Boston’s National League team was making a run as the 1914 season was approaching its end. The Braves had been 11 games out of first place at the end of May and were still nine games out at the end of July. In fact, they were in last place on every day but one from May 8 through July 18. Then they started winning. They were 11-2 in the last 13 games of July. On August 25, after a 16-4 stretch (there was one tie) they reached first place for one day. They regained first on September 2 and hadn’t let go.

They were in first – but only by one game over the New York Giants – as Wednesday, September 9, dawned.

Fenway Park, which had opened in 1912, offered significantly larger seating capacity than the Braves’ home field, the South End Grounds. The Braves’ crowds had increased as the pennant race heated up, and Red Sox President Joseph J. Lannin allowed the Braves to use Fenway Park at no charge. The Braves, awaiting construction of Braves Field, played all of their home games after Labor Day 1914 at Fenway Park.2

Because of the rescheduling of a June 29 rainout, there were two Braves games played at Fenway Park on September 9. The Philadelphia Phillies won the first game with ease, 10-3, scoring five runs in the first inning and two in the second off pitchers Gene Cocreham and Dick Crutcher and seeing their own Pete Alexander improve to 22-13.

Braves manager George Stallings had Davis, a 24-year-old right-handed spitballer nicknamed Iron, start the second game. Davis had pitched in only 12 big-league games coming into the 1914 season and was 0-1 (4.91) for the season thus far, with just 14⅔ innings under his belt.3 His only previous major-league victory came in August 1912, as a member of the New York Highlanders. He had spent most of 1914 playing for the Harvard Law School baseball team.

The Boston Post declared that in selecting Davis to start, “Stallings played a trump card that he has had up his sleeve for over a month. … Davis had what he announced as the best breaking spitball he had ever seen.”4

Manager Red Dooin of the Phillies had Ben Tincup, likewise a right-hander, pitch for them. The Phillies were fifth in the NL standings, 11 games behind, thanks to their win in the first game.

Neither team scored in the first inning, but the Braves got on the board in the second. Right fielder Possum Whitted led off with a single and third baseman Red Smith singled to left one out later. Shortstop Rabbit Maranville hit the ball directly to Phils second baseman Bobby Byrne, who committed an error, and the bases were loaded.

Catcher Hank Gowdy grounded to short. Jack Martin threw to second for the force, but Byrne’s relay for an inning-ending double play went astray, Gowdy and first baseman Sherry Magee collided “violently,” and both Whitted and Smith scored.5 It was 2-0, Braves.

In the top of the second inning, plate umpire Ernie Quigley was hit in the neck by a foul tip off the bat of Byrne. “He was knocked unconscious and for a time was thought to be seriously hurt. He was unable to move for half an hour, but midway through the game appeared on the field and finished out the afternoon on the bases.”6

The Braves added two more runs in the fourth. Smith led off with a single. Maranville walked. Both tagged up and took a base on Gowdy’s long fly to center. Pitcher Davis, who batted left-handed, singled through left fielder Beals Becker’s legs, driving them both in and giving himself a 4-0 lead.

Davis pitched on. He dug himself a hole when he walked the first three batters in the top of the fifth, but he struck out catcher Ed Burns and got Gavvy Cravath, batting for Tincup, to hit to Maranville for a double play.

Boston added one more in the seventh when Les Mann singled off new pitcher Eppa Rixey, advanced to second on a sacrifice by Johnny Evers,7 and scored on a single through the box by Whitted.

They added a pair more in the eighth, off Philadelphia’s third pitcher, Joe Oeschger. With two out, Gowdy singled. Davis got another hit – his third of the game. They were the only three hits he had all year, and he finished 1914 going 3-for-18 at the plate (.167).8 Mann tripled to the fence in right-center and it was 7-0.

Davis pitched the ninth without giving up a hit and secured his no-hitter, the only one in the National League in 1914. The Braves pitcher walked five batters, and there were two errors by Braves fielders (both by third baseman Smith), but Davis kept Philadelphia hitless.

Only two balls had been hit to the outfield by Phillies batters in the entire game. One was “a soft fly to Les Mann” in center field.9 The other was a ball hit to right field in the eighth inning. Whitted made a great catch, saving the no-hitter. It was a “low liner” on which Whitted initially stepped back, but quickly realized that the wind was holding it up and rushed in “just in time to scoop the ball with his left hand only a few inches before it struck the ground.”10

Davis struck out four; the rest of the outs were handled by Braves infielders. First baseman Schmidt had 14 putouts. The Boston Globe’s Melville Webb wrote that Davis pitched his game “without making his fielders do much extraordinary work behind him.”11 Webb declared the walks weren’t due to any wildness by Davis but “due mainly to his effort to nip the corners of the plate.”12

Davis made five more appearances in 1914, including four starts. On October 1 he threw four innings of no-hit ball against the Giants at the Polo Grounds, but then was gotten to for six runs, fortunate to win, 7-6.

The Braves finished in first place, with plenty of room to spare, 10½ games ahead of the second-place Giants. They played the 1914 World Series against Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics, winning the first two games on the road, 7-1 in Game One and 1-0 in Game Two, behind pitchers Dick Rudolph and Bill James. Game Three was in Boston, at Fenway Park, started by Lefty Tyler but won by James in the 12th. Both teams scored twice in the 10th. The Braves swept the Series with a Game Four 3-1 win by Rudolph. Rudolph had been 26-10 in the regular season, James had been 26-7, and Tyler had been 16-13. Stallings chose to stick with his trio and Davis was not used in the Series.   

After Harvard’s 1915 spring semester ended, Davis joined the Braves once more, appeared in 15 games, with nine starts, and was 3-3 with a 3.80 ERA. It was his last foray in the majors. He pitched in two games for the Double-A (International League) Providence Grays in 1916, but lost both.

Davis later went into law, then brokerage, and politics, and later founded the Buffalo Astronomical Society, which became his passion. His granddaughter wrote SABR biographer Rory Costello that Davis “fluently read and wrote Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and Arabic, and he read Sanskrit. He learned these languages to help him in his passion.” He “picked up Arabic using two dictionaries and no tutor. He also owned volumes in Egyptian hieroglyphics, and his monographs showed familiarity with Chinese.”13

Without doubt, any time he chose to reflect on his time in baseball, he could take a measure of pride in having thrown the first no-hitter at Fenway Park.14 

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Laura Peebles and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Trading Card DB.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BSN/BSN191409092.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1914/B09092BSN1914.htm

Notes

1 For more of the 1914 season, Bill Nowlin, ed., The Miracle Braves of 1914: Boston’s Original Worst-to-First World Series Champions (Phoenix: Society for American Baseball Research, 2014), a collaborative work of 39 SABR members. The Braves had finished in last place for four seasons in a row, 1909 through 1912, edging up to fifth place in 1913.

2 The Braves returned the favor in 1915 and 1916, because Braves Field offered more seating than Fenway Park. The Red Sox played home games of both the 1915 and 1916 World Series at Braves Field, for that reason. This particular day, cold weather cut attendance, listed at 7,500.  The Boston Post reported 10,000.

3 Davis had started seven games for the New York Highlanders in 1912 and was 1-4 (6.50).

4 Ed McGrath, “Braves Win No-Hit Game,” Boston Post, September 10, 1914: 1, 10. McGrath wrote that Davis had only needed some time and coaching to better gain control of the pitch.

5 The characterization was McGrath’s.

6 “Phils Did Not Get Hit in Afterpiece,” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 10, 1914: 10. The account in the Inquirer was clearly supplied by Melville Webb of the Boston Globe. The Post article noted that several doctors from the stands came to his aid and that he was carried from the field while still unconscious.

7 Evers, in his first season in Boston after 12 years and two World Series championships with the Chicago Cubs, had come to the Braves in a February 1914 trade. He was selected for the Chalmers Award as National League MVP, with teammates Maranville and Bill James finishing second and third.

8 Davis also struck out once in the game, batting right-handed against left-hander Rixey. Davis was 11-for-61 (.180), with one extra-base hit, a double in 1915, in his major-league batting career.

9 R.E. McMillin, “Pitcher Davis Yields Phillies No-Hit, No-Run,” Boston Journal, September 10, 1914: 1, 9.

10 “No-Hit, No-Run Game Pitched by Young Davis,” Boston Herald, September 10, 1914: 1, 10.

11 Melville E. Webb Jr., “Davis Keeps Quakers Hitless and Runless,” Boston Globe, September 10, 1914: 1.

12 Webb, 6.

13 Rory Costello, “Iron Davis,” SABR BioProject, at https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/iron-davis/.

14 There have been 14 no-hitters thrown at Fenway Park in its first 111 seasons, 1912 through 2022. Nine were thrown by Red Sox pitchers, with others thrown by Davis, George Mogridge, Walter Johnson, Ted Lyons, and Jim Bunning. “Fenway Park No-Hitters,” NoNoHitters.com, accessed August 25, 2023, https://www.nonohitters.com/fenway-park-no-hitters/.

One would have thought that the more experienced Philadelphia team would show more patience at the plate, defensive grace with its $100,000 infield, and moxie on the bases. In fact, the opposite transpired in all three categories, both in Game One and throughout the World Series. “The beating was perhaps the worst that has ever been handed to an opponent in the opening game of a postseason series between major league clubs,” Tim Murnane wrote in the Boston Globe.2

The trio of Boston starters all used the aggressiveness of the Athletics against them. No one did so more effectively than Rudolph, who, after Game One, observed, “I found out what makes the Athletics such a hitting team. They’re all what we call free swingers.”3

One sportswriter gushed that Rudolph “pitched one of the most remarkable games in the history of the sport. … He used a slow ball, a curve, his spitter, and not once during the game did the Athletics really threaten him.”4

In addition to Rudolph’s off-speed stuff, his “slow, deceptive delivery … proved the Mackmen’s undoing, for they are notoriously weak on this service, and Rudolph was at his best in this respect today.”5

By failing to make Rudolph, who threw fewer than ten pitches in both the eighth and ninth innings, and the other Braves starters work, Philadelphia never forced Boston to turn to its questionable pitching depth, allowing Game Two starter Bill James to relieve Lefty Tyler in extra innings in Game Three and Rudolph to pitch Game Four on regular rest. With runners on the corners and none out in the second inning, for instance, “Barry helped Rudolph out immensely by fanning on a ball about a foot outside.”6

With multiple baserunners in each of the first two frames, Game One began auspiciously for the Athletics. After Bender retired the Braves in order in the first, Eddie Murphy singled. Rube Oldring then bunted. Hank Gowdy “ran down to retrieve it and with little time to spare, shot it toward first base high in the air. By a wonderful jump, Butch Schmidt speared the ball and got down on the bag in time to retire the sprinting Oldring.”7

Rudolph then walked Eddie Collins to put runners on first and second for Frank Baker. Rather than take a strike following the free pass, Baker hit the first pitch toward “the right field grandstand seats, which Schmidt … mitted for the second out. Murphy tried to edge up to third … but Schmidt’s bounding throw reached Deal in time … to tag out Eddie and end the promising inning in a cloud of gloom.”8

“Schmidt’s great throw and Deal’s swift stab probably decided the game.”9

The promising start fizzled with a single play that evinced several themes that would run throughout the Series: poor situational hitting and blundering baserunning by Philadelphia, and sharp pitching and sparkling defense by the Boston infield, including repeated fine plays by its unheralded corner players.

The Braves had timely hitting, too, especially from Gowdy, the surprising batting star of the 1914 World Series. Thanks to Gowdy, the Braves took a lead that they would not relinquish in the top of the second. Gowdy drove in Possum Whitted, who had walked, with a double, and Rabbit Maranville scored Gowdy with a single. The Athletics came back with a  Stuffy McInnis walk and an Amos Strunk single. McInnis scored on an error by Herbie Moran in left, and Strunk went to third.

Philadelphia had the tying run on third with no out. But Jack Barry struck out, the first of eight K’s for Rudolph, and Wally Schang hit to Johnny Evers, who “scooped up the ball and shot it to Gowdy, nailing Strunk at the plate by a very narrow margin.”10 Rudolph then sealed the squander by getting Bender to force Schang.

The Athletics ran into another out in the fourth inning, when Strunk tried to stretch a single, but “was cut down at second on Joe Connolly’s sharp relay into Maranville. Strunk probably would have made the midway sack had he not lost his stride in rounding first base.”11

In his brief appearances in the 1914 Series, Strunk would struggle on the basepaths and in the field before giving way to injury. He made two hits in his first two trips to the plate, but failed in his final five opportunities. His successor, Jimmy Walsh, also fared poorly in center field and running the bases.

Boston got far better play from its key substitute. Over the next three games, the Braves, minus injured slugger Red Smith, who spent the Series in a Brooklyn hospital laid up with a broken leg, would barely exceed their run total from this first contest, but the fine fielding of Maranville remained constant throughout the quartet: “Barry smote a Texas Leaguer in the fifth inning. Connolly could not reach it, and Deal lacked the leg locomotion to get near it. Maranville almost dropped out of a cloud and with his back to the ball, he nailed it.”12

The Braves broke open a 3-1 run game with a trio of runs in the sixth inning, when Bender was knocked from the box. With runners on first and second with one out, Whitted delivered the key blow, a two-run triple, when he “connected squarely with one of Bender’s fast straight ones and it was going even faster and straighter toward the score-board in far centre field after Whitted had given it his special slugging treatment.”13

Charlie Deal ended the four-run sixth inning by hitting into his third double play of the game. Forced into service because of the Smith mishap, the unheralded Deal made up for his lackluster bat with his glove in both the first and final frames of the game.14 In the latter case, a Philadelphia paper noted, “No third baseman could have handled McInnis’ solid crack in the ninth better than did Deal, who pulled the ball down with his bare hand.”15

Deal later made the Series-clinching play on McInnis to end Game Four.

In a Series marred by runners giving up outs on the basepaths at inopportune times, the Braves had the opener’s most daring baserunning play, too, when the slow-footed pair of Butch Schmidt and Hank Gowdy pulled off a double steal in the eighth to make the final score 7-1. “Collins caught Lapp’s short throw, but in returning the ball Eddie threw high and Schmidt slid under Lapp.”16

Stallings may have called the play to send a message that the Braves would not back down even up by a big score, or he may have simply wanted to avoid having Deal, in the box with Gowdy on first and Schmidt on third, hit into his fourth double play of the game.

With better starting pitching for Philadelphia, the runs would not come so easily for Boston for the rest of the Series, but the ultimate results would remain the same.

This article is included in “The Miracle Braves of 1914: Boston’s Original Worst-to-First World Series Champions” (SABR, 2014), edited by Bill Nowlin.

Notes

By their actions and their inactions, both George Stallings and Connie Mack made the ninth inning a particularly memorable one. In fact, the World Series gamesmanship had begun even before the Series. Deal was replacing Charlie Smith, who had broken his ankle in the last game of the regular season. Mack commented that he regretted the injury to Smith “as he wanted the Athletics to meet the Braves at their best,” words that would appear in a different light after Deal’s heroics.1

The “bats of the Boston visitors, which had been so efficacious against the speed and curves of Chief Bender,” had remained quiet as the scoreless game made its way to the final frame.2 Ever superstitious, Boston manager Stallings sought to spark his team by turning to a human good-luck charm in reserve outfielder Josh Devore,3 who replaced Game One winner Dick Rudolph on the first-base coaching lines in the ninth inning. By cause or by coincidence, Devore worked his magic quickly after Maranville grounded to Barry, his opposite number at short.

Deal lifted a fly to deep right-center field. “It was a long ball, but would not have been a difficult catch.”4 Amos Strunk, who “has always been classed with Tris Speaker for his ability in going back for balls,”5 broke in but misjudged and/or lost the ball in the sun, which “shone brilliantly upon the soft greens of the in and outfields.”6 By the time Strunk had reversed direction and retrieved the smash, Deal had reached second safely with his first safety of the postseason (he would get just one more hit in the Series) and Boston’s only extra-base hit of the game.

Wally Schang had Deal in trouble immediately, caught far off second base after a Plank pitch, but when Schang fired the ball to Jack Barry covering second, Deal daringly lit off for third and took the bag. “Barry did not throw to Frank Baker. He drew his arm back, but the throw never came. … Deal was directly in line with Baker and the throw might have hit the runner in the back and ended the chances of the Athletics right there.”7

Now, with no score, one out, and Deal on third base, Stallings faced a decision on his pitcher, James. Stallings had had both James and Lefty Tyler warm up before the game, but in a surprise to fans, who had expected to see Tyler perform,”8 chose right-hander James to start Game Two. (Mack also had Plank take batting practice before Game One but had gone instead with Chief Bender, his usual opening-game hurler.) Should he dispatch a pinch-hitter to bat for James, and perhaps get the first run of the game across the plate? But James, who was “working a fast one and quick-breaker spitter on the Athletics” in pitching to the minimum 24 hitters through the first eight frames, so Stallings let Seattle Bill bat for himself against Gettysburg Eddie.9 One can understand this decision given “the one game contributed by long Bill James was the most perfect piece of twirling skill seen in a world’s series in many a day.”10

To no avail. For the fourth straight time, Plank struck out his opposite number, which left Leslie Mann to face the southpaw with two down and Deal still on third in a game that had gone scoreless for its first 50 outs.

But Gettysburg Eddie faltered in the end. He forced Mann to go the other way, and the Bostonian “whacked a short safe one-shot that fleet, game Eddie Collins could not reach though he leaped four feet into the air and landed in a shapeless heap on the outfield turf.”11 The single plated Deal with what turned out to be the only run of the ballgame.

Plank ended up hurling 129, 132, or 149 pitches in and out of trouble all day.12 “Inning after inning the Braves got runners on the bases, and, just as they were about to strike their telling blow, gray-eyed Plank, still cunning and wily in the evening of his baseball career, suddenly would pull himself together and halt the Boston uprising.”13

In his syndicated column, Ty Cobb credited Stallings’ platoon system, one originally devised by Mack, for the run, writing, “(T)hat game was won by Stallings’ shrewd shifts. He put Mann and Ted Cather into his batting order in place of Moran and Joe Connolly, to get two right-handed batters against a southpaw, and how well it worked the result showed.”14

Having given the Athletics a pep talk before the game, Cobb hardly counted as an impartial observer but he still credited the Braves for heady play.

James, who had pitched unerringly after walking Eddie Murphy to start the game, struggled to hold the lead in the ninth, sandwiching walks to Jack Barry (on four pitches) and pinch-hitter Jimmy Walsh around a strikeout of Wally Schang. With the tying run on second and the winning run on first, James induced a hot shot through the box by Murphy that looked as if it would get through and tie the game.

But Johnny Evers had moved Maranville just to the right of the second-base bag, so Rabbit made three great plays in one by receiving the ball, brushing off the lumbering Walsh (Maranville “bounded away from Walsh like a rubber ball”15), and firing the pill to Butch Schmidt at first to turn a dazzling short-to-first double play, the game’s only twin killing and the only double play Murphy hit into in all of 1914. It ended the game and the Shibe Park season. “Maranville’s utterly impossible double play [saved] the whole show.”16

Maranville had more than made up for dropping Stuffy McInnis’ foul fly for a one-out error in the eighth inning, a miscue that could have been a major one so late in a scoreless duel but that James mitigated by inducing Stuffy to sky to Deal at third.

In addition to the ninth-inning dramatics, each team threatened to score throughout the game although James did retire 15 Athletics in a row after walking Murphy in the bottom of the first.

Plank, by contrast, saw Bostonians reach base frequently, but pitched in a pinch by stranding Braves in scoring position in the first, second, fourth, and sixth. Schang ended the third by throwing out Johnny Evers trying to swipe second “by such a distance that the long chinned Trojan seemed to be standing still.”17 Boston went down in order only in the seventh.

Deal’s dash for third in the ninth capped off a game that featured audacious but often overly-aggressive baserunning. The other successful swipes included Deal stealing second in the top of the second with two outs,18 and Barry stealing second during Schang’s ninth-inning fan.

In addition to Schang gunning down Evers, James picked off Murphy pitcher-to-first-to-shortsopt in the first, Hank Gowdy threw out Schang trying to take third on a pitch of the dirt after Wally had broken up James’s 15-in-a-row run with a sixth-inning two-bagger down the left-field line,19 and James picked off another batter – Collins this time – after Eddie had reached on an infield single to second with two outs in the seventh.

The final two baserunning mistakes for the Americans had similar outcomes but resulted in different reactions. Some, including Schang himself, thought Schang safe at third – postgame photographic evidence seemed to indicate that he had taken the bag – but umpire Bill Byron ruled otherwise.20 The Boston Evening American credited Gowdy with “pegg[ing] him out, assisted somewhat by a perfectly splendid and stout-hearted tagging stunt by our old acquaintance, slight Charlie [Deal].”21

Byron’s decision made Plank’s grounder to short an inning-ender rather than an RBI that would have scored Schang and given the Philadelphians a critical 1-0 lead. In his column, Cobb implied that Byron, a National League umpire, might have exhibited bias in his call. No such controversy resulted from the Collins play, in which James caught Eddie napping as the latter hung his head after failing to retreat safely back to first.

Evers saw this as swift and divine retribution by the baseball gods. Having thought that his snap throw had in fact beaten Collins to first base, Evers after the safe call “threw his hands over his head, and everyone knew what he meant.”22

Amazingly, Schang and Collins, the only two Athletics with base hits, both ended up making outs on the bases before a fellow Philadelphian could complete his turn at bat. Whether the Athletics took the Braves too lightly or failed to focus on the game with Federal League riches lingering in the minds of many ballplayers remains unclear; indisputably, however, in Game Two Boston played like a confident veteran bunch while the Mackmen made multiple mistakes, an odd state of affairs given that Philadelphia played Game Two, its fourth World Series in five years, in the friendly confines of Shibe Park.

The Braves did enjoy, however, a loyal and vocal fan base that made the trip from Boston to Philadelphia to cheer on the visitors and visit invective on the home team. The Royal Rooters, who had hassled Honus Wagner and his Pittsburgh comrades in 1903, stayed true to their city. Former Boston Mayor John Fitzgerald, known then as Honey Fitz and later as the grandfather of President John F. Kennedy, said “in the most courteous manner [that] Plank was one hundred years old, had a glass arm and was blind of one eye.”23

Taking two in Philadelphia left the brash Bostonians feel that their miraculous run would continue. Stallings told his equipment manager to pack the road uniforms of the Braves and take them home rather than leave them at Shibe Park. Stallings said, “We won’t be coming back. It’ll be all over after the two games in Boston.”24

Lest readers today accuse writers from yesteryear of spinning yarns in the afterglow of victory, Stallings’ players made similar statements at the time. Gowdy hardly hedged: “We’re out for four straight and it looks all the more and more that we were going to get them.”

Herbie Moran, who did not even play in Game Two, predicted flatly: “The Braves will win four straight.”25

Like the Chicago Cubs from 1906 to 1910, the only other team that then had reached the World Series with the same frequency as the Athletics, but had dropped off the pace due to age, the loss of Evers, and the lure of the Federal League, the end of this great Philadelphia squad seemed suddenly near.

Damon Runyon observed at the time, “The star of the American League seems to be slowly sinking.”26 Norman Macht wrote nearly a century after the game, “Nobody spoke in the home clubhouse after the game. Plank stood on a stool, head in his hands, while the others silently showered, dressed, and left.”27

One could hardly fault Plank, at least, for his efforts in defeat.28 He “pitched those nine exciting, thrilling innings just like the old master that he is. … Hats off to Ancient Edward, like his rival, Matty, as great, or greater, in defeat as ever he was in victory.”29

Newspaper reporters invoked Christy Mathewson when summarizing the efforts of both the losing and winning hurlers. “James … twirled a quality of baseball that would have been a credit to a Mathewson, a Johnson or a Rudolph.”30

In his own newspaper article, Manager Stallings paid tribute to his winning pitcher, writing of James: “To him, almost alone, belongs the verdict.”31

The last words belonged to the National League’s Chalmers Award winner in 1914, Johnny Evers, who, after all, had a better view of the game than any sportswriter or historian. Though viewed today as a fierce partisan rather than a dispassionate observer, Evers astutely and evenly summed up the compelling contest, stating, “Bill James pitched wonderful ball, but he had little on that old veteran Plank.”32

This article is included in “The Miracle Braves of 1914: Boston’s Original Worst-to-First World Series Champions” (SABR, 2014), edited by Bill Nowlin.

Notes

But the booming bats of Hank Gowdy and a determined Evers brought Boston even in the tenth and, with darkness falling in the bottom of the 12th, the Braves bounced back to win on another Gowdy smash, a bunt, and a throwing error by hard-luck loser Bullet Joe Bush.

The dramatic finish seemed to clinch the Series for Boston and caused the press corps to reach for historic hyperbole: “Boston today threw down the statue of Hank Adams and set up that of Hank Gowdy, tossed the statue of Johnny Adams into the bay and set up one of Johnny Evers, and went wild. Nothing can persuade them that after triumphing [in Game Three] anything will stop them.”2

Eerily, Game Three began as Game One had, with a double by Eddie Murphy, a sacrifice by Rube Oldring on which the Braves made a “masterly”3 play, and a sacrifice fly by Eddie Collins. Unlike the opener, the Athletics took the lead this time, and for good measure Collins reached first on his fly ball when “Joe Connolly, good dependable Joey, made a miserable error.”4

Again, however, Philadelphia failed to capitalize more fully due to a baserunning blunder after Collins stole second base and Stuffy McInnis walked. Pitcher Lefty Tyler picked Collins off second. “Collins was playing too far away from second and Tyler’s throw to Evers caught him sliding back to the bag,” the Philadelphia Bulletin wrote.5

“This [was] the second time Collins has been caught in the series, a fault practically unknown to him in the American League campaign,” said the Philadelphia Inquirer.6

Boston tied the score in the bottom of the second on a Gowdy double, the first of his three extra-base hits off of Bush, which plated Rabbit Maranville, who had singled and stolen second base thanks to “Wally Schang’s miserable throwing.”7

Bush’s own shortstop criticized the pitcher after the game for going after Gowdy in this key spot: “That hit by Gowdy’s … was also a slip for Bush,” said Jack Barry. “With Maranville on second, two out and the pitcher next up, the best play was for Bush to feed bad ones to Gowdy and take a chance on walking him.”8

The Athletics regained the lead in the top of the fourth inning with a two-out rally ignited when McInnis doubled to left. Going the same way, Jimmy Walsh “hit a bounding single into left and Connolly, still shaken up [by hitting the stand on the McInnis double], juggled the ball long enough to let McInnis score.”9

The Braves tied the score immediately although Boston would have taken the lead if Bush had not started the inning with a key defensive play, ironic given the way the game would conclude. Leading off, “Possum Whitted hit a fierce low grounder … which Bush deflected just enough to allow Collins to make a wonderful stop and throw out at first.”10

But a two-out single by Maranville that fell in front of A’s center fielder Jimmy Walsh drove in Butch Schmidt, who had singled and gone to second on a grounder by Charlie Deal. Walsh was playing only because “Amos Strunk, crack centerfielder of the Athletics, is out … for the rest of the world’s series with an abscess on his hand…. Strunk would have been waiting for Maranville’s short fly which Walsh barely touched,” the Philadelphia Bulletin wrote ruefully.11

The teams played scoreless ball until the tenth inning, thanks in part to defensive gems by Schmidt, Tyler, and Maranville.

Braves manager George Stallings, in his daily column, called out “Big Schmidt’s play on Bush in the eighth inning when he led off with what looked like a sure two or three-base hit. Schmidt’s wonderful stop and Tyler’s lightening like work in covering the base were the greatest plays of the game.”12

As with his game-ending double play in the ninth inning of Game Two, “Maranville robbed Collins of a hit in the ninth when he raced over toward second, scooped up a low sizzler and nabbed the fleet Collins by inches at first.”13

The Athletics appeared to have won the game in the top of the tenth inning when Home Run Baker singled to second with two outs and the bases full to score Wally Schang. Murphy, who was on second, also scored because “Evers forgot the bases were full … began patting himself on the chest, and kept it up so long that Murphy finally took a chance to steal home, and … he ran home without Evers even looking up at him or making an effort to throw the ball.”14

Philadelphia still had two on with two out. In a World Series that featured little strong defensive outfield play, Possum Whitted made a key one on a fly ball by McInnis at a clutch time. Eddie Collins noted, “It looked like we would get a couple more when McInnis lined sharply to left centre, but Whitted made a good catch.”15

But Boston did not concede defeat even when they were confronted by a disheartening deficit. Gowdy opened the bottom of the tenth with “one of those fine, long, low drives that delight the eye of the golfer,”16 a “psychological swat that put the necessary courage into his teammates”17 to complete the comeback. (It bounced in center field and went into the stands, a hit that counted for four bases in those days.) Herbie Moran walked with one out and Evers had his chance for redemption. He “drove a fierce low bounder right where Collins should have been playing for him with a curve being pitched.”18 A single, the hit sent Moran to third. Connolly’s sacrifice fly knotted the game again, at 4-4.

Boston won the game in the bottom of the 12th inning. Gowdy doubled and Leslie Mann ran for him. Larry Gilbert, making his only appearance of the Series, batted for James and received an intentional walk to set up a force play. Herbie Moran bunted back to Bush, who “grabbed the ball as if it were a ball of fire, and hurled it into the darkness. It may have been within five feet of Baker; it may have been within ten feet of him, but it might have well been thrown into the grandstand for all the good that it did.”19

Given their disparity in experience, Bush came under much more blame for his miscue than did Mack for leaving him in the game. According to a Philadelphia paper, Bush threw 140 pitches in nine innings and 181 overall in a herculean effort.20 The Braves had clearly sought to drive up Bush’s pitch count from the beginning of the game. In the bottom of the first, “Moran pulled a ‘Roy Thomas’ by fouling off four straight balls, all good ones, before lifting to Mack’s second base guardian.”21

With his deep bullpen and the darkness that would have prohibited additional play, Mack could have easily relieved Bush at different junctures22 but chose not to do so and suffered again from his passivity, although the dimming light did make Bush’s “speed more effective every minute.”23

Boston proved faster than a speeding Bullet in taking Game Three and setting the stage for the possible first sweep in the history of the World Series.

This article is included in “The Miracle Braves of 1914: Boston’s Original Worst-to-First World Series Champions” (SABR, 2014), edited by Bill Nowlin.

Notes

The Braves played superior defense, making notable plays in nearly every frame. The tone was set when the second batter of the game,   Rube Oldring, “fouled to Gowdy. The high wind carried the ball back away from the plate, but Hank got under it and made a sterling catch.”3

In the second inning, Charlie Deal ran over in back of Rudolph, speared the ball with his gloved hand, shifted it to his left like lightning, and tossed out Stuffy McInnis at first while still on the dead run.”4

In the third inning Deal struck again with “a sensational stop over third base and retired Eddie Murphy by inches at first base. …” The next batter, Oldring, singled, “tried to steal on the first pitch to Collins and was retired, Gowdy to Maranville, by fully five yards.”5

With the game still scoreless in the fourth inning after one out on “a remarkable stop of Eddie Collins’ drive”6 by Evers, Frank Baker singled and got to third thanks to a single by Stuffy McInnis, but on the play “Joe Connolly returned the ball to Deal, who in a flash saw that Baker had it beaten, drove the ball to Evers and McInnis was caught trying to get to the base.”7

Boston capitalized by taking the lead in the bottom of the fourth, which began with a walk to Evers. Unlike the Braves, the Philadelphians failed to make the key plays at the key times. Following Evers, “Connolly hit a sharp grounder to Collins, who had a double play in front of him. Eddie, however, foozled the ball, allowing Evers to reach second easily. …  Posssum Whitted [then] pushed a savage grounder at Collins, which hit Eddie on the foot and went for a base hit”8 that moved Evers to third, from where he scored on a groundout by   Butch Schmidt.

Philadelphia’s starting pitcher, Bob Shawkey, quickly tied the score in the top of the fifth when he drove in Jack Barry with a double. But the Braves changed their tactics against Shawkey to retake the lead for good in the bottom of the same frame.9 “The feature clout … was contributed by Johnny Evers, who drove in both of Boston’s runs … on a fine young single to left field, Evers connecting when two were down with just a hit needed for Boston to break the tie and go into the lead.”10 Two runs scored on the blow, making the score 3-1 for the Braves, and that was the game’s final tally.

With the Athletics needing baserunners to keep their season alive after Boston had taken the lead, “Rabbit Maranville absolutely robbed Collins of a hit in the sixth inning, when he dashed back of second, grabbed Collins’ liner with one hand and shot it to first.”11

The Athletics would not get another man on base until the seventh inning, when Jimmy Walsh, playing center field this day in the absence of the lamed Amos Strunk, walked and went to second on a wild pitch. With none out, Philadelphia merely needed to do what the Braves had done in the fourth inning, namely, move the runner around to score a run, which would have closed the gap to 3-2. But as in the second inning of Game One against Rudolph, Barry failed to advance the runner by striking out on a pitch that again “was off the plate”;12 even worse for the Athletics, “Evers grabbed Gowdy’s throw down to second with one hand and slapped the ball on Walsh completing a sensational double play.”13

As Ty Cobb harshly but justly observed in his postgame analysis, “There was no excuse for Walsh being caught at that stage. … There was no reason for him to take chances.”14

The play seemed to demoralize Philadelphia, as its last seven batters went down in order. “Even with the chances of the Athletics fading,Herb Pennock [who had replaced Shawkey on the mound in the sixth] was sent up to bat”15 to start the eighth and grounded out to second.

Mack’s passivity and Pennock’s impatience typified the slack Philadelphia attack throughout the World Series. Rudolph remarked, “I’d rather pitch against the Athletics than the worst teams in the National and American Leagues, and I know that my average would be far better. They swung at anything I sent up to them, whether low, high or wide. They did not show any batting judgment at all.”16

Leadoff hitter Eddie Murphy followed Pennock in the eighth and skied to Mann, who “turned in a wonderful catch … getting the ball out in left centre after a hard run. It was a regular Tris Speaker catch, and Spoke, who was in the press stand … let out a mighty yell.”17

The inning ended on still a third notable effort, when Evers made “a clever play on Oldring’s short fly.”18

The final frame started no better for the Athletics, who showed “evidence of the loss of heart” as “Eddie Collins … led off in the ninth inning by striking out, the third strike being on a ball that almost hit the ground at his feet.”19

Baker’s groundout pushed the Athletics closer to their doom. Then, for a postseason that could have not looked better for the Braves, the game, Series, and season ended on a fittingly “pretty play”:20 “McInnis hit the first ball pitched. It went at Deal with great speed, but Charlie knocked it down and, after recovering, furnished the final play of the series with a fine throw to Schmidt.”21

That substitute Charlie Deal closed the World Series made sense. Boston had an unheralded team, and a backup stepped up to backstop the miracle squad to a sweep few had foreseen. “Deal held up his end in startling style and his brilliancy was in evidence just at the time when it was most required. To him went the honor of making the final assist and all throughout he handled his position masterfully.”22

With so many Braves playing masterfully, Boston captured the 1914 World Series in four convincing games.

After Game Four:

“Boston never knew a wilder baseball celebration than that which followed the fourth game.  Thousands of fans swarmed around the Boston dugout, and Manager Stallings had to make a speech.  Rabbit Maranville was dragged from the showers, and, half-dressed, he too spoke to the crowd from the roof of the dugout.  Then the crowd paraded with the band playing ‘Tessie’ and ‘Along Came Ruth’ around the park, through the Fens, down Huntington Avenue, and to Copley Square, where the beaten Athletics were serenaded in their hotel, the Copley Plaza.  There were fully 5,000 fans in the human chain, and thrust to its head were all the Braves who came in sight, especially Maranville, who needed no thrusting.” — Harold Kaese, The Boston Braves, p. 166.

This article is included in “The Miracle Braves of 1914: Boston’s Original Worst-to-First World Series Champions” (SABR, 2014), edited by Bill Nowlin.

Notes