{"id":137,"date":"2014-03-20T23:24:47","date_gmt":"2014-03-21T03:24:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/?page_id=137"},"modified":"2015-10-17T21:29:14","modified_gmt":"2015-10-18T01:29:14","slug":"memories-dreams-wilbert-robinson-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/?page_id=137","title":{"rendered":"Memories & Dreams: King Kelly on Stage"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Marty Appel<\/span><\/p>\n

Before there was YouTube, before there was MySpace, before there was television, before there was radio, and before there were movies, entertainers had the vaudeville stage and local saloons to present their acts, and vaudeville was where you wanted to be if you really thought you had some talent.<\/p>\n

Talent, or at least celebrity. Mike \u201cKing\u201d Kelly of Boston was the biggest sports celebrity in the land in the 1880s (well, perhaps with John L. Sullivan and Cap Anson), and being an extrovert who thought he had a lot of talent, he was happy to accept an offer to develop an act and make some extra money on the stage.<\/p>\n

Kelly was not only a fine player \u2013 a two-time batting champ and a \u201ccreative\u201d catcher\/outfielder (let\u2019s just say he could take advantage of only one umpire on the field, and perhaps skip third base while heading for home), but he was a showman on the diamond as well.<\/p>\n

He loved to banter with the fans, talk to them between pitches, keep them engaged in the game, while winning their devotion with his appealing personality. So well did he wear the mantle of celebrity, that he became the first American \u2013 not just in sports \u2013 to be pursued for autographs. Yes, the custom of seeking a celebrity autograph began with Kel.<\/p>\n

Prior to his arrival in Boston, he had been a great player in Chicago, and his sale to Boston for the unheard of $10,000 price made him more of a celebrity than he had ever been. And while people knew that it was nice to own a George Washington or an Abraham Lincoln signature, the practice of pursuing someone in the street to obtain an autograph didn\u2019t begin until Kelly, when fans knew his route to \u201cwork\u201d each day at Boston\u2019s South End Grounds.<\/p>\n

With this fan adulation in place, producers of vaudeville shows approached the King and asked him to consider stage appearances. One such encounter took place when Kel was stranded in Boston during the famed Blizzard of \u201988, where drifts reached as high as 15 feet. There he met a booking agent named Charles W. Thomas. Kelly regaled him with stories of his early dreams to be on the stage, and even of a childhood melodrama he\u2019d participated in, during which he and Jimmy McCormick (a future big leaguer as well), performed in Jimmy\u2019s basement.<\/p>\n

So Kelly took the role of \u201cDusty Bob\u201d in a play called \u201cA Rag Baby\u201d at the Park Theater.<\/p>\n

He slept through the first rehearsal, but on opening night, when he spoke his first line, \u201cWhere is this \u2018Old Sport,\u2019\u201d, the audience, packed with his fans, applauded and cheered for nearly a minute. This was going to be great.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, not all the critics were baseball fans. \u201cThere was a lot less applause when he finished than when he started,\u201d wrote one.<\/p>\n

But vaudeville was in his blood. He continued to appear on stage whenever he could, changing \u201cCasey at the Bat\u201d to \u201cKelly at the Bat\u201d and treating his audience to a dramatic recital.<\/p>\n

Kel was now a man for all seasons. He\u2019d been the first ballplayer to write an autobiography, the first to be immortalized in song (\u201cSlide, Kelly, Slide\u201d was the nation\u2019s first pop hit recording), and a painting of him sliding into second hung in almost every Irish saloon in town. He was the king of all media!<\/p>\n

His baseball skills waning as his waistline grew, he decided during the winter of 1892-93 to leave the game and devote his life to the stage. And so he signed on to appear in \u201cO\u2019Dowd\u2019s Neighbors,\u201d but soon had a change of heart of joined the New York Giants on May 25 for one last big league season. The fans loved having him in New York, particularly since he \u201cwintered\u201d in Paterson and in Hyde Park.<\/p>\n

And the fans knew his act!<\/p>\n

As he stood in the outfield, according to reports of the day, fans yelled, \u201cSay Kel, just one moment\u2026give us a verse of \u2018Casey at the Bat!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

And requests came in for others hits of the day \u2013 \u201cLet\u2019s have \u2018Daddy Wouldn\u2019t Buy me a Bow Wow\u2019\u2026\u2026\u2019The Day I Played Baseball\u2019\u2026\u2026\u2019Slide, Kelly, Slide!\u2019\u201d (His signature tune!).<\/p>\n

When he finally retired for good after the 1894 season, he accepted an engagement to rejoin the company of \u201cO\u2019Dowd\u2019s Neighbors\u201d at the Palace in Boston. He would be performing with the London Gaiety Girls, reciting poetry, singing and dancing a little bit, and mostly just giving the fans the treat of greeting their old hero.<\/p>\n

The schedule called for him to appear on Monday afternoon, November 5, and he took a boat from New York to Boston the night before.<\/p>\n

The boat, however, ran into an autumn snowstorm, and Kel wound up contracting a bad cold. Very bad. His resistance was down (he was not famous for taking good care of himself), and when the boat arrived on Sunday night, he was taken to a friend\u2019s house and then to Emergency Hospital.<\/p>\n

The seats were filled at the Palace on Monday, but Kel wasn\u2019t there; he was in a hospital bed, being administered oxygen. An announcement was made, and the Wednesday newspaper said, \u201cMike Kelly, the well-known ball player, who is at the Emergency Hospital, suffering from pneumonia, was reported as being a little better at an early hour this morning.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report was overly optimistic. On Thursday night, November 8, he died. He was only 37.<\/p>\n

His funeral was an enormous public event in Boston, with even the London Gaiety Girls attending, all wearing mourning badges for 30 days. Kel would have liked that. His heart was equally divided between baseball and the stage, and just as he was about to embark on the second act of his adult career, he was gone.<\/p>\n

Kelly was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1945.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Marty Appel Before there was YouTube, before there was MySpace, before there was television, before there was radio, and before there were movies, entertainers had the vaudeville stage and local saloons to present their acts, and vaudeville was where… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":2269,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-template-full.php","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-137","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P4s5bl-2d","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=137"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2435,"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/137\/revisions\/2435"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}