Zig-Zag-and-Swirl: Alfred W. Lawson's Quest for Greatness

2. The Magic Man of Baseball

2 THE MAG I ( MAN 0 F BASEBALL In the final scene of Childhood Days Lawson gives a dramatic account of "how he secured his first professional engagement" in baseball. As the scene opens, several citizens of an unspecified town talk excitedly about a baseball game in progress. It happens that the local nine have miraculously held a professional "league team" to a no-run standoff through eight innings. A young farmer asks, "Who's pitching for the home team?" A businessman replies, "A new fellow that we never saw before. They say he came to town this morning on a freight train. He's got great speed, good curves and good control. ... I believe they called him Lawson. He's just a young fellow about seventeen years old but he can put the twisters to that ball." Lawson goes on to win the game in a 2-0 shutout. Accompanying the young hero onto the stage, the grateful manager says, "Lawson, that was the greatest pitching that the people of this town have ever seen." Lawson quickly accepts the manager 's offer of a pitching job for the summer at forty dollars a month. When the proprietor of the local hotel also throws in an offer of free board for the season, Lawson requests a meal at once, explaining that "I haven't eaten anything yet today." Information which Lawson supplied elsewhere makes it nearly certain that the unnamed town in which this charming scene took place was Frankfort, Indiana, and the year, 1887. The veracity of the scene's action cannot be certified, ofcourse, 20 SEEDTIME OF A SELF-MADE MAN and at least one of the details is wrong: Lawson was eighteen, not seventeen , when he broke into professional baseball. Certain other details , however, have a great ring of plausibility. It is very easy to believe that Lawson did arrive at the debut of his baseball career precisely as he indicated-by chance, unheralded, via a freight train, and with an empty stomach. If Lawson's entrance into baseball was a fluke, he nonetheless made the most of the opportunity which suddenly opened to him in central Indiana. He pitched the next season for the Goshen team in northern Indiana and, in 1889, for no fewer than three teams-Bloomington and Sterling, both in Illinois, and Appleton, Wisconsin. Team hopping by footloose players was hardly uncommon in that freewheeling day when team folding was common, too, and handshakes sometimes took the place of written contracts, at least in the outlaw or independent leagues in which Lawson spent his first three years. In Lawson's case, however, frequent movement was the result of a succession of clubs eagerly buying his release, in order to cash in on his impressive pitching ability: according to an article appearing in 1890 in the Boston Daily Globe, his record for 1889 was an astounding thirty-three wins out of thirty-five games pitched. In the baseball parlance of that day, he was ~ "phenomenon." No wonder, then, that he soon came to the notice of a higher class of team in the minor leagues. For the 1890 season, his services were secured by the Wilmington, Delaware, club in the Atlantic Association. Wilmington boosters were certainly looking forward to a great 1890 season. Not only was a new ballpark under construction, but the club's owners were going all out to get topnotch playing talent. In early February , the Wilmington Every Evening reported almost daily on negotiations underway which, if successful, would permit "surplus material " of the Philadelphia Phillies to play for the Wilmington club. But even if the deal fell through (which it did), the newspaper was still brimming with optimism about the upcoming season: "It is not an exaggeration to say that the Wilmington club of 1890 will surpass the famous team of 1884 in playing strength." A key factor in the Every Evening's anticipation of great things ahead was Wilmington's new pitcher, Alfred Lawson. The newspaper had high expectations for him, and for good reason. Spending the THE MAGIC MAN OF BASEBALL 21 winter playing for a club in Saint Augustine, Florida, Lawson was regularly turning in performances which added to the luster of his reputation as a rising star of baseball. Reports of the ongoing great success of Wilmington's "phenomenon" piled up in the pages of the Every Evening throughout February and March of 1890...