The Wilmington morning star., 1947-12-01
AS Pegler Sees It
BY WESTBROOK PEGLER

up there in the Chase hotel in St. Louis
back in the twenties when the Cardinals
had won pennant and We were very young
and so was the hotch inside us.
l was just reading that Mr.. Muckerman
is horny-handed millionaire who bought
little bit of stock in the Browns and never
thought it might be habit-forming until he
was horribly addicted and finally sold off
all his players to cure himself.
l was reading that he was baying at the
moon at a party in a hotel in jefferson
City that night few years back when sud-
denly stranger broke into his iddle-bum- DO
to ask ''why don't you buy my $4,000 worth
of stock in the Browns?"
| And he kept pestering Mr.. Muckerman,
and pulling and picking at him, until Mr..
M. said: "All right, give me blank check
and will buy your rancid violets but then
leave me alone so can sing"
What for kind of looking type of party
was he, Mr.. Muckerman? Was he kind of
tall and dangerous-looking with kind of
sunk-in eyes and Texas hat and watch
chain with an Odd Fellows fob? Talked a
sort of Whitney drawl, did he, Mr.: Mueker-
man, and playing caronls off the bath
room door and the sofa where that lady was
asetting?
Sounds to me mighty like the same man,
Mr.. Muckerman. A few years older than the
time he sold men Lii Stoner, the old Detroit
pitcher, in that suite at the Chase hotel for
ST 500, and $500 for catcher, because a
pitcher is no good without you got boy
to ketch him. 1t couldn't be anyone else.
And tell me, Mr.. Muckerman, now, was
they right pretty sort of lady, a red-head,
setting there on the sofa all night long while
the gallant stays were harmonizing and arch
ing their necks and fetching her drains
and ev'body thought she was somebody
else's true loving spouse? And she set there,
loading and loading and smiling sweet at
this and that one, and nobody even made a
pass to offer to see her home and along
about 2 a. m. she just sifted away, alone,
like phantom in Viennese play?
Mr. Muckerman, you and me, we have
had the same dream Same cast. Same plot,
shook up a little. I bought battery, Stoner
and one. You bought into the Browns.
didn't have no more idea to buy me no ball
players that night than gossakes, that's all
I hope. And neither did YOU
Well, with me it was like, you know,
lot of people in World Series suite and
the bathtub full of beer, like always in those
days. And logger named Sam the gas-man,
he comes busting in and sheds pint slabs of
chicken-cock and golden wedding and, it
makes man shiver to think OF it now, how
we used to use giner ale to neutralize the
Worm-oil from the STILL
In hundred rooms, at the Copley in Bos-
Ritz in Philadelphia, the Commodore, the
Drake and those old pigeon-lofts in Wash
ington, the scene was always the same, give
or take few characters And always there
was a nice-acting, pretty-looking, red-head-
ed, sir-Pm-a-lady kind of lady on the couch.
Edna! That was her name! Her name was
Edna, because l remember one night we all
put our little touseled heads together and
sang ''The Is Always Girl Named Edna"
Well, this Whitney voiced party somehow
picked on me to buy Lii Stoner who had
been real good pitcher for the Tigers and
had gone down to Dallas when his term was
up. 1 said, mo, don't want to buy him
'Why not?" this fellow said with glarey
look.
Because" 1 said, II am not baseball;
am newspaper. You know, words and
phrases strur-e together W t h ininnitable
facility.
Sure, know" he said Associated Press.
Nothing but bigotry!"
"Who?" I said.
Associated Press" he said. He seemed ig-
Then this lady, Edna began to say why
started to cry and yell.
I was a red-head too, then.
I never could stand lady yelling and
carrying on, so the upshot was that some
body pulled out a check on little old bust
ed bank down around Popular Bluff and
filled it in for $4,000 and he wrote out
bill of sale for Lii Stoner and one.
The next morning when l met Grantland
Rice he said II suppose you know what you
did last night, don't you?" and Harry Sal
singer, from Detroit said. "and in MISSOURI
at that! He had to pick Missouri to 60 it!
Boy, that certainly is bad. Well, whenever
they have World Series out this way, we
will run up to jefferson City and call on you
on visitors day and bring you cigarettes and
candy bars"
"Me?" I yelled. II didn't do no such of
thing. She went out with her husband That
skinny guy in the Texas hat"
"Oh, her." Rice and Salsinger said. mo
body amt fretting about her. She is the
house mother. But you wrote bum check
for $4,000 and furthermore, come JAM l,
of Lii Stoner and one and they are terrible
eaters You are doomed to poverty, all for
a smile from a pretty red-head."
When Christmas came / wrote Lii Stoner
a nice note. I said didn't want to stand in
the way of his advancement so, inasmuch
as l didn't have any ball club, I was giving
him his unconditional release. Then 1 wrote
an article for the great American free press
giving the same notice to one, my catcher
said all right but the next time he would
fine me $26,240,000, the same that he fined
John D. Rockefeller.
So now, Mr.. Muckerman, you tell me.
Was that how it was you bought into the
Browns that night at the party in Jefferson
City?
An tell me, for my purely historical in
terest how was Edna and have the years
been kind to her?
On0fofionc