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Authors: Jimmy Greenfield
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pitcher Jack Pfiester not making it out of the first inning, the Cubs won 4–2 to win the pennant as Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown came on in relief to outduel Christy Mathewson. They went on to beat the Detroit Tigers in the World Series in five games.
While the Giants had lost the pennant, Fred Merkle had lost his good name. Newspaper accounts had referred to his “boneheaded” decision, and the expression “Merkle’s boner” quickly was adopted as the catch-all for the entire affair. Fair or not, Merkle had to live with his last name becoming a verb that came to represent doing something stupid.
By all accounts, Merkle was a good and intelligent man. His teammates never blamed him for what had happened, and he stayed with the Giants until 1916. A year later, ironically enough, he joined the Cubs and helped them win the 1918 NL pennant. But after Merkle retired, the incident continued to haunt him and his family.
In More Than Merkle: A History of the Best and Most Exciting Season in Baseball History , Merkle’s daughter told Keith Olbermann about how the family was living in Florida in the 1930s when a visiting minister attended their church.
“I want to begin by admitting to you an ugly secret,” the minister said. “I am from Toledo, Ohio, birthplace of the infamous Fred ‘Bonehead’ Merkle.
The entire family got up and left.
16. Jolly Cholly
The numbers don’t tell the Charlie Grimm story, the laughs do.
You can go through the statistical record and discover Grimm played 20 years in the big leagues, including his last 12 with the Cubs after getting traded from Pittsburgh. You can see he was a pretty fair ballplayer, too, knocking out 2,299 hits during a career launched in 1916.
A glance at his managerial record reveals he won 1,287 games and three National League pennants in 19 seasons as a big league manager, including 14 spread over three separate stints with the Cubs. Those are the indisputable, important, impersonal numbers, and they only begin to tell the story of the man called Jolly Cholly by countless friends, teammates, and admirers.
“We’d book Charlie into the old Wisconsin and Riverview theatres during the off-season,” Bill Veeck Jr. told the Chicago Tribune after Grimm passed away in 1983. “He was a wonderful entertainer. He would sing and play the banjo, and he was a great storyteller. Many of us believed he could have been a professional vaudevillian.”
In the foreword to Grimm’s 1968 autobiography, Jolly Cholly’s Story: Baseball, I Love You! , co-author Ed Prell relays the story of the time Grimm was struck by a beanball in an era when players didn’t wear helmets. Several men in the stands rushed to Grimm’s side and one of them, when asked his qualifications to help, said he was not a doctor but a pharmacist. This perked up Grimm, who managed to blurt out, “What do you charge for a pint of gin, Doc?”
Grimm’s good humor and laid-back approach is widely credited for turning around the 1932 season for the Cubs, who were disintegrating under Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby, a remarkable player but an uninspiring and difficult manager. With his trademark banjo by his side, Grimm took over as player-manager in late July and led the Cubs to a 37–18 record and the NL pennant.
Grimm stayed on as manager until 1938 when it was his turn to get ousted in the middle of the season. But unlike Hornsby, who left in a huff, Grimm switched to the broadcast booth and cheered on the Cubs as they again won the NL pennant.
In 1944, with the Cubs again in need of a change, Grimm returned for his second term as manager and in 1945 took them to their fifth World Series in 17 seasons. Although he wasn’t manager during the 1938 Series, Grimm was the only person to be in a Cubs uniform for each of those five pennant-winning seasons.
“Oh, Jesus, Charlie was really funny,” former Cubs second baseman Don Johnson told author Peter Golenbock in Wrigleyville . “In [the minors
While the Giants had lost the pennant, Fred Merkle had lost his good name. Newspaper accounts had referred to his “boneheaded” decision, and the expression “Merkle’s boner” quickly was adopted as the catch-all for the entire affair. Fair or not, Merkle had to live with his last name becoming a verb that came to represent doing something stupid.
By all accounts, Merkle was a good and intelligent man. His teammates never blamed him for what had happened, and he stayed with the Giants until 1916. A year later, ironically enough, he joined the Cubs and helped them win the 1918 NL pennant. But after Merkle retired, the incident continued to haunt him and his family.
In More Than Merkle: A History of the Best and Most Exciting Season in Baseball History , Merkle’s daughter told Keith Olbermann about how the family was living in Florida in the 1930s when a visiting minister attended their church.
“I want to begin by admitting to you an ugly secret,” the minister said. “I am from Toledo, Ohio, birthplace of the infamous Fred ‘Bonehead’ Merkle.
The entire family got up and left.
16. Jolly Cholly
The numbers don’t tell the Charlie Grimm story, the laughs do.
You can go through the statistical record and discover Grimm played 20 years in the big leagues, including his last 12 with the Cubs after getting traded from Pittsburgh. You can see he was a pretty fair ballplayer, too, knocking out 2,299 hits during a career launched in 1916.
A glance at his managerial record reveals he won 1,287 games and three National League pennants in 19 seasons as a big league manager, including 14 spread over three separate stints with the Cubs. Those are the indisputable, important, impersonal numbers, and they only begin to tell the story of the man called Jolly Cholly by countless friends, teammates, and admirers.
“We’d book Charlie into the old Wisconsin and Riverview theatres during the off-season,” Bill Veeck Jr. told the Chicago Tribune after Grimm passed away in 1983. “He was a wonderful entertainer. He would sing and play the banjo, and he was a great storyteller. Many of us believed he could have been a professional vaudevillian.”
In the foreword to Grimm’s 1968 autobiography, Jolly Cholly’s Story: Baseball, I Love You! , co-author Ed Prell relays the story of the time Grimm was struck by a beanball in an era when players didn’t wear helmets. Several men in the stands rushed to Grimm’s side and one of them, when asked his qualifications to help, said he was not a doctor but a pharmacist. This perked up Grimm, who managed to blurt out, “What do you charge for a pint of gin, Doc?”
Grimm’s good humor and laid-back approach is widely credited for turning around the 1932 season for the Cubs, who were disintegrating under Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby, a remarkable player but an uninspiring and difficult manager. With his trademark banjo by his side, Grimm took over as player-manager in late July and led the Cubs to a 37–18 record and the NL pennant.
Grimm stayed on as manager until 1938 when it was his turn to get ousted in the middle of the season. But unlike Hornsby, who left in a huff, Grimm switched to the broadcast booth and cheered on the Cubs as they again won the NL pennant.
In 1944, with the Cubs again in need of a change, Grimm returned for his second term as manager and in 1945 took them to their fifth World Series in 17 seasons. Although he wasn’t manager during the 1938 Series, Grimm was the only person to be in a Cubs uniform for each of those five pennant-winning seasons.
“Oh, Jesus, Charlie was really funny,” former Cubs second baseman Don Johnson told author Peter Golenbock in Wrigleyville . “In [the minors
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