The littlest Brown trotted to his base as the crowd cheered and cameras clicked; then he stood with one foot on the bag as if he were thinking of stealing, which got a huge, roaring laugh.
Finally pinch runner Jim Delsing came over and Gaedel surrendered the base to him, giving the big man a comradely pat on the butt.
The crowd was going wild, Veeck grinning like a monkey, as I made my exit, to go down and meet my midget charge in Veeck’s office. Eddie had his clothes changed — he was wearing a bright green and yellow shirt that made Veeck’s taste seem mild — and I warned him that the reporters would be lying in wait.
“Veeck says it’s your call,” I said. “I can sneak you out of here—”
“Hell no!” Eddie was sitting on the floor, tying his shoes — he didn’t need any help, this time. “It’s great publicity! Man, I felt like Babe Ruth out there.”
“Eddie, you’re now what most every man in the country wishes he could be.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“A former major-leaguer.”
Since Veeck had been talking about using Gaedel again, the little guy really warmed up to the reporters waiting outside the stadium, telling them “two guys I’d really like to face on the mound are Bob Feller and Dizzy Trout.”
But it didn’t work out that way. First off, despite the midget ploy, the Browns lost 6–2 to the Tigers, anyway. And before Veeck could put Gaedel into a White Sox game in Eddie’s hometown of Chicago a month later, the baseball commissioner banned midgets from baseball.
Veeck had responded to Commissioner Harridge by saying, “Fine, but first you gotta establish what a midget is — is it three foot six, like Eddie? If it’s five six, great! We can get rid of Phil Rizzuto!”
The commissioner’s ban was not only complete, but retroactive: Eddie didn’t even make it into the record books, the Gaedel name nowhere to be seen in the official 1951 American League batting records — though the base-on-balls was in Cain’s record, and a pinch-running appearance in Delsing’s.
Nonetheless, this stuffed-shirt revisionist history did no good at alclass="underline" record book or not, Eddie was immortal over Bill Veeck’s stunt, and so was Bill Veeck.
Immortal in the figurative sense, of course. Their fame didn’t stop Veeck from staring death in the face, nor, apparently, had it spared little Eddie Gaedel from murder.
The Keurtz Funeral Home was one of those storefront numbers, with a fancy faux-stone facade in the midst of pawnshops and bars. This was on the South Side, Ashland and 48th, the business district of a working-class neighborhood of two-flats and modest frame houses, a hard pitch away from Comiskey Park.
I left my car three blocks down, on a side street, mulling over what I’d learned from several phone calls to contacts in the Coroner’s Office and the Homicide Bureau. The death had never been considered a possible homicide, so there’d been virtually no investigation.
A midget had died in his sleep, a not uncommon occurrence, considering the limited life expectancy of little people. Yes, there’d been some bruises, but Gaedel was known as a rough customer, a barroom brawler, with several assaults on his record. The unspoken but strongly implied thread was that if Gaedel hadn’t died of natural causes, he’d earned whatever he’d gotten.
The alcove of the funeral home was filled with smoke and midgets. This was not surprising, the smoke anyway, being fairly typical for a Chicago storefront funeral parlor — no smoking was allowed in the visitation areas, so everybody crowded out in the entryway and smoked and talked.
Seeing all those small, strange faces turned toward me, as I entered, was unsettling: wrinkled doll faces, frowning at my six-foot presence, the men in suits and ties, the women in Sunday best, like children playing dress up. I took off my hat, nodded at them as a group, and they resumed their conversations, a high-pitched chatter, like half a dozen Alvin and the Chipmunks records were playing simultaneously.
The dark-paneled visitation area was large, and largely empty, and just inside the door was the tiny coffin with Eddie peacefully inside. He wore a conservative suit and tie, hands folded; it was the only time I hadn’t seen Eddie in a loud sport shirt, with the exception of that kid-size Browns uniform. Quite a few flowers were on display, many with Catholic trappings, a horseshoe arrangement ribboned MY FAVORITE BATTER — BILL VEECK prominent among them.
The folding chairs would have seated several hundred, but only two were occupied. Over to the right, a petite but normal-sized woman in black dabbed her eyes with a hanky as a trio of midgets — two men and a woman — stood consoling her. Eddie’s mother, no doubt.
The female midget was maybe four feet and definitely quite lovely, a shapely blue-eyed blonde lacking pinched features or ungainly limbs, a miniature beauty in a blue satin prom dress. She was upset, weeping into her own hanky.
In the back sat a human non sequitur, a slim, rangy mourner in his late thirties, with rugged aging-American-boy good looks — anything but a midget. His expression somber, his sandy hair flecked with gray, he looked familiar to me, though I couldn’t place him.
Since Eddie’s mom was occupied, I wandered back to the full-size mourner and he stood, respectfully, as I approached.
“Nate Heller,” I said, extending a hand. “I take it you were a friend of Eddie’s, too. Sorry I can’t place you...”
“Bob Cain,” he said, shaking my hand.
“The pitcher!”
His smile was embarrassed. “That’s right. You’re a friend of Bill Veeck’s, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. I’ve done a number of jobs for Bill... including body-guarding Eddie for that stunt, way back when.”
Cain smiled again, a bittersweet expression. Then he moved over one and gestured to the empty chair, saying, “Sit down, won’t you?”
We sat and talked. I was aware that Cain, after a contract squabble shortly following the midget incident, had been traded at Veeck’s request to the Browns. Cain played the ’52 and ’53 seasons for him.
“Bill’s a great guy,” Cain said. “One owner who treated the players like human beings.”
“Even if he did embarrass you?”
“That’s just part of the Veeck package. Funny thing is, in the time I played for him, Bill never mentioned the midget thing. But I always wondered if he’d traded for me to make it up to me, or something. Anyway, I had a fine career, Mr. Heller.”
“Nate.”
“Beat the Yankees fifteen oh, in my first major league start. Pitched a one-hitter against Feller. I had a lot of good experiences in baseball.”
“But you’ll be remembered for pitching to a midget.”
“At least I’ll be remembered. It’s part of baseball history, Nate — there’ll never be another midget in the game... just Eddie.”
“Did you stay in touch with the little guy?”
“Naw... I haven’t seen him since I pitched against him. But when I read about this, I just had to pay my respects, as a good Christian, you know — to a man who was so important in my life.”
“Are you still in the game, Bob?”
“Not since ’56... got a calcium deposit on my wrist, and couldn’t get my pitch back. I drove up from Cleveland for this — felt kind of... obligated.”
I didn’t hear anything but sincerity in his words and his voice; but I would check up on Cain’s whereabouts — and see if he’d driven up from Cleveland before or after Eddie’s murder.
The petite blonde was standing at the casket, lingering there, staring down at Eddie, weeping softly into her hanky. The two men had gone back out to the alcove.
This left Mrs. Gaedel free, and I went over to her, introducing myself.
“Mrs. Gaedel, Bill Veeck sends his condolences,” I told her, taking the seat next to her.
A pleasant-looking woman of sixty, salt-and-pepper hair in a bun, Mrs. Gaedel sat and listened as I told her how I’d been involved with Eddie in his famous stunt. I left out the part about the college girls in the lounge car.