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Victory

Few of us will ever have any of the attributes of Roy Hobbs in The Natural, Robert Redford looks, the sun just right, and amazing God-given talent. As much as we admire a figure like Barack Obama, Tom Brady, Tim Teabow, George Clooney or Derek Jeter, most of us are more like Charley Faust.

Never heard of Charley Faust? Sportscasters never talk about him in the pantheon of the baseball gods. Maybe it has to do with the fact that he might have been the most pathetic professional athlete to ever lace up a pair of cleats. Maybe it has to do with that he was born with “a whole bunch of nothing.” At least, that is what the people in his hometown of Marion, Kansas, must have thought when they saw him on the street.  The Bible says some people are born with ten talents, others with two. God seemed to have sent Charley, the son of a wheat farmer, into the world with nothing, except an eternal good nature. He seemed to have been born behind an eight ball that there was no way he was going to get out from behind.

Today, Charley’s problems would have been better understood.  There are teachers, caseworkers, medications and programs that would have helped him.  Those around him would have been more sensitive and understanding of the challenges Charley faced.  He was mentally slow and childlike.  He suffered from a form of schizophrenia called hebephrenia. It could have been a part of his family history or come from malnutrition as a fetus--no one in 1880s Kansas understood proper nutrition--or it could have been because his parents were older. It could have been something unspeakable in his childhood.  Whatever it was, something caused an imbalance in his brain; his neurotransmitters misfired. Today, we would just say he had special needs. Back then, locals would have called him one of the town’s characters and, in more harsh moments, the village idiot.  Still, he was gentle and good-natured, in many ways a real life Forrest Gump.

At 6’2”, Charley was huge for the era, rawboned and lanky.  For 31 years, no one outside of the borders of that little town heard of him.  A tornado took Dorothy out of Kansas. It was a fortune-teller in Lawrence who provided the yellow brick road for Charley to leave the wheat fields behind and make his way, not to Oz, but to a place probably just as exotic and unimaginable for Charley, New York City. Maybe she was just humoring the big duffus, picking his pocket as she spun him a yarn. Maybe she understood he was slow and was giving him something to smile about on his return home. Maybe she really saw the future—doubtful. For some unknown reason, she looked into Charley’s eyes and told him that he was going to lead the New York Giants baseball team to the pennant.

She could have believed what she told Charley, or she could have not. It did not matter. Charley believed what she told him.  She might have forgotten it the moment Charley left the tent, but Charley did not. He believed everything she told him, went home, and packed his bags to join the New York Giants.

John McGraw was only seven years older than Charley Faust. Short and stocky, he was in many ways the polar opposite of the 31-year-old Kansan.  Salty and street smart, he was as hard as nails, a man’s man, the kind of individual who terrorized umpires and got the most out of his players. As a player, he was notorious for underhanded tactics, tripping base runners, blocking the base path and the view of the umpire.  He pushed his players to do the same.  He is often credited with making baseball, through his antics, hire a crew of umpires instead having just one behind the plate.  He smoked and drank with the best of them and squeezed 2,669 victories out of his players--the second most of any manager in baseball history--before dying younger than he should have.

It had been six years since McGraw’s Giants had won the National League despite having future Hall-of-Famers Christy Mathewson, Rube Marquard, Chief  Meyers, and Red Schoendienst on the team. They were a bunch of talented underachievers.  Some fans and reporters were starting to wonder if they were cursed, pointing to Merkle’s Boner, a play where rookie first baseman Fred Merkle had forgotten to step on second base and cost the Giants the pennant three years earlier. McGraw’s Giants were in third place and appeared to be going nowhere again this year.

The hard-bitten McGraw must have rolled his eyes on July 29 when the lanky Kansan in the ill-fitting dark suit and black derby hat walked across the St. Louis Cardinals’ field towards him. Charley told the Giants’ manager, “Mr. McGraw, my name is Charles Victor Faust.  I live in Kansas, and a few weeks ago I went to a fortune-teller who told me that if I would join the New York Giants and pitch for them that they would win the pennant.”

McGraw told Charley to grab a glove to show him what the Kansan had.  The only baseball Faust had played was spotty service pitching for the local Marion team and only then when the team was short on players. Charley was awful, and McGraw ran him through the ropes, not out of meanness, but because the best way to separate the wheat from the chaff was to show the dreamers that they did not have the talent to play in the major leagues. McGraw and the team took every opportunity to embarrass Faust and turned him into a laughing stock.

 Maybe it was the fact that the young man did not react as he should have. Amid the laughter and catcalls, Charley kept his good nature. Maybe it was that McGraw, like a lot of ballplayers, was superstitious. Maybe he was just being kind to a young man who was clearly  “touched” and thought the 31-year-old would go back home in a few days. For whatever reason, he told Charley he could sit on the bench with the team that day.

With the grinning Kansan sitting on the bench, something strange happened; or maybe all the pieces started coming together. The Giants beat St. Louis, 5-2.  The big guy was back the next day, and, again, McGraw allowed him to sit on the bench. The Giants destroyed the Cards, 8-0. Most of the players thought that is where it was going to end, for some unknown reason their ill-natured manager had acted like a decent human being for a couple of days; but, much to their surprise, as they climbed on the train to continue their road trip, there was Charley Faust. McGraw announced, “We’re taking Charles along to help us win the pennant.”

Every game after that, Charley put on his uniform and warmed up, truly believing he might have a chance to pitch that day. Team sports are funny. It is not always the team with the best talent that wins, but often the team with the best chemistry. There was something about Charley being on the bench that transformed the Giants into winners. It could have been that he was a relief valve for McGraw’s intensity. It is possible that he lightened the clubhouse atmosphere with his windy stories or reminded the veteran players of why they were playing the game in the first place. Some teammates claim that McGraw’s sending Faust with his “whirling windmill” pitching style to the bullpen to warm-up in stressful moments or when the team was behind changed the ethos of the place and showed the genius of the “Little Napoleon.” Whatever it was, the Giants went on a winning streak. His “teammates” credited Charley with the change of attitude and changed his middle name from Victor to “Victory.” He was dubbed the “Kansas Jinx Killer” as they streaked to the pennant, winning the league by seven-and-a-half games.  

The great Christy Mathewson in his autobiography, Pitch in a Pinch, stated that Charley changed the attitude of the team.  Even though there were times that Charley caused McGraw to want to pull his hair out and tested the little man’s patience, John McGraw, looking back at that year, stated, “I give Charlie full credit for winning the pennant for me – the National League pennant of 1911.”

Even the fans climbed on the Charley bandwagon that year, cheering and calling for McGraw to put him in the game. With the pennant race safely in hand, one day, the baseball man turned to the simple Kansas farm boy and gave him the ball to finish out the game.  Charley raced out to the mound with his “whole bunch of nothing,” and it was having nothing that made him almost impossible to hit.  To the shock of everybody watching the game, he gave up only a couple of hits. He pitched a total of two innings that year and gave up only one run.

In a moment that rarely happens in sports, even the opposing team, the Brooklyn Superbas (later nicknamed The Dodgers), during the last game of the season got into the act. McGraw sent Charley, bat in hand, to the plate in the last inning.

The Superbas pitcher Eddie Dent softly lobbed the ball at Charley, to hit, but not hurt him. Sent to first base by the umpire, the crowd cheered and some cried as Superbas and Giant players encouraged Charley to “steal” second base, then third, and finally, home.  With his teammates and McGraw waiting for him around the plate, the big kid, feeling vindicated as he stepped on home and ran into the arms of his teammates, yelled, “Who’s loony now?”

“Who’s loony now?” It was not Charlie Faust, who was, at that moment, the center of the baseball universe and the hero of every New York fan. McGraw was not allowed to bring his “lucky charm” with him to the World Series against the Philadelphia Athletics.  The World Series was no place for a sideshow, and the Giants promptly lost. McGraw still sent Charley a full World Series share, $1,000. Charley returned again for the next two seasons, and the Giants continued their winning ways with him, enjoying one of the greatest starts in baseball history in 1912, 54-11. Three years, three pennants.

Yet, luck ran out of Charlie and the Giants. By 1913, Charley was as good-natured as ever, but thinner and not looking well. He was becoming lost in his disease. When spring training arrived the next year, Charlie was not there. The Giants, without him, finished in second place. A few months later, far from the cheering crowds, Charley “Victory” Faust died of tuberculosis on June 18, 1915, alone in a Steilacoom, Washington, mental hospital and was buried in an unmarked grave along with 3,000 other patients quietly forgotten. The Giants lost that day to Pittsburgh, 7-5, and finished the season in last place.    

Some people are given ten talents. Some two. Some a whole bunch of nothing. For some unknown reason, I identify with those who got a whole bunch of nothing.  Life is mainly about attitude. Maybe, when everything is said and done, that is all there is to determine victory.  “Who’s loony now?” Charley yelled, and I am asking now.