Shortstop : Where Grace and Power Collide!
Contents:
Dionne listened to his woes and diagnosed the problem as "tobacco heart"--frayed nerves due to excessive use of nicotine. As the season drew to a close, with Wee Willie Keeler and the Brooklyn Bridegrooms pulling away to beat the Bostons for the flag, Bergen's mental condition grew more acute. He sought remedies from doctors and importuned three Catholic priests--Bergen rarely missed a Sunday Mass--to still the demons that had nested in his soul.
He brooded in the clubhouse, staring into the distance for hours. Though of average stature, at 5'10" and pounds, he appeared to grow larger and more fearsome to his teammates, evolving into a semblance of James Wait in Conrad's Nigger of the Narcissus, who inspired such fear among his mates that they shrank from even looking at him. Boston club president Arthur Soden told his boys to be careful around Bergen. The catcher's wife, Hattie, had told Dionne that she had no fear of him. Nor did she fear for their two children, six-year-old Florence, a pretty brunette in curls, and flaxen-haired Joe, three years younger.
Martin liked to hitch up his horse and buggy and take the kids to pick up the mail in town. By January , though, he was not getting along with his father, Michael, whose drinking had been a source of tension between them, and on the night of Jan. At one point Hattie hid Martin's shotgun under the sheets of their bed, in the same room where the two kids slept, and when Martin got up around 5: Standing before the kitchen stove, he lifted the oven lids and scooped out Thursday's ashes.
Then he gathered old papers and laid them on the grate. Crossing the kitchen in his stocking feet, he opened the woodshed door and went inside. He may have meant to break up some wood for kindling. The heavy woodsman's ax was in one corner of the shed. Bergen picked it up. There's no telling where his last hallucination took him, but in that shed he Jekylled into Hyde.
He swept back into the kitchen, the ax in his hands, and cut the corner into the bedroom. Hattie saw him coming toward her. She got to her feet and raised her hands to protect herself. He was one of six children raised by Michael and Ann Delaney Bergen.
When Martin was a teenager, baseball was just coming to flower as the national game, with Cap Anson of the Chicago White Stockings and King Kelly of the Chicagos and then the Bostons showing the way in their wools. Martin and his younger brother William practiced endlessly, both as catchers.
William, a smooth fielder, would play 11 years in the majors, most of them for the Brooklyns.
His most enduring legacy would be a lifetime batting average of. Martin was cut from a better but softer grain of wood. Even as a kid, on Father James Tuite's team of altar boys, he had periodic tantrums, throwing down his gear and stalking off the field if another player earned more applause. He had a feel for the game, however, and he shaped his considerable athleticism to fit its languorous rhythms. Everywhere Bergen went trouble followed. He began his run in minor league ball in Salem, Mass.
He gave the other player "a bad beating. In '94 he landed in Lewiston, Maine, where he batted. Blues in the talent-rich and hotly competitive Western League. There Bergen played to generally effusive reviews. After a victory over Indianapolis in late July , The Kansas City Star noted, "Bergen caught an excellent game yesterday and kept the visitors anchored to the bases all through the contest. By July 1, Bergen was leading the Blues with a. His play suggested that he belonged at another level--in the only major league then in existence, the National League.
Mood swings aside--Bergen flipped from bright, expansive highs to dark, despondent lows--he was beginning to show a disturbing inclination to flee from his travails. He had met the pretty, fair-haired Hattie Gaines, who worked as a stitcher in the Batcheller shoe factory in North Brookfield, and they had been married in July He had urged her to join him in Kansas City, but she had chosen instead to stay with her family in upstate New York during the season.
Living in a distant town without his wife left Bergen more unsettled than ever, and his erratic behavior incensed the tough Manning. Near the end of the '95 season, in one of his "spells," Bergen left the Blues over a perceived slight and went home to Massachusetts, never to return. He would not be out of the game long. Bergen had ended up batting. They had lost their formidable catcher, Charlie Bennett, in January He lived but lost both legs.
Two seasons would pass before Bergen made the maximum--a good part of '96 was lost to injury--but he began to bloom as a defensive catcher in ' Some of his feats became legendary. In one game in Washington that year he threw out seven runners trying to steal second base. The Bostons were charging toward their fourth pennant in seven years, and the catcher asserted himself as a respected and even crucial member of one of the greatest teams of the 19th century.
Four of those Bostons would make it to Cooperstown: Nichols, who won games in a year career, had at least 30 wins per season seven out of eight years, from through '98, and pitched a staggering complete games; outfielder Hugh Duffy, who holds the highest batting average for a season,.
They were solid, even brilliant, and Bergen was embraced as a mate. Between the lines he played the unruffled pro. John Gaffney, one of the premier umpires of those times, never knew Bergen as a complainer, this in an era noted for its theatrics. No man could catch more gracefully or do more with less apparent exertion than Bergen. Every move he made counted. He and [Dick] Buckley were the only two players I've ever seen who could throw to the bases without moving their feet That was one of Martin's strongest points.
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If Bergen seemed odd off the field, he more than made up for it in the Bostons' run to beat the Baltimores for the '98 National League title. He was a favorite of the fans, so the money changers in the front office loved him. Bergen had hit only. Yet that year he also grew increasingly hostile and unbalanced and, according to the Boston Morning Journal, "assaulted several of the most inoffensive members of the team while in the west. All this came to a boil on July 28 in what The Sporting News would describe as a "sensational scene" instigated by Bergen over breakfast in the fancy dining room of the Southern Hotel in St.
The night before, on the train bearing the team from Brooklyn, pitcher Vic Willis and other players had begun kidding one another. Suddenly Bergen grew morose and refused to join in the horseplay. He growled at Willis, but no one paid any attention to it, as it was nothing unusual for him to relapse into one of his spells when he would not talk with or be talked to by anyone.
The next morning, Willis came down to breakfast and was escorted by the headwaiter to a seat next to Bergen. The year-old Willis, a 6'2" rookie on his way to winning 25 games that season, greeted his catcher as he sat down.
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Smarting from the blow, Willis appeared ready to fight, but he checked himself. Several players urged him to another table, then out of the room. Selee warned him not to retaliate. The other players, trying for a fifth pennant in eight years, admired Bergen as a hustling, hardworking player but were livid over the slapping incident.
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Bergen made an ass of himself and brought discredit on us all by his inexcusable conduct It is a surprise to me we were not all thrown out bag and baggage There is no boycott on Bergen, but there is nothing cordial in our relations with him and he so understands. He has made trouble with a good many of the boys and we just give him a wide berth. But he's a ballplayer, and once we get into a game, personal feelings are set aside in admiration of the artist, for such he is.
The Southern Hotel incident, suppressed by the writers at Selee's request during the season, finally broke in The Sporting News in mid-October--after Boston had won the pennant--but the story did not force the team to trade its star catcher. The club had come to perceive him as too valuable. Since the middle of the '98 season, however, the Bostons had been a house unevenly divided, an entire team set against one man.
Matters could only grow worse. In addition to paranoia, Martin Bergen most likely suffered from schizophrenia with a touch of manic depression. Carl Salzman, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who examined various contemporary accounts of Bergen's behavior. Schizophrenia, Salzman says, can be marked by delusions such as Bergen experienced: He finished his career with strikeouts in 42 starts. Thank you to my family, friends, teammates and coaches for helping me to get where I am today.
The 6-foot-1, pound Williams split time at catcher and in the infield. He was drafted by the Rays in the 31st round of the Draft, but chose to return for his senior season. He played strictly at catcher in and before transitioning to first base in The left-handed hitting Garry Jr. His father was the cousin of Southern Miss running back legend Ben "Go Go" Gerry, who was the school's all-time leader in rushing yards when he left the school in In 32 games for Madison Central High School, Grace went and struck out 98 batters over 64 innings and ended the season with a 1.
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Shortstop: Where Grace and Power Collide! [Mike Maloni] on www.farmersmarketmusic.com * FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Shortstop tells the story of a Massachusetts . Shortstop: Where Grace and Power Collide! - Kindle edition by Mike Maloni. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets.
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