The Richmond Saga, 1.4
#9 Barrow Street
At the corner of Barrow and Washington, Manhattan
Madigan Hall—The Headquarters of the Legacy Baseball league
May 1st, 1901
The large wheels of the elegant Hansom Cab conveyed the couple down Barrow Street, gleaming against a city after rain.
Annette was quiet. Her pale, ungloved hands were folded in her lap, and she studied passing street through the glass as Tommy Hershey turned his thumbs beside her and fixed his gaze on the felt wall.
How narrow the buildings seemed compared to Chicago—how wide the sidewalks, Tommy noted passively—how lacking in domes.
When at last Tommy could bear the silence no longer, he ran his fingertips against his corduroy pants, looking to his wife.
“Perhaps the meeting will go well,” he chimed, a hand drifting thoughtfully across his window. His wife scoffed.
Annette tilted her chin and raised a hand to her wide-brimmed hat, adjusting two of the golden tansies that stood primly beneath a band of violet ribbon.
“The last time we came to New York, Thomas Hershey,” Annette replied, “You left the game that you love forever.”
Tommy chewed on her words and nodded. He slinked back against the seat with a sigh.
“I didn’t leave it.”
Annette spared a glance for her husband, her wide eyes softening, for a moment.
“I know.”
She adjusted her white gloves and looked back to the street. “I am tired. And sorely demeaned, as I must drag myself before the decomposing corpse of Alexander Madigan for purposes that continue to elude me. Before noon.”
“I did recommend you stay at the hotel.”
She fixed a steel glare on the forty-seven-year-old ballplayer. He knew better than to react.
When the carriage came to a gentle halt, the door was opened to the aroma of fresh rains and springtime upon the wide sidewalk, busy with the commerce and motion of a burgeoning metropolis.
The two thanked the driver and set across the walk to the gates of Madigan Hall—laid in heavy, ornate stone—where a porter in a green suit dipped his hat and waved them through the iron-wrought gate. The interior courtyard was a lovely as Tommy remembered—alive in the riches of sycamores and maples—birds dancing in between the rays of sunlight that found their way to the bricks below. A paradise.
“Come along, Thomas,” Annette placed a hand on the back of her husband. He nodded quietly and stepped beneath the proscenium of sun-strewn branches and budding rosebushes.
Madigan Hall was a lovely, towering building—quite matching the immediate and luxurious success of the Legacy Baseball League itself. The rose-brick mansion, cut in the Queen Anne style, dominated the corner of the city block and could have easily been mistaken for an opera house or Royal Museum.
“You must trust my instincts,” Tommy told Annette as they entered through the double-oak doors of Madigan Hall into a marble-floored lobby. She did not reply.
A shimmering clamshell stairway conveyed the pair to the upper offices of the league, where an eager secretary welcomed them profusely, complimenting Mrs. Hershey on her hat. He escorted them down the sunlit hall to the offices of Alexander T. Madigan.
For all his faults, Tommy could not help but admire old Alex Madigan—as to enter his offices was to vanish into a memory of baseball that never truly existed. Despite the lavish grandeur of the outer halls, the Commissioner’s offices viewed rather as a boarding school, with simple, plastered walls and a lone secretary at a large, oak desk. The walls were adorned in the glorious memory of baseball; the Boston Beaneaters, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, and all the entrapments of a deceased National League. More prominent was Madigan’s Wall; the near wall of the office, towering nearly two stories with a crown of natural light from upper-story windows. All sixteen pennants of the LBL’s teams were painted neatly upon this blue-spackled wall, with the brass eagle of the Legacy Baseball League anchored in the center. Tommy stared at it with a half-smile until the secretary called them forward.
The groomed, young secretary welcomed the couple, rising politely to usher them back to the Commissioner’s office.
The heavy door opened, and the pair found a bearded and scowling Alexander Madigan at his large desk, scribbling upon papers with a wide hand. The old man, dressed in a faded suit, barked at the couple to enter and be seated, continuing at his scribbles with his head low to the paper.
The light of the city emerged from a single window beyond the old man’s chair, catching his many bookcases in a soft glow that revealed seas of dust swimming in the afternoon air. Behind him, on either side of a wide window, hung oval frames of both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. He kept to his letter, grimacing, looking ancient and tired in his old suit and pausing only to retrieve more ink and dab the paper with a small sponge.
The two found their seats before the desk. After a single cautionary glance to her husband, Annette adjusted her hat and cleared her throat.
“Mister Madigan,” she removed one glove after the other, her blue gaze fixed on the old man. “Is it your custom to invite guests into your office only to proceed with your business, or is this a display of indifference? Either way, I must observe that it fails to capture a gainful result.”
Madigan’s glossy eyes rose from his letters to the woman, then to her hat, and he grunted, looking back to his work.
“The tansy is the flower of war, Madame Hershey,” Madigan replied, his tone frontal and indifferent. “Or do you fancy New York a city bereft of metaphor?” The old man stamped his letter with a hard hand and sealed it away in a drawer, studying the pair. Despite himself, Tommy smiled. Annette did not.
He was a hard man, smaller than average, with an unkind stare and faded, white pate. He was old, unapologetically so, and what hair he had was brushed to the side over moles and freckles alike.
“It’s been some time, Mister Madigan,” Tommy said politely, his hat in both hands. Madigan scowled.
“It’s been eleven months and seven days,” the old man answered sharply. He slammed a book on his desk shut. “At the conclusion of that meeting, I was assured that this grievously illegal and unnecessary Player’s Union would be deceased forever.”
“You were promised no such thing,” Annette answered plainly, her hands in her lap. “The agreement, Mister Madigan, was that my husband would depart the league in exchange for a revocation of the Salary Cap Amendment.”
Madigan leaned back in his chair, studying the couple. His frown deepened.
“Your gambit was ineffective,” Mrs. Hershey continued, “As my husband only gained popularity in retirement, and the Player’s Union is now a legitimate threat to your league.”
The woman and old man locked cold gazes. Tommy Hershey cleared his throat, awkwardly. Before he could speak, Alexander Madigan interrupted.
“I am told, Mrs. Hershey, that you are involved with the Suffragette movement in Chicago.”
“I align myself with reason, yes.”
“I see.”
The two exchanged cold stares, and Tommy took a deep breath, leaning forward.
“Mister Madigan. Respectfully, we are not here to discuss suffrage.”
“It is all one,” Madigan answered, lifting himself from his desk with surprising alacrity and turning on a heel to observe lower Manhattan from his window. “I am unsurprised that the leader of an illegal Player’s Union is bosomed in matrimony with a leader of an illegal social movement.”
“Mister Madigan. If you please. I am not here to detail the demands of the Player’s Union. Or suffrage, for that matter.”
Both Madigan and Annette turned a surprised eye to Tommy, who looked intently back at the old man and leaned back in his chair. “We have come today, sir, to discuss a mutual enemy.”
Madigan eyed Hershey suspiciously, placing his wrinkled hands upon the desk and looking the younger man up and down. At last, he broke into a cold, staccato laughter.
“Hershey, my boy, you’re smarter than you look.”
“Hear me, Mister Madigan.” Hershey leaned forward once more. “You are a flawed man. Bigoted. Stuck in an ancient era. But for all your flaws, you keep your integrity. You despise inequity.”
Madigan glared at Hershey, but he remained silent from his perch.
“Michael Monroe,” Tommy continued, “represents a threat to everything you’ve spent your twilight days to create. You dream of a baseball league unfettered by the claws of corruption and malice. Monroe Tobacco, Mister Madigan, will see that vision undone. He will destroy the Legacy Baseball League.”
Madigan examined the pair for some time with his glossy gaze, his knuckles white on his old desk.
“Let us take on the mantle of our forbearers, Mister Madigan,” Anette said quietly, her eyes fixed on the old man. She nodded to the visages of the founding fathers behind him, “and oppose one another in due time.”
The old man studied the pair for a long, quiet time. At last, he folded his white hands together on the desk, looking between them.
“Tell me your proposal, then.”
Hershey offered a soft smile to his wife and removed a small portfolio from his suit jacket.
“Tell me, Commissioner,” he began, “what you know about Preston Kirby.”
