KILL THAT GOOSE! The humorous historical origin of baseball’s foremost feathered antagonist.
When a goose flew onto the outfield grass during a sixth inning rain delay at Detroit’s Comerica Park last Wednesday, few could have guessed it would prove a harbinger of good fortune for the Tigers—a team slowly finding its own wings a third of the way through the season.
Chased by the grounds crew, the goose struggled to generate the lift necessary to take off (not unlike the rest of the AL Central). When it finally got airborne, it almost immediately careened into a video banner. Falling to the lower deck, it was scooped up by a veterinarian in the crowd who took it to Michigan State’s wildlife ward where it eventually released safely back into the wild.
But the goose had made its presence known.
When play resumed, the Tigers rallied for 5 runs against the Angels to snatch a win—the first in a string of four straight victories, each one ascribable to nothing if not the enigmatic power of newly-christened “Rally Goose,” which had manifested itself once more in the form of a plastic goose decoy players perched in the dugout.
A loss to the Blue Jays on Sunday drew assurances from Tigers players that the Rally Goose is here to stay. A long look back at baseball history, however, and it’s clear the goose has been with us since the very beginning.
Down through the years, a menagerie of goats, cats, monkeys, bees, possums and, most recently, eagles, have infested the margins of baseball lore, but the goose holds a special place of distinction—not as a good luck charm or pesky inter-innings antagonist, but rather as a full-blown agent of anarchy whose fickle reign of terror traces its origins to the dawn of the National League.
Chronicling the inaugural season of his hometown Louisville Grays with a good-natured enthusiasm befitting one who would eventually earn the distinction of being the only writer to play in a game he was also covering, Louisville Courier-Journal baseball reporter John Haldeman frequently invoked the specter a goose that stalked the league, doling out “goose eggs” to teams with reckless abandon.
In fact, if you had to identify a unifying thread that ran through the Courier-Journal’s coverage of the hometown nine, it would be the comings and goings of the infernal goose—wholly a character of Haldeman’s own creation, but one which, by October of that year, had taken on a life of its own.
The goose first ran amock on April 27 when the Chicago White Stockings dropped Louisville 10-0 in a “badly contested game.” Haldeman sought to cover for the young club—and provide a hit of comic relief—by ascribing Louisville’s “wretched” luck to fowl play:
“ O O O O O O O O O ”
“The above goose-eggs were a few days ago presented to Louisville by Chicago,” he wrote in a May 7 recap of league-wide action. “Louisville turned them over to St. Louis to be returned, and yesterday at Grand Avenue Park, they were handed back to the Garden City boys [Chicago] by the Brown Stockings, about 2,000 spectators evincing their appreciation of the act by loud and continued applause.”
“If anyone is anxious to ponder over the uncertainty of base-ball,” Haldeman went on to note, “let him take into consideration the fact that Chicago whitewashed Louisville, Louisville treated St. Louis in the same way, and St. Louis in turn goose-egged Chicago.”
Indeed, in baseball, any outcome was possible on a given day, but Louisville would soon learn St. Louis had goose eggs to spare.
On May 9, following a 5-0 whitewashing at St. Louis that saw Louisville’s record drop to 2-5, Haldeman again deployed humor to express his mounting dissatisfaction with the club’s lack of offense, this time in gastronomic terms: “As an article of diet, we must candidly confess that ‘goose-eggs’ are not at all to our liking, but, if they are forced down us, all that we can do is to make a wry face and grin and bear it just as pleasantly as possible.”
The very next game, however, Louisville once more succeeded in “incubating a symmetrical series of ciphers on the grounds of the Browns.” Haldeman ran the headline: “KILL THAT GOOSE!” while speculating, “the principality of ‘goose-eggdom’ must be situated somewhere in the neighborhood of St. Louis.”
Even at that early stage of the ‘76 season, Haldeman’s assessment was not far from the mark. Over the season’s course, St. Louis’ George Bradley would prove a master at coaxing eggs from the goose and foisting them on opponents, tossing a league-leading 16 shutouts, including the league’s first no-hitter on July 15. (Louisville’s own Jim Devlin barely missed being the first to throw a no-no months earlier, taking a no-hit bid into the eighth against the Athletics at Philadelphia on May 23.)
On the back of a goose-addled 1.23 ERA, the 23-year-old Bradley would lead the Browns to 45 wins against 19 losses—good for third place in the eight-team league.
Louisville departed St. Louis for Chicago early the morning of May 12 with no runs to show for their visit and a day later fell to the White Stockings 4-2. In spite of the loss, the Courier-Journal triumphantly declared, “THAT GOOSE COOKED.”
A second loss in Chicago would drop Louisville’s record to a disappointing 2-8, but even though the Grays had failed to cover themselves in glory on what amounted to a 1-5 road trip, Haldeman relished in reporting that the goose had stayed in the vicinity of St. Louis.
He related “a very amusing incident” that took place in the game between the Browns and Cincinnati on Saturday, May 13:
“A goose, which had been feeding in a remote corner of the park, strayed down and stood so close to Snyder, of the Cincinnatis, at left field, as to incommode him. The umpire accordingly called time and Snyder, without outstretched arms, proceeded to run the goose off the field, while the crowd was convulsed with laughter.”
“Now, it happened that this was the very goose that has been laying all the eggs which clubs have been treated to here, but of course Snyder didn't know anything about it. If he had killed the goose and stopped the supply of eggs, the game would have terminated differently.”
“That goose,” Haldeman added, “has layed thirty-six eggs in eight days, and she hasn't got through yet.”
Indeed, the goose was only getting going.
The Grays steered well clear of further encounters until May 27 when the Athletics handed them a 9-0 result at Philadelphia and the Courier-Journal reported, “Louisville Succeeds in Capturing a Handsome Goose.” A month later, “THAT FESTIVE GOOSE” was at it again, with Louisville “securing nine eggs” to Hartford’s eight; Hartford breaking the eggy deadlock in the ninth, “pasting” Louisville’s Jim Devlin “quite merrily” for three runs on four hits while Haldeman reported the Grays failed to “paste” Hartford ace Tommy Bond “worth a cent.”
“Let us have many more such exhibitions as we were treated to yesterday,” he wrote in his recap of the game. “With one run on our side, we will not complain. We don’t like goose-eggs.” The same day, the Athletics “took a nest” from St. Louis, all thanks to generous throwing hand of George Bradley.
By September, Louisville had managed to pick up their play somewhat (in their better moments, Haldeman styled them the “Bluegrass Giants”), but still found the goose difficult to wrangle.
“This time, the Louisvilles are the distributors of the fruit of the goose,” Haldeman crowed after the club blanked the Athletics 3-0 at Philadelphia on September 15. “The boys, who won’t be able to fulfill their engagements by coming out West and finishing their series of games were given, as parting gifts, nine ovals of pearly whiteness.” The Athletics would later be expelled from the NL for failing to uphold their end of the schedule.
Even with the aid of stellar pitching and hitting from Jim “Terror” Devlin, who logged 622 IP with a 1.56 ERA and, though wracked by injuries, batted a team-leading .315, Louisville never got clear of the specter of the goose, which followed them all the way to season’s end.
Hosting Hartford on back-to-back days to close the season at home in early October, the Grays dropped the first game 6-0, prompting Haldeman to opine, “That goose still hovers near us. An old friend—that everlasting goose.”
With their last game looming on the chilly afternoon of October 5, Haldeman advised, “the Louisville boys better kill her to-day,” offering the home nine the sort of acerbic advice that could only be expected to drip from the pen of a reporter weary from covering a middling team whose offensive foibles he knew all too well: “If the Louisville boys besmear themselves with snake oil this morning it may neutralize the effects of any goose that may be prowling around on the grounds this afternoon.”
Haldeman then added: “No matter how the game may turn out today, Louisville will take first place on the number of goose-eggs received.”
Later that day, before a small crowd and “a trio of half-frozen scorers,” the Hartford club succeeded in turning the goose loose on Louisville through five innings before rookie catcher Bill Holbert stepped to the plate with two outs in the sixth, “resolved to crack that goose in the eye.”
Holbert laced a hard grounder down the left field line and, with a throwing error on the play, “barely succeeded” in scampering to third. “The goose was now in dying condition,” Haldeman reported with equal parts snark and satisfaction.
Next up, the Grays’ aptly-named first baseman “Move Up” Joe Gerhardt sent a “ground-hit past second, which brought Holbert home, and simultaneously with the stroke, her gooseship fell flat on her back, two feet flew up in the air, they gradually stiffened out, and for the first time this season her heart ceased to vibrate, and she was really dead.”
Like the greatest of mythological monsters, Haldeman’s goose left a looming legacy: “Seven or eight wee goslings mourn their mother’s untimely end and swear vengeance, but they will not be able to accomplish much until they attain their full growth, which will not occur until next spring.”
Colorful reportage aside, Haldeman was on to something despite little to no historical precedent and only the most rudimentary of data sets. A “goose” really did stalk the NL in 1876 in the form of an outsize number of shutouts. A century and a half of baseball bears Haldeman out.
The NL’s 1876 campaign is tied for 13th all-time in total shutouts by team at 9% total games. Thirteen of the top 16 years coincide with the Dead Ball Era, c.1900-1919, while 1968’s “Year of the Pitcher” and 1972 are the only other outliers (1972 holds the record for most shutouts in single day with eight recorded on June 4). The only other 19th century campaigns that come close are 1880 and 1881 at 8% team shutouts (2018 is right behind them at 7% of games).
Flash forward to the present. Detroit might have temporarily harnessed the power of the Rally Goose, but all thirty teams have been playing in the goose’s shadow this season. And it could be worse than we think.
As Sarah Langs of ESPN Stats and Info points out, there have already been 25 no-hit bids through six innings this season (compare that to 24 over the whole of 2017), and last Friday witnessed five teams throw combined shutouts—the most on any day this season.
Commissioner Manfred might want to take notice. That everlasting goose is up to its old tricks.
Matthew Leib is a Seattle-based writer currently working on a historical novel about the 1876-77 Louisville Grays and the founding of the National League. A lifelong Mariners fan, he tweets about the team at @Safeco330.
