September 5, 1904: Giants fans send John McGraw to hospital after accidentally trampling him in postgame celebration

Considering that the New York Giants were riding an eight-game winning streak and held a very comfortable lead in the National League pennant race, it was no surprise that fans swarmed the Polo Grounds by the thousands for a Labor Day doubleheader in 1904.

Some 37,327 rooters eventually squeezed into the ballpark on September 5 to watch the surging Giants battle the second-division Boston Nationals, and the record holiday crowd was treated to a delightful afternoon of baseball.1

New York’s 6-1 win in the day’s opener, combined with a last-at-bat win in the second game, sent the local cranks into a fever pitch. After Giants outfielder Sam Mertes sent a dart into center field for the game-winning hit, fans streamed from the grandstand and box seats and onto the field to celebrate the 4-3 victory.2

But while the rooters “danced like lunatics” in joyous celebration, there was some collateral damage – namely the ankle of beloved manager John McGraw.3 He ended up on the ground beneath a crush of humanity, and many fans accidentally trampled and injured the diminutive third-year manager while running about the field.4

The fans in the Labor Day crowd were already brimming with excitement after the Giants’ win in the afternoon’s opening game. Christy Mathewson held the Nationals scoreless until the top of the ninth inning while picking up his 29th win of the season.

There was more drama throughout the day’s second game, as poor fielding plagued both teams. But once the Giants battled from behind to win, more than a thousand fans hopped fences and poured onto the field to celebrate in a “wild demonstration.”5

New York’s 22-year-old rookie starter Red Ames retired Phil Geier and future teammate Fred Tenney to open the game, but Ed Abbaticchio smashed a triple into the overflow crowd in right field to spark an error-riddled rally.6 Giants shortstop Jack Dunn made a wild throw to first on Duff Cooley’s grounder, sending Abbaticchio across the plate and Cooley to second. Jim Delahanty also grounded to Dunn, but this time first baseman Roger Bresnahan dropped the throw, leading to another unearned run, boos from the crowd, and a 2-0 Nationals lead.7

In the bottom of the second, New York rallied against Boston starter Togie Pittinger, who sat tied for second in the NL with five shutouts but couldn’t add another as his fielders also struggled behind him.

Art Devlin reached second after second baseman Delahanty threw wildly to first, and Devlin crossed the plate on Dunn’s triple to center.8 Billy Gilbert and Jack Warner reached on infield errors to load the bases, and Bresnahan made an out, which allowed Dunn to score and tied the game at 2-2.9

Boston reclaimed the lead in the fifth, poor fielding again contributing. Geier reached when

Dunn muffed a grounder and Tenney followed with a bunt that became a single because Ames was slow to field the ball. Ames struck out Abbaticchio, and on the third strike, catcher Warner fired to third to catch Geier stealing for a double play. But the fielding miscues still hurt, as Cooley sent an RBI triple to left that gave Boston a 3-2 advantage.

The Giants again tied the game in the seventh, using a single by Bresnahan, a sacrifice by George Browne, and a two-out RBI single by Mertes, who had gone hitless in four of his last five games. This marked the first time in the game that a run was made without the benefit of shoddy defense.

After Ames retired the Nationals in order in the top of the eighth and ninth innings, excitement reached a fever pitch in the bottom of the ninth as fans clamored for their Giants to finish the comeback and beat Boston for a 16th time.10 Browne hit a one-out double to left-center field, Mike Donlin walked, and Mertes sent a bullet into center field. Browne crossed the plate with his 79th of an eventual league-leading 99 runs on Mertes’ third hit of the game, sending the massive crowd into a frenzy.

Many individuals from an overflow crowd that had put a “tax on the capacity” of the ballpark already had stood on the field throughout both games. New York’s players and coaches tried their best to hustle to the home team’s clubhouse in center field to avoid as many of the thousands of surging fans as they could.

The zealous throng had “worked up to a high pitch of enthusiasm” and fans were determined to hoist McGraw onto their shoulders and carry him to the clubhouse.11

McGraw was instead carried from the field on a stretcher and examined by a physician in the clubhouse after he was trampled. That doctor thought the 31-year-old manager had a broken leg, so McGraw was transported to a hospital by ambulance. He was discharged later that evening with an easier-to-manage diagnosis, a sprained left ankle.12

“I was hurrying from the field to my dressing room when someone tripped me,” McGraw recalled from his home that night, “and I was thrown to the ground, my foot being twisted under me.”13

With the win, New York improved to 87-32 and pushed its lead over the second-place Chicago Cubs to 13½ games. Ames, who made two starts for the Giants in 1903 and returned to New York in July 1904, earned his second win after striking out a career-best 10 batters.14 Pittinger fell to 12-18 with the loss, which sent the sixth-place Nationals 44 games behind the Giants at 44-77.

McGraw appeared at the Polo Grounds on crutches the next day and managed the Giants from the clubhouse veranda in center field.15 New York finished a four-game sweep of Boston with another exciting win, this time an 8-7 triumph that took 10 innings and saw Browne deliver the game-winning hit.

McGraw continued his long-distance managing for the remainder of the homestand. As he directed the charges from the veranda, the Giants extended their winning streak to 12 games with a 6-3 win over the Philadelphia Phillies on September 7 but lost the first game of a doubleheader the next day.

New York then won nine of its next 10 games, giving the Giants an impressive 22-2 mark between August 27 and the first game of a doubleheader on September 17 – though McGraw did not travel with the Giants on the season’s final road trip to Boston on September 12 and 13.16

In that series, the Giants took two of three games from the Nationals, who finished the campaign seventh in the NL at 55-98. The season amounted to manager Al Buckenberger’s last of three years at the helm and became the second of 11 straight losing seasons – a streak finally broken by the 1914 World Series champions.

McGraw eventually cast aside his crutches by the end of the month, though he still shifted his weight “from one foot to the other” while standing on stage at the New York Theatre during an October 2 ceremony honoring his team, which had secured the NL pennant with its 100th victory on September 22.17

New York ultimately lost 13 of its final 20 games but still led the standings by a comfortable 12½-game margin over the Cubs after posting a 106-47 record.18 Controversy arose when Giants owner John T. Brush declined to face the American League champion Boston Americans in what would have been the second World Series.19

The Giants won the World Series a year later, defeating the Philadelphia Athletics in five games. McGraw continued to manage New York until 1932 and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1937 after amassing 10 pennants, three World Series championships, and 2,583 victories in 31 seasons – further cementing his status as one of the franchise’s most beloved figures.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Carl Riechers and copy-edited by Len Levin. Special thanks to Tom Thress at Retrosheet for research assistance.

Photo credit: John McGraw, SABR-Rucker Archive.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted the Baseball-Reference.com, Stathead.com, and Retrosheet.org websites for pertinent statistics and the box scores. He also used information obtained from the New York Sun, New York Times, New York Tribune, New York World, Boston Globe, Sporting Life, and The Sporting News.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NY1/NY1190409052.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1904/B09052NY11904.htm

Notes

1 The crowd was the second largest of the season and marked the largest group to watch a game on Labor Day at the Polo Grounds. The Giants had hosted a doubleheader on nearly every Labor Day since it became a federal holiday in 1894, exceptions being in 1898 (at Brooklyn) and in 1899 and 1903 (split doubleheaders with one game at the Polo Grounds and one in Brooklyn). New York had set its Labor Day home attendance record in 1903 with 23,623 fans and had drawn 20,000 fans to doubleheaders in 1894 and 1895. The 1904 Labor Day attendance record stood until 1921, when the eventual World Series champion Giants hosted the Boston Braves before 40,000 fans on September 5. For New York’s 1904 season, this game trailed the June 11 game against the Cubs, which drew 38,805 fans to the Polo Grounds on a Saturday afternoon.

2 “Two Victories Over Bostons,” New York Sun, September 6, 1904: 7.

3 “M’Graw’s Injury How It Happened,” Meriden (Connecticut) Daily Journal, September 6, 1904: 8.

4 McGraw stood at 5-feet-5-inches. He took over as manager of the Giants in the middle of the 1902 season after a tumultuous breakup with the American League’s Baltimore Orioles.

5 “M’Graw The Victim of Enthusiasm of Fans,” Rochester (New York) Democrat and Chronicle, September 6, 1904: 12.

6 Tenney debuted for Boston in 1894 and spent the first 14 years of his career there. He became Boston’s manager in 1905, but after the 1907 season he was sent to the Giants as part of an eight-player trade. Tenney spent 1908 and 1909 in New York, and his final season came in Boston in 1911.

7 “Giants Struggle for Second Game,” New York World, September 5, 1904: 1.

8 This was the last of 10 triples Dunn hit over an eight-year major-league career from 1897 to 1904. He spent the next seven seasons in the minors and later purchased the Baltimore Orioles minor-league franchise and famously signed Babe Ruth to his first professional contract.

9 According to newspapers like the New York World and Boston Globe, Bresnahan flied out to center to allow Dunn to score, but the box scores of the time do not credit Bresnahan with a sacrifice. “Giants Struggle for Second Game” and “Giants Take Two From Boston Men,” Boston Globe, September 6, 1904: 5

10 With this victory, New York improved to 16-1 against the Nationals. The teams played five more games after this, and the Giants picked up four more wins to end the year 20-2 against Boston.

11 Wm. F.H. Korlsch, “Metropolitan Mention,” Sporting Life, September 17, 1904: 5.

12 “Two Victories Over Bostons” and “M’Graw’s Leg is Broken,” New York World, September 5, 1904: 1.

13 “M’Graw Too Popular,” New York Tribune, September 6, 1904: 1.

14 Ames eventually had 17 games with at least 10 strikeouts during his 17-year career. He twice reached his career high of 12 strikeouts on June 2, 1904, also against Boston, and on September 5, 1906, against the Brooklyn Superbas.

15 “Within an Ace,” Boston Globe, September 7, 1904: 5.

16 Other than the series at Boston, the Giants played an away doubleheader at Brooklyn on September 17 and played the final game of the season in Brooklyn on October 8. Otherwise, New York played at the Polo Grounds in every game from September 3 to October 4. “Bleacherites,” Binghamton (New York) Press, September 12, 1904: 10; and Wm. F.H. Koelsch, “Metropolitan Mention.”

17 “National League News,” Sporting Life, October 1, 1904: 9; and “The Giants’ Benefit,” Sporting Life, October 8, 1904: 5.

18 At the time, New York’s 106 wins were the most of all time, besting the 1902 Pittsburgh Pirates, who won 103 games. Two years later, in 1906, the Chicago Cubs won 116 games. New York’s 106 wins stood as the franchise record until the 2021 San Francisco Giants won 107 games.

19 As part of reasoning, Brush had declared: “There is nothing in the constitution or playing rules of the National League which requires its victorious club to submit its championship honors to a contest with a victorious club in a minor league.” “No Post-Season Series Declares John T. Brush,” Brooklyn Times, September 26, 1904: 5.