October 23: On
this day in 1939, Zane Grey died. Grey was born as Pearl Zane Gray in
Zanesville, Ohio, a town founded by his ancestors. After high school, his first
move was not west but east, to study dentistry at the University of
Pennsylvania, financed by a baseball scholarship. His next move was to New York
City as a dentist, but only because New York was a literary center, a place
where Grey would pull teeth by day and write or play baseball by night.
These three—dentistry, baseball and storytelling—converge in
the following anecdote. Grey's father was a dentist, and Grey was compelled to
help out around the office, at first cleaning up but eventually pulling teeth,
a job for which a baseball pitcher's strong hands and arms came in handy. Soon
Grey was sent out to surrounding towns for this task—a traveling and totally
unlicensed tooth-puller. On one visit to Baltimore, Ohio he heard talk of a big
baseball game that afternoon, the local squad against an unbeaten team from
nearby Jacktown. Grey was a star in the Columbus semi-pro league and proud of
his curve ball, a pitch new to the game and virtually unseen by the farm boys.
He introduced himself to the manager of the Baltimore team, and had his offer
to pitch that afternoon immediately accepted. With the game tied in the bottom
of the seventh inning, Grey hit a grand slam; in the eighth, he threw a
roundhouse curve so slow and strange that the batter fell over swinging. With
the other team yelling, "Ringer! Ringer! Ringer!" the umpire took to
the mound: "Game called. Nine to nothing, favor Jacktown. Baltimore's
ringer pitcher throws a crooked ball!"
In the ensuing riot, Grey slipped to the barn
to change, but when still only half-dressed he saw the Jacktown team and fans
coming with a fence rail to ride him out of town. Grey bolted, and after a long
chase escaped to a farmer's cornfield, where he spent the night in hiding. The
next morning the farmer congratulated him on a great game, and gave him a pair
of overalls.
Daybook is contributed by Steve King, who teaches in the English Department of Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland. His literary daybook began as a radio series syndicated nationally in Canada. He can be found online at todayinliterature.com.
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