At Home With The King Of The Collies

In 1902 Kattell, who came from a line of Yankee traders, was sent off to sailing school. At that time the school system of New York City owned an old wooden sailing vessel, a retired sloop of war named the St. Mary's, which was used to train promising youngsters for the sea. Kattell spent two years aboard the St. Mary's, including a pair of round trips to Europe.

Though he liked the sea, he found ships have a grievous defect. You can't play baseball on them. At about the time he was becoming a second-year man on the St. Mary's, and thereby entitled to the rank of old mug, with the privilege of being waited upon by first-year scholars (new mugs), he was also becoming aware of the enticing world of sports in general, and baseball in particular.

Sailing back from Southampton on his final cruise, he made a decision a lot of 15-year-olds have made—he would devote his life to sports. The difference in Kattell's case was that he never wavered from that decision in the nearly 60 years that followed—years that saw him plunging ecstatically into, in turn, baseball, boxing, basketball, golf and collies.

For a period of better than 20 years, Kattell earned his living chiefly by playing baseball in the summer and basketball in the winter. Those were the days when sports events were almost entirely home-town affairs, when the Bingham-ton, New York team was the only baseball team that people of Binghamton really gave a hoot about. Major leagues were in existence, of course, but they hadn't begun to devour the minor and semipro leagues. And actually, with one thing and another, a journeyman semipro like Kattell made about as much money as most professional players, with considerably less effort.

In those innocent days townspeople supported their athletes in a cooperative way, like a local militia. Kattell would breeze into a town on a bright Saturday afternoon in May and make his way to the local ball field. He would exhibit some clippings to whatever dignitary seemed in charge, and would then volunteer to pitch to the local Casey. Casey would almost always strike out—Kattell would usually blow a fast one a quarter of an inch past Casey's chin, and then, with the mighty one suitably enraged, two more fast ones just beyond the end of his bat, and when he caught on to that, a final, infuriating, slow one.

After that the civic dignitary would announce that Kattell was the new starting pitcher, at $5 or $10 a winning start. But he would also see to it that Kattell went to work in the dry goods store, at the prevailing wages, but better than the prevailing hours, with board and room at sharply reduced rates.

He played basketball through the winter under much the same conditions. At 6 feet 1, he played center, because he was usually the tallest man on his team or even the floor. Those were the days of the standing guard, the center jump after every basket and other cautions, which made basketball more a defensive game and less a mad, faster-than-the-eye scramble. Thirty-five or 40 points would usually win, and a skilled center like Kattell, who was good for 15 or so points a game, was a priceless community asset.

In 1910 Kattell drifted to California on word that basketball fever was unusually high there, and indeed it was. In 1911 he played on the Los Angeles YMCA team that won the state semipro championship, and 12 years later, when he was a mellow 36, he was center for the Riverside YMCA team that captured the same championship. Between those dates Kattell made a couple of forays back to New York and one into the Navy, where he was commissioned an ensign in honor of his days in sailing school.

In his mid-30s, Kattell, who had also had some brief and painful flings at boxing and wrestling, became entranced with the problem of knocking a small ball into a small hole with small wands. Again he excelled. He won many small golf tournaments, and he became the resident pro at a Riverside, Calif., club. Then, in the space of a few months, his wife and 5-year-old son died of the same rare brain disease. It is a tragedy he never discusses. An older daughter continued to live with relatives in Riverside, but Kattell moved on again in his lonely way.

From golf to collies