Ed Williamson, our old short-stop, was a fellow weighing 225 pounds, and a more active man you never saw. He went with them, and while they were on the ship crossing the English channel a storm arose. The captain thought the ship would go down. Then he dropped on his knees and promised God to be true, and God spoke and the waves were still. They came back to the United States and Ed. came back to Chicago and started a saloon on Dearborn Street.
I would go there and give tickets for the Y. M. C. A. meetings and would talk with him, and would cry like a baby, I would get down and pray for him. When he died they put him on the table and cut him open and took out his liver. It was so big it would not go in a candy bucket.
Ed Williamson sat there on the street corner with me twenty-seven years ago when I said, “Goodbye, boys, I’m through.”
Frank Flint, our old catcher, who caught for nineteen years, drew $3,200 a year on an average. He caught before they had chest protectors and masks and gloves. He caught bare-handed. Every bone in the ball of his hand was broken. You never saw a hand like Frank had. Every bone in his face was broken and his nose and cheekbones, and the shoulder and ribs had all been broken.
I’ve seen old Frank Flint sleeping on a table in a stale beer joint and I’ve turned my pockets inside out and said: “You’re welcome to it, old pal.”
He drank on and on, and one day in winter he staggered out of a stale beer joint and stood on a corner and was seized with a fit of coughing.
The blood streamed out of his nose, his mouth and his eyes. Down the street came a woman. She took one look and said: “My God, is it you, Frank?” And the old love came back.
The wife called two policemen and a cab and started with him to her boarding house. They broke all speed regulations. She called five of the best physicians, and they listened to the beating of his heart—eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen—and the doctor said: “He will be dead in about four hours.” She said: “Frank the end is near,” and he said: “Send for Bill.”
They telephoned me and I came. When I reached his bedside he said to me: “There’s nothing in the life of years ago I care for now. I can hear the grandstand hiss when I strike out. I can hear the bleachers cheer when I make a hit that wins the game, 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?”
He struggled as he had years ago on the diamond when he tried to reach home—but the great Umpire of the universe yelled: “You’re out.” And the great gladiator of the diamond was no more.