Ghost of a Chance

By Bob Brigham

The grass was green and lush as I walked my group on a tour of Angeles-Rosedale Cemetery. Each year the West Adams Heritage Association (WAHA) organizes a tour of selected grave sites at the cemetery that prides itself on being the first in Los Angeles to have opened its gates to persons of all faiths and colors. In past years I can remember visiting the plots of such notables as Civil War General William Rosecrans, movie star Anna Mae Wong, and jazz pianist Art Tatum. At each stop the tour group would be greeted by a real live person dressed and made up to look like the deceased in the prime of his or her life.

Macabre? Not at all. To me it is a charming way to get to know a subject, although I have found that the WAHA sometimes has to take what it can get, and the likeness can stretch credulity. For instance, the Art Tatum of a few years ago played good piano on the baby grand that had been placed next to the tombstone, the kind of stuff you would hear in a high class lounge, but it wasn't in Art's style. Sure, he was a black man but he wasn't blind. He didn't even try to fake it by wearing shades.

This year's assault on accuracy was Henry Armstrong, the great boxer of the 1930's. Instead of finding a compact, agile man to talk to his audience while shadow boxing around his headstone, WAHA put a robe and glove on a fellow who looked more like the lead character in "The Jeffersons" than Hammerin' Henry. He gave his birthplace as Columbus. Armstrong was born in Missouri.

But I digress. There is a baseball story here somewhere. Oh, yes! The man some claim would never have gotten to Cooperstown had it not been for a poem written by Franklin P. Adams.

Frank Chance was not a bad first baseman. In fact, there are those who say he would have made the Hall had Adams never immortalized the double play combination of Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance. So appealing was the rhythmic chant of those three names Adam strung together that the Chicago Cubs' infielders became larger than life and better than their records would indicate. To be sure, shortstop Joe Tinker, second baseman Johnny Evers and Chance on first, were the best double play combo in the first decade-and-a-half of the last century, but probably not the best of all time. And taken individually, without an assist from Adams, there is a good possibility that none of them would have advanced beyond TDA's "Stars In Their Time Hall of Fame" status.

Chance was born in Fresno, California in 1877. He was studying to be a dentist in 1898 when Bill Lange, a Cub outfielder, saw him in a semi-pro game in Irvington, CA. Lange persuaded Cubs management to sign him as a catcher-outfielder.

Any thought of continuing his career in dentistry must have been abandoned when the Cubs put him behind the plate. Foul tips were a problem for the man whose teammates called him "Husk" because of his husky build and aggressive style of play. He was frequently sidelined with broken fingers.

When Bill Hanlon, Chicago's regular first baseman, left the team following spring training in 1903, manager Frank Selee gave the job to Chance.

Not only did Chance prove to be an excellent first baseman, the fact that he no longer had to labor behind the plate improved his hitting as well. His average had ranged from .278 to .295 in his first five years in the majors. All of a sudden he found himself hitting .327, .310, .316 and .319 for the next four campaigns. Then, poor health took him on a slow but steady decline to his retirement at 37 in 1914.

Perhaps his responsibilities as a player-manager had something to do with taking his batting average down to .200 and .208 his final two seasons, but those two sub-par years did not do too much damage to his lifetime average of .296.

When Chance assumed the manager role, "Husk" went from being one of the boys to "The Peerless Leader," a nickname by which he is more commonly known. One could buttress his claim to Cooperstown status by citing his managerial record of 946-648 for a .593 winning percentage. In eight years as the Cubs skipper he won two world championships and four pennants. Do you think Cub fans today would find that acceptable today?

Given the Cubs' generally miserable performance over the rest of the century, it is hard to imagine that they were once the class of baseball. In 1906, Chance's overall most successful season he batted .319 and led the league in hits and stolen bases. His team compiled a 116-36 record. No team has ever won more, although the season is 8 games longer now (they had two ties in '06).

One stat that makes the baseball scholar do a double-take is Chance's stolen base mark. Men who play his position are often hulking, lumbering types not known for their speed and cunning on the base paths. He is credited with 401 thefts lifetime. One heist is considered by many to be "baseball's most expensive base." It occurred in a Cubs-Cincinnati game. Player-manager Chance hit a single and then stole second. Taking his lead, he gave the bunt sign. Before the ball was even down, he was rounding third and sprinting for home. He barely beat the tag. Owner Charles Murphy was so impressed with his guile and hustle that he rewarded Chance with a part ownership of the club. Chance later sold his share for $150,000. A lot of money in those days.

Frank Chance earned whatever financial rewards he received from baseball. He crowded the plate, in keeping with his aggressive nature. Thus, he was frequently beaned, a fate not to be taken lightly in that helmetless era. He paid the price with diminished hearing and binding headaches that caused him to take himself out of the lineup more and more as time went by.

The owner, who so generously rewarded his player-manager after his daring baserunning beat the Reds, tightened the purse strings in 1912, refusing to provide Chance with the talent he thought he needed to contend. At the end of the season the rift between the two had become so great that Chance was released.

After surgery that winter to try to relieve the headaches, Chance signed on with the Yankees as player-manager, but in two seasons he could not duplicate the success he had in Chicago.

In 1915, the "Peerless Leader" returned to his California roots, managing Los Angeles of the Pacific Coast League. Then, in 1923 he answered the call to return to the big leagues as manager of the Boston Red Sox. But the magic was gone. It was the era during which the Red Sox management was holding a fire sale every year to pay off the owner's debts. (Remember Babe Ruth in 1920?)

Chance was scheduled to try his luck as manager of the White Sox in 1924, but his health gave out and death took him at age 53, before the season began.

During his stint as manager of the Angels he purchased an orange grove west of Los Angeles. He had hoped for a long retirement as a gentleman farmer, but it was not to be.

The first time I saw the ornate but poorly maintained tombstone that marks the grave of Frank Chance was four years ago when I took my first Angeles-Rosedale Cemetery tour. I noted it and suggested to the folks at WAHA that "The Peerless Leader" might be important enough to include a future tour. I don't want to get too maudlin or new age here, but on that earlier occasion I felt the presence of the man who was on the tail end of all those double plays that the poet/journalist Adams immortalized.

This year, the second time around, the nostalgic atmosphere was enhanced by a thirtyish fellow named Joe Bergin. He is a WAHA member who was Frank Chance for a day. The fact that he seemed to have the right of gentility and athleticism was no accident. He was not a baseball player, but he had played professional soccer. He was wearing a Cub uniform of an indeterminate era. He didn't talk about the character he was portraying, he spoke in the first person just as did the other historic figures that made up the tour. The authenticity was compromised somewhat by the fact that he was wearing a regular fielder's glove, not the first baseman's trapper that Chance wore.

But let's not get too picky. He was a better Frank Chance than "Mr. Jefferson" was a Henry Armstrong. WAHA is on to something here, dressing those portraying reclusive millionairesses in 1890s garb, Civil War generals in full dress uniform and presenting jazz pianists approximating the style and look of Art Tatum. The experience was good enough to make me want to return.

Wonder who they are going to, uh, dig up next year?