian and Mexican games, all being played at the same moment.”78 The billiards fraternity, though, looked on with relish to “accord to one or the other of the renowned players, the billiard championship of the world.”79 A suitable go-between in the form of a Dublin “gentleman” came forward to arrange the game for November based on the French carom game. Yet despite further calls by Phelan, the match seems never to have taken place.80 The following year Phelan welcomed the French “professor” of carom, Claudius Berger, at his premises on Broadway. After complimenting the country and its citizens, Berger spoke of the “science of billiards and the five principal strokes,” then played and beat Kavanagh, Phelan, Geary and Tieman in carom.81 It took another five years for Americans to be recognized as on level terms with the French, but in 1865 Dudley Kavanagh took on Pierre Carme in a three-match series in different styles listed as “The French Carom game,” “The four-ball American game,” and “The full American game,” respectively.82 The first popular internationalization of American athletics was Daniel O’Leary’s visit to Britain in 1876. In October at Liverpool’s Park Skating Rink he put down his marker as a world-class athlete by covering on foot five hundred and a half miles in six days. Liverpool’s Daily Post excitedly described this as “perhaps, the most wonderful feat that has ever been chronicled in the history of pedestrianism.” His popularity grew as the week progressed, swelled by the city’s huge Irish community who had come out to support him; the Daily Post described “a numerous attendance of people, the great majority … Irishmen, who had come to pay their respects….” As the climax drew closer the rink became so crowded that it was impossible to move and admittance was closed. At the end of the race, the American minstrel promoter, Sam Hague, who had bet O’Leary one hundred dollars he couldn’t complete the feat within six days, entered the judges’ box and thanked the crowd on behalf of an exhausted O’Leary, before demanding the world to put forward a challenger.83 O’Leary remained for the winter: he defeated the English pedestrian Peter Crossland in Manchester in December then lost to William Howse in London.84 He visited his relatives in Clonakilty in January 1877, and was greeted as a returning hero: a local band played “See the Conquering Hero Comes” as he entered the town to five hundred onlookers waving handkerchiefs, as businesses closed for the day. He then returned to Liverpool to take on two athletes separately.85 One was known simply as Biggs of St. Helens; the other was “The American Postman,” W.H. Smythe, listed later by the Irish American Weekly as “of Dublin and America.” The Liverpool Post described O’Leary as having a “beautiful style” to his walking, adding “he is one of the most modest and undemonstrative pedestrians we have seen; and there is none of that

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bounce and dash and tossing of the head about him which unfortunately is the characteristic of Weston.”86 Following his defeat of Weston in Islington, North London, in April 1877, Weston’s patron, Sir John Dugdale Astley, established the “Astley Belt Races” for the “Long Distance Champion of the World” with five hundred pounds in cash to accompany it.87 O’Leary was, however, unimpressed with the races that removed restrictions on the running styles, that increased the popularity of the sport to its peak: “Satisfied that it was impossible to beat us at long distance walking, the Englishmen invented the style of progression called ‘Go-As-You-Please.’”88 Early the following year, O’Leary returned to London to meet Weston, and Britons like Peter Crossland, William Howse and Henry Vaughan along with W.H. Smythe.89 Weston pulled out, prompting the New York Times to ask if he was afraid of O’Leary,90 while the Irishman was only allowed to run with the approval of Astley, as a friend living in London had failed to hand in his registration payment. Six days later O’Leary triumphed, beating Harry Vaughan into second place, taking two and a half thousand dollars and Astley’s belt. On the final day a brass band played American songs, inspiring O’Leary to “put on spurt after spurt amid cheers that shook the building,” as fifteen thousand patrons, including some Irish MPs, loudly cheered him complete the race.91 In New York he told reporters of his future plans and suggested that Vaughan “would have secured a fortune had he won the match, for countless sums were offered to him by English sporting men ‘to beat the Irishman.’”92 Astley continued promoting his races, even in America. In September 1878, Gilmore’s Garden hosted the second contest for his belt, this time between Daniel O’Leary and the Tipperary-born John Hughes. The race ended in victory for O’Leary when Hughes dropped out after three days, leading the New York Herald to accuse him of being a fraud. The paper added that he failed to respond to O’Leary’s courtesies and yet the spectators, “ignorant of the obstinate nature of the man,” continued to give him a warm reception, “cheering and applauding Hughes as if he had just accomplished a wonderful feat, while on its merits it is not even third class.”93 O’Leary was now hungry for a rematch with the English runners in America, with a third victory of the Astley Belt allowing him to keep it: “I have the right to name the ground and can take them to San Francisco or Australia if I desire, but of course I will take them to a place that suits me best. I am more anxious to meet the Englishmen, on account of their good record, than any man in this country.” O’Leary concluded that he was leaving nothing to chance regarding training, stating that he’d get himself “in the best possible condition to be able to make an extraordinary performance. I don’t intend to let the belt leave my hands.”94 The English hope was Charles Rowell, a man whom the New York Times described on his arrival at New York as “a short, thick-set man, 5 feet 6 inches in height and 140 pounds in weight.” He was the only British athlete to travel to America, while others like Vaughan and “Blower” Brown had declined Astley’s offers to pay for their trip. The competitors were to be joined by Charles A. Harriman of Haverhill, Massachusetts, and the Longford-born Civil War veteran John Ennis, who had lived in Chicago since he was six and had broken the speed skating championship in Chicago in February 1879.95 The race was little more than a disaster for O’Leary, who came fourth after breaking down on the third day at 215 miles. He blamed it all on the exertions of the past year and quickly announced his retirement.96 One of O’Leary’s projects was to promote his own American races along the lines of

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Astley’s. The first “O’Leary Belt” race had $10,000 in prizes, with $5,000 for the long-distance pedestrian championship of America, and was competed for between October 6 and October 11, 1879.97 The winner was the “Young Irish boy” Nicholas Murphy, a brick maker from Haverstraw, New York, who completed 505 miles in a race that included E. Davis from Kerry and the English runner “Blower” Brown. O’Leary’s only concern seemed that the men had failed to dress appropriately for the race: The $150 trainers’ prizes have been thrown away because the object I had in view was not attained. The men did very well so far as cleanliness was concerned, but the prizes were not meant merely to make the men wash their faces. I wanted them to have appropriate costumes…. The bathing drawers and circus trunks worn by the majority of men on the track are not fit for a pedestrian’s dress…. In the race next week I intend to supply every contestant with an appropriate costume at my expense.

Murphy’s victory celebrations exhibited a bout of patriotic fervor as he walked around the track followed by his fellow competitor James Mahoney, who waved the Stars and Stripes above his head and looked more pleased than the winner.98 O’Leary then took two professional athletes, John Gobler (or Dobler) and George Guyon, over to England in late 1880 to snatch Astley’s Belt back to America.99 With “Blower” Brown also running, O’Leary coopted William Pegram, an African American he had found in London, where his manager had stranded him. With a promise to pay his repatriation, America was represented by three runners in Islington.100 Sadly, professional foot races were in decline in the 1890s. The “walking craze” disappeared as the spectacle of seeing men running in circles became too mundane to market. But this wasn’t the last time Irish-American athletes would compete in Britain, challenging for the prizes on offer at some of the best professional races and taking the side bets that could be won. Edward “Piper” Donovan competed at the 1889 Sheffield Shrovetide Handicap, being eliminated in the heats.101 He won the 1893 event, beating M. Clarkson of Leeds in the final, but was then knocked out of the city’s Easter Handicap contest, coming second to W. Schofield in a heat.102 Steve Farrell competed against Englishman Harry Darrin at the St. Andrew’s Games in Ottawa in August 1890, winning the £100 Manchester Pedestrian Company Easter Handicap at the Moorfield Grounds four years later.103 Also, in a different sport, Joseph Donoghue would break world records in ice speed skating in 1890, at Lingay Fen, near Cambridge, England, and in the Netherlands.104 As sporting intercourse grew between America and Britain, Irish athletes were prominent faces on future tours. Tom Conneff was part of a joint NYAC/MAC American team that visited England and Ireland in 1888, where their arrival in July at Kingstown (Dun Laoghaire) port was “met with an enthusiastic and in every way flattering reception” before they competed at a nearby Ballsbridge: “[T]hey found the harbor crowded with boats filled with athletes and their friends who had come to receive them, and a pleasure boat bearing a committee and a host of gentlemen interested in athletics waiting to escort them to Dublin. The yachts in the harbor were covered with flags, and the appearance of the Americans was the signal for prolonged cheering by the crowd ashore and afloat.”105 Then, in September 1894, John J. Mooney traveled to Mitchelstown, Cork, beating C.B. Fry’s world record.106 The following year the NYAC represented America and beat a London AC selection containing the best athletes from Britain and Ireland at Manhattan Field, in every class contested. The New York Times couldn’t resist pumping its fist in a “patriotic flap-doodle”: There was no reason why the American eagle should not have done as he did last evening. Finding the topmost branch of the topmost tree, he perched there just as the sun was going down,

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and, flapping his wings, he screeched defiance to the whole world. Back to Albion’s shore … will go a band of athletes and gentlemen who will forever set at rest the prevalent disbelief in the prowess of the Americans at track and field athletics.

The clean sweep was made all the sweeter by British gamesmanship. The New York Times was disgusted at the underhand way the London AC had tried to gain an advantage by including Irish athletes James Ryan and “Hagan” [sic]: “If this is to be an international contest, why not make it so from the outset and permit the New York Club to make its selections outside of its own club membership? What is fair for one side certainly should be equally so for the other.”107 The newspaper ignored that three Irish-born athletes won honors for America: Conneff took the one-mile and three-mile runs, Mitchell the sixteenpound hammer, and Michael Sweeney grabbed the running high jump, extending his world record.108 The London AC certainly didn’t: with Irish inclusion crucial to the NYAC’s victory, the LAC soon made its displeasure known, claiming that if the “Irish Brigade” hadn’t competed, they’d have been able to “lick the Yanks.”109 Still the LAC’s demands clearly stunk of extreme hypocrisy, with its side, as Leslie’s Weekly noted, consisting of “all England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales versus all America.” 110 John C. Gullick, the Winged Foot’s secretary, confided to the Times: “The Englishmen have practically stated that we must be represented by a purely American [born] team…. I claim that so long as a man is an American citizen he is as much of an American as a native born, and as long as our team is made up of American citizens, that ought to satisfy the Englishmen.”111 There were further murmurs that “the English”— this wasn’t “Britain,” let alone the more politically correct title of “Britain and Ireland”— intended to include even more Irish athletes, such as the English and Irish high jump champion James M. Ryan, shot putter Denis Horgan, and John Flanagan, effectively wanting to eat its cake and let America starve. When Vanity Fair announced the rematch the following year, the New York Times wrote that members of the NYAC found in the vicinity of Wall Street were “full of fight,” exclaiming: “We beat the Britons on our own grounds last fall, and we’ll show them what stuff we are made of when we tackle them … on their own sod.” A new sporting patriotism of antagonism was born.112 The match never took place. Both countries would wait a further four years before a United States track and field team returned to London, although this time it was to compete in the AAA Championships. During these years international contests were confined to singular matches, like the three races between the ailing Tom Conneff and Frederick Bacon in the autumn of 1896 or the Yale-Harvard selection that took on Oxford-Cambridge in July 1899 at the Queen’s Club in West London, where an “out of form” Thomas Burke failed to win any of his races.113 James E. Sullivan eventually recognized that structured international competition would both confirm the AAU’s legitimacy and become a vehicle to further national prestige. But in 1896 the AAU chief was still nothing more than a spectator as top athletic clubs of both countries organized the “international” matches.114 The route to homogenizing of the American “team” was boosted by a young French aristocrat, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, and his revival of the Olympic Games. It gave the greatest impetus to American international team sports in a way that nothing had before or indeed since. Kevin McCarthy argues that the Olympics and the AAA championships allowed the U.S. to seize “major opportunities to demonstrate it had surpassed, in sporting terms, anything the old world” offered:

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To the fore of this American change in track and field athletics were the Irish-Americas. As will be seen, the success of Irish-American athletes in the Olympics gave a significant boost to various forms of Irish national identity … and also to the American acceptance of Ireland as one of its “melting pot” components. This was achieved through sporting excellence, through very definite identification with the athletes’ adopted country (without losing Irish identity either) and to occasionally fighting battles against the more negative elements of Irish identity, in order to challenge the bias of others in the USA towards Irish identity.115

By classifying entry on national rather than individual lines, the Olympics endowed Sullivan a focus to unite a nation that was never united in any other sphere. Here every man who competed for the USA was an American, regardless of where they were born, or later, what color they were. Although Allen Guttmann’s argument that “a rabidly nationalistic partisanship” was a feature of the Olympics from its first games, the first three Olympic Games were never the pageant of nationalism that they are today, which manifested itself from 1906 onwards: Although the Olympic Charter proclaims that the games are contests between individuals … the IOC created an institutional structure based on national representation; no athlete can compete as an individual; every athlete must be selected by his or her country’s national Olympic committee; every athlete — even the otherwise irrepressible Florence Griffith-Joyner — must wear a national uniform; when a victor is honored, a national flag is raised and a national anthem is played.116

And as we will see, Sullivan wasn’t averse to stoking this patriotic fire at every opportunity. In short, it was much-needed “grist for cultural commentators and sports journalists,” to invent “a virile national sporting identity that they believed reflected America’s institutions, social structure, work ethic, and national superiority.”117 For the Irish-American athlete, the Olympics provided more opportunities for fame and glory, if not financial rewards. At the first revived Olympic Games in Athens, a party of fourteen American athletes gained eleven golds to Greece’s ten, and second in the total number of medals. The troupe also included the first-ever gold medalist of the modern games, James Brendan Connolly, reflecting a growing number of upwardly mobile secondgeneration Irish-Americans. Born into abject poverty in South Boston, 1868, one of the twelve children of a fisherman from the Aran Islands, John, and his wife Ann, James had pulled himself up from a poor education, to being accepted as a twenty-seven-year-old mature student at Harvard reading classics. Although a keen sportsman who had broken both indoor and outdoor American records in the running hop, skip and jump in 1890, and was later president of the Trimount Athletic Club, he had spent much of the following decade flittering between a career as an insurance clerk and a soldier, returning to war briefly in 1898 in Cuba, where he was the Boston Globe correspondent.118 His education at Harvard was, however, short-lived. Keen to travel to Greece for the inaugural games, but not having the contacts of fellow Crimson Ellery H. Clark — whose father had studied alongside the university’s dean of sciences — meant his application for leave to travel was declined. The chairman of the athletic committee scoffed that the games were no more than a “junket,” and told Connolly to resign and reapply. Connolly wasn’t intimidated: “I’m not making application to re-enter on my return. I am through with this college right now. Good day.”119 The American Olympic Committee, founded in 1893, refused to sponsor anyone’s travel to Greece, leaving athletic clubs, sporting associations, universities or individuals to pick up the tab.120 As late as February 1896 there was a fear that no Americans would compete. Then a “public spirited member” of the Boston AA suggested sending a team,

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and the club started a “popular subscription among members of the club to raise the necessary funds,” but with less than half the cash collected, only “club pride” ensured the money was gathered, “and the team sailed on the shortest possible notice.”121 Connolly’s decision to go was a bigger gamble. Most of his best performances had been in the late eighties while with the Army in the South, and he had been out of serious athletics since 1890. The triple jump hadn’t been included since 1893 in the AAU Championships, and thus he had no legitimacy as a national champion.122 He was under severe pressure from the start, and not just from a financial point, having blown his life savings on the trip.123 He suffered a back injury on the eve of his departure, which the long ship journey eventually eased, before finding that the difference in the Orthodox and Roman calendars left him not the twelve days’ acclimatization he had hoped for, but just one. He was also informed that the competition he was entering was not the hop, skip and jump but the hop, hop, and James B. Connolly, the first modern-day Olympic winner, jump, a procedure he hadn’t beside the Greek flag (Library of Congress). practiced since a child.124 No one can doubt that Connolly’s trip to Greece was the greatest decision he ever made. His initial reaction to Greece and witnessing the Pantheon as it came into view from the train, like that of his fellow Americans, was awe: “All that we had ever read or heard of Greece and all that we had never read nor heard, but that was born within us, lay like white-heated strata in the hotbeds of our imaginations…. ‘Athens!’ we cried; and the little word stood for all our years of thought, speech and subconscious reflection of the glory of things that were.”125 On April 6, 1896, the first day for over a millennium and a half that the Greek Olympics had been held, Connolly, the final competitor of the triple jump, took a leap not just into a sandpit, but into an immortality that comes close to Neil Armstrong’s. Connolly recalled the moment as a two-hundred-piece brass band struck up the “Star Spangled Banner”:

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Like one man they arose and stood to attention. The eighty thousand spectators in the seats were rising. I then came alive and stood to attention…. Slowly, reverently, the Greek sailors were hoisting the ensign, and except for our National Hymn the stadium and the hill slope outside was all a hush and every spectator there was standing. The thought next came to me that our National Hymn was for my winning my event. To myself I said: “You’re the first Olympic victor in fifteen hundred years.” A moment later: “The gang back home will be tickled when they hear of it!”126

Adding to gold with a silver medal in the high jump and a bronze in the long jump, he arrived back late in Boston — he missed his boat connection while in Paris — met only by his brother and Suffolk AA manager, Thomas J. Barry, who took him for a “quiet dinner” at Clark’s Hotel.127 Any nationalism exhibited was undoubtedly, as McCarthy remarks, “American.” John Boyle O’Reilly’s former paper, The Pilot, responded by reporting Governor Roger Wolcott’s address to the athletes at a banquet in their honor: “The spirit which wins in honorable competition makes a nation invincible … and so we recognize that these men carried to Athens the will and indomitable pluck which belongs to America, Massachusetts and Boston….” but not, it seems, to their ancestral home.128 Connolly went to the Paris Olympics four years later, losing his title to Myer Prinstein, with a second silver Olympic medal as compensation. But the Olympics proved fertilizer to his future career as a writer. In An Olympic Victor, he describes his own brief stardom in Athens, through the eyes of the watching spectators: “How proud he should feel, that American” breathed thousands of throats fervently, and doubtless he did, the first winner after fifteen hundred years, of an Olympic championship. But there was small chance to see how he took it, proud enough though he doubtless felt, for he no more than waved his hand to a group of his countrymen ere he disappeared into the tunnel which led to the dressing-room.129

He also saw the Olympics as the epitome of the connection between what Mark Dyreson calls sports and national well-being.130 He may well have been a critic of James E. Sullivan’s business practices, but Connolly wrapped himself in the American flag as much as Sullivan did and joined him along with Spalding, Roosevelt, the Unitarian minister Price Collier, Walter Camp and others in the varied coalition of the so-called “inventors” of the “Sporting Republic,” a rainbow alliance of promoters from public moralists, various social reformers and education professionals, to politicians, sporting goods producers and “scions of the Eastern establishment.” 131 Adoring amateurism and finding the Hellenic ideal of the Olympiad a perfect role model for American greatness, he bemoaned its removal from Greece to the globe-trotting commercialism that turned the Games into something little better than “a brewery picnic in Jones’ Wood.”132 “We have good men interested in athletics here in America,” wrote Connolly on the eve of the 1906 Interim Games: “Some of them are … not using athletics for business of social purposes, men who will go to any expenditure of time and energy to advance a great cause. And if they would but make the journey to the coming games it would mean much, for no matter how much inborn enthusiasm they may have for clean athletics, they will need to see its expression in Greece to experience it in full tide.”133 Another Irish-American in Greece, and Connolly’s roommate for his sojourn, has largely been forgotten. E.H. Clark described Thomas Edward Burke as “a seasoned campaigner, running all distances from the short sprints to the half-mile, and at one time or another adding to his list practically all known championships.” Burke was “tall and slim, yet wiry and rugged at the same time, and his stride in the quarter was enormous.” His

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career haul was impressive with titles varying from the educational of the interscholastic and intercollegiate championships and the geographical of New England and New York City’s Metropolitan to the national titles of America and Canada.134 Unlike Connolly, Burke, who was then a student at Boston University, was, as Caspar Whitney opined, one of only three Olympic athletes who “could be expected to win in open games in the United States.”135 Burke had won the AAU’s national championship in the 440 yards the previous September, and with Bernie Wefers absent in Athens, he took the gold in the 100 meters on April 10, 1896, with a twelve-second run that looks far from impressive compared to other runs of the time.136 Three days earlier in Athens, Burke had won the 400 meters gold, which displayed that he was more than a mere sprinter. His talents lay in his being a varied runner, a pioneer of the cramp starting style, who later combined sports journalism with his law practice. The following year, on April 19, 1897, he was the man who started the first-ever Boston Marathon when, lacking a pistol, he shouted “Go!” to the fifteen men who had accepted the challenge to run.137 The 1900 Olympics, held in Paris, included more Irish-American medalists. In addition to Connolly’s bronze, Frank MacKey, a member of the multi-national Foxhunters Hurlingham team, jointly won the polo event, while John Cregan took the 800-meters silver and Frederick Moloney won bronze in the 110-meters hurdles. The star of the Irish contingent, however, was a large twenty-seven-year-old who hadn’t been in America when Connolly and Burke won golds: John Jesus Flanagan. The steady trickle of Irish athletes who had entered America since 1888 was threatening to turn into a downpour, having a devastating effect on Irish athletics. Almost wholly nonuniversity educated, and therefore excluded from varsity games, their ultimate destination was mainly the home-away-from-home of Celtic Park. While the GNYIAA didn’t send any representatives to Paris, two future members did win events there: Flanagan and Myer Prinstein. They attended the Buffalo Exposition, where Irish interest centered on Peter O’Connor — the world record holder in the long jump, who as a Wicklow resident nominally competed as a guest of the GNYIAA — and John Flanagan, who had resigned from the NYAC a month earlier. Both athletes came first in the running long jump and discus respectively.138 The huge disparity between American and foreign competitors in St. Louis entailed a large haul for Irish-American athletes. In athletics the three original Whales took four medals in the field events: gold for Martin Sheridan in the discus and bronze for the standing long jump; John Flanagan took gold in the hammer; while James Mitchell crowned a long athletic career with a bronze Olympic medal in the 56-lb. weight. Other Irish-Americans took medals in boxing, cycling, diving, swimming and rowing and golf. Soccer saw the Irish, represented by the Christian Brothers College of St. Louis, taking silver, and St. Rose Parish’s getting bronze. The overall success of Irish athletes caused the Kentucky Irish American to crow: “From the recent showing of the Irish athletes at the World’s Fair contests, it is now conceded on all sides that the Irish as athletes are in a class by themselves.”139 Between the St. Louis Olympics and the next Olympics in London were the 1906 “Intercalated” Games, which afforded Irish-born athletes their finest hour in the Olympics so far.140 The Americans, without Mel Sheppard and John Flanagan, faced a sterner challenge, ensuring they came second in the medal table to France, although they still won more gongs than anyone else in Sullivan’s “beloved” athletics table. In all, four gold medals were won by athletes born in Ireland competing for either the USA or Great Britain. This was also

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the first Olympics that the AOC oversaw the sending of the team. Sullivan was enthusiastic to impose the first corporate branding of Team USA with the New York Times announcing: “The members of the team will wear a complete white uniform with quarter sleeves, with a small American shield or flag on the shirt.”141 Club emblems were thus eliminated, but the I-AAC still had five athletes on the podium winning ten medals, with Martin Sheridan collecting five.142 The only Irish-American medalists not with the I-AAC were Herbert Kerrigan and Thomas Cronan. Four hundred guests greeted the returning I-AAC’s representatives at the Grand Salon of the Hotel Astor, where, according to a gushing article by the New York Times, they paid patriotic and enthusiastic tribute to the skill and strength of the Irish-American athletes who aided the American Olympian team at Athens to win its wonderful triumph over the pick of the athletes of the world. They gave homage again to the men of the Gaelic race who made records when Greece was barbarian. They crowned once more the athletes of the club, who sat in the place of honor as the heroes of Marathon.143

For the I-AAC, London proved the summit of their Olympic medal wins. In fact, only two Irish-Americans from outside athletics won medals for the U.S.: Jim Gorman and Kellogg Casey, both in shooting events. Martin Sheridan wrote in the Irish-American Advocate of an American athletic team strongly “Irish” in composition: “Indeed if one were to go right through the team the difficulty would be to pick out those who haven’t at least some strain of Irish blood in them.”144 Out of the twenty-four individual track and field categories, I-AAC members won eight of America’s fourteen golds, with Mel Sheppard as a member of the U.S. team that won the medley relay event adding another.145 At a dinner attended by over five-hundred “prominent citizens” to commemorate the feats of the I-AAC at the Waldorf Hotel on Park Avenue, James E. Sullivan declared: “I would like to pay a tribute to the most remarkable athletic team that was ever brought together. Too much credit cannot be given to the Irish-American Athletic Club…. [It] could have won the world’s championship without the assistance of any other organization….”146 In 1906, for the first time ever, the Olympics would witness something darker than questions of athletes’ amateur status. John Bryant writes how de Coubertin’s ideals by 1906 had run “headlong into the aggressive athletic nationalism” of Americans like James Sullivan: “Approaching Olympic competition from a different angle, Americans turned the Games into spectacles celebrating American values. De Coubertin’s subtle distinctions between nationalism and patriotism passed them by, with American journalists and commentators soon totting up results from international playing fields and trotting them out as proof of national superiority.”147 While there is some truth in this assessment, Bryant clearly misses the point that whatever the superiority of the American team, this was in 1906 reliant on foreign-born athletes who watered down such claims. As a somewhat biased commentator, he also fails to mention the manipulation that the British used within international sports, and how they complained about the foreigners in a U.S. team, but happily picked, without a hint of irony, athletes from all corners of the world to bolster their own sporting prowess, such as K.S. Ranjitsinhji, aka the Maharaja Jam Sahib, who had played for England in cricket from 1896 to 1902.148 Yet the first hijacking of the Games as a vehicle for nationalism and protest came not from the Americans but from the Irish, even if some of the “Americans,” not for the last time, played a key part in stoking trouble. In the first three Olympics, nationalist aspirations

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and divisions were papered over by the lack of national “teams.” Now, as Mark Quinn writes, the most important legacy of Athens 1906 was how politics entered the games, so that “an event which had been originally non-political, amateur and idealistic in nature would become increasingly viewed as a commercial and political vehicle.”149 In 1906, Peter O’Connor had his first and last opportunity of taking part in the Olympics, yet in Athens he and the three other Irish athletes were dismayed at being listed as “British” in the program of events. He protested the inclusion, and later, during the medal ceremony for the long jump, climbed a flagpole and replaced the Union Jack with the Irish “harp and shamrocks,” in what Mark Quinn rightly concludes as “the first overtly political act to take place at an Olympic Games.”150 London was only chosen as the 1908 venue because Rome declined the offer following the eruption of Vesuvius in 1906. There, Irish-born athletes won seven gold medals, three silvers, and five bronze split between three countries, plus two more silvers in the hockey and polo competitions competing as “Ireland.” Leaving aside team medals won in the mixed British teams, the toll would have pushed Irish medalists into fourth place behind the States, Britain and Sweden and ahead of superpowers France, Germany, Hungary and Italy.151 Considering only the medals for athletics, six golds would’ve given Ireland third place. Prior to the games, James Sullivan gave his two cents on separate Irish participation, and it was unsurprisingly critical of Britain: “It would be a shame if Ireland, which has supplied many of the world’s finest athletes, should have to hide its identity behind the geographical description of the United Kingdom.”152 Naturally the Irish-American press also chipped in. The Kentucky Irish American observed dryly that what had made American hurdlers, shot-putters and pole vaulters “the best in the world” wasn’t the “English” style: “Irishmen and the sons of Irishmen own the only athletic park in Greater New York — of course you never heard of it, no more than you did of Ireland, one of the oldest nations in the world, that has and will preserve her ideals for a higher destiny.”153 Such was the animosity that many Irish athletes held for competing for Britain, Con Leahy and another jumper Dennis Murray desperately attempted to represent the States, and sought a meeting with Sullivan to enable this. One newspaper, the Los Angeles Herald, objected to the idea: “[T]he committee would be charged with ‘ringing’ men who should have competed for another country. The points of the Irish pair should go to the credit of England, and just because the men do not want England to receive credit for their work is no reason why the American team should receive them…. Majority of U.S. athletes do not want the pair to represent them.”154 The BOC, mindful that Leahy was one of their gold medalists in Athens, told the duo that unless they obtained American citizenship they could either compete for Britain or nobody.155 The success of the I-AAC in London was overshadowed by niggling events off the track and field, with the cause a toxic combination of British aristocracy, Irish athletes and American demands to be taken seriously as a new world power stoked by the Machiavellian Irish-American athletic administrator. Back in New York, Sullivan addressed the overwhelming issue at the Games: the ultra-nationalism, cheating and complaining that would sour future Games and spoil any form of decent sporting relations with the British for years: “The American people think we raised too many objections, but my opinion is that we did not object enough. The American Committee protested only when it was necessary to protect American interests…. I am glad a few members of the team have had the courage to declare that they were treated well, but my experience at the games is at variance with their views.”156 Certainly Sullivan and his Irish-American coaches Mike Murphy and Matt

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Halpin did all they could to inflame the situation, but it was Martin Sheridan, in his role as team captain, who takes most of the blame. In his history of the 1908 Olympics, John Bryant describes how Sheridan, the night before the opening ceremony and relaxing over a drink alongside the huge shot-putter Ralph Rose, swung discussions onto who would lead the delegation carrying the Stars and Stripes. The unanimous mood was that Rose, being the biggest and strongest, and thus having the stamina to march around all afternoon, should be the bearer of Old Glory. It has been suggested that Rose was an Irish-American, which is questionable, while Bryant, Kent and McCarthy all wrongly claim he was a member of the I-AAC, a misconception sprung from reports in certain newspapers that he’d leave the Olympic AC to Celtic Park following the 1908 Olympics.157 Whatever Rose’s ethnicity, it wasn’t necessary to be of Irish stock in 1908 to be an Anglophobic American. Bryant also paints Rose as an athlete who wouldn’t have looked out of place on Ned Hanlon’s Baltimore Orioles, with a reputation of “a hell raiser” who once offered James J. Jeffries outside following a “good evening” at the 1904 Olympics. So the decision taken, Sheridan put Rose straight on the sort of etiquette that an American should use as he passed the British royal family: “Don’t think you have to bow and scrape to that bunch…. You carry the Stars and Stripes proudly.”158 Kent puts the decision as being “arrived at over a few jars in some illlit bar” in more earthy terms: “It was said that the truculent Sheridan … had threatened to put Rose in hospital if he even considered acknowledging the presence of the British monarch.”159 If Rose had any doubts, the absence of the American flag at the stadium certainly dispelled them.160 Following a number of nations who all politely dipped their flags in respect as advised under Olympic protocol, Rose led the Americans past the royal box without any “noticeable sign of the Stars and Stripes being dipped.” As far as the British were concerned, this was a mere detail, probably down to the fact that Rose had forgotten, and the British press were, as ever, more concerned about the weather.161 Kent, though, claims there were “horrified gasps from those spectators who had noticed the slight, followed by delighted raucous laughter from those Americans in the crowd who were aware of the missing Stars and Stripes in the stadium and guessed that this was payback time.”162 Insults, however, are useless unless the recipient knows he is being slighted, and so what was more galling was that the Royals hadn’t even noticed it. Initially East Coast newspapers made no mention of the scandal outside the Evening World, arguably the most rabidly Anglophobic newspaper covering the games outside the Irish-American press. Martin Sheridan was providing — unpaid hopefully — eyewitness accounts through the Associated Press, yet he made no mention of the incident in his report in the Evening World, concentrating more on details of the journey over, such as that Ralph Rose and Dan Kelly were sick, and how Rose, Flanagan and McGrath combined to cause “a panic in the pantry at the first meal” with McGrath tucking into “five plates of soup, four orders of fish, three broiled chickens, two steaks … seven cups of custard, three pieces of apple pie, four cups of coffee and two pounds of cheese”; as Sheridan assured readers: “His record for eating still stands.” Meanwhile Dan Kelly was a victim of a “funny joke” when Tom Moffitt told him he was wanted on the phone. Kelly went outside and asked a steward where the call was to be taken, to which he was told curtly: “A shark by the ship had it in his mouth.”163 Basically it was the usual mundane anecdotes intended to tickle readers, not to get them to throw tea into the harbor. Instead, the Brit-baiting was left to the Evening World’s sporting editor, Robert W. Edgren. He described King Edward sitting in his royal box “fat, happy and smiling,” sur-

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rounded by “a hundred thousand loyal English [sic] subjects … calmly waiting for the great parade of athletes of all nations” to march by: There they all were — the athletes of the world — marching in a great winding column across the athletic field, turning with military precision into the running track, and then, with a great trampling of shoes, boots, sabots, clogs, moccasins, sandals and everything but brogans (the Irish had refused to parade) swinging long with rhythmic tread toward the royal box. Then came a section of the column that marched along with a loose swinging step, light and airy, like the step of khaki-clad rough riders dancing up San Juan Hill. The Americans! No hide-bound military training here. Everything free and easy and debonair. At the head of the American column tramps a Goliath of a man…. It is Ralph Rose, bearing the American flag. King Edward smiles more and more. It’s a long time since an English king has had the pleasure of seeing an American flag trailing before him. He smiles a little more, and then some, and then — Ralph Rose stalks, his nose in air, six feet five inches from the ground. The American flag never bobs or wavers, but flutters overhead. The Americans pass with singing step. On the great Stadium a sudden horrified silence falls. “My word!” exclaim a hundred thousand Englishmen. And again, “My word!”164

The Chicago Tribune was equally concerned with “one incident of the games which has received little comment in this country,” but for different reasons. Noting that Rose “failed to dip the flag in passing the Royal Box,” the writer’s mood was in marked contrast to what would later become the general consensus about this “lacking of courtesy”: “This salute was merely one of respect, nothing servile or degrading. According to reports, Rose gloried in his act. Had a similar circumstance occurred in this country with President Roosevelt as the offended party, what body of athletes would command our sympathies?… [Rose’s] lack of judgment … is not easy to excuse.”165 The Irish-American press was naturally in more belligerent form. The Irish World ran a woodcut across its front page with what McCarthy describes as “Rose holding the flag aloft and the ghost of a patriot from 1776, possibly Washington, doing exactly the same beside him.” The accompanying caption declared: “Inspired by the Spirit of ’76.” 166 McCarthy adds that whether or not it was deliberate, or that Sheridan was part of it, or that more snooty Americans saw Rose as a representative of bad manners, mattered little: “What was central was that it typified both the tensions in Anglo-American relations of 1908 and the degree to which Irish anti-monarchical sentiments were indistinguishable from popular American ones at this time.”167 It’s certainly doubtful that Sheridan would’ve encouraged Rose to show the same disrespect in Rome. It’s also probable that he was merely poking Rose into not groveling to the British royals, suggesting so after the Olympics in the Irish World about the incident when he confided: “Ah! When I saw the Stars and Stripes go marching by without going down, my heart took a great leap for joy.”168 Still, if the British didn’t immediately get the message that the Americans were going to be a pain in the rear, it wouldn’t take much longer. Further trouble arose with the tugof-war contest. Matt Halpin furiously lodged a complaint that was swiftly dismissed by the British, but also dragged in other countries complaining about how the Games were being run. The problem, as one Englishman was quoted, was that all the officials were British: “The whole trouble arises through the Olympic Association’s [sic] having assigned the management of the various sports to the officials of the local associations. These associations naturally are prejudiced in favor of … the United Kingdom team.” For the Americans, their gripe was that the tug-of-war was supposedly to be fought by men wearing ordinary “unprepared” shoes, only to see the Liverpool Police team turn up with heavy weighted boots containing steel rims.169 Halpin’s initial thoughts were to withdraw the team, but he allowed

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them to continue, “for the spectators in the stands nearby could see that as soon as the United Kingdom team put their weight down the heels of their shoes cut through the turf and gave them a hold that was almost impossible to break.” He then pulled the team out, whereupon an official with a megaphone proclaimed that they had retired “because they had had enough of it.”170 Bryant paints a picture of an unceasingly irritating Sullivan, out of step with the British ethos of “fair play,” which was only half true: “Almost from the start, James Sullivan had been complaining about the British. He constantly accused them of cheating and at one point even appeared to blame the London Olympic Committee for the appalling English weather.”171 Certainly by July 19, the end of first week, Sullivan was indignant about the climate. He told the Baltimore Sun: “We have come here to win the championship in field sports, and we are going to do it despite the handicap from which we are suffering. This handicap has been twofold. In the first place, the men came to a country having the worst possible climate for those unused to it and this affected them very seriously…. They thought to get a little sunshine at Brighton, but it has been as bad there as in London.” But if Sullivan was a whiner, another accusation carried more weight: “The other handicap … we have to contend is the manner in which the heat drawings have been conducted.” The Americans were consistently lumped together in races in order to dilute the number of them who would contest a final, and therefore increase the number of British runners. When he sought clarification from the AAA all he got in reply was a curt: “The drawings have been made in the usual way.”172 Things were about to get worse: two incidents stand out about Perfidious Albion at the 1908 Olympics for the Americans. First, the 400-meters final gold was awarded to Wyndham Halswelle in dubious circumstances after the winner, John C. Carpenter, was disqualified by a British umpire for “interfering” with Halswelle. In the rerun, William Robbins and John B. Taylor refused to run, leaving Wyndham by himself. Then the following day came possibly the most farcical and notorious incident on an Olympic track. Immortalized in one of the most iconic photographs of the Olympics, just behind Carlos and Smith with their clenched fists, is a boater-wearing moustachioed gent aiding with his left hand what appears to be possibly a stereotypical Englishman on the beach, complete with handkerchief hat, to break through a piece of string, while clutching a loudhailer with his right. Simultaneously a portly man in tweed stands behind just in case the “handkerchief hat man” falls back, while another boater gent beckons “handkerchief hat man” to him. The scene is looked on by cheering athletes, spectators and concerned British bobbies. Jack Andrew, the marathon’s chief clerk, was first boater; the man in tweed is Doctor Michael Bulger, the Irish chief medic of the course; while handkerchief-hat man was an Italian runner, Dorando Pietri, and the grueling twenty-six-mile run from Windsor Castle that he had just completed almost cost him his life. Not in the photo but some yards behind is Johnny Hayes, who was born in Manhattan in 1886 to Michael of Nenagh, Tipperary, and Ellen, a second generation Irish-American whose parents hailed from Roscommon.173 This is the point when the Olympics changed from a sporting gathering where “fair play” included helping a man on death’s door to cross the finish line, into the games we know of today. It was to render already obsolete the words that Baron de Coubertin was to famously say that evening about winning and taking part. The subsequent sympathy for Pietri derived from the fact that he never asked for assistance, but the American athlete Ray Ewry observed rightly: “I believe if those who had been following this runner around the course had seen that it was a runner from the United Kingdom who was in second place they would have been willing to hit Dorando over the

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head rather than have him cross the line.”174 The British press didn’t question Hayes’s victory. The Daily News declared that the assistance given to Pietri was “a gross infringement of the rules and a scandalous interference with the course of the race.” That the victory should have gone to the American is the very best thing that could have happened … it is sad for the sportsman who made such gallant effort; but it is even sadder for the reputation of the official body of the Stadium — which has hitherto confined itself to more or less innocent forms of mismanagement — that the necessity of disqualifying Pietri should have arisen at all. For the action of the person who was mainly responsible it is hard to find suitable words.175

Despite there being a general acceptance that Hayes rightfully deserved the marathon gold, this new world order left a bitter taste in British mouths, unhelped by the boisterous, continuous, and ultimately irritating “Rah, rah, rah!” which the Times wrote “made it quite clear to what country” the athletes being cheered were from.176 When the result was overturned by Jack Andrew and his megaphone, the crowd’s mood immediately changed and scuffles broke out in what may be the only crowd trouble recorded at an Olympic athletic event. Those bobbies who had been following Pietri were now dispatched with raised truncheons to restore order. Later, James B. Connolly quickly took credit for launching the protest, claiming “he practically had to put a boot into” Halpin, Murphy and Sullivan to go and complain, which is hard to believe.177 Pietri recovered, proving early newspaper reports that he had died to be premature. The following day, Queen Alexandra presented him with a special trophy. Little was mentioned that she also presented a “splendid trophy” to Sheridan.178 The Americans meanwhile “heaved” Hayes, clad in his athletic garb, “onto a table, from where he carried the handsome marathon trophy presented by the Greek Olympic Committee around the stadium, borne by his teammates.”179 Mike Murphy seemed totally sick of it all. When asked what he thought of the games, he snapped: “Just tell them at home I am glad it is all over.”180 In the aftermath of this triumph, Hayes took a brief sojourn to the “old country,” a longstanding tradition among American sportsmen in Europe that included more than baseball players on world tours. He and Martin Sheridan, upon their arrival, were accorded “a tremendous popular welcome,” according to the New York Times: “[A]ll the more remarkable because it was entirely spontaneous, the mere announcement of the hour of their arrival bringing many thousands of persons to the station to meet the athletes. The streets along the route to their hotel were completely blocked by the Dublinites, and the enthusiasm displayed recalled the triumphant entries into the city of Parnell when he was at the height of his popularity.”181 At their hotel, I-AAC athletes were met by the Belfast MP, Joseph Devlin. The Scot Lawson Robertson stated that they had expected “an Irish welcome, [but] what they had met with quite took away their breath.” The only fly in the ointment was the GAA, who, due to their conflict with the IAAA, had told Conway that the meeting that Sheridan and Robertson aimed to compete in was “illegal,” a move that was “generally condemned,” according to the New York Times: “The opinion is universal that the dispute … should not be allowed to mar the harmony of a National welcome to the American champions.”182 Sheridan competed in Dungarvan, County Waterford, two weeks later, meeting Tom Kiely, with the day ending with honors even.183 Hayes, in contrast, visited his father’s home town of Nenagh, where large crowds greeted their long-lost son, and where the New Yorker finally met his grandfather. The Chicago Tribune reported: “When the train drew in, the athlete

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was greeted by the town officials. Horses were removed from the carriage which was pulled triumphantly by the crowd through the streets.”184 On his arrival in New York on August 19, cheered by two thousand well-wishers, there was more than a hint of bitterness about Hayes: “The [English] press was manifestly unfair…. The papers conceded us no chance whatever in carrying off the Marathon prize, and when we did win, the pill was consequently all the harder to swallow.” Hayes denied there was any protest regarding Pietri’s “win”: “[T]he decision was promptly rendered by the officials giving me first place in the race. Probably they would have liked to lick me, but they didn’t try.”185 Sullivan had already disembarked on August 7 and immediately launched into the “English,” claiming if Bulger, Andrews et al. continue “to dictate affairs, England will become athletically degenerate.” Taking almost two columns of the New York Times alone, Sullivan’s rant was laced with militaristic jingoism common to today’s sportswriting: “They were friendly to every nation they could beat that was represented, and would raise their flags upon the smallest pretexts. When an American, however, finished, the raising of the Stars and Stripes … was received in silence. Now shouldn’t everybody take their hats off to the American boys who went into the enemy’s country and realized such glorious results?”186 Sullivan wasn’t the only “sportsman” wading into the Brits. Professional crank Mike Regan claimed that the home rooters made him feel unwelcome, adding angrily: “The decision in the 400 meter race was so outrageous that it makes me boil to think of it…. I want no more of British sport.”187 A quarter of a million New Yorkers lined the streets to witness “the men who carried off the Olympic honors from all the nations of the world” in one of those parades the Big Apple does better than anyone else.188 Irishness was in evidence everywhere: Irish regiments, such as the Sixty-Ninth Regiment, were represented, while the First, Second and Third Regiments of the Irish Volunteers “acted as a guard of honor to the American athletes, who rode in automobiles.” Catholic athletic clubs turned out in droves while the Kilkenny and Sligo Gaelic Football teams of the city represented Gaelic sport. The athletes were escorted by fifteen thousand troops and other civic workers for five miles from Forty-Sixth Street and Broadway, passing “banked behind lines of blue-coated policemen … thousands of enthusiastic spectators,” in what was “the greatest ovation in the history of athletics.”189 In the words of Kevin McCarthy, the 1908 Olympic Games were the “high point for Olympian promotion of Irish identity” within the U.S.: “It gave a simultaneous and huge boost to Irish pride, to American acceptance of the Irish as ‘Americans’ and, indeed, to the Irish embracing of their American identity.”190 At City Hall, acting Mayor Patrick McGowan concluded his speech: “But you won. You won! All the people of the United States are proud of you, and this great demonstration in your honor is the best evidence of the gratitude of the American people.”191 McGowan had already let it be known as Hayes arrived that “among those who helped to do the showering of honors were the Hayses [sic], Flanigans, [sic] Sheridans, Kelly, McGraths and others with names of that Irish type.”192 The New York Sun, lest it be forgotten, reminded readers: “A couple of months ago there was a $20 a week clerk in an uptown department store who said he could run fast enough … to win the greatest foot race in the world. He was Irish, therefore good humored, quick witted and game as a fox terrier … but the idea of little Johnny Hayes, Kid Hayes, Johnny Half Portion Hayes, winning the Marathon made them laugh up in Harlem.” His vulnerable, youthful innocence was pictured when he was grabbed by some aldermen, compelling “the Half Portion, red under tan and freckles, squirming in

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painful embarrassment” to say a few inaudible words which were “understood to mean that he was very much obliged and very happy and all that, and wouldn’t they please put him down so he could get under the table.”193 The most outrageous stunt of the day was pulled by James E. Sullivan himself when he arrived at City Hall with a chained lion. De Coubertin described this as “a minor incident [which] speaks volumes concerning the state of mind that prevailed … [that] almost caused a diplomatic scandal.”194 After the parade at his home, Sagamore Hill, on Long Island, President Roosevelt entertained the American team along with Sullivan, Halpin, Conway and Murphy, whom Teddy referred to as “an American institution.” During the proceedings one member of the team proposed three cheers “for the greatest President the country ever had” followed by a “yell that … almost raised the roof.” “Conway offered Roosevelt honorary membership of the I-AAC which he accepted. Then probably bored by Sullivan’s endless moaning cut him short during one diatribe: ‘Well, we’ve won and the less talking we do the better.’”195 For the Irish-American press, the London Olympics highlighted, as McCarthy observes, “what its spokespeople had been telling America about Britain since the Irish began arriving in the USA.”196 The Gaelic American would carry countless articles about the Games with no Irish connection, if it meant having a go at John Bull. It quoted Judge Daniel Cohalan in the Evening Press pouring scorn on English double standards: “Oh, no one who knows the English will be surprised at this little matter of favoritism…. It’s quite typical of the English, who are always talking about fair play, that they don’t know the meaning of the word, and would go far out of the way to keep from learning it.”197 Victor J. Dowling, scourge of the blue laws, told guests at the Astoria: That English King who, when he heard of the victorious charge of the Irish Brigade at Fontenoy, cried, “Cursed be the laws which deprive me of such subjects,” might have a prototype today in some sprig of English royalty who, seeing the victories won for the United States by IrishAmericans, might well exclaim against the tyranny which drove those men or their ancestors from Ireland to seek asylum in this country. Some of these men of Irish blood who won points against the British must have taken a malicious pleasure in seeing … the United States flag raised over the red flag of England.198

Meanwhile, the newspaper’s editor, John Devoy, was in his element. Responding to the mayhem that Sullivan had created in London, Devoy suggested Czar Sullivan “should be one of the proudest men in the world”: What learned editors, analytical academicians and Irish ex-patriates have failed to do by speech and other propaganda, he has accomplished … automatically. The bubble of English friendship for America has been pricked in the most unexpected way. The Britons have shown their dislike for us by resorting to tricks that have made a comedy of the boasted though non-existent sentiment — known as British love of fair play.199

There were various instances of Devoy, in the words of McCarthy, “bonding with the U.S. team in a swarm of mutual Anglophobia.”200 This included claiming America had won the games, “as the other things thrown in by the British are not really athletics.”201 Replying to Lord Desborough’s explanation that the Liverpool Police team wore “their usual boots,” Devoy smirked: “[He] might just as well have said, ‘Why, my dear sir, these are exactly the same boots that Lancashire men kick their wives with,’ for all its relevancy to the charge of unfairness. The same kind of defense could be made for a Lancashire man who had bitten off his antagonist’s nose in a prize fight.”202 The Irish World mocked the tug-of-war team by composing “England’s new anthem,” predictably titled “God Save Our Boots.”203

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As McCarthy observes, Devoy briefly deserted his parochial Irishness to call on all New Yorkers of whatever origin to hail the returning Irish athletes as if they were war heroes, clearly to “raise the hackles of Yankee New Yorkers.”204 But given Devoy’s background, this was understandable; here was the perfect opportunity to finally get his message across to Americans: [W]e now say, if you are true Americans, go out and welcome home those gallant sons of America, whether of Irish extraction or no … for they ventured with the American flag in the lion’s mouth, while it snarled and growled…. The English “boos” and hisses which greeted every American victory were as strongly indicative of British love for American people as the British sovereigns which were abundantly subscribed in London in 1861 to break the back of the American Republic while it engaged in the life and death struggle of the Civil War.205

Devoy wasn’t to be disappointed by the reception for the athletes, claiming that not since Admiral Dewey returned from Manila Bay had there been such excitement for returning heroes. He witnessed the mixing of Irish and American symbols: buildings decorated with American and Irish flags; the Irish Volunteers standing in line with the state National Guard; and the bands “played ‘The Star Spangled Banner,’ ‘Hail Columbia’ and ‘The Wearing of the Green.’”206 The Irish World added: “When it is considered that the day was not a holiday the reception to the victors assumes a most remarkable aspect.”207 The Irish success in London led to even more hailing of the Irish athletic prowess, with some hyperbolic claims. The Irish World believed the success in London focuses attention on “the fact that Irish brain and brawn is equally prominent in other lines of sport. In the National Game it will be noticed … that nearly all the managers and players are of Irish extraction.”208 In Louisville the Kentucky Irish American claimed Irish America loved the American competitors even more for the “enemies they have made” in London: “They submitted to humiliation and injustice at the hands of the British officials, athletes and their supporters, but even then defeated the English [sic] competitors overwhelmingly.”209 Four days before the parade the Gaelic American published a poem by E.P. McKenna called “How the Yankees Beat the World,” which praised the Irish members of the team: But they never met on turf or track such men of brawn and bone / So Flanagan and Sheppard, McGrath and Sheridan / Showed them all the kind of stuff ’s in a good Cork Yankee man… A blinding whirl, a mighty swing, and like a falling star / The hammer fell a good spear length beyond the farthest bar / Then Flanagan shook hands in glee, and dusting off his clothes / “I learnt that trick, me boys,” sez he, “where the blue bright Shannon flows.”

And of course it also had a swipe at Perfidious Albion: A man of god-like beauty then stepped out before the throng / So lithe, so trim and handsome, so sinewy and strong / He held the discus in his hand and hit the sod and swat / Then did a speedy stunt or two and let it go at that / The dukes and earls, who looked like girls, screwed their monocles tight / And said, “Ba Jove, th’ bloomin’ thing has gone up out o’ sight.” / Marty gazed upon the crowd who gave him cheer on cheer / “No man can hate that throw,” sez he, “since me father isn’t here….” At jumping too, and running they showed the English tricks / Although they knew John Bull could sprint since back in ’76 / They chewed them up, and spat them out, and trounced them good and sound / That’s how the Yankee beat the world in good old London town / So let the Eagle scream, me boys, from ’Frisco to New York / From Dublin town to Galway Bay, from Derry down to Cork / Hang out the starry banner and never take a dare / For they still raise brawny Yankees in Donegal and Clare.210

The Irish World published another woodcut with the trio of Flanagan, Sheridan and McGrath, hands on each others’ shoulders, wearing shirts with a large shamrock in the

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middle, with a five-verse poem dedicated to them. The final verse declared: “Brave ‘Kelly and Burke and Shea’ / Flanagan, Sheridan, McGrath / True Anglo-Saxons are we / Ha, ha, ha, ha, HA, HA!”211 The Irish-American press then turned their guns on the “West-British” Athletes. In the Gaelic American, Devoy savaged the Irish athletes who “disgraced themselves by making points for England [sic], that no Englishman [sic] could make….”212 The newspaper added that the city’s Owen Roe Club of New York condemned the renegades whose points boosted “the United Kingdom”: “Not alone have they been unmindful of the best interests of their country and recreant to true Irish nationalism, but they have shown themselves disloyal to the great Irish athletic organization which gave them the opportunities for development.”213 The Irish World claimed: “The Irishmen on our team and, in fact, all Irishmen are bitter against their countrymen who are competing under the colors of Great Britain and her colonies, thus including Canada.”214 Even Martin Sheridan waded in. In his Evening World Olympics column, he chided Leahy, Horgan, Walsh and Roche as causing “the only bitterness displayed by the boys” by letting their “scores” go to “John Bull.” Sheridan put up a pompous argument, discarding the political reality of 1908 Ireland, that if they couldn’t compete for the U.S., they should’ve boycotted the games altogether: All four of these men claim that they were scoring points for Ireland, but this contention while patriotic is not practical because the very object they seek is defeated by themselves. The Irishmen want to beat England, and the only way they could do that would be to stay at home. The eight and one third points scored by those men were taken from the American team and recorded for England. No amount of patriotic argument can change that fact.215

While in Ireland, the Kentucky Irish American quoted Sheridan as unable to contain his contempt for his countrymen who competed under what he continually referred to as “England” to a local newspaper: “Why, our team was made up of men, 75 percent of whom had Irish blood in them, and it grieved us to think that Irishmen were competing against us, with England’s flag [sic], the Union Jack, on their breasts…. It is cruel to think of it, after all those hundreds of years of persecution, to find some Irishmen still so slavish.”216 Not everyone was so misty-eyed with these athletes. The night before the victory parade, eighty-five athletes were invited to George Cohan’s Knickerbocker Theatre to watch a performance of The Yankee Prince. During the second act, the actor playing Uncle Sam, Gilbert Gregory, appeared with “flags formed by cutting off a section of Old Glory and adding a harp of Ireland … neatly printed on silk.” This didn’t go down well with a female member of the audience, Marion Alexander, who protested and called for Gregory’s arrest. Immediately a soldier shouted her down, claiming: “That flag doesn’t mean anything but a compliment to the boys.” As the audience took the soldier’s side, the lady ran off in disgust.217 Then on July 31, the New York Times published a letter from an “E Pluribus Unum” in Easton, who wrote he was “naturally proud of the achievements of the ‘American’ athletes” in London, before asking: But would it not be well for us to temper our celebration of their victories by consideration … [that] most of the victories won by our team in the track events were won for us by foreign-born athletes, or by men whose immediate ancestry is foreign; and that one club, the Irish-American of New York, composed for the most part of foreign-born athletes was the greatest point getter on our side…. The constant recruiting of athletic life by Northern and Anglo-Saxon blood seems, in our climate, to be necessary to the maintenance of our supremacy. But I submit that this fact should weigh far more than the conventional and purely adventitious fact that our flag

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was hoisted so many times, when we come to consider how many foreigners are included in the “American” wins in the Olympic games of 1908.218

The letter irked one S.L. Harbinson of New York to reply: There were twenty-seven events decided in the Stadium, of which we won fifteen…. Only three of these were won for us by men of foreign birth…. It is an extraordinary perversion to call an American of foreign descent or even of “immediate foreign descent” a foreigner. All of us except the Indians are of foreign descent…. His assumption that we cannot maintain our athletic standard without constant infusions of fresh blood from Northern Europe is an old English delusion and is scarcely worth consideration. The average American is larger and stronger than the average man anywhere in Europe, except possibly Scandinavia. This is confirmed by army enlistment measurements extending over a period of half a century, and is a matter of common observation.219

As McCarthy exposes, there was also a feeling among the more respectable if not significantly anglophile America that Sullivan and his co-ethnic charges were a disgrace. He quotes William Sloane, the American Olympic Committee’s first president and member of the IOC, who wrote to de Coubertin suggesting that while criticism directed at the Yanks grieved him, it was perhaps deserved. Tellingly he added that taking into consideration “the walk in life from which [the athletes] come from it is a matter of congratulations that things did not turn out worse.” Sloane wasn’t impressed by English officials’ protests of impartiality but couldn’t resist slipping in some old-school WASP prejudice regarding “the jealousy of the Irish,” whether born in Ireland or America: “They are … foremost in certain lines and we have to make the best we can of their bitterness towards the English.”220 The following January he wrote to de Coubertin slurring Sullivan: “[The British] have learned what it means for gentlemen to deal with self-seeking, semi professional, self-styled ‘amateurs,’” adding that there was “very slow progress in eradicating ideas [immigrants] have brought from their old homes: but we do make progress.”221 Sloane vowed to temper the influence of Sullivan and Irish America on future U.S. Olympic parties by shunting a better class of American into the seats of the America’s Olympic Committees.222 However, Sullivan’s influence remained until his death. At his third re-election to the AAU presidency, at New York’s Hotel Astor, the union approved a severe freezing in AngloAmerican athletic relations, resolving that “no athlete registered with the [AAU] be given permission to compete in any international competition … over which the Amateur Athletic Association has jurisdiction, unless such meeting and management thereof are approved by the [AAU].” Sullivan was back on his soapbox: So much willful misrepresentation of the attitude of the Americans at the Olympic Games has been displayed by the English press … the inference has been sent abroad … that the American committee protested too frequently and protested without reason. It is my intention to show that we protested only when it was necessary and protested that each contestant might get a fair chance immaterial of whether he was capable of winning a prize or not. We protested on when it was necessary to have what we considered athletic fair play.

He concluded: “Future Olympic Games, if they are to be held, must certainly have some central body with authority.”223 In London he did gain one lasting personal success: as Bryant concedes, he ensured local committees would no longer supply their own nationals as partial judges.224 At the next Olympics in Stockholm, the Irish American AC won just five medals, with Pat McDonald winning gold in the shot and 56-lb. weight as well as silver in the twohanded shot. These were the last Olympics in which I-AAC athletes would grace the Games.

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With the First World War leaving the proposed 1916 Berlin Olympics in tatters, and the United States Congress declaring war on Germany on April 6, 1917, it would be 1920 before another Olympiad was held, and by then the club’s crack athletes would all be with other clubs. The Olympic Games of Antwerp saw Patrick Ryan taking the hammer gold as well as silver behind Patrick McDonald’s 56-lb. weight, while the Bandon-born Patrick J. Flynn picked up silver in the 3000-m steeplechase. Antwerp was also the first Olympics to which the U.S. sent women, with none of the medalists of Irish background. The American-born diaspora’s representatives remained in the realm of the male and included John Norton’s taking silver in the 400 “Irish Whales” Pat McDonald and Matt McGrath (Library of Meters, and Eddie Eagan’s winCongress). ning gold in boxing’s lightheavyweight division. It was in the medals taken by one Philadelphian rower’s double medal haul, including one with his cousin, that proved an illuminating swan song to the Irish participation under the Stars and Stripes in the period we have explored. With other sports, Irish Americans were taking the U.S. success abroad. Maurice Evans McLoughlin, the “California Comet,” had already won the U.S. Open men’s singles in 1912 and 1913 and was runner-up in 1911, 1914 and 1915, when he became the first American finalist at Wimbledon. In the men’s doubles he had also taken the U.S. Open titles with Tom Bundy in 1912, 1913 and 1914, and runners-up in 1915 and 1916, the latter year with Wad Dawson as his partner. In southwest London on Independence Day 1913, McLoughlin lost to the New Zealander Anthony Wilding in straight sets, telling the New York Times after the match: “Yes, he was too good for me.”225 However, by the end of the month, the U.S. had retaken the Davis Cup for the first time in a decade, beating the British at Wimbledon. Despite losing the first encounter to James Parke, McLoughlin was given most of the praise for the win: “The dazzling, daring play of the Californian and his sportsmanlike actions during the tournament so endeared him to the British followers of the game that, in spite of the keen disappointment at the loss of the cup, the crowd which witnessed today’s crucial match gave the Californian the spontaneous ovation that is usually reserved for their own idols.”226 Elsewhere in Britain, the Yanks were coming. John Brendan Kelly first saw the light of day in the Irish area of Philadelphia known as The Falls in 1889, the son of John Henry from Newport, Mayo, who had emigrated to the States twenty years earlier and met his wife Mary, the Irish-born daughter of a Civil War veteran, in Rutland, Vermont.227 In Antwerp, Kelly won two gold medals, the second in the double sculls with his cousin Paul Costello, racing in a three-team heat and beating the Italian pair by five lengths. Daniel

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Maurice Evans McLoughlin with Horace M. Rice (Library of Congress).

Boyne, Kelly’s biographer, claims Kelly and Costello may as well have been Abbot and Costello, such was their striking physical difference. Costello was six inches shorter than Kelly and was “a dark-haired, dour faced” man with “sloping eyebrows that made him look like he was always wincing.” Unlike his cousin, Costello wasn’t comfortable in the public eye, and his standard response to any journalist’s questions about a race was: “I let my oars do the talking.”228 However, such an easy race followed the much anticipated line-up between Kelly and the British rower Jack Beresford. It was a tight finish, with Kelly narrowly winning by one second and a boat’s length, and the New York Times noted that both rowers were too tired to shake hands. This lack of sportsmanship may have been owing to an incident earlier in the year in a small town on the Thames, famous for little but a rowing regatta.229 The race continued the bitter Anglo-American sporting relations of 1908 that in 1920 was still based on prejudice, snobbery and a flavoring of anti–Irish and anti–Catholicism by the English, and a “hoopla” jingoism that hid a burning inferiority complex by the Americans, which often swerved into imitating the exclusive practices of their fellow Anglo-Saxons. Jack Kelly was everything that the snobs in British sport preferred to have nothing to

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do with, even if his life would cause jaws to drop in shock years later. He was the continuation of a long tradition of Irish-American rowing that afforded one of America’s few opportunities for international competition. In an article in the New York Times of December 13, 1914, the paper commented that international sport for the Americans “resulted somewhat disastrously” during the past year. This consisted of the America’s Cup and Harmsworth Trophy Motor-Boat competition, both of which were canceled due to the “general conditions in Europe.” In 1914, the Hurlingham Club regained the International Polo Cup from the Meadow Brook Club of Long Island, while an English team defeated the University of Pennsylvania in the four-mile college relay championship. International ties in golf, then present, were also neglected in 1914, while the sole success of the year was Harvard’s rowing team’s capture of the Grand Challenge Cup at the Royal Henley Regatta.230 Such a scattered line-up, heavily slanted in rich men’s sports, confirmed the dearth of populist sports among American international matches at the time. Increasingly international contests were concentrated on athletes performing for nothing. In a country that was to become the greatest free-market capitalist nation known, it was inevitable that this would bring its own problems.

15 Squares — The Irish Sportsman and Amateurism The term “square” comes from “’s coir é: It is fair play, it is honesty.”1

As sports moved from the criminal margins into the world of respectability, an increasing number of sports moved under the control of elitist and discriminatory rulers where exclusion was championed in the battle to keep out undesirables from the lower orders. No more was this highlighted than in athletics, which now resided in two very exclusive homes: the university and the athletic club. In the end, despite the obstacles, the Irish were to feature prominently within both, bringing sports into the so-called “respectable” mainstream, through the weapon of “amateurism.” The theory of amateurism and sporting purity harked back to a more innocent age, which reflected contemporary concerns about a changing society. As Eric Hobsbawm explains, the middle classes were the most perturbed about this shift in society’s tectonic plates: “Negatively, [they] found it easy to segregate themselves from their inferiors by such rigid insistence on amateurism in sport … not to mention residential segregation. Positively, it may be suggested, they found it easier to establish a sense of belonging through external symbols, among which nationalism was perhaps the most significant.”2 Amateurism also hid behind “fair play,” as Alan Guttmann explains: Through most of the twentieth century amateurism was defended with the argument that fair play and good sportsmanship are possible only when sports are an athlete’s avocation, never his or her vocation. Amateur athletes were defined as those who competed for the intrinsic pleasures of the contest, not because sports provided them with the material basis of the existence. After all, the word “amateur” derives from the Latin word for “love.”3

This attitude permeated much of small-time sports across America. After all, not everyone was good enough at a pastime to make money from it, but that didn’t mean that a select few should benefit from the aesthetic delights of playing a game in one’s own little World Series. Isn’t “sport for all” facilitated by amateurism, where even the blind can play soccer and those in wheelchairs compete in basketball? One example was the Derry-born Michael H. Murray’s work within local Newark soccer until his death in 1915. Thomas Cahill wrote of him in Spalding’s “Soccer” Guide: “Mr. Murray had no patience with professional sport. When moneymaking became an object, he contended, the element of sport passed out and 347

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a purely commercial proposition came in. Of all amateur sports, soccer appealed to him most strongly and no amateur organization in Newark and the contiguous territory ever appealed to him for aid in vain.”4 Yet the theory of amateurism soon extended further than non-payment for participation. Insidiously, it necessitated rejecting any “unfair” advantage gained through working in manual labor. Exclusion of the sweating class was forwarded not as a phobia to the lower orders but a struggle to keep athletics functioning on as much of an even playing field as possible. Of course this was rubbish: only the foolish could fail to come to the conclusion that this was a cynical attempt to cultivate “sport for the few.” Guttmann voices the opinion that amateurism “as it was then understood was an invention of the Victorian middle and upper classes. Its freely acknowledged purpose was to exclude the ‘lower orders’ from the play of the leisure class.”5 John B. Connolly put it more succinctly: “If your father wasn’t a curate, or a barrister, of if he wasn’t a brewer, or a wholesale dealer in jams, or in some way making his living off the Government, or if he did work with his hands for a living … be sure your entry won’t be accepted.”6 It wasn’t always the case. Norridge suggests seventeenth-century class parameters were less marked in England than continental Europe: “The landed gentry, who felt secure both financially and socially, were willing to fraternize with the lower orders.” In sports this meant a duke was content to play in a cricket team captained by the gardener, while the Prince of Wales entertained a pug at his house.7 So while a crude British Victorian interpretation of an amateur never gained the ascendancy in nineteenth-century America, where the sporting philosophy embraced “as it did professionalism, nationalism, anti-aristocratic sentiment and often bluntness,” the Olympic founding fathers, like de Coubertin, did eventually accommodate the bunkum of the unpaid “love” of sport.8 Amateurism claimed many casualties along the way, and although people remember victims of racism Jim Thorpe and Jesse Owens, McCarthy argues that the Irish and Irish-American athlete, many de facto pros, were “a severe challenge to accepted IOC norms of aristocratic dominance, whatever about the nationalistic threats they may have posed otherwise.”9 However, one shouldn’t mistake amateurism, with the elevation of notions of chivalry, patriotism, and parochialism above vulgar desires such as asking for payment to appear in sports, as belonging exclusively to the Brahmin. The Boston Globe, who asked J.J. Cullen in 1889 whether there were any professional hurlers in Ireland, got a succinct response: “Not one. No one plays for a salary or any other remuneration than emblems of skill and success.”10 John Sugden and Alan Bairner make the observation of the paradox at the heart of the GAA: “Despite the blatant anti–Englishness which fuelled the emergence of the GAA, a characteristically British approach to sports was used by the organization’s founder members….”11 But that does not paint the whole picture of the fine line that the GAA in the U.S. walked and the rumors and accusations it lived with regarding shamateurism. On the same page where Cullen was defensive about payments, the Globe was telling readers that “contrary to the rule in Ireland, hurling is a semi-professional sport in Boston….” The Irish-Americans who made up the city’s two teams, the Shamrocks and the Bostons (probably the ICAB), were “willing, now and then, to play for a stake or purse offered by some organization.” One of the local “stars” even suggested that either side was capable of meeting any challenge from Ireland, but that any visiting club would be slung out by the GAA for meeting them.12 Further payments to Gaelic teams appeared later: both the hurling and Gaelic Football Massachusetts State championships were fought for a $100 purse, one of these noted as having been put up by the Irish NAA.13 Quite where the money was going

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wasn’t disclosed, but it wasn’t the last time American Gaelic games would be dogged by allegations of professionalism.14 During the brief burst of popularity of pedestrianism, athletic clubs and ruling athletic bodies on both sides of the Atlantic began to combat professionalism. As the country’s prominent amateur athletic club, the New York Athletic Club, cleaned up the top amateur athletes, it kept the door shut on the slightest odor of professionalism. As early as 1877, when covering Daniel O’Leary’s race against Peter Van Ness, the New York Times had noted that the club had “declined to have anything to do with the walk for reasons which it withheld.”15 Pedestrianism offered huge rewards, with Kelly Collins claiming the money earned was astronomical. Even with the astonishing salaries of today’s athletes, it would be hard to find an athlete that makes one hundred years of salary in that many days.16 Yet as Melvin L. Adelman suggests, there was already a lack of popular appeal for athletics from the pre– Civil War era, with less sporting competition “to encourage entrepreneurs to promote professional pedestrians on a regular basis.” It proved professional athletics would never be as financially viable as baseball.17 One of the earliest promoters of professionalism in baseball was George B. Ellard. A large sporting equipment vendor of the time, Ellard, like Michael Phelan a decade earlier, was typical of a class of Irish entrepreneur keen to expand the business to which they supplied goods to. In the words of Stephen Hardy: “They were hardly content to leave promotional efforts in the hands of liberal theologians and urban reformers.”18 So Ellard set the pace in standardized baseball uniforms; he offered his club designed white flannel shirts and short white flannel trousers, which, combined with scarlet colored hosiery, changed the Resolutes’ nickname to the Red Stockings.19 In 1869 and despite heavy club debts, together with Alfred Gosham, Ellard combed eastern cities for the baseball talent that the New York Clipper hailed as their “Gold Medal Team,” ensuring the Queen City had the best baseball team in the country on the eve of the game’s jump into professionalism, something that the club’s biographer, Stephen Guschov, compares with a modern-day attempt to sign a whole all-star team.20 Baseball was fully professional by 1870; no matter how small the league, clubs began paying their players, and the amateur club of whatever sport was now in peril with the philosophy of paying nothing apparently doomed. Amateur clubs could only attract athletes who commanded a day-to-day salary greater than professional sportsmen, or had their own wealth, creating an inherent snobbery that made it difficult for the masses to embrace the sport. But as pedestrianism declined, the era when amateur athletic clubs stood their ground against paid athletes drew to a close. But unlike, say, professional rowing, athletic meetings, though long, drawn-out events with countless participants, could be staged with less reliance on crowds if overheads were small. All of which was rendered irrelevant once the club’s raison d’être wasn’t to make money, but to promote the prestige of club members. Stephen Pope argues “professional” athletics, with the “erratic and limited growth” of its organizational structures, was vulnerable to a “hostile takeover” by amateurs: The rising bureaucracy of amateurists … articulated a class-biased critique of professionalism, in terms of the ways it corrupted true sport through the exploits of working-class athletes unschooled in the virtues of the amateur ethos. Sport, they argued, should be a form of recreation, not a business. This rising generation of amateur spokesmen effectively turned their biases into resilient athletic structures, and thus defeated a more popular, but unorganized, group of professional-sports promoters.21

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As Pope adds in probably the best work on patriotism and American sports, it was Sullivan who “worked feverishly to solidify the AAU’s authority by [first] designing the athleticsanction notion, which gave the Union monopoly powers,” so that professional athletes were expelled into the uncertain world of paid athletics.22 Along with his associate Caspar Whitney, he saved amateur athletics “from its own contradictions and abuses,” making amateurism the dominant ideology in American track and field.23 One cultural historian, Andrew Ross, claims the pair “patrolled the ever-shifting border of popular and legitimate taste” supervising the participants’ passports, the temporary visas, the cultural identities, threatening alien elements, serving deportation orders and occasionally making their own “adventurous forays across the border.”24 However, by themselves such ideals were doomed in the egalitarian meritocracy and money-making credo of American society. This was reflected not only in the differing definitions between British and American athletics, but also in the pair’s different sides of the amateur ethos coin: Whitney was for snobbish exclusivity, while Sullivan, “a fierce and resolute defender of the pure amateur code,” saw amateur sports as something the masses could still enjoy.25 Sullivan may have been ruthless, but amateurism had to be clear of exclusivity to embrace all American men, not just a few, and its definition became increasingly fluid in the process. The Committee on Definition of an Amateur concluded that while those who took money for competing should be banned, to “classify as professionals” the trainers, teachers, even church workers, who “are doing their utmost to stem the tide of professionalism insofar as it lowers the standards of the true amateur principle,” was ridiculously “unjust.”26 It therefore became perfectly acceptable to take money to train unpaid athletes, but not to pay the athletes themselves. But not everyone was convinced. Adding to its review of Ethics of Manly Sport years earlier, the New York Times asked for advice on “how to avoid” the professional: “So far as the athletic clubs are concerned, there seems little prospect of solving the question. When it comes to a public contest for glory or a medal the amateur always takes the advice of the professional and sometimes outdoes him in trickery….”27 Sullivan’s successor Dan Ferris, a radical in comparison, still wouldn’t sway from amateurism, even to sometimes laughable extremes. Admitting his part in blacklisting Jim Thorpe, the greatest athlete he had ever seen, when asked in later life if he approved of high jumping against a horse at a professional horse show, Ferris retorted: “A show horse is not a pro. He is one of the purest amateurs.”28 Running concurrent with the elitist athletic clubs were the universities, where varsity sports had begun as student-run clubs. Undergraduates often found them more exciting than other extracurricular activities, but they also created “a feeling of community.”29 And as with athletic clubs, Harvard President Charles W. Elliot recalled the 1858 regatta involving Irish clubs in which Harvard competitors rowed for money: “In those days the distinction between amateur and professional had not been clearly made.”30 By the nineties these clubs came under the control of university faculties.31 The longterm profitability of sports came from the college football that was first played by Ivy League universities, Princeton and Rutgers, in 1869, and was seen as a builder of “tough bodies and manly character” of the country’s intellectual elite that were previously perceived as effeminate.32 In terms of hard cash, this was a game with growing appeal that meant wages, which once encouraged the scourge of “ringers,” was eliminated. In terms of social status, it also brought, as Rader claims, the brutal, gladiatorial spectacle of the prize ring to the respectable classes: “Only … prize-fighting … offered an equivalent display of brute physicality.

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While proper Victorians endangered their reputations when they patronized a prize fight, college football permitted them to express primeval feelings in a respectable and controlled setting.”33 Come the new century, Irish-American students were becoming key figures at Ivy League football teams, and Bernstein noted an ethnic change from predominantly AngloSaxon stock to more diverse teams, as the likes of Harvard, Yale and Princeton “changed their educational mission from the training of clergy to the cultivation of the nation’s business elite.”34 Harvard’s captain of 1904 was Dan Hurley, while James Lawrence Cooney was Princeton’s captain the following year. Other Irish-American stars of the early Ivy League included Ed Healy, Frank Cavanaugh (played by Pat O’Brien in the 1943 film The Iron Major), and John O’Connor at Dartmouth. Charles Daly of Harvard went on to play for and coach the Army side and wrote a guide to the game, American Football, in 1920. In 1902, Yale had what was called the “Irish line,” which included Tom Shevlin, Chuck Rafferty, Ralph Kinney, and Jim Hogan.35 The university also had the Kerry-born quarterback Michael J. “Iron Mike” Donahue between 1900 and 1903, a player the Atlanta Constitution described as “one of the most spectacular … ever playing at that institution.”36 In the autumn of 1904 Donahue became athletic director and football coach at Alabama Polytechnic (now Auburn University) for nineteen seasons, winning the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association title and being the Billingsley Report national champions for 1913,37 before leaving for Louisiana State in December 1922. Other non–Catholic University all– Americans and members of the College Football Hall of Fame included John F. McGovern at Michigan, the Australian-born former Aussie-rules kicker Pat O’Dea at Wisconsin, Clark Shaughnessy at Minnesota, and Paddy Driscoll at Northwestern. As time passed varsity sports became increasingly competitive and developed a focus for not only small town boosterism but also ethnic and religious sporting affiliation, especially with regards to Catholic universities. Although these sports were supposedly strictly amateur, the pressures to win increasingly blurred the line between what was acceptable philanthropic assistance to disadvantaged students, and what was blatant “ringing.” Nothing showed this growing tendency to bend the rules than the case of Yale’s Jim Hogan. James J. Hogan was born in Glenbane, Tipperary, in 1876 and was brought to Torrington, Connecticut, as a kid. Growing up dirt poor as his father worked as a stonemason and his mother washed laundry, Hogan himself was no natural scholar.38 He managed to graduate from high school, finding work in a hardware store before someone noticed his footballing abilities.39 Then he was offered a place as a mature student at Phillips Exeter — he still had to pay his way through — where one teacher recalls “the noble fight he made to get an education.”40 He joined Yale in 1902 as a twenty-eight year old. The New York Times wrote of his game against Columbia: “Hogan at right tackle is strong on offence, but his tackle back work is weak for some unknown reason.”41 By the following year he was named in the “all-star” team of the Eastern Colleges.42 What wasn’t disclosed was that Hogan had been granted a generous, and therefore secret, stipend to turn out for the Bulldogs, eventually exposed in 1905 by the muck-racking journalist, Henry Beech Needham of McClure’s Magazine. This included a suite at Vanderbilt Hall, the cream of the college’s dormitories; free meals at the University Club; and a hundred bucks in pocket money. The tab for his education was naturally also picked up. But that was only half of it. Hogan also received all the profits from selling score cards at Yale’s home games, and was the “franchisee” for the American Tobacco Company cigarettes, not just at the college, but in New Haven as a whole. So well known was this among the other students that they affectionately labeled the coffin

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nails “Hogan’s cigarettes,” and according to an ATC official, Hogan “talked up” the company’s product to his fellow students. Upon leaving New Haven, Hogan received a ten-day all-inclusive trip to Cuba with his coach Mike Murphy as a golden handshake. All of this generosity was paid for out of a slush fund belonging to the Yale Athletic Association and was put down to the old chestnut of “miscellaneous expenses.”43 As Stephen Fox contends, while Hogan worked hard at Yale, ranking as high as third in his class, “a nonathlete of similar academic promise would never have enjoyed such privileges.”44 But then no “nonathlete” could make Yale the money Hogan did. Hogan wasn’t alone in this “shamateurism.” Another Irish-American Ivy League star and Exeter alumnus from a modest background exposed by Needham was James L. Cooney. He was also handed “grants” to go to Princeton instead of Harvard, including managing an eating club on the campus and, like Hogan, a concession to sell match programs. Needham did have some sympathy for the pair, claiming they were “victims of a vicious system, subsidized through no fault of theirs,” but he added that, as subsidized athletes, the pair “have no proper place on college teams.”45 Yale declined to comment, but one “prominent Yale man” commented off the record that there was nothing untoward: “The only accusation made against Yale is that three athletes were given the privilege of publishing athletic score cards. As all three athletes bid for them like other competitors and were given the contracts as any bidders would get it, the strength of the charges is not apparent.”46 The university also exposed the gulf between the two extremes of Irish-American students: those of the shanty and those of the lace-curtain rich, as when Hogan met fellow All-American and Yale star, Tom Shevlin. The spoilt son of a Minnesota timber magnate who “sailed through college on an allowance, buying cars and forty-cent cigars,” Shevlin had “nouveau riche airs” that never endeared him to the students as much as Hogan, whose popularity made it into the classic Yale fighting song “Down the Field,” in which cranks pledge, “We’ll give a long cheer for Hogan’s men.”47 Sadly, despite privileged educations, both died young. Once Yale’s best all-round athlete — a varsity hammer-throwing champ under Murphy, who reportedly boxed Jim Corbett in an exhibition at the university — Shevlin went on to coach the Yale football team between 1910 until 1915, when he caught pneumonia while pacing the sidelines and eventually passing away aged thirty-two just after Christmas. On hearing the news, Walter Camp recalled Shevlin as: “A sportsman, a leader, a friend, always at the front with a dominant personality that compelled attention and success. Into life, as into football, he carried that personality, and it always stood him in good stead.”48 Hogan, meanwhile, became deputy commissioner of the New York Street Cleaning Department before succumbing to an acute attack of uremia that had been induced by the kidney affliction Bright’s disease.49 Hogan’s example was perhaps the most extreme end of college “shamateurism,” finally forcing faculties to take control of athletics from students and alumni, when the system was so well ingrained. Caspar Whitney had exaggerated that “tramp” athletes in the middle and far west of America were “bought and sold like cattle to play this autumn on ‘strictly amateur’ elevens.”50 But the Ivy League was to lose its ascendency in football in further years to the Midwestern and Californian colleges, as they put academia above muscularity; in 1900, students promoted a win-at-all-costs culture. And if the career of Hogan showed the lengthy efforts colleges and universities were going to ensure an athlete would compete for them, William “Pooch” Donovan’s playing career at Phillips Exeter College showed the corrupt practice of a relaxed approach to qualifications. Donovan was one of the most prominent “ringers” of his day. Reports claimed in 1891

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Tom Shevlin, right, with Frank Hinkey (Library of Congress).

that despite years of professionalism, the AAU were going to grant him an amnesty. It fooled nobody. “Those who know of ‘Pooch’s races in the past can scarcely believe that he has secured standing from the AAU,” commented the Boston Herald: “Donovan would be a valuable acquisition to any of the amateur clubs as he is an all round athlete, a fast sprinter, a good hurdle racer and fairly proficient in all round jumping, shot putting and middle distance running. But it is scarcely to be credited that his professionalism, which has been most fragrant, will allow of his reinstatement.” It didn’t help that only the previous week he was still performing for money in a meeting at Worcester.51 So when he enrolled as a twenty-five-year-old freshman at the New Hampshire institution in 1893, with fees underwritten, it certainly seemed Donovan had managed to enter a tertiary level education without the qualifications. Or as Axel Bundgaard puts it, “[with] false academic credentials and no legitimate connection with the school.”52 It was the Boston Herald that lifted the lid on the scandal in November 1893 after Andover surprisingly lost to Exeter and “the thing that everybody wanted to know was ‘How did it happen?’” A Herald man took up the case and found that Exeter had a player “who was a genuine phenomenon.” Further investigation proved that Donovan, who didn’t disguise his name, was none other than “Pooch” himself: “Mr. Donovan is eminently well qualified to

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make a successful half-back, but it is hardly in the interest of amateur sport for Exeter Academy to allow a recognized professional athlete to play on her eleven. It is certain that the principal of the school would not countenance any such unsportsmanlike action.”53 By the time the story broke, three men — Blas, Leahy and Donovan — had suddenly left. While Blas seemed to be going purely on his inability to keep up with the academic demands, Leahy’s and Donovan’s departures were more mysterious. The school’s principal, Charles Everett Fish, told the Boston Globe: “The knowledge that Donovan is a professional athlete is absolutely news to me.” He claimed that Donovan appeared a bona fide student, approaching him personally “one evening about Oct. 12” while working at a clubhouse at a lake near Worcester, claiming he was “desirous of obtaining an education” and offering the Honorable Samuel Winslow, chair of the Republican Committee of Massachusetts, as a reference. If the faculty obtain the slightest evidence that any of the students know that Donovan was a professional and asked him to come here for the purpose of deliberately degrading the school athletics they will have to pay the penalty…. The boys will be made to understand that the athletic honors of the academy cannot be purchased at the cost of the honor of the institution. I have nothing but the utmost condemnation for professionalism in school contests.54

But there was no evidence that “Pooch” was getting paid, while he was certainly keeping pace with his studies. In the end Exeter’s sporting fixtures with its rival Andover were suspended for three years, while the school’s faculty took over the control of sports.55 Just as the Irish began to dominate major league baseball management, the demands for success made Ivy League colleges turn to ex-professional baseball players, the type of citizen previously seen as far too plebeian for the top universities to coach their teams. Hugh Duffy, Jack Slattery and Stuffy McInnis all showed Harvard’s students how to swing a bat. And an important way to enhance the prospects of success was for clubs and universities to hire high quality coaching staff. Increasingly universities and top clubs began to recruit such “pros” in other sports. If neither the likes of Harvard nor the NYAC were the Gleason’s or Kronk boxing gyms of their day, it was a different story with athletics and rowing. And while both sought the better class of member, they still needed “professionals” to train them to win as they came under attack from less exclusive upstart clubs like the I-AAC or Notre Dame. Soon coaches with the social station of “Pooch” were training athletes at the oldest, most prestigious, most expensive and snootiest university in the country, where their formal academic status, Irish ethnicity and “professionalism” were all conveniently forgotten.56 The leading trainer at any university was Mike Murphy, who would in time become one of the greatest American physical trainers of all time, which is even more incredible in that he overcame deafness to achieve this accolade. Labeled on his death “the father of American track athletics,” he was born Michael Charles Murphy of Irish parents in rural Massachusetts near Framingham in 1860. In adulthood he was a professional athlete with the Natick Hook and Ladder Company, before leaving the Detroit Athletic Club to join the NYAC. As coach between 1890 and 1900, facing the London AC in 1895, he used psychological work and fine-tuned tactics to help Charles H. Kilpatrick to break the world record for the half-mile, the fastest in the distance of the nineteenth century that would last until the 1908 Olympics. Murphy pulled Kilpatrick aside, telling him: “Charlie, there’s no man in the world that can beat you today. If [the British runner F.S. Horan] should be on your shoulder when you come into the stretch just squeeze on your corks and think of your mother.”57

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Murphy later took up professional posts at Yale, University of Michigan, and University of Pennsylvania, while also coach to the 1908 and 1912 U.S. Olympic athletic teams.58 He authored two books on athletics, teaming up with the American Sports Publishing Company in 1906 to produce College Athletics, in which he laid out his vision for athletics’ benefits: “It is self-evident that the athlete cannot get into condition no matter how hard he trains as to diet and exercise, if he does not attend to his other habits of life. He should see to it that he gets plenty of sleep and that he does not dissipate in any way. It is only by attending carefully to his body that the athlete can expect to do himself justice in his favorite events.”59 Murphy was clearly marching in time with the contemporary battle against booze. His second book, a posthumously printed tome on athletics, Athletic Training, along with the various track and field categories, includes advice about diet, how to prepare for contests, and the virtues in enhancing one’s well-being: “I never did believe in athletics except as they promoted good health and physical efficiency. This is the one truth I have always emphasized — that all the athletic glory ever won is not worth a month’s ill health.”60 By 1910, when Keene Fitzpatrick was appointed trainer at Princeton, four of the northeast’s most respectable Ivy League colleges’ athletic and football teams were being trained by men Michael Charles Murphy (courtesy of University of from the Natick Hook and Ladder team.61 Fitzpatrick was cited as the man Pennsylvania Archives, 20060630002). who changed the nature of pole vaulting after a career in which he succeeded Murphy as coach on three occasions at Detroit and Yale. From here he became fitness coach to Fielding Yost’s Michigan University, four times national football champions in a row from 1901 to 1904.62 It was F. Scott Fitzgerald, himself an alumnus of Princeton, who referred “Keene” as having made “me into a very fair pole vaulter — and he did,” in his 1926 collection of short stories, All the Sad Young Men.63 Yost described Fitzpatrick as being like his brother: “He put men in shape, trained them and developed them. They were ‘usable’ all the time. He is a trainer who has his men in the finest mental condition possible. I don’t think there was ever a trainer who kept men more fit, physically and mentally, than Keene Fitzpatrick.”64 Leaving for Princeton, he helped William Roper to a national title in 1911. Later one of his students, Dr. Raymond G. Clapp, who became a trainer and coach at the University of Nebraska for thirty years, spoke of

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Fitzpatrick as: “That polished Irish gentleman, who was one of the finest sportsmen I have ever known and who was so highly regarded at … Michigan, Yale, and Princeton universities and by all of the track coaches and athletes of yesteryears.”65 When it was reported that two British athletic officials came to Chicago to hire an American coach to train their athletes for the aborted 1916 Olympics, Fitzpatrick’s was one name suggested by Everett C. Brown, the former president of the AAU. However, Brown thought another Irish-American coach, Martin A. Delaney, would prove a better choice.66 Delaney was by now one of the country’s “leading physical directors.” He initially coached the St. Louis University varsity track and field team, before becoming athletic director of Kansas City AC. At the 1904 Games he was the general manager of the athletics and worked as a judge. Four years later, Brown, then president of the Chicago Athletic Association, offered him an increased salary to manage the “Cherry Circles,” with the promise of the “entire charge and supervision” of the CAA’s athletics and gymnasium team. The Chicago Tribune crooned: “As a ‘gym’ man, the blue diamond instructor is without peer in this country. It is in that work that his main strength as an athletic director lies. As a track and field man he has the reputation of being one of the country’s topnotchers and is ranked with Mike Murphy and others of the A1 classes [sic].”67 The CAA dominated the Central AAU championships for the next decade and finally broke the I-AAC/NYAC hold on the national indoor and outdoor championships in 1917, then taking the 1918 and 1920 AAU outdoor championships.68 Brown, when questioned by the Chicago Tribune on Delaney as his choice to coach the British, laughed: “I rather suspect from his name that Delaney’s ancestors were British and that he might be paying off an old debt,” before adding: “[F]rom the broad view of sportsmanship, I think any American would be justified in undertaking work to raise the world standard of athletics. Just as we secured our first trainers from abroad and then improved on their methods until we excelled, so now foreign nations are justified in adopting our systems and until they do I think they cannot cope with American athletes.”69 Despite his scandal at Exeter, “Pooch” Donovan, the final member of the hook and ladder quartet mentioned, coached at Harvard, while two great Irish-American Crimsons, Eddie Casey and Eddie Mahan, were also from Natick. Both were childhood students at prestigious New England boarding schools, with Mahan at Phillips Andover, while “Natick Eddie” graduated from Donovan’s “alter mater” Phillips Exeter. Mahan, a noted sprinter with a reported “brogue of a full-blooded native of Erin,” enrolled at Harvard in 1912 and joined the Crimson football team as a running back.70 He played in every minute of the three seasons between 1913 and 1915, earning a place on a trio of All-American teams, forcing Donovan to concede he was the “best all-around football man I have ever handled,” and a model athlete: “He was easy to handle, eager to do as he was told, and he never caused the trainer any worry. Up to the very last moment he played, he was eager to learn everything he could that would improve his game.”71 Casey, two years younger than Mahan, was at Harvard for two seasons —1916 and 1919 — a period interrupted by a stint in the Navy during the war. On leaving he briefly played one game as a professional footballer with the Buffalo franchise of the fledgling NFL. Another Natick man, Steve Farrell, was at Ohio State University as America began the teens, having previously worked under Murphy at Yale and at the University of Maine. He left the Buckeye State the following year, eventually taking up the post of the University of Michigan’s athletic coach until his retirement in 1930, while also serving as trainer to Yost at the university’s football team between 1912 and 1919, helping him capture another national championship in 1918.72 Frank “Buck” O’Neill, the former Williams College football

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team captain, coached the Colgate and Syracuse teams in five separate periods between 1902 and 1919. Unlike the others, O’Neill also briefly dipped his toes into managing a professional side. In 1902 he managed the Syracuse Athletic Club in what was believed to be the firstever indoor professional American football game. At Madison Square Garden, Syracuse took Tom O’Rourke’s “World Series of Football” tournament, beating the Orange Athletic Club of New Jersey in their final game.73 The New York Athletic Club, founded in 1868, was “among the first restricted sport societies to be formed after the Civil War,” whose members “wanted to be able to compete in athletics with other men from the same social class.”74 By 1882 the door was firmly closed to ordinary aspiring athletes: the NYAC’s secretary, Alfred H. Curtis, sought through two of Gotham’s more illustrious gentlemen sports, Herman Oelrichs and William R. Travers, to recruit “the most prominent and successful men in New York City and vicinity,” regardless of sporting ability. Travers was elected president with the effect that “any one who was in the least interested in club life and sport, and who could afford it, would sign an application for membership. The example was contagious and the roll of members increased as if by magic.”75 Attendance at events was often by invitation only, and was “the ultimate in social snobbery.” Snooty clubs wanted to shut the door firmly on undesirables who could afford to get in, such as wealthy yet boorish ward heelers. Therefore even if one could afford the NYAC’s one-hundred-dollar “initiation fee” and a further fifty bucks a year, membership hopefuls still needed to pass the club’s screening process.76 As Pamela Lynne Cooper writes about the Boston Marathon, Irish sporting achievements on the track and controlling athletics counted for little when it came to access to the elite clubs: “Sports participation by the Irish celebrated their ethnic identification but did not further their social acceptance…. Irish immigrants and Irish Americans ran in the Boston Marathon, which they sometimes won, but they rarely belonged to the Boston Athletic Association. The Irish entered the marathon, but the Yankees were elected to the BA A board of governors, and they controlled the Boston Marathon.”77 Even the way newspapers referred to athletes, as the New York Times did with regards to James Connolly in April 1896, was classist. McCarthy notes how the Bostonian was listed simply by his surname, whereas all Princeton athletes had formal titles, such as “Captain Robert Garrett,” with a “pen picture about his family pedigree at the end of the article” listing his brother as a former railroad president.78 For the vast majority of the Irish this amounted to a “no need to apply” sign on the entrance of numerous clubs. In June 1868 the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported the search by the National Club of Washington for a first baseman, which highlighted how prevalent anti–Irish prejudice was in the initial postbellum period. Titled “NOTICE TO FIRST BASEMEN,” the article claimed the club had visited Brooklyn but “they were not successful in obtaining” a player there. The terms were listed as a “first-rate position in the Treasury Department; must work in the Department until three o’clock, and then practice at base ball until dark.” The article concluded: “No Irish need apply.”79 Throughout the following two decades a backlash against this discrimination was in full flow. Irish Catholics in Elizabethport, New Jersey, were “blackballed” by the Alcyone Boat Club, despite the presence of some Irish Catholics in the club. John J. Gannon, seeking membership with another Irishman, John D. Pender, was advised by his friend and club president John D. Barr to withdraw his name. Gannon told the New York Herald that Barr had suggested “there was a feeling” towards Irish Catholics: “[W]henever the club gave a

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reception each member was allowed to invite a certain number of his friends. At one of these receptions, he said, one of the Irish Catholic members invited people named Murphy, and the members of the club did not want such people among their guests, and proposed to keep receptions exclusive.” In the end at a club meeting it was decided to accept Pender as “a refutation of any charge of religion or race intolerance” leveled at the club, while simultaneously requesting Gannon’s application be refused, claiming they weren’t prepared to be “bullied” by Gannon’s “firm stand.” The meeting ended in an uproar and Pender pledged he’d resign at the next opportunity.80 By 1892, discrimination towards the Irish in the northeast was on the wane. A report in the Boston Journal reported on the expulsion of twentytwo bigots from the Lawrence Canoe Club, who constantly “blackballed” Irish-American applicants. The report summarized that “the blackballing was the work of a small minority” whose actions were condemned by the rest of the club as un–American, “and did not reflect the feeling of the whole club.”81 While the argument to ban those who made money from physical exercise, such as builders or stevedores, never quite found the support it had among British amateur clubs, the NYAC enforced an English definition of the amateur and an eye-watering entrance fee to keep out the hoi polloi. This was the last line of defense against an invasion of athletes of “inferior” backgrounds, according to Rader, and a fact that was observed by the sport’s first American historian, Frederick Janssen, who in 1885 railed against exclusion: The social element in Clubs is like “dry rot” and eats into the vitals of Athletic Clubs, and soon causes them to fail in the purpose for which they were organized…. It is like an octopus that squeezes the life-blood out of the organization by burdening it with debt. The youths who participate in health-giving competitions, as a rule, cannot afford the expense of membership of the so called Athletic Clubs and they retire in favor of the wealthy young man whose sole claim to athletic distinction is his connection with a “high-toned” club.82

Irish athletic picnics tried to buck the trend, and stumbled along for years with a laissezfaire attitude to prizes. Cash was given at the Boston Irish AC’s annual picnic of 1882 for a number of events, with a prize of $200 granted to the boating winners.83 The Clan na Gael was also noted for hosting professional events: cash prizes were offered at least until 1892, when gold and silver medals were handed out.84 But with the need to affiliate to the NAAAA and then the AAU, payments — the overt ones, at least — had to cease. While affluent misfits like William J.M. Barry, booted out of the NYAC in 1888, still managed to continue participating, beating his own world record for throwing the 16-lb. hammer later that year, others left clubs like the NYAC through their inability to resist being paid, leading to a growing number of athletes running under false names with some clubs knowingly colluding.85 The Natick boys were the most prominent of this group, cleaning up trophies from gullible athletic clubs and making bets with overconfident rivals. In September 1891, there was an uproar when the Prospect Harriers were accused of hiring a professional called Fanning, a companion “on the ropes” of the Donovan brothers, and running him under the assumed name of “Murray.” In covering the story, the New York Times sighed that it was hard to keep these interlopers out of “the amateur ranks” and that Prospect had been victims of a sting. It pointed out that a few months previously the Orange AC had accepted the entry of a certain Mr. Dolan, who despite a lack of pedigree beat the club’s own “cracks.” Although initially hailing the runner as a “one-for-the-future,” the club soon got suspicious when the young buck beat their top runner, Victor Mapes. Refusing to hand over any prizes to Dolan, the runner “disappeared mysteriously.”86 Dolan was none other than “Piper” Donovan, who by now was at home recuperating

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from a broken shoulder blade he had suffered from a fall at another race. He confessed to the Times: “It is amusing to see the young fellows watch me after I won. They gave me all sorts of advice, and told me that some day, perhaps, I would be as good as [Luther H.] Cary. I chuckled to myself and thanked the boys for the compliments they paid me.” Donovan concluded with a cheeky smirk: “One thing I regret, and that is, I didn’t have a chance to meet Cary. I wanted to show him that he is not a world beater.”87 Donovan later admitted that he just ran in amateur games “for a lark. My ambition was to meet Luther Cary and take the conceit out of him.”88 The following month, Donovan was declared a professional by the Metropolitan Association of the AAU, in an act that smacked of the Spanish Inquisition burning an effigy of a long-departed heretic.89 And it wasn’t just taking a few bucks that could get you slung out of the amateur ranks. An athlete called A. Riordan of the San Francisco I-AAC “struck” and “grappled” with a rival from the Olympic AC, Andrew Glarner, in the half-mile steeplechase at the first annual picnic of the city’s Gaelic Dancing Club. He found himself “expelled from the amateur ranks” within a week.90 In the days prior to the Olympics there really was no reason for an athlete to stay unpaid if people were waving bucks at him to run for them. Money was offered to come across the Atlantic to professional races, such as the Sheffield Handicap. But “shamateurism” continued, rife with pseudonyms of those who wished to protect their status, while also trying to gain a better handicap. A report in the Pittsburg Dispatch in July 1889 claimed “it is stated on reliable authority” that the “Edward S. Donovan” who had traveled across the Atlantic to participate in the Sheffield Handicap was instead Steve Farrell.91 “Piper” Donovan was himself no innocent when it came to identity theft: along with the Dolan “event,” he had also lost on a previous visit to England against W. Schofield of Featherstone, while running under the assumed name of J. Early. But even the public as far away as Sheffield weren’t fooled, with at least one local paper reporting that “Early” was indeed “late Donovan,” while Farrell was also noted as “late Donovan” when he competed in the Sheffield Christmas Handicap in 1893.92 Back in the States, the Sporting Life observed: “As the handicapper and public knew perfectly well who Early was, his Sheffield victory was quite a popular one, those who are fond of a surprise being pleased to see him win, after being knocked out in the betting on account of his poor display on Monday.”93 While false names were intended to get a better placing, the handicapping system also caused athletes to feel they were being discriminated against. Donovan and Farrell, together with fifteen other athletes (including two Americans), all refused to compete due to their allotment.94 Whispers would continue about the status of many runners. It seemed at one point that Tom Conneff, introduced by Gus Sacks of the Manhattan AC as coming “to America as an amateur to promote amateur athletics in this country,” 95 would also fall into the professional ranks. On his arrival the youth was adamant that he was a runner purely for the “ama” in amateurism: “You see I am not a professional runner. I never did any running at home excepting for my own amusement. Any exhibitions … that I may enter into here will be done for the same reason…. In the old country I was employed as a journalist, but whether I shall enter that profession here depends, of course, upon circumstances.”96 Then a sudden report in the New York Times of December 8, 1891, declared Conneff had resigned from the Wagner Palace Company where he worked and was deserting amateurism and America to compete for money in Ireland.97 Rumors were that he had lined up a series of races with the British champion William H. Morton, whom the New York Times described as “one of the most wonderful distance runners the athletic world has ever seen.”98 However, it seemed Conneff had second thoughts, while his amateur status was spared.99

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If runners were above board about their status, no one could accuse them of being hypocritical. Not so were covert payments. Peter O’Connor, whom Mark Quinn would describe as never “regretting his own strict adherence to the amateur code,” noted something was up at the 1901 Dublin Metropolitan Police Annual Games, when generous prizes were offered to American competitors, while O’Connor received a cheap second-hand gold chain and “a faulty clock with mutilated works.” Blood pressure was further raised among the Irish athletes when “an indiscreet official had allegedly been seen passing money to the American coach.” O’Connor waited a year and then spoke of his disgust to the newspapers, claiming the American athletes had received between thirty and fifty pounds each “for winning nothing.”100 Another critic of the hypocrisy of amateurism was James B. Connolly. In An Olympic Victor, the hero Loues turns down an offer of fifty thousand in gold from the mayor of Marousi: “I ran for no gold. I care not if it were a King’s income….”101 He was no apologist for professionalism, even if he had started out in athletics competing at the events of the NIAA of Boston, who eschewed the secretive and hypocritical world of the “shamateurs” by organizing professional and amateur competitions under the same large event or “picnic” but keeping them strictly separate. The 1888 annual picnic had cash prizes ranging from a hundred dollars for the winners of the (nominally amateur) Gaelic football match between the Woburns of Woburn and the Shamrocks, to ten bucks for athletes.102 When Connolly won the three standing jumps event at the 1887 annual picnic, another professional athlete, John H. “Jack” Fitzpatrick, the “Champion Jumper of America,” was meanwhile beating pros like C.J. Sullivan and George W. Hamilton, by jumping over a horse and two twin mules in succession, going over “both beasts like a projectile from a catapult … a feat [which has] often been excelled in a circus, but never before at a picnic of the Irish Athletic club [sic].”103 The club continued to attract the great professionals of the day, with the likes of “Piper” Donovan a regular participant.104 By 1899 the Boston Herald claimed there were more professional athletes based in Boston than elsewhere, and that the NIAA granted the largest prizes “ever given for professional games in this part of the country.”105 However, as amateurism became the hegemony of athletics, the NIAA began to be harassed, and it was clear that the club would never be willing to toe the line of the AAU, if they were ever members. But their defiance wasn’t without consequences. Amateurs who competed at meetings with professional races, regardless of whether they ran against pros, were liable to be banned. The 1892 NIAA picnic at Oakland Garden saw the club unable to get the event registered with the AAU, while amateur athletes risked “disqualification” for attending. Only those like J.T. McNeil remained sanguine, admitting he was planning on turning professional anyway.106 Meanwhile, the under-the-counter payments culture grew elsewhere with corruption not just with the competitors. Come 1910, Connolly recognized that “behind the faces of an orderly, efficient, moralistic banner of amateurism was a handful of self-interested, power hungry men, like Sullivan, who were elected to the local and national AAU boards, but who pursued policies to suit themselves,” and used athletics as a “status vehicle” in order to rub shoulders with select elites.107 He argued that most of New England’s athletic clubs were controlled by half a dozen men and their “safe friends,” adding that before he moved south in the eighties, he had been “elected” as a member of the Manhattan AC without his knowledge: “I never was strong for those big clubs who were always taking promising athletes away from poor clubs, and keeping them like stables of horses, paying their way and giving

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them a good time so long as they brought prestige to the big club.”108 More controversially, he believed that the pursuit of lucrative gate receipts lured not the enemies of amateurism, but “its very priests.” It was they who would provide top athletes with “under-the-table payments” and valuable gifts. The clearest illustration of this was the award of the “stock” watch, so called because the following day it would be returned to a jeweler’s stock in exchange for cash. He accused the AAU of knowing “both their origin and destination.”109 This was a far cry from what Sullivan had stood for in 1888. As Pastime AC’s president, he feared the power of the rich clubs in picking up top athletes at will either by importing them, paying their highly priced initiation fee and one year’s dues, or giving them employment as “assistant bookkeeper.” Sullivan had seen his club decimated with six former members taking the national championships “in the larger club’s colors to save a few paltry dollars”: There should be either a ten times stricter definition of an amateur — one that will prevent the big clubs from knocking out the little ones … or everything should “go,” and let the distinction between amateurs and professionals be swept away. [Lon] Myers used to say amateurism was a humbug, and he advocated in the sporting papers for which he wrote taking the bull by the horns, just as Sir John Astley did … by allowing all amateurs to race for whatever they could get.110

Now Connolly was also pointing fingers at Sullivan’s status and his connection with the “House of Spalding,” the “powerful firm intent on becoming the leading athletic-goods trust in America,” which seemed to wish to “[educate] the public that everything good in athletics had some connection with” Spalding, whose exclusivity rights were a key instrument in cultivating Spalding’s expanding profits, since rivals’ equipment would be used under no circumstances.111 There was clearly a clash of interests between Sullivan’s work at the AAU and working for Spalding. The irony was that Spalding’s business was the sort of area fundamentalists were keen on preventing other sportsmen, with their fame as an attraction, from entering into. When tennis and golf found themselves hijacked by working-class Irish-Americans, this became a touchy subject. Maurice E. McLoughlin accepted the principle of playing for free, but he also needed to eat; a lack of a “good education” and the networking it brought, meant that his career path was somewhat limited. Together with his doubles partner Thomas C. Bundy, he decided to open a sportswear business in 1916 in Los Angeles. In December 1915, when fifteen amateur sporting bodies, from the AAU to Tom Cahill’s USFA, joined the varsity departments of colleges to “define” finally an amateur, one thing the bodies were keen to condemn was “the capitalization of athletic fame.” This was directed at those sportsmen “who sell sporting goods and jewelry, and who allow their names to be used for advertising purposes by various clothing and wearing apparel stores, in most cases not for money, but sometimes for a suit or a hat.”112 Present at this meeting was the outgoing president of the U.S. National Lawn Tennis Association, Robert D. Wrenn. He had already suggested his doubts about the compatibility of McLoughlin’s business project with his being an amateur, but both players were adamant that their status would be preserved. The USNLTA stated: “An amateur is one who is not connected with the sale of tennis goods, nor with a firm manufacturing or selling tennis goods, except when such connection shall be of a general nature in a firm manufacturing or selling general athletic goods, and the person so connected has to do with tennis goods to no greater extent than with any other line of goods.” Wrenn’s nominated successor, George T. Adee, was more forthright and keen to bring the subject out into the open: “I think proposed firm would violate Sub-Section 4 of Section

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4 of Article II of the bylaws and would violate spirit of all amateur rules in that it capitalizes tennis prowess. I feel sure that tennis association would consider you had lost your amateur standing if firm is formed.”113 The Pacific States LTA sided with McLoughlin and Bundy. Its secretary, J.C. Rohlfs, was “unofficially” quoted by a Los Angeles Times reporter as saying the pair had “a perfect right to engage in the business they have planned.” The newspaper added that distinguishing amateurs was “just as muddled in tennis as in other lines of sporting competition,” and implied that there were no grounds for “disrating” the pair: “Certainly if McLoughlin and Bundy should be declared professionals for opening a general sporting goods store it would stir up a rumpus in the tennis ranks, for there are some of the leading players of the country employed by sporting goods stores and firms….”114 By March 1916 the USNLTA had decided to ban any amateur who had a sporting goods business “from playing in any open tournament, invitation meeting or team match or championship, while so engaged, without placing the stigma of professional against his name,” although the ruling wasn’t to come into effect until April 1, 1918, almost two years in the future.115 A year later the USNLTA performed a volte face, declaring that McLoughlin could keep his business, in a compromise that would prevent other sportsmen from setting up new concerns. USNLTA President George W. Wightman wrote: “There are instances where a player has grown up in the business, where it is a matter of heritage; a few have been in it for a number of their whole careers and financial conditions are wrapped up in the business; then there are those who have presumably put every dollar they have into this entirely legitimate business enterprise.” Adee added that he sought to draw a difference between an established concern and the increasing numbers of tennis players entering into this line of work which “unless checked will develop into a serious abuse.”116 When it came to bringing in the rule, it was defeated with speeches by tennis champions, current and former, being made in support of McLoughlin. It was decided that as long as tennis goods weren’t the sole nature of any business and “the person so connected has to do with tennis goods to no greater extent than with any other line of goods,” the business would be allowed.117 An almost identical incident occurred in golf with another Irish-American workingclass competitor, Francis Ouimet. Refusing to turn professional, he opened his own sporting goods business with another Irish-American amateur, John H. Sullivan. Both fell foul of the sport’s rulers, who considered “any person whose business depends upon his golfing prowess … a professional.” Ouimet was upbeat: “I do not think that the ruling will affect us,” the New York Times quoted him saying. “Neither Sullivan nor myself is relying on any fame as an amateur golfer to sell goods. We are going into the business because we believe we are good salesmen, not because of our skill on the links.”118 Ouimet’s optimism was misplaced: he was declared a professional by the USGA and barred from amateur competitions.119 Fellow golfers were furious, with one pointing out that Ouimet was a sporting goods salesman before he became a top player. The California Golf Association was also critical, with its president Vincent Whitney suggesting a break with the national organization was in the cards if it didn’t “recede from its position.” In a statement he pointed out the hypocrisy of the USGA: “The ruling … is all the more ridiculous because this same body permits a man who was once a professional baseball player to take part in amateur golf tournaments. The decision … is too much in line with the tendency to make golf a millionaire’s game. It is a snobbish policy.”120 Only when he enlisted in the U.S. Army, rising to the rank of lieutenant, and had severed his ties to his company, did the USGA reinstate his amateur status. He won his second U.S. Amateur title in 1931.121

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These weren’t the only problems. Amateurs found it harder to deal with their celebrity status than professionals. Patrick John O’Dea, who was born on St. Patrick’s Day 1872 of an Irish father in Melbourne, became one of the greatest kickers in the early American game. He left the Aussie rules ovals of his native Victoria in the spring of 1896 to visit his brother Andy, who was the rowing coach at the University of Wisconsin. Inevitably called the “Kicking Kangaroo,” he enrolled at Madison in September, playing his first game against Lake Forest and marking it with an eighty-five yard punt before missing the rest of the season with a broken arm.122 In 1897 against the University of Minnesota he kicked a 110yard punt and a forty-five yard field goal,123 and in November 1898 he virtually singlehandedly helped Wisconsin beat Northwestern in a blizzard. The Chicago Tribune claimed it was “one man against a team, and the one man won,” with O’Dea kicking a sixty-twoyard field goal on a drop kick, a record that stood for seventy-six years, and which has only been beaten in an NFL game by one yard.124 He later coached Notre Dame from 1900 through 1901, and although his troops were beaten 54–0 at Madison, he secured the Indiana state championship before announcing he was returning to Australia.125 He settled instead in San Francisco to practice law while coaching Stanford for the 1914 season. However, the insistence of people to constantly talk about football forced O’Dea to drop out of sight. He was feared to have died in France after joining an Australian unit passing through San Francisco, only to resurface again in the thirties.126 In what appears an overlooked part of NYAC’s history is a startling article by the Jersey Journal of 1897 concerning John Flanagan’s arrival in the States. Flanagan was courted by a number of clubs in New York including the Catholic Club, whose president, Father Mooney, and other members “tried hard to secure the champion a position.” For position, read decent paid employment. The Journal continues: “Positions, however, are not so plentiful, and as the [NYAC] made him the best offer it is only natural that Flanagan should have accepted it…. The [NYAC] has paid his registration fee….”127 If true, clearly the chaps at Travers Island had waived not only its considerable club membership, but also found him the finest job around. This was nothing new: elite clubs employed men as coaches they’d normally prohibit from membership, and relaxed their rules when it came to obtaining the services of a particular crack foreign arrival. The lure of competing against the cream of British athletes had also convinced Mike Sweeney to “join forces,” as he put it in his autobiography, with the Winged Foot club. Here he became a professional athlete in everything but payment. He took a leave of absence from his business and began full-time training on Travers Island. He later confessed: “This change in my routine gave me the first good opportunity of my life to devote to conditioning myself for an athletic event and I certainly made the most of it. In a short time the effect of the concentrated effort began to show.”128 This “poaching” of athletes by the NYAC had forced the New York Times to concede: “This club makes no attempt now to refrain from searching for athletes,” while a similar practice by the Boston AA was one of the factors that forced the South Boston AC to crumble and brought to the fore a demand by men like Dr. John McDonnell for a club of the stature of New York’s I-AAC for the city. One particular athlete, Joe Halpin, was at the center of a poaching scandal, with the BAA accused of prying him away from the SBAC with offers of a better-paid job, something the club couldn’t back up with proof.129 “Expenses” was another controversial area of amateurism. The cricketer W.G. Grace made more from them than most of his professional colleagues accumulated in fees, but

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such was the classism of Victorian Britain that his background ensured his reputation remained unsullied.130 Rugby had also split over the question of payments, but in athletics there was certain scope for what could be construed as reasonable compensation by subsidizing travel and accommodation, and therefore open to abuse. Soon someone would spill the beans about this “shamateurism” with a scandal that would threaten the fabric of this ethos. That moment came in October 1905 in the pages of the magazine Physical Culture, causing an athletic scandal that wouldn’t be bettered for another eighty-three years when a “Canadian Olympic champion” transformed within hours into a “Jamaican drug cheat.” Arthur Francis Duffey was to amateurism what Ben Johnson was to doping. An IrishAmerican kid from Roxbury who studied at Worcester Academy and then Georgetown, Duffey was a varsity athlete when he came fourth in the 100 meters in the Paris Olympics. Two years later in June 1902 he broke the record for the 100 yards that would’ve remained unbeaten for twenty-seven years had he not been paid for running.131 As early as 1901, in the runup to the AAA Championships at Stamford Bridge, there were rumors, according to the Boston Herald: “A howl went up that Duffey was a professional. Every effort was made to prove his ineligibility, but despite the careful searching for proofs, Duffey was upheld by the American and English athletic unions.”132 But the rumors were true: Two months after he declared his retirement, on October 28, 1905, a number of American papers published a statement by Physical Culture’s Bernard McFadden that Duffey hadn’t been an “amateur” since 1898: “[Duffey] intends to expose the crookedness of amateur athletics in all its nauseous details. He is not in any sense an amateur, according to the definition of the [AAU]. He has not been … for several years…. The definition should be of such a character that there would be no need of the athlete parading under false colors. If he is worth a certain amount of money to an amateur club, he is entitled to it.” Through McFadden, Duffey argued there were three factors that made this “evil” possible: the popularity of athletics, the managers, and the athlete who succumbs. Expenses were “of so liberal a nature that he can easily afford to compete for these alone, irrespective of the intrinsic value of the trophy.” They allowed him “to travel all over the world in order to take part in contests and return to the land of his birth with a bank account of a very comfortable nature indeed.”133 The New York Times was incandescent with anger. It opened by sarcastically calling Duffey’s declaration an “exposé of the pseudo-amateur and the methods whereby he is able without means to live and travel in comfort, if not luxury, and have a sufficient supply of pocket money,” without jeopardizing his status as an amateur: While the information may enlighten some who still hold to the belief that the majority of the “stars” that tour the world are bona fide “simon-pures,” most of these who have been in close touch with track sports know the methods quite as well as the champion and understand their limitations in attempting to prove the charges against any particular man. None knew the facts better than the [AAU] officials, and the impossibility of securing evidence…. While most of those in the know have believed this for some time, it has never been possible to establish it, so it must be assumed that Duffey has himself at last torn the veil from his false pretence…. The existent conditions described do not call so much for rule changes…. The only rule change needed is to give the authorities governing athletics the right to disqualify on suspicious circumstances as subversive to the entire fabric of true sport.134

The following day James Sullivan flew into action, making a statement “to take steps to ascertain whether or not [Duffey] … could be prosecuted legally for his action.” First thing was to take the classic dictator route: he made Duffey a historical nonperson and

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“expunged” Duffey’s records, “erased” his name from the winners’ list and placed those who came behind him there instead. Second, he took another dictatorial move, turning to propaganda. He called Duffey’s declaration “the most startling ever made in athletics” and claimed that “Duffey has … concealed his identity in an artistic manner,” which suggested that his money-taking had come as a complete surprise to Sullivan. He added: No punishment that can be meted out is too severe for Duffey. His name has been fraudulently placed upon our records and he has been given events that he himself admits he was not entitled to, and as editor of the Official Athletic Almanac…. I have this day eliminated Duffey’s name from the record books…. I can only hope that we can get at Duffey in some legal way that will be a lesson in the future to athletes who desire to deceive governing bodies.135

He later declared: “We must prosecute this case to the bitter end, no matter what it costs.” As for Duffey’s claims that corruption and payments were common in American athletics, Sullivan was brutally succinct: “I know it is untrue… There may be isolated cases of crookedness, but any wholesale practice would certainly come to our knowledge.”136 As he wrote these words the Sporting Life was preparing to go to press with an ad for No. 252 of Spalding’s Athletic Library, edited by Sullivan, in which Duffey “gives a complete and detailed account of how he trained for his races…. Every school boy who aspires to be a sprinter can study this book to advantage and gain a great deal of useful knowledge.”137 However, Duffey wasn’t taking this assault on his character lying down. “[S]tung by the criticisms of those whom he has stigmatized as following the pernicious practices he himself confesses to,” he declared he’d reveal names: If they thought my story would end with a rehearsal of my own doings they’ve shot wide of the mark. That was only the beginning. I know how the crooked game is played from start to finish…. I know the men who have yielded to the temptation and thus violated both the spirit and the letter of all amateur rules. I have names, dates, and a list of the amounts of expense money which was paid by managers in Philadelphia, New York, Boston and other cities…. Nobody shall be spared, and I believe what I write will be for the best future interests of amateur sport.138

Then suddenly he repudiated McFadden’s statement as “unauthorized and incorrect.” Although he remained adamant that expenses —“the practices which he characterizes as evils were practiced by him … and thus derived profit by his participation in athletics”— he also denied he’d name and shame: “No; it is not my intention to give names, dates, or places or to attack the amateur status of any athlete. I am attacking the rules, which permit a man to stultify himself and appear in a false light before the public. I am attacking the system, not the men who practice it.”139 Sullivan’s Almanac hit the shelves in late November and Duffey’s records were “stricken out.”140At the AAU’s seventeenth annual meeting soon after, President Joseph B. MacCabe declared: “The man who deliberately accepts excessive expense money is a professional of the worst type and the seal of amateur condemnation should be placed upon him forever.”141 By January, Duffey took Sullivan and the AAU to court over the removal of his records.142 Two days later, his college records were expunged by the Intercollegiate Association of Amateur Athletes of America at its annual meeting: “No such stigma should be allowed to cloud the fair name of the American college athlete.”143 Duffey never got his records back and moved into sports journalism. During the Eastern Bloc shamateurism of the Cold War years, the military and the police provided excellent camouflage for amateur athletes to disappear into.144 Additionally,

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in the States in the days before patrol cars and Dunkin Donuts, the Sun recognized the importance of physical fitness to being a successful cop: The police force is a natural refuge for the athlete. He usually comes into championship form so young that he has not thoroughly learned any trade, and during his heyday he usually doesn’t care or think about the bread and butter problem…. For such as these the Police Department is good, and they are good for the Police Department, too. Qualities like strength and agility and pluck — for you can’t be an athlete without gameness — surely are never better bestowed than when they are given to a policeman.145

As members of public bodies allied to machine politicians, these “employees” were able to take long periods of absence to compete. Meanwhile, jobs in “physical education” teaching, when every level of government was keen to raise the fitness of the population, also provided the amateur athlete all his needs to train and get paid for it. The AAU naturally took a dim view of these jobs. Mike Sweeney “forfeited” his amateur status when he took up a job as PE teacher at the Hill School, a top private prep boarding school near Philadelphia, and would continue competing only at professional events, like the Caledonian Games.146 Accusations of professionalism were also part of a growing feud between the NYAC and the I-AAC, where clubs were increasingly divided by class. While San Francisco’s athletic community didn’t have the polluted atmosphere of New York, the San Francisco Call still noticed differences: The three organizations represent three different classes of athletes, the Winged O team [Olympic AC] being composed mainly of former college stars, the Irish club [I-AAC] of former Irishmen who have been stars back in the old country and eastern states, with the addition of several St. Mary’s college stars, while the Pastime club represents the younger generation — high school lads and a few husky Presidio soldiers who are showing remarkably good form.147

The upper-crust end of amateur athletics grew suspicious that the I-AAC was bending the rules, especially with its police members. Equally sensitive to accusations over phony jobs for athletes was the NYPD, forcing Commissioner William F. Baker to declare in October 1910 that none of his men would be attending the AAU National Championships in New Orleans: Under no conditions will I grant any New York policeman a leave of absence for such a purpose. I might consider an absence … of twelve hours, but for one which would require the time for a trip to New Orleans, a stopover and return, that’s out of the question. No, the men cannot go, even if it was during their vacation time, for police regulations read that a man leaving New York must get permission from headquarters, and I have received no such request. When a man gets permission to leave New York the fact is posted in every station house so that 8,500 men can read, and each wants to know why special favors are granted certain men who are athletically inclined.

Effectively the I-AAC would now be without Pat McDonald and John Eller, along with another athlete, H. Maguire. With Flanagan absent after going to Ireland, the NYAC were favorites to win their first championships since 1903.148 One becomes suspicious of this affair on two fronts. First, the actions of Commissioner Baker gave an immediate advantage to the Winged Foot, and therefore he could have been influenced. Second, McDonald and Eller eventually competed in New Orleans, and their involvement was crucial in an event in which the I-AAC triumphed over their cross-city rivals by just one solitary point, raising the question whether the I-AAC, through Tammany contacts, eventually forced Baker to release his men.149

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A more unorthodox example of Tammany “patronage” that later came to light was Johnny Hayes’s employment. In November 1907, while running with the St. Bartholomew Athletic Club, Hayes won his first marathon at Yonkers with a time of two hours, forty-four minutes and forty-five seconds, grinning at the end of the race : “Never underestimate the luck of the Irish.”150 Immediately, with the prospect of running in the upcoming Olympics of 1908, pressure mounted on him to join the I-AAC with its top-level facilities and coaching. And here is where the pure waters of amateur athletics became murky. Hayes needed more than just good facilities. He needed time to train with an income to pay for his living expenses. In stepped the politically connected P.J. Conway, who refused to let Hayes continue to work in the sewers, and sorted a “dry job” at Bloomingdale’s instead, where he was photographed training on the store’s roof. Ostensibly the lad’s employment entailed being a messenger; in reality, his job was to collect his pay. As John Bryant puts it, “from the mo- John Hayes (between ca. 1910 and ca. 1915): “From the ment Johnny stopped being a moment Johnny stopped being a sandhog, he became a fullsandhog, he became a full-time time athlete” (Library of Congress). athlete.”151 When the Duffey case erupted, Sullivan sought to deny “any wholesale practice” of under-the-counter payments; he then conceded that three I-A AC athletes were under scrutiny: John J. Joyce, Frank Castleman, and Martin Sheridan.152 The battle lines had already been drawn at the Metropolitan Association Championships of August 1904 where the I-AAC had triumphed. Immediately the NYAC lodged a protest against Sheridan, slandering him as a professional because he managed a public athletic field in Pelham Bay Park, where he had all the facilities at his disposal to train whenever he wanted. The AAU’s Torquemada was the Irish-American Matt Halpin, who was heavily involved in the NYAC’s management from 1897 to his retirement in 1931; he was also Sullivan’s cousin, a prime

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example of the “keep-it-in-the-family” pseudo-incestuous structure of sports.153 Sheridan was investigated and cleared by the AAU in time for the 1906 Athens games, but the NYAC’s actions, and Halpin’s investigating, appalled the I-AAC, who felt their athletes were facing the brunt in the “war” on professionalism, and accused the AAU of “favoritism in the administration of rulings….”154 The catalyst for action was the suspension of Joyce, Castleman and another athlete, George Bonhag, in September 1905; the I-AAC immediately accused Sullivan of being at the root of a concerted campaign against the Winged Fist club since they “ignored” him by neglecting to send him as their delegate to a convention years earlier.155 Inevitably the I-AAC was compelled to resort to our learned friends. It obtained an injunction from the New York Supreme Court instructing the NYAC to allow the athletes to compete at the Spalding Trophy, New York’s Athletic championships, which the Irish subsequently won.156 The meeting was marred by the I-AAC’s objecting to every NYAC entry, while Halpin loudly accused Martin Sheridan of receiving payments in Boston and named dates, places and the fees charged. The day descended into what the New York Times described as “a battle of protests, with the majestic dignity of the Supreme Court looming threateningly in the background.”157 Certainly the I-AAC was playing for high stakes, with sporting bodies detesting the intrusion of the outside legal system in their internal affairs. Nine days later the participants were at the New York Supreme Court, with the I-AAC represented by Daniel Cohalan.158 One writer with the Boston Evening Telegraph noted that the move to lawyers was “undoubtedly … bad for amateur athletics,” but there was also a campaign to get a criminal prosecution against athletes that compete under “false representation.” More sinisterly, the Telegraph predicted that the I-AAC may have to leave the Metropolitan Association, as turning to the courts was “in violation of the rules of the [AAU].”159 And so the I-AAC, threatened with such expulsion, decided to withdraw the lawyers and a jointly agreed trio of arbitrators was instructed to deal with the case. Meanwhile, Joyce and Castleman were allowed to compete “under protest.”160 The charge against Joyce was conceded to be nothing more “than suspicious circumstances,” which further cultivated an air of a victimizing Holy Office of American athletics. This centered on the entry of Joyce and the Irish runner Thomas Hynes in a Fourth of July games at Celtic Park, while in the meantime both had gone to Medford Park, Boston. Father Hardy, an Irish-born man of the cloth in charge of the Celtic Park event, had earlier claimed he had refused to pay Joyce $100 to compete in New York. Joyce denied that he had any intention to compete in New York and claimed that his entry was made without his permission.161 In early May the three-man committee ordered the reinstatement of Joyce and Castleman, although the latter’s charge of playing for a hotel baseball team for money was upheld.162 Yet the witch-hunt continued. Mel Sheppard should’ve been one of the athletes on the boat for Athens, but in April 1906 he too was accused of running for cash in two races at Maspeth in 1904 and Philadelphia the following year. His accuser, Bob Hallen, a professional runner, then retracted his accusation, confessing he had made a mistake in identifying Sheppard. Still, mud sticks, and the AAU claimed they were “not satisfied that the charges against Sheppard were either proved or disproved. It was a question of veracity, and the members [of the committee] were not able to decide which statements were truth….” Immediately after the Mel Sheppard hearing, Conway declared that in light of the reluctance of the AOC to send only “those athletes whose record is beyond question,” the I-AAC would send Sheppard to Athens instead. Julian W. Curtiss of the AOC reacted with a veiled threat to the IAAC by declaring: “I would prefer for America not to be represented at Athens rather than have any man go whose record is questioned.”163

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The following month at the Wyandot Club on East Fifty-Eighth Street, Sheppard was finally “exonerated” of the allegations of professionalism.164 However, the evidence suggested that the I-AAC was stepping close to the line of what wasn’t deemed appropriate in the athletic spirit. They weren’t the only ones. Being caught between the world of the Irish societies’ laissez-faire attitude to organized athletics and the AAU caused the San Francisco IAAC problems. It was censured by the Pacific Association for advertising an indoor meeting in July 1907 with well-known local athletes, including the Olympic AC’s weight thrower Ollie Snedigar, without receiving any written entry from them. William Nelson, an athlete at the club, merely shrugged when questioned about the line-up, claiming that the athletes had given him “their word” they’d compete. Nelson was suspended for a year for making “an untrue statement to the registration committee” when it came out he hadn’t even spoken to Snedigar.165 Three years later, the I-AAC was suspended indefinitely by the Pacific Athletic Association, following a “warm meeting” because it hadn’t secured a “sanction” for their Hibernian Games, which clashed with another event by the Olympic and Pastime clubs. 166 Finally the club fell into decline, and in May 1912 the SFI-AAC was dropped from the Pacific Association’s membership.167 The AAU was able to get away with this nitpickiness because of the heights that athletics had reached, as evidenced by a full-page article in the New York Times of July 23, 1905, titled “Millions of Americans are Going In for Athletics.” The Times argued that over three decades of growth, the sport was now at a position where one eighth of the nation was involved in athletics: “This enormous army … has done much toward the placing of the United States in the foremost ranks of the nations of the world.” Athletics was no longer “a fad” but “permeated every level” of the country’s education system with “as much attention … now devoted to the development of the body as to the cultivation of the mind.”168 Given prominence on the page was a picture of athletics’ own high priest, James E. Sullivan, and at the heart of his gospel was amateurism. Also pictured were John Joyce and Arthur Duffey. Following the drama in West London, the American public were desperate for what Bryant calls “more races, more heroics, more collapsing, more dicing with death.” The man to organize this was Pat Powers at Madison Square Garden. The New York Times played down the prospect of a rematch between Pietri and Hayes, suggesting Hayes’s “theatrical engagements may prevent his accepting an offer.” However, this was now a professional race, harking back to the halcyon days of pedestrianism, with the irony that the third athlete, Tom Longboat, managed by Tom Flanagan, had so far refused to turn professional even though he was under suspension by the AAU over allegations of taking money. He had been the favorite to win in London, but unexpectedly collapsed late in the race, prompting rumors that he had been drugged by gamblers, although Flanagan insisted that it was sunstroke that had halted his runner.169 Pietri arrived on November 17 and was immediately upbeat: “I am confident that I will beat Hayes when we meet again. He won the Marathon Race through the unwarranted interference of the British Olympic officials, and if they had let me get up myself I would have crossed the line first.” 170 Powers was no fool, knowing if he could successfully transfer inter-ethnic animosities and rivalries from boxing, the project would be a financial success. The first race on November 25 at Madison Square Garden was a display normally reserved for the ring, with the officials being Chevalier Barsotti and Mike Murphy; baseball umpire Tim Hurst was rumored as the race ref.171 At the race, rival brass bands played music to support their heroes, with the Italian

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drowning the Sixty-Ninth Regiment band of the Irish: “Flags waved and partisans cheered until the big amphitheatre trembled with sound, and through it all the rival runners plodded around the ten-laps-to-the-mile track, and inhaled the dust and tobacco smoke with which the hall reeked in their reproduction of their struggle over twenty-six miles and 385 yards of English road in the Summer air of last June.” The crowd was almost hysterical, with the Italians leading the way, but the Irish-Americans, “representing every patriotic and athletic organization in the city,” soon matched them. Trouble was averted when police moved in to prevent spectators mobbing Pietri — who had led from the start — when they thought the race was finished, although it still had two more laps. “Blows were struck and fights sprung up on every side, but the track officials backed by the police, cleared a lane through which Pietri and Hayes ran in their next lap of the track….” The Italian had avenged his London defeat and picked up a silver cup and two hundred dollars while being swarmed by expatriates.172 Powers capitalized further on the city’s Irish-Italian rivalry by persuading Tom Longboat to take on Pietri. Despite being of Iroquois stock, Longboat would by virtue of the orange and green vest of the Irish-Canadian AC become a surrogate for New York’s Irish at the Garden on December 15. The race finished with a Longboat victory after Pietri once more collapsed, and concluded with yet another riot kicking off outside after a “singularly barefaced swindle [that] brought big profits to a number of sham ticket speculators” swamped the area with fakes.173 The race was equally memorable for two “former bitter enemies,” Boss Croker and Bill Devery, sitting in neighboring boxes using the occasion to heartily shake hands, and thus “the wound of long standing was healed.”174 Pietri met Hayes again at the Garden the following March, and in a series of marathons, either together or with other runners, as the marathon craze crossed the country. But Hayes could never better the Italian runner, their final meeting in San Francisco 1910 ending once more in defeat.175 Amateurism supposedly granted “sport for all,” including the fifty percent of the population not male. In any history of early Irish-American sport, women figure as bit part players. They were usually the lovers or victims of the main protagonists. Indeed, Julian Norridge in his own history of early British sports apologizes: “The nature of early sport was such that there have not been many opportunities in this book to write about women.”176 But in an era of growing discontent and protest by women for greater rights in education and in the ballot booth, there were very few opportunities for female sportswomen to become professional. It would be over four decades before an organization like the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League kept the game functioning while male players were away at war. Of course, bigoted sportsmen are often excused as men of their time, but it’s interesting how Irish-America’s attitude contrasted to the “auld” country. There, the Irish “Open” tennis championship — once matched with Wimbledon in prestige — was the first to include a Ladies Championship.177 Even a conservative body like the GAA wanted to promote female sport. Camogie was codified in 1903 as the female version of hurling, and the first game was played in 1904. Quite how much the game had infiltrated the diaspora in the States — immigrant communities tend to be even more conservative and traditionalist than the society as a whole they left behind — is hard to uncover, but Darby points to “an emerging culture.” He cites the Irish American Advocate advertising a game between Birr and Nenagh in 1907, although it’s unknown whether this was between two American clubs or teams from the respective towns in Ireland. It wasn’t until 1930 that the American Camogie Association was

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founded, despite its being played among Britain’s female Irish community from 1904.178 When it came to Irish sporting events, the only female involvement was the dancing that closed them. At the GAA “Irish Field Day” in 1906, the Chicago Tribune noted dancing was “the feature for which the women and girls had been waiting” all through the athletics: At last the girls, little and big, were assisted to the platform and their names entered upon the lists… “The young ladies are ready. Go ahead with the music,” said the voice through the megaphone in the judge’s stand, and the dancing began accompanied by an old familiar Gaelic melody. Nimbly the little feet flew over the boards and the spectators followed with their eyes and cheered their loudest. Everybody on the platform had scores of “rooters” in the grand stand and it was a hard task for the judges to decide who had won the honors.179

Promoters of female sports were few in nineteenth-century America, but one unlikely champion was Jere Dunn, who probably had less than chivalrous intentions. Dale A. Somers writes that he already had other plans for women and the ring while he was in New Orleans. One hundred and twenty years before Million Dollar Baby won an Oscar, Dunn unveiled Annie Lewis of Cleveland and Hattie Stewart of Norfolk, Virginia, as two new fistic protégés.180 Other sportsmen wanted women involved in sports. “Captain” Tom Riley spoke of the need for both sexes to learn to swim and saw no disadvantage between them, claiming girls “take to the water with just as much liking as the boys…. But a girl doesn’t get one chance to learn where a boy will have a hundred.” As proof, in June 1904 he pointed to Miss Fuetz, “the brave eighteen-year-old girl who swam right into the struggling women and children” of the burning Slocum and rescued five children before exhaustion stopped her.181 Two months later he commented: The average girl has just as much nerve as the boy in the water, and will become as good a swimmer if taught properly. Some of my nerviest pupils have been girls. They didn’t seem to know what fear meant…. The trouble with most grown-up women is that at some time in their lives they have been ducked by a would-be funny idiot until they have come to regard the water with terror…. If some one would give one of these fellows who take so much pleasure in ducking a feeble girl a dose of his own medicine, I’ll bet he would be begging for mercy on his knees in a jiffy.182

Yet one person who was denying any sporting opportunities to the fairer sex until his dying day was James Sullivan. In July 1913 he wrote an open letter to E.C. Brennan of the American Life Saving Society, rebuking him for planning to include women races in a school event. First, Sullivan set out the position of the AAU — which of course was his own — which “does not permit women or girls to be registered in any of its associations and does not sanction open races for women in connection with AAU events.” Then he pointed to the regulations of New York’s Board of Education — from which he had just resigned as its head — and that of the Public Schools Athletic League, stating: “They have no desire to make the girls public characters.” Then came the threats if Brennan didn’t conform: “If you desire to continue your membership of the AAU, you had better play the amateur game straight and true, day in and day out. I can assure you any of the boys that represent the PSAL in any mixed meeting you have announced for the future will be prohibited thereafter from taking part in scholastic events by the PSAL.”183 Despite women’s having been allowed to compete in the Olympics since 1908, Sullivan declined the opportunity for more American medals, steadfastly refusing to allow women to travel. This latest piece of Sullivan superciliousness stung one athlete denied the opportunity of going to Stockholm. Ida Schnall was captain of the female New York Giants baseball club and she composed a blistering response:

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[Sullivan] is always objecting, and never doing anything to help the cause along for a girls’ AAU. He has objected to my competing in diving at the Olympic Games … because I am a girl. He objects to a mild game of ball or any kind of athletics for girls. He objects to girls wearing a comfortable bathing suit. He objects to so many things that it gives me cause to think he must be very narrow minded and that we are in the last century.184

The following January, Sullivan effectively ordered his fellow AAU’s committee members, despite what they thought — and only one member questioned his judgment — to send out a resolution to confront the growing support for female athletics. With wording that, as Patricia Warner contends, “almost guaranteed the results he was looking for,” Sullivan demanded: “That the AAU does not and will not recognize the registration of women athletes and it is the sense of this committee that the rules were designatedly formed to include none but the male sex.”185 Two months after Sullivan’s sudden death in September 1914 aged just 51, following an operation on his intestines, the AAU voted to allow women in their own exclusive events, what the Boston Globe described as a “radical … departure” in the AAU’s laws. The union’s hierarchy all but conceded they had been too scared to confront Sullivan, and that without him women athletes would’ve been admitted long ago.186 On September 23, 1916, the Sporting Life reported that a swimmer called Miss Hazel Fowler, representing the Irish-American AC, had won the quarter-mile race of the Mid-Atlantic Championship at Pittsburgh, making this perhaps the first victory of a female member of the I-AAC.187 The Olympic Games accomplished two things for American athletics: while, as Pope argues, it “solidified amateurism by linking it to a burgeoning American nationalism,” the Games were also the “grandest effort to promote this ideology….” No longer was Sullivan promoting a largely negative case against commercialized sports. Amateurists now “shifted their rhetoric to a more positive tone and attacked professionalism much less than they had during the 1870s and 1880s.”188 It was also an opportunity to promote the virility of the American sporting male while feathering Sullivan’s own nest, although he wished the Games restrained itself to track and field. While accusations of professionalism began to hurt the AAU in terms of representatives at the Olympics, the “McCarthyism” that polluted the sport must be considered alongside other factors. Most top Irish-American athletes found amateurism hard to take. All the Irish-born I-AAC athletes had never attended any form of further education and there were questions over their general education as a whole, so amateurism was something they couldn’t easily afford. Indeed, the I-AAC eschewed elitism for pragmatic reasons. Conway wasn’t prepared to let the club become exclusive and adopt the “elitist policies” of the NYAC in terms of class, and indeed race, because as Katchen argues, he simply couldn’t get away with it.189 Asked by the journalist Joe Fitzgerald in 1908 why the club was successful, Conway replied: “That’s easily answered. Every man that carried the Winged Fist is made to feel at home the minute he joins our organization. He is on the same level with the judge or banker and is not patted on the back after he wins and then forgotten until his next victory. Knowing this our men get out and run their heads off to win victory for the club.”190 The Irish American in July 1911 acknowledged as much when it rounded on the more wealthy, lace-curtain Irish of New York who “take little or no interest in the truly wonderful exhibition of physical prowess … and contribute little to the upkeep of this unrivalled institute of physical culture,” and that “as in many other matters of high Irish import, an ignorance … of essential values, prevails among our well to do folk.”191

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At the 1906 Intercalated Olympics, Matt Halpin’s appointment as the U.S. team manager was another example of the inordinate influence of the NYAC within American athletics. With the Sheridan, Joyce, Bonhag and Sheppard incidents fresh, it was inevitable that ill feeling would arise among the I-AAC athletes when he was named coach. Meanwhile, James B. Connolly, unconnected with the I-AAC, would later write that Halpin “had never done anything which might indicate he could half fill the job…. [Halpin was an] incompetent trainer, a man of impossible manners and a child in travel.”192 Graeme Kent sniffs that Halpin had to endure the “many outspoken members” of the I-AAC “who remembered the prissy Halpin’s previous unsuccessful attempts to curtail their lavish lifestyles and his complaints against the loose way they conducted their sporting activities.”193 These athletes made his job intolerable. Behind the scenes the American athletes were involved in numerous raucous incidents, and there appears, according to Halpin later, that even the threat of being kicked out did nothing to quiet things down. One incident stood out for the lack of respect afforded not only to Halpin but to the country’s head of state. At a team dinner at the end of the Games, a congratulatory telegram was received from Teddy Roosevelt, which was read by W.A. Schick of Harvard before being forwarded down the table for the athletes to read: “The cablegram did not pass more than two members of the Irish-American Athletic Club, when it disappeared and has not since been seen, although I have repeatedly demanded it from the athlete in whose hands it was last seen,” claimed an outraged Halpin.194 Connolly also sought to undermine the American manager. He began winding up Peter O’Connor in between his jumps by letting slip that Halpin’s sense of fair play wouldn’t extend to allowing O’Connor to win, at which he unsuccessfully protested Halpin’s right to be the sole judge at the long jump.195 Reflecting angrily years later, O’Connor added: “If my wife had not been present looking on at this contest, which restrained me, I would have beaten Halpin to a pulp….”196 Connolly wasn’t finished: he claimed that Halpin had told the 1500 meters walker, George Bonhag, that it was safe to “skip the corners” as Sullivan was the judge. Bonhag, after much controversy, was granted gold.197 Sullivan defended his cousin by stating: “[It] is nigh well impossible for a jury of men to become a unit when a man’s style of walking is questioned.”198 Ill feeling continued when Halpin was re-invited to lead the Americans to London in late 1907. The I-AAC lodged a high-profile protest with club secretary, Charles E. Kenny, insistent that this was wholly due to an “almost unanimous” report of I-AAC athletes in Athens two years previously: “The record made at the games by the members of the IrishAmerican Club … are matters of universal knowledge and gloriously treasured by our organization. The charges of uncivil and sometimes boorish treatment which some of these young men received from Halpin have been fully proved to the satisfaction of this organization….”199 Halpin intended to answer the charges but was advised by “those in authority” to let the matter rest. He ignored them, claiming the attacks weren’t merely because of events in Athens, but “the continuation of a bitter quarrel for athletic supremacy between the [NYAC] and the [I-AAC].”200 He told the New York Times that it was all the “outcome of spite work” by the I-AAC: “The many rabid statements made concerning my treatment of certain men on that trip eminate [sic] from the [I-AAC] which has not had a kindly feeling for me since I was a factor in the protesting of [Sheridan] … for professionalism several years ago. I am free to confess that I think that the bitterness then engendered has never died out.”

Backing him up was former athlete and a future ambassador and IOC member, Charles H. Sherrill, who suggested that had no one criticized Halpin about Athens, it would’ve

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implied that he had let the athletes do whatever they wanted.201 Two days later Halpin made a lengthy statement in the Times in which he specifically named Martin Sheridan, along with four members from his own NYAC, as his “detractors”: It is almost public property that before the American team left New York the antagonism of some members of the team reached such a state that Martin J. Sheridan was requested not to permit any of his clubmates to use personal violence on me during the trip…. One athlete whose animosity toward me probably was stirred into life because of my having said that he was a grafting amateur, my claim being that he toured New York and New Jersey giving exhibitions in jumping at circuses and unsanctioned games, for which he received prizes disallowed by the [AAU] rules. This same man upon his return home complimented me on my management.

Two other athletes had also criticized Halpin. One of these, Halpin claimed, was the drunk who caused a furor in the Hotel De Napoli, while “the other man’s grievance against my management,” he suggested, “probably dates from the time in Naples when he tried to hold me up for money out of the Olympic funds, which I refused to give him.” He added that his “management … has not been criticized by the college element that took part in Athens.” The New York Times concluded that “the controversy savors more of a schoolboy quarrel than between men of intelligence and wide experience.”202 Halpin was, if nothing else, a tenacious solider in the battle against pay for play, and he had a bad war. He was undermined by the AAU in the case against Ray Ewry in 1907, and by 1908 few athletes respected him enough to go to him instead of James Sullivan for advice.203 Martin Sheridan, who in a rare turning of the guns away from the Brits in the Evening World, claimed many problems could’ve been avoided if “proper steps” had been made to brief the American athletes “carefully” about the rules: “This should have been done for by … [Sullivan] who was on the ground two weeks before the games … or by the alleged manager [Halpin] of our team. The disagreeable tilts that arose might have been avoided had this precaution been taken.”204 The decision to enlist Mike C. Murphy as the team coach was a sop to the anger of many athletes, and the appointment wasn’t lost on sections of the press. E.R. Bushnell of the Detroit Free Press commented dryly that Murphy’s appointment made a “ten-strike,” silencing criticism of Halpin, who was now relegated to the team’s “business management,” thus giving the athletes “assurance that their physical conditioning would be in the hands of the premier trainer of the world…. Anybody who knows Murphy, knows well that he will not tolerate any interference with his charges.”205 Before the AAU investigated Sheppard, James Sullivan made two visits to London. Returning from the first in December 1905, he laid bare proposals for a “union” with the Amateur Athletics Association, which apparently would’ve been signed had Charles Herbert, the AAA’s secretary, not fallen from the top of a bus. Sullivan’s motives were purely self interest. He sought to bypass de Coubertin with a purely world athletic body to extend his own power base with men he detested. The New York Times claimed his “mission” was to place athletics on both sides of the Atlantic “on the highest possible plane and keep them clean and above suspicion.” He addressed the subject on his return to New York on Christmas Eve 1905: “It is necessary in the best interest of amateur sports that an alliance be formed between [the AAU and the AAA]. When I use the word ‘alliance’ I do not use it in an abstract sense. I mean a right down, plain, straightforward, active agreement between the two bodies.” Sullivan was concerned about “disqualified” athletes crossing the Atlantic and

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competing, and clearly sought to shore up any professional fish that were slipping the net and competing in another country.206 Accusations of professionalism had long hindered America’s athletic relations with Britain. Despite previous meetings in the nineties, American college athletes found that approaches for competition were being rebuffed. Excuses were made about athletes’ amateur status, and in one prize piece of arrogance, the Oxford University Athletic Club’s secretary, Charles N. Jackson, sniffed: “[I]t is impossible to reach any other conclusion than that the status of the amateur American collegiate is not necessarily the same as at Oxford and Cambridge. We could not risk meeting athletes of an inferior status.”207 The [London] Times put things more bluntly: Whether rightly or wrongly, the impression has got abroad that the status of the amateur and the student amateur in America leaves much to be desired, and after the meeting between the New York Athletic Club and the London Athletic Club, the general opinion among university athletes here was that Oxford and Cambridge had better confine their competitions to themselves until they could establish beyond a shadow of doubt that their opponents were both amateurs and students in the full sense of the words, as they themselves have been and are.208

The English universities relented in 1899, but insisted on conditions for a proposed meeting with Yale and Harvard, including no more than two Americans per contest, with professional trainers barred. “Oxbridge” authorities also demanded all the Americans be undergraduates who had never represented another college or athletic club, which should have debarred Thomas Burke, by this time having moved from Boston University on to Harvard, and his fellow Irish-American Crimson, Frank J. Quinlan, the “Fordham Flyer,” who had moved to Boston to do a postgraduate law degree. Both were shoo-ins to visit England but now found their “amateur” status being questioned. The New York Times sympathized: “Technically, Burke’s standing as an amateur is all right in this country, but it would not be in England where a member of an athletic club is debarred from college contests.”209 It was no longer about payments, nor whether an athlete worked laboriously at his trade, but who he ran for. Still, Jackson conceded that he found Yale’s amateur status “thoroughly satisfactory,” and commended “the efforts of the American college faculties to put amateurism on a sound basis.” Both Crimsons were cleared to run in London.210 But if “Oxbridge” was looking down their nasals at the quality of American athletics, things were changing in the structure of American athletics, particularly in field events, where a new, hard-edged competiveness would develop out of professional college coaching. But the Americans themselves, and in particular Sullivan, weren’t averse to the odd “cry of ‘professionalism’” when it was needed. Prior to the 1908 Games in West London, Sullivan had targeted the Canadian runner Tom Longboat, who for over a year had been the center of another “professional” scandal.211 But unlike Sullivan’s lackeys, Longboat’s manager Tom Flanagan refused to be intimidated. He went on the offensive and “carried the battle” to Sullivan in the most effective and ingenuous way possible: by highlighting Sullivan’s payments from Spalding. Through the Irish-Canadian AA’s president, P.J. Mulqueen, Flanagan demanded a boycott against American sporting goods — effectively Spalding’s goods — in favor of Canadian or British equipment, which would “bring the AAU to time” if all Canadian clubs did the same: Mr. Sullivan … is the head selling agent for a certain line of goods … and his firm have seen fit to ignore the CAAU in its book of athletics records … and Mr. Sullivan has sought to harass the ICAC in every way possible, and to create trouble for every Canadian athlete who is likely to beat the U.S. champions, so I think that we should hit him every way we can. “Made in

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Canada” goods are the equal of the U.S. goods anyway. Let’s use them to the exclusion of these goods.212

Despite American protests, Longboat traveled to London with Flanagan, leaving the arrival until the last minute to avoid giving Sullivan an opportunity to have his runner barred.213 There Sullivan slammed his acceptance in the marathon as “not only an insult to the AAU … but it was an insult to the intelligence of men who had been striving all their life to keep amateur sport clean and pure and wholesome and have its activities confined to amateurs only.”214 Sullivan was slowly coming to the boil. It was only two years earlier, en route to Athens, that Sullivan had made his second visit to London. Meeting then with representatives of the AAA, he suggested a modified proposal to set up an international athletics union and a biennial international between the two countries, as another attempt at cornering more power. But the AAA pooh-poohed the idea as “too frequent,” especially as the Olympics looked like they would be a permanent fixture.215 Then the question of eligibility came: the New York Times suggested that future meetings be limited to “native-born athletes on both sides” even if it was “inconsistent with the American recognition of no difference between the natural-born and naturalized citizen.” Such citizenship requirements should be discarded rather than “offer an obstacle to the arrangement of the games … as the presence of ex-Britons or ex-Irishmen on the American team … would certainly not tend to promote good feeling, which is one of the principle ends to be gained.”216 Whatever was going to be agreed to, there would be no kowtowing by the time of the Olympics. At their termination, Sullivan launched into a blistering attack on British Corinthian values, calling into question not only the interpretation of their own definition of an “amateur” but also the integrity of athletic meetings in the country: I never again want an English athletic official’s definition of an amateur…. I believe that the colleges and private schools in England conduct their sports on a sound amateur basis, but the government of amateur sport outside this element in England is a joke…. They were willing to accept the entry of [Longboat] when we long ago discredited him and declared him a professional. They … contended we were afraid of Longboat…. We are afraid of his methods as an amateur.

Sullivan added he’d prove that the AAA was “no fit body to conduct and foster amateur athletics” in Britain by debating “the question of amateur sport as it was exemplified by the [AAA] officials … with any one the British people named.”217 At the AAU’s convention, Sullivan began his harangue by opining that the “acceptance of Longboat’s entry was not only an insult to the AAU … but it was an insult to the intelligence of men who had been striving all their life to keep amateur sport clean and pure and wholesome and have its activities confined to amateurs only.”218 The daggers were drawn for a “cold war” that would culminate with a defining event at a boating competition in a small town west of London twelve years later. Jack Brendan Kelly was typical of the Irish-American amateur athlete of the first two decades of the twentieth century. Having had a limited education and never attending college, he went into the bricklaying business at nineteen. As a pastime, he took up rowing on the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia and became a champion rower at the city’s Vesper Boat Club. In 1905, American clubs were invited to Britain’s most prestigious regatta. While it was safe to conclude that none of the Irish rowing clubs like those in Boston were among

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the visitors, one such club deemed to comprise those of the right social status were the Paris Olympic champions in the Coxed Eights from Kelly’s club. But then a scandal erupted, concluding with the club’s being banned from the following year’s festival. It all started within the ranks of the Vesper Club itself when certain members took exception to the expenditure of the Eights, which included three Irish-American rowers — James Flanagan, Joseph F. Dempsey and Michael D. Gleason — who had won gold the year before in St. Louis.219 Led by Dempsey, the “boisterous” eight had used “expenses” more than just to get them over to Henley and pay for digs. Instead, they used the cash to swan around Europe like debauched Lord Byrons.220 Following a local court case in April 1906 that resolved nothing, the NAAO decided to suspend the crew for a year.221 What happened next was that the Henley organizers gave the NAAO a rap across the knuckles by barring all Americans forthwith from the regatta. None returned to Berkshire until 1914, when the Grand Challenge Cup was won by Harvard.222 The decision ensured that guests didn’t go round with the begging bowl to fund a trip to their event, thus keeping out the riffraff in the days before Freddie Laker’s cheap flights. However, the begging bowl wasn’t a problem for Kelly when his turn came to visit Henley, even if his name and background suggested it should be. He had spent a decade becoming America’s top rower; and after coming third in 1912 behind E.B. Butler and the Canadian Thomas Rooney, he won his first NAAO title when he beat Rooney in the single sculls at the Association’s regatta in Philadelphia two years later, but lost out to another Canadian champion, Robert Dibble, in the championship senior sculls.223 The next two years, Kelly continued to come second best in the national rowing championships: in 1915 he lost to Dibble at Springfield, Massachusetts, and a year later at Duluth, Minnesota, he came second to Rooney.224 This was the last chance that Kelly had of competing for the title for three years. The regatta of 1917, scheduled for Philadelphia, was canceled in May when the NAAO acknowledged that “amateur oarsmen were forsaking rowing in favor of military activity and that there was little, if any, demand for the regatta.”225 Kelly himself became a doughboy, and when he returned to rowing, he took the national senior sculls championship at Worcester, “modestly declin[ing] to monopolize the praise” by pointing instead to the feat of Costello, who had won the association single sculls, using Kelly’s boat, which he had never previously rowed.226 He had also subsequently run a successful bricklaying business that made him a millionaire, and thus, in Marxist terms, he owned his own means of production; therefore a few weeks’ competing in a regatta abroad was certainly within this bourgeois businessman’s capacity. It was, however, not to be. As Kelly’s biographer Daniel J. Boyne suggests, his ability to pay his own way meant nothing. Whatever way he dressed himself up, Kelly still presented himself to Henley as everything they wanted to exclude: On at least a few different fronts, Jack Kelly … did not fit the mould of the British amateur or “gentleman oarsman” of his day. Certainly, if you were to examine his application through the eyes of the Henley Stewards, it was clear that Kelly’s background was one that could arouse caution at the very least. His overall résumé lacked some important elements. In terms of education, he had not finished high school, let alone attended an Ivy League college. He had worked in the trades and then gone directly into business, taking a few night school classes in engineering along the way. Not only that, but he had worked with his hands, first performing some general construction and then laying brick.

Technically, Boyne argues, had Kelly completed an apprenticeship and then went straight into business he could’ve still been an amateur. “In any case, he was truly working class, a

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tradesman by any measure, despite the fact that he didn’t haul around his own bricks anymore.”227 In January 1920 Kelly announced his intention to compete in the diamond sculls at Henley, the first regatta since 1914, with the Philadelphia Inquirer claiming he’d then pair up with Costello for the double sculling event in Antwerp.228 He later told the New York Times: “I would not want to go over again for the Olympics. However, if I am not accepted … I will make every effort to earn a place on the Olympic team.”229 Jack Kelly was just fifteen when the Vesper scandal occurred, but with Dempsey as his coach, he was clearly informed about it. Dempsey seemed “to fill Kelly’s head with tales” about Henley, telling him that the diamond sculls were an award “no less desirable than the Holy Grail,” while sidestepping the probability that any application to compete for it was likely to end in tears.230 Kelly sounded optimistic about his chances of competing: “[B]efore I can row in the English race, the approval of the American and English rowing authorities is necessary. It is by no means certain that the English authorities will accept me. [The 1905 Vesper crew had] violated so many rules that they resolved that they would never permit a Vesper oarsman to row there again. Of course, it is foolish that any such reason as that should bar me, but it is possible.” Kelly had declined any suggestion of going before the war because of Henley’s snobbery, but the conflict had convinced him, somewhat Sam Cooke style, that times were changing, fueled in part by the 1919 “Peace Regatta,” where amateurs and professionals were invited.231 Russell Johnson, a friend of Kelly and secretary of the NAAO, had been in London and had tested the water with a majority of the regatta’s organizers, “a self-electing body of Stewards,” with favorable feedback, while the entry received permission from the English rowing body, the ARA, in May. Then on June 4, the Vesper Club got a curt telegram from the “stewards,” stating “The entry of J.B. Kelly to Diamond Sculls not accepted. Letter follows. Advise Kelly.” Kelly told the Philadelphia Inquirer: “I had made all arrangements to sail for England and the action of the Britons is a sad blow to me…. I’ll go to the Olympics now for sure. I want to get a crack at the man who wins the diamond sculls.”232 That man was Jack Beresford. The rejection caused anger in America, with Kelly adamant that the ARA had informed him that any previous disputes had been resolved. While some conceded Kelly’s membership in the Vesper Club was to blame, others suspected that his prowess had a hand in the decision. It seemed the regatta’s organizers, having had their top award taken by Americans when they allowed them back in 1914, were fearful that they’d continue taking top prizes, and were using the Vesper incident as an excuse: “The actions of the English Henley committee in barring Jack Kelly … does not savor strongly of true sportsmanship…. The only thing Jack Kelly has done was to row the Henley distance in ten seconds below the English record. Let’s hope there are enough sportsmen in England to send Kelly a special invitation. He deserves it.”233 Certainly a small selection of Britons wanted the regatta to be a closed affair, if only because the ARA couldn’t screen competitors properly. As Boyne discusses, foreigners were never made to feel at home and successful ones were never invited back: If those from abroad made the regatta a truly international affair and lifted its prestige, they also took prizes from British rowers. The Americans were particularly troublesome as they had come merely to win and nothing else: They kept themselves to themselves, did not socialize and followed a strict training regime, which was seen by the rowing set as “professional.”… The unwritten understanding at Henley was that a few foreigners were fine, to add some color

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and interest, but they shouldn’t be allowed to walk away with all the prizes. After all the English had by and large invented rowing, and it was disheartening to be beaten at their own game, just as it would be for an American baseball team … to lose to the Japanese.234

Kelly’s exclusion also “reflected as much a difference in culture as in rules.” As one of these “winners,” his devotion was an example to those of the Sullivan wing of the Corinthian Spirit and how an amateur should behave. This is why his status was cleared by the NAAO. In contrast, the British, even if they’d find it impossible to prove, with his times  on the Schuylkill close to world record pace, thought Kelly “had all the earmarks of a pro.”235 Henley didn’t say what lay behind their decision, perhaps because it wasn’t the done thing, but in later years the minutes of the regatta’s committee of June 3, 1920, were disclosed, and had Kelly being rejected on two counts. First, he was a member of an “outlawed” club, even one that had committed its crime some fifteen years previously, and therefore “no entry from the Vesper Boat Club of Philadelphia or from any member of their 1905 crew” would be ever accepted again. Kelly “was also not qualified under Rule I (e) of the General Rules (manual labor),” which excluded Kelly because he was once “employed as a … laborer.”236 These rules mirrored the Puritanism of Casper Whitney, hiding behind the old argument that the working man accumulated strength in his job, giving him an unfair advantage, while ignoring that rowing involved training in a technique which cost time and money that the lower orders didn’t have. Such definitions were to cause a rift within British rowing akin to that of rugby when the National Amateur Rowing Association was set up to allow a more liberal definition of an amateur. Perhaps, like Flanagan, Sheridan, et al., Kelly would’ve been clear to compete had he taken the familiar path of the amateur Irish-American sportsman by joining Philadelphia’s finest and rowing for another club. After all, cops are defined neither as artisan, mechanic nor laborer. When this was finally put to the test in 1936 by the Australian Eight, preparing to compete in Berlin, they too were barred as the crew contained police officers — shades of the NYAC’s concern of the I-AAC’s NYPD athletes — who were deemed ineligible under Rule I (e). Even more hypocritical was that officers in the armed forces weren’t treated the same way. As far back as 1866, Edwin Brickwood, a double winner of the diamond sculls at Henley, rowing editor of The Field, and the man given most credit for compiling Henley’s exclusive rules, suggested proper amateurs should be confined solely to officers in the military or civil service, along with other respectable corners of the middle classes such as the clerical, legal, and medical professions, and of course students, alumni and teachers of “public” [sic] schools and universities.237 Make no mistake: Henley Regatta practiced the worst kind of sporting discrimination, and this final embarrassment prompted both the ARA and the Henley Stewards to modify its stringent definition of an amateur.238 There was, however, a third point that would’ve disqualified Kelly. A noted boxer in the army, who if he had he not broken his ankle may well have fought Gene Tunney for the U.S. Army Heavyweight Championship, Kelly had also betted on his own fights, offering yet another “technical flaw in his amateur resume” for Henley to say his name’s not on the list.239 As seen, Kelly got his reward in Antwerp by beating Beresford, but this was initially a hollow victory. Being excluded from Henley, even if future years would relegate the race to a poor second to the greatest sporting event in the world, was taken personally by Kelly. As Boyne explains: The pain set in motion not only the old Anglo-American hostility, but for Kelly the more ancient Irish wound that had been passed down to him from two generations. Every curse that his mother and grandfather had ever uttered against the English now surfaced in his mind,

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bolstering and blinding him in equal measure. And in the midst of it all, one thought became clear, forged in the fires of Kelly’s anger and embarrassment. He made a vow to himself that he would never forget this day, and he would have his vengeance, even if it took him a lifetime.240

To this he somewhat succeeded through his children. While he lived long enough to see the Olympics eclipse Henley, he also had the last laugh at the “self-electing” stewards both in their attitude to the Kelly name’s besmirching their regatta, and with their opinions on class. His son, John Brendan Junior, would win the event that his father was excluded from, in 1947 and 1949. Seven years later, in 1956, his daughter Grace, one of the most iconic and beautiful actresses of the fifties, married a prince. In 1981 she was invited to Henley to present the regatta’s prizes.241

16 So long — Epilogue The term “so long” comes from “slán: farewell … goodbye.”1

As the sun rose on the morning of January 1, 1921, the Irish didn’t suddenly disappear from the American sporting world. They remained influential components of baseball teams, continued to fight for belts, and threw footballs and heavy weights around the nation’s stadiums. Today, however, Irish-American sporting achievement is much more associated with “bourgeois” sports than with baseball and the ring. Irish-American sportsmen are now remembered for Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe in tennis; Tom Dolan and Natalie Coughlin in swimming; Mark O’Meara and John Daly in golf; and in the less blue-collar American soccer scene, Brian McBride, Clint Dempsey and Landon Donovan. Sometimes a Mark McGwire, a Micky Ward, a Kevin McHale and a Tom Brady come through, but it’s clear that these sportsmen are the exceptions at the top of their sports rather than the rule they once were. Undoubtedly the rising mobility of an ethnic group dents their propensity to sporting excellence, certainly within blue-collar sports. Baseball, the home for the biggest number of Irish sportsmen in the nineteenth century, would see their numbers decline fast as the game’s popularity and attendance, despite the growing population, fell. As Charley Rosen writes, new attractions competed for leisure time, including the radio, the automobile ride, and probably most importantly, the movies, and the finger was pointed at the combative style of play that seemed endemic to Irish baseball players: “So, if the Irish played a huge part in popularizing baseball, their high flying spikes, nose-smashing tags, and verbal assaults nearly marginalized the sport. Indeed, it wasn’t until the emergence of Babe Ruth’s long distance hitting enabled runs to score quickly and in bunches that the rough tactics necessitated by the preponderance of one-run games began to be deemphasized.”2 As early as 1915, Grantland Rice had already noted in verse this decline when he wrote “The Passing of Erin”: So the Irish are drifting from out of the frame / Losing their grip on the grand old game / So the Irish haven’t the old-time stuff / That once made good when the scrap was rough? / Bresnahan and McGraw and Mack / Are down at the foot with the conquered pack? / All right — but what tribe stalks in view / When the next World’s Series week is due / When a bloke by the name of Pat Moran / Hooks up with a guy named Carrigan?3

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Indeed, over the following years there was little talk about the Irish in baseball except in terms of their being the sporting equivalent of the passenger pigeon. In 1948, Patrick J. Keith of the Washington Post wrote: “If you had to rely solely on Irishmen for a baseball team, you’d have a hard time getting out of the cellar in either the National or American League. In fact, your Irish probably would have a tough time winning the Wisconsin State League pennant.”4 Thirty-three years later, Jim Murray’s article on the young Dale Murphy suggested if a baseball player had “an ‘O’ or an ‘M’ with a small ‘c’ in his name nowadays, chances are he was born in Puerto Rico or Venezuela…. The Shamrock is no longer the symbol of baseball, the canebrake is.”5 On St. Patrick’s Day 1950, Connie Mack and Bob Quinn, the former Red Sox executive and now the Hall of Fame president, penned their all-time “All-Irish” major league teams, with Mack picking the AL side and Quinn picking the Nationals. “Present Major Leaguers Miss All-Time Irish Nine,” ran the headline in the Hartford Courant, leaving no doubt about the dearth of the Irish left in the sport: “Not one of the current Irish baseball players would be able to carry a shillelagh alongside their fellow Hibernians of yesteryear…. Not one young gossoon of the current era is included.”6 In 1976, Esquire magazine posted five ethnic teams compiled by the baseball writer Harry Stein. Due to space, both the heavily laden Irish and German teams of the nineteenth century were omitted, but his Irish team was disclosed as containing six players who debuted after 1920.7 Four years later In November 1980, responding to a letter from a certain John Sullivan of New York, the editor of Baseball Digest, John Kuenster, swiftly named his own All-time Irish nine. Only Joe Cronin at shortstop and the catcher Gabby Hartnett played later than 1920.8 And yet for all this, in 2011, according to Rosen, 18.8 percent of major league players were Irish-American, the third largest group behind African Americans and Hispanics, which compared favorably to the 12 percent of Irish-Americans in the general population.9 And while professional baseball never did extend further than its initial overseas markets, it now has an organized league in Ireland.10 But while Irish-Americans still make up over 17 percent of the 235 baseball Hall of Fame members, 14 percent of these debuted before 1920. Post-1920 inductees were restricted to the likes of Joe Cronin, Jocko Conlan, Whitey Ford and Nolan Ryan, although the list also includes Casey Stengel, whose mother was an Irish-American, with Joe McCarthy, through managing seven World Series championships with the New York Yankees, also gaining admittance to Cooperstown’s greats.11 In addition, only one Irish-born player — Joe Cleary — played in the majors after 1920, a poor showing compared to ten players born in Ireland who played in the NFL, six in the NHL, and one in the NBA.12 Patsy Donovan remains the only player of the fortyeight Irish-born majors to have been nominated to the Hall of Fame, carrying the support in 2001 of George H.W. Bush — whom Donovan had coached at Phillips Academy in Andover — in a letter to the Hall of Fame’s nominating committee. His ultimate exclusion is a peculiarity to some and a total injustice to others.13 His nomination was being discussed as far back as 1949 in the New York Times, where Arthur Daley quotes one “white-haired writer, [with] a note of bitterness in his voice” demanding: “How about Patsy Donovan? I’ll bet they never think of him. Look up his record and see how deserving he is of nomination.”14 A similar decline happened in athletics. In 1955 Sports Illustrated wrote: Certain robust gentlemen with a bit of a brogue about them were the talk of the American sporting world at the turn of the century, for at that time Irish-American athletes dominated a large section of the sports world. But in none were they stronger than in track and field. Here

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they broke one another’s records with light-hearted abandon…. After the dust had more or less settled in 1915, a startling fact emerged: for the preceding 20 years Irish or Irish-Americans held world records in about a dozen standard track and field events.15

Matt McGrath returned to the Olympics in 1924, winning silver in Paris. But afterwards Irish-American names in the medals increasingly became the domain of African Americans. Notable exceptions were James Quinn’s gold for the 4x100m relay in 1928; Edward O’Brien’s silver in the 4x400m relay in 1936; Jim Delaney’s silver in the shot put in 1948; his successor Parry O’Brien picking up golds in 1952 and 1956 and a silver in 1960; Harold Connolly’s gold in the hammer in 1956; Bill Toomey’s decathlon gold in 1968; Mike Tully’s silver in the pole vault in 1984; Tim Mack’s gold in the pole vault twenty years later; and finally, Christian Cantwell’s shot put silver in 2008. And only Lynn Jennings gained a medal for Irish-American women with a bronze in the 10,000m in Barcelona, 1992. A more striking legacy from the Irish-American athletes of the past is the making of a myth that has culminated with the curt, defiant, almost arrogant declaration that “this flag dips to no earthly King.” Despite little evidence that Martin Sheridan actually said these words, Howard Bryant concedes: “The chances are this quote was embellished, rehashed and grew with the years … tidied up and used as propaganda. As a piece of propaganda, the story … [was] too good not to be true, and these days the legend has evolved into truth.”16 Its first reference comes in an Arthur Daley article in 1952 in what Daley concedes was “perhaps … only a legend but…” His hyperbolic style pinpoints the start of trouble with Britain’s insistence that Irish athletes compete under the Union Jack rather than “for Ireland as the embittered Celts desired. The rebellious Gaels flatly refused. Score victories for ‘perfidious Albion?’ Are you daft, man? They’d win ’em for Ireland or not at all. It was not at all. They sat it out.”17 Well, the majority didn’t “sit it out”; they either competed for Britain or America. But to bolster the myth, Daley turns to Irish sporting supremacy of the age, citing its heavy influence on the American team, from Sullivan and Murphy to the also-rans of Simon Gillis: “None of their ancestors came from Lower Slobodia. They were much too close to the Ould Sod.” The night before the Olympics opened, the legendary Irish-American whales were relaxing over a spot of ale in a near-by English pub. The grievances of their ancestors mounted with every passing hour and their brooding grew more intense. “’Tis a disgrace, it is,” said Pat McDonald in his soft County Clare brogue, “to think that our glorious American flag will be dipped tomorrow to the crowned head of a kingdom.” “And him an English King, too,” said Flanagan. “George Washington, the Lord have mercy on his soul, freed America from the yoke of a British King,” said Sheridan. “Ireland must also be free some day,” said Gillis, which showed how their minds were working. “We can’t permit our flag to dip,” said McGrath, pounding the table with brawny fist until the pewter mugs danced. “Ralph me lad,” said McDonald, drawing himself up to his full 300 pounds and 6-foot-5. He transfixed huge Ralph Rose with baleful glare…. “’Tis thinkin’ I’ve been. The American flag bows to no man, King or peasant. Should you be dippin’ it to the King I’ll break you in half with me own two hands.”18

Sixteen years later Daley reiterated this sentimental schmaltz following the opening ceremony of the Mexico City Olympics in which Janice-Lee Romary, carrying Old Glory, kept it upright and “faithfully observed a practice that began at London” in 1908: “The backbone of the United States team that year was supplied by the brawny weight-men from the IrishAmerican Athletic Club of New York, all with deep roots in the Ould Sod. They took a rim stand and issued explicit orders to the flag-bearer: ‘Ye won’t bow the American flag to

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a British King,’ bellowed Martin Sheridan, the discus champion. It didn’t bow then and has not bowed since.”19 The final line is incidentally a statement that King Gustav V and his subjects in Stockholm in 1912 would view with bewilderment.20 Another form of “fighting” Irishman helped college football grow in the decades after 1920. Notre Dame went on to “claim” eleven titles, with Frank Leahy as its most famous Irish product. And as the college moved out of the small town into the big city stadiums of New York, a new sporting group, more ad hoc, and more enduring than the Royal Rooters, surfaced. Notre Dame’s Subway Alumni were principally, though not exclusively, Irish, bringing together football cranks that had never been to any university, to pack out the Indiana college’s Big Apple games. The university’s ethnic moniker became accepted by the college by 1926 when the then president, the Rev. Matthew Walsh, officially confirmed its acceptance, writing to the New York World’s editor, Herbert Bayard Swope, to set Notre Dame’s position straight: “The University authorities are in no way averse to the name ‘Fighting Irish’ as applied to our athletic teams…. It seems to embody the kind of spirit that we like to see carried into effect by the various organizations that represent us on the athletic field. I sincerely hope that we may always be worthy of the ideals embodied in the term ‘Fighting Irish.’”21 By the end of the twentieth century, when Notre Dame played a college game in Dublin against the Navy, the University was using the “Fightin’ Irish” label as a marketing tool complete with trademark misspelling that was apparently a nod to “nineteenth century Irish-American speech.” The mascot, a by now obligatory part of every school’s pageantry, was no longer a terrier but the short red-headed and bearded student who was plucked from an annual audition to shake a shillelagh that brought good luck.22 College players were supposedly amateur, the last bastion of it in American mainstream sports, and as with Duffey there were numerous casualties from breaches of the Corinthian code. Ironically, Gaelic games remained the only other sports in the world where athletes performed for nothing in front of eighty-thousand-plus crowds. Naturally in America this was to bring a conflict between the American GAA, who according to Paul Darby “in their quest for divisional and national honors … overlooked the amateur cornerstone of GAA activities and have paid and continue to pay top-level players for their services,” and Croke Park.23 Perhaps the biggest impact on Irish-American sport as we turned into the third decade of the century was the implementation of the Eighteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution on January 17, 1920. The ban on the open sale of liquor throughout the country finished off two Irish sporting institutions. First to be waylaid was “The Third Base,” which saw its last orders the night before, and unlike many drinking houses across America, did not resurface as a “speakeasy.” Three years later a syndicated report brought the news that the saloon was now a library.24 Meanwhile a certain Michael J. Regan would emerge as a Dodgers fan and the president of the club’s Rooters Association, possibly because it was easier to find a drink in New York.25 Of greater significance was the collapse of the Irish-American Athletic Club. Martin Sheridan passed away in March 1918 at 36, one of the fifty million victims of Spanish flu, while his brother Dick rose in the ranks of the NYPD to become deputy inspector and the man credited with devising the traffic control signal devices used throughout the world, living until he was ninety.26 Meanwhile both John Flanagan and Pat Ryan returned to Limerick, probably the only major Irish-born athletes to settle in America who went back to the “old country”: Flanagan passed away there in 1938 and Ryan in 1964.27 For the I-AAC, the game was up the day it felt it would devote its Brooklyn grounds to the war effort.

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Then, with Prohibition, Celtic Park became a den of bootlegging, according to the New York Times: “For more than six months … men have been doing a retail business from bottles of whisky carried in their pockets.” At one Sunday picnic attended by five thousand patrons in July 1922, an attempt at arresting one entrepreneur culminated in a riot which ended with four people — including an eighteen-year-old Irish woman, Ruth Curley, just two months in the country — being shot. The bootlegger’s name, the irony, was James Sullivan.28 In September 1928, Celtic Park became a greyhound track, with one of its main events ludicrously known as the Martin Sheridan Memorial Cup.29 However, locals were concerned about the move, with George W. Morton Jr., the head of the Laurel Hill Association, claiming “only a gambling and ‘riff-raff ’ element would be attracted by the dog races.”30 The park was sold off within eighteen months, when in February 1930 the City and Suburban Homes Company purchased the grounds, the official line being that the club wanted a newer site further out on Long Island.31 It never happened. The I-AAC soon passed away, followed by a court case against a number of former officials, including Daniel F. Cohalan, who were accused of “gross inefficiency and waste” in the running of the club, and of “diverting large sums” from its coffers.32 There were attempts to revive the I-AAC: In the autumn of 1935 one correspondent to the letter pages of the New York Times sighed: “What a treat it would be to us old-timers and our present generation of athletic enthusiasts if the Irish-American AC were revived. I believe efforts were made last fall to reorganize the club and I hope that those active in that work have not given up the attempt. A club of that nature is sorely needed today.”33 Thomas Curran wrote to the New York’s press with a suggestion that a meeting was scheduled for September 25 at Central Opera House, 207 East Sixty-Seventh Street.34 But these efforts were to no avail; after fifty years of Irish-American clubs scattered from Providence to San Francisco, only the Newark Irish-American now remained.35 Still, Prohibition didn’t dent the sportsman penchant for drinking. While Rabbit Maranville was a boozer, he turned up all the time and the drink never affected his game. 36 His best “off-field” performances were left to the twenties when he became manager of the Chicago Cubs in 1925. Fired from Brooklyn after he mimicked a newsboy outside Ebbets Field, he celebrated his next appointment by getting drunk with two of his players, Herbert Brett and Clark Pittenger, before being arrested following an altercation with a taxi driver in Times Square. He was finally relieved of his duties after fifty-three games for his poor 23–30 record, not for running through a Pullman carriage and “anointing the passengers from a spittoon.”37 Yes, Johnny Barleycorn continued to take players, although not as many as he used to. Pat Moran died from “Bright’s Disease” in Orlando in 1924 as his Reds were in the middle of their spring training. Hailed by William A. Phelon of the Sporting News as “a ‘secondgrowth Irishman’ of the sturdy type … a plain and rugged character; he had no frills, no fancy ways. But he was one of Nature’s noblemen … keen witted, full of Celtic humor, and perhaps the softest hearted man who ever played the game.”38 The Black Sox revelations had devastated Moran and the man in the opposite dugout, Kid Gleason. The humiliating disclosures that his suspicions were true kept “Gleason on a sick bed for a long period,” according to the New York Times, and the bitterness of the betrayal from nine of his players made him resign in 1923 to coach under Connie Mack. Gleason died in Philadelphia ten years later from heart disease, aged sixty-seven; he was joined in the great diamond in the sky by other contemporaries, mostly taken, like Kid,

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through coronary ailments rather than “Irish” tuberculosis or pneumonia, let alone cancer, which perhaps showed the stress that baseball players lived under. Two years previously his former boss, Charles Comiskey, died at his retreat in Wisconsin, from “heart complications.” 39 Others who succumbed to faulty tickers included Willie Keeler (1921), Dan Brouthers (1932), Mike Donlin (1933), Roger Bresnahan (1944), John Tener (1946), Eddie Collins (1951), Rabbit Maranville (1954), Jimmy Archer (1958) and Jimmy Walsh (1962). Muggsy died of kidney failure in February 1934, having completed 4,769 games of which 2,763 were wins, which is currently second to Connie Mack’s record of 3,731 wins out of 7,755 games, a figure never likely to be beaten.40 Mack himself passed away in Philadelphia in February 1956, aged ninety-three, having seen Shibe Park renamed in his honor. Then we have Hughie Jennings dying from meningitis in 1929 and Jimmy Collins from pneumonia in 1943. And finally Wild Bill Donovan was taken not by cirrhosis of the liver, but by the 20th Century Limited he was traveling on, which crashed to smithereens near Forsyth, New York. He was managing the New Haven Profs at the time and had swapped berths with the club president who left the train with minor injuries.41 Of all the 1,138 probable Irish-Americans who made their debut prior to 1921, the longest survivor was Jimmy Cooney Jr., a 448-game journeyman who played in most of the Irish cities following his debut with the Red Sox in September 1917, and who finally got struck out on August 7, 1991, at the grand old age of ninety-six. The Irish presence in the boardroom did not shrink as much as on the playing field. Baseball owners were further represented by the Quinn dynasty of Bob at the Red Sox, Braves and Dodgers, his son John J. at the Braves and Phillies, grandsons Bob and Jack at the Yankees, Reds, and Giants; and his great-grandson Bob, who is current vice-president of the Milwaukee Brewers. Others included Steve O’Neill and Larry Dolan at the Cleveland Indians; Walter O’Malley and Frank McCourt at the Dodgers; Dan O’Brien at the Seattle Mariners; Nolan Ryan at the Texas Rangers; and Domino’s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan at the Detroit Tigers. Meanwhile, the Cardinals’ owner, Robert E. Hannegan, and the man who forced MLB expansion and the NL back to New York, William Shea, continued the link between politicians and sports. The new sports also included Irish ownership: pro football saw Tim Mara and his descendents (New York Giants), Dan F. Reeves (Los Angeles Rams), and the former American ambassador to Ireland, Dan Rooney (Pittsburgh Steelers), as its most prominent Irish owners. The journey from “organized crime” to sporting businessman was continued by William “Big Bill” Dwyer, the former “King of the Bootleggers,” who through his New York Americans franchise, introduced ice hockey to the Big Apple.42 Heading the major sporting bodies were Chub Feeney at the NL and Joe Cronin over at the AL, Joseph Carr at the NFL and Walter Kennedy and Larry O’Brien at the NBA. Meanwhile, David McNally, along with Andy Messersmith, challenged the reserve clause in 1974, and entailed an “Irish labor issue of almost a hundred years before was finally resolved.”43 If some sporting entrepreneurs saw the Volstead Act as a disaster, others viewed it as an opportunity. Basketball was developed by James Naismith of the YMCA as a game whose origins lay in getting the feckless young out of the saloon. Sam Murphy, a writer at the New York Evening Mail, believed that basketball would prosper under Prohibition: “[M]any halls will be held at the disposal of the teams that ordinarily would have been given over to drinking fests. Owners of such places find that basketball and dancing go hand-in-hand and are encouraging this sport.”44 As one of these hall owners, Tom Furey envisioned filling music-halls with an alternative to boozing through his Original Celtics. Sadly, as history will tell us, the Volstead Act did little to curtail liquor consumption, while of the small

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number of wise-guys who became wealthy during Prohibition, none made it through basketball. Yet the Fureys’ team did prove the inspiration for a later sporting enterprise up the coast in Boston. While the name “Original” was an underhand way around Frank McCormack’s refusal to sell his team, today it carries far more resonance as the fountain from where the Boston Celtics, the most successful team — just about — in world basketball, can source its heritage; here Celtic “Mystique” was born, and where Celtic “Pride” was derived. Walter Brown allegedly toyed with a number of names for his newly bought franchise — Whirlwinds, Unicorns and Olympics — until, according to Bill Reynolds, he remembered the Original Celtics: “Didn’t the name have a certain history in the game, what with the Original Celtics in New York in the twenties? Didn’t Boston have a lot of people of Irish descent?” Despite protests from his publicist Howie McHugh that Irish nicknames had never done well in Boston — the Boston Shamrocks lasted just two seasons, although there were other factors involved than an aversion to an Irish moniker — Brown remained unmoved. “So Celtics it became. Walter Brown would put his new team in green uniforms and call them the Boston Celtics.”45 Today the Celtics provide that other shillelagh-carrying cartoon Irishman of American sport, Lucky the Leprechaun, a far more chilled-out character than the belligerent “Paddy” from South Bend. So while an Irish Catholic was still deemed unworthy of entering the White House in 1921, it couldn’t be further from the truth for him in sports. Not so for others. Although Dan Ferris and the I-AAC did their best to promote integration in athletics, there was little appetite in baseball to do what Orator O’Rourke had briefly managed.46 John McGraw spent his entire managerial career observing the Negro Leagues and the players he wanted to snap up, and when he died, his wife discovered a list of black stars.47 One such player, Bobby Robinson, recalled meeting McGraw in 1930 while he was playing for the St. Louis Negro franchise, the Stars. Robinson had just completed an astonishing triple play when he was called over to the first-base box seats where thirty well-dressed white men were assembled. McGraw pulled over Robinson and gave him a huge handshake and began complimenting him: “Bobby, I’ll tell you. I have read of your playin’ third base lots of times, but this is the first time I’ve seen it. I think you’re probably one of the greatest ever.” Robinson, somewhat stunned, could only reply a “thank-you” before McGraw whispered: “If things were different you would be my starting third baseman.”48 Other black players repeated similar stories.49 Muggsy even told one Negro League manager, Chicago Leland Giants’ Rube Foster: “If I had a bucket of whitewash that wouldn’t wash off, you wouldn’t have five players left tomorrow.”50 It’s hardly earth-shaking news: if any of these players could have been classed as white, every baseball manager would’ve tried to sign them too. It was not until 1947 that the apartheid of American sports was breached with Walter O’Malley and the Brooklyn Dodgers financial backer George V. McLaughlin playing a significant role in signing Jackie Robinson.51 While these two Irish-Americans were in favor of integration, others were battening down the hatches. McGraw has always had a good press regarding racism. Not so Connie Mack, and perhaps there was a hint of trying to spoil his otherwise unblemished reputation. But when Branch Rickey and O’Malley sought to once and for all, smash baseball’s “no blacks” policy, Mack opposed them, even stating his objections publicly. When one reporter asked him about the Dodgers playing Robinson in a match against the Athletics in West Palm Beach in March 1946, he reacted angrily: “I wouldn’t play him. I used to have respect for Rickey. I don’t have anymore.” Only by insisting his remarks stay “off the record” did

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the story remain under wraps.52 Ted Davis observes Mack never made much of an effort to sign black players, but finds it hard to agree he was a racist.53 But there was one good reason for Mack’s objections. He was a franchise owner and relied on the Philadelphia Stars to rent Shibe Park, while the stadium also hosted the Negro League’s World Series. From a purely commercial, rather than a moral, viewpoint, signing blacks promised nothing except loss of money, and this fits nicely with Mack’s skinflint image. Still rumors lingered that Mack was the illusive “one exception” that Branch Rickey claimed existed among his peers in their support for integration. Black major league players in the City of Brotherly Love’s American League team were slow in coming, with Bob Trice debuting in 1953 after Mack had retired. Still it was better than their neighbors, the Phillies, who integrated in 1957, with the last team to sign a black player being the “Irish” Boston Red Sox in 1959. Perhaps the most startling of this was the destination that the NYAC took over the next forty-eight years; while the I-AAC welcomed all ethnic groups, the exclusive Winged Foot became a refuge for Irish-American racism. Although this scion of New York’s richest muscular wannabes was rumored to hold an “unwritten quota” for Catholic members, it also welcomed many members of the “FIFs,” or “First Irish Families,” who headed the “Lace Curtain” in the city.54 But this was only part of the picture: as with the Democratic Party’s local urban machines, the Irish who had infiltrated the NYAC as lowly competitors, ingratiated themselves with the manners and the contacts of the rich, before moving into the club’s positions of power.55 The NYAC’s continuing refusal to accept most Jewish and all black applicants as members, after the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was a side of Irish America that contrasted with the I-AAC of Conway. This naked bigotry culminated in the much-publicized 1968 boycott by many black and white athletes of the annual NYAC indoor meet at Madison Square Garden. The NYAC was now dismissed by Sports Illustrated as little better than a “crusty old Irish-dominated club.”56 Fifty Notre Dame former students joined the boycott, urging fellow alumni and all Catholic clergy to resign from the NYAC “unless it explains its membership policies with regards to nonwhites and non–Christians.” Kenneth L. Woodward, religion editor for Newsweek and spokesman for the Notre Dame Alumni Against Racial Discrimination, declared: “The New York Athletic Club has a reputation of being a Catholic club — more particularly an Irish Catholic hangout. This brings it very close to Notre Dame.”57 Indeed, Notre Dame’s faculty and alumni like to portray themselves as the champions against discrimination; this was, after all, the university that took on the Klan in South Bend in May 1924.58 Writing about its mascot in 2003, the university’s then press spokesman, Dennis K. Brown, suggested that the term “fighting Irish” was being “taken back,” as if this was akin to black rappers’ liberal use of the “N” word: “At the time, anti–Catholicism and anti-immigrant sentiments were openly expressed in this country. Notre Dame’s cranks took it up, turning what once was an epithet into an ‘in-your-face’ expression of triumph.”59 And yet while its alumni battled with the coneheads, unlike many “Brahmin” seats of learning, Notre Dame “adamantly refused to admit ‘Negroes.’” The reason? Coupled with the “few” black Catholics in America, the large number of Southern students at the college (which incidentally was a meager 1 percent of students) entailed that African Americans were dissuaded from entering the college. Father John F. O’Hara, the university’s prefect of religion, in a complaint over the inclusion of a black player by the University of Detroit basketball team against the Irish, backed his stance by arguing, “[T]here is a difference in a game where there is such close physical contact between players scantily clad and perspiring at every pore.”60

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Yet this was not the end of it: Boston seemed to be the worst place for Irish-American racism as the century moved into its fall years. In a city torn apart by the “Busing Crisis,” the African American Magazine Jet reported in June 1987 that two Irish-American rowing clubs were boycotting the South Boston regatta after John Joyce, the president of the hosting club, the South Boston RC, had told them: “You are welcome to bring your boats, but not your niggers.” A perplexed Joyce had told Jet: “We don’t encourage the participation of Blacks. I know it’s discriminatory, but I’ve never seen a Black man take part in this kind of sport before now. It just looks funny to people to see a Black man row in a currach, which is an Irish boat through and through…. It’s an Irish sport and the club feels [Blacks] don’t belong here.”61 How ironic, then, that the greatest sportsman of the twentieth century should turn out to be an American with Irish ancestry despite his color, name and religion. Muhammad Ali, entangled within the racist mesh of the Nation of Islam, once famously told an audience around 1965: “My white blood came from the slave masters, from raping.” But this was untrue and Ali knew it: one great-grandparent was the Clare-born Abe Grady, who arrived in the States in the era of Reconstruction and married a black woman called Dinah.62 It may be crass to suggest Ali was an Irish-American — though no more than the onedrop rule that classifies anyone with any African ancestry as “black”— but at least we know how much or little of Ali is Irish. Not so Nancy Kerrigan, the ice skater unsuccessfully taken out by a hoodlum hired by Tonya Harding’s former husband in 1994. Predictably tagged as the Irish-American sporting poster girl, she apparently “bristled” when someone once referred to her as “the Irish Katarina Witt,” snapping: “There’s very little Irish in me, just my name.”63 Evidently she may well be as Irish as Shaquille O’Neal. Yet her pique highlights that much of Irish-American identity — particularly that belonging to those whose connection is lost in the midst of the famine ships or before — is a faux culture increasingly disconnected from the “auld country” by the late twentieth century. Maureen Dezell describes this as a “symbolic ethnicity” that is “little more than spice sprinkled on a bland American culture of telecommuting, suburban sprawl, and shopping malls.”64 The homogeneity of Irish-American identity bears little resemblance to reality in an America with increasingly ethnically mixed individuals. No longer is the Irish-American exclusively of Hibernian extraction, but increasingly includes African and Latin American backgrounds. They are also — those that were not “Scotch-Irish”— no longer exclusively Catholic. The aforementioned Dale Murphy became a Mormon, while Sean O’Grady, whose life was threatened in Glasgow, Scotland, prior to his 1980 clash with Jim Watt — he had had the temerity to walk around Celtic’s Parkhead pitch before a game wearing a replica shirt of the “Irish-Catholic” soccer club, in what was described by fight promoter Mickey Duff as “clearly an effort to drum up Catholic support”— wasn’t a “papist,” but a member of Oklahoma City’s Millwood Baptist Church.65 Yet the myth continued. The Boston Celtics became not only the “wearers of the green” but of the white too: its 1986 NBA champions contained eight whites and four blacks in a sport that had a 72 percent African American playing pool. In 1991, Spike Lee sneered: “When I hear the name Celtics, I see the American flag, I see Elvis Presley, I see Mom and apple pie, I see the bus with black school children being overturned during the whole busing thing…. I’m not going to say all of white America, but a large part of it is saying, ‘Come on Celtics, you can’t let these niggers beat you.’”66 Nothing illustrated this more than the toxic racial atmosphere of the second attempt at a “White Hope” through Larry Holmes vs. Gerry Cooney, in June 1982. In the prize ring, the oldest arena the Irish once dominated,

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the quarter of a century following 1920 brought a brief, illusionary respite for the Irish pug. Richard K. Fox made it into the roaring twenties, dying in Red Bank, New Jersey, aged 76, leaving behind three million bucks more than the five dollars he arrived in America with.67 He had witnessed Johnny Kilbane and Joe Lynch take their reigns as world featherweight and bantamweight champions into 1921, along with William “Jack” Dempsey — a Mormon from Manassa, Colorado, with both parents of mixed Irish-Cherokee ancestry — who had taken Jess Willard’s world heavyweight title on Independence Day, 1919. Kilbane lost to Eugene Criqui in 1923 and Lynch succumbed to Abe Goldstein the following year. Then in September 1926, over 120,000 people saw Gene Tunney, the son of John, a Mayoman who was said to fight the house professional at Owney Geoghegan’s dive, beat Dempsey at Philadelphia’s Sesquicentennial Stadium.68 Tunney’s reign lasted less than two years before he retired in July 1928, but not before a second mill in September 1927 with the “Manassa Mauler,” known as the “The Battle of the Long Count,” ended in controversy. The first $1 million gate in history, it was remembered for the seventh-round knockdown of Tunney which, with Dempsey refusing to return to a neutral corner, allowed a dazed Tunney thirteen seconds on the deck. Meanwhile, a story to be compared with Cinderella was in the making. In 1929, James J. Braddock, the son of an English-born Irish couple, failed to take the world light heavyweight crown from fellow Irish-American Tommy Loughran, who had worn the belt since October 1927 when he beat Mike McTighe in New York. Due to the 1929 stock market crash and the loss of his taxi business, Braddock ended up working on New York’s docks.69 He would return to the ring, wresting the world heavyweight title from Max Baer — partly Irish, Baer was “a synthetic Jew, a Hebrew ordained overnight for box-office appeal,” according to Paul Gallico — in Columbus on June 13, 1935, before losing it to Joe Louis in Chicago two years later.70 Braddock was the last of the ethnic Irish heavyweight champs in America that stretched back to John Morrissey. Billy Conn came within three rounds of being another. Having taken the light heavyweight championship in 1939 by beating Melio Bettina, he uttered an immortal summarization of where he went wrong in his loss to Joe Louis in June 1941 read like a line from a Thomas Nast cartoon: “What’s the sense in being Irish, if you can’t be dumb?”71 Years later, being teased by Conn for not letting him have the title for six months, Louis responded: “I let you have it for twelve rounds and you couldn’t keep it.”72 Other champs included Mickey Walker (middleweight and welterweight), Freddie Cochrane (welterweight), and Jimmy Goodrich (lightweight). But following the Second World War, there was a dearth of Irish pugs; noted exceptions included Bill Brennan, Joey Archer and Jerry Quarry. The Emerald Age of Irish boxing was long over. So it was no surprise to see a disgruntled Holmes failing to contain his contempt for the circus unfolding as Gerry Cooney jumped the queue to have a pop at taking his belt: “If the man was black, he wouldn’t be nowhere. You know it, I know it. Everybody knows it.”73 Still, there were those who saw the funny side of all this. The Washington Generals, longtime whipping boys of the Harlem Globetrotters, often doubled as the Boston Shamrocks on tour: same players, just seemingly more opponents for the ’Trotters; and who better than the Irish-Americans to provide more white fodder? Holmes-Cooney, American racism, and a certain African American promoter were equally mocked in Reginald Hudlin’s 1996 film, The Great White Hype. Here the champion (Damon Wayans) knows that HolmesCooney was the biggest payday in boxing history and approves the search for the last fighter, the washed-up white Terry Conklin (Peter Berg), who had beaten him. Despite efforts to hype his Hibernian credentials, getting him to feature on the cover of Playboy surrounded

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by women wearing little more than Irish tricolors, Conklin continually protests: “I’m not Irish!” The previous year, 1995, when Don King was granted a choice for Mike Tyson’s first opponent out of prison between “a real life Rocky Balboa”— Lou Savarese, who punched tunas in a Manhattan fish market — or Peter McNeeley, he chose the latter. Symbolically, McNeeley’s eighty-nine-second defeat illustrated how successful the Irish had become in American society since Samuel O’Rourke and James Burke swapped punches in New Orleans, by how poor they now were in the ring. Leaving aside Cooney’s being mocked by Holmes as the “Great White Dope,” despite some genuine championship credential, and McNeeley’s being mocked by everyone as the “Great White Hopeless,” a fighter with absolutely none, both were equally picked because sixty years after James Braddock, white America still held the Irish pug in a far higher esteem than it now warranted. Of course, for King it was all about the money … all fifty bucks of it handed over by each pay-per-view customer. He pushed home this point at one press conference by aggrandizing, in his usual colorful manner, the fight’s significance to laughable heights beyond any acceptable level of hyperbole: “People all over the world, from Ireland’s Belfast to New York and Chicago, will be decked out in green. The leprechauns will be dancing from glen to glen, the chaps will be singing lullabies and the shamrocks will be shining…. This is not a fight, this is a global happening! Call your [cable TV] operator now!” Listening on beside him was a yawning Tyson; sufficiently vexed, he stirred himself just enough to mouth the word, “Bullshit.”74

Notes Chapter 1

13. The Times [London]: July 12, 1833; Bell’s Life in London: July 14, 1833. 14. Bell’s Life in London suggested that Byrne never gave his best when fighting Burke, and his inability to fight with the will needed to win could not offset his beating. Bell’s Life in London: June 9, 1833. 15. Bell’s Life in London: August 4, 1833; Bell’s Life in London: October 6, 1833. 16. O’Rourke was listed as a former pupil of Simon Byrne. Bell’s Life in London: July 28, 1833; Bell’s Life in London: December 22, 1833; Elliott Gorn, The Manly Art (London: Robson Books, 1986), p. 42. 17. Bell’s Life in London: July 29, 1832. 18. Myler, The Fighting Irish, p. 37. 19. Benjamin G. Rader, American Sports (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990), p. 2. 20. Steven A. Riess, Sport in Industrial America: 1850 – 1920 (Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1995), p. 1. 21. Bruce Daniels, Puritans at Play (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1995), p. 167. 22. John Chester Miller, The First Frontier (New York: Dell Publishing, 1966), p. 84. 23. Daniels, Puritans at Play, p. 166. 24. Melvin L. Adelman, A Sporting Time: City and the Rise of Modern Athletics, 1820 –70 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990), p. 224. 25. Irish American Weekly: October 11, 1879. 26. Paul Darby, Gaelic Games, Nationalism, and the Irish Diaspora in the United States (Dublin, Ireland: University College Dublin Press, 2009), p. 68. 27. Irish American Weekly: December 27, 1890. 28. Irish World: September 6, 1873. 29. Robert F. Burk, Never Just a Game (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), p. 10. 30. Rader, American Sports, p. 55. 31. Nathaniel Fleischer, The Heavyweight Championship (London: Putnam, 1949), p. 55. 32. The other champion was Englishman Tom Allen, who along with Jem Mace and Joe Goss crossed the Atlantic after a crackdown on prizefighting in Britain in the 1860s. There is some uncertainty about their titles: as non–Americans, they usually fought for world titles, always against Irish-born fighters who were naturalized or Irish-Americans and who had claimed the American heavyweight championship. I have added Allen’s disputed

1. Daniel Cassidy, How the Irish Invented Slang: The Secret Language of the Crossroads (Petrolia, CA, and Oakland, CA: Counterpunch Books and AK Press, 2007), p. 23. 2. For full contemporary details of the fight see Bell’s Life in London: June 2, 1833. It has to be noted that at least two other venues have been given for this fight. One is from an 1833 “broadside” titled “Battle between Simon Byrne and Deaf Burke,” which placed the fight “150 miles on this side of London upon the Great North Road.” See http://www.nls.uk/broadsides/broadside.cfm/id/14618. Another site is described as “near Ascot racecourse.” Roger Anderson, The Fighting Irish (Edinburgh, UK : Mainstream, 2004), p. 27. Bell’s Life in London notes that the site had been procured by Mr. Coleman, “the spirited host of the Turf Tavern, St Albans.” The site is also described as being No Man’s Land, Hertfordshire, in John Gilbert Bohun Lynch, Knuckles and Gloves (reprint: Central, Hong Kong: Forgotten Books, 2008), p. 80. 3. Bell’s Life in London: June 9, 1833; National Gazette and Literary Register, Philadelphia, August 1, 1833. Cited in http://www.boxinggyms.com/news/simon/death_simon1. htm. 4. Bell’s Life in London: June 2, 1833. 5. Bell’s Life in London: June 9, 1833. 6. Bell’s Life in London: June 9, 1833; Lynch, Knuckles and Gloves, p. 84; The Times [London]: June 4, 1833. 7. Bell’s Life in London: June 2, 1833; Bell’s Life in London: January 13, 1833. 8. Bell’s Life in London: June 2, 1833. 9. Patrick Myler, The Fighting Irish (Dingle, Ireland: Brandon, 1987), pp. 34–35. 10. Bell’s Life in London: June 2, 1833. 11. Many concluded this was connected with a large bet Spring had wagered and the accusations were alluded to in the popular poem of Jemmy Catnatch, which also suggested Ward also had a financial interest in Byrne’s fighting literally to the death. “On Thursday, May the 30th day, Brave Simon took the ring / Back’d by Jem Ward the champion, likewise by Gallant Spring / To fight Burke for two hundred pounds, a man of courage bold / To stop reports that with Ward the battle he had sold.” 12. The Times [London]: June 5, 1833; Bell’s Life in London: June 9, 1833.

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claim as an American heavyweight champion because, unlike the others, he took up U.S. citizenship. 33. Burk, Never Just a Game, p. 19. 34. Harold Seymour and Dorothy Seymour Mills, Baseball: The Early Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 334. 35. Sporting News: October 8, 1892. 36. “Ireland On Top,” Sporting Life: October 1, 1892. 37. New York Herald: September 25, 1892. 38. Sporting Life: June 1, 1895. 39. Sporting Life: September 19, 1896. 40. Sporting Life: June 27, 1896. 41. Sporting Life: May 1, 1897. 42. Sporting Life: October 16, 1897. 43. This was possibly the view of Ban Johnson, who was the paper’s sports editor. Sporting Life: June 20, 1896. 44. T.H. Murnane, “Gossip on the Game,” Washington Post: April 29, 1906. 45. Steven A. Riess, Touching Base (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980), p. 186. David L. Fleitz claims that Pants Rowland and Wilbert Robinson (whose wife was Irish) were erroneously added to the list. David L. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009), pp. 150–1. 46. Sporting Life: April 29, 1911. 47. Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times: May 2, 1863; Rader, American Sports, p. 39. 48. Richard Stivers, Hair of the Dog (New York: Continuum International, 2000), pp. 52–3. 49. Ibid., p. 68. 50. Hasia R. Diner, “‘The Most Irish City in the Union,’” in Ronald H. Bayor and Timothy J. Meagher, eds., The New York Irish (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 104. 51. Michael T. Isenberg, John L. Sullivan and His America (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1994), pp. 46–48. 52. Lawrence J. McCaffrey, “The Irish American Dimension,” in Lawrence J. McCaffrey, ed., The Irish in Chicago (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), p. 1. 53. Elliott J. Gorn, “‘Good-Bye, Boys, I Die a True American,’” Journal of American History 74 (September 1987), pp. 394–5. 54. Richard C. Lindberg, The Gambler King of Clark Street (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2009), n25, p. 258. 55. [Philadelphia] Sunday Mercury: August 26, 1866. Cited in Rader, American Sports, p. 69. 56. “The Professional Player,” New York Times: March 8, 1872. 57. Leo Hershkowitz, “The Irish and the Emerging City,” in Bayor and Meagher, eds., The New York Irish, p. 25. 58. Rader, American Sports, pp. 219–20. 59. Harold Seymour and Dorothy Seymour Mills, Baseball: The Golden Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 4. 60. Burk, Never Just a Game, pp. 65, 67. 61. Rader, American Sports, p. 45. 62. Leo N. Miletich, Dan Stuart’s Fistic Carnival (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1994), p. 4. 63. Riess, Sport in Industrial America, p. 148. 64. Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 195. 65. Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography (Reprint: Fairford, UK: Echo Library, 2006), p. 27.

Chapter 2 1. Cassidy, How the Irish Invented Slang, p. 5. 2. Bell’s Life in London: March 27, 1836; Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 42; Bell’s Life in London: December 22, 1833; Dale A. Somers, The Rise of Sports in New Orleans: 1850 –1900 (Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, 1972), p. 54. 3. Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 44. 4. Baltimore Gazette and Daily Advertiser: January 7, 1837; Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 100. 5. New Orleans Picayune: May 6, 1837. 6. T.J. English, Paddy Whacked (New York: Regan Books, 2005) pp. 48–49. 7. New Orleans Picayune: March 4, 1837. 8. Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 42. In 1841, Burke stood trial in Bedford for “riot and assault” at the Cain vs. Adams fight. Bell’s Life in London defended Burke’s honesty and character, claiming that while in Canada “on more occasions than one, [Burke] saved the lives of women and children by the fearless exposure of his own, and while in Montreal, Canada, he was selected, sword in hand, wrapped in the Union Jack, to head a sortie against the Canadian rebels.” Bell’s Life in London: March 7, 1841. 9. Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 44. 10. New Orleans Picayune: May 6, 1837; Myler, The Fighting Irish, p. 39. 11. Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 44. 12. Public Ledger [Philadelphia]: May 15, 1837; Eastern Argus [Portland, ME]: May 23, 1837. 13. Albany Evening Journal: May 17, 1837. 14. Dubliner Ned Hammond and Liverpudlian George Kensett had fought two lighter-weight fights on Coney Island and Jamaica Queens thirteen years earlier. See Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 40. 15. Bob Mee, Bare Fists (Woodstock, NY: Overlook, 2001), p. 130; Spirit Times: March 3, 1832. 16. Baltimore Sun: August 24, 1837. 17. Commercial Advertiser: August 23, 1837. 18. Gloucester Telegraph: August 26, 1837. 19. New Orleans Picayune: May 7, 1837. 20. New York Herald: August 24, 1837. 21. “History of Prize-fighting in the United States,” New York Times: December 13, 1855. 22. Kerby A. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 3. 23. Ibid., p. 197. 24. Ibid., p. 198. 25. Ibid., pp. 193, 291. 26. Mark Quinn, The King of Spring (Dublin, Ireland: Liffey, 2004), p. 17. 27. Diner, “‘The Most Irish City in the Union,’” pp. 99–100. 28. Ibid., p. 96; Hershkowitz, “The Irish and the Emerging City,” p. 21. 29. Diner, “‘The Most Irish City in the Union,’” p. 99. 30. Hershkowitz, “The Irish and the Emerging City,” p. 20. 31. New York Evening Post: July 20, 1823. Cited in Jennie Holliman, American Sports: 1785 –1835 (Reprint : Mansfield Center, CT: Martino Publishing, 2003), p. 143; Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 39. 32. Rader, American Sports, p. 25. 33. Elliott J. Gorn, “‘Gouge and Bite, Pull Hair and Scratch,’” in David K. Wiggins, ed., Sport in America, vol. 1 (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics Books, 1995), p. 35.

Notes — Chapter 2 34. Fleischer, The Heavyweight Championship, p. 41; Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 38. No contemporary news report can be found, and so this appears as no more than a stand-up quarrel between two New York toughs, not a prizefight. However, for years there was the myth shrouding the fight that prizefighting was American, not unlike the legend that Abner Doubleday had invented baseball as “an American sport,” a story that will be discussed later. 35. Patrick Timony, The American Fistiana (New York: H. Johnson, 1849), p. 29; New York Times: December 13, 1855. 36. A more intriguing aspect of this revisionism of the early days of American prizefighting is the fact that by 1816, America had already seen two top fighters travel to fight against the English champion of his day, Tom Cribb. Bill Richmond was a Staten Islander who was brought to Britain in 1777 as a “servant” by the Earl of Percy, the general in command of the British forces that had occupied New York during the American Revolution. He was followed by the Virginian Tom Molineaux, who lost two bouts to Cribb in 1810 and 1811, and eventually succumbed to the debauched lifestyle of a pug, dying of liver failure and being buried in a pauper’s grave in Galway in 1818. Both fighters, however, had one thing in common that probably added to the coyness of certain quarters to proclaim them as America’s pioneering prizefighting champions: they were both black. 37. Ambrose, Murry, Murray and Martin, from Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 69; Frank Amor from Pittsburgh Press: February 20, 1910. Gorn believes James Ambrose was his real name. 38. Mee, Bare Fists, p. 132. 39. Ed James, Life and Battles of Yankee Sullivan (New York: Ed James, 1880), p. 5. 40. Ibid., p. 11. 41. Bell’s Life in London: February 7, 1841; James, Life and Battles of Yankee Sullivan, pp. 12–15. 42. James, Life and Battles of Yankee Sullivan, p. 16; American Sporting Chronicle: January 25, 1842; Spirit of the Times: September 3, 1842. Cited in James, Life and Battles of Yankee Sullivan, pp. 19–27. 43. New York Herald: September 14, 1842. 44. James, Life and Battles of Yankee Sullivan, p. 78; “Fatal Prize Fights,” New York Times: September 23, 1856. 45. James, Life and Battles of Yankee Sullivan, p. 81. 46. New York Times: December 13, 1855. 47. James, Life and Battles of Yankee Sullivan, p. 87. 48. Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 76. 49. James, Life and Battles of Yankee Sullivan, p. 78. 50. Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 76. 51. James, Life and Battles of Yankee Sullivan, p. 79. 52. New York Tribune: September 19, 1842. 53. Baltimore Sun: September 5, 1842. 54. Baltimore Sun: September 17, 1842. 55. New York Herald: September 14, 1842; Baltimore Sun: September 17, 1842. 56. New York Tribune: September 19, 1842. 57. New York Herald: September 14, 1842. 58. Baltimore Sun: November 24, 1842; Baltimore Sun: November 26, 1842. 59. Baltimore Sun: November 29, 1842; Baltimore Sun: September 5, 1843. 60. Baltimore Sun: April 17, 1844; Baltimore Sun: April 14, 1844. 61. New York Times: December 13, 1855. 62. Ralph C. Wilcox, “The Shamrock and The Eagle: Irish Americans and Sport in the Nineteenth Century,” in George Eisen and David Wiggins, eds., Ethnicity and

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Sport in North American History and Culture (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1995), p. 58. 63. Nathaniel Orr, American Fistiana (New York : Robert M. De Witt, 1860), pp. 12–13. Cited in Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 71. 64. Luc Sante, Low Life (London: Granta, 1992), p. 163. 65. James, Life and Battles of Yankee Sullivan, p. 34; Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 85. 66. George W. Walling and A. Kaufman, Recollections of a New York Chief of Police (Reprint: Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2010), pp. 41–42. 67. New York Herald: February 9, 1849. 68. Baltimore Sun: February 5, 1849. 69. “The Prize Fighters,” Baltimore Sun: February 12, 1849. 70. Weekly Herald [New York]: February 3, 1849. 71. “Local Matters,” Baltimore Sun: February 9, 1849; “The Prize Fighters,” Baltimore Sun: February 12, 1849. 72. James, Life and Battles of Yankee Sullivan, p. 53. 73. “Local Matters,” Baltimore Sun: February 9, 1849. 74. New York Police Gazette: February 10, 1849. Cited in James, Life and Battles of Yankee Sullivan, p. 56. 75. New York Herald: February 11, 1849; “The Prize Fighters,” Baltimore Sun: February 12, 1849. 76. Baltimore Sun: February 28, 1849. 77. William Edgar Harding, John Morrissey (New York : Richard K. Fox, 1881). Cited in William Bryk, “John Morrissey: Wharf Rat, Chicken Thief, Congressman,” City of Smoke: January 16, 2009. http://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/256; William Bryk, “Old Smoke,” The Sun: May 11, 2005. http://www.nysun.com/calendar/ old-smoke/13666/. 78. James, Life and Battles of Yankee Sullivan, p. 64. 79. Baillargeon: The Honorable John Morrissey: 1831– 1878 (The Cyber Boxing Zone Encyclopedia), http:// www.cyberboxingzone.com/boxing/morrisey.htm 80. “The $2000 Prize Fight,” New York Times: October 13, 1853. 81. Albany Evening Journal: October 13, 1853. 82. “The Prize Fight Between Sullivan and Morrissey,” New York Times: October 14, 1853. 83. Albany Evening Journal: November 8, 1853. 84. “The $2000 Prize Fight,” New York Times: October 13, 1853; New York Times: October 15 1853. 85. New York Times: July 28, 1854. 86. New York Times: July 29, 1854. 87. Herbert Asbury, The Gangs of New York (reprint: London: Arrow Books, 2002), pp. 85- 90. 88. “The Fight for the Championship,” New York Times: October 22, 1858. 89. New York Herald: October 22, 1858. The paper also went into detail about the fighters’ training regimes and their previous fighting histories. 90. New York Herald: October 22, 1858. 91. New York Tribune: October 22, 1858. 92. New Orleans Picayune: May 7, 1837. 93. San Francisco Chronicle: April 11, 1867; San Francisco Chronicle: April 12, 1867. 94. New York Times: May 30, 1933. 95. New York Times: April 23, 1929; New York Times: April 25, 1929; Miami News: May 17, 1929; New York Times: April 22, 1878. 96. New York Times: October 9, 1883; New York Herald: February 14, 1884. 97. The Sun [New York City]: July 5, 1887; New York Times: August 21, 1887. 98. The Sun [New York City]: July 5, 1887; New York Times: July 5, 1887.

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99. New York Times: August 12, 1888. 100. Boston Journal: August 17, 1880; Boston Herald: April 8, 1881. 101. Denver Post: January 16, 1910. 102. Sporting Life: October 21, 1885; New York Times: September 26, 1885; New York Herald: July 4, 1887; New York Herald: June 27, 1887. 103. Malcolm W. Ford, “Of Honest John,” Bismarck Tribune: July 13, 1890; Chicago Inter Ocean: August 31, 1888. 104. Sporting Life: January 11, 1888. 105. Sporting Life: February 8, 1887. 106. Evening World: January 25, 1888. 107. New York Times: January 29, 1888. 108. Edward S. Sears, Running Through the Ages ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2001), p. 120. Conneff ’s fame was considerable enough for him to be venerated sarcastically by James Joyce in the Cyclops chapter of Ulysses as one of the “heroes of antiquity” on the seastones of the figure “seated on a large boulder at the foot of a round tower” that ranged from “Cuchullin [sic] to the Man that Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo.” See James Joyce, Ulysses (reprint: London: Penguin, 1992), p. 383. 109. Samuel Crowther, Rowing and Track Athletics (reprint: Central, Hong Kong: Forgotten Books, 2012), p. 330. 110. New York Times: March 9, 1894. 111. New York Times: August 22, 1895; Sears, Running Through the Ages, p. 120. 112. This was also the first-ever mile to be run at an even pace. Ibid., pp. 120–121. 113. New York Times: September 26, 1888. These athletes were John J. Connery, M. Connery, J. McCarthy, William McCarthy, James S. Mitchell, John Mooney, P. O’Donnell. Hurlers: Frank Coughlin, J.J. Cullen, J. Dunne, J. Furlong, J. McEvoy, P. Meleady, P. Minogue, P.J. Molohan, J. Rourke, James Royce. Séamus Ó’Riain, Maurice Davin (1842 –1927) (Dublin, Ireland: Geography Publications, 1994), p. 178. 114. “American Amateur Athletes in 1896,” Outing 24: 3 (December 1896). 115. Derek Birley, Sport and the Making of Britain (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1993), pp. 69–70. 116. New York Times: March 31, 1889; New York Times: October 17, 1892. 117. New York Times: September 21, 1890; New York Times: September 19, 1890. 118. Sporting Life: September 29, 1894. 119. Sporting Life: June 21, 1890. 120. Sporting Life: November, 29 1890; New York Times: March 1, 1892. 121. New York Times: September 4, 1894. 122. Ó Riain, Maurice Davin, p. 208; Marcus De Búrca, The GAA (Cumann Lúthchleas Gael, 1980), p. 42. 123. New York Times: September 20, 1896. 124. New York Times: April 20, 1897. 125. Colman McCarthy, “At 100, Boston Continues Its Run of Glory,” Washington Post: April 14, 1996. 126. Pamela Cooper, The American Marathon (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999), p. 19. 127. Two Irish-Canadians, Ronald MacDonald in 1898 and John Caffrey in 1900 and 1901, succeeded McDermott. They were followed by Irish-Americans Tim Ford in 1906, Thomas Morrissey in 1908, Michael Ryan in 1912, James Duffy in 1914, and Bill Kennedy in 1917. Irish Echo: September 15, 2005. 128. New York Times: July 13, 1964.

129. New York Times: May 18, 1954. 130. New York Times: January 29, 1941. 131. New York Times: May 18, 1954; “Police Athletes of the Past: Patrick McDonald,” Spring 3100 21:10 (November 1950); John A. Lucas, “Pat ‘Babe’ McDonald,” Journal of Olympic History 5:3 (Fall 1997): pp. 8–9. 132. New York Times: June 16, 1907. 133. William Dooley, Champions of the Athletic Arena (Dublin, Ireland: General Publicity Service, 1948), p. 68. 134. Kevin McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green (Cork, Ireland: Cork University Press, 2010), p. 115. 135. Ibid., p. 287. 136. New York Times: December 27, 1908. 137. Calgary Herald: January 30, 1941; New York Times: January 29, 1941. 138. Mike Sweeney, Mike Sweeney of the Hill (New York: Putnam’s, 1940), pp. 21–2. 139. New York Herald: October 9, 1892. 140. Ibid. 141. New York Times: February 12, 1893. 142. Daily People: September 22, 1900; New York Times: September 16, 1900. 143. New York Tribune: October 9, 1905. 144. New York Times: August 26, 1906; New York Times: January 9, 1908. 145. New York Times: June 3, 1904; New York Times: September 25, 1904; Boston Globe: June 24, 1906; New York Tribune: August 18, 1901; Quinn, The King of Spring, p. 130. 146. Quinn, The King of Spring, p. 109. 147. Chicago Tribune: July 6, 1913. 148. Sporting Life: May 6, 1893. 149. Robert L. Tiemann and Mark Rucker, Nineteenth Century Stars (Kansas City, MO: The Society for American Baseball Research, 1989), p. 77. 150. Since commencing research on these stars in April 2006, Baseball-Reference.com’s list of Irish-born has increased from forty to forty-eight. 151. http://www.baseball-reference.com/bio/. September 5, 2012. 152. David Jones, “Patsy Donovan,” The Baseball Biography Project. http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm?a=v& v=l&pid=3698&bid=952. 153. Both teams had 1,199 games by Irish-born players. http://www.baseball-reference.com/bio/Ireland_born. shtml. 154. New York Times: January 19, 1949. 155. Jones, “Patsy Donovan.” 156. Lyle Spatz, “Jack Doyle,” The Baseball Biography Project. http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm?a=v&v=l&bid =640&pid=3763. 157. Ray Robinson, Matty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 28. 158. Bill Bishop, “Jimmy Archer,” The Baseball Biography Project. http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm?a=v&v= l&bid=918&pid=325. 159. New York Times: April 27, 1944; Chicago Tribune: April 27, 1944; Lee Allen, The Cincinnati Reds (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2006), pp. 32–33. 160. Tiemann and Rucker, Nineteenth Century Stars, p. 97. 161. Ladies’ Day was already in operation when Mullane was first listed as appearing for the Reds in October 1885. See Cincinnati Enquirer: October 5, 1885. 162. “A Base-Ball Fight,” Cincinnati Enquirer: April 10, 1889; New York Times: April 10, 1889; Richard Scheinin, Field of Screams (New York : W.W. Norton, 1994), p. 39.

Notes — Chapter 3 163. Sporting Life: October 31, 1903; Sporting Life: January 21, 1905; Sporting Life: October 22, 1910; Sporting News: December 23, 1926. 164. Dorothy Seymour Mills and Harold Seymour, Baseball: The People’s Game (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 259. 165. James L. Terry, Long Before the Dodgers ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002), p. 103. 166. John Shiffert, Base Ball in Philadelphia ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006), pp. 52, 68. William J. Ryczek claims he joined Philadelphia in 1862. William J. Ryczek, Baseball’s First Inning ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009), p. 119. 167. Sporting Life: January 28, 1905. 168. Brian McKenna, “Curry Foley,” The Baseball Biography Project. http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm?a=v &v=l&pid=4562&bid=2665. 169. Sporting Life: October 29, 1898. 170. Baltimore Sun: August 5, 1857; Gorn, The Manly Art, pp. 113–114. 171. Coburn’s funeral in 1890 took place at the Holy Innocents Roman Catholic Church on West Thirty-Seventh Street. New York Times: December 10, 1890; New York Times: October 7, 1859. Price, the London-born son of a Welsh contractor, eventually became a lawyer, but worked firstly as an interpreter with the Boston Circuit Court, speaking, among a number of languages, Irish. He died in 1907 aged 77. New York Times: February 1, 1907. 172. Chicago Tribune: November 23, 1857; Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 114. 173. Many writers have McCoole as being born in Ireland. The National Republican specifies this as Ballabuffey. National Republican: May 26, 1868. See also Sporting News: October 25, 1886; Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 166; Myler, The Fighting Irish, p. 43; New York Times: March 26, 1863. 174. “The Prize Ring,” New York Times: March 26, 1863. 175. “The Pugilistic Championship,” New York Times: May 6, 1863. 176. Boston Herald: May 29, 1860. 177. New York Herald: May 14, 1863. 178. New York Herald: May 11, 1867; New York Herald: November 13, 1868. There are reports that Elliott spent much of the time between the Dunne and Davis fights in prison for armed robbery, although he was listed in the pages of the press as a second of Dooney Harris against Patsy Marley in May 1864. See New York Herald: May 5, 1864. 179. New York Herald: September 21, 1866. 180. New York Times: May 28, 1868; “Arrest of Prize Fighters,” Baltimore Sun: May 28, 1868; Myler, The Fighting Irish, p. 44. 181. Dubuque Daily Herald: June 17, 1869; “The McCoole and Allen Prize Fight,” Baltimore Sun: June 16, 1869. 182. New York Times: October 30, 1868; New York Times: December 19, 1870. 183. San Francisco Chronicle: April 13, 1867; San Francisco Chronicle: April 15, 1867; Baltimore Sun: April 15, 1867; San Francisco Chronicle: April 16, 1867; San Francisco Chronicle: April 12, 1867. 184. The National Republican: April 18, 1867. 185. New York Times: February 13, 1863. 186. New York Times: April 22, 1861; New York Times: May 20, 1863. 187. New York Times: November 30, 1880 188. New York Times: April 10, 1883. Regarding the ethnicity of Mitchell, see Ralph Mace, “Jem Mace :

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Champion of the World,” Jemmace.com. Chapter 9. http: //www.jemmace.com/9-BackToAmerica.php. 189. New York Times: July 31, 1884. 190. New York Herald: July 31, 1884. 191. Myler, The Fighting Irish, p. 51. “Nonpareil” was taken from the of nickname an early nineteenth century English fighter, Jack Randall; it means “unrivaled” or “incomparable,” and is derived from a mixture of French and late Latin. See Lester Bromberg, Boxing’s Unforgettable Fights (New York: Ronald Press, 1962), p. 7. 192. New Orleans Picayune: January 16, 1891. 193. Sporting Life: February 15, 1888. 194. Myler, The Fighting Irish, pp. 55–6. 195. Along with McAuliffe, only Rocky Marciano and the Irish-American bantamweight Jimmy Barry remained unbeaten in their careers in records to 1987. With four different boxing bodies, each trying to avoid suspect “champions” fighting those from other organizations, this list is likely to grow. 196. New York Times: June 2, 1880. 197. I have tried to use the term “boxing’ here for all fights fought under the Marquis of Queensberry rules. I use “prizefighting” for fights fought under the London Prize ring rules, which allowed wrestling and grappling. These two terms are of course often interchangeable.

Chapter 3 1. Cassidy, How the Irish Invented Slang, p. 66. 2. U.S. Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov/ population/www/documentation/twps0027/tab03.txt. 3. U.S. Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov/ population/www/documentation/twps0027/tab08.txt. New York population 1860: 60,515; 1865: 515,547. 4. Jack Beatty, The Rascal King (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1992), p. 22. 5. Diner, “‘The Most Irish City in the Union,’” p. 93. 6. Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 37. 7. Lancaster Daily Intelligencer: May 26, 1883. 8. Spirit of the Times: June 19, 1852. Cited in Somers, The Rise of Sports in New Orleans, p. 59. 9. New York Times: December 24, 1870; The Sun: December 24, 1870. 10. Sante, Low Life, p. 201. 11. Robert Sullivan, Rats (London: Granta, 2004), p. 77; Sante, Low Life, p. 107. 12. Asbury, The Gangs of New York, p. 45. 13. Sante, Low Life, p. 106; Sullivan, Rats, p. 77. 14. Sullivan, Rats, p. 76. 15. New York World: Undated. Cited in Asbury, The Gangs of New York, p. 54. 16. Sullivan, Rats, p. 77. 17. Ibid., p. 78. 18. Sante, Low Life, p. 156. 19. The New York Clipper: June 25, 1859. Cited in Ryczek, Baseball’s First Inning, p. 84. 20. New York Herald: February 10, 1880; New York Herald: Apri1 24, 1858; The Sun: July 15, 1891. 21. New York Herald: March 17, 1858. 22. New York Herald: October 15, 1858. 23. Herbert Asbury, “The Old-Time Gangs of New York American,” The American Mercury Magazine: August 1927, p. 479; Sante, Low Life, p. 201. 24. Sullivan, Rats, p. 80. 25. Thomas B. Macauley, The History of England from the Accession of James II, vol. 1 (Leipzig, Germany: Bernh.

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Tauchnitz Jun., 1849), Chapter 2. Quoted from Birley, Sport and the Making of Britain, p. 84. 26. Sullivan, Rats, p. 80. 27. Ibid., p. 81. 28. Ibid., p. 82. 29. Ibid., p. 83. 30. New York Herald: February 8, 1870. 31. New York Times: January 24, 1870. 32. New York Herald: February 8, 1870. 33. New York Times: January 24, 1870. 34. New York Times: July 11, 1870. 35. New York Times: November 22, 1870. 36. New York Times: November 23, 1870. 37. New York Herald: November 23, 1870. 38. New York Times: December 24, 1870; The Sun: December 24, 1870. 39. New York Herald: December 24, 1870. 40. New York Times: December 24, 1870. 41. New York Times: January 2, 1871. 42. New York Times: February 24, 1871. 43. The Sun: December 16, 1874. 44. New York Times: April 25, 1883. 45. New York Herald: January 21, 1885; New York Times: January 21, 1885; New York Times: January 21, 1885. 46. New York Herald: January 21, 1885; New York Times: April 25, 1883. 47. New York Times: April 25, 1883. 48. New York Times: January 21, 1885. 49. Michael Phelan, The Game of Billiards (New York: H.W. Collender, 1868), p. vi. 50. Melvin A. Adelman, “Pedestrianism, Billiards, Boxing and Animal Sports,” in Wiggins, ed., Sport in America, vol. 2, p. 54; “A Short History of Billiards: The Nineteenth Century,” Alcocks.com. http://www.alcocks. com.au/billi3.html. 51. Phelan, The Game of Billiards, pp. vii-viii. 52. “History of Billiards,” The8knights.com, http:// www.the8knights.com/history.htm. 53. Ned Polsky, Hustlers, Beats and Others (Chicago: Aldine Transaction, 2006), p. 35. 54. Steven A. Riess, City Games (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991), p. 73. 55. “History of Billiards,” The8knights.com, http:// www.the8knights.com/history.htm. 56. Sporting Life: September 2, 1905. 57. New York Times: April 2, 1890. 58. Sporting Life: April 11, 1914. 59. New York Times: January 5, 1858. 60. Irish American Weekly: February 12, 1859; Irish American Weekly: April 14, 1859. 61. New York Times: May 25, 1859. 62. New York Times: May 26, 1859. 63. Richard B. Stott, Workers in the Metropolis (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), p. 221. 64. New York Times: April 14, 1859; Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times: February 15, 1862. 65. New York Times: November 1, 1860. 66. Saturday Evening Gazette [Boston]: April 25, 1863. 67. New York Times: June 12, 1863. West meant mostly Midwest. 68. New York Times: April 8, 1864. Tiemann was also suffering from rheumatism. 69. New York Times: January 17, 1865; New York Times: January 21, 1865. 70. Irish American Weekly: October 14, 1871; Adelman, “Pedestrianism, Billiards, Boxing,” p. 59; “Billiards,” Hickok sports.com. http://www.hickoksports.com/history/ billiard.shtml.

71. New York Times: October 9, 1871. 72. New York Times: April 10, 1881. 73. Sporting Life: April 11, 1914. 74. Sporting Life: December 10, 1904. 75. Wilkes’ Spirit of The Times: May 2, 1863; Adelman, A Sporting Time, p. 228. 76. Sporting Life: January 21, 1911. 77. Sporting Life: October 25, 1890. 78. Sporting Life: July 26, 1890. 79. Detroit Plain Dealer: May 22, 1892; Duluth NewsTribune: March 9, 1920. 80. Sporting Life: July 26, 1890; New York Times: June 23, 1865; New York Times: September 4, 1866; Chicago Tribune: November 4, 1926; Sporting Life: February 13, 1892. 81. Sporting Life: July 26, 1890; Chicago Billiards. From illinoisbilliardclub.com. http://www.illinoisbilliardclub.com/content/newsletters/chicago_billiards.html. 82. “Foley Has Seen Best Cue Games of Six Decades,” Duluth News-Tribune: March 9, 1920. 83. Sporting Life: December 27, 1890. 84. Sporting Life: September 8, 1894. 85. Sporting Life: March 14, 1908. 86. Riess, City Games, p. 1; Riess, Sport in Industrial America, p. 5. 87. “The Great Foot Race,” New York Courier and Enquirer: undated. Cited in John S. Skinner, ed., American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine, No. 6 ( June 1835): p. 518. See also George Moss, “The Long Distance Runners in Ante-Bellum America,” Journal of Popular Culture 8:2 (Fall 1974): pp. 370–382. 88. Sporting Life: December 24, 1892. 89. New York Times: April 1, 1878. 90. Irish American Weekly: May 1, 1875; New York Times: May 24, 1875. 91. Chicago Tribune: November 21, 1875. 92. Chicago Tribune: April 27, 1877. 93. Sears, Running Through the Ages, pp. 140; Chicago Tribune: April 27, 1877. 94. New York Times: April 8, 1877. 95. “O’Leary’s Greatest,” Chicago Tribune: April 27, 1877; Sears, Running Through the Ages, p. 140. 96. New York Herald: October 7, 1878; Irish American Weekly: October 12, 1878; Walter Bernstein, “A Walking Fever Has Set In,” Virginia Quarterly Review 56 (Fall 1980), http://www.vqronline.org/articles/1980/autumn/ bernstein-walking-fever/. 97. New York Times: March 13, 1879. 98. Turf, Field and Farm: January 7, 1880. Cited in New York Times: January 9, 1880. 99. New York Times: January 18, 1880. 100. Chicago Inter Ocean: January 20, 1886. 101. Sears, Running Through the Ages, p. 157. 102. Pittsburgh Press: March 7, 1914. 103. Irish American Weekly: April 26, 1879. 104. New York Times: May 31, 1879. 105. New York Times: October 5, 1879. 106. Irish American Weekly: June 21, 1879; Irish American Weekly: July 5, 1879. 107. New York Times: September 28, 1879. 108. Irish American Weekly: October 25, 1879. 109. New York Herald: May 25, 1880; New York Times: May 25, 1880. 110. Irish American Weekly: May 25, 1880; New York Times: May 25, 1880. 111. Alan S. Katchen puts the year the original I-AAC disappeared as 1882. Alan S. Katchen, Abel Kiviat (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2009), p. 52.

Notes — Chapter 3 112. New York Times: January 24, 1889. 113. New York Times: April 12, 1890; Evening World: April 18, 1890. 114. Irish American Weekly: April 12, 1890. 115. New York Herald: April 21, 1890. 116. Irish World: July 5, 1890. 117. Evening World: July 19, 1890; The Sun: April 11, 1891; Evening World: March 11, 1891. 118. Evening World: July 29, 1890; New York Herald: July 30, 1890; New York Herald-Tribune: July 30, 1890. 119. New York Times: April 20, 1890; The Sun: December 22, 1890; New York Times: September 25, 1893; The Sun: December 22, 1890. 120. The Sun: November 28, 1890. 121. Evening World: March 9, 1891. 122. The Sun: March 12, 1893. 123. Evening World: April 21, 1891; Evening World: October 12, 1892. 124. New York Herald: May 31, 1894. 125. The Gael: September 1901; The Pilot: June 12, 1886. 126. Boston Herald: September 22, 1879; Boston Journal: August 21, 1879. 127. Lowell Daily Citizen: September 30, 1879; Springfield Republican: October 1, 1879. 128. The Pilot: October 4, 1879. 129. Boston Globe: September 30, 1879. 130. Boston Journal: September 30, 1879. 131. Boston Globe: September 30, 1879. 132. Boston Globe: May 22, 1880. 133. Boston Herald: May 22, 1881; Boston Journal: August 2, 1883; Boston Globe: August 2, 1883; Boston Globe: August 2, 1883. 134. Boston Globe: July 30, 1882. 135. Boston Journal: August 2, 1883; Boston Globe: August 2, 1883. 136. Boston Globe: June 18, 1884. 137. Boston Journal: September 30, 1879; Boston Globe: August 2, 1883; Boston Globe: July 30, 1882; Boston Globe: June 18, 1884. 138. Boston Globe: September 30, 1879. 139. Boston Journal: August 2, 1882; Boston Globe: July 30, 1882. 140. Boston Globe: June 18, 1884. 141. Boston Globe: July 30, 1882. 142. Boston Herald: February 26, 1884. 143. Boston Journal: June 25, 1885; Boston Herald: September 16, 1887. 144. Boston Daily Advertiser: September 18, 1885; the Boston Journal referred to the club as the Boston Irish Athletic Club. See Boston Journal: September 18, 1885. 145. Boston Herald: September 16, 1885; Boston Herald: September 3, 1901; Boston Daily Advertiser: August 6, 1886. 146. Boston Globe: July 4, 1888; Boston Journal: July 15, 1892; Boston Herald: September 5, 1893. 147. Boston Herald: September 5, 1899. 148. Boston Herald: September 4, 1900. 149. Boston Globe: September 3, 1901. 150. Boston Herald: September 24, 1888. 151. Boston Globe: June 21, 1892; Boston Herald: June 21, 1892; Boston Journal: June 21, 1892. 152. Boston Herald: August 1, 1892; Boston Journal: August 1, 1892; Boston Globe: August 9, 1892. 153. Boston Journal: October 10, 1892; Boston Herald: October 10, 1892. 154. Irish World: July 18, 1903. 155. Boston Journal: November 29, 1911.

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156. Boston Journal: July 13, 1914; Boston Journal: July 23, 1914. 157. New York Times: September 10, 1916; Boston Globe: September 10, 1916. 158. Chicago Tribune: September 22, 1879. 159. Chicago Tribune: May 24, 1880. 160. Chicago Tribune: September 5, 1881. 161. Chicago Inter Ocean: February 24, 1895. 162. Chicago Tribune: August 27, 1910; Chicago Tribune: August 29, 1910. Some newspapers list this as the second annual event, including the Kentucky Irish American: September 3, 1910, and the New Orleans Item: August 29, 1910. 163. Chicago Tribune: October 16, 1910. 164. San Francisco Call: July 18, 1910. 165. San Francisco Call: December 22, 1910; San Francisco Call: January 2, 1911; San Francisco Call: November 11, 1910 166. San Francisco Call: October 24, 1909; San Francisco Call: May 18, 1911; San Francisco Call: July 29, 1910. 167. San Francisco Call: October 25, 1909. 168. San Francisco Call: May 11, 1911; San Francisco Call: May 18, 1911. 169. New York Times: May 24, 1910; San Francisco Call: September 16, 1910. 170. Kansas City Times: August 16, 1891; Kansas City Star: July 24, 1909; Kansas City Star: August 6, 1909; Kansas City Star: September 9, 1909; Kansas City Star: November 13, 1909. 171. Kansas City Star: August 6, 1909; Kansas City Star: November 20, 1909; Kansas City Star: April 21, 1911. 172. The Sun: January 23, 1890; Sporting Life: February 26, 1890. 173. New York Times: September 7, 1909. 174. Official Athletic Rules and Official Handbook of the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States: 1912, p. 22; Official Athletic Rules and Official Handbook of the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States: 1910, p. 45. 175. Official Athletic Rules and Official Handbook of the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States: 1911, p. 20. 176. Official Athletic Rules: 1912, p. 22. 177. New York Times: January 31, 1898. 178. “F-I-G-H-T! Irish!” New York World: July 19, 1906. Cited in “Conway of the IAAC,” Cited in Gaelic American: July 25, 1908. 179. New York Times: January 31, 1898. 180. New York Times: April 24, 1898. 181. New York Times: July 10, 1898; Katchen, Abel Kiviat, p. 53. 182. Katchen, Abel Kiviat, p. 53. 183. Freeman’s Journal [Dublin]: May 4, 1896. 184. Morning Post [London]: May 26, 1896. 185. New York Times: June 1, 1897. 186. Philadelphia Inquirer: June 6, 1897. 187. Evening World: July 20, 1908. 188. New York Times: August 18, 1901. 189. New York Times: September 15, 1901; New York Herald: September 16, 1901. 190. New York Herald: September 17, 1901; New York Times: October 5, 1902. 191. New York Times: June 5, 1904. Sheridan won AAU National Titles in the shot put also in 1904, the pole vault for distance in 1906 and 1907, as well as further discus titles in 1906, 1907 and 1911 and the discus Greek style in 1907. 192. Frank Zarnowski, All-Around Men (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2005), p. 33. Zarnowski lists the

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Notes — Chapter 3

athlete John Bredemus, winner of the AAU “All-Around” event in 1908 and 1912, as Irish, even though there is no other evidence to suggest either Bredemus or any of his parents or grandparents were born in Ireland. 193. Katchen, Abel Kiviat, p. 55. 194. New York Times: December 27, 1878. 195. Adelman, A Sporting Time, p. 97. 196. Benjamin G. Rader, Baseball (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), p. 12. 197. Adelman, A Sporting Time, p. 111. 198. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: April 7, 1862. 199. San Francisco Daily Examiner: November 27, 1887. Cited in Ryczek, Baseball’s First Inning, p. 33; Charley Rosen, The Emerald Diamond (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), pp. 14–15; Monica Nucciarone, Alexander Cartwright (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), p. 145. 200. Brian McKenna: Elysian Fields. http://baseballhistoryblog.com/2456/elysian-fields-part-2/. 201. Jerrold Casway, Ed Delahanty in the Emerald Age of Baseball (Notre Dame, IL: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004), p. 18. 202. Rader, Baseball, p. 7. 203. William J. Ryczek, When Johnny Came Sliding Home ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1998), p. 63. 204. Rader, Baseball, p. 17. 205. New York Times: July 21, 1860. 206. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: October 9, 1860. 207. Ryczek, When Johnny Came Sliding Home, p. 63; Ryczek, Baseball’s First Inning, p. 184; Charles A. Peverelly, et al., Peverelly’s National Game (Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2005), p. 55. 208. Ryczek, When Johnny Came Sliding Home, p. 63. 209. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: October 21 1865. 210. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: October 31 1865; Terry, Long Before the Dodgers, p. 58. 211. Ted Vincent, Mudville’s Revenge (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), p. 6. 212. Stephen D. Guschov, The Red Stockings of Cincinnati ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1998), p. 1. 213. David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), p. 4. 214. Stephen Freedman, “The Baseball Fad in Chicago,” Journal of Sport History 5:2 (Summer 1978): p. 48. 215. Arthur J. Weise, “St. Patrick’s Day Riot —1837,” in Arthur J. Weise, Troy’s One Hundred Years 1789 –1889 (Troy, NY: William H. Young, 1891). and cited on Troy Irish Genealog y Society website, http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~nytigs/StPatricksDayRiot.htm. 216. Mullany’s House, located at 350 8th Street, is now a National Historic Landmark. See Janet Nolan, Ourselves Alone (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1989), p. 84. 217. John W. Tuohy, “The Legend of Old Smoke Morrissey,” American Mafia: January 2001 http://www.americanmafia.com/Feature_Articles_113.html. 218. English, Paddy Whacked, p. 17. 219. Ibid., p. 13. 220. Frank Baillargeon, “‘I am the man:’ The Honorable John Morrissey (1831–1878).” Cyber Boxing Zone Journal: June 1999, http://www.cyberboxingzone.com/ boxing/box6–99.htm. 221. Ancestry.com. http://trees.ancestry.com/tree/83 78412/person/815617336/facts. 222. There is no record of him fighting or of meeting up with either Morrissey or Sullivan on his travels in California. 223. New York Times: October 23, 1858.

224. New York Times: October 12, 1859. 225. New York Times: July 18, 1860. 226. English, Paddy Whacked, p. 29. 227. “John Carmel Heenan,” The Cyber Boxing Zone Encyclopedia: http://cyberboxingzone.com/boxing/heenan. htm. 228. Donald Rittner, Troy, NY: A Collar City History (Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2002), p. 125. 229. New York Times: April 26, 1878. 230. New York Times: June 23,1878. 231. Boston Globe: July 23,1878. 232. New York Times: December 10, 1879. 233. Allen, The Cincinnati Reds, p. 4. 234. Frank P. Jozsa, Big Sports, Big Business (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006), p. 4. 235. Burk, Never Just a Game, p. 131. 236. A good example is “Terry” Larkin. He illustrates the pitfalls of gathering information on players of this period. Larkin is an Irish name from Galway that is also an English Norman name. Terry Larkin by himself would probably not be considered Irish. However, we find that his first name was actually Frank (Francis) and his religion was probably Catholic, by virtue of his being buried in the Calvary Cemetery at Woodside, Queens. Taking this together, Frank “Terry” Larkin could be considered as more than likely of Irish descent. 237. The case of Charles H. Kilpatrick, the fastest halfmile runner of the nineteenth century, is an ideal example. Although he was not a baseball player, the definition of being Irish is hard to pin on him. In a 1955 article titled “Great Days for the Irish,” an unnamed Sports Illustrated writer includes Kilpatrick and another runner, Bernie Wefers, in his article. However, Wefers isn’t an Irish name, while Kilpatrick, who had a common Scottish name, won his first race at fourteen in an event for the sons of members of the Albany Caledonian Club games, and was probably from a Scottish background. “Great Days for the Irish,” Sports Illustrated: March 21, 1955; New York Herald: December 6, 1921. 238. Roy Kerr, Sliding Billy Hamilton ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010), p. 39. 239. James H. Webb, Born Fighting (New York : Broadway Books, 2004), p. 13. 240. Approximately 4966 players debuted in the major leagues between 1871 and 1920. Of the Irish, the figures are 26.6 percent in the 1870s, 31.4 percent in the 1880s, 27.5 percent in the 1890s, 23.3 percent in the 1900s, and 15.9 percent up to 1920. 241. Even if these towns are now either a major city or suburbs of a major city. These figures include players born in Canada, England, Australia as well as Ireland and “Not Knowns.” New York and Brooklyn are counted as one city. 242. Steven A. Riess in particular. See Riess, City Games, pp. 95, 103–4. 243. Its St. Patrick’s Parade is now second only to New York’s in size. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 65. 244. Marty Appel, Slide, Kelly, Slide (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1999), pp. 2–3. 245. Mike “King” Kelly, Play Ball (reprint: Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006), p. 7. 246. Daniel Okrent and Steve Wulf, Baseball Anecdotes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 16. 247. Rosen, The Emerald Diamond, p. 60; Richard Pioreck, “Baseball and Vaudeville and the Development of Popular Culture in the United States, 1880–1930,” in Alvin Hall and Peter M. Rutkoff, eds., The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture 1999 ( Jef-

Notes — Chapter 4 ferson, NC: McFarland, 1999), p. 88; Sporting Life: March 10, 1894. 248. Rosen, The Emerald Diamond, pp. 57, 58; Okrent and Wulf, Baseball Anecdotes, p. 16. 249. New York Times: June 27, 1891. 250. New York Times: November 9, 1894.

Chapter 4 1. Cassidy, How the Irish Invented Slang, p. 195. 2. William O. Johnson, “Sports and Suds,” Sports Illustrated (August 8, 1988). 3. Robert D. Stainback, Alcohol and Sport (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 1997), p. ix. 4. Howard P. Chudacoff, The Age of the Bachelor (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 229. 5. Joseph R. Gusfield, Symbolic Crusade (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), p. 55. 6. Ibid. 7. Todd Tucker, Notre Dame vs. the Klan (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2004), p. 57. 8. Daniels, Puritans at Play, p. 143. 9. Noah Rothbaum, The Business of Spirits (New York : Kaplan Publishing, 2007), p. 7; Dave Richard Palmer, George Washington and Benedict Arnold (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2006), p. 65. 10. Miller, The First Frontier, p. 87. 11. Ibid., p. 88. 12. Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 37. 13. Bristol Mercury: November 12, 1836; Bristol Mercury: May 3, 1862; Roger Swift and Sheridan Gilley, The Irish in Britain, 1815 –1939 (Savage MD: Barnes & Noble, 1989), p. 121. 14. Roger Swift and Sheridan Gilley, The Irish in the Victorian City (London: Croom Helm, 1985), p. 185. 15. Swift and Gilley, The Irish in Britain, p. 167. 16. Tom Hayden, Irish on the Inside (New York: Versobooks, 2001), p. 56; Stivers, Hair of the Dog, p. 46. 17. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles, p. 320. 18. Swift and Gilley, The Irish in Britain, p. 167; Stivers, Hair of the Dog, p. 9. Heavy drinking in Ireland itself is a recent trend, linked with late twentieth century religious, demographic and cultural factors such as weaker church attendance, higher wages, and female drinking. When records began of alcohol consumption in the 1960s and 1970s, Irish over-fifteens’ per capita consumption was twenty-first in a list of countries, placing Ireland well behind France, Italy, Portugal and Spain in the drinking stakes. OECD Health Data 1970. In 1960 Ireland consumed, per capita, 4.9 liters of pure alcohol for every person over 15 years old; the figure rose to 7 liters by 1970. In 1970 France consumed per capita 22.3 liters, Italy 18.2 liters, Portugal 17.9 liters, Spain 16.1 liters and Luxembourg 15.6 liters. In the most recent report by the World Health Organization in 2003, the Irish moved to third place, behind France and Luxembourg: Ireland consumed 13.5 liters, with only Luxembourg (15.5 liters) and France (14.8 liters) greater consumers of alcohol. American alcohol consumption has remained virtually the same since 1960. Consumption was 7.8 liters in 1970 and 8.3 liters in 2003, although it rose to 10.5 in 1980. Nation Master.com: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/foo_ alc_con_197-food-alcohol-consumption-1970 , OECD Health Data 1970. Cited from NationMaster.com: http:// www.nationmaster.com/graph/foo_alc_con_200-foodalcohol-consumption-2000. 19. Maureen Dezell, Irish America (New York: Anchor

401

Books, 2002), pp. 15–17. Just as some commentators argue that aspects of African American slavery are still with us today, for instance in the role of fatherhood. See Jacob U. Gordon, The Black Male in White America (Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 2002), pp. 39–41. 20. McCaffrey, ed., The Irish in Chicago, p. 4. 21. Sometimes these were between two topless women. See Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times: February 2, 1861. 22. Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 142. 23. “The Glory and the Shame,” New York Tribune: March 2, 1883. 24. Irish World: June 3, 1871. 25. Isenberg, John L. Sullivan, p. 11. 26. Rader, American Sports, p. 45. 27. Baltimore Sun: August 5, 1857. 28. New York Tribune: September 19, 1842. 29. New York Tribune: September 20, 1842. 30. Frank Queen, Life and Battles of Yankee Sullivan (Philadelphia: A. Winch, 1854), p. 16. 31. New York Herald: May 12, 1884. 32. Robert W. Peterson, Pigskin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 35, 41; Times-Dispatch [Richmond, VA]: March 23, 1906; New York Tribune: March 25, 1900. 33. New York Herald: January 21, 1885. 34. New York Tribune: January 21, 1885; New York Times: January 21, 1885; New York Times: October 30, 1872. 35. New York Times: August 4, 1873; New York Times: January 21, 1885. 36. New York Times: February 27, 1878. 37. New York Herald: September 15, 1877. 38. “Owney Geoghegan and the Police,” New York Times: September 21, 1877; New York Herald: September 21, 1877. 39. New York Times: October 8, 1877, New York Times: March 3, 1878. 40. New York Times: January 10, 1878. 41. New York Times: December 1, 1877. 42. New York Times: February 24, 1878. 43. New York Herald: March 5, 1878. 44. New York Times: May 9, 1878. 45. New York Times: October 30, 1878; New York Herald: November 30, 1878. 46. New York Times: May 9, 1878; New York Times: December 13, 1878; New York Herald: December 17, 1878. 47. New York Herald: December 17, 1878. 48. New York Herald: December 16, 1878; New York Herald: December 17, 1878. 49. New York Times: May 9, 1878. 50. New York Times: March 4, 1883. 51. New York Times: March 3, 1878; New York Times: December 13, 1878; New York Tribune: April 13, 1883. 52. New York Times: January 21, 1885. 53. Seymour and Mills, Baseball: The Early Years, pp. 106–107. 54. Syracuse Herald: August 23, 1894. Cited in Howard Rosenberg, Cap Anson 2 (Arlington, VA : Tile Books, 2004), p. 255. 55. Adrian Constantine Anson, A Ball Player’s Career (reprint: Mattituck, NY: Ameron House, n.d), p. 115. 56. Ibid., p. 116. Lee Allen claims Anson said: “There’s not a man alive who can drink Mike Kelly under the table.” Allen, The Cincinnati Reds, p. 42. 57. Rosen, The Emerald Diamond, p. 84. 58. Riess, Touching Base, p. 163. 59. Appel, Slide, Kelly, Slide, p. 99.

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Notes — Chapter 4

60. Ibid., pp. 183–184. 61. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 65; Sporting Life: November 17, 1894. 62. Luke Salisbury, The Cleveland Indian (Seattle, WA: Black Heron Press, 2007), p. 166. 63. Lyle W. Dorsett, Billy Sunday and the Redemption of Urban America (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2004), p. 24. 64. Robert Francis Martin, Hero of the Heartland (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), p. 73. 65. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 65; New York Times: January 16, 1892; Sporting Life: January 23, 1892. 66. Floyd Conner, Baseball’s Most Wanted (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2000), p. 139. 67. David Nemec and Dave Zeman, The Baseball Rookies Encyclopedia (Washington DC: Brassey’s, 2004), p. 33. 68. David L. Fleitz, Cap Anson ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005), p. 147. 69. Martin, Hero of the Heartland, p. 74. 70. Cleveland Plain Dealer: June 29, 1889. 71. Cleveland Plain Dealer: June 30, 1889. 72. Sporting Life: July 24, 1889. 73. Sporting Life: July 31, 1889. 74. Sporting Life: May 23, 1891. 75. New York Times: October 6, 1878. 76. Graeme Kent, Olympic Follies (London: JR Books, 2008), p. 100. 77. New York Times: July 13, 1964. 78. New York Times: February 14, 1964; Katchen, Abel Kiviat, p. 87. 79. Kent, Olympic Follies, p. 101. 80. New York Times: December 30, 1907. 81. Boston Journal: August 23, 1893; Boston Herald: August 23, 1893; Boston Herald: August 24, 1893. 82. New York Times: June 8, 1888. 83. New York Herald: October 2, 1887. 84. New York Times: February 12, 1888. 85. Sears, Running Through the Ages, p. 99. 86. “New 100 Yard Dash Record,” Baltimore Sun: September 3, 1895; Grand Forks Herald: September 3, 1895. 87. New York Times: March 13, 1910. 88. Charles C. Alexander, John McGraw (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988), p. 150. 89. Ibid., p. 7. 90. Ibid., p. 171. 91. Ibid., p. 7. 92. Tom Simon, Deadball Stars of the National League (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2004), p. 55. 93. Ibid. 94. Donlin’s was .340, behind Nap Lajoie with .426. Source: Baseball-Reference.com. http://www.baseballreference.com/leagues/AL/1901-batting-leaders.shtml. 95. “Warrant for Donlin,” Baltimore Sun: March 14, 1902. 96. Simon, Deadball Stars of the National League, p. 56. 97. Pittsburgh Press: August 3, 1904. 98. New York Times: August 6, 1904; Sporting News: February 17, 1906. 99. New York Times: February 9, 1906. 100. Simon, Deadball Stars of the National League, p. 56. 101. Sporting News: December 5, 1907. 102. Burt Solomon, Where They Ain’t (New York: Free Press, 1999), p. 46; Jack Smiles, Ee-Yah ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005), p. 32.

103. Simon, Deadball Stars of the National League, p. 46. 104. Casway, Ed Delahanty, pp. 13–14. 105. Ibid., p. 33. 106. Ibid., p. 187. 107. Ibid., p. 258. 108. Ibid., pp. 261–263. 109. Sporting Life: July 11, 1903. 110. Detroit Times: July 1, 1903. Cited in Casway, Ed Delahanty, p. 265. 111. New York Times: July 10, 1903; Sporting Life: July 18, 1903. 112. “Merry Mike Kelley [sic],”Sporting Life: November 13, 1897. 113. Richard F. Peterson, “‘Slide, Kelly, Slide,’” in Lawrence Baldassaro and Richard A. Johnson, eds., The American Game (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002), pp. 57–58. 114. Players like Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, and Dennis Martinez. 115. James’s 1870s include Jim Devlin and The Only Nolan, out of six. The 1880s, of a list of eight, include Mike “King” Kelly, Mickey Welch, Charlie Sweeney, and Jack Farrell, plus the Glasgow-born pal of King Kelly, Jim McCormick, who possibly had Irish parents and who grew up in an “Irish neighborhood” in St. Louis. The 1890s list has Marty Bergen, Jack McCarthy and Willie McGill out of seven drunks. Bill James, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (New York: Free Press, 2001), pp. 13, 43, 61. 116. Boston Globe: January 20, 1900. 117. James, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, p. 78. James lists Mike Donlin and Larry McLean for the 1910s (p. 101). 118. Daniel R. Levitt, Ed Barrow (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010), p. 63. 119. Glenn Stout and Richard Johnson, Yankees Century (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002), p. 67. 120. William M. Anderson, The Detroit Tigers (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2008), p. 17. 121. Donald Hubbard, The Heavenly Twins ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008), p. 54. 122. Richard F. Peterson, ed., The Saint Louis Baseball Reader (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006), p. 64. 123. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 46. 124. Sporting News: June 8, 1889. 125. Cleveland Plain Dealer: July 11, 1889. 126. Baltimore Morning Herald: July 6, 1892. 127. Baltimore Morning Herald: July 13, 1892. 128. “Welch’s Fate,” Sporting Life: September 16, 1893. 129. Sporting Life: September 5, 1896. 130. David L. Fleitz, More Ghosts in the Gallery ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004), p. 145. 131. Fleitz, More Ghosts in the Gallery, p. 140; Sporting Life: December 12, 1888. 132. Okrent and Wulf, Baseball Anecdotes, p. 20. 133. Roger Kahn, The Head Game (New York : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2001), p. 67. 134. Harold Kaese, The Boston Braves (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004), p. 169. 135. Spalding’s Baseball Guide and Official League Book: 1889: p. unknown. Archive.org: http://www.archive.org/ stream/spaldingsbasebal09477gut/8sbbg10.txt. 136. David Nemec, The Great Encyclopedia of Nineteenth Century Major League Baseball (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006), p. 108.

Notes — Chapter 5 137. William A. Cook, The Louisville Grays Scandal ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005), p. 79. 138. New York Times: December 9, 1880. 139. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 35; Burk, Never Just a Game, p. 66. 140. James Charlton, “Charlton’s Baseball Chronology —1881,” Baseballlibrary.com. http://www.baseballlibrary.com/chronology/byyear.php?year=1881; James D. Hardy, The New York Giants Baseball Club (Boston: Northeastern University, 1982), pp. 7, 43. 141. Allen, The Cincinnati Reds, p. 14. 142. James, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, p. 17; Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 17. 143. Jack Smiles, Big Ed Walsh ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007), p. 124; Sporting Life: April 5, 1913; Chicago Tribune: July 20, 1913. 144. Sporting Life: September 9, 1893; Sporting Life: April 7, 1894. 145. “Young Takes a Hand,” Sporting Life: July 21, 1894. 146. Sporting Life: August 18, 1894. 147. Sporting News: July 27, 1895. 148. New York Times: July 9, 1896. 149. Sporting Life: September 29, 1900. 150. Sporting News: May 24, 1890. 151. Sporting Life: November 23, 1895; Casway, Ed Delahanty, p. 259. 152. New York Times: December 3, 1911. 153. Paul G. Zinn and John G. Zinn, The Major League Pennant Races of 1916 ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009), p. 58. 154. John C. Skipper, Wicked Curve ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006), pp. 40–41. 155. Harvey Frommer, Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball (Dallas, TX: Taylor, 1992), p. 91. 156. David Q. Voigt, American Baseball (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1983), p. 43. 157. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 157. 158. Adrian Burgos Jr., Playing America’s Game (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007), p. 38. 159. Spalding’s Baseball Guide and Official League Book: 1892. Cited in Daniel E. Ginsburg, The Fix Is In ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1995), pp. 78–79. 160. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 157. 161. Connie Mack, My 66 Years in the Big Leagues (reprint: Mineola, NY: Dover, 2009), p. 17. 162. Ted Davis, Connie Mack (Lincoln, NE: Writers Club Press, 2000), p. 8. Norman Lee Macht notes that Mary was aware of the “sordid reputation” of baseball players, but “didn’t have to extract any promises from her son to avoid evil ways and hard liquor. He was already the man he would be, and she was content with what she saw.” Norman L. Macht, Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), p. 30. 163. Bruce Kuklick, To Every Thing a Season (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 35. 164. Bob Warrington, “Old Man Booze at Shibe Park/Connie Mack Stadium,” Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society. http://philadelphiaathletics.org/old-manbooze-at-shibe-parkconnie-mack-stadium/. 165. Mack, My 66 Years in the Big Leagues, p. 136. 166. Sunday baseball came to the City of Brotherly Love in 1934, while booze arrived in 1961. Sunday booze didn’t arrive in Philadelphia until two years after Connie’s park had closed in 1972. Kuklick, To Every Thing a Season, p. 73.

403

167. Ibid., p. 34. 168. Sporting Life: October 5, 1912. 169. Chicago Tribune: September 25, 1912. 170. San Jose Evening News: May 18, 1923; Andy Dabilis and Nick Tsiotos, The 1903 World Series ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004), p. 21. 171. San Jose Evening News: May 18, 1923. 172. Dabilis and Tsiotos, The 1903 World Series, p. 20. 173. Bill Felber, A Game of Brawl (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), p. 39. 174. Roger I. Abrams, The First World Series (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2003), p. 95. 175. Glenn Stout and Richard Johnson, Red Sox Century (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005), p. 5. 176. Isenberg, John L. Sullivan, pp. 348–9, 220. 177. Ibid., pp. 48–51. 178. Ibid., p. 39. 179. Ibid., p. 227. 180. New York Times: July 1, 1884. 181. New York Times: July 2, 1884. 182. The Repository [Canton, OH]: December 26, 1884. 183. Chicago Tribune: March 2, 1883. 184. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: May 8, 1887. 185. New York Times: August 18, 1870. 186. New York Herald: November 10, 1870. 187. New York Times: February 17, 1877. 188. New York Herald: July 26, 1885; New York Herald: July 27, 1885. 189. New York Times: May 15, 1883. 190. New York Times: July 27, 1885. 191. New York Herald: April 9, 1886; New York Times: April 9, 1886. 192. New York Times: April 25, 1887. 193. New York Times: December 8, 1882; New York Times: December 29, 1882. 194. The Sun: December 7, 1890. 195. Isenberg, John L. Sullivan, p. 354. 196. New York Times: January 15, 1892; Isenberg, John L. Sullivan, p. 298. 197. He once gave a Sister of Mercy fifty dollars. When this was pointed out he cried: “What! I thought it was five dollars. Never mind. Keep it. I’m glad to give it to you.” “John L. Sullivan’s Sails to the Breeze,” New York Herald: December 21, 1890. 198. New York Times August 2, 1915.

Chapter 5 1. Cassidy, How the Irish Invented Slang, p. 233. 2. Ibid., pp. 285–286. 3. Susan Castle, The History of Gambling. http:// www.helium.com/items/848556-the-history-of-gambling?page=2. 4. Daniels, Puritans at Play, pp. 176–77. 5. Rader, Baseball, p. 19. 6. Ibid., p. 45. 7. Baltimore Sun: August 11, 1841. 8. New York Herald: October 21, 1858. 9. Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 126. 10. New York Times: May 20, 1863; New York Times: January 21, 1885. 11. “Another Prize Fight,” New York Times: May 20, 1863. 12. New York Times: March 5, 1873. 13. Wheeling Register: March 5, 1873. 14. “A Mob at the Funeral,” New York Times: January 28, 1885.

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Notes — Chapter 5

15. Wheeling Register: March 5, 1873. 16. Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 141. 17. Rader, Baseball, pp. 19–20. 18. New York Times: April 7, 1893. 19. New York Times: September 14, 1855. 20. Baltimore Sun: August 11, 1841. 21. Steven A. Riess, “Sport and Machine Politics in New York City, 1870–1920,” in Wiggins, ed., Sport in America, vol. 1, p. 172. 22. “Cock Fighting,” New York Times: March 7, 1867. 23. New York Clipper: December 16, 1854. Cited in Ryczek, Baseball’s First Inning, p. 84. 24. Phelan, The Game of Billiards, p. 22. 25. Ibid., p. 23. 26. Detroit Free Press: March 6, 1859; Phelan, The Game of Billiards, p. viii-ix. 27. Phelan, The Game of Billiards, p. 222. 28. Michael Phelan, Billiards without a Master (New York: D.D. Winant, 1850), p. 7. 29. New York Tribune: January 24, 1847. 30. Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 125. 31. David G. Schwartz, Roll the Bones (New York : Gotham Books, 2006), p. 276. 32. Hugh Bradley, Such Was Saratoga (reprint: New York: Arno Press, 1975), p. 140. 33. Chicago Tribune: January 22, 1862. 34. Bradley, Such Was Saratoga, p. 141. 35. Riess, “Sport and Machine Politics,” p. 171; Timothy Holmes, Saratoga Springs, New York (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2008), p. 54, 59. 36. New York Times: April 2, 1866. 37. The Percy-Gray law of 1895 made off-track betting illegal, which obviously increased the numbers of patrons at the track. 38. New York Times: October 10, 1906. 39. New York Times: June 20, 1899. 40. “Danny Maher’s Case,” Hartford Courant: June 22, 1899. 41. “Maher Exonerated,” Hartford Courant: July 6, 1899. 42. New York Times: November 10, 1916. 43. New York Times: April 16, 1891. 44. New York Times: January 4, 1894; “Dunn’s Strange Life,” Baltimore Sun: July 4, 1906. 45. “Dunn’s Strange Life,” Baltimore Sun: July 4, 1906. 46. He may have killed four people. New York Times: 28 June 1906; “Dunn’s Strange Life,” Baltimore Sun: July 4, 1906. 47. New York Times: January 6, 1870, New York Times: November 13, 1870. 48. Chicago Tribune: November 19, 1884. 49. New York Times: November 13, 1870. 50. Lindberg, The Gambler King of Clark Street, p. 62. 51. New York Herald: September 1, 1887. 52. Chicago Inter Ocean: March 20, 1887. 53. Chicago Inter Ocean: October 10, 1890. 54. Chicago Herald: October 11, 1890. 55. New York Herald: June 14, 1890. 56. Chicago Herald: October 11, 1890. 57. New York Times: June 14, 1903. 58. New York Times: January 7, 1904. 59. “Dunn’s Strange Life,” Baltimore Sun: July 4, 1906. 60. John Dizikes, Yankee Doodle Dandy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 79. 61. Parker Morell, Diamond Jim (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1934), p. 201. 62. Dizikes, Yankee Doodle Dandy, p. 27. 63. Morell, Diamond Jim, p. 201.

64. Dizikes, Yankee Doodle Dandy, p. 72. 65. New York Times: November 5, 1890; Dizikes, Yankee Doodle Dandy, p. 28. 66. New York Times: March 27, 1893; Morell, Diamond Jim, p. 201. 67. New York Times: June 24, 1900. 68. New York Times: August 20, 1906. 69. New York Herald: December 30, 1894. 70. New York Times: July 3, 1900. 71. H. Paul Jeffers, Diamond Jim Brady (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2001), pp. 238–239; New York Times: June 22, 1902. 72. Morell, Diamond Jim, p. 7; New York Times: April 14, 1917. 73. Jeffers, Diamond Jim Brady, p. 249. 74. New York Times: August 20, 1906. 75. New York Times: April 14, 1917. 76. David M. Emmons, The Butte Irish (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990), p. 19. 77. New York Times: June 19, 1892. 78. Patrick F. Morris, Anaconda, Montana (Bethesda, MD: Swann, 1997), p. 86. 79. New York Times: September 29, 1893. 80. Jon Bartels, Saratoga Stories (Lexington, KY: Eclipse, 2007), p. 130. 81. Riess, City Games, p. 185. 82. Ezra Mendelsohn, Jews and the Sporting Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 56–57. 83. Steven A. Riess and Gerald R. Gems, eds., The Chicago Sports Reader (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), p. 77. 84. Abrams, The First World Series, p. 48. 85. New York Times: February 11, 1926; Riess, Touching Base, p. 98. 86. New York Times: February 11, 1926. 87. Glenn Stout, ed., Top of the Heap (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2003), p. 13. 88. “Case of Mr. Unger,” New York Times: October 13, 1901. 89. New York Times: November 27, 1902. 90. New York World: March 19, 1903. Cited in Stout, ed., Top of the Heap, p. 10. 91. Neil J. Sullivan, The Diamond in the Bronx (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 15. 92. Frank Graham, The New York Yankees (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002), p. 12. 93. Not P.T. Barnum. English, Paddy Whacked, p. 73. 94. Lindberg, The Gambler King of Clark Street, pp. 9, 11. 95. Richard B. Stott, Jolly Fellows (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), p. 240. 96. English, Paddy Whacked, p. 73. 97. Lindberg, The Gambler King of Clark Street, p. 200. 98. “Michael Cassius McDonald,” Findagrave.com. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr& GRid=10741444. 99. The Patriot [Harrisburg]: May 13, 1891. 100. Chicago Tribune: November 3, 1873. 101. New York Times: January 27, 1895. 102. Boston Journal: August 23, 1893; Boston Herald: August 23, 1893; Boston Herald: August 24, 1893. 103. J.J. Lee and Marion Casey, Making the Irish American (New York: New York University Press, 2006), p. 451. 104. New York Times: May 28, 1895; Emmanuel Kreike and William C. Jordan, Corrupt Histories (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2004), p. 368.

Notes — Chapter 6 105. New York Times: April 16, 1891. 106. New York Herald: April 15, 1891. 107. “Plain Talk for Poolmen,” New York Times: April 16, 1891. 108. New York Herald: April 15, 1891. 109. New York Herald: April 17, 1891. 110. New York Herald-Tribune: April 16, 1891. 111. New York Herald: April 20, 1891. 112. “Byrnes Likes Honest Sport,” New York Herald: April 19, 1891. 113. New York Herald: April 17, 1891. 114. New York Herald: April 21, 1891. 115. “Board of Control Meeting,” New York Times: April 30, 1891. 116. New York Times: August 15, 1897. 117. Guschov, The Red Stockings, p. 76; Burk, Never Just a Game, p. 31; Seymour and Mills, Baseball: The Early Years, p. 53. 118. New York Times: July 28, 1868. 119. Guschov, The Red Stockings, p. 76. 120. Cincinnati Enquirer: August 27, 1869. 121. “Base Ball,” New York Times: August 29, 1869. 122. Burk, Never Just a Game, p. 31. 123. Ginsburg, The Fix Is In, pp. 5–6. 124. New York Times: August 4, 1864; New York Times: July 24, 1863. 125. Ginsburg, The Fix Is In, pp. 6–7. 126. Ibid., p. 26. 127. Ibid., p. 27. 128. New York Times: May 28, 1876. 129. Philadelphia City Item: June 1, 1876. Cited in Ginsburg, The Fix Is In, p. 41. 130. New York Clipper: February 12, 1876. Cited in Dean A. Sullivan, ed., Early Innings (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), p. 96. 131. Cook, The Louisville Grays Scandal, p. 28. 132. Robert C. Cottrell, Blackball, the Black Sox and the Babe ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2001), p. 197. 133. Alfred H. Spink, The National Game (reprint: Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000), p. 12. 134. Louisville Courier-Journal: November 3, 1877. Cited in Sullivan, ed., Early Innings, p. 106; Boston Globe: November 7, 1877. 135. Cook, The Louisville Grays Scandal, p. 153. 136. Boston Globe: November 7, 1877. 137. Louisville Courier-Journal: November 3, 1877. Cited in Sullivan, ed., Early Innings, p. 109. 138. Burk, Never Just a Game, p. 61. 139. [St. Petersburg] Independent: August 19, 1916. 140. Sporting Life: January 9, 1897. 141. Andrew J. Schiff, The Father of Baseball ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002), p. 153. 142. Chicago Tribune: July 6, 1879. 143. Patriot [Harrisburg]: October 11, 1883. 144. Voigt, American Baseball, p. 71; Burk, Never Just a Game, pp. 60–61. 145. Sporting Life: November 3, 1900. 146. “Eight Hits for Lajoie,” Detroit Free Press: October 10, 1910. 147. “O’Connor Report Must Be Hurried,” Detroit Free Press: October 14, 1910. 148. New York Times: March 8, 1872. 149. Riess, Touching Base, p. 77. 150. Jim Hawkins, et al., The Detroit Tigers Encyclopedia (Champaign, IL: Sports Publishing, 2003), p. 5. 151. Sporting Life: September 15, 1900. 152. Casway, Ed Delahanty, pp. 75, 131.

405

153. Ibid., p. 198. 154. Ibid., p. 222. 155. Boston Journal: January 24, 1903; Casway, Ed Delahanty, p. 241. 156. Trenton Evening Times: January 22, 1903; Philadelphia Inquirer: January 13, 1903. 157. Trenton Evening Times: January 13, 1903; Casway, Ed Delahanty, p. 252. 158. Burk, Never Just a Game, p. 175; Alexander, John McGraw, p. 7. 159. Alexander, John McGraw, p. 7. 160. Ibid., p. 71. 161. David L. Fleitz, Ghosts in the Gallery at Cooperstown ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004), p. 74. 162. Alexander, John McGraw, p. 105. 163. Ibid., p. 126. 164. Ibid., p. 108. 165. Ibid., p. 177. 166. New York Times: February 8, 1906. 167. Alexander, John McGraw, p. 142. 168. David Pietrusza, Rothstein (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2003), pp. 38–39. 169. Robinson, Matty, pp. 47–48. 170. New York Times: October 21, 1919; Alexander, John McGraw, p. 229. 171. James T. Farrell, My Baseball Diary (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1957), p. 108. 172. Providence Herald-Journal: November 17, 1911; Pittsburgh Gazette Times: November 18, 1911. 173. New York Times: September 2, 1910. 174. “War on Baseball Gambling,” New York Times: May 10, 1912. 175. Eliot Asinof, Eight Men Out (New York: Henry Holt, 2000), p. 22. 176. Kelly B. Sagert, Joe Jackson (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004), p. 84. 177. Cottrell, Blackball, the Black Sox and the Babe, p. 40. 178. Ibid., p. 41. 179. Donald Honig, Baseball America (New York : Macmillan, 1985), p. 104. 180. Christopher H. Evans and William R. Herzog, The Faith of Fifty Million (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1989), p. 108. 181. David L. Fleitz, Shoeless ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2001), p. 284. 182. William Harper, How You Played the Game (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999), p. 281. 183. Pietrusza, Rothstein, p. 151. 184. Ibid., p. 153; English, Paddy Whacked, p. 108.

Chapter 6 91.

1. Cassidy, How the Irish Invented Slang, p. 174. 2. Diner, “‘The Most Irish City in the Union,’” p.

3. Statistics of the United States in 1860. Cited in Susannah U. Bruce, The Harp and the Eagle (New York: New York University Press, 2006), p. 13. 4. Oliver E. Allen, The Tiger (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1993), pp. 35–36. 5. The Naturalization Act of June 18, 1798, which entailed a fourteen-year wait for “free white persons” of “good moral character,” was superseded by the Naturalization Act of April 14, 1802. The Naturalization Act of May 26, 1824, brought the requirement down to two years for those who had entered the U.S. as minors. In 1850 the

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vote was open to virtually all Irish males, because they were white and the property or tax requirements then present in Ireland were already abolished. Meanwhile Ireland had had just twenty-one years of Catholic voting freedom and still retained, through the 1850 Irish Franchise Act, an occupational franchise of eight pounds in the boroughs and twelve pounds in the country. Twentyone years later, only sixteen percent of the Irish male population could actually vote. S.J. Connolly, ed., The Oxford Companion to Irish History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 215. 6. Sporting Life: May 12, 1900. See also Sporting Life: September 4, 1909. 7. Sporting Life: April 5, 1890. 8. Ibid. 9. Sporting Life: August 19, 1885. 10. Sporting Life: September 4, 1909. 11. Sporting Life: August 7, 1915. See also Sporting Life: September 6, 1913; and Sporting Life: July 11, 1914. 12. New York Times: August 31, 1861. 13. “The Fenian Brothers,” New York Times: July 26, 1865. 14. Terence A.M. Dooley, The Greatest of the Fenians (Dublin, Ireland: Wolfhound Press, 2003), pp. 87–88; Tim P. Coogan, Wherever Green Is Worn (London: Hutchison, 2001), p. 335. 15. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles, p. 458. 16. Chicago Inter Ocean: February 15, 1892. 17. Darby, Gaelic Games, p. 65. 18. New York Herald-Tribune: August 18, 1870; New York Times: August 18, 1870. 19. Irish American Weekly: August 19, 1871. 20. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles, p. 547. 21. New York Herald: July 28, 1880; New York Tribune: July 28, 1880. 22. Chicago Tribune: July 5, 1892. 23. Reginald Byron, Irish America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 246–247. 24. Michael A. Gordon, The Orange Riots (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), p. 19. 25. New York Times: July 6, 1853; New York Times: July 8, 1853 26. Eight died in 1870 and sixty-two died the following year. Gordon, The Orange Riots, pp. 42, 151. 27. Terry Golway, Irish Rebel (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), p. 168. 28. Dooley, Champions of the Athletic Arena, p. 125. 29. Harry Greensmyth and Denis Martin, John Flanagan (Kilfinane, Ireland: Kilfinane (Coshlea) Historical Society, 2001), p. 31. Cited in McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 264. 30. This was the IPP flag of a green background with gold harp and the words “Erin Go Bragh” written below it. The tricolor was also regarded as a “party flag” belonging to pre-partition Sinn Feín. “Irish Athletes in Greece,” Gaelic American: May 5, 1906. 31. “John Bull in His True Colors,” Gaelic American: July 25, 1908. 32. New York Times: March 18, 1893. 33. The New York Times noted that this was the King’s County AOH’s forty-sixth “annual festival and outing,” which would mean that the first was in 1855. New York Times: July 5, 1900. 34. New York Herald: March 18, 1885; New York Times: March 18, 1885. 35. New York Times: July 6, 1897. 36. New York Times: June 1, 1902. 37. Kentucky Irish American: July 10, 1909; Pawtucket

Times: July 22, 1913; Omaha Evening World-Herald: August 3, 1900; Kentucky Irish American: August 21, 1909 38. Washington Herald: August 8, 1909. 39. Philadelphia Inquirer: September 10, 1893; St. Louis Republic: May 26, 1889. 40. St. Louis Republic: June 18, 1889. 41. Sporting Life: September 1, 1886. 42. Omaha Evening World-Herald: August 3, 1900. 43. Pawtucket Times: July 22, 1913. 44. Philadelphia Inquirer: August 26, 1873; “A Donnybrook Fair,” Atlanta Constitution: May 11, 1894; “The Hibernian’s [sic] Picnic,” Atlanta Constitution: May 21, 1894. 45. New York Herald: October 8, 1878. 46. Irish American Weekly: August 9, 1879. 47. Boston Globe: July 5, 1906; New York Times: July 5, 1906. 48. New York Times: August 26, 1906. 49. New York Tribune: August 31, 1908. 50. Springfield Republican: July 25, 1909. 51. Springfield Republican: July 31, 1909. 52. New York Times: June 27, 1910; New York Times: July 18, 1910; New York Times: July 18, 1910. 53. New York Times: June 26, 1910. 54. New York Times: May 31, 1891. 55. New York Times: August 6, 1897. 56. New York Times: May 22, 1911. 57. New York Times: July 18, 1888. 58. New York Herald: July 28, 1880. 59. New York Times: July 24, 1884. 60. New York Herald: July 28, 1880; New York Times: July 28, 1880. 61. New York Times: October 21, 1907. 62. Kevin Kenny, New Directions in Irish-American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 83. 63. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles, p. 511. 64. Anthony G. Evans, Fanatic Heart (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1999), pp. 37–39. 65. Ibid., pp. 136, 166, 168, 169. 66. The Pilot: July 23, 1870. 67. Evans, Fanatic Heart, p. 181. 68. Ibid., pp. 226–227. 69. Allen, The Tiger, p. 8. 70. Ibid., pp. 27–28, 50. 71. “Ex-Senator Plunkitt on Bosses,” New York Times: August 6, 1905. 72. The city had elected the publishing magnate James Harper as a Nativist mayor in 1844. 73. Lawrence J. McCaffrey, “Forging Forward and Looking Back,” in Bayor and Meagher, eds., The New York Irish, p. 218. 74. New York Tribune: September 20, 1842. 75. “Pugilists and Politics,” New York Tribune: March 1, 1855. 76. Riess, “Sport and Machine Politics,” p. 164. 77. Sporting Life: October 25, 1913. 78. Rosen, The Emerald Diamond, p. 150. 79. “Prize Fighters and a Grateful Country,” New York Times: July 28, 1858. 80. New York Times: May 9, 1859. 81. New York Tribune: June 6, 1868. 82. New York Times: February 9, 1906. 83. Katchen, Abel Kiviat, p. 87. 84. Lindberg, The Gambler King of Clark Street, p. 64. 85. New York Times: May 13, 1893. 86. Bruce, The Harp and the Eagle, p. 10. 87. Ibid., p. 12.

Notes — Chapter 6 88. William M. Reddig, Tom’s Town (reprint: Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1986), p. 32. 89. Lawrence H. Larsen and Nancy J. Hulston, Pendergast! (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997), p. 24. 90. McCaffrey, “Forging Forward,” p. 222; Evening World: December 26, 1894. 91. Baltimore Sunday Herald: December 24, 1893; “No Gloves for Croker,” Evening World: December 26, 1894; Lotthrop Stoddard, Master of Manhattan (New York & Toronto: Longmans, Green, 1931), p. 29. 92. “Croker’s Orby Wins Derby,” New York Times: June 6, 1907. 93. Asbury, The Gangs of New York, pp. 234–235. 94. André C. Drainville, Contesting Globalization (London: Taylor & Francis, 2004), p. 49; New York Times: January 21, 1885. 95. New York Times: April 24, 1872; New York Times: April 25, 1872. 96. Isenberg, John L. Sullivan, pp. 10–11. 97. Steven A. Riess, “In the Ring and Out,” in Donald Spivey, ed., Sport in America (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985), p. 96. 98. Asbury, The Gangs of New York, p. 39. 99. Baltimore Sun: March 14, 1849. 100. California Star: August 28, 1847. Cited in sfgenealogy.com. http://www.sfgenealogy.com/sf/history/hgpop.htm ; Soulé, Frank, et al.: The Annals of San Francisco. Cited in sfgenealogy.com. http://www.sfgenealogy. com/sf/history/hgpop.htm. 101. Hubert H. Bancroft, Popular Tribunals (San Francisco: History Co., 1887), p. 272. 102. San Francisco Bulletin: May 31, 1856. 103. New York Times: June 30, 1856. 104. Boston Globe: October 2, 1912; Boston Globe: November 9, 1912. 105. Evening World: November 24, 1915. 106. Boston Globe: June 15, 1906. 107. Boston Globe: November 6, 1901; Boston Globe: June 15, 1906. 108. Boston Globe: March 13, 1903; Boston Globe: June 15, 1906. 109. Boston Globe: June 15, 1906. 110. Tener’s religion is listed as Episcopalian in the National Governor’s Association website. “Pennsylvania Governor John Kinley Tener,” nga.org, http://www.nga. org/portal/site/nga/menuitem.29fab9f b4add37305ddc beeb501010a0/?vgnextoid=393392289054c010VgnVCM 1000001a01010aRCRD&vgnextchannel=e449a0ca9e3f101 0VgnVCM1000001a01010aRCRD. See also “Why John K. Tener is Important to Washington County!” Charleroi (PA) Area Historical Society website. http://charleroi-historical.org/history_JKT.html. 111. “Chief of Elks Going to Congress,” Baltimore Sun: April 15, 1908; New York Times: May 20, 1946; Simon, Deadball Stars of the National League, pp. 26–28. 112. New York Times: May 20, 1946. 113. “Chief of Elks Going to Congress,” Baltimore Sun: April 15, 1908; New York Times: November 10, 1910. 114. Riess, “Sport and Machine Politics,” p. 167. 115. Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 109. 116. New York Herald: February 11, 1849. 117. New York Herald: May 2, 1878. 118. New York Tribune: November 2, 1877. 119. New York Herald: November 4, 1866. 120. New York Times: May 2, 1877. 121. New York Times: May 2, 1878. 122. New York Times: May 6, 1878.

407

123. New York Herald: May 2, 1878. 124. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: November 5, 1870. 125. The Sun: March 13, 1883. 126. New York Times: March 13, 1883. 127. New York Tribune: April 7, 1915. 128. New York Times: November 25, 1879; New York Times: November 26, 1879. 129. New York Times: October 27, 1880. 130. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: October 27, 1883. 131. New York Times: October 16, 1884. 132. English, Paddy Whacked, p. 32. 133. New York Times: December 26, 1912. 134. New York Times: September 14, 1913; New York Times: September 15, 1913. 135. New York Times: July 3, 1886. 136. Riess, “In the Ring and Out,” p. 97. 137. New York Times: July 3, 1886; Charles Denson, Coney Island (Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press), pp. 9–13. 138. Riess, City Games, p. 182. 139. Riess, “In the Ring and Out,” pp. 97–8, 101; Riess, “Sport and Machine Politics,” p. 168. 140. New York Times: February 20, 1894. 141. New York Times: August 19, 1900. 142. Riess, City Games, p. 174. 143. New York Times: March 12, 1883. 144. “An Extraordinary Exhibition of Brutality,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle: June 12, 1882. 145. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: June 29, 1882; Brooklyn Daily Eagle: June 4, 1883. 146. Leonard V. Huber, New Orleans (New York : Crown Publishers, 1971), p. 253; Jeffrey T. Sammons, Beyond the Ring (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), p. 8. 147. New York Times: September 8, 1892. 148. Sporting Life: April 27, 1901; Harry C. Silcox, “William McMullen: Nineteenth Century Political Boss,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 110: 3 ( July 1986): pp. 389–391. 149. Sporting Life: April 27, 1901; “The Prize Fighting Thwarted,” Baltimore Sun: August 15, 1872; New York Times: May 12, 1871. 150. Chicago Tribune: March 29, 1900. 151. Riess, “In the Ring and Out,” p. 103. 152. New York Times: March 2, 1900; New York Times: March 29, 1900; Chicago Tribune: March 29, 1900. 153. New York Times: September 11, 1900. 154. Riess, “In the Ring and Out,” p. 110. 155. Stephen Fox, Big Leagues (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), p. 233. 156. New York Times: March 22, 1906. 157. New York Tribune: April 27, 1905. 158. New York Tribune: June 12, 1905. 159. New York Tribune: November 14, 1905. 160. Riess, City Games, p. 175. 161. Riess, “In the Ring and Out,” pp. 106–107. 162. English, Paddy Whacked, p. 127. 163. Smith believed that it was pointless including Catholic priests and rabbis as it wouldn’t be hard to find supporters amongst both groups. Riess, “In the Ring and Out,” pp. 122–123. 164. Riess, Touching Base, p. 98. 165. Allen Guttmann, A Whole New Ball Game (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), p. 61. 166. New York Times: April 30, 1925; Frank Graham, The Brooklyn Dodgers (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002), pp. 34–35. 167. New York Times: March 7, 1938.

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168. New York Times: April 30, 1925. 169. New York Times: April 30, 1925; New York Times: March 7, 1938. 170. Graham, The Brooklyn Dodgers, p. 35. 171. Glenn Stout and Richard Johnson, The Dodgers (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004), p. 54. 172. New York Times: April 30, 1925; Bob McGee, The Greatest Ball Park Ever (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005), p. 32. 173. McGee, The Greatest Ball Park Ever, p. 69. 174. Solomon, Where They Ain’t, p. 183. 175. Ibid., p. 221. 176. “New Baseball President,” Baltimore Sun: February 18, 1902. 177. Baltimore American: July 15, 1902. 178. Baltimore Morning Herald: July 15, 1902; New York Times: July 17, 1902; “Ball Club Gone,” Baltimore Sun: July 17, 1902; Robert P. Wiggins, The Federal League of Base Ball Clubs ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009), p. 68. 179. Riess, Touching Base, p. 64. 180. Glenn Stout and Richard Johnson, The Cubs (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007), p. 79. 181. Riess, Touching Base, pp. 66–67; Chicago Tribune: December 21, 1908. 182. Perhaps the worst case of “boosterism” gone mad was when Shelby, Montana, hosted the world heavyweight title fight between two Irish-American fighters, Jack Dempsey and Tommy Gibbons, on Independence Day 1923. Four banks went bust in the aftermath as no one in the oil town could afford the tickets to cover the cost. 183. Andrew E.G. Jonas and David Wilson, The Urban Growth Machine (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), p. 37. 184. Ibid., p. 45. 185. English, Paddy Whacked, p. 84. 186. Riess, City Games, p. 35; Brooklyn Eagle: September 3, 1860. 187. Guttmann, A Whole New Ball Game, p. 61. 188. Jon D. Cash, Before They Were Cardinals (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2011), p. 100. 189. Stout and Johnson, Red Sox Century, p. 54. 190. Felber, A Game of Brawl, p. 39. 191. Boston Journal: October 7, 1912. 192. Felber, A Game of Brawl, p. x. 193. Abrams, The First World Series, pp. 96–98. 194. English, Paddy Whacked, p. 263. 195. Peter F. Stevens, Hidden History of the Boston Irish (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2008), p. 53. 196. Boston Globe: January 20, 1915. 197. Boston Globe: October 24, 1919; English, Paddy Whacked, pp. 263–265. 198. Stout and Johnson, Red Sox Century, p. 52. 199. Felber, A Game of Brawl, p. 39. 200. Boston Globe: March 26, 1904. 201. Stout and Johnson, Red Sox Century, p. 54. 202. Boston Globe: March 26, 1904. 203. Stout and Johnson, Red Sox Century, p. 54. 204. Boston Globe: March 26, 1904. 205. “‘Will Be No Sale,’” Boston Globe: March 27, 1904. 206. New York Tribune: March 27, 1904. 207. Boston Globe: March 29, 1904. 208. Abrams, The First World Series, p. 173; Stout and Johnson, Red Sox Century, pp. 52, 54–55. 209. Boston Globe: October 16, 1912.

210. Kaese, The Boston Braves, pp. 128–129. 211. New York Times: December 20, 1911. 212. Kaese, The Boston Braves, p. 129. 213. New York Times: October 13, 1914. 214. New York Times: October 11, 1914. 215. “Royal Rooters Have a Jubilee,” Boston Globe: October 14, 1914. 216. Stout and Johnson, Red Sox Century, p. 95. 217. Felber, A Game of Brawl, p. x. 218. Darby, Gaelic Games, p. 400. 219. Chicago Inter Ocean: December 21, 1890. 220. Boston Globe: September 23, 1892. 221. New York Times: April 16, 1914. 222. New York Times: July 5, 1916. 223. New York Herald: February 29, 1880; New York Herald: March 5, 1880. 224. Golway, Irish Rebel, p. 201. 225. New York Times: November 13, 1946. 226. New York Times: November 13, 1946; Katchen, Abel Kiviat, p. 87. 227. Evening World: November 21, 1890. 228. “Irishmen Greet Hearst,” The Sun: October 29, 1906. 229. Katchen, Abel Kiviat, p. 86. 230. New York Herald: June 24, 1879. 231. Isenberg, John L. Sullivan, p. 85. 232. Gerald Morton and George M. O’Brien, Wrestling to Rasslin’ (Bowling Green OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1985), pp. 24–25. 233. New York Times: January 20, 1880. 234. New York Times: June 11, 1899; Riess, “In the Ring and Out,” p. 100. 235. New York Times: February 23, 1901; New York Times: June 21, 1919. 236. [St. Petersburg] Evening Independent: January 15, 1916. 237. Robert F. Fuchs and Wayne Soini, Judge Fuchs and the Boston Braves ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1998), p. 26. 238. Alexander, John McGraw, p. 188. 239. Kaese, The Boston Braves, p. 174. 240. Baseball Digest: September 1996.

Chapter 7 1. Cassidy, How the Irish Invented Slang, p. 121. 2. Peter J. Nash, Boston’s Royal Rooters (Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2005), p. 7. 3. Harvey Araton and Filip Bondy, The Selling of the Green (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), p. 123. 4. John E. Dreifort, ed., Baseball History from Outside the Lines (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), p. 21. 5. Timony, American Fistiana, p. 17. 6. Riess, Touching Base, p. 34. 7. Farrell, My Baseball Diary, pp. 39–40. 8. New York Tribune: September 20, 1842. 9. New Orleans Picayune: May 6, 1837; Myler, The Fighting Irish, p. 39. 10. New Orleans Picayune: May 6, 1837; New Orleans Picayune: May 7, 1837. 11. New York Herald: February 7, 1849. 12. Gorn, The Manly Art, pp. 86–87. 13. Weekly Herald [New York]: February 10, 1849. 14. Unnamed newspaper report cited in James, Life and Battles of Yankee Sullivan, p. 37. 15. Baltimore Sun: August 11, 1860.

Notes — Chapter 7 16. New York Herald: August 13, 1860; Baltimore Sun: August 11, 1860. 17. New York Times: May 20, 1863. 18. New York Times: March 10, 1873. 19. “The McCoole and Allen Prize Fight,” Baltimore Sun: June 16, 1869. 20. Dubuque Daily Herald: June 17, 1869. 21. Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 174. 22. New York Daily Reformer: May 14, 1867; New York Herald: November 13, 1868. 23. New York Herald: May 14, 1863. 24. “A Prize Fight,” New York Times: May 14, 1863. 25. New York Daily Reformer: May 18, 1867. 26. “Pugilism,” Chicago Tribune: November 13, 1868. 27. “The Late Fatal Prize Fight,” New York Times: September 24, 1856. 28. The Patriot [Harrisburg]: May 19, 1880. 29. New York Times: May 19, 1880. 30. New York Herald: June 2, 1880. 31. “Disorderly Scenes About the Building,” New York Times: June 17, 1891. 32. Dean A. Sullivan, ed., Middle Innings (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), p. xiv. 33. Sporting News: March 29, 1886. 34. “Vaudeville with Pugilism,” Chicago Tribune: June 18, 1893. 35. The Sun: September 2, 1908. 36. Rosen, The Emerald Diamond, p. 61. 37. IMDb.com: http://www.imdb.com/find?s=all&q= casey+at+the+bat. 38. “Novel Names,” Sporting Life: March 18, 1911. 39. New York Times: March 8, 1883; New York Tribune: March 9, 1883. 40. Chicago Tribune: March 6, 1883. 41. “The Dead Pugilist’s Body,” New York Times: March 8, 1883. 42. The Sun: March 7, 1883. 43. New York Tribune: March 12, 1883; New York Times: March 16, 1883. 44. New York Times: March 12, 1883. 45. The Sun: March 12, 1883. 46. New York Tribune: March 12, 1883. 47. New York Times: March 12, 1883. 48. New York Times: January 26, 1885. 49. Toronto Daily Mail: October 10, 1883. 50. New York Herald: January 21, 1885. 51. New York Times: January 21, 1885. 52. New York Times: January 26, 1885. 53. New York Herald: January 27, 1885. 54. New York Times: January 28, 1885. 55. New York Times: January 29, 1885. 56. New York Times: January 28, 1885. 57. New York Herald: July 16, 1885; New York Times: July 16, 1885; New York Times: October 11, 1885; New York Times: October 22, 1885; New York Times: December 25, 1885. 58. New York Times: July 23, 1885. 59. New York Herald: November 20, 1885; New York Herald: January 24, 1886. 60. New York Times: January 18, 1887. 61. To get a taste of a modern-day NPG and some of the original NPG’s finest contributions to journalism, check out www.policegazette.us. 62. Isenberg, John L. Sullivan, p. 93. 63. Ibid., p. 94. 64. Myler, The Fighting Irish, p. 43. 65. Riess, City Games, p. 172. 66. Sammons, Beyond the Ring, p. 13.

409

67. Isenberg, John L. Sullivan, p. 96. 68. Leroy Ashby, With Amusement for All (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006), p. 92. 69. New York Times: June 24, 1870. 70. New York Times: July 28, 1880. 71. Boston Globe: August 2, 1883. 72. New York Times: July 28, 1880. 73. The Sun: July 4, 1904; New York Times: July 5, 1904. Baseball attendance calculated by dividing the New York Giants’ season attendance at the Polo Grounds (609, 826) by the total season games (153) and then multiplying by two to counteract the home/away differential. Baseball-Reference.com http://www.baseball-reference.com/ teams/NYG/1904-schedule-scores.shtml. 74. New York Times: July 14, 1913. 75. New York Times: July 9, 1906. 76. New York Times: September 10, 1906. 77. “Hurleys Serve for Shillalahs,” New York Times: December 19, 1892. 78. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: February 25, 1895. 79. Boston Globe: February 25, 1895. 80. “Riot at Irish Games,” New York Tribune: February 3, 1907. 81. “Tipperary Thumps Kilkenny,” The Sun: February 3, 1907. 82. Chicago Tribune: September 13, 1909. 83. New York Times: April 12, 1909. 84. The Sun: September 5, 1911. 85. New York Times: July 9, 1906. 86. New York Times: May 24, 1915. 87. New York Times: September 7, 1920. 88. Sporting Life: February 19, 1916. 89. Chicago Tribune: November 21, 1875. 90. Chicago Tribune: April 27, 1877. 91. Chicago Tribune: November 22, 1875. 92. “Incidents of the Great Walking Match Yesterday,” New York Times: March 11, 1879. 93. New York Times: March 16, 1879. 94. New York Times: February 17, 1881; Irish World: February 4, 1893; New York Times: January 12, 1908. 95. Sporting News: May 10, 1886. 96. George B. Kirsch, Baseball in Blue and Gray (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), p. 99. 97. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: August 24, 1860; New York Clipper: September 1, 1860. 98. New York Times: August 24, 1860. 99. New York Clipper: September 1, 1860. 100. Rader, Baseball, p. 23. 101. Ryczek, When Johnny Came Sliding Home, p. 8. 102. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: August 27, 1860. 103. New York Clipper: September 8, 1860. 104. David Nasaw, Going Out (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 99–100. 105. Evening World: June 16, 1894; Evening World: August 20, 1894. 106. “From ‘Burkeville,’” Evening World: October 9, 1894. 107. St. Louis Republic: February 8, 1903. 108. Little else is known of Ryan apart from what Spink wrote about him. Spink, The National Game, pp. 381–382. 109. Sporting News: May 24, 1886. 110. Kaese, The Boston Braves, p. 44; Voigt, American Baseball, p. 178; Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 96; Rosenberg, Cap Anson 2, p. 3. 111. Sporting News: May 31, 1886. 112. Sporting Life: October 26, 1912.

410

Notes — Chapter 8

113. Alexander, John McGraw, p. 115; Fleitz, Ghosts in the Gallery, p. 36. 114. New York Times: June 24, 1910. 115. “Giants Swing Their Fists,” The Sun: June 24, 1910; [Providence] Evening Tribune: June 24, 1910; New York Times: June 24, 1910. 116. New York Times: June 25, 1910 117. [Providence] Evening Tribune: July 9, 1910. 118. Sporting Life: July 9, 1910. 119. New York Times: July 2, 1910. 120. Sporting Life: July 8, 1905. 121. Farrell, My Baseball Diary, p. 41. 122. Lewiston Evening Journal: November 9, 1894; Kaese, The Boston Braves, p. 43. 123. Boston Herald: October 10, 1897; Boston Journal: October 3, 1897. This was apparently an early attempt at sports marketing by the passenger agent of the Royal Blue Line, Al Simmons, who was responsible for shipping Boston cranks down to New York and then on to Baltimore for the Temple Cup games. But Bill Felber claims the former Red Stockings first base, Tim Murnane, now a hack with the Boston Globe, christened these men “The Royal Rooters” when he wrote in an article in late June 1897: “‘Make ’em be good’ sang a Royal Rooter, as Collins went up to the cannon’s mouth for business in the ninth.” No report was found on the Boston Globe website, but that does not mean it does not exist. Some reports claim the group was known initially as the Roxbury Rooters. Felber, A Game of Brawl, p. 136, 278n. 124. Nash, Boston’s Royal Rooters, p. 7; Felber, A Game of Brawl, p. 27; Timothy M. Gay, Tris Speaker (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), p. 57. 125. Stephen Hardy, How Boston Played (Boston: Northeastern University, 1982), p. 188. 126. Felber, A Game of Brawl, p. 30. During the 1903 series, the Rooters hired a German, then an Italian, and finally an Irish band for the three games in the Hub, and were sued by the Guenther Band when they were dropped for game four. See Chuck Burgess and Bill Nowlin, Love That Dirty Water (Burlington, MA : Rounder Books, 2007), p. 203. 127. Abrams, The First World Series, p. 94; Boston Globe: October 13, 1914. 128. New Orleans Item: September 23, 1908; Boston Journal: November 11, 1909; Nash, Boston’s Royal Rooters, p. 123. 129. Boston Journal: April 22, 1910; Boston Journal: April 23, 1910; Boston Journal: January 28, 1911. 130. Stout and Johnson, Red Sox Century, p. 8. 131. Boston Journal: October 5, 1903. 132. Nash, Boston’s Royal Rooters, p. 20. 133. Boston Herald: March 12, 1906. 134. Boston Journal: December 23, 1907. 135. Sporting Life: October 5, 1907. 136. Sporting Life: September 30, 1905; Sporting Life: August 22, 1908; Duluth News-Tribune: August 23, 1908. 137. Sporting Life: May 5, 1906; Sporting Life: January 13, 1906. 138. Sporting Life: December 21, 1907. 139. Sporting Life: March 28, 1908. 140. Sporting Life: October 19, 1912. 141. Lawrence J. Sweeney, “Rooters Win Recognition,” Boston Globe: October 15, 1912. 142. Allan Wood, Babe Ruth and the 1918 Red Sox (San Jose, CA: Writers Club Press, 2000), p. 230. 143. [Providence] Evening Telegraph: September 25, 1897.

144. Kaese, The Boston Braves, p. 86; Felber, A Game of Brawl, p. 32. 145. Boston Globe: September 25, 1897 146. Felber, A Game of Brawl, pp. 26, 32. 147. Nash, Boston’s Royal Rooters, p. 7. 148. Kaese, The Boston Braves, p. 87. 149. Nasaw, Going Out, p. 100. 150. Stout and Johnson, Red Sox Century, pp. 3–5. 151. Ibid., p. 8. 152. Boston Globe: May 9, 1901; Kaese, The Boston Braves, p. 101. 153. Bangor Daily News: May 5, 2003. 154. Gay, Tris Speaker, p. 62. 155. Sporting Life: September 25, 1915. 156. Kaese, The Boston Braves, p. xviii. 157. Boston Globe: October 2, 1914; Boston Globe: October 4, 1914. 158. Boston Globe: October 8, 1914. 159. Boston Globe: October 13, 1914. 160. Lawrence J. Sweeney, “Royal Rooters Have a Jubilee,” Boston Globe: October 14, 1914. 161. Sporting Life: August 28, 1915. 162. Boston Globe: October 16, 1912. 163. Gay, Tris Speaker, p. 11. 164. Lawrence J. Sweeney, “Royal Rooters An Angry Lot,” Boston Globe: October 16, 1912. 165. Donald Hubbard, The Red Sox Before the Babe ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009), p. 181. 166. Boston Globe: October 16, 1912; New York Times: October 16, 1912. 167. Sweeney, “Royal Rooters an Angry Lot,” Boston Globe: October 16, 1912; Gay, Tris Speaker, p. 13. 168. Boston Journal: October 16, 1912. 169. Boston Globe: October 16, 1912. 170. New York Times: October 17, 1912; Sporting Life: November 2, 1912. 171. Sporting Life: January 4, 1913. 172. Sporting Life: November 2, 1912. 173. New York Times: October 1, 1915. 174. New York Times: October 2, 1915. 175. Boston Globe: October 2, 1915. 176. Lawrence J. Sweeney, “400 Seats for Royal Rooters,” Boston Globe: October 3, 1915. 177. I.E. Sanborn, “Chicago Gleanings,” Sporting Life: October 9, 1915. 178. Boston Evening Transcript: October 7, 1915. 179. Boston Journal: October 7, 1915. 180. Boston Globe: October 3, 1915; Boston Journal: October 8, 1915; Boston Journal: October 9, 1915. 181. “Sportsmanship of Royal Rooters is Pleasing Novelty,” The Sun: October 10, 1915. 182. Boston Journal: October 11, 1915. 183. Boston Journal: October 12, 1915. 184. Sporting Life: October 23, 1915. 185. New York Times: January 7, 1920.

Chapter 8 1. Cassidy, How the Irish Invented Slang, p. 103. 2. Riess, City Games, pp. 187–8. 3. “The History of Gambling in New York,” Campaign Against Gambling in New York. http://www.cagnyinf.org/history.htm. 4. New York Times: May 29, 1894. 5. New York Times: May 26, 1887. 6. Peter J. Galie, Ordered Liberty (New York: Fordham University Press, 1996), p. 162.

Notes — Chapter 8 7. New York Times: April 16, 1891. 8. Richard Davenport-Hines, The Pursuit of Oblivion (London: Phoenix Press, 2002), pp. 53, 122. 9. Abrams, The First World Series, p. 105; New York Times: August 23, 1889. 10. Abrams, The First World Series, p. 106. 11. Washington Post: August 14, 1889. 12. Irish Voice: December 21, 2007. 13. New York Times: March 8, 1902; Abrams, The First World Series, p. 108. 14. David N. Laband and Deborah H. Heinbuch, Blue Laws (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1987), p. 16. 15. Charles E. Quirk, Sport and the Law (New York: Gartland, 1996), p. 36. 16. This does not explain why the Roman Catholic Church was less critical of Sunday sports than Protestant churches were. William J. Baker, Playing with God (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), p. 153. 17. New York Times: December 16, 1907. 18. Laband and Heinbuch, Blue Laws, p. 155. 19. Quirk, Sport and the Law, p. 38. 20. Neil W. Macdonald, The League That Lasted ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004), p. 24. 21. New York Times: December 9, 1880; Seymour and Mills, Baseball: The Early Years, p. 92. 22. Voigt, American Baseball, p. 212. 23. Tom Melville, Early Baseball and the Rise of the National League ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1997), p. 132. 24. Riess, City Games, p. 71. 25. Sunday baseball finally arrived on July 3, 1932. Boston Globe: July 4, 1932; Harvey Frommer and Frederic J. Frommer, Red Sox vs. Yankees (Champaign, IL: Sports Publishing, 2004), p. 24. 26. Trenton Evening Times: November 15, 1891; New York Times: August 28, 1925. 27. New York Tribune: July 22, 1889. 28. New York Times: February 7, 1915. 29. Paul Darby, “Emigrants at Play,” Sport in History 26:1 (April 2006): p. 56; Chicago Inter Ocean: October 5, 1892. 30. “Opposed to Foot-Ball,” Chicago Inter Ocean: September 23, 1892; Chicago Tribune: September 23, 1892. 31. “Gaelic Athletic Games,” Chicago Tribune: October 5, 1892. 32. “They Played a Game,” Chicago Inter Ocean: September 19, 1892; Chicago Tribune: September 19, 1892. 33. “Execute The Threat,” Chicago Tribune: September 26, 1892. 34. “No Gaelic Football,” Chicago Inter Ocean: September 26, 1892. 35. Chicago Inter Ocean: September 26, 1892; Chicago Tribune: September 26, 1892. 36. Chicago Tribune: November 5, 1892. 37. Chicago Tribune: April 17, 1893. 38. Sporting Life: April 29, 1893. 39. Darby, “Emigrants at Play,” pp. 56–57. 40. Baltimore Sun: September 17, 1842. 41. “Fatal Prize Fights,” New York Times: September 23, 1856. 42. New York Herald: September 21, 1856; New York Times: September 22, 1856. 43. New York Herald: September 21, 1856; New York Times: September 23, 1856. 44. New York Times: September 23, 1856; New York Herald: September 25, 1856. 45. Rader, American Sports, p. 45. 46. Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 78. 47. “The Prize Fight,” New York Times: October 14, 1853.

411

48. Elliott J. Gorn, “The First American Championship Fight,” OAH Magazine History (Summer 1992). 49. New York Times: April 19, 1861. 50. Sammons, Beyond the Ring, p. 8. 51. Baltimore Sun: February 5, 1849. 52. “Local Matters,” Baltimore Sun: February 8, 1849; “Local Matters,” Baltimore Sun: February 9, 1849. 53. “Local Matters,” Baltimore Sun: February 8, 1849; Elliott J. Gorn, The Manly Art (London: Robson Books, 1986), p. 92. 54. Baltimore Sun: February 10, 1849; “The Prize Fighters,” Baltimore Sun: February 12, 1849. 55. Weekly Herald [New York]: February 10, 1849. 56. “The Prize Fighting Thwarted,” Baltimore Sun: August 15, 1872. 57. Ibid.; “Local Matters,” Baltimore Sun: August 16, 1872. 58. New York Times: May 12, 1871. 59. New York Times: May 15, 1880. 60. Cincinnati Commercial Tribune: December 26, 1880; Cincinnati Commercial Tribune: December 27, 1880. 61. Cincinnati Daily Gazette: December 30, 1880. 62. New York Times: August 27, 1884; New York Times: October 22, 1884; New York Times: October 23, 1884; Chicago Tribune: October 24, 1884. 63. Chicago Tribune: October 29, 1884. 64. New Orleans Times-Picayune: June 29, 1906. 65. New Orleans Picayune: March 13, 1885; New Orleans Picayune: March 20, 1885. 66. Somers, The Rise of Sports in New Orleans, p. 159. 67. New York Times: March 28, 1906. 68. Somers, The Rise of Sports in New Orleans, p. 169; New Orleans Times-Picayune: June 29, 1906. 69. “In The Ring,” Atlanta Constitution: July 9, 1889; New Orleans Picayune: August 9, 1889. 70. New York Times: August 18, 1889; “Kilrain’s Appeal,” Atlanta Constitution: December 21, 1889. 71. Sammons, Beyond the Ring, p. 16. 72. “Olympic Club Wins,” New York Times: March 12, 1895. 73. New Orleans Picayune: May 7, 1895; New York Times: May 7, 1895; Chicago Tribune: May 7, 1895. 74. Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 105. 75. New York Tribune: January 24, 1847. 76. New York Times: December 6, 1907. 77. New York Times: October 27, 1902. 78. Sporting Life: November 8, 1902. 79. New York Times: November 2, 1903. 80. New York Times: April 25, 1905. 81. Evening World: April 30, 1906. 82. New York Times: December 8, 1907. 83. New York Times: November 8, 1915. 84. New York Times: November 9, 1915. 85. New York Times: January 15, 1919. For the next nine years, through the National Exhibition Company, McQuade was the money man as the Polo Grounds hosted not just baseball, but a number of high-ranking sporting events, including the 1923 Dempsey-Firpo world heavyweight fight and the 1924 “Four Horsemen” Notre DameArmy game, until he was forced out by Stoneham and McGraw. Alexander, John McGraw, p. 284. 86. “Baseball Men Exonerated,” New York Times: August 22, 1917. 87. “For Sports on Sunday,” Baltimore Sun: June 10, 1915. 88. New York Times: June 8, 1888. 89. Richard F. Welch, King of the Bowery (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010), p. 50.

412

Notes — Chapter 9

90. Daniel Czitrom, “Underworlds and Underdogs,” Journal of American History 78:2 (September 1991): p. 552; Raymond A. Mohl, The Making of Urban America (Lanham, MD: SR Books, 2006), p. 142; Welch, King of the Bowery, p. 92. 91. New York Times: December 18, 1907. 92. Philadelphia Record: April 28, 1896; Riess, “In the Ring and Out,” p. 95; Robert G. Rodriguez, The Regulation of Boxing ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008), p. 32. 93. Riess, “In the Ring and Out,” p. 169. 94. New York Times: April 13, 1911; “Senate Passes Boxing Bill,” New York Times: June 8, 1911. 95. New York Times: February 2, 1917. 96. New York Times: April 30, 1919. 97. Sammons, Beyond the Ring, p. 13. 98. John E. Findling and Kimberly Pelle, Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004), p. 73. 99. New York Times: August 5, 1920. 100. John Wilson, Playing by the Rules (Detroit : Wayne State University Press, 1994), p. 97. 101. Rader, Baseball, p. 62. 102. Wilson, Playing by the Rules, pp. 97–100. 103. New York Times: September 13, 1883. 104. Voigt, American Baseball, p. 130. 105. Fleitz, More Ghosts in the Gallery, p. 98. 106. Rosen, The Emerald Diamond, p. 53. 107. Keefe ranks in the all-time lists as twelfth for innings pitched, eleventh for batters faced, tenth for wins, and third for both wild pitches and complete games. “Tim Keefe,” Baseball-Reference.com. http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/k/keefeti01.shtml. 108. Fleitz, More Ghosts in the Gallery, p. 95. 109. Mike Roer, Orator O’Rourke ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005), p. 56. 110. Ibid., p. 112. 111. Ibid., p. 135; Appel, Slide, Kelly, Slide, pp. 104, 111. 112. Daniel M. Pearson, Baseball in 1899 (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1993), p. 32. 113. John C. Eckel and Frank Connelly, The Universal Baseball Guide (Chicago: Rand, McNally, 1890), p. 38. Cited in Pearson, Baseball in 1899, p. 78. 114. Macht, Connie Mack and the Early Years, p. 76. 115. Fleitz, More Ghosts in the Gallery, p. 100; Roer, Orator O’Rourke, p. 135, 146. 116. Pearson, Baseball in 1899, p. 78. 117. New York Times: November 5, 1889. 118. Macht, Connie Mack and the Early Years, p. 74. 119. Roer, Orator O’Rourke, p. 271. 120. Robert C. Berry et al., Labor Relations in Professional Sports (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1986), p. 25. 121. Chicago Tribune: March 6, 1890. 122. Macht, Connie Mack and the Early Years, p. 80. 123. Appel, Slide, Kelly, Slide, pp. 150–152. 124. Seymour and Mills, Baseball: The Early Years, p. 244. 125. New York Times: November 13, 1890. 126. Frederick G. Lieb, The Pittsburgh Pirates (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), p. 16. 127. Frederick G. Lieb, The Baltimore Orioles (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005), p. 34. 128. Macht, Connie Mack and the Early Years, p. 82. 129. Sporting Life: June 27, 1891; Sporting Life: July 25, 1891; “Hanlon’s An Oriole,” Baltimore Sun: May 6, 1892. 130. Richard Adler, Mack, McGraw and the 1913 Base-

ball Season ( Jefferson, NC : McFarland, 2008), p. 7; Macht, Connie Mack and the Early Years, p. 72. 131. Macht, Connie Mack and the Early Years, p. 83. 132. Davis, Connie Mack, p. 19. 133. Gustav W. Axelson, Commy (reprint: Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003), p. 77.

Chapter 9 1. Cassidy, How the Irish Invented Slang, p. 90. 2. Baseball-reference.com. http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/NL/. 3. Davis, Connie Mack, p. 21. 4. Riess, Touching Base, p. 98. 5. Chicago Tribune: November 4, 1926; Chicago Tribune: August 16, 1867; Pete Walken, 99 and Counting (North Charleston, SC: Booksurge, 2007), p. 2. Foley is often confused with Tom Foley, his Chicago-born outfielder during the 1871 season. 6. Harry Ellard, Baseball in Cincinnati ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004), p. 93. 7. Sporting Life: October 14, 1916; Ellard, Baseball in Cincinnati, p. 26. 8. New York Times: May 3, 1908; Ellard, Baseball in Cincinnati, p. 24. 9. Solomon, Where They Ain’t, p. 141. 10. Frederick Ivor-Campbell et al., Baseball’s First Stars (Kansas City, MO: The Society for American Baseball Research, 1996), p. 19. 11. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: January 4, 1898. 12. Ivor-Campbell et al., Baseball’s First Stars, p. 19; New York Times: January 5, 1898. 13. Terry, Long Before the Dodgers, p. 124. 14. Graham, The Brooklyn Dodgers, p. 5. 15. New York Times: January 5, 1898. 16. Ivor-Campbell et al., Baseball’s First Stars, p. 19. 17. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: January 7, 1898. 18. Ivor-Campbell et al., Baseball’s First Stars, p. 19. 19. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: January 4, 1898; Brooklyn Daily Eagle: January 6, 1898; New York Times: January 7, 1898; Solomon, Where They Ain’t, p. 141. 20. Seymour and Mills, Baseball: The Golden Age, p. 183. 21. Burton Boxerman and Benita W. Boxerman, Ebbets to Veeck to Busch ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003), pp. 9–10. 22. Six others — Patsy Donovan, Dirty Jack Doyle, Fergy Malone, George McManus, Mike Scanlon and Mike Walsh — managed in the majors. Donovan had the longest managerial career, completing 1,597 games in eleven seasons, eight as player-manager. http://www.baseball-reference.com/managers/donovpa01.shtml. 23. Spink, The National Game, p. 286. 24. Axelson, Commy, p. 211. 25. James E. Elfers, The Tour to End All Tours (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003), p. 3. 26. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 45; Spink, The National Game, p. 288. 27. Axelson, Commy, pp. 21–22. 28. Spink, The National Game, p. 23. 29. Boston Globe: February 13, 1885; New York Times: June 16, 1885; W.C. Madden and Patrick J. Stewart, The Western League ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002), pp. 28–32. 30. Elfers, The Tour to End All Tours, p. 3. 31. Neil J. Sullivan, The Minors (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), pp. 14–15.

Notes — Chapter 9 32. Ibid., p. 23. 33. Spink, The National Game, p. 23. 34. Rader, Baseball, p. 85. 35. Madden and Stewart, The Western League, p. 40; Axelson, Commy, pp. 88–89. 36. Seymour and Mills, Baseball: The Early Years, p. 308. 37. Sporting Life: May 28, 1898. 38. New York Times: September 18, 1899. 39. Spink, The National Game, p. 23. 40. Rader, Baseball, p. 75. 41. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 83. 42. Lieb, The Baltimore Orioles, p. 84. 43. The first “Hit by Pitch” award in the Players League was his only claim of note. 44. Davis, Connie Mack, p. 26; Macht, Connie Mack and the Early Years, p. 129; Sporting Life: October 17, 1896. 45. Macht, Connie Mack and the Early Years, p. 131. 46. Davis, Connie Mack, p. 26. 47. The exceptions are Washington in the AL and Philadelphia, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh in the NL. 48. Boston Post: March 21, 1904. Cited in Glenn Stout, ed., Impossible Dreams (New York : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2003), p. 34. 49. In 1915 Connie Mack became a full partner to Shibe, finally gaining full control of the franchise with the death of Shibe’s sons Tom and John in 1936. Adler, Mack, McGraw and the 1913 Baseball Season, p. 10. 50. New York Times: July 10, 1902. 51. Lieb, The Baltimore Orioles, p. 114. 52. Alexander, John McGraw, p. 89. 53. Ibid., pp. 11–12. 54. Macht, Connie Mack and the Early Years, p. 13. 55. Mack’s Margaret passed away in 1894, three weeks after giving birth to their third child, while McGraw lost his twenty-two-year-old wife Minnie in 1899. Macht, Connie Mack and the Early Years, p. 93; Alexander, John McGraw, p. 66. 56. Sporting Life: July 19, 1902. 57. Macht, Connie Mack and the Early Years, p. 281. 58. Gay, Tris Speaker, p. 126. 59. McGraw and Mack six each, Hughie Jennings three, Collins, Moran and Carrigan two each, and Kid Gleason just one. Of those who won pennants only Hughie Jennings and Kid Gleason never won the World Series. Fleitz adds the name of Fred Mitchell to this list without arguing why. No evidence can be found that Mitchell — born Frederick Francis Yapp — was of Irish ancestry. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 151. 60. Meriden Daily Journal: October 8, 1904. 61. Sporting Life: July 30, 1904. 62. New York Times: August 1, 1904. 63. New York Times: October 7, 1904. 64. Sporting Life: July 19, 1902. 65. Fleitz, More Ghosts in the Gallery, p. 23. 66. His replacement, Chick Stahl, was on the job seven months when he killed himself by drinking carbolic acid in Collins’s bedroom while in preseason practice in West Baden, Indiana. New York Times: March 29, 1907. 67. St. Petersburg Independent: July 1, 1935. 68. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 172. 69. Stout and Johnson, Red Sox Century, p. 97; Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 173. 70. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 174. 71. Ibid., p. 176. 72. New York Times: December 10, 1916. 73. Lewiston Evening Journal: December 28, 1916. 74. The “Deadball Era” is the low-scoring period of

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baseball between the emergence of the American League and Babe Ruth in the late teens. Simon, Deadball Stars of the National League, p. 207. 75. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: June 13, 1997. 76. Reading Eagle: October 1, 1920. 77. Only Mack and McGraw had previously managed in the majors. 78. Sporting Life: April 5, 1913. 79. Surprisingly, there were no representatives of Hibernia in the Federal League. Riess states that eleven of the sixteen managers were Irish. David L. Fleitz may be wrong about Wilbert Robinson, as it seems he was of English ancestry (though married to an Irish wife). Chicago’s Pants Rowland was only the de jure boss, with Comiskey the real decision maker and taker. Riess, City Games, p. 104; Riess, Touching Base, pp. 185–186; Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, pp. 150–151. 80. Smiles, Ee-Yah, p. 7. 81. Dan Holmes, Ty Cobb (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004), p. 29. 82. Smiles, Ee-Yah, p. 111. 83. Baseball Digest: December 1961. 84. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 131. 85. Ibid., p. 89. 86. Toledo News-Bee: July 1, 1913. 87. Warren N. Wilbert and William C. Hageman, The 1917 White Sox ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004), p. 14. 88. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 132; Fleitz, Shoeless, p. 137. 89. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 132. 90. “Collins Now Satisfied,” Baltimore Sun: January 3, 1919. 91. Asinof, Eight Men Out, p. 72. 92. Fleitz, Shoeless, p. 186. 93. New York Times: August 4, 1921. 94. Abrams, The First World Series, p. 52. 95. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 174. 96. Boston Globe: December 1, 1913. 97. New York Times: May 16, 1928; Stout and Johnson, Red Sox Century, p. 99. 98. Stout and Johnson, Red Sox Century, p. 116. 99. Graham, The New York Yankees, p. 7. 100. Pittsburgh Press: September 12, 1907; “Frank J. Navin President of Detroit Baseball Club,” Detroit Free Press: January 10, 1908. 101. Charles C. Alexander, Ty Cobb (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 30. 102. Simon, Deadball Stars of the National League, p. 113. 103. Riess, Touching Base, p. 64; Stout and Johnson, The Cubs, p. 44; Simon, Deadball Stars of the National League, p. 113. 104. Stout and Johnson, The Cubs, p. 80. 105. Chicago Tribune: February 22, 1914. 106. Seymour and Mills, Baseball: The Golden Age, p. 34. 107. Chicago Tribune: February 22, 1914. 108. New York Times: February 22, 1914. 109. Stout and Johnson, The Cubs, p. 80. 110. Baseball Magazine: February 1919. Cited in Simon, Deadball Stars of the National League, pp. 114–115. 111. New York Times: August 30, 1912; Graham, The Brooklyn Dodgers, p. 34. 112. Alexander, John McGraw, p. 208. 113. Lee Allen, The Giants and Dodgers (New York: Putnam’s, 1964), p. 161; Seymour and Mills, Baseball: The Golden Age, p. 389.

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114. New York Times: January 15, 1919. 115. Alexander, John McGraw, p. 210. 116. New York Times: January 14, 1920. 117. Lee Lowenfish, Branch Rickey (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), p. 120; William Marshall, Baseball’s Pivotal Era (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), p. 199. 118. Lowenfish, Branch Rickey, p. 122. 119. Peterson, The St. Louis Baseball Reader, p. 112. 120. Macht, Connie Mack and the Early Years, p. 571. 121. Kuklick, To Every Thing a Season, p. 37. 122. Davis, Connie Mack, p. 75. 123. Rosen, The Emerald Diamond, p. 162. 124. Boston Evening Transcript: September 26, 1903; Stout, ed., Impossible Dreams, p. 27. 125. Stout and Johnson, Red Sox Century, p. 51. 126. Detroit Free Press: April 28, 1908; Pittsburgh Press: March 30, 1908; Pittsburgh Press: April 1, 1908. 127. Detroit Free Press: May 20, 1912; Detroit Free Press: May 21, 1912. 128. Alexander, Ty Cobb, p. 30. 129. Anderson, The Detroit Tigers, p. 17; Chicago Tribune: May 18, 1924. 130. Stout and Johnson, The Cubs, p. 75. 131. Simon, Deadball Stars of the National League, p. 113. 132. Steven A. Riess, ed., Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball Clubs (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006), p. 66. 133. Seymour and Mills, Baseball: The Golden Age, pp. 35–36; Chicago Tribune: February 12, 1922; Elfers, The Tour to End All Tours, p. 213. 134. Lowenfish, Branch Rickey, p. 122. 135. Marshall, Baseball’s Pivotal Era, p. 199. 136. Michael Seidel, Ted Williams (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), p. 170. 137. Chicago Journal: September 1, 1908. Cited in Gordon H. Fleming, The Unforgettable Season (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), p. 201. 138. Rosen, The Emerald Diamond, p. 181. 139. Macht, Connie Mack and the Early Years, p. 571. 140. Fleitz, Shoeless, pp. 242–243. 141. Jennifer D. Keene, World War I (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), p. 74. 142. Isenberg, John L. Sullivan, p. 97. 143. Ibid., p. 6. 144. Ibid., p. 174. 145. New York Times: May 19, 1883; Lindberg, The Gambler King of Clark Street, p. 64. 146. Isenberg, John L. Sullivan, pp. 174–176. 147. Ibid., p. 237. 148. Lindberg, The Gambler King of Clark Street, p. 62. 149. Peterson, Pigskin, pp. 35, 41. 150. Boston Globe: March 22, 1888; Boston Globe: January 30, 1889. Roberts and Skutt put the first meeting between O’Rourke and Dixon in 1889 at a fight between the two fighters at the Cribb Club. James Roberts and Alexander Skutt, The Boxing Register (Ithaca, NY: McBooks Press, 2006), p. 739. 151. Kelly R. Nicholson, Hitters, Dancers and Ring Magicians ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011), p. 83. 152. San Francisco Call: October 30, 1897. 153. Hartford Courant: December 7, 1898. 154. Two version of this story exist. One that his opponent was a Abe Aitken in Australia; the other was Patsy Mehegan at the California Athletic Club in San Francisco

in a fight refereed by the future promoter Paddy Carroll. See “Queer Endings to Ring Battles,” New York Telegraph, n.d. Cited in Washington Post: November 28, 1915; Geoffrey C. Ward, Unforgivable Blackness (London UK: Pimlico, 2005), p. 82. 155. Jack Johnson and Christopher Rivers, My Life and Battles (reprint : Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007), p. 76. 156. Carlos Acevedo, “Nasty, Brutish, Short,” boxinginsider.com. http://www.boxinginsider.com/history/ nasty-brutish-short-al-palzer-the-white-hopes/. 157. Boston Herald: June 17, 1897. 158. Chicago Tribune: August 22, 1897. 159. Toronto Star: February 1, 1909; Limerick Leader: September 5, 1953; Toronto Star: July 5. 1901; Jackson [Michigan] Citizen Patriot: June 12, 1902. 160. Toronto Star: May 22, 1907; Toronto Star: July 19, 1909; Toronto World: January 13, 1915; Toronto Star: February 1, 1909. 161. New York Times: April 21, 1910. 162. “Tom Flanagan’s Is Johnson’s Manager,” New York Times: June 8, 1910. 163. Toronto World: July 5, 1910. Cited in Limerick Leader: September 5, 1953. 164. Ward, Unforgivable Blackness, p. 281. 165. Ibid., p. 349. 166. Ken Bloom, Broadway (New York: Routledge, 2004), p. 79. 167. Patrick Myler, Gentleman Jim Corbett (London: Robson Books, 1998), p. 47; Armond Fields, James J. Corbett ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2001), p. 49. 168. Myler, Gentleman Jim Corbett, p. 47. 169. Sammons, Beyond the Ring, p. 22. 170. Fields, James J. Corbett, p. 50. 171. New York Times: December 28, 1960. 172. New York Times: May 3, 1929; Milwaukee Journal: May 3, 1929; Sarasota Herald: May 3, 1929; Pittsburgh Press: May 5, 1929. 173. Roger Kahn, A Flame of Pure Fire (New York: Harcourt, 1999), p. 20. 174. Randy Roberts, Jack Dempsey (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979), pp. 36–37. 175. Sporting Life: February 20, 1892. 176. David Wangerin, Distant Corners (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011), pp. 60–62; Daily True American: August 30, 1901. 177. New York Times: June 12, 1909; Wangerin, Distant Corners, pp. 62–63. 178. Wangerin, Distant Corners, pp. 40, 63–64. 179. Roger Allaway, “The Forgotten Thomas W. Cahill,” Roger Allaway Blog: BigSoccer.com, February 14, 2011. http://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/blog.php?b= 10940. 180. Schenectady Gazette: May 6, 1922. 181. New York Times: November 28, 1920. 182. Wangerin, Distant Corners, p. 61; “Our Football Harmful,” New York Times: February 7, 1915. 183. Isenberg, John L. Sullivan, p. 97. 184. Sammons, Beyond the Ring, pp. 8–9. 185. New York Herald: September 25, 1892. Amongst other later uses in various forms of popular culture, including the film Dr. Strangelove, the tune was also sung by Manchester United fans in honor of John O’Shea (“When Johnny goes marching down the wing, O’Shea! O’Shea!”). 186. New York Times: May 30, 1875. 187. New York Herald-Tribune: August 9, 1876. 188. New York Times: January 5, 1878.

Notes — Chapter 9 189. New York Herald: September 25, 1892; New York Times: September 25, 1892. 190. New York Times: October 4, 1911. 191. To compare, take General Francisco Franco Bahamonde’s interview with Constantine Brown of the Washington Evening Star in 1947, in which historian Paul Preston later observes a belief by the dictator “in his own propaganda that he was the reluctant instrument of a divine mission … made clear by the mixture of megalomania and false humility of his opening words.” These were: “I am a man who never harbored any ambitions of command or power…. If I believed that the interest of my Patria lay in my resigning my command, have no doubt that I would do it without hesitation and with joy since command constitutes for me both a duty and a sacrifice.” General Franco “sacrificed” a further twenty-eight years in his “duty” until his death in November 1975. See Paul Preston, Franco (London: Fontana Press, 1995), pp. 565–6. 192. “Sullivan Heads Boxing Commission,” New York Times: August 19, 1911. 193. New York Tribune: September 6, 1911. 194. New York Times: May 24, 1912. 195. New York Times: October 25, 1912; Chicago Tribune: October 25, 1912. 196. The Sun: October 9, 1915; New York Times: October 9, 1915. 197. Evening World: November 24, 1915. 198. New York Times: July 18, 1918. 199. New York Times: July 23, 1918. 200. New York Times: July 24, 1918. 201. Gary K. Weiand, The First Superstar: Bareknuckles: John L. Sullivan (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris Publishing, 2008), p. 253; Edward Van Every, Muldoon (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1929), p. 349. 202. New York Times: June 7, 1921. 203. “Boxing Scandal To Be Aired Today,” New York Times: September 8, 1911. 204. Dumas Malone, Dictionary of American Biography, vol. 18 (New York: Scribner’s, 1936), pp. 118–119. Cited in S.W. Pope, Patriotic Games (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 31; New York Times: January 22, 1888. 205. Sullivan was re-elected secretary at the 1889 Congress. New York Times: September 15, 1889; George R. Matthews, America’s First Olympics (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2005), p. 6. 206. George B. Kirsch et al., Encyclopedia of Ethnicity and Sports in the United States (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000), p. 445. 207. Sporting Life: October 25, 1913; Sullivan later became secretary of the New Jersey AC in 1890: New York Times: June 29, 1890. 208. Allen Guttmann et al., Essays on Sport History and Sport Mytholog y (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1990), p. 64. 209. Matthews, America’s First Olympics, p. 6. 210. Matthews, America’s First Olympics, pp. 7–8; Mark Dyreson, Making the American Team (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), p. 74. 211. Matthews, America’s First Olympics, p. 8. 212. Ibid., p. 13. 213. John A. Lucas, “Early Olympic Antagonists,” Stadion 3:2 (1977), p. 263. 214. The American Sports Publishing Company also employed Tim Murnane, James S. Mitchell and Michael C. Murphy as contributors and authors, knocking out “hundreds” of publications on a range of sports. Guttmann et al., Essays on Sport History, p. 61.

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215. New York Times: January 1, 1907. 216. Pope, Patriotic Games, p. 31. 217. Official Athletic Rules and Official Handbook of the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States: 1909, p. 54. 218. St. Louis Republic: October 8, 1901; Chicago Tribune: September 22, 1908. 219. Official Athletic Rules: 1909, p. 54. 220. Official Athletic Rules and Official Handbook of the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States: 1914, p. 61. 221. Sporting Life: November 26, 1910. 222. In 1890 one Patrick Powers was listed as being involved with the second I-AAC’s soccer team, and then named as the New York State Football League’s vice-president, although whether this was the same man as the sporting entrepreneur isn’t entirely known: Sporting Life: September 6, 1890. 223. “The Managerial Question,” The Sun: November 7, 1891. 224. The Day: March 2, 1892. 225. Los Angeles Times: February 27, 1893; New York Times: February 10, 1893. 226. New York Times: October 4, 1897; New York Times: December 11, 1897. 227. New York Times: December 11, 1898. 228. “The 1st President. Minor League Baseball History,” MiLB.com. http://saltlake.bees.milb.com/milb/history/presidents.jsp?mc=_powers. 229. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: July 29, 1903. 230. Charlie Bevis, “Pat Powers,” The Baseball Biography Project. http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm?a=v&v= l&pid=11439&bid=1215. 231. Boston Journal: December 23, 1905. 232. New York Times: December 13, 1910. 233. New York Times: September 1, 1911. 234. New York Times: September 3, 1911. 235. Evening World: September 2, 1911. 236. New York Times: September 8, 1911; New York Times: September 9, 1911. 237. “O’Neil Sees Dix; Still After Powers.” New York Times: September 10, 1911. 238. New York Times: September 23, 1911, New York Times: September 27, 1911; New York Times: September 29, 1911. 239. Evening World: March 30, 1912. 240. New York Times: January 25, 1912. 241. New York Times: February 9, 1915; New York Times: February 16, 1915. 242. The Federal League had a franchise in Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Tip-Tops. 243. Mansfield Shield: May 3, 1915. 244. New York Times: July 8, 1916. 245. New York Times: July 28, 1918. 246. New York Times: July 26, 1898. 247. New York Times: December 19, 1909. 248. Sporting Life: November 29, 1913. 249. Sporting Life: December 13, 1913. 250. Sporting Life: November 29, 1913. 251. “Tom Lynch Ousted,” New York Times: December 10, 1913. 252. Sporting Life: November 29, 1913. 253. W.A. Phelon, “John K. Tener’s Career,” Sporting Life: January 17, 1914. 254. Sporting Life: November 29, 1913. 255. New York Times: February 8, 1916. 256. New York Times: August 7, 1918.

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Notes — Chapter 10

Chapter 10 1. Cassidy, How the Irish Invented Slang, p. 226. 2. Samuel Dickson, “Adah Isaacs Mencken (1835– 1868),” Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco. http://www.sfmuseum.org/bio/adah.html. 3. New York Times: August 12, 1868; Samuel Dickson, Tales of San Francisco (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1983), p. 71. 4. Renée Sentilles, Performing Menken (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 58. 5. New York Tribune: January 25, 1860. 6. Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times: January 28, 1860. 7. Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times: February 4, 1860; Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times: January 28, 1860. 8. Francis Vincent, Vincent’s Semi-Annual United States Register (Philadelphia: Francis Vincent, 1860), p. 139. 9. Ibid., p. 269. 10. Sentilles, Performing Menken, p. 58; New York Times: November 3, 1861; Chicago Tribune: April 4, 1862; New York Times: April 19, 1862. 11. New York Herald-Tribune: August 12, 1868. 12. New York Times: May 27, 1868; New York Times: January 17, 1872; New York Herald: October 27, 1873. 13. Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 145. 14. New York Times: November 10, 1870. 15. Isenberg, John L. Sullivan, p. 130. 16. New York Times: June 12, 1883. 17. Isenberg, John L. Sullivan, p. 131. 18. “Corbett’s Sudden Exit,” Baltimore Sun: September 10, 1900. 19. Boston Globe: July 16, 1895. 20. Myler, Gentleman Jim Corbett, p. 105. 21. New York Times: July 16, 1885; New York Times: October 11, 1885; New York Times: October 22, 1885; New York Times: December 25, 1885. 22. New York Herald: January 10, 1878; New York Times: January 10, 1878. 23. New York Times: January 15, 1878. 24. New York Herald: January 18, 1878. 25. New York Times: January 22, 1878. 26. New York Times: May 22, 1878. 27. New York Times: December 12, 1878; New York Times: December 13, 1878. 28. New York Times: June 17, 1882. 29. “Warrant for Donlin,” Baltimore Sun: March 14, 1902; Sporting Life: March 22, 1902. 30. Solomon, Where They Ain’t, pp. 220–221; Baseball Digest: June 1964. 31. “Warrant for Donlin,” Baltimore Sun: March 14, 1902. 32. “Donlin Under Bail,” Baltimore Sun: March 16, 1902; “Fielder Donlin Under Bail,” Baltimore Sun: March 18, 1902. 33. “Fielder Donlin Released,” Baltimore Sun: March 15, 1902. 34. “Six Months in Jail,” Baltimore Sun: March 20, 1902. 35. Sporting Life: March 22, 1902. 36. Chicago Tribune: October 4, 1898. 37. “Bad Bill Egan in Last Sleep at Denver, Col.,” Detroit Free Press: February 14, 1905; Pittsburgh Post Gazette: February 15, 1905. 38. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: April 25, 1883. 39. James, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, p. 51. 40. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: April 26, 1883.

41. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: May 27, 1883. 42. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: May 29, 1883. 43. New York Times: February 19, 1884. 44. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: January 12, 1886. 45. Sporting Life: January 20, 1886. 46. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: June 11, 1886. 47. Sporting Life: February 4, 1893. 48. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: June 20, 1894. 49. James, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, p. 51. 50. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: January 23, 1896. 51. Sporting News: January 27, 1900. 52. Baseball Digest: February 1963. 53. New York Times: January 20, 1900. 54. Baseball Digest: February 1963; Sporting Life: January 27, 1900. In 1934 Connie Mack and George Cohan gathered enough cash to get Bergen a suitable granite memorial erected in his honor: Kaese, The Boston Braves, p. 98. 55. Baseball Digest: February 1963; Sporting News: January 27, 1900. 56. Boston Globe: January 20, 1900. 57. Boston Globe: January 20, 1900. 58. Sporting News: January 27, 1900. 59. Boston Globe: January 20, 1900. 60. Sporting News: January 27, 1900. 61. Boston Globe: January 20, 1900. 62. New York Times: October 12, 1903; Abrams, The First World Series, p. 164; Stout and Johnson, The Cubs, p. 77. 63. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: July 29, 1903. 64. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: October 12, 1903. 65. Sporting News: October 17, 1903. 66. Chicago Tribune: December 21, 1910. 67. Chicago Tribune: October 16, 1910. 68. Chicago Tribune: May 6, 1911. 69. Boston Globe: August 8, 1915. 70. New York Times: August 8, 1915. 71. Gil Bogen, Tinker, Evers, and Chance ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003), p. 159. 72. Mark Frost, The Greatest Game Ever Played (London: Hachette Digital, 2002), p. 160. 73. Ibid., pp. 159–160; New York Times: August 21, 1913. 74. Rhonda Glenn, “The Tragedy of John J. McDermott,” Maine State Golf Association website, http://www. mesga.net/newsletters/tragedy.htm. 75. Frost, The Greatest Game Ever Played, pp. 159–161. 76. Ibid., pp. 161–162. 77. The American Golfer: June 1916. 78. The American Golfer: March 1915. 79. Frost, The Greatest Game Ever Played, p. 162. 80. Harper, How You Played the Game, p. 220. 81. Washington Times: August 30, 1913. 82. “A Plea for McDermott,” The American Golfer: December 1913. 83. The American Golfer: June 1916. 84. Frost, The Greatest Game Ever Played, p. 451. 85. New York Herald-Tribune: June 9, 1871. 86. New York Times: December 14, 1858; New York Times: December 20, 1858. 87. New York Times: February 24, 1859. 88. New York Times: May 9, 1859. 89. New York Times: May 17, 1874; New York Times: December 3, 1874. 90. New York Times: January 15, 1875; New York Times: January 16, 1875. 91. New York Herald: February 17, 1877.

Notes — Chapter 10 92. New York Times: March 1, 1877. 93. New York Times: February 17, 1877. 94. New York Herald: February 18, 1877. 95. New York Times: March 2, 1877. 96. New York Times: March 3, 1877. 97. New York Times: March 4, 1877. 98. New York Herald: December 8, 1882. 99. New York Times: May 18, 1885. 100. New York Times: July 27, 1885; New York Herald: April 8, 1886. 101. Isenberg, John L. Sullivan, p. 118. 102. Sporting News: July 5, 1886. 103. Isenberg, John L. Sullivan, p. 348. 104. New York Times: May 16, 1893. 105. New York Times: May 17, 1893. 106. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: August 17, 1894. 107. Isenberg, John L. Sullivan, p. 349. 108. Ibid., p. 55. 109. Ibid., p. 348. 110. New York Times: April 24, 1883. 111. Lancaster Daily Intelligencer: May 4, 1883. 112. New York Times: November 9, 1870; “The Election Law,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle: November 17, 1870. 113. New York Times: October 1, 1872; New York Times: June 12, 1874; New York Times: June 14, 1874. 114. New York Times: September 27, 1874. 115. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: May 30, 1877. 116. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: June 13, 1877. 117. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: October 31, 1877; New York Times: November 1, 1877. 118. New York Times: November 12, 1880; New York Times: November 13, 1880; New York Times: December 25, 1880. 119. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: April 25, 1887. 120. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: April 25, 1887; New York Times: May 1, 1887. 121. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: April 25, 1887 122. New York Times: May 6, 1887; New York Times: May 8, 1887. 123. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: May 7, 1887. 124. Myler, Gentleman Jim Corbett, p. 86. 125. The Morning Times: August 12, 1895. 126. San Francisco Call: August 11, 1895. 127. Sporting Life: June 30, 1900. 128. New York Times: May 21, 1902; “Donlin Signs With The Reds,” Baltimore Sun: May 21, 1902. 129. New York Times: February 9, 1906. 130. Sporting News: February 17, 1906. 131. New York Times: September 12, 1909; Sporting Life: September 18, 1909. 132. New York Times: November 29, 1915. 133. Baseball Digest: June 1964. 134. New York Herald: July 31, 1890. 135. Boston Herald: February 24, 1906; Boston Globe: February 24, 1906; Boston Globe: February 25, 1906; Boston Herald: March 11, 1906. 136. Boston Herald: September 8, 1905; Boston Globe: July 5, 1906. 137. McCaffrey, “Forging Forward,” p. 218. 138. New York Tribune: March 10, 1855. 139. New York Herald: July 4, 1860. 140. New York Tribune: April 6, 1859; Chicago Tribune: April 9, 1859. 141. Andrew Noymer, “Life expectancy in the USA, 1900–98,” UC Berkeley: Department of Demography website. http://www.demog.berkeley.edu/~andrew/1918/ figure2.html. 142. Isenberg, John L. Sullivan, p. 75.

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143. New York Times: July 29, 1875; New York Times: September 30, 1875. 144. Chicago Tribune: August 24, 1884. 145. New York Times: August 25, 1883. 146. New York Times: December 19, 1870. 147. New York Times: June 28, 1906. 148. Chicago Tribune: March 2, 1883. 149. New York Times: June 28, 1906; “Dunn’s Strange Life,” Baltimore Sun: July 4, 1906. 150. New York Times: January 6, 1870; “Dunn’s Strange Life,” Baltimore Sun: July 4, 1906. 151. New York Times: November 12, 1870; “Dunn’s Strange Life,” Baltimore Sun: July 4, 1906. 152. New York Herald: December 16, 1870; “Dunn’s Strange Life,” Baltimore Sun: July 4, 1906. 153. “His Last Fight,” Chicago Tribune: March 2, 1883. 154. Chicago Tribune: March 10, 1883. 155. “His Last Fight,” Chicago Tribune: March 2, 1883; New York Times: January 4, 1894. 156. Chicago Tribune: May 19, 1883; New York Times: May 19, 1883. 157. Chicago Tribune: May 20, 1883. 158. “Jim Elliott,” Chicago Tribune: March 4, 1883. 159. “Jere Dunn’s Enemies,” Atlanta Constitution: December 27, 1887. 160. New York Herald: January 5, 1892; New York Herald: January 6, 1892. 161. Chicago Inter Ocean: January 4, 1894. 162. “Sorry No Gore Was Spilled,” New York Times: January 5, 1894. 163. New York Times: February 20, 1876. 164. Atlanta Constitution: October 31, 1873; Atlanta Constitution: November 1, 1873; New York Times: November 4, 1873; Brooklyn Daily Eagle: December 2, 1873. 165. Atlanta Constitution: November 1, 1873; Baltimore Sun: October 19, 1886. 166. Sporting News: October 25, 1886. 167. New York Times: April 10, 1885; New York Times: December 11, 1885. 168. New York Times: July 6, 1887. 169. New York Times: July 11, 1887; New York Times: July 22, 1887. 170. New York Times: September 22, 1887. 171. New York Herald: September 24, 1887. 172. New York Times: September 27, 1887; New York Times: August 22, 1888. 173. New York Times: September 15, 1907; New York Times: November 4, 1907. 174. Rosen, The Emerald Diamond, p. 3. 175. Lawrence Baldassaro and Richard A. Johnson, eds., The American Game (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002), p. 66. 176. James Edward Miller writes that television money was important to the Baltimore Orioles from the start of their return to the majors in 1954, being “more positive than that of many other clubs.” James E. Miller, The Baseball Business (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), p. 63. 177. Lieb, The Baltimore Orioles, p. 34. 178. Edward J. Rielly, Baseball and American Culture (New York: Haworth Press, 2003), p. 139. 179. “Hanlon’s an Oriole,” Baltimore Sun: May 6, 1892. 180. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 83. 181. Nemec, The Great Encyclopedia of Nineteenth Century Major League Baseball, p. 613. 182. Solomon, Where They Ain’t, p. 48. 183. Lieb, The Pittsburgh Pirates, p. 54.

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184. Sporting News: October 9, 1897. 185. “Duffy’s Homer,” Boston Globe: June 21,1894. 186. Sporting Life: April 28, 1894; Rosen, The Emerald Diamond, p. 78. 187. Peter Morris, Level Playing Fields (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), p. 38. 188. Ivor-Campbell et al., Baseball’s First Stars, p. 68. 189. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 132. 190. Solomon, Where They Ain’t, pp. 119–120; Felber, A Game of Brawl, p. 13; Alexander, John McGraw, p. 54. 191. Ibid., p. 48. 192. “Orioles Mobbed,” Baltimore Sun: April 9, 1896. 193. Smiles, Ee-Yah, p. 67. 194. “Still Another Defeat,” Baltimore Sun: July 7, 1897. 195. Sporting News: August 20, 1898. 196. Sporting Life: September 4, 1897. 197. New York Times: June 12, 1900. 198. Alexander, John McGraw, p. 54. 199. Sporting News: July 3, 1913. 200. Simon, Deadball Stars of the National League, p. 46; New York Times: April 23, 1905. 201. Simon, Deadball Stars of the National League, p. 46. 202. New York American: April 29, 1908; “McGann Punches McGraw,” Baltimore Sun: April 30, 1908; Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 143. 203. New York Times: December 14, 1910. 204. Simon, Deadball Stars of the National League, p. 46. 205. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 110. 206. Sporting Life: February 25, 1905. 207. Sporting Life: November 21, 1908. 208. Philadelphia North American: undated. Cited in Sporting Life: August 17, 1912. 209. John J. Evers and Hugh S. Fullerton, Touching Second (Chicago: Reilly & Britton, 1910), p. 189. 210. Pearson, Baseball in 1899, p. 108. 211. Sporting Life: August 19, 1885. 212. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 43. 213. Sporting News: April 27, 1889. 214. Axelson, Commy, pp. 51–52. 215. Sporting Life: July 29, 1885. 216. Sporting Life: June 15, 1887. 217. Sporting Life: June 22, 1887. 218. Voigt, American Baseball, p. 187. 219. Kelly, Play Ball, p. 6. 220. Kaese, The Boston Braves, p. 53. 221. New York Times: September 23, 1900. 222. Alexander, John McGraw, p. 26. 223. Sporting Life: May 11, 1901; Sporting Life: May 18, 1901; Alexander, John McGraw, p. 77. 224. Alexander, John McGraw, p. 4. 225. “Keefe Resigns as Umpire,” New York Times: July 9, 1896. 226. David L. Fleitz, Louis Sockalexis ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002), p. 74. 227. Fleitz, Ghosts in the Gallery, p. 71. 228. Sporting Life: July 4, 1896. 229. New York Times: August 5, 1897. 230. Sporting Life: August 14, 1897. 231. Sporting News: February 23, 1933. 232. “Called Down Again,” Sporting Life: June 20, 1891. 233. Elmer E. Bates, “Cleveland Chatter,” Sporting Life: July 4, 1896. 234. Cleveland Leader: October 15, 1896. 235. Cleveland Plain Dealer: October 16, 1896. 236. “The Attempted Raid,” Sporting Life: August 30, 1902.

237. “Eight Hits for Lajoie,” Detroit Free Press: October 10, 1910; Detroit Free Press: October 14, 1910. 238. New York Times: June 29, 1913; Sporting Life: July 5, 1913; New York Times: April 19, 1914; Sporting Life: July 25, 1914. 239. Sporting News: February 23, 1933. 240. Baltimore tenth and Cleveland twelfth out of twelve. Their respective league positions were second and fifth. 241. Don Doxsie, Iron Man McGinnity ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009), pp. 5–6. 242. New York Times: July 25, 1906. 243. Sporting Life: August 4, 1906. 244. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, pp. 139–140. 245. Baltimore Sun: August 22, 1901 246. Baltimore American: August 22, 1901; Baltimore Sun: August 22, 1901. 247. Baltimore American: August 22, 1901. 248. Alexander, John McGraw, p. 79; Solomon, Where They Ain’t, pp. 211–212; Doxsie, Iron Man McGinnity, p. 63. 249. Sporting Life: August 14, 1897. 250. Sporting News: September 4, 1897. 251. New York Times: June 2, 1911. 252. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 73. 253. “Bad Behavior at a Hotel,” Baltimore Sun: August 13, 1895; New York Times: August 13, 1895. 254. Rosen, The Emerald Diamond, pp. 101–102. 255. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 116. 256. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: July 24, 1897. 257. Dr. Harvey Frommer, “Old Time Baseball: Umpires,” Travel-watch.com. http://www.travel-watch.com/ oldtimebaseballumpires.htm. 258. Sporting Life: May 29, 1897. 259. Sporting Life: August 7, 1897. 260. “Bang!” Cincinnati Enquirer: August 5, 1897. 261. “Hurst’s Statement,” Cincinnati Enquirer: August 5, 1897. 262. “Tim Hurst,” Cincinnati Enquirer: August 6, 1897. 263. “Hurst,” Cincinnati Enquirer: August 7, 1897. 264. Sporting Life: August 14, 1897. 265. Sporting Life: August 21, 1897. 266. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: August 11, 1897. 267. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: July 2, 1900. 268. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 117. 269. New York Times: May 8, 1906. 270. Sporting Life: May 15, 1909. 271. Sporting Life: August 14, 1909. 272. Sporting Life: August 21, 1909; Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 118. 273. Kevin Nelson, The Golden Game (San Francisco: California Historical Society Press, 2004), p. 58. 274. New York Times: July 18, 1894. 275. Sporting Life: August 4, 1894. 276. New York Times: December 10, 1894. 277. Nelson, The Golden Game, p. 59. 278. Solomon, Where They Ain’t, p. 46. 279. His record shows him as the best slugger of 1888 of both major leagues with the best batting average in the NL and third in the majors. 280. Adrian C. Anson, A Ballplayer’s Career (reprint: Mattituck, NY: Ameron House, n.d.), p. 132. Cited in Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 60. 281. Evers and Fullerton, Touching Second, pp. 80–82. 282. Sporting News: March 1, 1961. 283. Howard W. Rosenberg, Cap Anson 1 (Arlington, VA: Tile Books, 2003), p. 187. 284. Boston Globe: June 5, 1896.

Notes — Chapter 11 285. New York Times: August 7, 1893; Sporting Life: August 12, 1893. 286. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 172. 287. Gay, Tris Speaker, p. 69. 288. “A Bitter Feud,” Sporting Life: May 29, 1909. 289. Newburgh Sunday Telegram: June 9, 1895; [Trenton] Daily True American: June 20, 1895. 290. Hubbard, The Heavenly Twins, p. 127. 291. Newburgh Sunday Telegram: June 9, 1895; [Trenton] Daily True American: June 20, 1895; Sporting Life: May 25, 1895. 292. Hubbard, The Heavenly Twins, p. 127. 293. “Too Wet,” Cincinnati Enquirer: May 21, 1895; The [Lincoln, Nebraska] Courier: May 25, 1895.

Chapter 11 1. Cassidy, How the Irish Invented Slang, p. 287. 2. New York Tribune: October 15, 1859. 3. Riess, Sport in Industrial America, p. 18. 4. Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 179. 5. Ibid., p. 162. 6. John Sugden, Boxing and Society (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1996), p. 32. 7. “Tom Riley, Life Saver and Champion Swimmer,” New York Times: July 16, 1905. 8. New York Times: July 26, 1887. 9. “There’s No Sense in Getting Drowned,” New York Times: July 3, 1904. 10. “All Should Be Able To Swim,” The Sun: June 19, 1904. 11. “The Great Billiard Match,” New York Times: April 25, 1863. 12. “The Professional Player,” New York Times: March 8, 1872. 13. Somers, The Rise of Sports in New Orleans, p. 160. 14. Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 180. 15. “Jere Dunn’s Acquittal,” Chicago Tribune: May 19, 1883. 16. Weekly Herald [New York]: February 10, 1849. 17. John Boyle O’Reilly, Ethics of Boxing and Manly Sport (reprint : Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, n.d.), p. xi. 18. Ibid., pp. 161–2. 19. Ibid., p. 149. 20. Evans, Fanatic Heart, p. 240. 21. Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 201; O’Reilly, Ethics of Boxing and Manly Sport, p. 83. 22. O’Reilly, Ethics of Boxing and Manly Sport, p. 85. 23. Ibid., p. 82. 24. Ibid., pp. 5–6. 25. Darby, Gaelic Games, p. 37. 26. O’Reilly, Ethics of Boxing and Manly Sport, pp. 69–70. 27. New York Times: May 29, 1888. 28. Peter McCorry, “Ethics of Boxing and Manly Sport,” Donahoe’s Magazine ( July 1888): p. 24. 29. Ibid., pp. 24, 28. 30. Ibid., p. 29. 31. Peter McCorry, “Ethics of Boxing and Manly Sport. Part II,” Donahoe’s Magazine (August 1888): p. 150. 32. Peter McCorry, “Ethics of Boxing and Manly Sport,” Donahoe’s Magazine ( July 1888): p. 26. 33. Ibid., p. 30. 34. Ibid., p. 31. 35. John R. Betts, “John Boyle O’Reilly and the America Paideia,” Eire Ireland 2:4 (1967): p. 42.

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36. O’Reilly’s The Pilot had previewed the fight with an article from The Sun, hailing the pair as from Boston and calling them “The Great Athletes.” The Pilot: July 6, 1889. 37. Boston Herald: August 7, 1890. 38. Boston Herald: August 11, 1890. 39. Robert Crego, Sports and Games of the 18th and 19th Centuries (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003), p. 52. 40. Jack “Nonpareil” Dempsey and George Fulljames have that honor in their fight in Great Kills, New York, in July 1884. 41. Sammons, Beyond the Ring, p. 8. 42. New York Times: April 6, 1893. 43. “Prize Fighting in New York,” New York Times: April 7, 1893. 44. New York Times: April 8, 1893. 45. New York Times: January 4, 1897. 46. New York Times: January 8, 1897. 47. New York Herald-Tribune: January 5, 1897. 48. New York Times: January 13, 1897; New York Times: January 10, 1897. 49. Crego, Sports and Games, p. 52. 50. Somers, The Rise of Sports in New Orleans, p. 160. 51. Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 88. 52. Spirit of the Times: undated. Cited in Sporting Life: January 18, 1888. 53. New York Tribune: September 22, 1875. 54. Stanley P. Brown, Introduction to Exercise Science (Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2001), p. 370. 55. Fields, James J. Corbett, pp. 10–11. 56. Myler, Gentleman Jim Corbett, pp. 11–13. 57. Fields, James J. Corbett, p. 14. 58. Ibid., pp. 25–26. 59. Ibid., p. 26. 60. San Francisco Morning Call: January 1, 1891. 61. San Francisco Morning Call: January 2, 1891. 62. San Francisco Morning Call: January 1, 1891. 63. San Francisco Morning Call: January 3, 1891. 64. Myler, The Fighting Irish, p. 51. 65. Reddig, Tom’s Town, p. 32. 66. Axelson, Commy, p. 26. 67. Smiles, Ee-Yah, p. 29. 68. Fleitz, More Ghosts in the Gallery, p. 92. 69. Sporting Life: November 27, 1897. 70. San Francisco Morning Call: January 2, 1891. 71. San Francisco Morning Call: August 17, 1898. 72. Fields, James J. Corbett, p. 22. 73. San Francisco Morning Call: September 9, 1892. 74. Myler, Gentleman Jim Corbett, p. 65. 75. Fields, James J. Corbett, p. 1. 76. Kirsch et al., eds., Encyclopedia of Ethnicity and Sports, p. 111. 77. Aaron Baker, Contesting Identities (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003), pp. 13–14. 78. Fields, James J. Corbett, p. 137. 79. J.J. Johnston and Sean Curtin, Chicago Boxing (Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2005), p. 12. 80. New York Times: May 19, 1878. 81. New York Times: November 15, 1914. 82. Alpheus Geer, Mike Donovan (reprint: Charleston, SC: Bibliobazaar, 2011), p. 121. 83. Michael J. Donovan, The Roosevelt That I Know (B.W. Dodge, 1909), p. 29; Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 100. 84. Geer, Mike Donovan, p. 125. 85. Ibid., p. 174. 86. New York Times: January 10, 1906.

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87. Clifford Putney, Muscular Christianity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), p. 5. 88. Donovan, The Roosevelt That I Know, pp. 3–4, 7–9. 89. Geer, Mike Donovan, p. 280. 90. New York Times: January 25, 1891; Chicago Herald: January 25, 1891. 91. Springfield Republican: June 24, 1906. The New York Times would later claim Flood had fought John L. Sullivan, but this was John Flood. New York Times: December 30, 1909. 92. Baltimore Sun: July 16, 1903. 93. New York Herald: July 14, 1890. 94. Irish American Weekly: July 19, 1890; Irish American Weekly: July 9, 1892; New York Times: June 16, 1899; New York Times: November 8, 1932. 95. “‘Tom’ Conneff Long Held Mile Record,” Hartford Courant: October 14, 1912. 96. Van Every, Muldoon, p. 94. 97. Ibid. p. 46; New York Tribune: April 6, 1877; New York World: March 23, 1878; New York World: March 24, 1887. 98. New York World: June 6, 1882. 99. The Sun: January 25, 1903. 100. “Police Athletes of the Irish-American Athletic Club,” Wingedfist.org. http://www.wingedfist.org/police_gallery.html. 101. New York World: August 16, 1905. 102. “New York’s Athletic Police Force,” Wilkes-Barre Times: November 6, 1907. 103. New York Times: February 14, 1964. 104. Calgary Herald: January 30, 1941; New York Times: January 29, 1941. 105. New York Times: January 29, 1941. 106. The Sun: January 25, 1903. 107. New York Times: March 28, 1918. 108. New York Times: May 17, 1954; New York Times: May 18, 1954. 109. Morton and O’Brien, Wrestling to Rasslin’, pp. 20–21. 110. Mark S. Hewitt, “John McMahon,” Journal of Manly Arts ( June 2002). http://ejmas.com/jmanly/articles/2002/jmanlyart_hewitt_0602.htm. 111. Morton and O’Brien, Wrestling to Rasslin’, p. 21. 112. New York Times: August 8, 1873; New York Times: October 24, 1873. 113. Morton and O’Brien, Wrestling to Rasslin’, p. 28. 114. Hewitt, “John McMahon.” 115. Chicago Tribune: November 24, 1878; New York Times: November 24, 1878. 116. Chicago Tribune: December 15, 1878. 117. Boston Journal: March 13, 1879. 118. New York Herald: March 23, 1881; New York Times: March 23, 1881. 119. New York Times: October 20, 1879; New York Times: November 19, 1879. 120. The Sun: August 25, 1880. 121. New York Times: February 18, 1881; New York Times: March 25, 1884; New York Times: May 6, 1884; New York Times: February 9, 1889; New York Times: February 23, 1889. 122. New York Times: March 2, 1884. 123. New York Herald: April 10, 1885; New York Times: December 11, 1885. 124. New York Times: March 12, 1886. 125. New York Times: July 6, 1887. 126. New York Times: November 26, 1909. 127. E.B. Dewhurst, “McLoughlin the Champion,”

Outing 63 (November 1913): p. 188. Paul Fein claims that McLoughlin was the “amiable son of a Scotch-Irish immigrant.” Certainly McLoughlin was an Episcopalian, and so his family was probably previously Church of Ireland. Paul Fein, Tennis Confidential (Washington DC: Brassey’s, 2002), p. 145. 128. Frost, The Greatest Game Ever Played, p. 162. 129. Glenn, “The Tragedy of John J. McDermott.” 130. New York Times: June 27, 1911. 131. New York Times: June 19, 1910. 132. New York Times: August 3, 1912. 133. Frost, The Greatest Game Ever Played, p. 108. 134. William E. Kelly, “Johnny McDermott — America’s Forgotten Hero,” Kelly’s Golf History Blog. http:// kellysgolfhistory.blogspot.com/2008/06/johnny-mcdermott-americas-forgotten.html. 135. Glenn, “The Tragedy of John J. McDermott.” 136. Jack Kofoed, “Golfing Portraits,” The American Golfer: December 1926. 137. New York Times: June 13, 1919. 138. Boston Globe: June 26, 1909; New York Times: June 26, 1909. 139. New York Times: July 23, 1939. 140. George B. Kirsch, Golf in America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), p. 47. 141. New York Times: September 20, 1913. 142. New York Times: September 21, 1913. 143. Peterson, “‘Slide, Kelly, Slide,’” p. 58. 144. James, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, p. 55. 145. Rader, Baseball, p. 63; Peterson, “‘Slide, Kelly, Slide,’” p. 58. 146. Peterson, “‘Slide, Kelly, Slide,’” p. 59. 147. Spink, The National Game, p. 361. 148. Ibid., p. 307. 149. Dick Thompson, “Marty O’Toole,” The Baseball Biography Project. http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm?a= v&v=l&bid=437&pid=10607. 150. New York Times: February 19, 1949. 151. Spink, The National Game, p. 307. 152. Pittsburgh Post: August 28, 1911. Cited in Thompson, “Marty O’Toole.” 153. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 169. 154. Spink, The National Game, p. 306. 155. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 169. 156. Robinson, Matty, p. 28. 157. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 72. 158. Spink, The National Game, p. 184. 159. Peterson, “‘Slide, Kelly, Slide,’” p. 64; New York Times: June 2, 1937. 160. New York Times: November 9, 1918. 161. Tiemann and Rucker, Nineteenth Century Stars, p. 126. 162. James S. Mitchell, “The Celt as a Baseball Player,” The Gael (May 1902): p. 155. 163. Stew Thornley, The Land of Giants (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000), p. 46. 164. Pittsburgh Post Gazette: December 27, 1918. 165. William F. McNeil, The King of Swat ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1997), p. 33. 166. Fleitz, Ghosts in the Gallery, p. 165. 167. Thornley, The Land of Giants, p. 26. 168. Fleitz, Ghosts in the Gallery, p. 170. 169. Sporting Life: January 8, 1890. 170. Cash, Before They Were Cardinals, p. 187. 171. New York Times: November 6, 1887; Fleitz, More Ghosts in the Gallery, p. 97; Roer, Orator O’Rourke, p. 134; Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 35.

Notes — Chapter 12 172. Hubbard, The Heavenly Twins, p. 179. 173. Boston Globe: January 3, 1890. 174. Spink, The National Game, p. 238; Peterson, “‘Slide, Kelly, Slide,’” p. 64. 175. Sporting Life: May 17, 1890. 176. Philadelphia Record: May 24, 1890. 177. Sporting Life: May 23, 1891. 178. Cappy Gagnon, Notre Dame Baseball Greats (Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2004), p. 26. 179. New York Times: April 26, 1909. 180. Sporting Life: May 1, 1909; Robert M. Gorman, Death at the Ballpark ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003), pp. 95–96. 181. The total was 215 players out of 1137 players. 182. Lawrence J. McCaffrey, The Irish Catholic Diaspora in America (Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1976), p. 88. 183. Rick Huhn, Eddie Collins ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008), pp. 9–10. 184. Ibid., p. 12 185. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 160; Howard Bryant claims Collins was “a bigot” who saw no reason to integrate blacks. Curiously, he adds: “For Collins, it wasn’t just blacks, either. During his time with the Red Sox, the club suffered from the ironic reputation of being horribly anti–Catholic….” Howard Bryant, Shut Out (Boston: Beacon, 2002), p. 28. Huhn, meanwhile, speaks of Tom Dowd’s testimony of Collins’s contributions to a local Catholic church. Huhn, Eddie Collins, p. 306. 186. Fleitz, Shoeless, p. 110. 187. Daniel Nathan, Saying It’s So (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005), p. 43. 188. Ibid., p. 45. 189. Fleitz, Shoeless, p. 110. 190. Kahn, The Head Game, p. 132. 191. Joan M. Thomas, “Roger Bresnahan,” The Baseball Biography Project. http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj. cfm?a=v&v=l&bid=958&pid=1528. 192. New York Times: July 12, 1911. 193. David W. Anderson and Keith Olbermann, More than Merkle (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), p. 69. 194. Sporting Life: May 4, 1907. 195. Sporting Life: April 20, 1907. 196. Sporting Life: June 1, 1907. 197. Simon, Deadball Stars of the National League, p. 349. 198. Roer, Orator O’Rourke, p. 56. 199. Ibid., pp. 112–113. 200. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 140. 201. Fleitz, More Ghosts in the Gallery, p. 35. 202. Gorman, Death at the Ballpark, p. 57. 203. McNeil, The King of Swat, p. 145. 204. Baseball-reference.com. http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/batting_avg_career.shtml. 205. “Dan Brouthers Dies, Noted Ball Player,” New York Times: August 3, 1932. 206. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 140. 207. Alexander, John McGraw, pp. 116–117. 208. Davis, Connie Mack, p. 8. 209. New York Times: August 1, 1904. 210. Macht, Connie Mack and the Early Years, p. 24.

Chapter 12 1. Cassidy, How the Irish Invented Slang, p. 124. 2. Rader, American Sports, p. 105.

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3. Sporting Life: March 28, 1903. 4. Anthony J. Kuzniewski, S.J., Thy Honored Name (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1999), p. 139. 5. Hubbard, The Heavenly Twins, p. 162; Fleitz, Ghosts in the Gallery, p. 76. 6. Reid Oslin, Tales from the Boston College Sideline (Champaign, IL: Sports Publishing, 2004), pp. 12–13. 7. Ibid., p. 17. 8. Boston College has “claimed” only one national championship, in 1940. 9. Named after Frank Leahy, the famous Irish-American tackle at South Bend between 1928 and 1930, who also coached Boston to their 1940 success. 10. Sperber, Shake Down the Thunder, p. 7. 11. Ibid., p. 11. 12. Ibid., p. 31. 13. New York Times: November 2, 1913. 14. Although most Catholic colleges’ teams are called Crusaders or Saints, St. Mary’s College of California and Iona College are known as the Gaels and the University of St. Thomas, Houston, are the Celts. A large number of Catholic high schools across the United States are also called the “Fighting Irish.” St. Vincent–St. Mary High School of Akron, Ohio, is one such school. It won the Ohio State basketball championships three years running through the help of teenage sensation and 2009 NBA MVP LeBron James. 15. Sporting Life: February 22, 1913. 16. “The Fighting Irish,” Und.com. http://www.und. com/trads/nd-m-f b-name.html. The report in the Chicago Tribune makes no mention of this incident. Chicago Tribune: October 28, 1899. 17. Sperber, Shake Down the Thunder, p. 80. 18. E.A. Batchelor, “U. of M. Outplayed and Beaten by the Notre Dame Eleven,” Detroit Free Press: November 7, 1909. 19. Chicago Tribune: October 18, 1914. 20. Sperber, Shake Down the Thunder, p. 81. 21. E.A. Batchelor, “U. of M. Outplayed and Beaten by the Notre Dame Eleven,” Detroit Free Press: November 7, 1909. 22. Sperber, Shake Down the Thunder, p. 80; for example, “Nip and Tuck Gives Micks 30-Point Lead” is a headline from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune: November 25, 1947. 23. Sperber, Shake Down the Thunder, p. 80. 24. Ibid., p. 81. 25. Francis Wallace, O’Reilly of Notre Dame (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1931), p. 11. Cited in Sperber, Shake Down the Thunder, p. 79. 26. Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 42. 27. New York Spectator: October 19, 1824. Cited in Holliman, American Sports, p. 144; Jack Anderson, The Legality of Boxing (Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Birkbeck Law Press, 2007), p. 44; Queen, Life and Battles of Yankee Sullivan, p. 88. 28. Wheeling Register: March 5, 1873; New York Times: March 5, 1873; New York Times: January 28, 1885. 29. New York Times: March 10, 1873. 30. New York Evening Post: July 20, 1823. Cited in Holliman, American Sports, p. 143; Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 39. 31. Porter’s Spirit of the Times: October 23, 1858. Cited in Adelman, “Pedestrianism, Billiards, Boxing,” p. 67. 32. Irish athletic and basketball clubs, like the Irish American Athletic Club of New York, the New York Celtics and the Brooklyn Visitations, all were nonsectar-

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ian, admitting many non–Irish Catholics, principally Jews who were denied membership in WASP clubs, thus rendering a club’s homogeneity nonexistent. See Wilcox, “The Shamrock and the Eagle,” p. 67. Even the Boston Celtics, a sporting franchise with Irish foundations, was supported in their early years more by Jewish than Irish Bostonians. Dan Shaughnessy, Ever Green (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), p. 61. Only with regards to color are Irish-American sporting clubs and concerns due criticism. 33. New York Times: April 15, 1863. 34. Adelman, A Sporting Time, p. 237. 35. Rader, American Sports, p. 44. 36. Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 96. 37. New York Herald: May 6, 1863. 38. Bell’s Life in London: April 22, 1860. 39. The assumption of Irishness includes second generation athletes with at least one Irish-born parent. This list includes Bob Fitzsimmons, the English-born world heavyweight champion from 1897 to 1899. 40. Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 110. 41. New York Herald: October 14, 1853. 42. New York Tribune: October 20, 1858. 43. New York Times: October 22, 1858. 44. New York Tribune: October 20, 1858. 45. “The Pugilistic Championship,” New York Times: May 6, 1863. 46. Boston Herald: November 18, 1899; Rader, American Sports, p. 105. 47. Baltimore Sun: May 12, 1847; James, Life and Battles of Yankee Sullivan, p. 30. 48. New York Tribune: February 7, 1855. 49. Reading Eagle: May 17, 1880. 50. National Police Gazette: November 19, 1881. 51. This scene was repeated in Ron Howard’s 1992 film Far and Away, when Joseph Donnelly’s (Tom Cruise) distraction causes him to lose an important inter-ethnic prizefight with an Italian fighter (Carl Ciarfallo) he was beating easily. Upon victory, the Italian rips Donnelly’s flag from his waist before being carried away triumphantly by his supporters. 52. Gorn, The Manly Art, pp. 72–73. 53. Champions, contenders, and bums from the first two decades of the twentieth century included Fireman Jim Flynn (Andrew Chiariglione), Jack Dillon (Ernest Cutler Price), Bobby Gleason (Peter Gagliardi), Jack Delaney (Ovila Chapdelaine), Hugo Kelly (Ugo Micheli), and Bill “KO” Brennan (Wilhelm Schenck). Allen Barra, Inventing Wyatt Earp (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1998), p. 327. 54. Carmelo Bazzano, “The Italian-American Sporting Experience,” in Eisen and Wiggins, eds., Ethnicity and Sport, p. 112. 55. These included Jim Brennan ( John Gottlieb Dorn), Phil Cooney (Philip Clarence Cohen), Sam Gillen (Samuel Gilleland), Jack Gilligan ( John Peter Gilgen), Harry Kane (Harry Cohen), Lee Magee (Leopold Hoernschemeyer), Jack Quinn ( Joannes Pajkos), Skel Roach (Rudolph Weichbrodt), and Frank Rooney (Frank Rovny). 56. Sporting Life: December 16, 1916. 57. Johnson and Rivers, My Life and Battles, p. 67. 58. Golf Illustrated: July 1919. 59. Thomas Clavin, Sir Walter (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), pp. 26–27; David Mackintosh, Golf ’s Greatest (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003), p. 70. A number of golfing websites’ biographies of Hagen list his mother as originating from County Antrim, e.g.: “Walter

Hagen (1892–1969),” Golfeurope.com, and Golflegends. org. http://www.golfeurope.com/almanac/players/hagen. htm; http://www.golflegends.org/walter-hagen.php. 60. Pittsburgh Post Gazette: December 23, 1963. 61. Steven A. Riess, Sport and the American Jew (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1998), p. 99. 62. Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 96. 63. Isenberg, John L. Sullivan, p. 29. 64. Ibid., p. 291. 65. New York Herald: September 8, 1889. 66. San Francisco Morning Call: June 27, 1891. Jackson was born in Saint Croix in the Virgin Islands, but grew up in Australia. 67. San Francisco Morning Call: March 6, 1892. 68. Ward, Unforgivable Blackness, p. 18. 69. “John L’s Views on the Big Fight,” New York Times: May 1, 1910. 70. [Ottawa] Citizen: June 2, 1910. 71. Roger Lane, William Dorsey’s Philadelphia and Ours (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 16. 72. Chicago Tribune: September 7, 1892; Chicago Tribune: September 8, 1892. 73. Chicago Tribune: September 7, 1892. 74. New Orleans Picayune: September 11, 1892. 75. David K. Wiggins, Glory Bound (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997), p. 38. 76. Ibid., pp. 35–36. 77. Randy Roberts, Papa Jack (New York: Free Press, 1983), p. 46. 78. Johnson and Rivers, My Life and Battles, pp. 66– 67. 79. New Orleans Item: April 21, 1908. 80. Dan McCaffery, Tommy Burns (Toronto, Canada: James Lorimer, 2000), p. 152. 81. Sammons, Beyond the Ring, p. 36; Roberts, Papa Jack, p. 70. 82. Roberts, Papa Jack, pp. 48, 70. 83. Johnson and Rivers, My Life and Battles, p. 74. 84. Chicago Tribune: July 5, 1910. Ernest Hogan was an African American composer. Roberts, Papa Jack, p. 104. 85. New York Times: February 18, 1916. 86. Rader, American Sports, pp. 60–61. 87. Alexander, John McGraw, p. 75. 88. Burgos, Playing America’s Game, p. 83. 89. Ibid., pp. 83–4. 90. Ibid., p. 84. 91. Robert Peterson, Only the Ball was White (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 57. 92. Burgos, Playing America’s Game, p. 84. 93. Baltimore American: March 30, 1901. 94. Sporting Life: April 20, 1903. 95. Albert T. Powers, The Business of Baseball ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002), p. 99. 96. Joel Zoss and John Bowman, Diamonds in the Rough (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1996), p. 143. 97. Burgos, Playing America’s Game, p. 57. 98. Robert C. Cottrell, The Best Pitcher in Baseball ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2001), p. 14. 99. Neil Lanctot, Negro League Baseball (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), p. 209. 100. New York Times: December 5, 1911. 101. Neil Lanctot, “A General Understanding,” in Patrick B. Miller and David K. Wiggins, eds., Sport and the Color Line (New York: Routledge, 2004), p. 67. 102. Elliott J. Gorn, Sports in Chicago (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), p. 103.

Notes — Chapter 12 103. Neil Lanctot, “A General Understanding,” p. 67. 104. McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 209. 105. Letter Sloane to De Coubertin: August 16, 1908. Cited in McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 209. 106. Ibid., p. 248. 107. Bill Mallon, The 1904 Olympics ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009), p. 14. 108. John Bryant, Marathon Makers (London: John Blake, 2008), p. 91. 109. Sporting Life: May 12, 1900; New York Times: August 13, 1900. 110. New York Tribune: December 28, 1902; New York Tribune: March 15, 1903; McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 79. 111. Sporting Life: March 23, 1900; Minneapolis Journal: January 29, 1901; St. Louis Republic: February 3, 1901; St. Louis Republic: August 18, 1901. 112. Buffalo Evening News: August 29, 1901. From library.buffalo.edu 113. Buffalo Evening News: August 30, 1901. From library.buffalo.edu 114. St. Louis Republic: July 3, 1904. 115. Kentucky Irish American: June 25, 1904. 116. St. Louis Republic: July 3, 1904; Kentucky Irish American: July 9, 1904. 117. St. Louis Republic: July 21, 1904. 118. Spalding’s Official Athletic Almanac: 1905, p. 209. 119. St. Louis Republic: July 22, 1904. Spalding’s Official Athletic Almanac lists W.R. McCulloch as first and C.H. Holloway as second in the 120 yards hurdle. Both men are listed as second and third by the St. Louis Republic’s report. 120. St. Louis Republic: July 22, 1904. 121. These games weren’t “international in scope”; they “consisted of handicap events”; they weren’t open to all competitors; and they only qualified on the fourth criteria, that the participants were amateur. It’s ironic that it remains one of the few top- class sports still unpaid. Mallon, The 1904 Olympics, p. 13. 122. McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 86. 123. Susan Brownell, The 1904 Anthropolog y Days and Olympic Games (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008), p. 129. 124. Matthews, America’s First Olympics, p. 206. 125. Brownell, The 1904 Anthropolog y Days, p. 128. 126. New York Times: November 1, 1903. 127. Dyreson, Making the American Team, p. 96. 128. Matthews, America’s First Olympics, p. 206. 129. Spalding’s Official Athletic Almanac: 1905, p. 249. 130. Ibid., p. 251. 131. Ibid., p. 257. 132. Ibid., p. 259. 133. Matthews, America’s First Olympics, pp. 206–207. 134. Brownell, The 1904 Anthropolog y Days, p. 106. 135. Spalding’s Official Athletic Almanac: 1905, p. 257. 136. John Bloom and Michael Willard, Sports Matters (New York: New York University Press, 2002), p. 169. 137. Ferris once ran the 100 yards in 9.9 seconds. New York Times: September 8, 1957; New York Times: November 25, 1961; New York Times: May 3, 1977; New York Times: September 8, 1957. 138. New York Times: May 17, 1927. 139. Bridgeport Post: January 9, 1919. Cited in Roer, Orator O’Rourke, p. 33. 140. Washington Post: April 29, 1906. 141. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles, p. 495. 142. Thomas H. O’Connor, The Boston Irish (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1995), p. 290.

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143. Thomas Nast, “The Usual Irish Way of Doing Things,” Harpers Weekly: September 2, 1871. 144. Roer, Orator O’Rourke, p. 33. 145. Gagnon, Notre Dame Baseball Greats, p. 11. 146. “The Chicagos Crushed,” Detroit Free Press: June 23, 1886. 147. Detroit Free Press: June 25, 1886. 148. Philadelphia Press: May 27, 1888. Cited in Chicago Tribune: May 29, 1888; Brooklyn Daily Eagle: June 17, 1888. 149. Sporting Life: September 30, 1893. 150. Chicago Tribune: January 3, 1890. 151. Jeffrey Powers-Beck, The American Indian Integration of Baseball (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), p. 24. 152. Casway, Ed Delahanty, p. 213. 153. Sporting News: April 1, 1893. 154. Roer, Orator O’Rourke, pp. 212, 216–217. 155. Ibid., p. 208. 156. Ibid., p. 217. 157. Dyreson, Making the American Team, p. 96. 158. Sporting Life: January 17, 1914. 159. Robert Elias, Baseball and the American Dream (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharp, 2001), p. 72. 160. New York Times: February 8, 1916. 161. Seymour and Mills, Baseball: The Early Years, p. 83; Elias, Baseball and the American Dream, p. 72. 162. Riess, City Games, p. 104. 163. Sporting Life: November 3, 1906. 164. Rader, Baseball, p. 23. 165. Sporting Life: December 29, 1906. 166. Sporting Life: June 6, 1914. 167. New York Times: November 1, 1920. 168. New York Times: May 12, 1921. 169. Sporting Life: September 18, 1889. 170. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 85. 171. Ibid., p. 69. 172. Ibid., pp. 69, 81. 173. Ibid., p. 77. 174. Sporting Life: October 23, 1897. 175. Sporting Life: October 30, 1897. 176. Sporting Life: October 19, 1907. 177. Leaving aside the second and third Americanborn generations, Boston had 69,239 Irish-born in 1855. By 1900 the figure had barely moved, just creeping over the seventy-thousand mark to a total of 70,147. The percentage of Irish-born of the city’s population had shrunk from forty-two per cent to twelve and a half per cent as the city’s population grew from 162,629 souls to 382, 839. It was, however, still the highest percentage of the population. See New York Times: September 17, 1855; New York Times: August 29, 1900; Stephan Thernstrom, Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups (Belknap Press, 1980), p. 531. 178. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 164. 179. It was more the “color bar” that defined the Red Sox than any anti–Irishness. Sharon O’Brien reflects that when the Sox did finally sign an African American twelve years after the Brooklyn Dodgers, “Fenway’s green-andwhite color scheme was hardly disturbed.” Bloom and Willard, Sports Matters, p. 171. 180. Sporting Life: January 18, 1913. 181. Sporting Life: January 7, 1905; Sporting Life: May 22, 1909; Sporting Life: October 5, 1912. He wasn’t the only ball player to be wrongly credited with being born in Ireland: the Sporting Life also claimed Pete Browning and Joe Cantillon saw their first light of day in Innisfail. Sporting Life: April 17, 1889; Sporting Life: January 5, 1907.

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182. Sporting Life: January 29, 1910. 183. Sporting Life: February 5, 1910. 184. Lawrence J. McCaffrey, Textures of Irish America (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1992), p. 27. 185. Tucker, Notre Dame vs. the Klan, p. 126. 186. Lewiston Evening Journal: March 31, 1897. 187. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 64. 188. Sporting Life: January 11, 1896. 189. Evers and Fullerton, Touching Second, p. 207. 190. St. Petersburg Evening Independent: March 15, 1915. 191. Sporting Life: November 21 1896; Sporting Life: December 5, 1896. 192. Lewiston Evening Journal: March 31, 1897. 193. Sporting Life: August 4, 1906. 194. Paul W. Eaton, “From the Capital,” Sporting Life: March 16, 1907. 195. Sporting Life: June 23, 1906. 196. “McGraw’s Exhortation to Battle,” Sporting Life: July 28, 1906. 197. Sporting Life: September 1, 1906. 198. Hubbard, The Heavenly Twins, p. 127; Sporting Life: May 25, 1895. 199. The [Lincoln, Nebraska] Courier: May 25, 1895. 200. Newburgh Sunday Telegram: June 9, 1895; [Trenton] Daily True American: June 20, 1895. 201. Sporting Life: June 1, 1895. 202. Sporting Life: June 1, 1895. 203. Hubbard, The Heavenly Twins, p. 127. 204. Sporting Life: August 9, 1902. 205. Mike Vaccaro, The First Fall Classic (New York: Doubleday, 2009), p. 199. 206. Sporting Life: October 12, 1912. 207. Washington Times: October 16, 1912. 208. Vaccaro, The First Fall Classic, pp. 201–202. 209. Gay, Tris Speaker, p. 67. 210. Ibid., p. 11. 211. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 172. 212. Gay, Tris Speaker, p. 18. 213. Ibid., p. 35. 214. Boston Globe: July 17, 1913. 215. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, pp. 172–174. 216. Boston Globe: July 17, 1913. 217. Boston Globe: December 1, 1913. 218. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 175. 219. Gay, Tris Speaker, p. 198. 220. Ibid., p. 221. 221. Sporting Life: November 27, 1897. 222. Sporting Life: August 27, 1898. 223. Sporting Life: June 15, 1912. 224. Sporting Life: December 9, 1893. 225. Detroit Free Press: September 28, 1910. 226. Sporting Life: February 19, 1916. 227. Vaccaro, The First Fall Classic, p. 93. 228. Sporting Life: December 20, 1913. 229. “Superbas Win on Change of Diet,” New York Tribune: November 20, 1913. 230. “Outdoor Sports: The Winner of the Marathon,” Irish World: August 1, 1908. 231. James B. Connolly, An Olympic Victor (Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar, 2009), p. 138. 232. Ibid., p. 133. 233. Sporting Life: January 18, 1888; Nelson, The Golden Game, p. 167. 234. James B. Connolly, The English as Poor Losers (1908: unpublished). Cited in McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 46. 235. David Guiney, Gold, Silver, Bronze (Dublin, Ireland: Sportsworld, 1988), p. 9. His brother Tom in Can-

ada — perhaps bearing in mind that this “country” wasn’t yet an autonomous dominion, let alone independent — fought hard against the efforts of his colleague, Frederick Lyonde, to change the name of the Irish-Canadian AA to the Canadian-Irish club. Lyonde had opined: “We are Canadians first, last, and all the time, and we are as proud of it as we are that we are Irish. I would ask that the manager second the motion.” Flanagan scoffed bluntly: “There isn’t a possible chance. With me it is Irish first, last, and all the time.” Lyonde meekly withdrew the proposition. Toronto Star: February 27, 1908. 236. Boston Post: March 21, 1904. Cited in Stout, ed., Impossible Dreams, pp. 32–35. 237. Joyce, Ulysses, pp. 382–383. 238. Boston Post: March 21, 1904. Cited in Stout, ed., Impossible Dreams, pp. 34–35. 239. Boston Journal: March 28, 1904.

Chapter 13 1. Cassidy, How the Irish Invented Slang, p. 84. 2. Darby, Gaelic Games, p. 5. 3. Brian McGinn, “A Century before the GA A : Hurling in 18th Century New York,” New York Irish History 11 (1997): p. 58. 4. Ibid., p. 52. 5. The saint’s day that year was a Sunday. Ibid., p. 54. 6. Darby, Gaelic Games, p. 39. 7. Alta California: July 15, 1853. 8. San Francisco Morning Call: December 15, 1892. 9. The Gael: September 1901, p. 292; The Pilot: June 12, 1886. 10. The Pilot: October 4, 1879. 11. New York Herald-Tribune: June 12, 1867. 12. Irish American Weekly: September 6, 1873. 13. “Irish Athletic club,” Boston Globe: September 30, 1879. 14. Boston Globe: July 30, 1882. 15. Chicago Inter Ocean: February 15, 1892; Darby, Gaelic Games, p. 44; Chicago Tribune: July 19, 1891. 16. Boston Globe: May 6, 1895. 17. Chicago Tribune: July 5, 1891; Chicago Tribune: July 19, 1891. 18. Darby, “Emigrants at Play,” pp. 54–55; Chicago Inter Ocean: August 29, 1892; Baltimore Sun: December 1, 1908. 19. Chicago Tribune: June 29, 1913; Chicago Tribune: May 4, 1908; Darby, Gaelic Games, p. 77. A fourth Gaelic Park, opened in 1985, is now currently located in 147th Street. See “Once a Dream, Now a Reality,” Chicago gaelicpark.org. http://www.chicagogaelicpark.org/About _Gaelic_Park.htm 20. Darby, Gaelic Games, p. 83. 21. Chicago Tribune: September 7, 1891; Omaha Daily Bee: September 7, 1891; Chicago Tribune: September 10, 1906. 22. Chicago Tribune: August 6, 1911; Chicago Tribune: August 7, 1911. 23. The Pilot: June 29, 1889; Boston Herald: July 13, 1890. 24. New York Times: October 11, 1874. 25. Denver Post: April 5, 1914. In Omaha, boxing and wrestling featured at their 1909 Carnival: Omaha World Herald: May 28, 1909. The Holyoke club was looking for basketball opponents: Springfield Daily News: February 26, 1917.

Notes — Chapter 13 26. Sweeney, Mike Sweeney of the Hill, pp. 50–51. 27. St. Louis Republic: April 14, 1904. 28. Official Athletic Rules and Official Handbook of the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States: 1908, p. 28; Official Athletic Rules: 1911, p. 46; Official Athletic Rules: 1912, p. 47. 29. Somers, The Rise of Sports in New Orleans, p. 118. 30. Wilcox, “The Shamrock and the Eagle,” p. 61. 31. “Grand Rapid Shamrocks,” Baseball-Reference. com. http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Grand _Rapids_Shamrocks; New Orleans Item: March 23, 1904; Sporting Life: February 14, 1891; Sporting Life: February 21, 1891; Sporting Life: April 16, 1898; Sporting Life: September 29, 1900; Sporting Life: December 5, 1903; Anaconda Standard: August 9, 1898; Anaconda Standard: February 3, 1899; Trenton Evening Times: February 20, 1917; Pueblo Chieftain: June 1, 1919. 32. Sporting Life: April 15, 1885. 33. Sporting Life: March 30, 1887; Sporting Life: April 13, 1887; Sporting Life: May 11, 1887. 34. Sporting Life: December 19, 1888. 35. Sporting Life: May 30, 1908. 36. Casway, Ed Delahanty, p. 18; Sporting Life: April 13, 1887. 37. Sporting Life: January 25, 1902; Spink, The National Game, p. 110; Chad Gramling, Baseball in Fort Wayne (Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2007), p. 23. 38. Although the Dubuque Shamrocks of the IllinoisIndiana-Iowa League played semi-professionally for three seasons, there is little to suggest this team was Irish in origin, and after three years it was renamed the Dubuque Dubs. Peter Filichia, Professional Baseball Franchises (New York: Facts On File, 1993), p. 63. 39. William McNeil, The Californian Winter League ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002), p. 41; Los Angeles Herald: January 9, 1910; Los Angeles Herald: January 10, 1910; Los Angeles Herald: January 18, 1910; Los Angeles Herald: October 9, 1910. 40. Los Angeles Herald: March 12, 1910. 41. Los Angeles Herald: October 23, 1910. 42. Rader, American Sports, p. 41. 43. Rowinghistory.net : http://www.rowinghistory. net/racehist.htm. 44. Boston Advertiser: July 10, 1855. New York Times: July 20, 1855. 45. New York Times: September 14, 1855. 46. Randy Roberts, The Rock, the Curse and the Hub (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), p. 114. Springfield Republican: July 22, 1858. 47. Hardy, How Boston Played, p. 6. 48. Harvard Magazine: July 1858. Cited in Mary Huntington Cooke, A Few Memories of William Reed Huntington by His Sister Mary Huntington Cooke (Cambridge, MA : Riverside Press, 1910), Anglicanhistory. com. http://anglicanhistory.org/usa/wrh/memories1910. html; Kirsch et al., eds., Encyclopedia of Ethnicity and Sports, p. 234; Wilcox, “The Shamrock and the Eagle,” p. 66. 49. Currach is the Scottish Gaelic spelling for the same boat. Only the Boston Globe’s Edgar L. Wakeman writes of “curraghs,” when reporting from the Aran Islands for the paper’s St. Patrick’s Day edition in 1889. Boston Globe: March 17, 1889. 50. The American FA, founded in 1884, is the second earliest sporting association in the States. 51. Sporting Life: September 27, 1890. 52. Evening World: June 10, 1890. 53. Sporting Life: September 6, 1890. There is little ev-

425

idence to suggest that this Patrick Powers was the same Pat Powers of baseball management fame. P.E. Powers is quoted as a member of the I-AAC soccer team in New York Herald: November 10, 1890. 54. Sporting Life: October 11, 1890. 55. The Sun: November 1, 1890. 56. The Sun: August 31, 1891. 57. The Sun: December 7, 1891. 58. Evening World: September 23, 1892; The Sun: February 28, 1894. 59. Spalding’s Soccer: Official Foot Ball Guide: 1915 –16, pp. 12, 14. 60. Sporting Life: November 21, 1916. 61. Spalding’s Soccer: Official Foot Ball Guide: 1916 –17, pp. 96, 99. 62. Spalding’s Soccer: Official Foot Ball Guide: 1914 –15, p. 105. 63. Sporting Life: April 22, 1916; Wangerin, Distant Corners, p. 141. 64. William B. Faherty, The St. Louis Irish (St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press, 2001), p. 113. 65. Wangerin, Distant Corners, p. 140. 66. Sporting News: December 4, 1886; Sporting News: December 11, 1886. 67. St. Leo’s was originally the recreational club of the St. Leo’s Sodality. Dave Litterer, “History of Soccer in St. Louis,” The American Soccer History Archives website, http://homepages.sover.net/~spectrum/saintlouis. html; Spalding’s Soccer: Official Foot Ball Guide: 1910, p. 92. 68. Wangerin, Distant Corners, pp. 5–6; New York Times: November 5, 1909; Philadelphia Inquirer: November 5, 1909. 69. Spalding’s Soccer: Official Foot Ball Guide: 1914 –15, pp. 65, 66. 70. “Brooklyn Fields Soccer Champions,” Hartford Courant: May 17, 1914. 71. New York Times: May 2, 1915. 72. Spalding’s Soccer: Official Foot Ball Guide: 1915 –16, p. 37. 73. Spalding’s Soccer: Official Foot Ball Guide: 1915 –16, p. 40. 74. New York Times: May 7, 1917. 75. New York Tribune: March 31, 1918. 76. New York Tribune: May 30, 1915; Spalding’s Soccer: Official Foot Ball Guide 1915 –16, p. 39. 77. Darby, Gaelic Games, p. 33; Boston Pilot: August 7, 1886. 78. De Búrca, The GAA, p. 43; Ó Riain, Maurice Davin, p. 159; Boston Herald: September 30, 1888. 79. Irish World: September 15, 1888. 80. Outing 13:2 (November 1888). 81. “Our Athletic Visitors,” The Sun: September 30, 1888. 82. The Sun: November 28, 1890; Evening World: November 28, 1890; New York Times: November 28, 1890; The Sun: November 28, 1890. 83. Darby, Gaelic Games, pp. 61–63. 84. Daily Arizona Silver Belt: July 21, 1909; Intermountain Catholic [Salt Lake City]: June 26, 1909. 85. “Hurling,” Kentucky Irish American: January 5, 1901. 86. Washington Herald: August 8, 1909. 87. Irish American Advocate: June 11, 1904; Irish American Advocate: September 10, 1904. Cited in Darby, Gaelic Games, p. 70. 88. New York Times: October 27, 1903. 89. John T. Ridge, “Irish County Societies in New

426

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York, 1880–1914,” in Bayor and Meagher, eds., The New York Irish, p. 291; it didn’t contain all thirty-two counties until the 1930s. Ridge, “Irish County Societies,” p. 292. 90. Darby, Gaelic Games, p. 70. 91. “Gaelic Sports and Pastimes,” Gaelic American: October 24, 1903. 92. New York Times: August 4, 1907; New York Times: April 22, 1907. 93. Ridge, “Irish County Societies,” p. 291. 94. Irish American Advocate: 23 June 1913. Cited in Darby, Gaelic Games, p. 72. 95. Irish Advocate: June 26, 1909. Ridge, “Irish County Societies,” p. 291. 96. Darby, Gaelic Games, p. 71. 97. Ibid., p. 72. 98. Irish American Weekly: February 25, 1911. 99. “Gaelic Football and Hurling Teams,” Irish American Weekly: March 4, 1911. 100. Evening Public Ledger: April 22, 1916; Evening Public Ledger: September 6, 1916. 101. Boston Journal: September 11, 1880; Boston Globe: September 15, 1880. 102. It wasn’t until 1959 that the current American Gaelic games body, the North American County Board (USA and Canada), was set up, but New York retains a separate “county” status over the New York and Jersey region. Darby, Gaelic Games, pp. 40, 103, 115, 118. 103. “Breach in Ranks of Gaelic Sport,” Chicago Tribune: January 6, 1910. 104. Darby, Gaelic Games, pp. 78–79. 105. Ibid., p. 72. 106. New York Times: February 1, 1915. 107. Darby, Gaelic Games, pp. 73–74. Almost a century later, these divisions remain: the GAA is still divided in America between a body that controls the games outside of New York and a board that controls it within the city. 108. New York Times: September 6, 1892. 109. New York Times: December 31, 1892. 110. One reason given was the difficulty in obtaining hurleys, which had to be imported from Ireland. San Francisco Morning Call: June 26, 1893. 111. “An Ancient Gaelic Sport,” Baltimore Sun: December 12, 1912. 112. Kentucky Irish American: January 5, 1901. 113. “Hurleys Serve for Shillalahs,” New York Times: December 19, 1892. 114. Boston Globe: February 17, 1889. 115. “Irish Field Day Enthuses Crowd,” Chicago Tribune: September 10, 1906. 116. “Gaelic Do Some Lively Scrapping,” The Sun: April 10, 1893. 117. [Beaver Falls] Daily Tribune: November 29, 1905; New York Times: November 29, 1905; Riess, Sport in Industrial America, p. 129; Rader, American Sports, pp. 180–181. Other alternatives were equally dangerous. In Britain one survey found that between 1890 and 1893, seventy-one players died in rugby. See Wakefield Express: April 8, 1893. Cited in Julian Norridge, Can We Have Our Balls Back, Please? (London: Allen Lane, 2008), p. 220. 118. New York Herald: December 1890. Also playing at the venue that night were teams from Yale, Princeton, Pennsylvania and Rutgers colleges and universities “and others to show off to its best advantage the College game of football….” Cited in Irish American Weekly: December 27, 1890. 119. “Wielding the ‘Hurley,’” Boston Globe: February 17, 1889.

120. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: August 9, 1892. 121. The Sun: April 28, 1895. 122. Fort Worth Gazette: October 7, 1894; “Gaelic Football,” Topeka Weekly Capital: October 16, 1894. 123. “A Typical Irish Game,” The Sun: November 28, 1890. 124. Henry Chadwick, “Chadwick’s Chat,” Sporting Life: December 9, 1893. 125. “If Not Football, What?” Washington Post: January 1, 1906. 126. “Wielding the ‘Hurley,’” Boston Globe: February 17, 1889. 127. Outing 13:2 (November 1888). 128. New York Times: November 28, 1890. 129. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: August 9, 1892. 130. Pittsburg Dispatch: November 23, 1890. 131. San Francisco Morning Call: July 5, 1892. 132. “Gaelic Football,” San Francisco Morning Call: December 26, 1892. 133. “Gaelic Football,” Hartford Courant: November 29, 1895. 134. Irish American Weekly: April 1, 1893. 135. Washington Times: August 9, 1917. 136. “Gaels are asked to contribute to fund to supply the fighting sixty-ninth with GA A material,” The Advocate: August 11, 1917. Cited in Darby, Gaelic Games, p. 74. 137. The Sun: October 1, 1894. 138. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: April 10, 1900. 139. New York Times: October 5, 1903. 140. “Whirroo for Football!” New York Herald: June 10, 1894. 141. San Francisco Morning Call: December 21, 1892. 142. The Sun: March 10, 1895. 143. “Whirroo for Football!” New York Herald: June 10, 1894. 144. Chicago Tribune: September 26, 1892. 145. San Francisco Morning Call: August 1, 1892. 146. San Francisco Morning Call: November 7, 1893. 147. Boston Globe: February 25, 1895; Brooklyn Daily Eagle: February 25, 1895. 148. “Gaelic Football Row,” Philadelphia Record: November 18, 1895. 149. Seattle Star: October 14, 1910. 150. Boston Globe: October 27, 1899. 151. “Many ‘Scraps,’” Boston Globe: October 6, 1901. 152. New York Times: June 20, 1910. 153. “Athletics at Celtic Park,” Gaelic American: July 9, 1904. 154. Irish American Weekly: September 10, 1910. 155. New York Times: December 14, 1892. 156. New York Times: July 15, 1900. 157. “Strenuous Games? Well!” Baltimore Sun: March 17, 1904. 158. New York Times: October 12, 1905. 159. “The ‘Times’ and Football,” Gaelic American: October 21, 1905. 160. Buffalo Evening News: August 30, 1901. 161. New York Times: September 8, 1903. 162. Chicago Tribune: October 11, 1909. 163. San Francisco Morning Call: October 14, 1894. 164. Denver Rocky Mountain News: December 12, 1892. 165. Wichita Eagle: April 9, 1889. 166. Pittsburgh Dispatch: January 26, 1890. 167. “Hand Ball,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle: January 7, 1876. 168. “Hand Ball,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle: July 25, 1877.

Notes — Chapter 13 169. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: November 30, 1887. 170. Salt Lake Herald: April 16, 1893. 171. New York Times: March 23, 1903. 172. Meriden Daily Journal: September 20, 1899; New York Times: March 23, 1903, New York Times: February 24, 1875; New York Times: December 28, 1875. 173. Chicago Tribune: June 20, 1872. 174. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: November 3, 1893; New York Times: April 7, 1915. 175. New York Times: November 30, 1887. 176. “Casey Wins,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle: November 30, 1887. 177. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: March 16, 1888. 178. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: January 14, 1894. 179. San Francisco Morning Call: January 21, 1894. 180. Interestingly, the players, representing America and Ireland, were born in each other’s country, Lawlor having seen first light in Pennsylvania. New York Times: March 23, 1903. 181. New York Times: March 23, 1903. 182. Meriden Daily Journal: September 20, 1899; San Francisco Call: June 1, 1901. 183. New York Times: March 23, 1903. 184. Ashok Kumar, Handball (Delhi, India: Discovery Publishing House, 1999), p. 20; New York Times: March 23, 1903. 185. New York Times: July 13, 1904; Brooklyn Daily Eagle: November 25, 1887. 186. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: September 6, 1877; Brooklyn Daily Eagle: April 1, 1875. 187. Daily True American: March 14, 1894. 188. Daily True American: March 14, 1894. 189. McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 79; “Irish Games tonight,” Baltimore Sun: December 27, 1902. 190. New York Herald: March 31, 1893. 191. Darby, Gaelic Games, p. 83. 192. San Jose Mercury: March 15, 1915; San Francisco Chronicle: March 17, 1915. 193. New York Times: March 15, 1915; Evening Tribune [San Diego]: March 15, 1915; Anaconda Standard: March 10, 1915. 194. Washington Times: August 5, 1906. 195. New York Times: August 11, 1907. 196. De Búrca, The GAA, p. 107. 197. Irish American Weekly: December 17, 1892. Only St. Mary’s College of San Francisco, with the founding of a hurling team in 1933 by the college’s dean, Brother James Shanahan (it folded the following year), had any Irish sport amongst the American universities’ athletic departments. See Darby, Gaelic Games, p. 99. 198. Soccer may be talked as a growing threat to the “Big Four,” but their support is sidelined in an “unholy alliance” between the middle classes and Hispanics that leaves the traditional “blue-collar” support, of which a large part is of Irish descent, still preferring their team sports “home-made.” 199. Alan Bairner, Sport, Nationalism and Globalization (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001) p. 70. 200. Darby, Gaelic Games, p. 11. 201. Ibid., p. 15. In 1934, the GAA’s General-Secretary in Dublin, Padraigh O’Caoimh, felt the GAA in America should concentrate on attracting Irish-Americans: “Irishman of all creeds should be rounded into our organization so that we could have their children play the games of their ancestors, and herein I say lies your work.” See Irish Echo: June 4, 1938. Cited in Darby, Gaelic Games, p. 92.

427

202. McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 10. 203. In 1885, 1887, and a more permanent one in 1905. Other “bans” included Rule 27 — enforced between 1902 and 1971— which prohibited anyone playing “foreign sports” from joining GAA’s clubs. Meanwhile, Rule 21 excluded members of British police and military in Ireland from being members. 204. McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 23. 205. Chicago Inter Ocean: November 23, 1896. 206. T.H. Nally, The Aonac Tailteann (reprint: Nabu Public Domain Reprints, n.d.), pp. 14, 27. 207. Chicago Tribune: June 29, 1913. 208. Zarnowski, All-Around Men, p. 167. 209. “Gaelic Notes,” Irish World: July 25, 1908. 210. The third annual games were recorded in 1859. New York Times: September 17, 1859. 211. “The Celt as an Athlete,” Gaelic American: July 16, 1904. 212. Boston Herald: May 22, 1881. 213. Boston Globe: May 28, 1886. 214. New York Times: May 31, 1891. 215. New York Times: August 2, 1903. 216. “Many Games for Athletes,” New York Times: August 30, 1903. 217. Ray Ewry of NYAC in three standing jumps, James Mitchell broke John Kiely’s record in 56-lb. Irish style, while H.L. Hillman failed to break the 440-yard hurdles by knocking down the last hurdle. 218. New York Times: September 8, 1903. World Series attendance from Baseball-reference.com. 219. New York Times: September 6, 1904; Gaelic American: September 10, 1904. 220. McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 93. 221. New York Times: September 5, 1905; New York Times: September 6, 1909. 222. AAU regulations required three officials to time a record. New York Times: September 6, 1910. 223. New York Tribune: September 3, 1912. 224. Chicago Tribune: June 29, 1913; Chicago Tribune: July 6, 1913. 225. Chicago Tribune: August 10, 1914. 226. Chicago Tribune: August 9, 1915. 227. Professional hockey had been around in dribs and drabs since 1904 with the International Hockey League, strongly dominated by Canadian teams, although there was a semi-pro league in the Pittsburgh area. Known as the Western Pennsylvania Hockey League, it had switched from amateurism in the 1902–3 season, heavily staffed with Canadian professionals. See Daniel S. Mason, “The International Hockey League and the Professionalization of Ice Hockey, 1904–1907,” Journal of Sport History 25:1 (Spring 1998): p. 1; Marshall D. Wright, The National Hockey League: 1917–1967 (Jefferson, NC : McFarland, 2010), p. 6. 228. New York Times: November 12, 1912. 229. Ibid.; New York Times: February 8, 1903; New York Times: December 6, 1914. 230. Spalding’s Official Ice Hockey Guide: 1915, p. 9. 231. “Irish Team Wins Fast Hockey Game,” New York Times: January 21, 1914. 232. Long before the Boston Celtics won the first of their seventeen NBA championships in 1957, the New York Celtics had been christened national and world champions in the fall of 1920 following victories against the Canadian “champions,” the Half Moon. Evening World: November 27, 1920; Murry Nelson, The Originals (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1999), p. 67.

428

Notes — Chapter 14

233. Letter to Edward J. Hicox, November 4, 1962. Cited in Nelson, The Originals, p. 57. 234. Ibid., p. 58. 235. Ibid. 236. Allison Danzig and Peter Brandwein, Sport’s Golden Age (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1969), p. 272. 237. Nelson, The Originals, p. 59. 238. Evening World: March 15, 1920. 239. Evening World: December 6, 1920. 240. New York Tribune: November 24, 1919; Evening World: December 29, 1919. 241. Katchen, Abel Kiviat, pp. 50–51. 242. Irish American: April 20, 1903. Cited in McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 81. 243. Gaelic American: May 12, 1906. 244. New York Times: June 5, 1904; Spalding’s Official Athletic Almanac: 1905, p. 197. 245. Cregan was a double winner of the 880 yards and mile in both the collegiate and AAU national championships of 1897 and followed this up with the AAU mile championship of 1898. New York Times: August 29, 1897. 246. Irish American Weekly: October 11, 1879. 247. McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 83. 248. Gaelic American: May 12, 1906. 249. New York Times: May 27, 1906. 250. Donald Holst and Marcia S. Popp, American Men of Track and Field ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005), p. 76. 251. Katchen, Abel Kiviat, pp. 50–51. 252. At that year’s Tailteann Games, Lunghi broke Lon Myers’s twenty-six-year world record in the 700 yards. Later that month he smashed the world half mile record in Montreal, before finally — on a day when five world records were broken, including Sheridan reclassifying his own discus record — the Italian took the two-thirds mile record that had stood since 1883, feats that earned Lunghi an honorary life membership in the club in 1911. New York Times: September 7, 1909; New York Times: September 16, 1909; New York Times: October 11, 1909; “Emilio Lunghi: Italian Runner of the I-AAC,” Wingedfist.org. http://www.wingedfist.org/Emilio_Lunghi_IAAC.html. 253. New York Times: July 11, 1909. 254. Katchen, Abel Kiviat, pp. 54–55, 85. 255. Kent, Olympic Follies, pp. 100–101. 256. San Francisco Call: August 19, 1909; San Francisco Call: January 29, 1910. 257. San Francisco Call: February 16, 1909; San Francisco Call: February 19, 1909; San Francisco Call: February 22, 1912; San Francisco Call: February 23, 1912. 258. San Francisco Call: September 16, 1912; New York Times: February 22, 1914. 259. “Irish Root for Taylor,” Washington Post: September 15, 1907. 260. New York Mail: date unknown. Cited in Seattle Daily Times: March 24, 1907. 261. Washington Post: December 3, 1908. 262. Boston Journal: July 29, 1911. 263. Boston Journal: August 14, 1913. 264. Seattle Daily Times: January 22, 1911. 265. Chicago Tribune: August 6, 1911; Chicago Tribune: August 7, 1911.

Chapter 14 1. Cassidy, How the Irish Invented Slang, p. 259. 2. Nina Silber, The Romance of Reunion (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), p. 161.

3. Pope, Patriotic Games, p. 14. 4. New York Times: July 15, 1878; New York Herald: August 11, 1878; The Morning Star and Catholic Messenger [New Orleans]: August 25, 1878; Irish American Weekly: August 31, 1878. 5. Irish American Weekly: October 12, 1878; Irish American Weekly: November 30, 1878. 6. Cincinnati Commercial Tribune: May 11, 1879; Zarnowski, All-Around Men, pp. 28, 72. 7. McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 4. 8. New York Herald: February 13, 1860. 9. John Morrissey, in contrast, was condemned as a traitor for being Sawyer’s second. In at least one bar where he was previously a hero, his picture was slashed with knives. New York Herald: April 30, 1860. 10. New York Herald: July 6, 1860. 11. Yankee Doodle on his Muscle, by Currier & Ives, circa 1860–1. Pictured in Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 158. 12. Bell’s Life in London: April 22, 1860. 13. Freeman’s Journal: December 7, 1863. Cited in New York Times: December 22, 1863. 14. Bell’s Life in London: December 12, 1863. 15. New York Times: October 30, 1868. 16. Somers, The Rise of Sports in New Orleans, p. 159. 17. “John L. Shies His Gauntlet Into the Ring,” San Francisco Morning Call: March 6, 1892. 18. New York Times: January 26, 1894. 19. New York Times: March 1, 1893. 20. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball, p. 8. 21. Irish American Weekly: September 5, 1874; Freeman’s Journal: August 27, 1874; Josh Chetwynd, Baseball in Europe ( Jefferson, NC : McFarland, 2008), p. 206. 22. Mark Lamster, Spalding’s World Tour (New York: PublicAffairs Books, 2006), pp. 27–29, 36. 23. That summer had already witnessed a tour by an Irish team in cricket culminating in an “international” against “All-New York” on September 24. See New York Times: September 24, 1888. Also soccer and rugby, taken up by Yale in 1872 and Harvard in 1875 respectively, had still not had their rules significantly changed to become what we know today as American football. New York Times: November 3, 1889. 24. Lamster, Spalding’s World Tour, p. 216. 25. Chicago Tribune: January 27, 1889; Thomas W. Zeiler, Ambassadors in Pinstripes (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), p. 89. 26. Sporting Life: April 17, 1889; Lamster, Spalding’s World Tour, p. 223. 27. It would be superseded by Gaelic football and hurling by the turn of the century. 28. Zeiler, Ambassadors in Pinstripes, p. 147. 29. Sporting Life: April 3, 1889. 30. Sporting Life: April 3, 1889; Lamster, Spalding’s World Tour, p. 233. 31. Zeiler, Ambassadors in Pinstripes, p. 147. 32. Sporting Life: April 3, 1889; Chetwynd, Baseball in Europe, p. 207. 33. “The Great Trip,” Sporting Life: April 3, 1889. 34. Lamster claims it was Callan in County Kilkenny, although the Sporting Life reported Manning went to Donegal, where there is also a Callan located between Ballybofey and Letterkenny. Lamster, Spalding’s World Tour, p. 234. 35. Sporting Life: April 17, 1889. 36. Lamster, Spalding’s World Tour, p. 239. 37. Ibid., p. 252. 38. Chicago Tribune: April 9, 1889; Warsaw Daily

Notes — Chapter 14 Times: April 9, 1889; New York Clipper: April 13, 1889. Cited in Sullivan, ed., Early Innings, p. 176. 39. Spink, The National Game, p. 346. 40. Zoss and Bowman, Diamonds in the Rough, p. 121. 41. Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, p. 55. 42. Ibid., p. 44. 43. Zoss and Bowman, Diamonds in the Rough, p. 43. 44. New York Times: September 25, 1907. 45. Spalding’s Official Base Ball Guide: 1908. Cited in Sullivan, ed., Early Innings, p. 288. 46. “From Over The Sea,” Sporting Life: May 7, 1892. 47. Sporting Life: December 1, 1906. 48. Sporting Life: July 30, 1904. 49. Sporting Life: April 6, 1907. 50. Sporting Life: April 11, 1908. 51. Sporting Life: June 26, 1909. 52. Elfers, The Tour to End All Tours, p. 7. 53. New York Times: February 2, 1913; Chicago Tribune: February 2, 1913. 54. Elfers, The Tour to End All Tours, pp. 10–11. 55. Cited in Elfers, The Tour to End All Tours, p. 10. 56. Sporting Life: February 28, 1914; Sporting Life: February 21, 1914. 57. Sporting Life: February 28, 1914; New York Times: February 27, 1914. 58. James E. Elfers, The Tour to End All Tours (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003), p. 231. 59. Sporting Life: March 14, 1914. 60. Sporting Life: February 28, 1914. 61. Sporting Life: March 7, 1914. 62. Pall Mall Gazette: February 23, 1914 63. Pall Mall Gazette: March 2, 1914. 64. Sporting Life: July 4, 1914. 65. Sporting Life: August 8, 1914. 66. Sporting Life: August 29, 1914. 67. New York Times: February 8, 1916. 68. Sporting Life: March 31, 1887. 69. Irish American Weekly: September 30, 1878. 70. New York Times: September 13, 1879; New York Times: September 14, 1879; New York Times: September 20, 1879; New York Times: September 21, 1879; New York Times: September 26, 1879; New York Times: September 28, 1879; New York Times: October 1, 1879; New York Times: October 2, 1879. 71. New York Herald: August 9, 1886. 72. New York Herald: September 27, 1885; New York Herald: September 28, 1885. 73. Sporting Life: October 21, 1885; “Irish Athletes Coming,” New York Times: September 26, 1885. 74. New York Herald: October 4, 1885; New York Herald: October 10, 1885. 75. “Feasting The Athletes,” The Sun: October 10, 1885. 76. Ellery H. Clark, Reminiscences of an Athlete (reprint: Central, Hong Kong: Forgotten Books, 2012), p. 178. 77. New York Times: October 14, 1888. 78. New York Times: December 27, 1858. 79. New York Herald-Tribune: July 14, 1859. 80. New York Times: July 19, 1859. 81. New York Herald: October 1, 1859; Commercial Advertiser: November 13, 1850. 82. New York Times: November 6, 1865. 83. The Daily Post [Liverpool]: October 23, 1876. 84. New York Herald: December 10, 1876; Irish American Weekly: December 23, 1876; Lloyds Weekly Newspaper: December 31, 1876.

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85. Irish American Weekly: February 10, 1877; Liverpool Mercury: January 30, 1877; Liverpool Mercury: January 31, 1877; Liverpool Mercury: February 5, 1877; Irish American Weekly: March 2, 1878; Irish American Weekly: March 30, 1878. 86. Irish American Weekly: March 3, 1877; Daily Post [Liverpool]: February 5, 1877. 87. New York Times: March 16, 1879. 88. Sears, Running Through the Ages, p. 141. 89. New York Times: February 26, 1878. 90. New York Times: March 17, 1878. 91. New York Herald: March 24, 1878; New York Times: March 24, 1878. 92. New York Times: May 16, 1878. 93. New York Herald: October 6, 1878. 94. New York Times: November 26, 1878. 95. New York Times: February 17, 1881; New York Times: March 1, 1879; New York Times: March 9, 1879, New York Times: April 23, 1929. 96. Sears, Running Through the Ages, p. 143. 97. Irish American Weekly: July 12, 1879. 98. New York Times: October 8, 1879; “The Belt Goes to Murphy,” New York Times: October 12, 1879; New York Herald: October 12, 1879. 99. Sears, Running Through the Ages, p. 146. 100. New York Times: November 30, 1881. 101. Sheffield and Rotherham Independent: June 11, 1889. 102. Sheffield and Rotherham Independent: February 15, 1893; Sheffield and Rotherham Independent: April 5, 1893; New York Times: March 3, 1893; Chicago Inter Ocean: March 6, 1893; New York Times: April 13, 1893. 103. Sheffield and Rotherham Independent: September 26, 1889; Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser: March 24, 1894; Yorkshire Herald [York]: March 26, 1894. Contrary to reports in his obituaries, Steve Farrell didn’t win the Sheffield Shrovetide Handicap in 1889, 1891 or 1894. The winners of the 1889 and 1891 events were G. Grant of Edinburgh and H. Hutchens of Putney, London. York Herald: March 6, 1889; Sheffield and Rotherham Independent: February 11, 1891. In 1891 Farrell was also involved with Barnum’s Circus for five weeks with the Donovan brothers. Boston Herald: March 23, 1891; Boston Herald: April 20, 1891. 104. New York Times: December 18, 1890; New York Times: December 25, 1890. 105. “American Athletes in Ireland,” Sporting Life: July 11, 1888. 106. The record was subsequently not recognized by the IAAA, as the meeting was held under the GAA. Sporting Life: September 30, 1894. 107. New York Times: July 31, 1895. 108. New York Times: September 22, 1895. Thomas Burke also won the quarter-mile run while Bernie Wefers, a man whom Sports Illustrated claimed in 1955 was IrishAmerican, also won and broke the world records in the 100 and 220 yards races. “Great Days for the Irish,” Sports Illustrated: March 21, 1955. 109. New York Times: January 12, 1896. 110. John A. Lucas, “The First Great International Track Meet,” Sports Illustrated: October 23, 1972. 111. “Challenge From London,” New York Times: January 12, 1896. 112. New York Times: January 12, 1896. 113. New York Times: October 25, 1896; New York Times: July 23, 1899; New York Times: July 25, 1899. 114. This was nothing unusual. The England cricket team remained under the auspices of the Marylebone

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Cricket Club until 1968, while in other areas of the sport, a private club organized international sport rather than a national cricket organization. In Trinidad and Tobago, the birthplace of one of cricket’s greatest writers, C.L.R. James, he noted the Queen’s Park Club was “for the most part white and wealthy. There were a few colored men among them, chiefly members of the old well-established mulatto families. A black man in the Queen’s Park was rare and usually anonymous; by the time he had acquired status or made enough money to be accepted he was much too old to play.” Like these other elite establishments, this was the sort of club that C.L.R. adds he’d have found it easier gaining membership to the MCC. See C.L.R. James, Beyond the Boundary (reprint: London: Yellow Jersey Press, 2005), p. 66. 115. McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 5. 116. Allen Guttmann, The Olympics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), p. 2. 117. Pope, Patriotic Games, p. 34. 118. Boston Journal: April 14, 1890; Boston Herald: September 26, 1890; Boston Globe: August 4, 1898. 119. Geoff Tibballs, The Olympics’ Strangest Moments (London: Robson Books, 2004), pp. 1–2. 120. Dyreson, Making the American Team, p. 41. 121. Outing 28:2 (May 1896), p. 21. 122. And wouldn’t include it again until 1909; Outing 29:2 (November 1896), p. 167. 123. Connolly insisted that he had eventually paid his own way to Athens, but McCarthy argues that this was probably part sponsored by the lowbrow Suffolk Athletic Club of South Boston that he represented, and his own Catholic parish. McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 43. 124. Tibballs, The Olympics’ Strangest Moments, p. 2. 125. James B. Connolly, “The Spirit of the Olympic Games,” Outing 48:1 (April 1906): p. 102. Cited in Dyreson, Making the American Team, p. 44. 126. James B. Connolly, Sea-Borne (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1944), p. 17. 127. Boston Globe: May 15, 1896. 128. The Pilot: May 23, 1896. 129. Connolly, An Olympic Victor, pp. 87–88. 130. Dyreson, Making the American Team, p. 9. 131. Ibid., p. 21. 132. Connolly, “The Spirit of the Olympic Games,” p. 102. Cited in Dyreson, Making the American Team, p. 129. 133. Connolly, “The Spirit of the Olympic Games,” p. 104. Cited in Dyreson, Making the American Team, p. 129. 134. Clark, Reminiscences of an Athlete, p. 68. 135. Dyreson, Making the American Team, p. 48. 136. Clark, Reminiscences of an Athlete, pp. 68–69. 137. Roberts, The Rock, the Curse and the Hub, p. 98. 138. New York Times: August 2, 1901; New York Tribune: September 7, 1901. 139. Kentucky Irish American: October 15, 1904. 140. A fact that has less validity now that the IOC decided to airbrush the results from these games. 141. New York Times: March 6, 1906. 142. However, athletes from other countries could be entered by clubs and wear whatever they liked, including much of the British representatives. The Canadian William Sherring won the marathon with a vest of the St. Patrick’s club in his native Hamilton, displaying a huge shamrock with the initials St. P.A.C. in the flower.

143. “Tributes to Athletes Who Won at Athens,” New York Times: May 27, 1906. 144. Irish-American Advocate: July 18, 1908. Cited in McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 211. 145. The U.S. won sixteen gold medals, with Edward Cook and Andrew Gilbert both winning gold in the pole vault; no silver was awarded. 146. New York Times: September 22, 1908. 147. Bryant, Marathon Makers, p. 100. 148. Such double standards were to return to the English sport in the late eighties. Following the England soccer team’s loss to the Republic of Ireland in Stuttgart, Germany, in June 1988, members of the English press complained about the fact that seven out of the eleven starting players for Ireland had been born in Britain. Again the words “stones” and “glass houses” sprung to mind, not only with a side containing the Jamaican-born John Barnes, but with a cricket team that was replete with players born outside England (and Wales, as the full name of the side should be), principally in southern Africa. Whatever can be said, what was known that day was that none of the Irish players had to search as far back to find their Irish roots as Barnes had to find his British roots. It did transpire years later that one player in the squad, Tony Cascarino, had no Irish blood connections, since his mother had been adopted. See Tony Cascarino and Paul Kimmage, Full Time (London: Simon & Schuster, 2005), pp. 178–182. 149. Quinn, The King of Spring, p. 199. 150. Ibid., pp. 172–173, 199. 151. Only the now discredited haul of four medals by Michelle Smith in Atlanta 1996 has come anywhere near beating this figure ever since Ireland finally got its own separate Olympic representation after the establishment of the Irish Free State. 152. New York Times: June 30, 1908. 153. Kentucky Irish American: September 16, 1905. 154. “Irish Athletes Want To Remain,” Los Angeles Herald: November 22, 1907. 155. Kent, Olympic Follies, p. 55. 156. “Pay Final Tribute To Olympic Victors,” New York Times: September 22, 1908. 157. In any case, Rose was definitely back with the Frisco club for the following summer. See Pittsburgh PostGazette: October 15, 1908. Bryant and Graeme Kent claim he was Irish-American, while Kevin McCarthy disagrees. Books that chronicle Irish-American achievements fail to mention any reference of him. Bryant in the same sentence wrongly claims John J. Flanagan was also an Irish-American. See Bryant, Marathon Makers, p. 162; Kent, Olympic Follies, p. 63; and McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 212. 158. Bryant, Marathon Makers, p. 152. 159. Kent, Olympic Follies, pp. 108–109. 160. McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 212. 161. Bryant, Marathon Makers, p. 153. Bryant mentions the New York Herald and The Sun. The New York Times claims it was John Garrells who carried the flag, while elsewhere suggestions appeared that Sheridan carried the flag. See McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 212. 162. Kent, Olympic Follies, p. 63. 163. Martin Sheridan, “American Athletes Had a Busy Time on Way to Olympic Games,” Evening World: July 15, 1908. 164. “R. Edgren Column,” Evening World: July 14, 1908. 165. Chicago Tribune: July 26, 1908. 166. Irish World: July 25, 1908. 167. McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 214.

Notes — Chapter 15 168. “Outdoor Sports: With the American Team,” Irish World: August 1, 1908. 169. “The Angry Athletes,” Baltimore Sun: July 18, 1908; New York Times: July 18, 1908. 170. New York Times: July 18, 1908. 171. Bryant, Marathon Makers, p. 206. 172. “Americans To Try Hard,” Baltimore Sun: July 20, 1908. 173. Bryant, Marathon Makers, p. 43, 48. 174. New York Times: August 7, 1908. 175. Daily News: July 25, 1908. 176. Daily Mail: July 23, 1908; The Times [London]: July 23, 1908. The Americans weren’t the only fans making noise. The Times reported the Canadians, “not to be outdone, started their characteristic yell —“Hi-yaka, hiyaka, boom-a-laka, boom-a-laka, sis boom, boom-a-rah, boom-a-rah-ree, Canada, Canada, across the sea, C-a-na-d-a.” The Times [London]: July 24, 1908. 177. Bryant, Marathon Makers, p. 226. 178. Evening World: August 6, 1908. 179. Bryant, Marathon Makers, p. 242; Chicago Tribune: July 26, 1908. 180. New York Times: July 26, 1908. 181. “Dublin Honors Athletes,” New York Times: July 31, 1908. 182. New York Times: July 31, 1908. 183. Seamus Ware, “Tom Kiely,” Journal of Olympic History 7:1 (Winter 1999): pp. 34–35; New York Times: August 17, 1908. 184. Chicago Tribune: August 1, 1908. 185. New York Times: August 20, 1908. 186. “Sullivan Flays Olympic Officials,” New York Times: August 8, 1908. 187. Boston Journal: August 10, 1908. 188. New York Times: August 30, 1908. 189. New York Times: August 30, 1908. 190. McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 238. 191. New York Times: August 30, 1908. 192. New York Times: August 20, 1908. 193. “Hayes Olympic Parade Hero,” The Sun: August 30, 1908. 194. Pierre De Coubertin, “Olympic Memoirs: The Fourth Olympiad,” Olympic Review 114 (April 1977): p. 252. 195. New York Times: September 1, 1908. 196. McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 217. 197. “English Foul Play at Olympic Games,” Gaelic American: July 25, 1908. 198. “Irish Athletes Honored,” Gaelic American: September 26, 1908. 199. “That English Bubble,” Morning Telegraph [NY], n.d. Cited in Gaelic American: August 15, 1908. 200. McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 217. 201. “National Welcome for Olympic Victors,” Gaelic American: August 1, 1908. 202. “English Foul Play at Olympic Games,” Gaelic American: July 25, 1908. 203. “England’s New Anthem,” Irish World: August 22, 1908. 204. McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 231. 205. “Athletes as Diplomats,” Gaelic American: August 29, 1908. 206. “New York’s Welcome to Olympic Victors,” Gaelic American: September 5, 1908. 207. “New York’s Welcome,” Irish World: September 5, 1908. 208. “Prominence of Irish-Americans in the National Game of Base Ball,” Irish World: August 22, 1908.

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209. Kentucky Irish American: August 1, 1908. 210. E.P. McKenna, “How the Yankees Beat the World,” Gaelic American: July 25, 1908. 211. Irish World: August 8, 1908. 212. “West-British Athletes,” Gaelic American: August 1, 1908. 213. “Owen Rose Rap Renegades,” Gaelic American: August 1, 1908. 214. “With the American Team,” Irish World: August 1, 1908. 215. Evening World: July 22, 1908; “West-British Athletes,” Gaelic American: August 1, 1908. 216. “They Hate Us,” Kentucky Irish American: August 29, 1908. 217. New York Herald: August 29, 1908. 218. Letter to the Editor from E Pluribus Unum, New York Times: July 31, 1908. 219. Letter to the Editor from S.L. Harbison, New York Times: August 6, 1908. 220. William Sloane to de Coubertin: August 16, 1908. Cited in McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 246. 221. William Sloane to de Coubertin: January 26, 1909. Cited in McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 246. 222. Ibid., p. 247. 223. “America Puts Ban on British Games,” New York Times: November 17, 1908. 224. Bryant, Marathon Makers, p. 247. 225. New York Times: July 5, 1913. 226. “America regains Davis Tennis Cup,” New York Times: July 29, 1913. 227. Daniel J. Boyne, Kelly (Guilford, CT: Lyons, 2012), pp. 17, 92. 228. Ibid., p. 108. 229. New York Times: August 30, 1920. 230. New York Times: December 13, 1914.

Chapter 15 1. Cassidy, How the Irish Invented Slang, p. 281. 2. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 302. 3. Guttmann, The Olympics, pp. 12–13. 4. Spalding’s Soccer: Official Foot Ball Guide: 1915 – 16, p. n/n. 5. Guttmann, The Olympics, p. 12. 6. Connolly, The English as Poor Losers, cited in McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 45. 7. Norridge, Can We Have Our Balls Back, Please?, p. xviii. 8. McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 76. 9. Ibid., p. 4. 10. Boston Globe: February 17, 1889. 11. Today, almost two decades after the Rugby Football Union and the International Olympic Committee accepted payments for its sportsmen and women, Gaelic games remain the only sports in the world where an athlete can play in front of a crowd of over eighty thousand spectators and not get a cent for his sweat. John Sugden and Alan Bairner, Sport, Sectarianism and Society in a Divided Ireland (London: Leicester University Press, 1993), p. 29. 12. Boston Globe: February 17, 1889. 13. Boston Globe: October 27, 1899; Boston Globe: October 6, 1901. 14. Darby, Gaelic Games, p. 172. 15. New York Times: July 2, 1877.

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16. Kelly Collins, Old Time Walk and Run, Ultra Marathon Running: December 11, 1996. Cited in LeHigh University website. http://www.lehigh.edu/~dmd1/kelly.html. Collins cites Charles Rowell as earning $50,000 for competing in two races in 1879: “This was equivalent to one hundred years of salary in only twelve days work. As an example see Rafael Nadal’s $1.7 million for his two weeks and subsequent victory in the 2010 U.S. Open for a comparison. This is based on an annual salary of $17,000 over a hundred years which was below the U.S. average income for 2010.” 17. Adelman, A Sporting Time, p. 219. 18. Stephen Hardy, “‘Adopted by All the Leading Clubs,’” in Wiggins, ed., Sport in America, vol. 1, p. 144. 19. Ellard, Baseball in Cincinnati, pp. 1, 2, 24, 53. 20. Voigt, American Baseball, p. 25; Guschov, The Red Stockings, p. 24. 21. Pope, Patriotic Games, p. 33. 22. Ibid., p. 31. 23. Ibid., p. 29. 24. Andrew Ross, No Respect (New York: Routledge, 1989), p. 5. Cited in Pope, Patriotic Games, p. 32. 25. Ibid., p. 31. 26. Ibid., p. 33. 27. New York Times: May 29, 1888. 28. New York Times: May 3, 1977. 29. Riess, Sport in Industrial America, p. 123. 30. Boston Herald: November 18, 1899. 31. Rader, American Sports, p. 109; Riess, Sport in Industrial America, p. 121. 32. John S. Watterson, College Football (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), p. 58. 33. Rader, American Sports, p. 108. 34. Mark F. Bernstein, Football (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), p. 73. 35. Tim Cohane, The Yale Football Story (New York: Putnam’s, 1951), p. 126. 36. “Donohue [sic] to Coach LSU,” Atlanta Constitution: December 31, 1922. 37. Atlanta Constitution: November 23, 1913. 38. Bernstein, Football, p. 73. 39. Fox, Big Leagues, p. 238. 40. William H. Edwards, Football Days (New York: Moffat, Yard, 1916), p. 432. 41. New York Times: October 28, 1901. 42. Pittsburgh Press: December 2, 1902. 43. Henry Beach Needham, “The College Athlete : How Commercialism is Making Him a Professional,” McClure’s Magazine 25:2 ( June 1905): pp. 124–125. See also Rader, American Sports, pp. 174–175; Ronald Smith, Sports and Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 188. Regarding Hogan and ATC, see Watterson, College Football, p. 57. Such a kedgeree of freebies forced one contributor of Yale’s daily student paper in 2007 to accuse the university of being a pioneer of corruption, quoting Rader’s American Sports and the page number as his source, sniffing: “What, you think I could write this without having a footnote?” See Yale Daily News: November 17, 2007. 44. Fox, Big Leagues, p. 239. 45. Needham, “The College Athlete,” p. 126. 46. Boston Evening Transcript: May 24, 1905. 47. His snubbing by the three major societies in his freshman year caused a scandal. Bernstein, Football, p. 74 48. “Tom Shevlin, Yale’s Famous Athlete, Dead of Pneumonia,” Hartford Courant: December 30, 1915. 49. New York Times: March 21, 1910.

50. Literary Digest: November 30, 1895, p. 128. Cited in Rader, American Sports, p. 174. 51. Boston Herald: January 13, 1891. 52. Axel Bundgaard, Muscle and Manliness (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005), p. 148. 53. Boston Herald: November 17, 1893. 54. “News to Them,” Boston Globe: November 18, 1893. 55. Bundgaard, Muscle and Manliness, pp. 147, 178. 56. It should be noted that neither Harvard nor the NYAC was an American equivalent of the Glasgow Rangers, with a dogmatic aversion to employing, let alone recruiting, Irish Catholics. Harvard had a long tradition of accepting Catholics, but because they were poorer — a factor crucial to gaining any form of secondary or tertiary education — and with the numerous Catholic colleges and universities in the country as alternatives, Irish numbers at Harvard were low. 57. Sears, Running Through the Ages, p. 109; New York Times: September 22, 1895. 58. E.R. Brushnell, “Halpin Will Not Have Authority,” Detroit Free Press: March 15, 1908; New York Times: April 8, 1912. 59. Michael C. Murphy, College Athletics (reprint : Charleston, SC: Bibliobazaar, 2010), p. 50. 60. Michael C. Murphy and Edward R. Bushnell, Athletic Training (reprint: Central, Hong Kong: Forgotten Books, 2008), p. xviii. 61. New York Times: March 13, 1910. 62. Edwards, Football Days, p. 312. 63. F. Scott Fitzgerald, All the Sad Young Men (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 381– 382, 399. 64. Edwards, Football Days, p. 313. 65. Nebraska State Journal: May 9, 1941. 66. Chicago Tribune: February 23, 1913. 67. “CAA Gets New Trainer,” Chicago Tribune: December 25, 1908. 68. Chicago Tribune: June 2, 1926. 69. “Delaney May Train Britons,” Chicago Tribune: February 23, 1913. 70. Oakland Tribune: August 29, 1916. 71. Edwards, Football Days, p. 151. 72. New York Times: October 18, 1933. 73. “The First Football World Series: Experiment in the Garden,” The Coffin Corner 2 (1980). http://www.profootballresearchers.org/Coffin_Corner/02-An-054.pdf. 74. Riess, City Games, p. 57. 75. Malcolm W. Ford, “The New York Athletic Club,” Outing 33:3 (December 1898): p. 253. 76. Rader, American Sports, pp. 87–88. 77. Cooper, The American Marathon, pp. 19–20. 78. New York Times: April 7, 1896; McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 42. 79. Brooklyn Daily Eagle: June 22, 1868. 80. New York Herald: June 24, 1888. 81. Boston Journal: June 21, 1892. 82. Frederick W. Janssen, History of American Amateur Athletics (reprint: Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2010), p. 103. 83. Boston Globe: July 30, 1882. 84. New York Times: August 5, 1892. 85. New York Herald-Tribune: July 30, 1888. 86. New York Times: September 6, 1891. 87. New York Times: September 6, 1891. 88. New York Times: January 26, 1892. 89. New York Times: February 3, 1892. 90. San Francisco Call: July 22, 1907; San Francisco Call: July 25, 1907.

Notes — Chapter 15 91. Pittsburgh Dispatch: July 23, 1889. 92. Sheffield and Rotherham Independent: February 15, 1893; Sheffield and Rotherham Independent: December 28, 1893. 93. Sporting Life: March 11, 1893. 94. Sheffield and Rotherham Independent: April 19, 1892. 95. Sporting Life: January 18, 1888. 96. “Conneff Here To Stay,” Evening World: January 25, 1888. 97. New York Times: December 8, 1891. 98. New York Times: September 25, 1890. 99. New York Times: March 10, 1892. 100. Irish Independent: June 9, 1902; Quinn, The King of Spring, pp. 98, 136, 208. 101. Connolly, An Olympic Victor, p. 181. 102. Boston Herald: August 8, 1888. 103. Boston Daily Advertiser: September 16, 1887; Boston Herald: September 16, 1887. 104. Boston Herald: August 28, 1898. 105. Boston Herald: September 1, 1899. 106. Boston Journal: July 14, 1892; Boston Journal: July 15, 1892. 107. Pope, Patriotic Games, p. 32. 108. James B. Connolly Papers, Colby College, ME. Cited in McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 42. 109. James B. Connolly, “The Capitalization of Amateur Athletics,” Metropolitan Magazine: July 1910. 110. Evening World: January 28, 1888. 111. Pope, Patriotic Games, p. 32. For example, Luther Gulick, the national chairman of the A AU basketball committee, decreed that only Spalding balls could be used in championship games, and if these were unavailable, games would be declared void. 112. New York Times: December 24, 1915. 113. “Amateurs May Lose Status,” New York Times: January 13, 1916. 114. “Dissension Over Tom and Maurice,” Los Angeles Times: January 14, 1916. 115. New York Times: March 19, 1916. 116. Jack Proctor, “Tennis Champ Suggests Plan to Avert Break,” Chicago Tribune: January 21, 1917. 117. Boston Globe: February 10, 1917; “Pleads for McLaughlin,” Baltimore Sun: February 10, 1917. A couple of years later the Irish tenor John McCormack, a close friend of McLoughlin’s, sought to purchase an interest in the store: Providence News: May 13, 1919. 118. New York Times: January 16, 1916. 119. New York Times: February 27, 1916. 120. New York Times: February 14, 1915. 121. New York Times: January 26, 1918. 122. Dave Anderson, University of Wisconsin Football (Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2005), p. 55. 123. New York Times: April 5, 1962. 124. Chicago Tribune: November 25, 1898. 125. Chicago Tribune: November 11, 1900; Pittsburgh Press: November 19, 1901. 126. [Dubuque] Herald-Telegraph and Times-Journal: November 14, 1934; Milwaukee Journal: April 5, 1962. 127. Jersey Journal [Jersey City]: May 3, 1897. 128. Sweeney, Mike Sweeney of the Hill, p. 63. 129. New York Times: September 21, 1890; New York Times: September 19, 1890; Boston Journal: July 29, 1911. 130. Norridge, Can We Have Our Balls Back, Please?, p. 107. 131. New York Times: June 1, 1902; New York Times: May 16, 1926; “Great Days for the Irish,” Sports Illustrated: March 21, 1955. 132. Boston Globe: July 6, 1902.

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133. “Athlete Confesses to Professionalism,” New York Times: October 28, 1905. 134. Ibid. 135. “To Prosecute Duffey Legally, If Possible,” New York Times: October 29, 1905. 136. New York Times: October 30, 1905. 137. Sporting Life: November 4, 1905. 138. “Duffey Will Tell All,” New York Times: November 2, 1905. 139. “Duffey Repudiates Employer’s Statement,” New York Times: November 4, 1905. 140. The Sun: November 20, 1905. 141. New York Times: November 21, 1905. 142. New York Times: February 21, 1906. 143. New York Times: February 25, 1906. 144. Eric Dunning describes “covert, non-legitimate” shamateurism as being listed in four categories. The first example happens when “nominally amateur sportspersons are supported by the state via sinecures in the military, police or civil service.” Obvious examples were seen in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The other three examples are: financial support from “private commercial and industrial firms” (e.g.: rugby until 1995 and county cricket until 1960); university scholarships; and “boot money” taken from either gate receipts, rich patrons, mass media, commercial sponsors or advertising revenue (e.g.: rugby until 1995). Eric Dunning, Sport Matters (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 116. 145. “Athletes Among the Cops,” The Sun: January 25, 1903. 146. Sweeney, Mike Sweeney of the Hill, p. 75. He won 750 francs for winning the 100m, high jump and long jump in the unrecognized “professional races” of the Paris Olympics. McCarthy, Gold, Silver and Green, p. 66; Wilcox, “The Shamrock and the Eagle,” p. 63. 147. Herbert Hauser, “Winged O Looks To Have Class,” San Francisco Call: August 28, 1910. 148. “Athletic ‘Cops’ Must Stay Home,” New York Times: October 9, 1910. 149. Matt McGrath of the NYAC also competed. 150. New York Times: November 29, 1907; Bryant, Marathon Makers, p. 135. 151. Ibid., pp. 51, 52. 152. A fourth not mentioned was George Bonhag. New York Times: October 30, 1905. 153. New York Times: August 21, 1904. 154. New York Times: September 13, 1905. 155. New York Times: September 14, 1905. 156. The Sun: September 10, 1905. 157. New York Times: September 10, 1905. 158. New York Times: September 19, 1905. 159. Boston Evening Telegraph: September 12, 1905. 160. New York Times: February 2, 1906. 161. New York Times: July 6, 1905; New York Times: September 13, 1905; New York Times: March 16, 1906. 162. New York Times: May 5, 1906. 163. New York Times: April 2, 1906. 164. New York Times: May 19, 1906. 165. San Francisco Call: July 25, 1907. 166. San Francisco Call: August 26, 1910. 167. San Francisco Call: May 18, 1912. 168. New York Times: July 23, 1905. 169. New York Times: October 29, 1908. Charles Enman, “Tom Longboat, Canadian Marathon runner,” Ottawa Citizen: undated. Cited from www.runnersweb. com. http://www.runnersweb.com/running/tom_longboat.html; Montreal Gazette: August 7, 1908. 170. New York Times: November 18, 1908.

434

Notes — Chapter 15

171. New York Times: November 21, 1908. 172. New York Times: November 26, 1908; New York Times: December 7, 1908. 173. Bryant, Marathon Makers, p. 260; New York Times: December 16, 1908. 174. New York Times: December 16, 1908. 175. New York Times: January 31, 1910. Other runners included Longboat, the Englishman Alf Shrubb, Frenchmen Henri St. Yves, Edouard Cibot and Louis Orphee, the Irish champion Pat White, and the Irish-American Matt Maloney. 176. Norridge, Can We Have Our Balls Back, Please?, p. 291. 177. Ibid., p. 291. 178. Irish American Advocate: June 8, 1907. Cited in Darby, Gaelic Games, p. 219, n3; Mary Moran, A Game of Our Own: Camogie’s Story (Dublin, Ireland: Camogie Association, 2011). Cited in “History of Camogie,” The Camogie Association, http://www.camogie.ie/about-_ camogie.asp; Helena Duignan: Keeping the Game Alive (Birmingham, UK : Erin Go Bragh GA A & Camogie Club, 2004). As for Gaelic football with its reputation for rough play, it didn’t become officially accepted until the seventies. Historian Jack Mahon concedes that he too was a skeptic: “For some time the idea of women’s Gaelic football wasn’t taken seriously. Old diehards were heard to say, ‘What’s the world coming to?’” It wasn’t until 1974 that the Ladies Gaelic Football Association was founded in Ireland, and the game played by women in America competitively in the Chicago area. Ladies Gaelic Football Association, North America. http://ladiesgaelic.ie/aboutlgfa/history/association-history-county-international/ northern-america/north-america/. Mahon’s own reservations were changed by the 1996 senior final, which he argues was an outstanding advertisement for a clean game free of clutter and gamesmanship. See Jack Mahon, A History of Gaelic Football (Dublin, Ireland: Gill & Macmillan, 2000), p. 262. 179. “Irish Field Day Enthuses Crowd,” Chicago Tribune: September 10, 1906. 180. Somers, The Rise of Sports in New Orleans, p. 169; New Orleans Picayune: February 6, 1885. 181. The Sun [New York City]: June 19, 1904. 182. “You’re Never Too Old to Learn to Swim,” New York Times: August 28, 1904. 183. “Bar Mixed Athletics,” New York Times: July 13, 1913. 184. “Hot Shot for ‘Jim’ Sullivan,” New York Times: July 19, 1913. 185. Patricia C. Warner, When Girls Came out to Play (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006), p. 96; New York Times: January 18, 1914; New York Times: March 31, 1914. 186. Boston Globe: November 17, 1914. Sullivan is today remembered with the James E. Sullivan Award, established in 1930 to commemorate yearly the country’s top amateur athlete regardless of sex or color. Its first female winner was Ann Curtis in 1944 and its first “colored” recipient was “Mal” Whitfield ten years later. 187. Sporting Life: September 23, 1916. 188. Pope, Patriotic Games, p. 34. 189. Somers, The Rise of Sports in New Orleans, p. 89. 190. “F-I-G-H-T! Irish!” New York World: July 19, 1906. Cited in “Conway of the IAAC,” Cited in Gaelic American: July 25, 1908. 191. Irish American Weekly: July 8, 1911. 192. Connolly, “The Capitalization of Amateur Athletics.”

193. Kent, Olympic Follies, p. 101. 194. New York Times: December 30, 1907. 195. Quinn, The King of Spring, pp. 180–181. 196. The Limerick Leader: August 5, 1956. Cited in Quinn, The King of Spring (Dublin, Ireland: Liffey Press, 2004), p. 183. 197. Connolly, “The Capitalization of Amateur Athletics,” p. 452. Cited in Quinn, The King of Spring, p. 188. 198. James E. Sullivan, The Olympic Games at Athens (New York: American Sports Publishing, 1906), p. 95. 199. “Protest Against Halpin,” New York Times: December 24, 1907. 200. New York Times: December 30, 1907. 201. “Halpin Willing To Answer Detractors,” New York Times: December 28, 1907. 202. “Halpin Willing Answers His Detractors,” New York Times: December 30, 1907. 203. Kent, Olympic Follies, p. 103. 204. Martin Sheridan, “American Athletes in Fine Condition to Keep On Winning,” Evening World: July 22, 1908. 205. E.R. Brushnell, “Halpin Will Not Have Authority,” Detroit Free Press: March 15, 1908. 206. New York Times: December 25, 1905. 207. New York Times: February 24, 1898. 208. The Times [London]: February 23, 1898. 209. New York Times: June 3, 1899. 210. New York Times: July 5, 1899; The Sun [New York City]: January 25, 1904. 211. Toronto Star: November 21, 1907; Toronto Star: December 12, 1907. 212. Toronto Star: February 27, 1908. 213. Montreal Gazette: August 8, 1908. 214. New York Times: November 17, 1908. 215. New York Times: March 23, 1906. 216. New York Times: September 2, 1906. 217. “Sullivan Flays Olympic Officials,” New York Times: August 8, 1908. 218. “Full Report of President Sullivan,” Gaelic American: December 5, 1908. Sullivan’s monologue had to be stretched over four editions of the Gaelic American. 219. New York Times: December 3, 1905. 220. Boyne, Kelly, p. 103. 221. New York Times: April 15, 1906. 222. New York Times: June 24, 1906; New York Times: June 25, 1906; New York Times: December 16, 1906. 223. Washington Herald: August 9, 1914; The Sun: August 9, 1914. 224. New York Tribune: August 15, 1915; New York Times: August 13, 1916. 225. New York Times: May 17, 1917. 226. New York Times: August 10, 1919. 227. Boyne, Kelly, p. 102. 228. Philadelphia Inquirer: January 24, 1920. 229. New York Times: April 28, 1920. 230. Boyne, Kelly, p. 67. 231. Ibid., pp. 97–98. 232. Philadelphia Inquirer: June 5, 1920. 233. Robert W. Maxwell, “Unsportsmanlike to Ban Kelly,” Evening Public Ledger [Philadelphia]: June 23, 1920. 234. Boyne, Kelly, p. 103. 235. Ibid., p. 104. 236. New York Times: July 4, 1993. 237. Norridge, Can We Have Our Balls Back, Please?, p. 247. 238. It wasn’t until 1954 that the definition of amateur

Notes — Chapter 16 finally became exactly that: A competitor who wasn’t paid for his sport. 239. Boyne, Kelly, pp. 102–103. 240. Ibid., p. 105. 241. The Times [London]: June 26, 1981.

Chapter 16

1915.

1. Cassidy, How the Irish Invented Slang, p. 275. 2. Rosen, The Emerald Diamond, p. 277. 3. “The Passing of Erin,” Sporting Life: October 23,

4. “‘Shure,’ ’Tis Another Famine That Has Hit Irish — It’s a Scarcity of Athletes, Ye See,” Washington Post: March 17, 1949. 5. Jim Murry, “The Name Is Irish, but…,” Los Angeles Times: August 8, 1982. 6. “Present Major Leaguers Miss All-Time Irish Nine,” Hartford Courant: March 18, 1950. The AL selection was: Pat Dougherty OF, Jimmy Walsh OF, Eddie Murphy OF, Jimmy Collins, 3B, Jack Barry SS, Danny Murphy 2B, Stuffy McInnis 1B, Billy Sullivan C, Ed Walsh P. The NL was: Hughie Duffy OF, Ed Delahanty OF, Willie Keeler OF, Jimmy Collins 3B, Hughie Jennings SS, Johnny Evers 2B; Dan Brouthers 1B; Roger Bresnahan C; Joe McGinnity P. Hughie Duffy was the only surviving member of the NL team, while Mack’s team had only two deaths. 7. Esquire (undated, 1976). This list was disclosed as consisting of Mickey Cochrane (Catcher), Jimmy Foxx (1B), Eddie Collins (2B), Joe Cronin (Shortstop), Jimmy Collins (3B), Willie Keeler (CF) Tommy Holmes (RF), Lefty O’Doul (LF), Dave McNally (LH Pitcher), Joe McGinnity (RH Pitcher) Don McMahon (Relief Pitcher). John McGraw was the team’s manager. This time Cochrane, Foxx, Cronin, Holmes, McNally and McMahon played later than 1920. 8. Collins was included at second base with Stuffy McInnis at first, Jimmy Collins at third, outfielders Hugh Duffy, Ed Delahanty and Lefty O’Doul, leaving the pitching to be shared by Joe McGinnity and Ed Walsh, with two more positions to be named. The manager was a lot draw between Mack, McGraw and Joe McCarthy. Baseball Digest: November 1980. 9. Rosen, The Emerald Diamond, pp. 8, 277. 10. Peter O’Malley, former Los Angeles Dodgers owner, pledged $140,000 to the building of an Irish Baseball facility in Clondalkin, Dublin. See Baseball Ireland. com. http://www.baseballireland.com/fields.htm. 11. The other three are Rick Ferrell, Mickey Cochrane and Jimmie Foxx. Cochrane’s father was born in Omagh of Scottish parents and his mother was born in Canada, also of Scots. 12. France Fitzgerald, Birdie Maher, Brian McGrath, Tom McLaughlin, Bob Nash, Con O’Brien, Neil O’Donoghue, Paddy Quinn, John Sinnott and Adrian Young in the National Football League; Sid Finney, Bobby Kirk, Jim McFadden, Sammy McManus, Owen Nolan and Jack Riley in the National Hockey League; Pat Burke in the National Basketball Association. 13. Jones, “Patsy Donovan.” 14. New York Times: January 19, 1949. 15. “Great Days for the Irish,” Sports Illustrated: March 21, 1955. 16. Bryant, Marathon Makers, p. 157. 17. Arthur Daley, “The Big Parade,” New York Times: July 6, 1952.

435

18. Ibid. 19. Arthur Daley, “Amid Matchless Pageantry,” New York Times: October 13, 1968. 20. Jeremy Schaap, Triumph (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007), p. 166. 21. Sperber, Shake Down the Thunder, p. 82. 22. Ibid., p. 83. 23. Darby, Gaelic Games, p. 147. 24. San Jose Evening News: May 18, 1923. 25. New York Times: August 17, 1935. 26. “Deputy Inspector Richard J. Sheridan,” Winged fist.org. http://www.wingedfist.org/Richard_Sheridan. html; New York Times: September 27, 1962. 27. New York Times: June 5, 1938; Limerick Leader: February 2, 1964. 28. New York Times: July 25, 1922; New York Times: July 24, 1922. 29. New York Times: September 13, 1928. 30. New York Times: September 21, 1928. 31. New York Times: February 22, 1930. 32. New York Times: December 24, 1932. 33. New York Times: July 4, 1936. 34. New York Times: August 22, 1936; New York Times: September 19, 1936. 35. New York Times: March 12, 1933. 36. Skipper, Wicked Curve, p. 99. 37. New York Times: July 11, 1925; Baseball Digest: August 1980 38. Sporting News: March 13, 1924. 39. Irv Goldfarb, “Charlie Comiskey,” The Baseball Biography Project. http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/8f bc6 b31. 40. Baseball-Reference.com. 41. New York Times: December 10, 1923. 42. New York Times: December 11, 1946. 43. Rosen, The Emerald Diamond, p. 267. 44. Murphy quoted in Reach Official Basketball Guide: 1920 –1921, p. 112. Cited in Nelson, The Originals, p. 59. 45. Bill Reynolds, Cousy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), p. 87; Shaughnessy, Ever Green, p. 52. 46. Although Ferris’s involvement in stripping Jesse Owens of his amateur status is an eye-catching stain on his record. 47. Zoss and Bowman, Diamonds in the Rough, p. 143. 48. Nick Wilson, Voices from the Pastime ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2000), p. 113; Brent P. Kelley, The Negro Leagues Revisited ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2000), p. 8. 49. Leslie A. Heaphy, The Negro Leagues: 1869 –1960 ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003), p. 141. 50. Cottrell, The Best Pitcher in Baseball, p. 59. 51. Arnold Rampersad, Jackie Robinson (New York: Ballantine Books, 1997), p. 121. 52. Jules Tygiel, Baseball’s Great Experiment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 109. 53. Davis, Connie Mack, p. 209. 54. Stephen Birmingham, Real Lace (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997), p. 232. 55. Cooper, The American Marathon, p. 74. 56. Pete Axthelm, “Boycott Now — Boycott Later?” Sports Illustrated: February 26, 1968. 57. New York Times: February 16, 1968. 58. Tucker, Notre Dame vs. the Klan, pp. 152–162. 59. Chicago Tribune: November 15, 2003 60. Sperber, Shake Down the Thunder, p. 369. 61. “Rowers Snub South Boston Club Race that Bans Blacks,” Jet: June 8, 1987.

436

Notes — Chapter 16

62. Jack Olsen, “Growing Up Scared in Louisville,” Sports Illustrated: April 18, 1966; Jack Cashill, Sucker Punch (Nashville, TN: Nelson Current, 2006), p. 6. 63. Randy Harvey, “Coach’s Remarks Put Kerrigan on Thin Ice,” Los Angeles Times: January 13, 1992. 64. Dezell, Irish America, p. 214. 65. Rosen, The Emerald Diamond, p. 269; Bill Murray, The Old Firm (Edinburgh, UK: John Donald, 1984), p. 249. 66. Araton and Bondy, The Selling of the Green, p. 195. 67. New York Times: November 15, 1922; New York Times: June 19, 1923. 68. John Jarrett, Gene Tunney (London: Robson Books, 2003), p. 2.

69. Jeremy Schaap, Cinderella Man (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), p. 114; Michael C. De Lisa, Cinderella Man (Wrea Green, Lancs, UK: Milo Books, 2005), p. 140. 70. Schaap, Cinderella Man, p. 145. 71. Anderson, The Fighting Irish, pp. 189–190. 72. Ibid., p. 201. 73. Paul Beston, “Holmes-Cooney: The Last Great Race Fight,” thesweetscience.com, http://www.thesweet science.com/news/articles/14751-holmes-cooney-the-lastgreat-race-fight. 74. USA Today: August 19, 1995. Cited in Donald McRae, Dark Trade (Edinburgh, UK: Mainstream, 1996), p. 226.

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Giants, and the Cast of Players, Pugs, and Politicos Who Reinvented the World Series in 1912. New York: Doubleday, 2009. Van Every, Edward. Muldoon, the Solid Man of Sport: His Amazing Story as Related for the First Time by Him to His Friend, Edward Van Every. New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1929. Vincent, Ted. Mudville’s Revenge: The Rise & Fall of American Sport. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1994. Voigt, David Quentin. American Baseball: From Gentleman’s Sport to the Commissioner System. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1983. Walken, Pete. 99 and Counting: Life as a Chicago Cubs Fan. North Charleston, SC: Booksurge, 2007. Wangerin, David. Distant Corners: American Soccer’s History of Missed Opportunities and Lost Causes. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011. Ward, Geoffrey C. Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and fall of Jack Johnson. London UK: Pimlico, 2005. Warner, Patricia Campbell. When Girls Came out to Play: The Birth of American Sportswear. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006. Watterson, John Sayle. College Football: History, Spectacle, Controversy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. Weiand, Gary K. The First Superstar: Bareknuckles: John L. Sullivan. Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, 2008. Wiggins, David K. Glory Bound: Black Athletes in a White America. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997. _____, ed. Sport in America. Vol. 1: From Wicked Amusement to National Obsession. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 1995. _____, ed. Sport in America. Vol. 2: From Colonial Leisure to Celebrity Figures and Globalization. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2009. Wiggins, Robert Peyton. The Federal League of Base Ball Clubs: The History of an Outlaw Major League, 1914 –1915. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009. Wilbert, Warren N., and William C. Hageman. The 1917 White Sox: Their World Championship Season. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004. Wilson, John. Playing by the Rules: Sport, Society, and the State. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994. Wilson, Nick. Voices from the Pastime: Oral Histories of Surviving Major Leaguers, Negro Leaguers, Cuban Leaguers and Writers, 1920 –1934. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2000. Wood, Allan. Babe Ruth and the 1918 Red Sox. San Jose, CA: Writers Club Press, 2000. Wright, Marshall D. The National Hockey League, 1917–1967: A Year-by-Year Statistical History. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010. Zarnowski, Frank. All-Around Men: Heroes of a Forgotten Sport. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2005. Zeiler, Thomas W. Ambassadors in Pinstripes: The Spalding World Baseball Tour and the Birth of the American Empire. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006. Zinn, Paul G., and John G. Zinn. The Major League Pennant Races of 1916: “The Most Maddening Baseball Melee in History.” Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009

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Books — American History Allen, Oliver E. The Tiger. Reading, MA: AddisonWesley, 1993. Asbury, Herbert. The Gangs of New York. New York: Garden City, 1928. Reprint: London: Arrow Books, 2002. Bancroft, Hubert Howe. Popular Tribunals. San Francisco: History, 1887. Barra, Allen. Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life And Many Legends. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1998. Beatty, Jack. The Rascal King: The Life and Times of James Michael Curley (1874 –1958). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1992. Bloom, Ken. Broadway: Its History, People and Places. An Encyclopedia. New York: Routledge, 2004. Chudacoff, Howard P. The Age of the Bachelor: Creating an American Subculture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. Denson, Charles. Coney Island: Lost and Found. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 2002. Dickson, Samuel. Tales of San Francisco: Comprising San Francisco is Your Home, San Francisco Kaleidoscope, and the Streets of San Francisco. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1983. Galie, Peter J. Ordered Liberty: A Constitutional History of New York. New York: Fordham University Press, 1996. Gordon, Jacob U. The Black Male in White America. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science, 2002. Gusfield, Joseph R. Symbolic Crusade. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986. Huber, Leonard V. New Orleans: A Pictorial History. New York: Crown, 1971. Jonas, Andrew E.G., and David Wilson. The Urban Growth Machine: Critical Perspectives, Two Decades Later. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. Keene, Jennifer D. World War I: The American Soldier Experience. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001. Laband, David N., Deborah Hendry Heinbuch. Blue Laws: The History, Economics, and Politics of Sunday-Closing Laws. Lexington, MA : Lexington Books, 1987. Lane, Roger. William Dorsey’s Philadelphia and Ours: On the Past and Future of the Black City in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Miller, John Chester. The First Frontier: Life in Colonial America. New York: Dell Publishing, 1966. Mohl, Raymond A. The Making of Urban America. Lanham, MD: SR Books, 2006. Morris, Patrick F. Anaconda, Montana: Copper Smelting Boom Town on the Western Frontier. Bethesda, MD: Swann, 1997. Palmer, Dave Richard. George Washington and Benedict Arnold: A Tale of Two Patriots. Washington, DC: Regnery, 2006. Reddig, William M. Tom’s Town. Philadelphia, J.B.

Lippincott, 1947. Reprint: Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1986. Sante, Luc. Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York. London, UK: Granta, 1992. Sentilles, Renée. Performing Menken: Adah Isaacs Menken and the Birth of American Celebrity. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Silber, Nina. The Romance of Reunion: Northerners and the South, 1865 –1900. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993. Stivers, Richard. Hair of the Dog: Irish Drinking and Its American Stereotype. New York: Continuum International, 2000. Stoddard, Lotthrop. Master of Manhattan: The Life of Richard Croker. New York: Longmans, Green, 1931. Stott, Richard Briggs. Jolly Fellows: Male Milieus in Nineteenth-Century America. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. _____. Workers in the Metropolis: Class, Ethnicity, and Youth in Antebellum New York City. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990. Sullivan, Robert. Rats: A Year with New York’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants. London, UK: Granta, 2004. Tansill, Charles. America and the Fight for Irish Freedom 1866 –1922. New York: Devin-Adair, 1957. Walling, George Washington, and A. Kaufman. Recollections of a New York Chief of Police. Denver, CO: Denver Police Mutual Aid Fund, 1887. Reprint : Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2010.

Books — Irish History in Britain, Ireland and the USA Bayor, Ronald H., and Timothy J. Meagher, eds. The New York Irish. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Birmingham, Stephen. Real Lace: America’s Irish Rich. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997. Byron, Reginald. Irish America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Cassidy, Daniel. How the Irish Invented Slang: The Secret Language of the Crossroads. Oakland, CA : Counterpunch Books and AK Press, 2007. Connolly, S.J., ed. The Oxford Companion to Irish History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Coogan, Tim Pat. Wherever Green Is Worn: The Story of the Irish Diaspora. London, UK: Hutchison, 2001. Dezell, Maureen. Irish America: Coming into Clover. New York: Anchor Books, 2002. Dooley, Terence A.M. The Greatest of the Fenians: John Devoy and Ireland. Dublin, Ireland: Wolf hound Press, 2003. Emmons, David M. The Butte Irish. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990. English, T.J. Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster. New York: Regan, 2005. Evans, Anthony G. Fanatic Heart: A Life of John Boyle O’Reilly. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1999. Golway, Terry. Irish Rebel: John Devoy and America’s Fight for Ireland’s Freedom. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998.

Bibliography Gordon, Michael A. The Orange Riots: Irish Political Violence in New York City, 1870 and 1871. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993. Hayden, Tom. Irish on the Inside: In Search of the Soul of Irish America. New York: Versobooks, 2001. Ignatiev, Noel. How the Irish Became White. New York: Routledge, 1995. Kenny, Kevin. Making Sense of the Molly Maguires. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. _____, ed. New Directions in Irish-American History. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003. Larsen, Lawrence H., and Nancy J. Hulston. Pendergast! Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997. Lee, J.J., and Marion Casey. Making the Irish American: History and Heritage of the Irish in the United States. New York: New York University Press, 2006. Lindberg, Richard C. The Gambler King of Clark Street. Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press, 2009. Macauley, Thomas Babington. The History of England from the Accession of James II. Vol. 1. Leipzig, Germany: Bernh. Tauchnitz Jun, 1849. McCaffrey, Lawrence J. The Irish Catholic Diaspora in America. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1976. _____, ed. The Irish in Chicago. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987. _____. Textures of Irish America. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1992. Miller, Kerby A. Emigrants and Exiles. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Nolan, Janet. Ourselves Alone: Women’s Emigration from Ireland, 1885 –1920. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1989. O’Connor, Thomas H. The Boston Irish: A Political History. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1995. Stevens, Peter F. Hidden History of the Boston Irish: Little-Known Stories from Ireland’s “Next Parish Over.” Charleston, SC: History Press, 2008. Swift, Roger, and Sheridan Gilley. The Irish in Britain, 1815 –1939. Savage, MD: Barnes & Noble, 1989. _____. The Irish in the Victorian City. London, UK: Croom Helm, 1985. Tucker, Todd. Notre Dame vs. The Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan. Chicago: Loyola Press, 2004. Webb, James H. Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America. New York: Broadway, 2004. Welch, Richard F. King of the Bowery: Big Tim Sullivan, Tammany Hall, and New York City from the Gilded Age to the Progressive Era. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010.

Books — Other Subjects Cooke, Mary Huntington. A Few Memories of William Reed Huntington by his sister Mary Huntington Cooke. Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1910. Davenport-Hines, Richard. The Pursuit of Oblivion: A Social History of Drugs. London: Phoenix Press, 2002. Drainville, André C. Contesting Globalization: Space

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and Place in the World Economy. London: Taylor & Francis, 2004. Fitzgerald, F Scott. All the Sad Young Men. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Joyce, James. Ulysses. Paris, France: Shakespeare & Co, 1922. Reprint: London, UK: Penguin Books, 1992. Kreike, Emmanuel, and William Chester Jordan, eds. Corrupt Histories. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2004. Preston, Paul. Franco. London, UK: Fontana Press, 1995. Rittner, Donald. Troy: A Collar City History. Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2002. Vincent, Francis. Vincent’s Semi-Annual United States Register: 1860. Philadelphia: Francis Vincent, 1860. Wallace, Francis. O’Reilly of Notre Dame. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1931.

Reference Books Malone, Dumas. Dictionary of American Biography. Vol. 18. New York: Scribner’s, 1936. Morrison, Ian. The Guinness Book of World Championship Boxing Book. London, UK : Guinness, 1990. Official Athletic Rules and Official Handbook of the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States 1908. Official Athletic Rules and Official Handbook of the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States 1909. Official Athletic Rules and Official Handbook of the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States 1910. Official Athletic Rules and Official Handbook of the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States 1911. Official Athletic Rules and Official Handbook of the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States 1912. Official Athletic Rules and Official Handbook of the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States 1914. Official Basketball Guide: 1920 –1921. Spalding’s Baseball Guide and Official League Book: 1889. Spalding’s Baseball Guide and Official League Book: 1892. Spalding’s Official Athletic Almanac: 1905. Spalding’s Official Base Ball Guide 1908. Spalding’s Official Ice Hockey Guide 1915. Spalding’s Soccer: Official Foot Ball Guide 1910. Spalding’s Soccer: Official Foot Ball Guide 1914-15. Spalding’s Soccer: Official Foot Ball Guide 1915-16. Spalding’s Soccer: Official Foot Ball Guide 1916-17. The Universal Baseball Guide. Wallechinsky, David. The Complete Book of the Olympics. Aurum Press, London, 1992.

Other Sources A.G. Spalding Baseball Collection baseballhistoryblog.com Boston Public Library (Michael T. McGreevey Collection)

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British Newspaper Library Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame Chicago Daily News Photographs ecorover.blogspot.co.uk George Peabody Library Google Images historiatletismo.blogspot.co.uk kingofthepeds.com Library of Congress: Prints & Photographs Online Catalog London Metropolitan University National Library of Ireland New Orleans Public Library

New York Public Library Outofthepark.com Professional Wrestlers Hall of Fame rebeccajenkins.com SABR Project TG4, Ireland theboweryboys.blogspot.co.uk University of Connecticut University of Pennsylvania untoldstoriesbilliardshistory.blogspot.co.uk Westsiderooters.com Wisconsin Historical Images wrestlingsbest.com

Index Page numbers in bold italics indicate pages with illustrations. Aaron, Barney 33, 135, 219, 247 Abbott, Fred 226 Abell, Ferdinand 177 Active Base Ball Club, New York 97 Addis, Thomas 111 Adee, George T. 361, 362 Adrian, MI 187 Africa 275, 430n148 African Americans 10, 46, 82, 106, 110, 193, 236, 241, 268–269, 272– 273, 313–315, 327, 382–383, 387– 390, 401n19, 421n185, 422n84, 423n179, 430n114, 434n186 Akron, OH 29, 321, 421n14 Alabama Polytechnic 351 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, 1909 295 Albany, NY 97, 217, 248 Albany Caledonian Club 400n237 Albert, Prince of Wales 116, 226, 319, 348 alcohol 1–3, 14–15, 19, 21, 34–35, 38–39, 55, 59–83, 90, 94, 112, 133, 137–138, 140, 142–143, 150, 156, 158–159, 170–171, 181, 184, 191, 196, 205–209, 212–214, 216, 218, 228, 246, 234, 246, 253– 255, 277–278, 286, 302, 312, 317– 318, 374, 384–385, 386, 401n18, 402n115, 403n162; Anti-Saloon League 83; Catholic Temperance Society 60; Pennsylvania Women’s Christian Temperance Union 78 Alcyone Boat Club 357 Alexander, Pete 155 Alexandra, Queen 338 Ali, Muhammad 389 Allen, Tom 32, 81, 134, 219, 318, 393n32 Allentown, PA 58 Allinger, Sol 41 Alsheimer, H. 44 Altgeld, John Peter 38 Amateur Athletic Association of Canada 324 Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) 25,

46, 109, 170, 196, 198–199, 276, 290, 294, 306, 328, 343, 350, 353, 356, 358, 360–361, 364– 369, 371–372, 374–376, 427n222, 433n111; AAU Central Association 356; AAU Metropolitan Association 359; AAU National championships 26, 27, 48, 50, 310, 312, 330, 332, 356, 366, 399n191, 399–400n192, 428n245; AAU Western Association 199, 289 Amateur Athletics Association (AAA), Great Britain 328, 337, 364, 374, 376 Amateur Rowing Association (ARA) Great Britain 378–379 amateurism 3, 24, 51, 56, 68, 97, 128, 159, 171, 199, 247, 290, 331, 333–334, 343, 347–380, 384, 423n121, 427n227, 433n144, 435n238, 435n46; “shamateurism” 56, 348, 352, 359, 364–365, 433n144 Ambrose Park, Brooklyn 200 American Amateur Football Association 194 American Association (AA) baseball 28–29, 58, 78, 124, 146, 159–161, 172, 177–180, 182, 200, 208, 226, 290 American Association of Baseball Clubs see American League American Billiard Players Association 41 American Camogie Association 370 American Civil War 7, 23, 27, 41– 42, 51, 53, 58, 88–89, 94, 117, 120, 122, 129, 173, 178, 196, 237, 247, 249, 251, 262, 265, 294, 326, 341, 344, 349, 357 American Football Association 194, 292, 425n50 American Football Association Cup 293 American Jockey Club 88 American League (AL) baseball 9,

451

29, 70, 80, 99–100, 102, 123, 126, 149–151, 154, 179–185, 189, 200– 203, 207, 227, 230–231, 233, 235, 272, 280, 284–285, 322, 382, 386, 388, 413n47, 413n74, 435n6 American Olympic Committee (AOC) 68, 329, 333, 343, 368 American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) 36, 38 American Sports Publishing Company 199, 355, 415n214, 415 American Tobacco Company 351 America’s Cup 9, 346 Ames, Michael E. 161–162, 289 Anaconda, MT 290 Anaconda Copper Mining Company 92 Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) 2, 7, 27, 106–107, 108–109, 116, 135, 140, 266, 274, 287, 293, 312 Andover, Phillips Academy 353–354, 356, 382 Andrew, Jack 337–338 Anglo-Irish rivalry 14, 115, 133, 143– 144, 263, 265–266, 274 Anson, Adrian, “Cap” 66, 72, 189, 234, 254, 262, 272, 277 Antrim, Ireland 119, 422n59 Appomattox, VA 316 Archer, Jimmy 28, 29, 386 Archer, Joey 390 Armagh, Ireland 31, 265 Armagh County Gaelic Football Club, New York 295–296 Asbury, Herbert 35, 114–115 Ashland, MA 25 Ashland, PA 232 Ashton, John 119 Astley, Sir John Dugdale 43, 326, 361 Athens 25, 68, 107, 250, 286, 308, 330–331 Athletic Training 355 athletics (track and field) 2, 27, 42, 45–48, 51, 107–108, 113, 116, 129,

452 194, 196, 198–200, 222, 249, 273, 276, 290, 306–308, 310, 312–315, 327–334, 340, 347–350, 354–357, 359–361, 364–376, 382–383, 387; pedestrianism 3, 9, 42–45, 49, 51, 68, 143, 195, 217, 316, 325, 327, 349, 369 Athletics News 198 Atlanta, GA 29, 108, 227, 430n151 Atlanta Crackers (SA) 29 Atlantic Base Ball Club of Brooklyn see Brooklyn, Atlantic Base Ball Club of Atlantic League 178 Auburn, AL 261 Auburn, NY 243 Auburn Prison, NY 214 Augusta, GA 70, 290 Austin, John S. 135 Australia 16, 105, 110, 248, 268, 270, 308, 319, 326, 363, 400n241 bachelor subculture 2, 9, 60, 80, 86, 99, 133, 218, 237 Bacon, Frederick 328 Baer, Max 390 Bailey, Annie 205 Baker, Lewis 22 Baker, William F. 366 Baker, William Frazer (W.F.) 154, 202 Baker Field 155 Baldwin, Mark 319 Baltimore, MD 32, 41, 56, 86, 112, 123, 133, 145, 150, 165–166, 183, 195, 207, 410n123 Baltimore Academy of Music 207 Baltimore Athletic Club 249 Baltimore FL Franchise (1914–15) 177 Baltimore Orioles, AA and NL (1882–1899) 29, 71, 73, 77, 145– 146, 150, 175, 177, 179–180, 184, 202, 222–225, 227–232, 234, 279–280, 281, 335, 417n176, 418n240 Baltimore Orioles, AL (1903–present) 70, 93, 123, 181, 188, 201, 207, 217; see also New York AL Franchise Bancroft, Frank 74 Bank Street Grounds, Cincinnati 159 Bannon, Jimmy 282 Barnie, Billy 180 Barnum, P.T. 196; American Museum 275 Barr, John D. 357 Barrow, Ed 201 Barry, Jack 72, 261, 435n6 Barry, Jimmy 397n195 Barry, Thomas J. 331 Barry, William (GAA) 273 Barry, William J.M. 24, 69, 93–94, 324–325, 358 Barry, William V., “Billy” 42 Barrymore, Maurice 89 Barrys, William, GFC 294, 297–298, 300, 425n83 Barsotti, Chevalier 369 Barstow, Rogers L. 93 baseball 1–3, 7–11, 27–31, 42, 45, 49, 51–53, 56–59, 63, 65–80, 88, 92, 95–103, 107–108, 112–115, 116, 118–

Index 119, 122–132, 136–137, 139–140, 144–156, 159–162, 166, 170–191, 194–196, 199–203, 207–211, 216– 217, 222–236, 245–246, 253–262, 267, 270–273, 276–285, 287– 288, 290, 294–295, 301–304, 306–307, 310–311, 313, 317–324, 338, 349, 354, 362, 368, 370–371, 379, 381–382, 386–388, 395n34, 396n150, 403n162, 403n166, 435n10; Deadball Era 28, 183, 413n74; hall of fame 29, 57–58, 74, 100, 173, 180, 183, 224, 234, 258–259, 261, 382–383; reserve clause 30, 65, 79–80, 171–172, 386; syndicate baseball 150, 177, 180; Temple Cup (1894–1897) 145, 150, 159, 225, 230, 281, 410n123; World Series (1884–1890) 73, 177; World Series (1903, 1905–present) 29, 77, 100–103, 123, 125–127, 146, 148–156, 182–183, 185, 187, 189– 190, 211, 259, 280, 283, 285, 309, 322–323, 382, 413n59; wars 71, 174, 199 Baseball Digest 382 “baseball wars” 71, 174, 199 basketball 2, 49, 239, 273, 306– 307, 310–311, 324, 347, 386–388, 421n14, 424n25, 433n111 Bauer, Thiebaud 129 Baumgartner, Harry 290 Bayonne, NJ 50, 297 Beasley, Tom 15–16 Bedford, England 394n8 Beer and Whiskey League see American Association Belfast, Ireland 13, 31, 78, 139, 320, 338, 391 Belfast, NY 129 Bell, William 17, 19 Bellevue Hospital, New York 163, 255 Belmont Park, Long Island 100 Belote, F.V. 315 Bender, Charles Albert, “Chief “ 151, 273 Bennett, James Gordon, Jr. 129 Bennett, James Gordon, Sr. 24, 164 Bennett Park, Detroit 189 Benning Racetrack, Washington, DC 108 Beresford, Jack 345, 378–379 Bergen, Joe (jockey) 89 Bergen, Marty (jockey) 89 Bergen, Marty 72–73, 208–210, 226, 402n115, 416n54 Berger, Claudius 325 Bergh, Henry 36–39 Bernstein, Joe 121 Berrigan’s Hall, New York 45 Berry, Shad 261 Bethlehem FC 293 Bibby, Edwin 249, 251 Bierbauer, Lou 281 The Billiard Cue 40 billiards 2, 7, 9–10, 39–42, 76, 87– 88, 93, 101, 105, 119–120, 176, 226, 238, 248, 316, 325 Billiards Without a Master 40 Bingham, Theodore 169 Birmingham, Joe 9, 184

Birmingham, England 31–32, 216, 318 Bishop, C.O. 97 Bitterroot Valley, MT 92 Bixamos, Charles 166 Blackwell’s Island Hospital 38 Blackwell’s Island Jail 39 Blake, William 81 blood sports 2, 7, 34–39, 63 blue laws 3, 78, 159–163, 170–171, 296, 340 Bond, Tommy 30, 178 Bonhag, George 314, 368, 373, 433n152 Boston, MA 16, 24–25, 27, 30–32, 34, 46–48, 53, 57, 61, 63, 67, 69, 79–81, 86, 90, 102, 104, 108–110, 112–113, 116, 124–127, 129–130, 137, 147–156, 157, 160, 175, 183, 186, 192, 195–196, 205, 210, 214, 218, 226, 231, 238, 242–243, 251, 258, 261, 268, 276–277, 279, 287–289, 291–292, 294–295, 297, 302, 309, 311, 314, 318, 329, 331, 348, 360, 365, 368, 375–376, 387, 389, 397n171, 419n36, 423n177 Boston AL Franchise (1901–present) 29, 96, 124–126, 127, 129–130, 147, 149–156, 182–183, 185–187, 189, 235, 257, 277, 280, 283–284, 382, 386, 388, 421n185, 423n179 Boston Americans see Boston AL Franchise (1901–present) Boston Athletic Association (BAA) 26, 110, 314–315, 329–330, 357, 363 Boston Beaneaters see Boston NL Franchise (1876–1952) Boston Braves see Boston NL Franchise (1876–1952) Boston Caledonian Club 46 Boston Celtics 1, 131, 262, 311, 387, 389, 422n32, 428n232 Boston College 261, 421n8 Boston Common 294 Boston Corners, New York 21, 265 Boston Doves see Boston NL Franchise (1876–1952) Boston Hurling Club 47 Boston Irish Athletic Club 7, 46–48, 110, 127, 140, 238, 288–289, 297, 399n144 Boston Marathon 25, 332, 357 Boston NL Franchise (1876–1952) 27–28, 30, 58–59, 74, 76, 79, 102, 116, 125–127, 129, 147–152, 158, 173, 181–183, 186–187, 203, 208– 211, 224, 226, 228, 236, 256, 276, 280, 282–283, 319, 386 Boston Philo-Celtic Society 46 Boston Red Caps see Boston NL Franchise (1876–1952) Boston Red Sox see Boston AL Franchise (1901–present) Boston Red Stockings see Boston NL Franchise (1876–1952) Boston Reds, PL Franchise (1890) 58 Boston Rustlers see Boston NL Franchise (1876–1952) Boston Shamrocks 390 Boston Shamrocks, AFL 387

Index Boston Union Boat Club 110 Boston University 116, 332, 375 Botto, John 279 Bouck, William C. 18 Bowerman, Frank 226 “Bowery Boys” 117 Braddock, James J. 390 Bradley, Dominick 31 Bradley, J. (athlete) 109 Bradley, Joseph 45 Brady, Alice 193 Brady, “Diamond” Jim 91–92 Brady, Mike, “King” 212, 252–253, 267 Brady, Tom 381 Brady, William Aloysius 193, 216, 246 Brainard, Asa 96 Braves Field, Boston 129, 152 Breadon, Samuel 188, 190 Bredemus, John 399–400n192 Brennan, Ad 226 Brennan, Bill 390 Brennan, Bill, “KO” (Wilhelm Schenck) 422n53 Brennan, E.C. 371 Brennan, Jack ( John Gottlieb Dorn) 57 Bresnahan, Roger 123, 146, 184, 258, 280, 282, 381, 386, 435n6 Brett, Herbert 385 Brian Borus GFC Chicago 142 Bridewell Prison, London 61 Bridgeburg, Ontario 72 Bridgeport, CT 57, 258, 276 Bridgeport Victors (Connecticut State League) 278 Briggs, Warren 258 Brighton, England 337 Brighton, MA 253 Brighton Shamrocks GFC, New York 302 Bright’s disease 67, 77, 352, 385 Bristol, England 61 Britain 3, 6, 15, 17–18, 24, 42–43, 61, 107, 109–110, 143, 166, 194, 260, 273, 286, 319–320, 323, 325, 327–328, 332, 334, 340, 342, 344, 348, 364, 371, 375–376, 383, 393n32, 395n36, 430n148; British government/rule 9, 18, 43, 58, 61– 62, 104–105, 111, 128, 240–241, 268, 307, 320–321 British Army 110, 288, 323, 395n36 British Olympic Committee (BOC) 334 British Open 211, 213 British press 107, 211, 270, 338, 339 British Royals/Crown 148, 334–336, 340, 383–384; see also Albert, Prince of Wales; Alexandria, Queen; Edward VII; George V; Victoria, Queen Broadway Athletic Club, New York 243 Brockton, MA 69 Brockway, John 96 Brodie, Steve 281 Brommers Union Park, New York 108 Bronson, Helen 90 Brookline, MA 253

Brooklyn, NY 34, 38, 44, 53, 56, 67, 81, 91, 95, 118–120, 122–124, 157, 171, 200, 208, 215–216, 225, 304–306, 316, 400n241 Brooklyn, Atlantic Base Ball Club of (1855–1870) 51–53, 52, 124, 144– 145, 227, 254, 279 Brooklyn Atlantics, NA (1872–1875) 30 Brooklyn Atlantics/Grays/Bridegrooms, AA (1884–1889) 177 Brooklyn Bridge 122–123, 177 Brooklyn Celtic (or Celtics) FC 292–294 Brooklyn Dodgers see Brooklyn NL Franchise (1890–1957) Brooklyn Eckford Base Ball Club (1855–1872) 51, 97 Brooklyn Excelsior Base Ball Club (1854–1870) 51, 144, 176, 227, 254, 279 Brooklyn Handball Club 305–306 Brooklyn Jockey Club 89, 91 Brooklyn NL Franchise (1890–1957) 28, 99, 123–124, 146–147, 150, 177, 180, 183, 188, 233, 286, 384–387, 423n179 Brooklyn Robins see Brooklyn NL Franchise (1890–1957) Brooklyn Superbas see Brooklyn NL Franchise (1890–1957) Brooklyn Tip Tops, FL (1914–15) 415n242 Brooklyn Visitations Basketball Club 421n32 Brooklyn Ward’s Wonders, PL (1890) 175, 177 Brouthers, Dan 57–58, 173–174, 224, 255, 258–259, 386 Brown, Alexander 120 Brown, Everett C. 356 Brown, Harriet N. 148 Brown, Harry D. “Curley” 101 Brown, Henry, “Blower” 326–327 Brown, Robert W. 202 Brown, Valentine, “KO” 201 Brown, Walter 1, 387 Brown-Séquard, Charles 158 Browne, George 226 Browning, Pete 423n181 Brunswick Brothers and Co. 40, 41 Brush, John T. 100, 182, 188, 190, 202 Buckley, Pat, and Sister 141 Buffalo, NY 23, 29, 31, 55, 98, 108, 135, 179, 182, 252, 309, 324 Buffalo All-Americans (NFL) 356 Buffalo Bisons, IL, EL 28, 160, 182, 186 Buffalo Bisons, NL (1879–1885) 30, 158, 173, 258 Buffalo Bisons, PL (1890) 175 Bulger, Doctor Michael 337, 339 Bulkeley, Morgan 11 Bulls Ferry, NJ 134 Bundy, Tom 344, 361, 362 Burke, Eddie 145 Burke, Frank 306 Burke, Jack, “The Irish Lad” 269 Burke, James (baseball) 146 Burke, James (handball) 306 Burke, James, “Deaf ” 1, 5–6, 12–14,

453 23, 33, 132–133, 265, 391, 393n2, 393n11, 393n13, 394n8 Burke, John J. 249 Burke, Pat 435n12 Burke, Thomas Edward 328, 331– 332, 375, 429n108 Burkett, Jesse 72, 229, 277–278 Burkeville 145 Burlington, NJ 290 Burns, Rev. James 263 Burns, Kit 35–39, 91, 103, 134, 163 Burns, Tommy 319–320 Burns, Tommy (boxer) 267, 270 The Burnt Rag 64, 137 Bush, George H.W. 382 Busse, Fred 123 Butler, Dennis 238 Butler, E.B. 377 Butt, Isaac 107 Butte, MT 92, 294–295 Byrne, Charles H. 99, 177 Byrne, Simon 5–6, 12, 14, 393n2, 393n14, 393n11, 393n16 Byrnes, Thomas 89, 94–95, 157– 158 Cady, Hick 284 Cahill, James 297 Cahill, John Parnell 146 Cahill, Thomas W. 194–195, 347, 361 Cain vs. Adams 394n8 Caldwell, “Starter” 221 Caledonian Games 308–309, 366 California Golf Association 362 California League (baseball) 234 Californian Athletic Club, San Francisco 192 Callahan, Nixey 183, 185, 285, 323 Calvary Cemetary, Long Island 38, 50, 137, 400n236 Cambridge, England 327 Cambridge, MA 57, 172, 290 Cambridge University, England 242, 328, 375 Camden, NJ 184, 207 Camden Merritts 177 Camp, Walter 331, 352 Camp Jerome 190 Campana, Peter Napoleon, “Sport” 43, 51 Campbell, Bryan 85–86, 134, 263 Canada 13, 20, 23–24, 26–29, 31, 55, 93, 166, 186, 191–192, 194, 251–253, 267, 269, 291, 293, 311, 316, 324, 332, 342, 364, 375– 377, 394n8, 400n241, 424n235, 426n102, 427n227, 431n176, 435n11; Fenian raids 105 Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame 29 Cannon, Tom 249 Cantillon, Joe 423–424n181 Cantwell, Christian 383 Carbondale, PA 57 Carbrey, Bob 16 Carlisle, Joseph 51 Carlos, John 337 Carme, Pierre 325 Carney, Jim 134 Carney, William 306 Carpenter, John C. 337 Carr, Joseph 386

454 Carrigan, “Rough” Bill 156, 182–184, 235, 261, 284–285, 381, 413n59 Carroll, Cliff 283 Carroll, Fred 261, 319 Carroll, Father John 260 Carroll, Paddy 192, 414n154 Carroll, Dr. William 106 Carson City, NV 193, 252 Carter, E.C. 244 Cary, Luther H. 359 Casement, Roger 128 Casey, Eddie 356 Casey, James 115 Casey, Kellogg 333 Casey, Phil 118, 305–306 “Casey at the Bat” 53, 136–137 Castleman, Frank 367–368 Casway, Jerrold, and “Emerald age of baseball” 2 Catnatch, Jemmy 393n11 Caunt, Benjamin 19 Caunt, Bob 19, 266 Cavan 27, 92, 116, 178, 202–203, 277, 280, 319 Cavan GFC, New York 141 Cavan vs. Kerry Gaelic football match, New York, 1947 6 Cavanaugh, Frank 351 Caylor, Oliver Perry 8, 236, 281, 283 Celtic Park, New York 27, 50, 106– 107, 109, 128, 140–142, 168–169, 289, 295–297, 301, 303, 309–310, 312, 314–315, 332, 335, 368, 385 Celtic Park Gang 142 Celtics (Malden, MA) Hurling Club 48 Centennial Grove, MA 46 Centralia, PA 35 Chadwick, Henry 97, 224, 299, 321 Chambers, John 242, 244 Chambers Street Hospital, New York 206 Chance, Frank 258 Chandler, Tom 23, 32, 166, 221 Chapman, Ray 284 Charlestown, MA 113, 289 Charlesworth, MD 31 Chase, Charles 98 cheating 14, 40, 84–85, 87–88, 93, 98–99, 240, 334, 337 Chelsea Emmets GFC, Boston 302 Cherry Hill, NJ 253 Chicago, IL 10, 23, 27, 34, 41–43, 46, 56–57, 67, 76, 81, 90, 92–93, 106–107, 112–113, 126, 137, 147, 157, 162–163, 166, 174, 176, 178– 180, 191, 199, 201, 211, 218–221, 239, 247, 251, 284–285, 289, 291– 292, 294–295, 297, 304, 323, 326, 356, 390–391; great Chicago fire, 1871, 42, 176; Haymarket bombing 171; Tenderloin district 67, 220 Chicago AL Franchise (1901–present) 79, 101, 181, 183, 185, 188–189, 257, 272, 280–281, 322–323; “Black Sox” scandal 11, 101–103, 183, 188–190, 203, 257, 385 Chicago Athletic Association (CAA) 48, 356 Chicago Chi-Feds/Whales 190

Index Chicago Colts see Chicago NL Franchise (1876–present) Chicago Cubs see Chicago NL Franchise (1876–present) Chicago Fenians GFC 274 Chicago Leland Giants 387 Chicago NL Franchise (1876–present) 28–29, 58, 65–68, 78–79, 97, 99, 108, 116, 123, 146–147, 172, 181, 183, 187, 190, 227, 233–234, 256, 258, 277–282, 319–320, 385 Chicago Pirates, PL (1890) 175, 256 Chicago White Sox see Chicago AL Franchise (1876–present) Chicago White Stockings see Chicago NL Franchise (1876–present) Chicago White Stockings, NA (1871, 1874–1875) 30, 41, 97–98 Chicago World Fair, 1893 167, 297, 306 Chicago’s Innisfails GFC 127, 162, 274 China 158, 319, 324 Choynski, Jo 121 Christian Brothers College of St. Louis 332 Church of Latter Day Saints 389, 390 Cicotte, Eddie 102, 185 Cincinnati, OH 40–41, 44, 73, 77, 79, 90, 116, 123, 160, 166, 177, 179, 185, 187, 204–205, 210, 233, 272, 292 Cincinnati Base Ball Club (aka the Cincinnati Red Stockings, 1866– 1871) 27, 56, 96, 176–177, 349 Cincinnati Kelly’s Killers, AA (1891) 148 Cincinnati Red Stockings, AA (1882– 1890) 29, 58, 229, 286 Cincinnati Reds, NL 1876–1880 58, 75, 159, 413n47; 1890–present 73– 74, 77, 100–101, 123, 170, 177, 183, 187, 211, 217, 225, 233, 262, 279 Cincinnati Shamrocks 290 City and Suburban Homes Company 385 City of Boston Regatta 291 Clan-na-Gael (CnG) 2, 7, 106–107, 109, 128, 140, 227, 279, 297, 303, 310, 312, 358 Clapp, Dr. Raymond G. 355 Clare 24, 26, 131, 178, 250, 341, 383, 389 Clark, Ellery H. 325, 329 Clark, Nobby 31 Clarke, Fred 2104 Clarke, Tom 262 Clarkson, John 57 Clarkson, M. 327 Cleary, Joe 28, 382 Cleary, Mike 32, 35, 215 Cleveland, OH 53, 71, 166, 178, 235, 243, 255, 280, 283, 371 Cleveland AL Franchise (1901–present) 9, 58, 183, 284, 386 Cleveland Blues, AL (1901) see Cleveland AL Franchise (1901– present) Cleveland Blues, NL (1879–1884) 29, 175 Cleveland Blues, NL (1887–1888) see

Cleveland NL Franchise (1887– 1899) Cleveland Broncos (1902) see Cleveland AL Franchise (1901–present) Cleveland Indians (1915–present) see Cleveland AL Franchise (1901–present) Cleveland Infants, PL (1890) 71 Cleveland NL Franchise (1887–1899) 8, 29, 68, 78, 146, 181, 185, 222, 228–230, 232–233, 254, 279– 280, 291, 418n240 Cleveland Park 233 Cleveland Shamrock 51, 291 Cleveland Spiders, NL (1889–1899) see Cleveland NL Franchise (1887– 1899) Clinton, MA 234 Cobb, Ty 99, 189, 225, 230, 252, 402n114 Coburn, Joe 23, 31–32, 55, 63, 82– 83, 113, 120, 137, 139, 166, 205, 213–214, 265, 318, 397n171 Coburn, Johanna 205, 213 Cochems, Edward 199 Cochrane, Freddie 390 Cochrane, Mickey 435n7, 435n11 Coe, W.W. 27 Cohalan, Daniel Florence 128, 312, 340, 368, 385 Cohan, George M. 103, 188, 342, 416n54 Cohn, Harvey 313 Cohoes, NY 57, 254 Cold Spring, IN 32, 113 Cold War 128, 365 Colgate University 357 College Athletics 355 College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA 24, 235, 261, 277 Collender, Hugh 40, 42, 88, 105 Collender’s Giants 42 Collier, Price 331 Colliers, WV 135 Collier’s Station, WV 33, 85 Collins, Eddie 72, 102, 185, 189, 234, 257–259, 257, 280, 386, 421n185, 435n7, 435n8 Collins, Jerome 106 Collins, Jimmy 150, 181–182, 282, 286–287, 386n123, 410, 413n59, 413n66, 435n6, 435n7, 435n8 Collins, “Shano” 102 Columbia Giants, Chicago 271–272 Columbia Park, Philadelphia 181 Columbia University in the City of New York 102, 196, 234, 257, 299, 310, 351 Columbus, OH 125, 390 Columbus Solons, AA (1889–1891) 28, 229, 254 Comiskey, Charles 75–76, 79, 100, 102, 113, 175–176, 178–181, 185– 186, 188–190, 194, 227–228, 246, 272, 280, 285, 322–323, 386 Comiskey, “Honest” John 178 Comiskey, J.L. 322 Comiskey Park, Chicago 132, 189, 272 Coney Island, NY 24, 49, 82, 89, 92, 119, 120, 129, 196, 207, 238, 394n14

Coney Island Athletic Club 119 Confederate States of America 100, 173 Conlan, Jocko 382 Conlin, Peter 243 Conn, Billy 390 Connaught Lad 87 Conneff, Tom 24–25, 45, 245, 249, 312, 327–328, 359, 396n108 Connery, J.J. 25, 396n113 Connolly, Harold 383 Connolly, James B. 48, 116, 286, 329– 332, 338, 348, 357, 360–361, 373, 430n123 Connolly, Thomas H. 227, 231 Connor, Jim 108 Connor, Roger 57, 172, 246, 255 Connors, Jimmy 381 Connorton, Luke J. 168–169 Conway, Bill 57 Conway, Dick 57 Conway, Jack 134 Conway, “Pay Jay” 49–50, 314, 338, 340, 368, 372, 388 Cook, Edward 313 Cooney, Gerry 389–390 Cooney, James Lawrence 351–352 Cooney, Jimmy, Jr. 386 Cooper, Sir Astley 5 Cooperstown, NY 53, 100, 258, 321 Corbett, Eleanor Blanche Mary 43 Corbett, James J. 80, 120–121, 136, 193, 205–206, 216, 243–247, 268–270, 304, 306, 318, 352 Corbett, Joe 216, 224, 261 Corbett, Patrick 245, 246 Corcoran, Larry 67 Corcoran, Tommy 57, 279 Cork, Ireland 16, 23, 25–27, 29, 33, 38, 42, 128, 279, 305, 327, 341 Cork GFC, New York 141, 302 Costello, Billy 134 Costello, Paul 344–345, 377–378 Coughlin, Bill 57 Coughlin, Natalie 381 Covington, Kentucky 100 Crane, Ichabod 181 Cranston, RI 256 Craver, William 98 Creahan, John 42, 105 Creedmore, NC 324 Cregan, John Francis 312, 332, 428n245 Cregan, Michael, “The Lightning Cop” 249 Cribb, Tom 395n36, 414n150 cricket 51–52, 149, 162, 177, 194, 237, 258, 290, 293, 305, 319–320, 322–323; Ireland cricket tour 1879 324, 333, 348, 428n23, 430n114, 430n148, 433n144 Criqui, Eugene 390 Croker, Richard, “Boss” 91, 93, 114, 124, 370 Cronan, Thomas 333 Cronin, Jack 123 Cronin, Joe 382, 386, 435n7 Crossland, Peter 325 Cuba 27–28, 286, 318, 329, 352 Cuban-American Jockey Club 101 Cullen, J.J. 348, 396n113 Curley, James M. 116, 127

Index

455

Curran, Thomas 45 Curtis, Alfred H. 357 Curtis, Ann 434n186 Curtis, Patrick 45 Curtiss, Julian W. 368 Cusack, Stephen 227 cycling 194, 249, 332

Denver Athletic Club, Denver, CO 304 Derry, Ireland 341 Desborough, William H Grenfell, Lord 340 Detroit, MI 40, 67, 71, 179 Detroit Athletic Club 354–355 Detroit Tigers, AL (1901–present) 29, 77, 99, 116, 184, 187, 197, 231, 235, 280, 386 Detroit Wolverines, NL (1881–1888) 29, 175, 277 de Valera, Eamon 279 Devery, Bill 93, 129, 187, 370 Devitt, Reverend Edward I. 261 Devlin, Art 146–147, 231, 261 Devlin, Jim 58, 98–100, 254, 402n115 Devlin, Joseph, MP 338 Devore, Josh 147 Devoy, John 106–110, 128, 295, 340– 342 Devyr, Thomas 97 Dewey, Admiral George 341 Dibble, Robert 377 Dickens, Charles 15 Dineen, Bill 57, 150 Dineen, Maurice 46 Dion, Joseph 42 Dix, John Alden 196, 201 Dixon, George 191–192, 269, 414n150 Doheny, Ed 210–211, 226 Dolan, Cozy 282 Dolan, Larry 386 Dolan, Tom (baseball) 146 Dolan, Tom (swimmer) 381 Dominican Republic 27 Donahoe, Patrick 110 Donahue, John, “Jiggs” 75–76 Donahue, Michael J., “Iron Mike” 351 Donahue, Tim 99 Donaldson, John 166 Donegal, Ireland 31, 35, 106, 320, 341, 428–429n34 Donegal (Celtics) FC 292 Donlin, “Turkey” Mike 70–71, 113, 136, 146, 207, 216–217, 282, 386 Donnelly, Jim 281 Donnelly, Peter 292 Donoghue, Joe (ice skater) 144, 327 Donohue, Charles D. 169 Donovan, Daniel 86, 243 Donovan, Edward, “Piper” 69, 327, 360, 429n103; “Mr. Dolan” incident 358–359 Donovan, Jemmy 61 Donovan, Landon 381 Donovan, Pat 313 Donovan, Patsy 28, 28, 180, 382, 412n22 Donovan, “Professor” Mike J. 32, 167, 244, 247–248 Donovan, Tom 58 Donovan, “Wild” Bill 73, 184, 235, 386 Donovan, William, “Pooch” 48, 352–354, 356, 358, 429n103 Dooin, Charles, “Red” 183 Dooling, Peter J. 169 Dorgan, Dick 193 Dorgan, John L., “Ike” 193 Dorgan, Mike 75, 172

Dahlen, Bill 226, 282 Dalacassians GFC, Chicago 142 Daley, Arthur 26, 28, 267, 382–384 Daley, Doctor J.C. 325 Dallas, Texas 234 Daly, Charles 351 Daly (Daley), “Captain” James C. 23–24, 63, 106, 218, 251, 316–317 Daly, John (athlete) 273 Daly, John (golfer) 381 Daly, John J. 109, 297 Daly, Marcus 91–92 Daly, Maurice 42 Daly, Michael J. 122 Daly, Peter 47 Daly, Thomas B. 142 Daly, Tom 319, 320 Dalys HC, Brooklyn ( John Daly AC) 294, 303, 309 Damon, Monsieur 39 Daniels, C.F. 161 Danish American Athletic Club, Chicago 310 Darby Park, Baltimore 317 Dargan, Andrew J. 168 Darrin, Harry 327 Dauvray, Helen 173 Davis, Bill 31, 134, 397n178 Davis, E. 327 Davis, George 57, 254 Davis, James, “Jumbo” 59 Davis, Jessie see Vera Stanwood Davis Cup 252, 344 Davitt GFC, Chicago 161–162 Dawson, Wad 344 Day, John B. 255 Dayton, OH 108 Dead Rabbits Gang 35, 36, 145 Deadball Era 28, 183, 413n74 de Coubertin, Pierre 198–199, 328, 337, 340, 343, 348, 374 Deery, John 42 Delahanty, Ed 1–2, 51, 71–72, 99– 100, 291, 435n8 Delaney, Martin A. 356 Delaney, Jim 383 Delany, Frederick Joseph 199 Democratic Party 2, 10, 18, 109–113, 115–116, 118, 121–125, 127, 148, 151, 157, 159, 276, 388; Tammany Hall (Society of St. Tammany) 36, 64, 92–94, 104, 109–111, 113–115, 117, 122, 124, 126–129, 168, 170–171, 187, 251–252, 366–367; Young Men’s Democratic Club, Boston 291 Dempsey, Clint 381 Dempsey, Jack, “Nonpareil” 33, 166, 191, 221, 246 Dempsey, Joseph F. 377–378 Dempsey, William, “Jack” 193–194, 202, 390, 408n182, 411n85 Dempsey-Firpo, 1923 193, 411n85 Denver, CO 208, 290, 304, 321

456 Dorgan, Tad 193 Doubleday, Abner 53, 306, 321–322, 395n34 Dougherty, Pat 435n6 Dowd, Tommy 57, 261, 421n185 Dowling, Frank L. 171 Dowling, Victor J. 168, 340 “Downtowns” gang (Troy) 54 Doyle, “Dirty” Jack 28–29, 100, 184, 200, 224–226, 231–232, 285, 412n22 Doyle, Jack (gambler) 101 Doyle, Joseph J. 99, 177 Doyle, Larry 147 Dreyfuss, Barney 79, 189, 202, 211 Driscoll, Denny 57 Driscoll, Paddy 351 Drogheda, Ireland 110 Drum, Joseph 261 Duane, “Dutch” Charlie 117 Dublin, Ireland 5, 27, 41, 62, 89, 94, 105, 128, 148, 193, 248, 307, 319– 320, 322–325, 327, 341, 384, 435n10; Dublin Metropolitan Police Annual Games 360 Dubuque, IA 178 Dubuque Rabbits 178 Dubuque Shamrocks 425n38 Duffey, Arthur Francis 275, 306, 364–365, 367, 369, 384 Duffy, Ed 27, 97, 100 Duffy, Hugh 76, 150, 183, 210, 256, 277, 282–283, 354, 435n6, 435n8 Duffy, James 243 Duffy, James (golfer) 396n127 Dugan, Joe 261 Duluth, MN 377 Dundee, Johnny 266 Dunfee, Joseph 243 Dunn, Jack 231 Dunn, Jere 81, 89–90, 93, 95, 113, 135–136, 166–167, 191, 219–221, 239, 371 Dunne (or Dunn), James, “Bulldozer Jim” 31, 81, 118, 120, 134, 215–216, 219, 305–306, 397n178 Dunne, William 49 Dussell, George 93 Dwyer, Frank 116, 197–198, 270 Dwyer, John J. 33, 55–56 Dwyer, Johnny 318 Dwyer, Michael 95 Dwyer, Philip 157 Dwyer, William, “Big Bill” 386 Dwyer Brothers 90–91, 93–95, 119; Michael 95; Philip 157 Eagan, Eddie 344 Eagan, William, “Bad Bill” 207–208 East Brookfield, MA 57–78 East Liverpool, OH 74 Easter Rising 128 Eastern League (EL) 58, 76, 161, 182–183, 199–201, 256, 259 Eastern Park, Brooklyn, NY 177 Eastern Railroad 46 Eastern Soccer League (I) 292 Ebbets, Charles H. 123, 177, 202, 211 Ebbets, Harry 193 Ebbets Field 188, 385 Edgren, Robert W. 335 Edward VII 114, 335–336

Index Egan, Dick 261 Egan, Henry Chandler 252 Egan, Mike 306 Egypt 319 Eke, John 313 Elberfeld, Kid 233 Elberfield, Norman 231 Elizabethport, NJ 357 Elks of North America 116, 155, 272 Ella, Mark 275 Ellard, “Colonel” George B. 176–177, 349 Eller, John 313, 366 Elliot, Charles W. 350 Elliott, Jim 31–32, 55, 81, 90, 113, 118, 134–135, 137–138, 166, 191, 219–221, 239 Ellis, Albert 251 Elysian Fields 51 Embro, Ontario 192 Emeralds GFC, New York 301 Emmet, Robert 111 Emmet, Thomas 105 Emmett GFC, Chicago 106, 289 Emmetts GFC, Buffalo 309 Emmetts GFC, Philadelphia 294, 296 Emmetts HC, Lynn 48 Emslie, Bob 76 England 5–8, 12–14, 16, 18, 22, 31– 32, 36, 39, 45, 51, 55–57, 89, 105, 109, 114, 163–164, 199, 213, 216– 217, 237, 239–242, 257–258, 317, 319- 322, 324–327, 339–340, 348, 359, 375–376, 378–379, 400n241 England sporting representative teams 294, 327–328, 333–334, 342, 346, 430n114, 430n148 Englewood, NJ 253 English, Peter 251 English Pilgrims 194, 293 Ennis, John 23, 49, 143–144, 326 Epsom Derby 89, 114 Erie, PA 29, 44, 70 Esquire magazine 382 Evans, Hiram Wesley 284 Everett, James 305 Evers, Johnny 58, 79, 127, 183, 187, 190, 211, 281–282, 435n6 Ewry, Ray 337, 374, 427n217 Exposition Building, Chicago 43 Eyster, Reverend C.M. 170 Fagan, Bill 58 Fairfax, VA 32 Fairfield University, CT 261 fans, cranks, spectators 2–3, 6–7, 14, 17, 19, 21–22, 24, 29, 32, 36–37, 40, 42–43, 45, 47, 51, 53, 55–56, 59, 65, 68, 74, 78–79, 96–97, 101–102, 109, 112, 120, 122–125, 128–156, 161, 163–167, 171, 173– 174, 180, 182, 186, 188, 190, 195, 198, 222, 225, 228, 230–233, 235, 238–239, 245, 252, 255, 258, 262–263, 267, 271–272, 278–281, 289, 293–294, 301–302, 304, 310–311, 316–317, 319–321, 325– 326, 331, 335, 337, 339, 352, 370–371, 384, 388, 414n185, 431n176; riots 3, 14, 18, 81, 85, 97,

117, 132, 140–147, 152, 161, 169, 225, 228, 229, 234, 264, 301, 303, 338, 370, 385 Far and Away (1992) 422n51 Farrell, Charles, “Duke” 224 Farrell, Frank 92–93, 99, 127, 171, 186, 187, 201 Farrell, Jack 402n115 Farrell, James T. 101, 132, 147 Farrell, Steve 327, 356, 359 Federal League (FL) 161, 172, 177, 183, 187, 190, 201–202, 230, 413n79, 415n242 Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) 194 Feeney, Chub 386 Feldman, Dora 93 Felsch, Oscar, “Happy” 102, 190 Fenian Base Ball Club, New Orleans 290 Fenians 105–106, 289; raids of Canada 105 Fenians GFC, Chicago 274 Ferguson, Bob 255 Ferrell, Rick 435n11 Ferris, Dan 68, 276, 350, 387, 423n137, 435n46 Fichtburg, MA 183 Fielding, Father James K. 297, 310 Fields, Mamie (or Minnie) 70, 207, 217 Fillmore, Millard 112 Finn, Oscar 45 Finnell, Michael 218, 221 Fish, Charles Everett 354 Fitzgerald, F. Scott 355 Fitzgerald, France 435n12 Fitzgerald, John Francis, “Honey Fitz” 124–127, 125, 148, 150–152, 154, 156, 185; “Toodles Scandal” 125 Fitzgibbon, James 45 Fitzpatrick, John (New Orleans) 120, 167 Fitzpatrick, John H., “Jack” 360 Fitzpatrick, Keene 355–356 Fitzpatrick, Sam 192, 269–270 Fitzpatrick, William F. 89 Fitzsimmons, Bob 33, 100, 129, 193, 216, 422n39 Flanagan, Ed 279 Flanagan, James 377 Flanagan, John 50, 107, 109, 192, 249–250, 286, 328, 332, 335, 341–342, 363, 366, 379, 383–384 Flanagan, Tom 192–193, 369, 375– 376, 424n235 Fleischer, Nathanial 8, 15, 21, 193 Flint, Frank, “Silver” 66–67 Flood, John 115 Flood, “Val” 248, 420n91 Florida and Southern Railroad 148 Flynn, “Fireman” Jim 193, 422n53 Flynn, Jack 138 Flynn, Jocko 67 Flynn, Patrick J. 26, 344 Flynn, T.J. 251, 252 Flynn, Timothy 105 Fogarty, James 67–68, 173, 256, 261, 319, 320 Foley, Charles, “Curry” 30 Foley, J.B., “Tom” 109

Index Foley, Michael (billiards) 40, 42 Foley, Capt. Michael 63 Foley, Peter, “Pat” 48 Foley, Tom (baseball) 412n5 Foley, Tom (billiards and Chicago White Stockings founder) 10, 41– 42, 93, 105, 113, 176 Foley, William 305–306 football, American rules 1- 3, 48, 195, 260–262, 298–300, 307, 317, 350–357, 363, 384, 386, 426n118, 428n23, 435n12; College Football Hall of Fame 351 football, association (soccer) 1, 45, 48, 142–144, 152, 194–195, 260, 290, 292–295, 302, 307, 311, 324, 332, 347–348, 381, 389, 415n222, 425n53, 427n198, 428n23, 430n148 football, rugby union rules 426n181 Ford, Henry 75, 189 Ford, Tim 396n127 Ford, Whitey 382 Fordham University, New York 261, 375 Fort Sumter, SC 31 Fort Wayne, IN 56, 196 Fort Wayne Kekiongas, NA (1871) 56 Fort Wayne Shamrocks Baseball Club 291 Foster, Andrew, “Rube” 272, 387 Foster, George G. 15 Foster’s Island 32 Fourth Avenue Tunnel Gang 114 Fowler, Hazel 372 Fox, Richard Kyle 86, 139–140, 164, 195, 390 Foxhunters Hurlingham Polo Team 332, 346 Foxx, Jimmie 402n114, 435n7, 435n11 Framingham, MA 354 France 101, 105, 159, 191, 318–319, 324, 332, 334, 363, 401n18; Foreign Legion 129 Franco, General Francisco 415n191 Franco-Prussian War 129 Frank, Sidney S. 123 Frawley, James J. 171, 196 Frawley’s Act/Law 11, 171, 196, 201 Frazee, Harry 187 Freedman, Andrew 123, 124, 202 Freeman, Cathy 275 Freeman, James 215 freemasons 90, 284 Fremantle, Western Australia 110 French Billiards Game see Carom Fresno, CA 234 Fruin, Jeremiah 254 Fry, C.B. 327 Fulljames, George 33, 419n40 Fulton, Fred 202 Fulton, Reverend Robert 261 Fulton Street Ferry 52, 122 Furey, James 311 Furey, Robert, “Bob” 215 Furey, Thomas 311, 386 Furey Brothers 311, 387; James 311; Thomas 311, 386 Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) 7, 8, 107, 162, 294, 307–308; “Big Four” (Cork, Kerry, Kildare and

Kilkenny) 296–297; football, Gaelic 46, 49, 108, 128, 141–142, 169, 273–274, 288–289, 294– 295, 298–304, 307, 339, 348– 349, 360, 428n27; Gaelic Athletic Association of America 295, 297; Gaelic Athletic Association of the U.S. 297; Gaelic games 7, 45, 49, 106, 128, 141, 163, 295–297, 306– 308, 384, 423n121, 431n11; “Gaelic Invasion,” 1888 25, 47, 294, 299, 304, 325; hurling 25, 46–49, 141– 142, 273–274, 289–290, 294– 300, 302–304, 307–310, 348, 370, 427n197, 428n27; Illinois Gaelic Athletic Association 48, 162, 289, 297, 315; New York GAA 297, 306; women participation in 370– 371, 434n178 Gaelic League of New York 297 Gaelic Park, Chicago 142, 161, 289, 297, 304, 310, 424n19 Gaelic Park, San Francisco 289 Gaelic Society, New York 7, 25, 109, 294, 309; GFC 299, 303, 425n83 Gaffney, “Honest” John 76, 277 Gaffney, James E. 122, 126–127, 129, 151, 171, 187 Gallagher, Charley 31, 134 Gallagher, Charlie 318 Gallagher, Thomas J. 42 Gallico, Paul 390 Galligan, John 279 Gallivan, James A. 127 Galvin, James Pud 158 Galway, Ireland 30, 42, 116, 129, 196, 341, 395n36, 400n236 Galway GFC, New York 294 gambling 1–3, 7, 10–11, 21–22, 34, 40, 58, 62, 79, 83–103, 108, 112, 115, 117–121, 127, 131–133, 143–145, 148, 157–159, 171, 177, 185, 189, 191, 214, 218, 220, 238, 240, 244, 259, 271, 303, 369, 385; pool 94, 97–98, 101, 157, 191; poolrooms and halls 92, 101–102 Gandil, Chick 185 Gangs of New York: Bill, “The Butcher” 22 Gannon, John J. 357–358 Gardner, “Awful” 22 Gardner, George 191 Garno, Benjamin 105 Garrells, John 430n161 Garryowens GFC, New York 294, 301, 302 Gashouse Gang 63, 114 Gavit, Daniel E. 42 Gaynor, Tom 6 Gaynor, William J. 118 Geary, Michael 42, 325 General Sarsfield 291 General Slocum 238 Geneva, NY 116 Gentleman Jack 136, 246–247 Geoghegan, Owen, “Owney” 32, 38–39, 63–65, 85–86, 114–115, 134, 137–139, 164, 206–207, 263– 264 George V 323 Georgetown University, Washington, DC 146, 260–261, 364

457 German Americans 45, 57–58, 77, 83, 106, 111, 150, 160, 170, 267, 280, 285, 290–292, 410n126; baseball rivalry with 8–9, 280– 282, 323–324, 382 Germany 64, 128, 324, 334, 344, 430n148 Gerrity, John 297 Gifford, Captain 165 Gifford, James H. 44 Gilks, Bob 29 Gill, D. 47 Gillespie, Pete 57 Gillis, Simon 383 Gilmore, Patrick Sarsfield 196 Gilmore’s Garden 43, 143, 196, 326 Glarner, Andrew 359 Glasgow, Scotland 389, 402n115 Glasgow Celtic FC 11, 260, 311 Glasgow Rangers FC (1872–2012) 432n56 Glauer, George 42 Gleason, Bill 227–228 Gleason, Booby 422n53 Gleason, Michael D. 377 Gleason, William, “Kid” 102, 184– 185, 190, 224–225, 385, 413n59 Gleason’s Gym 354 Gobler (or Dobler), John 327 Godfrey, George 268 Goerwitz, George 168 gold rushes 21, 39, 115, 194, 288 Goldstein, Abe 390 Goldthwaite, William 40–41 golf 169, 170, 186, 211–213, 246, 252–253, 267, 332, 346, 361–362, 381 Goodrich, Jimmy 390 Goolagong, Evonne 275 Gore, George 66 Gorman, Jeremiah 169–170 Gorman, Jim 333 Goss, Joe 33, 55–56, 135, 139, 166, 266, 393n32 Gotham Base Ball Club 51 Gowdy, Hank 125, 127 Grace, W.G. 363 Grace, William R. 119, 170 Grady, Abe 389 Grand Central Hotel, New York 75 Grand Rapids, MI 290 Graney, Jack 284 Grant, Charlie, “Chief Tokahoma” 271–272 Grant, Ulysses S. 88, 105 Graves, Abner 321 Gravesend, Long Island 91, 119–120 Great Kills, NY 33, 419n40 The Great White Hype (1996) 390 Greater New York Irish Athletic Association see Irish American Athletic Club (III) Greece 240, 329–331, 333 Greeley, Reverend Clarence 167 Green Island, NY 33 Green Mountain, VT 250 Greene, John P. 90 Greenwood, Bill 228 Gregory, Gilbert 342 Griffin, James H. 42 Griffith, Clark 65, 151, 233 Griffith-Joyner, Florence 329

458 Guerin, Webster 93 Gulick, Luther 433n111 Gullick, John C. 328 Gutenberg, NJ 92 Guyon, George 327 Haas, Charles 142 Hagen, Walter 253, 267, 422n59 Hague, Sam 325 Halcyon Hall, Millbrook, NY 248 Halcyon Hall, New York 45 Hall, George 98 hall of fame 29, 57–58, 74, 100, 173, 180, 183, 224, 234, 258–259, 261, 382–383 Hallen, Bob 368 Halligan, Jocko 223 Hallinan, Jimmy 75 Halpin, Joe 363 Halpin, Matt 68, 335–338, 340, 367–368, 373–374 Halswelle, Wyndham 337 Hamilton, Billy 56, 210 Hamilton, George W. 360 Hammerstein Case 168 Hammond, Ned 263, 394 Hammond, Vincent 17 Hammond, IN 290 Hanlon, Ned 29, 57, 71, 73, 150, 173–175, 174, 177, 179–180, 184, 222, 224, 226, 246, 319, 335 Hannegan, Robert E. 386 Harcourt, Sir William Vernon 319 Harding, Tonya 389 Harlem, New York 339 Harlem Clippers 259 Harlem Globetrotters 390 Harmsworth Trophy 346 Harper, James 406n72 Harper, Jesse 262 Harpers Ferry, Virginia 19 Harriman, Charles A. 326 Harrington, William, “Old Boss” 218 Harris, Dooney 32, 397n178 Harrisburg, PA 78, 203 Harrison, Carter Henry, Sr. 93 Harrison, William H. 321 Harrison, NJ 161, 202, 292 Hart, James A. 187, 227 Hart, Marvin 270 Hartford, CT 57, 290 Hartnett, Gabby 382 Hart’s Island, Long Island 14, 17 Harvard University 11, 110, 183, 248, 256, 258, 266, 272, 291, 328–329, 350–352, 354, 356, 373, 375, 377, 428n23, 432n56 Haskell, Jim 228 Haughton, Mr. [Percy] 285 Havana, Cuba 101, 185, 270, 272 Haverstraw, NY 327 Hawley, Pink 232 Hawthorne, Adam D. 107 Hayes, John 136, 149, 286, 301, 337– 340, 367, 367, 369–370 Healy, Ed 351 Healy, John 319–320 Hearst, William Randolph 128; Independence League 118 Heenan, John Carmel 23, 31, 54–55, 54, 58, 80, 85, 204–205, 213, 218, 264, 265, 317–318

Index Hemel Hempstead, England 5 Hempstead, Harry 188 Hennessy, “Clipper” 115 Herbert, Charles 374 Herbert, Harry 278 Herbert, T.C. 109 Hernon, Andy T. 192 Herrmann, August 187 Hertford, England 6 Hess, Joe 55 Heydler, John 179 Hibernians FC, Edinburgh 11, 260, 311 Hicken, Harry 85, 86, 134, 263 Hickman, Charley 281 Highland Lake Grove, MA 47, 140 Hildebrand, George 185 Hill, Harry 138, 219 Hill, John Wesley 159 Hill School, Pottstown, PA 366 Hines, Paul 99 Hinkey, Frank 301, 353 Hite, Mabel 70, 70, 217 Hjertberg, Ernest 169, 313 Hoboken, NJ 51, 87, 97, 135–136, 205, 288 Hogan, Ernest 422n84 Hogan, James J. 351–352 Hogan, “Patsy” 138 Holler, Ed 183 Holloway, John 26, 273–274 Holmes, Ducky 202 Holmes, Frank LeRoy 289, 315 Holmes, Larry 389–391 Holmes, Tommy 435n7 Holyoke, MA 28, 57, 74, 290 Holyoke Shamrocks (IL, NA) 255, 291 Hone, Philip 164 Hopper, Jack 33 Horan, F.S. 354 Horgan, Denis 27, 50, 109, 222, 328, 342 horse racing 51, 84, 88–89, 91–92, 94, 100, 102–103, 108, 119, 144, 157, 190; Epsom Derby 89, 114; Kentucky Derby 189, 220 Horton, George S. 120 Horton, Judge Oliver H. 162 Horton Law/Act 120–122, 171, 201, 243 Hot Springs, AR 100, 138, 271, 272 Hotel Astor, New York 312, 333, 343 Howse, William 325–326 Hudlin, Reginald 390 Huggins, Miller 183–184, 290 Hughes, John, “The Lepper” 23, 43, 326 Hulbert, William 75, 97–99, 101, 159–160, 171–173, 176, 198 Hungary 334 Hunter, John R. 88 Huntingdon, Reverend William R. 291 Huntington Avenue Grounds, Boston 151 Hurley, Dan 351 Hurley, Dick 191 Hurley, Martin J. 296 Hurst, Tim 201, 232–234, 257, 369 Hyer, Jacob 15–16

Hyer, Tom 16, 19–22, 115, 117, 133, 165, 218, 239, 264–265, 269 Hyman, Harry 313 Hynes, Thomas 368 ice hockey 2, 288, 307, 310, 386, 427n227 Illinois Athletic Club, Chicago 310 Illinois-Indiana-Iowa League 425n38 Inglewood Race Track, San Francisco 49 Innisfails GFC, Chicago 127, 162, 274 Intercollegiate Association of Amateur Athletes of America (IAAAA) 365 International Association 28, 290 International Boxing Hall of Fame 21, 193 International Hockey League 427n227 International Law and Order League 167 International League 28–29, 291 International Olympic Committee (IOC) 198, 329, 343, 348, 373, 430n140, 431n11 Interstate League 177 Ireland 6, 10, 25, 27, 29–30, 34, 39– 43, 50, 56–57, 60, 66, 69, 89, 97, 104–107, 110, 127–128, 132, 136, 141, 176, 192, 227, 240, 242–243, 249, 258, 261, 263, 266–267, 273, 279–280, 283, 286–287, 295– 297, 299–301, 305–309, 319–320, 322–324, 327–329, 332, 334, 340, 342–343, 348, 359, 366, 370, 382, 386, 400n241, 401n18, 405–406n5, 423n181, 426n110, 427n180, 427n203, 430n148, 430n151; Irish athletic exodus 27; migration to the U.S. 10, 15, 19, 23, 25–27, 104, 111, 114, 264, 279, 288, 308, 319 Irish Amateur Athletics Association (IAAA) 338, 429n106 Irish American Athletic Club (Association), Boston 47–48, 292, 315 Irish American Athletic Club (Association), Chicago 46, 48, 310, 315 Irish American Athletic Club, New York (I) 23, 44–45, 312, 398n111 Irish American Athletic Club, New York (II) 45–46, 109, 141, 292, 294, 300–301, 312, 425n53 Irish American Athletic Club, New York (III) 2–3, 9, 25- 27, 48, 68, 106, 127–128, 141, 168–170, 249, 272–273, 276, 295–297, 303, 310–315, 332–335, 338, 340, 343, 354, 356, 363, 366–369, 372– 373, 383–385, 387–388 Irish American Athletic Club, San Francisco 46, 48–49, 359 Irish American Athletic Clubs: Buffalo, New York 49; Jersey City, NJ 49; Kansas City, MO 49; Pittsburgh 49; Providence, RI 49; St. Louis 49, 293; Wilmington, DE 49 Irish American Athletic Union of Boston 47, 127, 289 Irish American identity 3, 18, 56, 61, 80, 109, 146, 163, 260–270, 273–

Index 275, 277, 279–287, 307–309, 312, 314–315, 321, 329, 334, 339, 389; and American patriotism 18, 80, 199, 268, 273, 286–287, 318, 321, 327–329, 333, 336 Irish American Rifle Club 290 Irish Athletic Club of Boston (IACB) 7, 46–47, 110, 127, 238, 288–289, 297 Irish Canadian (or Canadian Irish) Athletic Club (Association) 192, 370, 375, 424n235 Irish Counties Association 141 Irish Counties Athletics Union 289, 295–296 Irish famine (1848–1852) 8, 12, 15, 41, 53, 57–58, 105, 278, 288, 389; famine relief 264 Irish Hurling and Football Club, New York 288 Irish National Alliance of Greater New York 109 Irish Nationalists AC (St. Louis, MO) 199 Irish “Open” Tennis Championship 370 Irish Park, Wakefield, Yonkers, New York 289, 296 Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) 128, 406n30 Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) 106 Irish Volunteers 108, 169, 249, 339, 341; Gaelic football team 295, 304 Irish “Whales” 26, 68, 250, 332, 344, 383 The Iron Major (1943) 351 Irving, Jimmy 115 Irving Hall Democracy 40, 117 Ishmaelo, Yousouf, “The Terrible Turk” 193 Italy 159, 319, 324, 334, 401n18 Ives Pool Bill of 1887 94, 157 Jack Sheehan’s Gym, Boston 192 Jackson, Charles N. 375 Jackson, Peter 192, 245–246, 268, 269–270, 422n66 Jackson, “Shoeless” Joe 101–102 James, LeBron 421n14 James, Bill 71–72, 253–254, 402n115 James E. Sullivan Award 434n186 Janssen, Frederick 358 Japan 27, 276, 324 Jay Cooke Bank 42 Jennings, Harry 36 Jennings, Hughie 29, 57, 76–77, 183–184, 189, 223, 224–225, 235, 280, 322, 386, 413n59, 435n6 Jennings, Jack 36, 38 Jennings, Lynn 383 Jerome, Leonard 88 Jerome, William Travers 92 Jewish Americans 41, 92, 160, 176, 267, 279, 388 John Daly Athletic Club 309 John Mitchell GFC, Jersey City, NJ 294 Johnson, Ban 92, 99, 100, 123, 126, 150, 154, 179–187, 186, 203, 230– 234, 259, 272, 284, 394n43 Johnson, Ben 364

Johnson, Jack 12, 101, 121, 192–193, 197, 200–201, 267, 269–270 Johnson, Joseph, Jr. 201 Johnson, Russell 378 Johnston, E.W. 316 Johnstone, James E. 227 Joliet, IL 290 Jones, Bob 252 Jones, Davy 77 Jones, Mary Harris 38 Jones Wood Coliseum/Stadium, New York 44, 45, 105, 106, 108, 114, 289, 316, 331 Joyce, Bill 8 Joyce, James 287, 396n108 Joyce, John 389 Joyce, John J. (athlete) 249, 367–369, 373 Joyce, Michael see O’Neill, Michael Justice, George 243 Kansas City, MO 114, 147, 178–179, 284 Kansas City Athletic Club, Kansas City, MO 356 Kansas City Cowboys, AA (1888– 1889) 320 Kansas City Cowboys, UA (1884) 178 Kansas City Monarchs (Negro Leagues) 272 Kansas City Packers, FL (1914–15) 201 Kavanagh, Dudley 9, 40–42, 238, 325 Keane, J.C. 251 Keane, John 42 Keaney, Matthew 125 Kearney, Patrick 243 Kearns, Jack, “Doc” 193 Kearns, Michael 303 Keating, William J. 249 Keefe, Clara 173 Keefe, Tim 57, 74, 76, 172–174, 228, 246, 255, 412n107 Keefe and Becannon 173 Keegan, Louis 306 Keeler, Willie 223, 224–225, 258, 386, 435n6, 435n7 Keenan, John 127, 148, 151–156 Kelley, Florence 38 Kelley, J. Levi 147 Kelley, Joe 57, 70, 123, 223, 224, 231 Kelley, John (actor) 149 Kelly, Andy 163–164 Kelly, Dan 335, 339, 342 Kelly, Grace 380 Kelly, “Honest” John (baseball/boxing referee) 136 Kelly, “Honest” John (politician) 117–118 Kelly, J.W. 136 Kelly, John B., “Jack” 344–346, 376–380 Kelly, John Edward see Dempsey, Jack, “Nonpareil” Kelly, Mike, “King” 3, 42, 58–59, 63, 65–67, 66, 71–74, 136, 146– 148, 173–174, 189, 227–229, 277– 278, 291, 401n56, 402n115; Play Ball 58, 59, 228; Slide, Kelly, Slide! 59, 136

459 Kelly, Paddy 191 Kelly, Pat 114 Kelly, Thomas B. 227 Kennedy, Bill 396n127 Kennedy, James C. 200 Kennedy, John F. 124, 253 Kennedy, Joseph P. 187 Kennedy, Michael 109 Kennedy, Robert F. 253 Kennedy, Ted 125, 127 Kennedy, Walter 386 Kenny, Charles E. 373 Kenrick, Pat 167 Kensett, George 18, 263, 394n14 Kent County, MD 19 Kentfield, Edwin 39 Kentucky Derby 189, 220 Kerr, William 175 Kerrigan, Herbert 333 Kerrigan, Nancy 389 Kerry, Ireland 9, 26, 28, 30, 42, 78, 80, 255, 258, 269; county Gaelic football team 297, 313, 327, 351 Kerry GFC, New York 6, 141, 294, 296, 303–304 Kerry Men’s Association 295, 304 Kerry Patch, Sportsman’s Park 146 Kiely, Thomas Francis 27, 273–274, 338, 427n217 Kieran, John F. 171, 253 Kiernan, J.J. 25 Kilbane, Johnny 390 Kildare, Ireland 6, 24, 33, 320; county Gaelic football team 307 Kildare GFC, New York 295–296, 303 Kilkenny, Ireland 39, 71, 276, 323n34, 428; county Gaelic football team 297 Kilkenny GFC, New York 141, 295– 296, 307, 339 Killeen, Henry 58 Killeen, John 154 Killefer Brothers 57 Killilea, Henry 122, 126, 180, 181, 185, 187, 189 Killilea, Matthew 180, 185 Killoran, Jim 55 Killoran, John 251 Kilpatrick, Charles H. 354, 400n237 Kilrain, Jake 32, 47, 119–120, 135– 136, 167, 191, 195, 242, 249 King, Don 391 King, Tom 31, 55, 317 Kings County Athletic Club see the Irish American Athletic Club, New York (I) Kingstown, Ireland 327 Kinney, Ralph 351 Kiviat, Abel 312–313 Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, New York 51, 194 Knights of Columbus 125, 284 Knights of Columbus Athletic Clubs 290, 310 Knights of the Red Branch Hall, Mission Street, San Francisco 49 Know-Nothings see Native American Party/American Party Koelsch, William 280–281 Kolehmainen, Hannes 313 Konetchy, Ed 258

460 Kramer, Louis 78 Kronk’s Gym 354 Krug, Marty 283 Ku Klux Klan 60, 280–281, 284, 388 Kuenster, John 382 Lac-Beupont, Quebec 186 lacrosse 186, 300, 324 Lacy’s stud, Newmarket, England 93 Lake Forest College, IL 363 Lake Maranacook, ME 108 Lakeville, CA 32 Lamhfada, Lugaidh (Lugee the Longhanded) 297 Landis, Kenesaw Mountain 101 Langan, Jack 6 Langtry, Lilly 319 Lannin, Joseph 154–155, 186, 186– 187, 284 Lansdowne Road, Dublin 320 Laois, Ireland 32, 199, 215, 305 Lardner, Ring 323 Larkin, Frank, “Terry” 208–209, 400n236 Larkin, Matt 211 Las Vegas, NM 193 Laurel Hill Association 385 Lavigne, “Kid” 168, 192 Law and Order Society 161, 168 Lawlor, John 305, 427n180 Lawlor, Mike 58 Lawrence Canoe Club 358 League Island, PA 17 League of American Wheelmen 194 Leahy, Con 26, 334, 342 Leahy, Frank 261, 384, 421n9; Frank Leahy Memorial Bowl 261 Leahy, Patrick 26 Lee, Robert E. 316 Lee, Spike 389 Lee, MA 116 Leggett, Joseph B. 144 Leland Hotel, New York 90 Lenox Athletic Club, New York 192 Lenox Oval, New York 294 Leo Military Cadets 108 Leo Naval Battalion 108 Leonard, Andy 1, 27–28, 96 Lester, Andrew 51 Levinsky, King 268 Lewis, Annie 371 Lewis, Duffy 277 Lewis, Evan 249 Lewis, Joe 390 Lewis, Ted 209–210 Lewis Law 121, 171 Lewiston, ME 183 Liberty Club of New Brunswick, NJ 52 Lilly, Chris 17–18, 132, 164 Limerick, Ireland 26, 49, 50, 192, 384 Lincoln, NE 276, 282, 325 Linehan, D. 109 Liverpool, England 16, 263, 325– 326; Park Skating Ring 325; Police Team 336, 340 Lizotte, Max L. 214 Locust Street Grounds 48 Loftus, Tom 68 Logan, James, “Logan No. 2” 89, 219

Index London, England 1, 5, 6, 16–17, 27, 32, 43–44, 50, 94, 105, 149, 192, 268, 270, 318–319, 323–328, 341, 374–378, 393n2; Agricultural Hall, Islington 43, 326; Kensal Rise 50; Stamford Bridge Stadium 50, 323, 364; Wimbledon 344, 370 London Athletic Club 24, 327–328, 354, 375 London Irish Rugby Football Club 311 London Rules 6, 17, 33, 397n197 London Tecumsehs (IA) 28 Lonergan, Thomas 45, 308 Long, Herman 282 Long Island City 119, 168, 169 Long Island Cricket Club 52 Long Island Railroad 249 Long Point, Canada 23 Longboat, Tom C., “Cogwagee” 192–193, 369–370, 375–376, 434n175 Longford 23, 30, 326 Los Angeles, CA 70, 256, 291, 361 Los Angeles Rams 386 lotteries 84, 101, 157 Loughran, Tommy 390 Louis, Joe 317, 319 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, 1904 199, 273 Louisiana State Lottery 167 Louisiana State University 351 Louisville, Kentucky 73, 134, 226, 236, 282–283, 341 Louisville Colonels, AA (1882–1891), NL (1892–1899) 28–29, 74, 182, 184, 229–230, 279 Louisville Grays, NL (1876–1877) 98 Louisville Jockey Club 91 Louth GFC, New York 295 Love, H.M. 256 Low, Seth 114, 118 Lowe, Bobby 282–283 Lowell, MA 30, 46, 53, 57, 104 Lucid, Con 27 Lunghi, Emilio 309, 313, 428n252 Lynch, Charles 14 Lynch, Charley 163–164 Lynch, Dickie 114 Lynch, James 41 Lynch, Joe 390 Lynch, Leigh 319 Lynch, Thomas F. 24, 45, 249, 316 Lynch, Thomas James 202–203, 231–232, 323 Lynn, MA 32, 47, 289 Lynnfield, MA 318 Lyons, Daniel 222 Lyons, Denny 73, 232 Macauley, Thomas Babbington 36 MacCabe, Joseph B. 365 Mace, “Gypsy” Jem 55, 120, 133, 166, 318, 393n32 Mack, Denny 261 Mack, “Reddy” ( Joseph McNamara) 28–29 Mack, Tim 383 MacKey, Frank 332 Macon, GA 74, 287 Macone, Harry 5–6 MacSwiney, Terence 279

Madden, Billy 81, 139, 191, 195 Madden, Pete 133 Madison Square Athletic Club, New York 201 Madison Square Garden, New York 24, 45, 63, 81, 128–129, 141, 196– 197, 200, 303, 318, 357, 369, 388 Magee, Lee (Leopold Hoernschemeyer) 267, 422n55 Magee, Sherwood, “Sherry” 75 Magnolia Base Ball Club, New York 51 Maguire, H. 366 Maguire, Pete 32 Mahan, Eddie 356 Mahan, W.F. 284 Maher, Birdie 435n12 Maher, Daniel 89 Maher, James 45 Maher, Peter 191, 248 Mahon, John J., “Sonny” 123, 126 Mahoney, Dennis 109, 218 Mahoney, James 327 Mahoney, Richard 45 Mahony, Patrick 9, 42 The Maid of Erin 86, 291 Malone, Fergy 30, 412n22 Maloney, Billy 261 Maloney, James T. 24, 316 Maloney, Matthew 26, 434n175 Manassa, CO 390 Manchester, England 322, 325 Manchester Pedestrian Company Easter Handicap 327 Maney, Vincent 189 Manhasset, Long Island 221 Manhattan Athletic Club, New York 24–25, 45, 248, 294, 325, 360; joint NYAC team 327 Manhattan College, New York 128 Manhattan Field, New York 327 Manila, Philippines 249, 341 Mann Act 270 Manning, James 319–320, 428– 429n34 Mantle, Mickey 402n114 Mara, Tim 386 Maranville, Walter, “Rabbit” 57, 74–75, 385–386 Marciano, Rocky 397n195 Mare Island, CA 21 Marley (or Mulroy), Patsey 221, 397n178 Martin Sheridan Memorial Cup, Greyhounds 385 Martinez, Dennis 402n114 Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) 430n114 Mason, A.C. 161 Maspeth, NY 368 Mathew, Father Theobald 60 Mathewson, Christy 170–171, 183, 272 Mayo, Ireland 29, 50, 344 Mayo GFC, New York 141 McAleer, James 67, 154, 183, 185–186, 229–230, 283–284 McArthur, Douglas 279 McAtee, Bub 58 McAuliffe, Jack 33, 191, 397n195 McBride, Brian 381 McBride, Dick 183

Index McCaffrey, Dominick 81, 244, 248 McCamphill, Thomas 293 McCann, Tom 21 McCarthy, Cal 192, 269 McCarthy, Jack 261, 402n115 McCarthy, Joe 28, 261, 382, 435n8 McCarthy, John 227 McCarthy, Patrick H. 49 McCarthy, Thomas F. 76, 151, 236, 282–283 McCarthy, William 25, 396n113 McCleester, John, “Country” 18, 19, 115 McClellan, William 247 McCoole (or McCool), Mike 31–32, 55, 63, 81, 113, 134, 221–222, 264– 265, 318, 397n173 McCormack, Frank, “Tip” 311, 387 McCormack, John (tenor) 433n117 McCormick, Harry, “Moose” 225 McCormick, Jim 66–67, 402n115 McCormick, Jim (manager of the McCormicks) 291 McCormick’s Hall, Chicago 251 McCourt, Frank 386 McCoy, Kid 121 McCoy, Peter 47 McCoy, Tom 17–18, 62–63, 112, 132, 163–164 McCreery, Tommy 261 McCullagh, John W. 41 McCullagh, Joseph B. 41 McDermott, John J. (athlete) 25 McDermott, John J. (golfer) 211–213, 212, 252–253 McDermott, Michael 279 McDevitt, John 42 McDonald, Charlie 33 McDonald, “King” Mike C. 92–93, 113, 191, 220 McDonald, P.J. 44 McDonald, Pat, “Babe” 26, 171, 250, 343–344, 344, 366, 383 McDonald, Stephen T., “Young” 171 McDonnell, Dr. John 48, 314–315, 363 McEnenry, Samuel D. 168 McEnroe, John 381 McEvoy, James 306 McFadden, Bernard 364–365 McFadden’s Row of Flats 312 McGann, Dennis, “Dan” 71, 123, 224, 226, 282, 322 McGarr, James, “Chippy” 229, 277 McGarr, Jim 189 McGarvey, Dan 189 McGeary, Mike 97 McGee, William John 275–276 McGill, Willie 402n115 McGillicuddy, Cornelius, “Connie Mack” 1, 57, 72, 78–79, 102, 151, 175–176, 178, 180–184, 181, 189– 190, 203, 210, 247, 259, 272–273, 281, 285, 381–382, 385–388, 413n49, 413n59, 413n77, 416n54, 435n6, 435n8 McGillicuddy, Margaret 413n55 McGillicuddy, Mary 78, 403n162 McGinley, Patrick 138–139 McGinn, Frank J. 246, 290 McGinnity, Joe 100, 123, 224, 230– 231, 282, 435n6, 435n7, 435n8

McGlory, Bill 64–65, 137, 222 McGough, John 107 McGovern, John F. 351 McGovern, “Terrible” Terry 121, 269 McGowan, Patrick 339 McGrath, Matt 26, 109, 250, 310, 313, 335, 339, 341–342, 344, 383 McGraw, John 1, 57, 63, 69–71, 76, 78, 100–102, 123, 146–147, 170– 171, 178–185, 180, 188–190, 217, 223, 224–226, 228, 230–231, 247, 258–259, 270–272, 279, 281–282, 285, 293, 322–323, 381, 386–387, 413n59, 413n77, 435n7, 435n8 McGraw, Minnie 413n55 McGraw, “Professor” John 244, 248 McGreevey, Mike, “Nuf Ced” 79, 148, 149, 151–152, 156 McGuire, James, “Deacon” 233, 254 McGunnigle, Bill 175, 177 McGurn, William 306 McGwire, Mark 381 McHale, Kevin 381 McHugh, Howie 387 McIlroy, Pat 302 McInnis, Stuffy 354, 435n6, 435n8 McKane, John Y. 119–120 McKane, Joseph 168 McKay, Alexander 6 McKean, Ed 229 McKeesport, PA 222 McKeever, Edward J. 122–123, 188 McKeever, Stephen W. 122–123, 188 McKenna, E.P. 341 McKenna, Harvey 42 McKeon, James 96 McKibben, John 51 McKnight, H.D. 159 McLain, Andrew 6 McLaughlin, Edward 42 McLaughlin, Frank 57 McLaughlin, George V. 387 McLaughlin, Hugh, “Boss” 118, 120 McLaughlin, Col. James H. 81, 251 McLaughlin, Jimmy 89 McLaughlin, Kane 97 McLaughlin, Tom 435n12 McLean, Larry 402n117 McLewee, Fred C. 91 McLoughlin, Maurice Evans 252– 253, 344, 361–362, 387, 420n127 McMahon, Archy 52, 144 McMahon, Don 435n7 McMahon, John, “Sadie” 71, 234 McMahon, John, “The Green Mountain Boy” 46, 251 McManus, Con 234 McManus, George 412n22 McManus, Sammy 435n12 McManus, Thomas 169 McMullen, William 120 McMullin, Fred 102, 185 McMullin, Thomas 288 McNally, David 386, 435n7 McNally, Michael 115 McNamara, Joseph, “Reddy Mack” 29 McNamara, Tommy 212, 252, 253 McNary, William 126 McNeeley, Peter 391 McNeil, J.T. 360

461 McNulty, Jack 230 McQuade, Barney 305, 306 McQuade, Francis X. 170 McRoy, Robert 126, 152–154, 186 McTighe, Mike 390 Meacham, Louis 75 Meadow Brook Club, New York 346 Meagher, Thomas F. 105 Meath, Ireland 32, 192 Meath GFC, New York 295 Medicus, Henry 188 Medill, Joseph 301 Meeghan, Patsy 192 Mellody, Honey 194 Memphis Reds, SL 227 Menken, Adah Isaacs 204–205 Meredith, Harry 221 Meriden, CT 144 Mertes, Sam 281, 282 Messersmith, Andy 386 Mexican War 18 Mexico 27, 322 Mexico City 383 Meyer, Alvah 313 Michigan Central Railroad 137 Middlesex County, NJ 32 Middletown Mansfields, NA (1872) 173, 256, 276 Military Hall, Bowery 46 Miller, Charles W. 200 Miller, Joe, “Cyclone” 74 Miller, John 105 Miller, Nathan Lewis 197 Millerton, NY 257 Millwood Baptist Church, OK 389 Milwaukee, WI 41, 127, 160, 178, 180, 181, 183, 185, 226 Milwaukee Brewers see St. Louis Browns, AL Franchise (1901–1953) Minor Leagues 176, 178–179, 200, 227; farm system 188; national agreement 199, 200 Mississippi City, MS 120 Mississippi River 31, 115, 157, 265 Missouri AC, St. Louis 199 Mitchell, Charlie or “Charley” 32, 81, 119–120, 139, 167, 191, 195, 215, 318 Mitchell, Fred 413 Mitchell, James S. 25–26, 50, 109, 218, 255, 312, 325, 328, 332, 396n113, 415n214, 427n217 Moffitt, Tom 335 Molineaux, Tom 395n36 Molly Maguires 107 Moloney, Frederick 332 Monaghan, Tom 386 Monaghan GFC, New York 141 Monroe, James: and Monroe Doctrine 318, 319 Monte Carlo, Monaco 101 Montreal, Canada 428n252 Montreal Canadiens 290 Montreal Royals 183 Montville, CT 57, 175 Moody, Dwight Lyman 239 Mooney, John J. 25, 327 Moran, Frank, “The Fighting Dentist” 193, 270 Moran, Herbie 286 Moran, Pat 77, 77, 183–184, 282, 285, 381, 385n59, 413

462 Moriarty, George 235 Moriarty, Maurice 48 Moriarty, Richard 301 Morris, Samuel D. 215–216 Morrissey, John 20, 20–23, 27, 31– 33, 54–56, 58, 63, 85, 88–89, 91, 93, 95–96, 103, 115, 117–118, 129, 157, 176, 218, 245, 264–265, 268, 390, 428n9 Morrissey, Susan 54 Morton, George W., Jr. 385 Morton, James 64, 206 Morton, William H. 359 Mott Haven, New York 45 Mount Vesuvius, eruption of 1906 334 Muldoon, William 129, 166–167, 191, 197–199, 249–251, 268, 270 Muldoon, William H. 216 Mullane, Tony 28–29, 224, 290, 396n161 Mullany, Kate 53, 400n216 Muller, Emil 313 Mulqueen, P.J. 375 Mulvey, Joe 67, 68 Murnane, Tim 9, 73, 126, 149, 151, 210, 224, 256, 261, 276–277, 283–285, 410n123, 415n214 Murphy, “Big” Johnny 63 Murphy, Charles, “Mile-A-Minute” 249 Murphy, Charles Francis 114 Murphy, Charles Webb 78–79, 123, 187, 190, 280, 285, 289 Murphy, Dale 382, 389 Murphy, Danny 435n6 Murphy, Eddie 102, 261, 435n6 Murphy, “Joe” 243 Murphy, John 51 Murphy, John J. (Gaelic footballer) 302 Murphy, Johnny 86, 269 Murphy, Joseph 17 Murphy, Michael Charles 24, 314, 334, 338, 340, 352, 354–356, 355, 369, 374, 383, 415n214 Murphy, Mike (vaudeville) 67 Murphy, Morgan 58 Murphy, Nicholas, “Young Irish boy” 327 Murphy, Thomas 161 Murphy, Tom (handball) 306 Murray, Dennis 334 Murray, Michael H. 347 Murray, Red 262 Murray, Inspector William 64 Mutrie, Jim 255 Mutual Base Ball Club of New York (1857–1871) 51, 96–97 Myer, Billy 33 Myers, Lon 109, 361, 428n252 Myrtle Avenue Park 316 Nagle, David J. 218 Nagle, Garrett 90 Nagle, Louise 90 Naismith, James 306, 386 Naples, Italy 68, 374 Nast, Thomas 277, 390 Natick, MA 69, 356, 358 Natick Hook and Ladder Company 69, 354–355, 358

Index Nation, Carrie 83 Nation of Islam 389 National Amateur Rowing Association (NARA), Great Britain 379 National American Billiards Association 41 National Association (NA) see National Association of Professional Base Ball Players. National Association of Amateur Athletes of America (NAAAA) 45, 69, 170, 198, 294, 325, 358 National Association of Amateur Oarsmen (NAAO) 377–379 National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NA) 27, 30, 56, 97, 147, 159, 176, 183, 291 National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues 101, 199 National Athletic Club, New York 171 National Base Ball Club of Washington (1859–1871) 357 National Baseball Commission 187 National Basketball Association (NBA) 1, 382, 386, 389, 421n14, 435n12, 428n232 National Football League (NFL) 356, 363, 382, 386 National Irish Athletic Association (NIAA) 47, 69, 94, 110, 242, 360 National League (NL) (baseball) 8, 27, 29–30, 56, 59, 65–66, 71, 75– 79, 97, 99, 102, 116, 124, 126, 146, 148–150, 159–160, 172–184, 187, 190, 198, 202–203, 227, 231–233, 255–256, 270, 280, 282, 285, 382, 386, 413n47, 418n279, 435n6 National Police Gazette 86, 139, 219, 409n61 National Sporting Club, New York 171, 197 Native American Party/American Party 2, 10, 22, 111, 112, 162, 265, 284 naturalization 10, 104, 118 Naturalization Act, 1798 405n5 Naturalization Act, 1802 405n5 Naturalization Act, 1824 405n5 Navin, Frank 99, 184, 186, 187, 189, 235 Needham, Henry Beech 351–352 Needham, Tom 28, 30 Nelson, John, “Candy” 228 Nelson, William 369 Netherlands 327 New Basin Canal, New Orleans 13, 15 New England 7, 56, 61, 84, 159, 289–290, 293, 332, 356 New England League 74, 256 New Haven, CT 57, 149, 159, 178, 290, 297, 351–352 New Haven Profs, EL 386 New Jersey Athletic Club, NJ 25, 297, 300, 415n207 New London, CT 149–150, 246 New Orleans, LA 12–14, 33, 48, 56, 80–81, 90, 100, 105, 112, 120, 157, 166–167, 222, 244, 246, 269, 276, 290, 366, 371, 391 New York, NY 2, 13, 15–16, 18–27,

32–42, 44, 50–51, 53–56, 59, 62, 63–65, 67, 69, 70, 72, 75, 86, 88– 99, 101–102, 104, 106, 107–122, 124, 126, 129, 133, 135, 137–138, 140, 142, 147, 149–150, 152, 154– 155, 157, 159–160, 164–171, 174, 185, 188, 192–193, 196, 198–202, 205–206, 214, 220–222, 238, 241, 243, 247–248, 250–251, 255, 257, 260, 263–265, 269–270, 274, 279, 283, 288–290, 294–297, 301, 312–313, 319–320, 324, 326, 334, 339, 341–343, 352, 357, 363, 365–366, 368, 372, 374, 382, 384–385, 387–388, 390–391n34, 395n36, 395, 400n241; Tenderloin district 88, 92, 121, 214, 221 New York Academy of Music 41 New York AL Franchise (1903–present) 28–29, 71, 92–93, 123, 127, 129, 131, 151, 181, 187, 233, 279, 382, 386 New York Americans, NHL 386 New York and Federal League Franchise 201–202 New York & Harlem Railroad 196 New York & New England Railroad 140 New York Athletic Club (NYAC), New York 24–25, 27, 44, 48, 50, 69, 93, 170, 196, 247–248, 251– 252, 294, 312–313, 324, 327–328, 332, 349, 354–356, 357–358, 363, 366–368, 372–375, 379, 388, 427n217, 432n56, 433n149; NYAC boycott, 1968 388 New York Caledonia Club 142 New York Celtics 310–311, 386 New York Central Railroad 91, 122, 198, 217, 257 New York City Caledonian Club 109 New York City “Draft Riots,” 1863 269 New York Foot Baller’s Protective Association 143 New York Giants see New York NL Franchise (1883–1957) New York Giants (NFL) 386 New York Giants (female) Baseball Club 371 New York Giants, PL (1890) 175 New York Gothams see New York NL Franchise (1883–1957) New York Highlanders see New York AL Franchise (1903–present) New York Metropolitans, AA (1883– 1887) 173, 177, 228 New York Mets, NL (1962–present) 386 New York Mutuals, NA (1871–1875) 124 New York NL Franchise (1883–1957) 8, 58, 70–71, 100–101, 123–124, 129, 140, 145–147, 149–150, 153– 154, 160, 170, 172–173, 181–185, 187–200, 202, 217, 225–226, 229– 234, 254–255, 258–259, 271, 277, 279, 281, 322–323, 386, 409n73 New York 69th Infantry Regiment 24, 106, 170, 249, 262, 279, 300– 301, 339, 370 New York State 57, 72, 196–197

Index New York State Amateur Football League 293 New York State Athletic Commission (NYSAC) 129, 171, 196, 201, 270 New York State Football Association 194, 293 New York State Football League 292, 415n22 New York State Government, Albany 11, 87, 104, 113, 117–118, 120, 162, 165, 170–171, 201, 248 New York Supreme Court 368 New York Yankees see New York AL Franchise (1903–present) New Zealand 319, 344 Newark, NJ 27, 29, 56, 161, 194, 201, 292–293, 297, 347–348 Newark Irish American Athletic Club, Newark, NJ 385 Newark Peppers, FL (1915) 201–202 Newbury (Crookham Common), England 16 Newmarket, England 89, 93 Newton Athletic Association, MA 192 Niagara Falls, NY 93, 182 Niagara River 31, 72 Niagara University, Lewiston, NY 261 Nicaragua 27 Nice, France 101, 319 Nichols, Al 98 Nichols, Kid 210 Nicholss, Francis 167 Nolan, Edward, “The Only” 75, 402n115 Noonan, Pete 282 Norfolk, VA 371 North Brookfield, MA 209 North Carolina 242 Northwest League 178 Northwestern League 178 Northwestern University 262, 351, 363 Norton, John 344 Norway 194, 267 Norworth, Jack 132 Notre Dame-Army, 1924 “Four Horsemen” 411n85 NYPD Athletic Club 249–250 Oak Island, Revere, MA 47, 48, 69, 242, 309 Oakland, CA 90, 261 Oakland Gardens, Boston 47, 360 O’Baldwin, Ned 32, 85–86, 120, 133–134, 166, 218, 221, 263, 318 O’Brien, Billy 23, 81 O’Brien, Con 435n12 O’Brien, Dan 386 O’Brien, Darby 58 O’Brien, Edward 383 O’Brien, James 305, 306 O’Brien, James C. 310 O’Brien, John, “Cinders” 67 O’Brien, John J. 251–252 O’Brien, Larry 386 O’Brien, Mattie 52–53 O’Brien, Parry 383 O’Brien, Pat 351 O’Brien, Peter 52, 52–53 O’Brien, “Philadelphia” Jack 270, 271

O’Brien, Thomas, “Buck” 283–284 O’Connell, Daniel 120 O’Connell, Joseph F. 261 O’Connell, Tom 14 O’Connells GFC, New York 294, 301, 303 O’Connor, Charles 169 O’Connor, Daniel 319 O’Connor, John (billiards) 42 O’Connor, John (football) 351 O’Connor, John C. 300 O’Connor, John J. 199, 274 O’Connor, Miles 306 O’Connor, Pat 16 O’Connor, Peter 27, 107, 332, 334, 360, 373 O’Connor, “Rowdy” Jack 78, 99, 146, 229–230, 277–278, 286, 290–291 O’Connor, Tobias C., “Chris” 40, 42 O’Day, Hank 187, 227, 231, 261 O’Dea, Patrick John, “The Kicking Kangaroo” 351, 363 O’Donnell, Pat (lawyer) 281 O’Donnell, Pat (pugilist) 14 O’Donnell, Tom 22, 165 O’Doul, Francis, “Lefty” 286, 435n7, 435n8 Oelrichs, Herman 357 Ogden, UT 205 Ogden’s Grove, Chicago 48 O’Gorman, James Aloysius 168–170 O’Grady, Sean 389 O’Hagan, Jim 14 O’Hara, Father John F. 388 O’Higgins, John B. 289 Ohio State University 356, 421n14 Ohio-Michigan League 74 Oldring, Rube 151 O’Leary, Charlie 285 O’Leary, Daniel 23, 42–44, 51, 68, 81, 143, 325–327, 349 O’Leary Belt 327 O’Loughlin, Silk 76, 184, 227, 233, 285 Olympia, Greece 308 Olympic Athletic Club, San Francisco 24, 49, 245, 307, 313, 334–335, 359, 366, 369 Olympic Club, New Orleans 120, 167–168, 269 Olympic Games: ancient 198, 308, 330; Anthropological Days 275; Antwerp, 1920 171, 344, 378–380; Athens, 1896 249, 286, 329–332; Berlin, 1916 (not held) 344, 356; “Intercalated,” Athens, 1906 68, 107, 312, 332–334, 368, 373–374; London, 1908 3, 6, 107–108, 136, 149, 192, 199, 222, 276, 308, 313– 314, 334–343, 354–355, 367, 369, 371; modern and reestablishment 198, 309–310, 359, 376, 383; and nationalism 328–329, 332–337, 372, 383–384; Paris, 1900 198, 273, 331–332, 364, 377; St. Louis, 1904 25, 107, 199, 252, 273–276, 290, 295, 306, 309, 312, 332, 335, 377, 423n119; Stockholm, 1912 26, 315, 343, 355, 371, 384 An Olympic Victor 286, 331, 360

463 Omaha, NE 108, 177–179, 206, 254, 290 O’Mahoneys HC, Chicago 289, 297 O’Malley, Walter 386–387 O’Meara, Mark 381 O’Neal, Shaquille 389 O’Neil, Frank S. 196–197, 201 O’Neill, Daniel 306 O’Neill, Francis J., “Steve” 386 O’Neill, Frank, “Buck” 356–357 O’Neill, Jack 30, 147 O’Neill, John Joseph 124 O’Neill, Mike 30 O’Neill, Steve 284 Orange Athletic Club, NJ 357–358 O’Reilly, John Boyle 11, 47, 109–110, 218, 239–242, 272, 292, 309, 331, 419n36; “Peter McCorry” 241–242 O’Reilly Hurling Cup 289 O’Reilly of Notre Dame 263 Orem, Con 32, 85, 134 Original Celtics see New York Celtics O’Rourke, Jim, “Orator” 57, 172– 174, 190, 255–256, 258–259, 276–278, 387 O’Rourke, John 173 O’Rourke, Sam 1, 6, 12–14, 23, 33, 132–133, 265, 391, 393n16 O’Rourke, Tom 63, 121, 191–192, 197, 243, 269, 357, 414n150 O’Sullivan, Michael 45 Oswald’s Garden 106 Oswego, New York 89 O’Toole, Marty 254 Ottawa, Canada 327 Ouimet, Francis 246, 253, 362 Owen Roe Club of New York 342 Owens, Clarence 227 Owens, Jesse 348, 435n46 Oxford University, England 328, 375 Pacific Coast League 194 Page, W.B. 26 Page, William H. 248 Palisades, NY 135, 163 Palo Alto Athletic Club, San Francisco 248 Palzer, Al 192, 197 Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, 1901 192, 198–199, 273–274, 304, 306, 332 Parkyns, Sir Thomas 250 Parnell, Charles Stewart 107, 297, 320, 338 Parnell crisis of 1890 127 Parnells GFC, San Francisco 49, 288, 294, 300–301 Pasco, Elmer E. 230 Pastime Athletic Club, New York 25, 27, 45, 50, 69, 109, 170, 198, 222, 251, 307, 361 Pastime Athletic Club, San Francisco 49, 313, 366, 369 Pastime Athletic Club, St. Louis 199 Paterson, NJ 50, 292 Pawling, NY 276 Pawtucket, RI 108, 293 Pearse, Padraig 128 Peche Island, Ontario 31 Peckington, John 124

464 Pegram, William 327 Peitz, Henry, “Heinie” or “Heine” 231, 233 Peixotto, F.R. 251 Pelletier, Joseph C. 126 Pender, John D. 357–358 Pendergast, T.J. 114, 246 Peora, IL 70 Percy-Gray Law 157, 404n37 peritonitis 256 Perry, Frederick W. 164 Perry, Scott 203 Petersburg, VA 225 Peterson, Richard (author) 72, 222, 253–254 Pfeffer, Fred 174 PGA Tournament 253 Phelan, Jim 132 Phelan, Michael 9, 39–42, 87–88, 105, 238, 325, 349 Philadelphia, PA 6, 7, 30–32, 53, 67, 78, 86, 98–99, 108, 110, 112– 113, 120, 133, 147, 151, 154–155, 165, 184, 207, 215–216, 219, 252– 253, 256, 258, 263, 289, 297, 312, 324, 344, 365, 368, 376–377, 379, 385–386, 403n166; Kensington, PA 113, 120, 293 Philadelphia AL Franchise (1901– 1954) 29, 78, 102, 127, 151–152; 181–182, 189–190, 203, 228, 257, 387 Philadelphia Athletic Base Ball Club (1860–1871) 30 Philadelphia Athletics see Philadelphia AL Franchise (1901–1954) Philadelphia Athletics, AA (1882– 1890) 200, 228 Philadelphia Athletics, NA, 1871– 1875 (1873–1875) 183, 319 Philadelphia Athletics, PL (1890– 1891) 256 Philadelphia Hibernians, FC 292– 293 Philadelphia, Keystone Base Ball Club of 30 Philadelphia Keystones, UA (1884) 30 Philadelphia NL Franchise (1883– present) 58, 67, 71, 99–100, 151, 154–155, 173, 181, 183–184, 187, 202, 226, 258, 281, 386, 388, 413n47 Philadelphia Phillies see Philadelphia NL Franchise (1883–present) Philadelphia Quakers see Philadelphia NL Franchise (1883–present) Philadelphia Stars (Negro Leagues) 388 Philadelphia Whites/White Stockings, NA (1873–1875) 30, 97, 176 Philippines 324 Phillips Exeter 351–354, 356 Pietri, Dorando 337–338, 369–370 Pinkerton detectives 66–67, 220 Pinkney, Frederick 165 Pittenger, Clark 385 Pittsburgh (Pittsburg), PA 49, 61, 116, 137, 151, 158, 290, 372, 427n227 Pittsburgh AA and NL Franchise (1882–present) 28–29, 70, 73, 76,

Index 79, 100, 147, 158, 173, 175, 180, 189, 210–211, 230–233, 254, 281, 322 Pittsburgh Alleghenys see Pittsburgh AA and NL Franchise (1882–present) Pittsburgh Burghers, PL (1890) 116, 158, 175 Pittsburgh Pirates see Pittsburgh AA and NL Franchise (1882–present) Pittsburgh Steelers (NFL) 386 Pittsfield, MA 256 Pittston, PA 57, 184 Plattsburgh, NY 257 The Playboy of the Western World 312 Players League (PL) 58, 71, 116, 127, 174–177, 179–180, 202, 234, 255– 256, 413n43; Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players 172–173 Plunkitt, George Washington 111 Point Isabel, CA 32 police 2, 21, 30, 32, 68, 75, 82, 89, 96, 98, 102, 116, 121, 134, 136, 161, 163, 166, 168, 207–210, 213, 216, 229, 231–233, 235, 249, 272, 301, 318, 336, 339–340, 360, 365– 366, 427n203, 433n144; Boston Police Department 152–153; Chicago Police Department 142, 161, 166–167, 211, 219; New York Police Department (NYPD) 19, 22, 32, 38–39, 41, 63–65, 68, 81–82, 88, 93–95, 101, 107, 112–113, 121, 128–129, 135, 138, 140–143, 145, 159, 163–164, 168–170, 196–197, 201, 206–207, 213–215, 218, 243, 249–250, 366, 370, 379, 384; Philadelphia Police Department 215, 219, 379 politics 1–3, 10, 22, 34, 36, 40, 53– 55, 63–64, 88–89, 93, 96, 101, 103–130, 133, 143, 145, 148, 150, 152, 156–157, 159–160, 162–163, 166, 168–170, 176, 178, 180, 188, 201–202, 215, 218, 224, 233, 245– 246, 260, 264, 268, 276–277, 279, 285, 290, 295, 299, 307, 310, 317, 319, 331, 334, 342, 366–367, 386 Polo Grounds, New York 6, 23, 45– 46, 100, 119, 125, 128, 145, 255, 259, 279, 282, 294, 299, 409n73, 411n85 pool (form of billiards) 40, 88 Pool’s Island, MD 165 Poughkeepsie, NY 217 Powers, Michael Riley, “Doc” 256, 261–262 Powers, Pat T. 160–161, 160, 200– 202, 285, 369–370, 415n222, 425n53 Powers, Patrick E. 292 Prendergast, William 25, 49 Presidio Athletic Club, San Francisco 49 Price, Edmund, “Ned” 31, 397n171 Prieur, Denis 133 USS Princess Matoika 171 Princeton University 248, 256, 263, 312, 350–352, 355–357, 426n118 Princip, Gavrilo 324 Prinstein, Myer 313–314, 331, 332

Proescher, A.F. 105 Progressive Party 25, 116 prohibition see Volstead Act. Prospect Harriers Athletic Club, New York 358 protestants 10, 15, 27, 31, 62, 110–116, 120, 122, 159–161, 163, 177, 183, 188, 279, 281–282, 284, 411n16; Baptist 7, 91, 389; Episcopalian 280, 407n110, 420n127; German United Evangelical Church 170; Presbyterian 7, 41, 106, 113, 126; Quakers 7 Prout, William C. 315 Providence, RI 49, 148–150, 182, 205, 234, 251, 385 Providence Grays, EL 186, 201 Providence Grays, NL (1878–1885) 234 Public Schools Athletic League 273, 371 Pueblo, CO 290 Puerto Rico 27–28, 382 pugilism (prizefighting/boxing) 1–3, 5–6, 8, 10–23, 31–35, 39–40, 45, 47, 49, 51, 53–56, 61–63, 65–66, 79–81, 83, 85–87, 93–95, 107, 110, 112–114, 117–123, 129, 132–136, 139–140, 145, 163–168, 170–171, 191–198, 200–201, 205, 207, 211, 215–216, 218, 221, 230, 232–233, 237, 239–250, 263–270, 300, 305, 316–317, 325, 332, 340, 344, 350–352, 354, 369, 379, 389– 390, 393n32, 395n34, 395n36, 397n195, 397n197, 422n51; law and prize-fighting in Louisiana 120, 166–168; Maryland 19, 165; Mississippi 167 Pulitzer, Ralph 249 Pulliam, Harry 202 Pullman Sleeping Car 24, 72, 235, 385 Purcell, John 24 Purchase, NY 249 puritanism 7, 12, 36, 61, 65, 84, 159–160, 162, 379 Putnam Club Grounds, Brooklyn, New York 144 Quaker City Base Ball Club, Philadelphia (pre-majors) 30 Quarry, Jerry 390 Queen’s Club, London 328 Queen’s College, Cork, Ireland 69, 325 Quinlan, Frank J., “The Fordham Flyer” 375 Quinn, James 383 Quinn, Jim 224 Quinn, Joseph 222, 251–252 Quinn Dynasty: Bob 382, 386; Jack 386; John J. 386 Racing Board of Control 95 racism 3, 163, 191, 260, 263, 269– 278, 284, 301, 343, 348, 357, 387–390 Radbourne, Charley 74 Rafferty, Chuck 351 Ragan, Pat 286 railroads 107, 115, 118, 155, 182, 194,

Index 205, 210, 214, 234–235, 284, 301, 320, 330, 338–339, 357; crashes 196, 235, 258, 386; Eastern Railroad 46; Florida and Southern Railroad 148; Long Island Railroad 249; Michigan Central Railroad 137; New York & Harlem Railroad 196; New York & New England Railroad 140; New York Central Railroad 91, 122, 198, 217, 257; Pullman Sleeping Car 24, 72, 235, 385; Union Pacific 177 Randall, Jack 397n191 Ranjitsinhji, K.S. 333 Rankin, Samuel 31, 62 Rankin, William M. 53 rats 35–38, 87, 91, 99 Ray, Noble S. 48, 315 Ray, Ted 211–213 Read, William 109 Reagan, Johnny 221 Red Bank, NJ 390 Redmond, John 107 Reed, James 18 Reeves, Dan F. 386 Regan (or Reagan), Michael J. 148– 149, 339, 384 Reilly, Charlie 278 Reilly, “Long” John 255 Reitz, Heinie 224 Republican Party 104, 116, 120, 123, 171, 354 reserve clause 30, 65, 79–80, 171–172, 386 Resolutes Baseball Club, Cincinnati 177, 349 respectability 3, 10, 28, 40, 46, 90, 95, 117, 128, 135, 159, 176, 216, 222, 227, 237–259, 313, 343, 347, 351, 355, 379; lace-curtain Irish 7, 62, 68, 94, 109–110, 181, 224, 241, 243, 255, 259, 352, 372, 388; muscular Christianity 3, 237–239, 242–243, 247 Rice, Fletcher, “The Bird” 96 Rice, Grantland 212, 282, 381 Rice, Horace M. 345 Richardson, Danny 172 Richmond, Bill 395n36 Richmond Virginians, AA (1884) 208 Richter, Francis C. 68, 224 Rickard, Tex 193 Rickey, Branch 188, 387–388 Ridgely, Kate 21 Ridgewood, New York 292, 297 Ridgewood Park, New York 46, 109, 140–141, 297–298, 301–302 Rightor, Judge (possibly N.H.) 167– 168 Rigler, Cy 272 Riley, “Captain” Tom 47, 237–238, 371 Riordan, A. 359 Risberg, Charles, “Swede” 185 Robbins, Charles 214 Robbins, William 337 Roberts, John 39, 325 Robertson, Lawson 169, 313, 338 Robinson, Bobby 387 Robinson, Jackie 387–388 Robinson, Sugar Ray 33

Robinson, Wilbert 69–70, 181, 225, 394n45, 413n79 Robison Field, St. Louis 100 Rock Mount, MD 19 Rockefeller, John 88 Rockford Forest Citys 56 Rockne, Knute 262, 267 Rocky Point, RI 109 Roeber, Ernest 218 Roesler, Bernard J. 146–147 Rohlfs, J.C. 362 Roman Catholics 9, 10, 15, 56, 57, 62, 110–111, 113, 116, 124, 159–160, 176, 243, 280, 288, 290, 293, 313, 388–389, 411n16; anti–Catholicism 111, 126, 257, 260–261, 263, 280, 283–284, 345, 357–358, 387–388, 406–407n5, 421n185, 432n56; education 3, 146, 256–257, 260– 262, 307, 351, 357–358, 421n14 Romary, Janice-Lee 383 Rome 334, 336; ancient 241, 250, 297 Rooke, John 32 Rooney, Dan 386 Rooney, Frank (Frank Rovny) 422n55 Rooney, Thomas 377 Roosevelt, Theodore 11–12, 94, 248, 321, 331, 336, 340, 373 Root, Jack 191 Roper, William 355 Roscommon, Ireland 337 Roscommon Men’s Benevolent Society, New York 295 Rose, Duffy (aka Katie Ross, Mrs. Catherine Geoghegan, Catherine Scott) 138–139 Rose, Ralph 68, 109, 313, 335–336, 383, 430n157 Ross, Duncan C. 251, 316–317 Ross, Norman 171 Rossa, Jeremiah Donovan 105 Rothstein, Arnold 101, 103, 188 Rowell, Charles 43, 143–144, 326, 432n16 Rowland, Clarence, “Pants” 185, 394n45, 413n79 Roxbury, Massachusetts 80, 148, 364 Roxbury Rooters see Royal Rooters Royal Blue Line Rooters see Royal Rooters Royal Henley Regatta 346, 377–380 Royal Rooters 79–80, 125–127, 148– 156, 153, 182, 186, 323, 384, 410n123, 410n126 Ruef, “Boss” Abe 121 Rusie, Amos 232 Russell, William Hepburn 127 Rutgers University 350, 426n118 Ruth, Babe 156, 183, 187, 246, 252, 259, 402n114, 413n74 Rutland, Vermont 251, 344 Ryan, Elizabeth, “Toodles” 125 Ryan, Frank 162 Ryan, Jack 279, 282 Ryan, Jack, “Crank” 146, 409n108 Ryan, James M. 328 Ryan, Jimmy 71, 234–235, 277, 319–320 Ryan, Joe (Chicago I-AAC) 48 Ryan, Lynn Nolan 254, 382, 386 Ryan, Michael 396n127

465 Ryan, Paddy 33, 55–56, 58, 63, 65, 80, 82, 120, 135–136, 139, 166, 191, 195, 218–220, 266 Ryan, Pat (athlete) 26, 68, 113, 250, 344, 384 Ryan, Phil 306 Rynders, Capt. Isaiah 115, 117 Sabbath Observance Society 169 Sacks, Gus 359 Sagamore Hill, Long Island 340 St. Albans, England 5, 393n2; “Nomansland,” England 5–6, 12 St. Bartholomew Athletic Club, New York 367 St. Francis Xavier College, New York 177 St. Louis, MO 8, 31–32, 49–50, 56– 57, 70, 77, 81, 107–108, 112, 124, 134, 147, 160, 194, 196, 209, 216, 219, 222, 233, 265, 280, 402n115; Kerry Patch 158, 194 St. Louis Brown Stockings see St. Louis Franchise (AA 1882–1891 and NL 1892–present) St. Louis Brown Stockings, NL (1876–1877) 97 St. Louis Browns see St. Louis Franchise (AA 1882–1891 and NL 1892–present) St. Louis Browns, AL Franchise (1901–1953) 181, 185, 230 St. Louis Cardinals see St. Louis Franchise (AA 1882–1891 and NL 1892–present) St. Louis Franchise (AA 1882–1891 and NL 1892–present) 28–29, 58–59, 70, 73–74, 76, 98, 100, 124, 146, 158, 175, 178, 184–185, 188, 226–227, 229, 233, 281 St. Louis Innisfails HC 274 St. Louis Maroons, NL (1885–1886) 146, 178 St. Louis Maroons, UA (1884) 74 St. Louis Red Stockings, NA (1875) 158 St. Louis Soccer 292–293 St. Louis Stars (Negro Leagues) 387 St. Louis Terriers, FL (1914–1915) 230 St. Louis University 356 St. Mary’s Boat Club, Charlestown, Massachusetts 47 Saint Mary’s College, KS 178 Saint Mary’s College of California 49, 256, 261, 366, 421n14, 427n197 St. Paul, MN 179 St. Paul Apostles, WL 179 St. Rose Parish’s, St. Louis 332 San Antonio, TX 101 San Francisco, CA 16, 21, 23–24, 32, 39, 46, 56–57, 64, 90, 112, 115, 121–122, 157, 192–193, 205, 218, 234, 245, 248, 256, 268, 288, 292, 294, 301, 306–307, 311, 313, 319, 326, 359, 363, 366, 370, 385 San Francisco earthquake, 1906 90, 149, 169 San Patricio Battalion 18 San Quentin, CA 234 Saratoga Springs, NY 55, 75, 88, 90, 92, 95, 157

466 Sargent, George 253 Sarsfield Club, Portchester 128, 294, 299 Savannah, GA 207, 290 Savarese, Lou 391 Savin Rock, CT 109 Sayers, Tom 55, 264, 317 Scanlan, Colonel J.J. 249 Scanlon, Mike 412n22 Schaefer, Herman 323 Schaefer, William, “Germany” 285 Schick, W.A. 373 Schmeling, Max 317 Schmelz, Gus 229 Schmitz, Eugene 121 Schnall, Ida 371–372 Schofield, John 162 Schofield, W. 327, 359 Scotland 11, 107, 111, 260, 294, 317, 328, 389 Scotland Yard 105 Scottish Thistles FC, Chicago 308 Scottish-American AC, New York 128 Scottish-Americans FC, Kearny, NJ 293 Scranton, PA 8, 30, 57, 134, 290 Seattle, WA 30, 194 Seattle Athletic Club 49 Seattle Celtic FC 292 Seattle Mariners 386 Secor, Tom 17 sectarian riots 14, 104, 113, 260; New York, “Fourth of July Riot,” 1853 107; “Orange Day Riots,” New York, 1870 and 1871 107, 110, 113– 114; Philadelphia “Kensington” riot, 1844 113, 120; St. Patrick’s Day Riot, 1837, Troy 53 Seereiter, John 40, 87 Selee, Frank 210, 224, 236, 283 Sesquicentennial Stadium, Philadelphia 390 Seventeen Mile House, CA 32 Sexton, Thomas 320 Shamrock FC, Philadelphia 292 Shamrock Foot Ball Club, New York 292 Shamrocks FC, St. Louis 293 Shamrocks GFC, New York 141, 289, 294, 302 Shamrocks GFC, Troy, NY 294, 303 Shanfroid, Henry 17, 63 Shannon, Dan 279 Sharkey, Jack ( Joseph Zukauskas) 266 Sharkey, “Sailor” Tom 121, 191 Shaughnessy, Clark 351 Shaw, S.G. 6 Shawnee Open, PA 211–212 Shea, John D. 166 Shea, William 153 Shea, William (New York Mets) 386 Shean, Dave 261 Sheedy, Pat 93, 191, 195, 220 Sheehan, Andee 22 Sheepshead Bay Race Track, Coney Island, NY 92 Sheffield Christmas Handicap 359 Sheffield Shrovetide Handicap 327, 359, 429n103 Shelby, MT 408 Sheldon, Richard 27

Index Shell Mound, San Francisco 49 Sheppard, Melvin 109, 289, 313, 332–333, 341, 368–369, 373–374 Sheridan, John F. 227 Sheridan, Martin 26, 50, 68, 109, 250, 314, 332–333, 335–336, 338–339, 341–342, 367–368, 373–374, 379, 383–384, 399n191, 428n252, 430n161 Sheridan, Richard 50, 249 Sheridan, Thomas F. 194 Sherrill, Charles H. 373 Sherring, William 430n142 Shettsline, Billy 71 Shevlin, Tom 351–352, 353 Shibe, John 413 Shibe, Tom 413 Shibe Park 127, 256, 386, 388 Shiffler, George 120 Sholto, Douglas John, Marquis of Queensberry IX 242; rules 33, 86, 120, 166, 242–243, 397n197 Siddons, George 86 Sidebotham, Thomas H. 215 Sinatra, Frank 266 Sinclair, Harry 201 Sing Sing Prison, New York 18, 82, 93, 115, 120, 214, 222 Sioux City Cornhuskers, WL 179 Sixty-Ninth New York Infantry Regiment 24, 106, 170, 249, 262, 279, 300–301, 339, 370 Skelly, Jack 269 Slagle, Jimmy, “Shorty” 147, 282 Slattery, Jack 354 Slattery, Thomas 249 Slavin, Frank, “Paddy” 135–136, 191 Sligo, Ireland 249 Sligo GFC, New York 339 Sloan, Tod 101, 103 Sloane, William 273, 343 Smith, Al (governor) 111, 122, 279, 407n163 Smith, Al (manager) 81 Smith, Jack 189 Smith, “Mysterious” Billy 192, 194 Smith, Tommie 337 smoking 41, 64, 69, 72–74, 78, 82, 91, 100, 137–138, 206, 210, 219, 221, 252, 351–352, 370 Smythe, W.H. 325–326 Snedigar, Ole or Ollie 313, 369 Société de Biologie, Paris 158 Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (SPCC) 38–39 Sockalexis, Louis 277–278 Soden, Arthur 79, 150 sokol movement 106 Sons of the Emerald Isle HC, San Francisco 288 Sorakichi, Matsada 251 Sorin, Father Edward 261 South Bethlehem, PA 293 South Boston Athletic Club (SBAC) 24, 48, 314–315, 363 South Boston Rowing Club 389 South End Grounds, Boston 79, 147, 150, 302 Southern Athletic Club, New Orleans 246 Southern California Winter League 291

Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association 351 Southern League (SL) 179, 227 Spain 159, 401n18 Spalding, Albert 66–68, 75, 116, 173–174, 176, 198–199, 256, 319– 321, 323, 333, 361, 375; official guides and annuals 49, 75, 194, 275, 292–293, 304, 310, 347, 365; Spalding Sports Goods 194, 361, 375–376, 433n111; Spalding Trophy 368 Spanish Flu 384 Spanish-American War 129, 179, 249, 316 Speaker, Tris 183, 284 Spink, Alfred H. 146, 178–179, 254– 256, 321, 409n108 Spiros (Spyridon), Louis 25, 286 sports franchise system 2, 65, 112, 122, 124, 171, 176, 200–201, 260 Sports Illustrated 382, 400n237, 429n108 Spring, Tom 5–6, 393n11 Springfield, IL 231 Springfield, MA 46, 57, 74, 377 Springfield, NA 255 Sri Lanka 319 Stahl, Charles, “Chick” 413n66 Stahl, Jake 283–284, 287 Staley, Harry 283 Stallings, George 75, 127 Standard Car Company 91 Stanford, CT 25, 144 Stanford University, CA 363 Stannard, Henry 42 Stanwood, Vera 205–206 Star Athletic Club, New York 25 Staten Island, NY 17, 32, 45, 95, 124, 164, 395n36 Stein, Harry 382 Stengel, Casey 382 Stenzel, Jake 232, 281 Steubenville, OH 30, 263 Stevens, John Cox 9 Stewart, Hattie 371 Stiles, Jack 137 Stivetts, “Happy” Jack 236, 282–283 Stoneham, Charles 188, 411n85 street gangs 2, 10, 13, 22, 40, 62, 69, 86, 105, 113–115, 117, 145, 218; “Bowery Boys” 117; Dead Rabbits Gang 35, 36, 145; “Downtowns” (Troy) 54; Fourth Avenue Tunnel Gang 114; Gangs of New York, Bill “The Butcher” 22; Gashouse Gang 63, 114 Stricker, Cub 223 Subway Alumni 384 Suffolk Athletic Association, Boston 331, 430n123 Sullivan, “Big” Tim 92, 103, 118–119, 119, 121–122, 158, 170–171 Sullivan, Billy 435n6 Sullivan, C.J. 360 Sullivan, James (baseball) 210 Sullivan, James Ambrose, “Yankee” 16, 16–17, 18–20, 21–22, 27, 35, 56, 63, 115–117, 133, 157, 164–165, 218, 239, 264–266, 269, 400n222 Sullivan, James E. 11, 50, 66, 69, 109, 113, 170, 196–199, 198, 222,

Index 273, 275–276, 278, 306–307, 310, 321–322, 328–329, 331–334, 337– 341, 343, 350, 360–361, 364–365, 367–369, 371–376, 379, 383, 415n205, 415n207, 434n186, 434n218 Sullivan, John H. 362 Sullivan, John L. 1, 3, 24, 32–33, 47, 58, 63, 65–66, 80–83, 80, 89, 93, 115, 119–120, 136–137, 158, 166– 167, 191, 195, 197, 205, 214–215, 219, 242–248, 266, 268–269, 306, 318, 403n197, 420n91 Sullivan, Joseph J., “Sport” 102–103 Sullivan, “Little” Tim 170 Sullivan, Marty 319–320 Sullivan, Michael Joseph, “Big” Mike 116, 126 Sullivan, Timothy Paul, “Ted” 131, 178–179, 227, 322–324 Sullivan, William (CnG) 107 Sunday, Billy 67 Superior Club of St. John, New Brunswick 86, 291 Sussex County, NJ 22 Sweden 194, 334; King Gustav V 384 Sweeney, Charlie 74, 234, 402n115 Sweeney, J.J. 69 Sweeney, Lawrence J. 149–155 Sweeney, Mike 26, 290, 328, 363, 366 swimming 49, 114, 237–238, 250, 332, 381 Swope, Herbert Bayard 384 Sylvan Lake, NY 57, 259 syndicate baseball 150, 177, 180 syphilis 76, 118 Syracuse, NY 57, 76, 86, 243, 290, 295 Syracuse Athletic Club, Syracuse, NY 357 Syracuse Stars (New York State League) 29 Syracuse University 313, 357 Tacoma, WA 83 Taft, Charles P. 123, 187 Taft, William H. 49, 123 Tague, Peter F. 126 Tailteann Games 47, 304, 308–310, 428n252 Take Me Out to the Ball Game 132 Taylor, George 177 Taylor, John Baxter 314–315, 314, 337 Taylor, John I. 185–186 Taylor, Norman, “The Pie-Eater” 109 Tebeau, Patsy 224, 229–230, 232– 233, 254, 277, 280, 291 Temple Cup (1894–1897) 145, 150, 159, 225, 230, 281, 410n123 Tener, John 66, 116, 187, 202–203, 203, 277–278, 285–286, 319– 320, 324, 386, 407n110 Tenney, Fred 226 tennis 170, 252, 301, 361–362, 370, 381 Texas League 178 Texas Rangers 386 T.F. Meagher 291 Thayer, Ernest 136–137

Third Base Saloon, Boston 79, 148, 150, 156, 384 Thompson, George 21 Thompson, Sam 28 Thorpe, James 199, 253, 279, 348, 350 Tieman, Philip 40, 325 Tiernan, “Silent” Mike 232, 255 Tighe, James T. 122 Tipperary, Ireland 20, 25–26, 33, 41, 274, 295, 326, 337, 351 Tipperary GFC, New York 128, 141– 142; (Harlem) Kickhams GFC, New York 49, 141, 294–295, 297, 299–303 Tobias, William E. 213–214 Tobin, John M. 47 Tobin, Richard 98 Tokyo University 319 Toledo, OH 178, 235, 258 Toledo Blue Stockings, AA (1884) 29, 73 Toledo Iron Men/Mud Hens, AA 258 Tom Brown’s Schooldays 239 Tone, Theobald Wolfe 107 Toner, Richard, “Dick the Rat” 38 Toronto 29, 192–193, 324 Torrington, CT 351 Touhy, Eddie, “Ned” 32, 164 Townsend, John D. 117 Travers, William R. 88, 357 Travers Island, New York 26, 363 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo 115 Tremont Club, Boston 191 Trice, Bob 388 Trimount AC, Boston 329 Trinity Athletic Club, Brooklyn 26 Troy, James 215 Troy, NY 20, 53–55, 58, 88, 95, 117, 135, 211, 217 Troy Trojans, NL (1879–1882) 255, 259 tuberculosis 68, 70, 72, 89, 205, 255; “Irish” 386 Tucker, Tommy 57, 282–283 Tufts University, Medford, MA 256 Tully, Mike 383 Tunney, Gene 197, 379, 390 turnverein 45, 106 Twain, Mark 88, 275 Tweed, William, “Boss” 96, 111, 117– 118 typhoid fever 314 Tyrone, Ireland 30, 33, 116, 320 Tyson, Mike 391 Ulysses 287, 396n108 Unger, Henry W. 92 Union Association (UA, or Onion League) 30, 74, 172, 178 Union (Base Ball) Club of Lansingburgh, NY (Lansingburgh/Troy Haymakers) (1860–1871) 58, 95– 96 Union Bicycle Club 45 Union Course, Long Island, NY 42 Union Cricket Club, Cincinnati 177 Union Pacific Railroad 177 United Irish Societies of Massachusetts 48 United States Football Association 194, 292–293, 361

467 United States Golf Association (USGA) 212, 362 United States government: House of Representatives 92, 116–118, 124– 127, 169, 261, 344 University of California 263 University of Detroit 388 University of Maine 356 University of Michigan 262, 355 University of Minnesota 363 University of Nebraska 355 University of Notre Dame du Lac, South Bend, IN 1, 131, 256, 261– 263, 277, 354, 363, 384, 388; Notre Dame-Army, 1924 “Four Horsemen” 411n85; O’Reilly of Notre Dame 263 University of Pennsylvania 314, 346, 355 University of Wisconsin 363 U.S. Army 18, 31, 89, 122, 129, 173, 219, 249, 265, 311, 330, 343, 362, 379 U.S. Army football 262, 351, 411n85 U.S. Marshals 63, 174, 215 U.S. National Lawn Tennis Association (USNLTA) 361–362 U.S. Navy 56, 356 U.S. Navy football 384 Van Camp, O.V. 315 Vanderbilt, Cornelius 88, 196; family 143 Van Ness, Peter 43, 349 Vardon, Harry 211–213 vaudeville 42, 59, 65, 67, 136, 193, 204, 214, 219, 246, 254 Vaughan, Henry, “Harry” 326 Vaughan, Robert, “Pete” 262 Venezuela 27, 382 Vesper Boat Club 376, 379 Vesuvius, Mount see Mount Vesuvius Victoria, Queen 146, 247 Vigilance Committee, San Francisco 115 Villanova University, PA 102, 261 violence 2–3, 10, 12, 14, 17, 28, 34– 35, 54, 62–63, 85, 89, 104, 107, 110, 113, 115–116, 120, 132–135, 138, 144, 167, 179, 203–236, 247, 252– 253, 298, 301–304, 374 Virginia 15, 61, 133, 165, 242 Virginia Company of London 84 Virginia League 178 Volstead Act 2, 61, 386 Von der Ahe, Chris 59, 124, 178, 185, 228 Von der Horst, Harry 71, 76, 177 Waddell, Rube 302 Wadhurst, England 55 Wagner, Earl 232–233 Wagner, Heinie 153, 283 Wagner, Honus 224 Wagner Brothers ( Jacob Earl and George W.) 200 Walcott, Joe 192 Waldorf Hotel 333 Walker, Jimmy 122 Walker, Mickey 390 Walker Act 122, 196–197

468 Wallace, Edwin, “Nunc” 192 Wallace, Francis 263 Walling, George 19 Walsh, A.J. 108 Walsh, Con 26, 289, 313, 342 Walsh, Ed, “Big” 261, 285, 435n6, 435n8 Walsh, Jimmy 28, 29, 386, 435n6 Walsh, John (billiards) 42 Walsh, John H. 297 Walsh, Rev. Matthew 384 Walsh, Mike 412n22 Walsh, Tom 282 Walshe, Edward J. 24, 324 Waltham, MA 148 Wansley, William 97 Wappingers Falls 259 Ward, Arch 262 Ward, Jem 5, 6, 16, 393n11 Ward, John Montgomery 30, 127, 172–174, 202 Ward, Micky 381 Washburne, Hempstead 161 Washington, George 61, 323, 336, 383 Washington, DC 112, 115, 146, 150, 207, 210, 232, 318 Washington Generals 390 Washington Heights, NY 170 Washington Nationals, NL (1886– 1889) 78, 181 Washington, Olympic Base Ball Club of (1867–1871) 30 Washington Olympics, NA (1871– 1872) 27 Washington Park, Brooklyn 147 Washington Senators, AL (1901–1960) 28, 71, 76, 100, 281, 285, 413n47 Washington Senators, NL (1892–1899) 28, 232, 278 Washington Statesmen, AA (1891) 28 Washington University, St. Louis 199 Water Street, New York 35, 37–38, 42, 163 Waterbury, CT 57, 144, 255 Waterford, Jack 36 Waterford, Ireland 32, 40, 71, 105, 338 Waterloo, Omaha, NE 108 Watt, Jim 389 Weatherson, Christopher 161–162 Webb, Jim 56–57 Weeks, Bartow S. 196 Wefers, Bernie 332, 400n237, 429n108 Welch, Curt 71, 73–74, 228 Welch, Mickey 74, 172, 255, 402n115

Index Wells, Matt 201 Wenck, F.A. 270 West Baden, IN 413 West Side Park, Chicago 123, 190, 285 West Side Shamrock FC 292 Westchester County 17–18 Westcott, Edward Noyes 175 Western Association 178 Western League (WL) 178–179, 181, 246 Western Union 98 Westmeath, Ireland 132, 147; Athlone 31, 80, 196 Weston, Edward 43–44, 143, 326 Wexford, Ireland 244, 248 Weyhing, Gus 216, 228 Wheaton, IL 211, 252 Wheeling, WV 229 “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” 196, 414n185 Whig Party 111, 112 White, Deacon 173, 258 White, Frank 86, 139 White Sox Stadium 48 Whitfield, “Mal” 434n186 Whitman, Charles S. 171, 197 Whitney, Casper 198, 332, 350, 352, 379 Whitney, Harry Payne 253 Whitney, Vincent 362 Wicklow, Ireland 332 Wiedman, Stump 229 Wightman, George W. 362 Wilding, Anthony 344 Willard, Jess 194, 270, 390 Williams, Alexander, “Clubber” 82, 196, 214 Williams College, Williamstown, MA 356 Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York 33, 37, 292 Willis, Vic 209 Wilmington, DE 49, 234, 292 Wilmington, OH 187 Wilson, Harold 313 Wilson, William 22 Wilson, William L. 166 Wilson, Woodrow 128 Winslow, Samuel 354 Wolcott, Roger 331 Wolf, William 229 Wolfe Tones GFC, Chicago 161, 294 Wolfe Tones GFC, New Jersey 307 Wolfe Tones HC, New York 141, 298 Women’s sport 370–373 Wood, Fernando 112 Wood, George 67–68

Wood, Joe, “Smokey” 283–284 Woodin Inquiry 117 Woods, Jimmy 98 Woodstock, IL 205 Woodward, Kenneth L. 388 Worcester, MA 69, 289, 353–354, 377 Worcester Academy 364 Worcester Ruby Legs, NL (1880–1882) 178 World Colored Heavyweight Championship 269 World Series: 1884–1890 73, 177; 1903, 1905–present 29, 77, 100– 103, 123, 125–127, 146, 148–156, 182–183, 185, 187, 189–190, 211, 259, 280, 283, 285, 309, 322– 323, 382, 413n59 World War I 2, 26, 72, 83, 109, 129, 150, 187, 190, 237, 257, 278, 293, 315, 324, 344, 356, 370, 378, 384; doughboys 191, 237, 300 World War II 257, 390 Wormwald, Joe 318 Wrenn, Robert D. 361 wrestling 47, 49, 55, 114, 119, 129, 166, 196–197, 218, 222, 249–251; in Virginia 15 Wright, Harry 68, 276–277, 319 Wright, John D. 38 Wright, Robert 251 Wrigley, William, Jr. 281 Wrigley, Philip K. 280 Wrigley Field 280 Xavier Athletic Club/ Athletic Association, New York 25–26, 108, 290 Yale University 173, 248, 262–263, 328, 351–352, 355–375, 426n118, 428n23 Yawkey, Tom 280 Yawkey, William H. 187 Yonkers, NY 17, 100, 194, 294, 296, 367 Yost, Fielding 262, 355–356 Young, Nicholas 76, 232 Young, Ralph 313 Young Irelander Rebellion 1848 40, 105 Young Mens Christian Association (YMCA) 11, 170, 239, 386 Youngstown, OH 254 Zimmer, Chief 67