The field was crowded with people and I yelled: ‘Stand back!’ and the crowd opened like the Red Sea opened for the rod of Moses. I ran on, and as I ran I made a prayer; it wasn’t theological, either, I tell you. I said: “God, if you ever helped mortal man, help me to get that ball, and you haven’t got much time to make up your mind, either.”
I ran and jumped over the bench and stopped. I thought I was close enough to catch it. I looked back and saw it going over my head, and I jumped and shoved my left hand out and the ball hit it and stuck. At the rate I was going, the momentum carried me on and I fell under the feet of a team of horses. I jumped up with the ball in my hand. Up came Tom Johnson. He was afterwards Mayor of Cleveland. “Here is $10.00 Bill; buy yourself the best hat in Chicago. That catch won me $1,500. Tomorrow go and buy yourself the best suit of clothes you can find in Chicago.”
An old Methodist minister said to me a few years ago: “Why, William, you didn’t take the $10.00 did you.” I said: “You bet I did.”
Listen! Mike Kelley was sold to Boston for $10,000. Mike got half of the purchase price. He came up to me and showed me a check for $5,000. John L. Sullivan the champion fighter, went around with a subscription paper and the boys raised over $12,000 to buy Mike a house.
They gave Mike a deed to the house and they had $1,500 left and gave him a certificate of deposit for that. His salary for playing with Boston was $4,700 a year. At the end of that season Mike had spent the $5,000 purchase price and the $5,000 he received as salary and the $1,500 they gave him and had a mortgage on the house. And when he died in Pennsylvania they went around with a subscription to get money enough to put him in the ground. Mike sat there on the corner with me twenty-seven years ago, when I said: “Goodbye, boys, I’m through.”
A. G. Spalding signed up a team to go around the world. I was the first man he asked to sign a contract and Captain Anson was the second.
I was sliding to second base one day. I always slid head first, and I hit a stone and cut a ligament loose in my knee.
I got a doctor and had my leg fixed up and he said to me: “William, if you don’t go on that trip I will give you a good leg.” I obeyed and I have as good a leg today as I ever had. They offered to wait for me at Honolulu and Australia.
Spalding said: “Meet us in England, and play with us through England, Scotland and Wales.” I didn’t go.