On a fair day by most accounts, the game proceeded in fairly usual fashion. Braves starter Dick Rudolph threw a complete game, holding the Cardinals to eight hits and one walk while striking out six. Rudolph wasn’t the only one who turned in decent pitching either. While giving up three runs, the Cardinals’ Harry “Slim” Sallee held the Braves to five hits while striking out two before being relieved by Lee Meadows in the top of the eighth inning. Were it not for the five walks surrendered by Sallee, the outcome of the game may have been different. As it happened though, the Braves took a three-run lead into the ninth inning before the Cardinals’ Tom Long was able to drive in Bob Bescher for a meaningless run.

The Braves, on the other hand, started their scoring early. In the second inning, “[Braves left fielder Sherry] Magee hit a fly, which Bescher came in from deep left for and, after a long run, got his hands on, but could not hold.”1 This Texas Leaguer, combined with a poor throw to the infield, allowed Boston’s Magee to advance to second. After a sacrifice by Butch Schmidt advanced Magee to third, Rabbit Maranville used one of his two hits in the game to drive in the Braves’ first run. The Braves finished their scoring in the fourth inning when catcher Hank Gowdy plated two by hitting a double to the right-field gap. This proved to be more than enough scoring, allowing the Braves to emerge victorious. However, neither the pitching of Rudolph nor the offense of Maranville and Gowdy was the star that day. Instead, the star of the day was the field itself –this was the first game played at the new Braves Field. The Braves had played the earlier portion of the season at nearby Fenway Park, courtesy of the Boston Red Sox.2

Located just off Commonwealth Avenue in Allston, Braves Field was hailed as “the finest baseball park in the world.”3 Construction under owner James E. Gaffney commenced just before the 1915 season, in March.4 And even though Gaffney built the biggest ballpark of the time, the expansive facility turned out not to be big enough to hold all who were interested in attending. With seating for between 43,000 and 45,000, by far the largest in baseball at the time, the Braves still ended up turning away 6,000 fans, even after they exceeded capacity by allowing an estimated 46,000 fans through the gates.5 Those who were able to get through the turnstiles were not your typical crowd, either. A host of dignitaries were there, including Boston Mayor James Michael Curley, along with 12 other Massachusetts mayors.6 In addition to political notables, a number of baseball men were present for the opening game. These included Charles Ebbets, president of the Brooklyn Robins; Chicago Cubs president Charles Thomas; National League President John Tener; and National League Secretary John Heydler.7

The special guests weren’t only in the stands. The first pitch, a strike, was thrown out by Washington manager Clark Griffith and caught by Braves manager George “The Miracle Man” Stallings.8 In addition to the baseball and political dignitaries among the 46,000 in attendance were 10,000 children from the Boston area.9 Also there were 300 members of the Royal Rooters who “as usual, were quick to appreciate the good plays and to encourage anything that looked like a rally.”10 In addition to the Royal Rooter band, who “were out full force with their band and singers and making themselves heard as in the days when ‘Tessie’ was new,”11 the 9th Regiment Band was also on hand to add to the cacophony of the day.12 Finally, according to the Boston Globe, “there were fans from every walk, oldtimers galore, and probably not less than 6000 women, the greatest outpouring of the fair sex that the game probably ever has known.”13

While the game and the crowd were something to see, the field itself was what really took the day. With ceremonies that included the raising of the world’s championship pennant, the field itself was massive. Sod from the Braves’ former home at the South End Grounds had been transported to help form the infield at the new park. The distance down the foul lines was 375 feet to both poles. Dead center was 440 feet and right center was a monstrous 520 feet.14 None other than Ty Cobb declared that a ball could not be hit over the fence at the new park.15 In addition to Cobb, other baseball notables, including Hughie Jennings and Clark Griffith, claimed “that it is all that a modern baseball plant should be.”16 The greatness of the park extended beyond the field as well; the clubhouses under the grandstands were equipped with showers, there was plenty of office space, and there were 22 box offices and 28 turnstiles to allow for the large crowds to be accommodated.17

Even though the afternoon started out in spectacular fashion, with opening ceremonies that included raising the championship flag, followed by a great performance by the Braves, it had to come to an end. With a 3-0 lead in hand heading into the seventh, many of the Braves fans began to leave as quickly as they had arrived.18 While the splendor of the new park was something to behold, at the end of the day this was another ballgame and another Braves win. As a result, the fans left happy and “the pleasure was due mainly to the fact that the Boston club won from St Louis by a score of 3 to 1; that there was a lot of good playing and very little that was not up to standard.”19

The rivet tappers are silent,
Thee grumbling crusher is still
And here is the thing they’ve fashioned, the work of the noisesome mill.
Tier upon tier it rises,
A gray and a lofty pile,
As grim in its stony casings
As the mark of a Gorgon smile.

But it ain’t any further, kid, from the plate to second;
It’s big an’ gran’ an’ elegant, but get this in yer dome:
Them sacks are measured out jus’ like you always reckined
And it’s the same ol’ erround’ from home-ta-home.

—R.E. McMillin, Boston Evening Journal, August 17, 1915

This article appeared in “Braves Field: Memorable Moments at Boston’s Lost Diamond” (SABR, 2015), edited by Bill Nowlin and Bob Brady. To read more articles from this book, click here. 

Sources

In addition to the sources mentioned in the Notes, box scores for this game can be seen on baseball-reference.com, and retrosheet.org at:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BSN/BSN191508180.shtml

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1915/B08180BSN1915.htm

Notes

In 1915 baseball still followed the practice of a coin flip to determine which team hosted the opening games of the World Series. Phillies’ president William F. Baker won the toss, and the first two games were played in his bandbox ballpark, the Baker Bowl.3 The Phillies won the October 8 opener, 3-1, behind Alexander’s eight-hitter but the Red Sox captured the second game, 2-1, behind a three-hitter by the diminutive Rube Foster, who also knocked in the winning run with a ninth-inning single.4 President Woodrow Wilson, accompanied by his fiancée, Edith Galt, attended game and threw out the first pitch. He was the first president to attend a World Series game.

The Series then switched to Boston for Games Three and Four. The Red Sox elected, with the consent of the crosstown Braves, to play their home games in brand-new Braves Field, which had a capacity of 42,000, the largest in the big leagues.5 While the larger seating capacity of Braves Field certainly influenced the Red Sox decision to move, the club was also no doubt seeking a competitive advantage. The Braves Field outfield was expansive, measuring 402 feet down each foul line and 550 feet to dead center,6 and would allow the exceedingly fast Red Sox outfield trio of Tris Speaker, Duffy Lewis, and Harry Hooper plenty of room to track down fly balls.

Phillies manager Pat Moran7 started the redoubtable Alexander on two days’ rest.8 Red Sox manager Bill Carrigan picked Dutch Leonard, one of the top lefties in the American League, over the protestations of Babe Ruth, who was arguably the top southpaw in the league and who very much wanted a World Series start.9 According to one report, Carrigan purposely kept Ruth on the bench to make it clear to the cocky, out-of-control 20-year-old that the Red Sox could win without him.10

A World Series record crowd of 42,360 crammed into Braves Field, more than saw the first two games in Philadelphia combined. Among them was a delegation from the Massachusetts Women’s Suffrage Association, which gave Red Sox star center fielder Tris Speaker a $10 gold piece for scoring the first Red Sox run of the Series.11 Once the game started, Speaker promptly lost leadoff hitter Milt Stock’s lazy fly ball in the sun. Speaker never moved for the ball, which fell about 15 feet from where he was standing for a gift double. Dave Bancroft sacrificed Stock to third but Leonard pitched himself out of the early hole, retiring Dode Paskert on a foul popup to Larry Gardner at third before striking out Phils slugger Gavvy Cravath to end the inning.

Another taut pitcher’s duel quickly developed as Alexander retired the first four Red Sox hitters before allowing a single to left by Duffy Lewis, who was promptly thrown out by catcher Ed Burns. 12

The game was scoreless when Ed Burns led off the Phillies’ third with a ground single to right just out of the reach of second baseman Jack Barry. Alexander sacrificed and was safe when first baseman Dick Hoblitzell muffed Gardner’s perfect throw. Stock sacrificed and the Phillies had runners on second and third with one out. Dave Bancroft followed with a single to center to plate Burns with the first run of the game. Alexander took a wide turn at third before Moran, coaching third, put on the brakes. He drew a throw home from Speaker, which enabled Bancroft to scamper down to second. Paskert was next and lofted a ball to short right but Barry made a fine running catch while the runners held.

That again brought up Cravath, the undisputed leading slugger in the game. He’d set a twentieth-century major-league record that year with 24 home runs, his third year in a row to lead the majors. (He also led in runs batted in with 115.)13 Cravath proceeded to hit the longest ball of the Series, a prodigious blast to deepest left field that sent Lewis racing with his back to the plate. He turned and grabbed the ball just in front of the left-field bleachers, a full 400 feet from home plate, to retire the side. Cravath’s blast would have been a three-run homer in Fenway Park or the Baker Bowl, but was just a long out in Braves Field.14 Thus, two great Red Sox fielding plays in the inning kept the Phillies to a single run.

The Red Sox tied the score in their half of the fourth on Speaker’s one-out line triple down the right-field line, quickly followed by Hoblitzell’s long sacrifice to Paskert in left to score Tris. Both hurlers then set down the opposition without a baserunner until the bottom of the seventh, when Speaker led off with a single to left. Hoblitzell attempted to sacrifice but Burns pounced on the ball and threw to Bancroft at second to force Speaker while Hoblitzell stood at home plate thinking the ball was foul. The Phillies threw to first for the double play and while the Red Sox squawked long and hard to home-plate umpire Silk O’Loughlin, the call stood.15

While Alexander held the Red Sox at bay, the Phillies could not even generate a baserunner after the third inning. In the ninth Leonard made it 20 consecutive Phillies retired after two groundouts and a foul pop. In the bottom of the inning Hooper led off with a two-strike single to right field. Everett Scott twice failed to lay down a sacrifice, but with two strikes surprised the Phillies by poking a bunt that got by Alexander. Second baseman Bert Niehoff raced in from second and made a sparkling play, just nipping Scott at first while Hooper advanced to second. Manager Moran then ordered an intentional pass to Speaker to put runners on first and second with one out. As Speaker trotted down to first, he doffed his cap to the Phillies dugout.16 Hoblitzell was next and slashed a drive that seemed headed to right field. Niehoff, however, made another fine play to get to the ball and threw to first to get the batter by a whisker.

That left runners on second and third with two outs and Duffy Lewis coming to the plate in one of the pivotal and most controversial at-bats in the Series. At that juncture the hot-hitting Lewis was 4-for-7 against Alexander in the Series. The feeling in the press box was that Moran would order Alexander to intentionally walk Lewis to set up a force at any base and bring Larry Gardner to the plate.17 But after a mound confab, the Phillies decided to pitch to Lewis even with first base open. Lewis laced Alexander’s first pitch to center field to drive in the winning run and end the ballgame. In a happy delirium the Red Sox faithful rushed onto the field, lifted Lewis on their shoulders and carried him off the field. He later lamented that the crowd almost broke his back.18 The hit proved to be the seminal moment in Lewis’ rock-solid11-year big-league career.19

The Phillies couldn’t recover from the walkoff loss, which put Boston ahead in the Series two games to one. They proceeded to lose two more one-run games as the Red Sox claimed the world championship in five games.

After the Series, Alexander defended the decision to pitch to Lewis in the ninth inning of Game Three, asserting that in a prior all-star tour Lewis had gotten exactly two hits off him in 12 to 14 games, striking out four times in one game. He wrote, “If there was a player in the world that I should have felt confident in facing on past experiences, that man was Lewis. Every series has its star. I didn’t know that Lewis was to be the star of 1915.”20

Alexander also revealed after the Series that he had strained his pitching shoulder while favoring a blister in a game against Brooklyn on Labor Day and had not been healthy since, even though he had thrown a one-hit shutout against the Braves on September 29 to clinch the pennant. According to Alexander, “[i]t is a very disconcerting experience to find yourself at the critical moment, when every eye is on you, and know that you are not in your best form.”21

Moran intended to bring Alexander back in Game Five on only one day’s rest (after pitching Game Three on two days’ rest). Alex, however, was forced to tell his manager after warming up that his “arm was not right.”22 To baseball’s then greatest pitcher, the 1915 Series was “a peculiar, personal disappointment in that I was unable, through lack of condition to live up to expectations of my friends.”23

This article appeared in “Braves Field: Memorable Moments at Boston’s Lost Diamond” (SABR, 2015), edited by Bill Nowlin and Bob Brady. To read more articles from this book, click here.

Sources

In addition to the sources mentioned in the Notes, box scores for this game can be seen on baseball-reference.com, and retrosheet.org at:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/postseason/1915_WS.shtml

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1915/B10110BOS1915.htm

Alexander, Charles C. Spoke – A Biography of Tris Speaker (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 2007).

Alexander, Grover Cleveland. “How I Lost the World Series,” Baseball Magazine, January 1916.

The Baseball Encyclopedia (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1969).

Baseball-reference.com.

Clark, Ellery H., Jr. Red Sox Forever (Hicksville, New York: Exposition Press, 1979).

Gay, Timothy M. Tris Speaker – the Rough-and-Tumble Life of a Baseball Legend (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005).

Golenbock, Peter. Fenway – An Unexpurgated History of the Boston Red Sox (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1992).

Honig, Donald. The October Heroes (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979).

Kavanagh, Jack. Ol’ Pete – The Grover Cleveland Alexander Story (South Bend, Indiana: Diamond Communications, Inc., 1996).

Krueger, Joseph J. Baseball’s Greatest Drama – World Series History, 1903-1945 (Milwaukee: Joseph J. Krueger, 1946).

Lieb, Frederick G., and Stan Baumgartner. The Philadelphia Phillies (Kent, Ohio: Kent University Press, 2009, originally published by A.S. Barnes & Co., Inc., 1948).

Lieb, Frederick. Baseball As I Have Known It (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1977).

Lieb, Frederick G. The Boston Red Sox (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003, originally published by G.P. Putman’s Sons, 1947).

Ritter, Lawrence S. Lost Ballparks – A Celebration of Baseball’s Legendary Fields (New York: Viking, 1992).

Ritter, Lawrence S. The Glory of Their Times (New York: Macmillan & Co., 1966).

Skipper, John C. Wicked Curve – The Life and Troubled Times of Grover Cleveland Alexander (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2006).

Westcott, Rich, and Frank Bilovsky. The New Phillies Encyclopedia (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993).

Zingg, Paul J. Harry Hooper – An American Baseball Life (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993).

Notes

After a 3-1 opening-game loss in Philadelphia, the Red Sox had gained the upper hand, taking two straight contests by identical 2-1 scores. Their Game Three victory the previous day at Braves Field was especially encouraging, as it came against Phillies ace Grover Cleveland Alexander , upon whom much of Philadelphia’s hopes rested.

Although Game Four attendance, reported officially at 41,096, was slightly lower than that of Game Three, it was not through a lack of fans desiring admission. In fact, there was such a crush of prospective ticket-buyers that the fans found themselves somewhat in physical peril as they attempted to muscle through the ballpark gates: “The police were powerless, as apparently no systematic and intelligent arrangements had been made to handle the enormous crowd.”2Recognizing potential danger, the Red Sox decided to stop selling standing-room tickets, and thus estimated thousands were turned away. Of course, many of these sought out what vantage points were available outside the park and watched from a distance.

The weather was excellent for the 2:00 P.M. start, the “brilliant October sun having in its rays the warmth of early summer.”3October 12 was Columbus Day, and Boston was celebrating with a number of public activities. Although the usual military parade was canceled due to “conditions in Europe” (the World War was raging), there was a parade of coast artillery from the city’s harbor-defense corps, and the third annual Pan-American meeting was held at Faneuil Hall, presided over by Mayor James Michael Curley. Fireworks on the Common were scheduled for 3:00 P.M.4

Boston manager Bill Carrigan sent Ernie Shore to the mound on three days’ rest. In his second year with the Red Sox, and having enjoyed a career-best season, (19-8, 1.64 ERA), Shore was looking to avenge his Game One loss to Alexander. Today he would face George Chalmers, who, at 27 years old, in the penultimate season of an unspectacular seven-year major-league career, was essentially manager Pat Moran’s fifth starter behind Alexander, Erskine Mayer, Al Demaree, and Eppa Rixey. But Chalmers got the call ahead of Demaree and Rixey, and for the most part made Moran look like a genius in choosing him. The two teams together had produced but 10 runs in the first three games, and the huge audience at Braves Field was in for another pitchers’ duel.

Third basemanMilt Stock led things off for the Phillies with a single down the left-field line but was erased trying to take an extra base by Duffy Lewis’s swift peg to shortstop Everett Scott covering second. A walk to future HallofFamer Dave Bancroft was wasted too, as Shore then fanned Dode Paskert and Cravath.The Red Sox also failed to start well, Harry Hooper and Scott striking out and Tris Speaker getting caught stealing after drawing a base on balls.

Another inning and a half went by without scoring, both pitchers looking strong. Shore was perhaps getting the worst of the pitchers’match, walking a batter in each of the first four innings. He may have been a little wild, or it could have been that Moran’s men were finally showing some patience at the plate – as Boston Globe columnist (and former nineteenth-century major leaguer) Tim Murnane suggested, consciously “waiting him out.”5

Boston broke the scoreless tie in the bottom of the third. Second baseman Jack Barry walked and took second on Hick Cady’s bunt single. Shore sacrificed Barry to third, and he tallied on Hooper’sinfield hit.

The Phillies threatened in the fourth, putting two men on, but came up empty when Chalmers hit into an inning-ending force out. Things were quiet on the Red Sox side too until the sixth, when first baseman Dick Hoblitzell stroked his second single of the game and was driven home by Lewis’s double into left.

An apparently spontaneous show of patriotism erupted at the outset of the seventh inning, as a brass band struck up “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The Braves Field crowd responded en masse, standing and doffing their headwear, and the players and umpires followed suit.6

Speaking of crowd demonstrations, Boston’s Royal Rooters made their presence in the park well known. Ty Cobb commented in his syndicated column: “It is pretty tough when people have to pay from $1 to $5 for a seat to see a ball game and be pestered to death with the terrible strains of ‘Tessie’ through an entire world’s series.”7

Meanwhile, Shore had settled down and was picking up steam as the afternoon progressed. In the Philadelphia seventh, Chalmers, aiming to help his own cause, reached on a one-out blooper to center, but the opportunity died on Stock’s double-play grounder.

One of the most hotlydiscussed matters of the Series was the lack of production from Phillies slugger Gavvy Cravath. At age 34 he had enjoyed one of his best seasons, topping the National League in runs, homeruns, RBIs, walks, total bases, and slugging percentage. But here in his only postseason series, he was struggling miserably, with just one hit and one RBI to his credit in three games. Many blamed the spacious dimensions of Braves Field, but then again, Cravath did no better in his home park, going 1-for-8 in the Baker Bowl games, the same as in the Boston games. Cravath finally rose somewhat to the occasion in the eighth inning, mashing a two-out, full-count triple past Speaker in center. First baseman Fred Luderus, the one consistent bright spot in Moran’s lineup this October, followed with a single that scored Gavvy and cut the Boston lead in half. Oscar Dugey pinch-ran for Luderus and when he stole second, the Phillies had the tying run in scoring position.8But Shore got Possum Whitted on an easy grounder back to the mound, and the uprising was quelled.

In the bottom half of the eighth, three men reached base for the Sox, but Larry Gardner’s tapper back to the mound was fired to the plate by Chalmers, forcing Speaker. Catcher Eddie Burns inturn “shot the ball down to Whitted”9 at first, nipping Gardner. The snappy doubleplay ended Boston’s batting for the day. Shore put the Phillies down 1-2-3 in the ninth inning on only four pitches10and Game Four went into the books as the third straight 2-1 win for the Red Sox, placing them on the brink of the championship.

Eppa Rixey had been warming up all day, but things never got to the point where he was needed.11It was generally agreed that Chalmers had pitched above expectations, perhaps more effectively than either Alexander or Mayer in their games.Tim Murnane, referring to Chalmers as a “moist ball pitcher,” said he pitched a “very intelligent game.”12

The next day, the scene shifted back to Philadelphia for the final act: a 5-4 Red Sox victory in Game Five, giving the city of Boston its second of three consecutive World Series titles from 1914 to 1916.

Sources

In addition to the sources mentioned in the Notes, box scores for this game can be seen on baseball-reference.com, and retrosheet.org at:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS191510120.shtml

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1915/B10120BOS1915.htm

Notes

Cincinnati’s Fred Toney yielded only two hits1 in 11 innings before giving way to Pete Schneider, who gave up just one hit in five frames. Boston ace Dick Rudolph threw one more inning than Toney but gave up 11 hits. Rudolph made superlative fielding plays to keep the game scoreless; the last such play resulted, however, in a hand injury that required Tom Hughes to pitch after Pete Compton pinch-hit for Rudolph.

With foul weather plaguing the Hub, the Braves had not played since June 7, and the Reds had not taken the diamond since June 6. The game started late to let the field, “a quagmire,”2 dry, but the delay did not faze Rudolph, who fanned the three Cincinnati batters in the top of the first.

In the second inning, Boston captain Johnny Evers, a record umpire-baiter,3 could not stay out of the fray even on a day when he was too injured to play. “Dick Egan was called out on strikes, and started to sputter. Johnny Evers … directed his remarks at Pitcher Toney. … Johnny told Pitcher Toney that he, Johnny, had once fired him.”4

Umpire Ernest Quigley ejected Evers for insulting the visiting pitcher. As Cubs manager in 1913, Evers had sold Toney, owner at the time of a 2-2 record with a 6.00 ERA, to the minors. Three years later, Evers tried to get Toney off his game, but his antics backfired. “In great measure the laurels of the day swung to Toney[, who] was in rare form.”5

Toney’s 11 innings represented less than his average appearance in his preceding starts, a 16-inning complete-game win on May 31 followed by a 10-inning complete-game win on June 5. In three starts, Toney pitched 37 innings and gave up just 17 hits. “Pitching a team-high 300 innings in 1916, Toney posted a 2.28 ERA but compil[ed] a 14-17 record. In August of that year he stated that he could be a 25-game winner if the Reds would give him the four runs per game he felt he deserved, instead of the 2.5 runs he thought he was receiving.”6

Boston got its first hit in the bottom of the second inning when Ed Konetchy singled. Konetchy stole second but stayed stranded after Toney struck out two.

In the top of the third, former Brave Buck Herzog, the Reds’ player-manager, singled before Rudolph started a 1-6-3 double play via future Hall of Famer Rabbit Maranville.

In the top of the fourth inning, left fielder Greasy Neale singled. Neale, later a starter for the 1919 world champion Reds and coach of the 1948 and 1949 NFL champion Philadelphia Eagles, lit out for second too soon. Rudolph threw to first. Boston tagged out Neale in a rundown, but Neale would stay aggressive.

In the bottom of the sixth, Toney plunked Braves backstop Walt Tragesser. After consecutive fielder’s choices, Boston center fielder Joe Connolly walked, but right fielder Joe Wilhoit hit into yet another fielder’s choice to strand two mates.

In the top of the ninth inning, Neale singled again, and Rudolph had him picked off again. But bad throws by Konetchy and Maranville sent Neale to third with two outs. To the plate strode Hal Chase, who would bat a league-leading .339 in 1916. “It was a narrow squeak for Rudolph as Chase all but got an infield single on a slow roller toward third. Only just in time did Rudolph secure the ball and get his man at first while a Red was legging it across the plate.”7

In the top of the 10th, Cincinnati got two on thanks to a single by first baseman Fritz Mollwitz and an intentional walk to Herzog after a wild pitch, but Baldy Louden hit into a fielder’s choice to end the rally.

Boston had major threats in each of the first three extra innings. In the bottom of the 10th, Egan walked. Batting for Tragesser, Zip Collins reached on a fielder’s choice/sacrifice when Reds catcher Ivey Wingo threw too late to second to try to cut down the lead runner. Declining to bat for Rudolph with two on and none out, Stallings ordered a bunt. But Wingo “made a beautiful play on what looked like a perfect sacrifice by Rudolph, forcing [Ed] Fitzpatrick, who was sent in to run in place of Egan, at third.”8

In the 11th, Wilhoit hit a leadoff double, Boston’s only extra-base hit, which, “[o]n a dry field … would have been good for three bases.”9 Sherry Magee popped out to Wingo, then Herzog took Konetchy’s grounder and gunned down Wilhoit at third. Facing his final batter, Toney retired Red Smith.

In the top of the 12th, the Reds loaded the bases with two outs after getting multiple hits in an inning for the only time in the game. Herzog replaced Toney with pinch-hitter Tommy Clarke, who “came so close to breaking up the game that there was no fun in it. Clarke hit the ball hard and on a line. It was whistling past Rudolph when the latter stuck out his bare hand and stopped the burning drive dead to toss out the hitter.”10

The game’s great controversy occurred in the bottom of the inning. Fitzpatrick walked. Hank Gowdy, resting to heal a spike injury, had replaced Tragesser behind the plate after Zip Collins pinch-hit, and sacrificed Fitzpatrick to second. With Rudolph already throwing 12 innings and now having a hurting hand, Braves manager George Stallings turned to Compton.

Pete Compton hit a swinging bunt, but “[t]he speedy Ivy Wingo was on the ball like a shadow”11 and “had gone nearly half way to first to retrieve the ball,”12 which he threw to Mollwitz at first. With “a good lead off second”13 and Wingo having vacated the plate, Fitzpatrick never stopped running, trying to end the game by scoring from second base on an infield out.

But Cincinnati third baseman Heinie Groh “beat Fitz to the plate, took Mollwitz’s return throw, which was high, and, stooping, made a stab at Fitz, who claimed he touched the rubber with his hand.”14

The conditions clearly complicated seeing what had actually happened. “In a swirl of mud, Fitzy, Heinie and the ball reached the plate at the same identical moment [as did] Umpire Quigley. As Heinie was doing a back flip-flop and Fitzy was sliding over, Umpire Quigley dropped his arms in the manner generally known to signify ‘safe.’”15

Quigley’s signal seemingly ended the game.

But “before the jubilant Braves or chagrined Reds could say a word, Umpire Quigley … announced … that Fitzy was out because he had failed to touch the rubber.”16

Opinions differ on whether Fitzpatrick touched home, and whether Groh actually tagged Fitzpatrick at all, much less before he had hit the dish.

“Whether Fitzpatrick was safe or out, Heinie Groh made a great play in covering the plate.”17

Smith singled for the third and final Boston hit in the 14th. Three newspaper accounts say nothing of what transpired the rest of the game, which “wore along …before descending darkness and hunger called a halt.”18

This article appeared in “Braves Field: Memorable Moments at Boston’s Lost Diamond” (SABR, 2015), edited by Bill Nowlin and Bob Brady. To read more articles from this book, click here.

Sources

In addition to the sources mentioned in the Notes, box scores for this game can be seen on baseball-reference.com, and retrosheet.org at:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BSN/BSN191606130.shtml

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1916/B06130BSN1916.htm

Notes

On paper the game between the Boston Braves and Pittsburgh Pirates at Braves Field on June 16, 1916, looked like nothing special. After jumping out to a decent start and sitting in third place with a 15-11 record on May 22, the Braves hit the skids and lost 12 of their next 18. They sank to fifth place, seven games behind the first-place Brooklyn Robins, and sported a record of 21-23 on June 15.

The Pirates, piloted by James “Nixey” Callahan, were even worse, having gone 21-26, good for seventh place and an 8½-game deficit. Their roster still boasted legendary shortstop Honus Wagner, but he was 42 and in his next-to-last season, and even though he was still productive, he was just a shell of his former self. The rest of the lineup was helmed by 33-year-old right fielder Bill Hinchman, who would lead the National League that season with 16 triples, and speed demon and future Hall of Famer Max Carey, who would lead the league with a career-high 63 stolen bases.

Braves skipper George Stallings sent 32-year-old journeyman hurler Tom Hughes (known as “Salida Tom” for the Colorado town in which he grew up) to the mound to face Pittsburgh’s hard-luck lefty, 23-year-old Erv “Peanuts” Kantlehner. Despite pitching to a 2.26 earned-run average in 1915, sixth best in the National League, Kantlehner went only 5-12, and 1916 wasn’t much better. Going into the June 16 contest, the southpaw boasted a nifty 1.64 ERA, but was only 2-6. Hughes, on the other hand, had enjoyed his best season in 1915, going 16-14 with a 2.12 ERA, and led the league in games, games finished, and saves.1 He began the 1916 season with five wins and a save in his first nine appearances and was 5-2 with a 3.05 ERA when he took the slab against the Pirates.

According to the Boston Post, a drizzle dampened the field but did not interrupt play, and a chilly east wind blew throughout the contest.2 Carey led off with a long drive that was hauled in by right fielder Joe Wilhoit, who would be instrumental to Hughes’s success on this day. Hughes retired Doc Johnston and Wagner, and the Pirates went down in order in the first, but not before an injury to Boston catcher Walt Tragesser, who was getting a rare start, knocked him out of the game.

The Braves jumped out to an early 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first on a walk, a single, a bunt, and a throwing error. Rabbit Maranville drew the base on balls to start the frame and advanced to second on a Fred Snodgrass base hit. Wilhoit attempted to advance both runners with a bunt, but popped it right to Kantlehner, who snared the ball out of the air, spun in an effort to double Maranville off second base but heaved the ball into center field. Carey was backing up on the play, but the ball rolled past him and Maranville scored.

Snodgrass moved to third but was erased in a rundown when Sherry Magee grounded to third. Ed Konetchy fouled out to third to end the threat, and Boston held a 1-0 lead. That’s all Hughes would need as he continued to mow down Pirates hitters. Hinchman and Joe Schultz went down in the second before Ed Barney lifted what Boston Post writer Ed McGrath called an “ominous fly near the [right-field] foul line.”3 Wilhoit raced over and made the catch for the final out of the inning. He would make three more that had McGrath gushing, “Joe Wilhoit had to cover quite a little ground in the pursuit of five hoists that came out to his plot, but managed to get his putouts without any vast trouble.”4

The Braves fashioned another minor rally in the second when second baseman Dick Egan blooped a single to right and Hank Gowdy, who’d replaced the injured Tragesser, lined a double to left, but Hughes struck out and Maranville grounded out to third and stranded both runners. It would be the only time Maranville failed to reach base in four trips to the plate.

“Beyond that nothing stirred to encourage the Braves until Bob Harmon came in to pitch the last inning for his crew,” wrote McGrath.5 After the second inning, Kantlehner settled down and surrendered only three more hits, all singles, before leaving the game after the seventh inning in favor of Harmon.

But Kantlehner also got an assist from the umpires in the sixth when a controversial call on a steal attempt by the Braves had the Boston Globe’s James O’Leary suggesting a change in the way arbiters made future calls.6 With Ed Konetchy at the plate, Sherry Magee attempted to steal second. Konetchy swung at the pitch and fouled it into Walter Schmidt’s mitt. Home-plate umpire Bill Klem called “foul” as Schmidt fired a strike to second to nab Magee. Magee insisted he was misled by Klem calling “foul,” but the play stood and Kantlehner got out of the inning.

“Umpires will probably evolve some scheme to avoid the confusion which occurred in one play,” opined O’Leary. “It would seem … better for the [home-plate] umpire to delay his decision until the play at second is completed, or call it a strike, as are all foul tips if caught.”7

Meanwhile Hughes had yet to allow a hit, thanks to his command of the strike zone and Wilhoit’s glove. “All eyes were centered on the thin Boston pitcher as he cleaved the murky air with his wide curves,” waxed McGrath, “compelling the thoroughly helpless hostiles either to lift the ball in the air, where it would drop into the clutches of a waiting Boston fielder, or swing vainly at elusive shoots.”8

Indeed, only three assists were recorded by Boston’s fielders; Hughes fanned seven batters, Gowdy recorded nine putouts and Wilhoit captured everything belted his way, whether short or long. Kantlehner popped a shallow fly to right in the fifth; Johnston poled a “screaming drive” toward the right-field corner in the sixth; and Dan Costello blasted a shot in the eighth that seemed headed for extra bases, yet Wilhoit chased down all of them.9

The Braves plated their second tally in the bottom of the eighth when Maranville drew his third free pass of the game, raced to third on another Snodgrass single, and came home on a double steal when catcher Schmidt chucked his throw into center field.

The top of the ninth found Hughes facing Max Carey, Doc Johnston, and Honus Wagner, the first three hitters in Pittsburgh’s order. “Every spectator was anxious that Hughes should come through with his ‘no-hit game,’” wrote O’Leary.10

“Even the Pittsburgh players caught the feeling,” O’Leary continued, “and all who could left the bench and lined up on the top step of the dugout. They did not, so far as could be observed, do anything to distract Hughes from his work, which was to their credit.”11

O’Leary surmised that Carey was the “most dangerous of the bad lot” because of his speed, but the center fielder lofted a popup to second baseman Egan for the first out.12 Johnston whiffed and Hughes was only one out from something he’d accomplished once before, although this time it would count.

On August 30, 1910, while with the New York Yankees, Hughes tossed 9⅓ innings of no-hit ball against Cleveland only to lose the game in extra innings.13 His opponent that day was a 20-year-old rookie named George Kahler, who was making only his fourth major-league start and pitched brilliantly, allowing only three hits in 11 innings. Hughes finally gave up a hit in the 10th inning, then fell apart in the 11th and surrendered five runs to lose 5-0.

Now, six years later, he had a chance to capture a no-hitter that would stay in the record books forever.14 Wagner took the first pitch for a ball, then the second for a strike to even the count at 1-and-1. He “struck wildly at another offering,” then took ball two to even the count again.15 “Hughes took his time,” O’Leary wrote, “and finally the count was two and two. Honus took a look at the next ball, which broke over the corner of the plate. Klem raised his hand, indicating a strike. Gowdy squeezed the ball for all he was worth, and Tommy had reached the goal of all ambitious pitchers.”16

With the win, Hughes improved his record to 6-2 and began a run that would see him win 10 of his last 11 decisions before a broken wrist suffered on September 7 sidelined him for the rest of the season. He finished at 16-3 and his .842 winning percentage led all of major-league baseball.

This article appeared in “Braves Field: Memorable Moments at Boston’s Lost Diamond” (SABR, 2015), edited by Bill Nowlin and Bob Brady. To read more articles from this book, click here.

Sources

In addition to the sources mentioned in the Notes, box scores for this game can be seen on baseball-reference.com, and retrosheet.org at:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BSN/BSN191606160.shtml

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1916/B06160BSN1916.htm

Notes

Tillie Walker took over in center field for the holdout Speaker, who had been sold to the Cleveland Indians, but that was really the only significant change in the lineup.

Stout and Johnson write that despite a slow start, “Once the club adjusted to Speaker’s absence, they began to respond to [Red Sox manager Bill] Carrigan, a master motivator.”1

The team as a whole performed as well relative to the other contenders as it had in 1915, finishing two games ahead of second-place Chicago. On September 18 the Red Sox had climbed into first place for good.

They won 91 games, as opposed to 101 in 1915, but it was enough to allow them to hoist another pennant at Fenway Park. For the second year in a row, however, the Red Sox borrowed the larger-capacity Braves Field for their home games. In the World Series, the repeating Red Sox faced the Brooklyn Robins, who had beat out the Phillies by 2½ games.

The Brooklyn team’s ERA (2.12) was much better than Boston’s 2.48, and the Robins’ .261 team batting average was higher as well (the Red Sox hit .248). Brooklyn looked to be a formidable opponent.

The Boston Globe’s Tim Murnane expected Brooklyn to break through first, to “start with a rush.” He added, “The Red Sox seldom start like winners, but manage to tighten up and show as the game and contests lengthen out.”2

Neither manager announced his pitcher beforehand. The Robins’ Rube Marquard (13-6, 1.58 ERA) was expected to face the unorthodox submariner Carl Mays (18-13, 2.39), according to the newspapers the morning of the first game. Columnist Hugh Fullerton anticipated a Babe Ruth/Marquard matchup in Game Two, and picked the Red Sox to win in five games with Jack Coombs pitching and winning for Brooklyn in the third game of the five. He didn’t expect Boston’s Rube Foster to be used at all, given that he’d had an off year.

A capacity crowd of 36,117 jammed Braves Field. Interest in the game was such that a “special wire from Braves Field” was hooked up and an estimated 15,000 fans stood in the streets outside the Boston Herald-Traveler offices on Tremont Street to hear telegraphed news of each play relayed via megaphone and to see plays reflected on a special scoreboard erected by the newspaper.3

Though Boston’s Bill Carrigan had Ernie Shore (16-10, 2.63) warming up, the Robins expected Carrigan to call on Babe Ruth (23-12, 1.75) at the last minute, so they took batting practice as though they’d be facing the left-hander. Carrigan chose Shore, however, and Brooklyn manager Wilbert Robinson led with Rube Marquard.

The Robins made a weak showing of it in the top of the first, not getting a ball out of the infield. In the bottom of the first, after two men were out, Tillie Walker tripled to the wall in left, but first baseman Dick Hoblitzell grounded out to end the inning.

The Robins got two men on base in the second, but didn’t score. In the bottom of the second the Red Sox put three men on – two on Marquard walks – but didn’t score, though only after Harry Hooper’s two-out smash to Hi Myers in deep right-center field saw the Brooklyn man “fairly robbing” Hooper of a bases-clearing hit.4

Myers singled in Brooklyn’s third, but was left stranded. With two outs, the Red Sox put the first run on the board with back-to-back extra-base hits – a triple on a 3-and-2 count by Hoblitzell that went over right fielder Casey Stengel’s head and a “fierce liner” of a double down the left-field line by Duffy Lewis. Lewis was then picked off second base when Brooklyn’s catcher, Chief Meyers, fired to shortstop Ivy Olson.

Stengel singled to center field to lead off the fourth, and Zack Wheat banged one of Shore’s pitches for a triple that hit the right-field wall, evening the score at 1-1. Second baseman George Cutshaw hit into an unusual double play, when Hooper raced in and – as he slipped and fell – caught Cutshaw’s shallow fly ball, and then hopped up in time to throw on the fly directly to catcher Hick Cady, who erased Wheat at the plate. The Washington Post correspondent termed it “one of the most brilliant plays ever witnessed on a ball field.”5

With just one out, Meyers tripled in Brooklyn’s fifth but again the Robins couldn’t get him safely home. The Red Sox re-established the lead, 2-1, in the bottom of the fifth when Hooper led off with a double to center that Myers lost in the sun, took third on second baseman Hal Janvrin’s bunt, and scored when Walker singled to left field.

The Red Sox broke the game open in the bottom of the seventh. Janvrin doubled down the left-field line to kick things off. Walker reached safely as Ivy Olson’s error allowed Janvrin to get to third; he may have been a bit hasty in anticipating the double play and flubbed the catch. Then it was Cutshaw’s turn for an infield error as he tried to scoop up a grounder and throw to home plate, but merely knocked the ball down instead; Hoblitzell reached first and Janvrin scored. After Lewis pushed both runners up a base with a sacrifice, Larry Gardner reached on a fielder’s choice and Walker scored. Everett Scott’s sacrifice fly brought in Hobby. It was 5-1, Red Sox.

One of the four double plays the Sox turned wiped out another Robins runner in the eighth. It was quite a play, a rocket of a ball that caromed off Shore’s glove and then off his ankle directly to Janvrin, who stepped on second and threw to first. With Jeff Pfeffer now pitching in place of Marquard, the Red Sox ran the score to 6-1 in the bottom of the eighth as Hooper walked and Janvrin singled. Stengel committed the Robins’ fourth error of the game by throwing the ball so far from any possible fielder that Hooper was able to come all the way home on the single to right.

It was a good thing for the Red Sox that they’d built up a five-run lead because the Robins pecked away at Shore in the top of the ninth “as the evening mist was circling in about Braves Field.”6 After walking Brooklyn team captain Jake Daubert on four pitches and giving up a single to Stengel, Shore hit Cutshaw in the ribs, loading the bases with one out. Janvrin’s error on Mike Mowrey’s drive allowed two runs to score. Olson hit one on a hop to Gardner, who gloved the ball but couldn’t make a play. The bases were loaded again. Meyers popped out to Hobby at first for the second out, but Shore walked pinch-hitter Fred Merkle, forcing in a run. Manager Carrigan had seen enough, and changed the whole battery, bringing in “Underhanded Carl Mays”7 to pitch and Pinch Thomas to catch. The next batter, Hi Myers, bounced a single over Mays’ head to bring the score to 6-5 with the bases still loaded. Daubert hit a hot grounder that got by third baseman Gardner, but shortstop Everett Scott ranged far to his right, snared the ball, and threw a perfect strike to Hoblitzell to just nip Daubert and save the game.

Scoring four runs in the top of the ninth, and leaving the bases full of Robins, had put a scare into the Red Sox and their fans, who left Braves Field somewhat subdued, but relieved that Boston had held on to win.

This article appeared in “Braves Field: Memorable Moments at Boston’s Lost Diamond” (SABR, 2015), edited by Bill Nowlin and Bob Brady. To read more articles from this book, click here. It is adapted from Bill Nowlin and Jim Prime’s “From The Babe to the Beards” (Sports Publishing, 2014), itself an adaptation of the two authors’ “The Red Sox World Series Encyclopedia” (Rounder Books, 2008).

Sources

In addition to the sources mentioned in the Notes, the author consulted baseball-reference.com, and retrosheet.org.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS191610070.shtml

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1916/B10070BOS1916.htm

Photo credit: Ernie Shore, SABR-Rucker Archive.

Notes

For the second year in a row, Boston won the pennant in 1916, by just two games over the Chicago White Sox and four over the Detroit Tigers. As in 1915, the Red Sox’ World Series home games were played at Braves Field, but this time Boston faced the Brooklyn Robins (later, Dodgers).

The Red Sox presented a similar but not identical team to that of the previous year. Bill Carrigan remained as manager, but Tris Speaker was traded away, and Smoky Joe Wood was injured. George Herman Ruth emerged as the ace on the pitching staff (23-12, 1.75 ERA), while Dutch Leonard and Carl Mays each won 18 games. All in all, the staff ERA was 2.48, slightly worse than the 2.39 of the previous year. Team batting was off marginally, too – the 1915 team average was .260 (.336 OBP) while in 1916 it dipped to .248 (.317 OBP), decent numbers in the era of the dead ball. Run production dropped from 668 runs to 548. Still, the Red Sox had done what they needed to do; they won the pennant.

This was an over-confident team, and there was talk in the papers about the Sox sweeping Brooklyn.

Game One opened in Boston, with Ernie Shore against Rube Marquard (who’d opposed the Red Sox in the 1912 Series for the Giants, but was now pitching for Brooklyn). The game turned into a 6-5 win when the Red Sox managed to shut down a four-run rally in the top of the ninth before the Robins could tie the game.

Game Two pitted Red Sox ace Ruth against Sherry Smith, both southpaws. Ruth’s 1.75 ERA had led the American League. Smith was 14-10, with a 2.34 ERA. Brooklyn batted first and didn’t wait long to put a run on the board. After Ruth retired the first two Robins, center fielder Hi Myers drove a ball between Tilly Walker in center and Harry Hooper in right, sparking a Keystone Kops moment. Hooper dove but the ball rolled all the way to the fence and Walker fell trying to field the rebound. Myers legged all the way around the bases for an inside-the-park home run.

Brooklyn’s moundsman Smith doubled to right field with one out in the top of the third, and was waved toward third, but Hooper threw the ball to Walker, the cutoff man; the center fielder fired a strike to third and cut down Smith. The score remained 1-0, Brooklyn.

Boston tried to answer in its half of the inning. Everett “Deacon” Scott led off with a triple to the cement wall in right field. He had to hold at third on Pinch Thomas’s grounder to George Cutshaw at second. Ruth grounded to Cutshaw, too, but this time the second baseman bobbled the ball. Though Ruth was thrown out on the play, Scott scored to even things at 1-1. After that, both teams put men into scoring position at times but neither brought them home. In the fifth Brooklyn’s shortstop Ivy Olson was accused of tripping Pinch Thomas as he rounded second and the umpire awarded Thomas third base on interference. But Thomas languished there when Ruth struck out.

In the eighth Brooklyn again feinted. Harry “Mike” Mowrey singled, moved to second on a sacrifice, and moved up when Otto Miller singled. But Walker fired so fast to the plate that Mowrey had to stop at third, Miller taking second on the throw. With runners at second and third, and just one out, the pitcher Smith grounded to short and Scott luckily caught Mowrey in a rundown between third and home, Ruth making the tag. Jimmy Johnston hit a high bounder and Ruth leapt up to grab it, threw to first, and snuffed the threat.

The score remained tied as Boston came to bat in the bottom of the ninth. Hal Janvrin doubled to lead off for a promising start. Jimmy Walsh, pinch-hitting for Walker, managed only a comebacker. Smith fielded the ball and tossed to Mowrey to cut down the lead runner, but Mowrey dropped the ball and Janny was safe. With runners on first and third and no one out, the crowd was on the edge of their seats. Even a fly ball could score Janvrin. Dick Hoblitzell got that fly to center, but Myers’ throw home erased Janvrin, two outs on one play. After an intentional walk to Duffy Lewis, Larry Gardner fouled out to send the game into extra innings, still tied 1-1.

The Red Sox escaped a couple of potential problems in the top of the 10th as a deflected grounder was converted into an out and a walk went for naught, and looked once again to push across that one crucial run. Scott singled to lead off and Thomas moved him up with a sacrifice. Ruth swung hard three times, and missed three times for the second out. Hooper hit a ball down the third-base line; as it went off his glove, Mowrey knew Hooper had it beat but feigned a throw to first. The decoy worked and Scott overran third. Olson scooted over from shortstop and took Mowrey’s throw, nabbing Scott as he tried to get back to the bag. The scorer credited Hooper with a single, but the side was retired.

Neither team had particularly good chances in the 11th or 12th inning, and the sky was growing dark. If the game were called because of darkness, it would go into the scorebook as a tie. Neither team wanted to waste a great pitching performance, but they were running out of time.

So to the 13th. Brooklyn’s first batter, Mowrey, reached base when Gardner’s throw pulled Hoblitzell off the bag. The Robins sacrificed to move Mowrey to second, but Miller popped up to the catcher for out number two. Smith, still pitching for Brooklyn, almost dropped one into short left but Lewis made a “phenomenal” catch and the Sox were out of the 13th. Tim Murnane of the Boston Globe felt sure that Lewis had saved a run: “Tearing along as if it was a case of life or death, he made one final reach while twisting his neck like a seagull and managed to reach and hold the ball.” The game had been characterized throughout by exceptional fielding for both teams. Smith quickly retired all three of Boston’s batters, and the game entered the 14th inning.

Babe Ruth had not given up a hit since the eighth inning. He set Brooklyn down again 1-2-3 in the top of the 14th. The Sox came up in the bottom half and Smith walked Hoblitzell, the fourth time in the game that Hobby had worked a walk. Lewis sacrificed the walking man to second, first-pitch bunting. A hit now could win the game. Larry Gardner was due up, but he was 0-for-5 and Carrigan decided to try something different. He put the speedy Mike McNally in to run for Hobby and sent up “Sheriff” Del Gainer (a .254 hitter in 1916) to pinch-hit for Gardner (.308 in the regular season, and 1-for-4 in Game One, and reached on an error). Despite his overall better numbers, Gardner was 1-for-9 in the Series at this point and had struggled against the left-handed Smith. The switch paid off. Gainer singled, a low liner to left, and Zack Wheat had to play it on one hop and hope the throw home could beat McNally. Not a chance. McNally burned around the bases and crossed the plate. The Red Sox had their second run and the game.

No other World Series game before or after has gone to 14 innings. After Myers’ freak inside-the-park home run back in the first inning, Babe Ruth had held the National League champions scoreless and earned the complete-game victory. 

The Series would be over in five games. Game Three saw Brooklyn take one from the Red Sox 4-3, but the Red Sox handled the Robins by a 6-2 score in Game Four (Larry Gardner’s three-run inside-the-park homer in the second inning being the decisive blow). They won the World Series, their fourth, the second in a row, and the third in five years, with a 4-1 triumph the next day, Ernie Shore allowing just three hits and picking up his second win.

A lengthy Globe editorial rhapsodized about how the Athens of America followed in the Greek tradition of the Olympics being justly proud of the manly prowess of its sons. Carrigan, who had caught Game Four, gone 2-for-3, and managed the club, was dubbed “another Ivanhoe, less brutal and more civilized, less romantic than Scott’s fictional hero, but more skillful.” The confidence the Sox had carried into the Series had been justified.

Acknowledgments

This article appeared in Braves Field: Memorable Moments at Boston’s Lost Diamond (SABR, 2015), edited by Bill Nowlin and Bob Brady. An earlier version of this article was published in The 50 Greatest Red Sox Games by Cecilia Tan and Bill Nowlin, and appears here by permission from Riverdale Avenue Books.

Photo credit: Bain Collection, Library of Congress.

Sources

In addition to the sources mentioned in the Notes, box scores for this game can be seen on baseball-reference.com, and retrosheet.org at:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS191610090.shtml

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1916/B10090BOS1916.htm

The fifth game, in Boston, saw Brooklyn’s Jeff Pfeffer start, facing Game One winner Ernie Shore. For Pfeffer, it was his fourth appearance of the Series. He’d thrown the last inning in relief of Rube Marquard in Game One, pitched the last 2⅔ innings saving Game Three for Jack Coombs, and had pinch-hit for Rube Marquard in Game Four (striking out) before Larry Cheney came in to pitch. Pfeffer had been a formidable 25-11 in the 1916 regular season, with a 1.92 ERA.

Red Sox manager Bill Carrigan had already announced that he would retire after the World Series.

For the fourth game in a row, Brooklyn scored first – a single run, without benefit of a hit, in the top of the second. George Cutshaw walked on four pitches and then advanced one base at a time on Mike Mowrey’s sacrifice, Ivy Olson’s high bouncing grounder to third that Sox third baseman Larry Gardner hauled down, and a passed ball charged to catch Hick Cady.

In no time the Red Sox countered and tied the score in the bottom of the second when Duffy Lewis hit a one-out triple down the left-field line and Gardner flied one just barely deep enough to left that Lewis was able to tag and score when Zack Wheat’s throw went wide.

After the Robins (some accounts were already calling them the Dodgers, though they were more frequently termed the Robins in reference to manager Wilbert Robinson) failed to get the ball out of the infield in the top of the third, the Red Sox took advantage of their next opportunity to score as well.

Cady singled to lead off the bottom of the third. Ernie Shore attempted a sacrifice bunt, but fouled out to Brooklyn catcher Chief Meyers. Pfeffer missed with four in a row and walked Harry Hooper. Red Sox second baseman Hal Janvrin hit a ball to shortstop Ivy Olson that looked like a sure double play, but Olson tried to rush the throw and couldn’t maintain his grip on it. After he finally corralled it, his only play was to first – but the ball flew out to right field, enabling Cady to score and Hooper to reach third, Janvrin stopping safe on first. Janny was caught stealing, but center fielder Chick Shorten then singled up the middle and into center field, and Hooper trotted home. Shorten was then caught stealing, too, the second aggressive Red Sox baserunner erased in the inning.

Brooklyn finally got its first hit of the game in the fifth, a meaningless single into center field by Chief Meyers, but it came with two outs and Pfeffer was up next. He grounded out, third to first. And, as if to punish the Robins for presuming to get a base hit, the Red Sox added an insurance run when Hooper singled and Janvrin doubled, both of them first-pitch-swinging – a strategy employed by several Sox throughout the game. It was 4-1, Red Sox, after five.

Neither team scored again. Brooklyn added one single in the seventh and one in the ninth. A subsequent error in the seventh resulted in Robins runners on second and third, but there were two outs and Meyers hit one back to Shore, who threw him out at first to retire the side. Casey Stengel singled to lead off the Brooklyn ninth, but Shore buckled down and didn’t let the ball out of the infield, striking out Wheat and getting Cutshaw to ground out to second, forcing Stengel. Mowrey was up. While the band was playing “This Is the End of a Perfect Day,” Shore induced Mowrey to hit a pop fly to Everett Scott at short for the third and final out.

Shore walked off the mound triumphant as the Red Sox won the game, 4-1, and captured their fourth world championship.

Shore had his famous “down ball” working and allowed just “three measly hits,”1 with just one base on balls, the only run an unearned one, and won his second game of the Series while the Red Sox won their second Series in succession.

Because they had borrowed Braves Field so they could pack in more fans, the Red Sox had taken the 1916 World Series with ease, despite never once playing on their true home field.

The New York Times column on the game said acidly of the 4-1 final that if the score “had been 40 to 1 it would have represented more accurately the respective merits of the two contending teams.”2 The game was said to be so lacking in drama that even the hometown fans didn’t get worked up during the competition. The Times said the contest “resembled a tug of war between an elephant and a gold fish.”3

Boston fans were so jaded that Wallace Goldsmith’s sports-page cartoon of the game in the Globe depicted a tradition apparently more longstanding than heretofore appreciated – fans on the first-base side were “so sure of the outcome that it amused itself batting toy balloons about.”4 Not everyone who had wanted to get into Braves Field had, however. The Boston Herald observed, “While the game was in progress an army clogged the streets around the park, a disappointed army, because the gates had been closed and the field was filled up.”5

At the very end, though, there arose such a loud shout from all those present that its effect was all the more startling, given their quiescence throughout. Winning the World Series was apparently still a big thing in Boston, though the Red Sox had now won three of the last five played. The masses flocked to the field and marched around behind the Royal Rooters band. “After the cheering and the marching, the gathered thousands wended out of the vast closure, smiling and happy.”6

Widely syndicated columnist Hugh Fullerton proposed abolishing the World Series. The American League was superior, he wrote, and the Brooklyn “team was licked, beaten, and dogging before it went to the park. … Brooklyn dogged it.” He claimed they’d held a team meeting before the game to decide how to divide the losers’ share, a telling and self-fulfilling attitude. Overriding the play of the losers was Fullerton’s feeling that “baseball has ceased to be a sport and has become a commercial enterprise.” The players were, he felt, more interested in the money than the result on the field. Fullerton closed his column recounting what Christy Mathewson had told him: “I don’t know whether the best team won or not, but I am satisfied that the worst team lost. You’ve got to give it to Brooklyn – they finished the game – and it looked to me as if that was about all they were trying to do.”7

Postscript on Ernie Shore: Ernie Shore’s contract had been purchased by the Red Sox on July 9, 1914, the very same day the Red Sox bought Babe Ruth. The year after the 1916 World Series, Shore pitched as perfect a game as one could ask for – on June 23, 1917. Ruth started the game but became so furious when the home-plate umpire ruled that he’d walked the first batter that Ruth was ejected from the game. Shore came in with the runner on first, and then retired 27 men in order, the first one being the baserunner on first who was picked off. Today Shore’s game is considered an “unofficial” perfect game. After a good year in 1917, Shore spent 1918 in the Navy before being traded to the New York Yankees that December, but his better years were behind him.

Sources

This account is adapted from Bill Nowlin and Jim Prime, “From the Babe to the Beards” (New York: Sports Publishing, 2014), itself an adaptation of the two authors’ “The Red Sox World Series Encyclopedia,” published by Rounder Books in 2008. This article also appeared in “Braves Field: Memorable Moments at Boston’s Lost Diamond” (SABR, 2015), edited by Bill Nowlin and Bob Brady. To read more articles from this book, click here.

Box scores for this game can be seen on baseball-reference.com, and retrosheet.org at:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS191610120.shtml

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1916/B10120BOS1916.htm

Notes

The game was intended to benefit sailors and soldiers “help” funds via an expected courtesy “collection” throughout the stands but First Naval District Rear Admiral Spencer S. Wood nixed the idea by citing official Navy Department policy that prohibited its personnel from playing in any contest that involved gate receipts or any form of money exchange, even donations. An innocent compromise was suggested that all proceeds go to the Red Cross but Wood vetoed that, too. Major General Harry Hodges (Camp Devens), Commandant William Rush, and Captain A.L. Key of the Charlestown Navy Yard, many Boston clergymen, and Boston Mayor Andrew J. Peters were seated in prime home-plate boxes for the well-played, 105-minute contest between the friendly rivals. Rear Admiral Wood arrived in the fourth inning.

Former A’s “$100,000 Infield” shortstop Barry, who played second base and managed the Red Sox in 1917, was a Navy Yard employee, as were all of his players: pitcher Ernie Shore (of perfect-game fame), shortstop Walter “Rabbit” Maranville (Braves, future Hall of Famer), first baseman Del Gainer (Red Sox/Tigers), outfielder Ladislaw Whitey Witt (Athletics), outfielder Charles “Chick” Shorten (Red Sox/Tigers), catcher Art Rico (Braves, from the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston),2 third baseman Marty Killilea (several minor-league teams), and outfielder Jimmy Walsh (Athletics/Red Sox). On the team but not playing that day were future Hall of Fame pitcher Herb Pennock (Red Sox/Yanks) and hurler Lore “King” Bader (Texas League star, Red Sox).

Devens field general Janvrin had no such major-league firepower but made a good showing in losing just 5-1. His locally grown stars were hurler Ralph Waldo “Rube” Cram (Melrose High ace, Brown University), outfielder Billy Mulcahy (Woburn High, Tufts University), outfielder Frank Kane (Weymouth, Providence Grays), catcher Fred “Brick” Wilder (Maynard High, Buffalo, Springfield, Omaha), first baseman William Whalen (East Boston), shortstop Jim Cooney (Red Sox), a kid named Powers from Roxbury who played outfield, and another boy named Glennon who played third base. Veteran National League umpire Charles “Cy” Rigler and rookie ump Charlie Moran donated their time. They were in Boston to oversee the New York Giants sweep that continued on Monday, interrupted only by the scheduled day off on the “Lord’s Day.” The Braves paid all the policemen and the ushers who directed delighted fans to their priceless seats.

Both of the “military” squads had been assembled less than a week before the game. The local papers followed the practice progress of both and promoted the Sunday contest daily. The likely starting lineups were posted and touted. To fine-tune for the clash, Barry’s Navy recruits found Harvard University an easy mark on Saturday, 12-0, behind Bader’s four-hitter and his own three safeties at Soldier Field in front of 2,000 fans. Meanwhile Janvrin’s Devens boys smacked an all-star team from nearby Somerville, 11-1, in that Boston suburb. Whalen (three runs) and Powers each had four hits. The Somerville hurler, A. Graham, gave up 16 hits but clouted a solo home run. The Boston Sunday Post sports page had a prophetic headline: “Big Crowd Expected at Game, Plan for Overflow at Braves Field Today.” The accompanying story declared, “With favoring weather this afternoon it is almost certain that the crowd … will break all baseball attendance records for this city or elsewhere.”

Before the Sunday throng, Cram pitched well for Devens against the superb Navy Yard lineup, but two misplayed fly balls, one called an error and one ruled a double by Killilea, led to three Navy runs in the fifth inning. It was claimed that young flychasers Powers and Mulcahy were not ready for the expanse of the Braves Field pasture. Witt singled and scored in the first inning on Gainer’s hit while Captain Barry walked and found his way home in the sixth on a Shorten single. Whalen’s hit, a groundout, and a single by Wilder got Camp Devens on the board in the seventh. Rabbit Maranville provided entertainment for the huge throng with his “vest pocket” catches, fast play at the keystone sack, and a humorous wrestling match at home plate. Husky Devens catcher Brick Wilder pinned little Rabbit near the plate when an outfielder’s throw rolled away from him. He quickly grabbed the ball and tagged Maranville but umpire Rigler ruled that holding the runner down was illegal and allowed Rabbit his score.

The game was such a success that the Army boys played the following Sunday at Braves Field with Cram beating outclassed Fort Strong, 12-2, behind Kane’s four singles, Janvrin’s two triples (three runs), and Cooney’s four scores. The Army team amassed 12 hits, 12 steals, and received 14 walks. This time 20,000 fans showed up and donated $1,100 to the Devens athletic fund.

Navy bragging rights from May 5 were short-lived, however, as on May 8 the flashy Charlestown squad was scuttled by Rear Admiral Wood’s decision to transfer many of Barry’s stars. He disliked pro players on so-called “Navy” teams even though Barry had assembled possibly the most elite wartime ballclub in the country. Wood staunchly stated: “I have a policy, and a well-defined one, in regard to baseball matters as well as other sports. All athletic contests shall be kept free from professionalism, and in the ranks of amateurism.”3 Maranville, Witt, Gainer, Leo Callahan (Phillies), Mike McNally (Red Sox/Yanks), and Herb Pennock were given over to Boston’s 1st Naval District for duty. (Some papers reported it would be “sea duty.”4) The next Sunday (the 12th) in Worcester, Captain Jack’s leftovers and new recruits swamped the 302nd Regiment, 16-1, as the entire lineup got hits (20) and touched home plate.

Boston Herald sports scribe Burt Whitman used the May 5 game’s magnificent turnout to write eloquently in favor of Sunday baseball, which was banned in Boston until a 1928 statewide referendum. Monday morning’s Herald front page included this Whitman observation: “It was the second Sabbath game of ball played in this state under the recently enacted law that teams composed wholly of men in service may play on Sunday, provided there be no admission charged. It was a convincing and human argument for properly regulated sport on Sunday. There was nothing boisterous, nothing loud, nothing hilarious about the gathering. Less than twenty-five percent were juveniles. Thousands of women not with their escorts, many of the latter unquestionably seeing their first ‘big time’ ball game in years, because of inability to attend games through the week.”5

The Boston American agreed with its headline: “40,000 Approve Sunday Baseball.” Writer Nick Flatly typed, “It was a typical Sunday holiday crowd. Everybody and his best girl was there and enjoyed a real holiday. There was cheering, of course, but not the semblance of anything that could possible raise the least protest against the national pastime on the Sabbath.”6 It didn’t take long for one front office to notice the benefits of Sunday ball. The May 20 Boston Post had a simple headline for one particular American League game, “First Sunday Ball in East, 15,000 See Senators Beat Indians, 1-0, in 12 Innings. A Boston Globe story datelined May 19 led, “Sunday baseball in the national capital was inaugurated today with a 12-inning game in which Washington defeated Cleveland, 1-0.” Senators veteran spitballer Yancey “Doc” Ayers scored the winning run to beat Stan Coveleski. Each team had six errors, while each pitcher walked two, fanned just one, and allowed seven hits.

Nonetheless, it was not until April 1929 that a major-league baseball game was played in Boston on a Sunday.

This article appeared in “Braves Field: Memorable Moments at Boston’s Lost Diamond” (SABR, 2015), edited by Bill Nowlin and Bob Brady. To read more articles from this book, click here. 

Sources

Baseball-Reference.com

Johnson, Lloyd, and Miles Wolff, Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball (Durham, North Carolina: Baseball America, 2007).

The author also consulted contemporary issues of the Boston American, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Boston Post, Brooklyn Eagle, and New York Times.

Notes

The only thing hotter than Braves bats that day was the abnormal Hub spring weather. Sunday had been pleasantly warm but Monday was blistering and Tuesday topped it, killing three in the city. According to a Boston American front-page story the next day, “The official thermometer at the weather bureau reached its maximum height at 3 pm when it registered 89 degrees, thus beating Monday’s record of 88 at the same hour, the highest it ever went on May 6 in the 46 years of the weather bureau’s existence.”1

Rawlings, from smallish Bloomfield, Iowa, had a career-high five singles (two RBIs, two runs) in the 17-hit attack. That alone must have shocked the small2 crowd as Johnny was in a .106 slump, having just five hits and two runs so far for the 3-13 Braves. He doubled those numbers that afternoon. Five other Braves had at least two hits, including two triples by right fielder Al Wickland, while pitcher Don Carlos Pat Ragan contributed a pair and one RBI to serve his own cause. Buck Herzog had three hits. Braves president and part owner Percy Duncan Haughton and manager George T. Stallings were beaming after the game and the next morning when they saw that their neighbors, the first-place Red Sox, had been thrashed 7-2 in Washington by Walter Johnson despite a Babe Ruth home run for Boston. Of course, those smiles were short-lived.

Victimized in the Teepee slaughter were Brooklyn hurlers veteran Larry Cheney (14 hits) and tryout Rich Durning. Eight walks and three Robins errors gave the Braves even more at-bats, but umpires Bill Klem and Bob Emslie had to work only two hours and the carnage was over. Ex-Cub Cheney and Pat Ragan, who had been traded to Boston from Brooklyn in early 1915, had hooked up five days earlier at Ebbets Field with Cheney winning, 7-4. That had been Ragan’s second consecutive day on the slab, after beating Rube Marquard the day before, 4-2. Cheney was in his final full season of 10 in the majors and this was his worst outing ever in terms of the most hits allowed in the fewest innings pitched.

Ragan, born in Blanchard, Iowa (on the Missouri border, population 22 in 2010), split his basic nine-year career between Brooklyn (794 innings) and Boston (775), and played for four other clubs. To that point Ragan had compiled a 6-2 record versus his old team, allowing manager Wilbert Robinson‘s Flatbush flock more than two runs only twice. He beat ex-Giants star and future Hall of Famer Marquard three times in that stretch. He and Cheney didn’t match up again in 1918.

Young Durning pitched for the Portland, Maine, Naval Reserve that year. His entire major-league experience was a mere three innings, one in 1917 and two that day. He gave up three hits and four walks for five runs in the Braves’ sudden outburst.

The World War I schedule-shortened season was less than 20 games old (per club). The Giants had just swept the Braves and were 14-1, with Brooklyn’s Cheney being the only pitcher who beat them. The Robins and Braves had been trading seventh and eighth place for a week and when Brooklyn arrived in the Hub, host Boston owned the cellar courtesy of the departing New Yorkers.

Manager Stallings juggled his 3-13 Braves lineup that day by benching rookie Roy Massey and Wally Rehg (both of whom had hits in Monday’s loss) in favor of Wickland and Ray “Rabbit” Powell. Leadoff man Powell didn’t get a hit but walked four times (career high) and scored thrice. Joe “Red” Kelly singled, tripled, had three RBIs, and scored twice. Ex-Federal Leaguer Wickland stroked two triples and knocked home three mates in the first of two straight games. The next day his ninth-inning home run tipped the Robins, 4-3. But Rawlings was the game’s Wonder Boy. It was his best day within his worst season (.206). Veteran second baseman Charley “Buck” Herzog (three hits, three scores, and two RBIs), catcher Artie Wilson (a hit, two scores), and third-baseman Jim C. Smith (then hitting .369, had a double, two RBIs, and scored) all had a good day. First sacker Ed Konetchy was 0-for-5 but scored once.

For the vanquished, star left fielder Zack Wheat had a single in his first game of the year after a contract squabble. Sub center fielder Henry “Hi” Myers, first baseman Jake Daubert, and shortstop Ivan “Ivy” Olson also singled while left fielder Jim Johnston had a double and single. Poor part-time right fielder Jim Hickman fanned a career-high four times and made an error. Future Hall of Famer Wheat eventually won the 1918 NL batting title with a .335 mark. Despite a solid losing record, Stallings’ Braves defeated the Robins in eight of 14 games. The Braves’ main downfall in 1918 was due to the Giants, as they lost 15 straight to John McGraw before winning the final game of the season.

Though the usually mild-hitting Braves managed 17 runs (in a home game) in July 1911, September 1940, again in September 1941, and 19 in June 1951, none of those outcomes was a bigger home-park blowout. Before they slipped out of Boston ignominiously before the 1953 campaign began, the Braves could only equal their home-margin record once in more than 2,600 games, when they beat pitiful Pittsburgh 16-0 in late September of 1952. That was just eight games before they would no longer call enormous Braves Field home.

Braves fans were not used to a lot of scoring by their Tribesmen, who had averaged almost exactly three runs per game from when Braves Field opened in late 1915 to that afternoon in 1918.3 Monday morning’s Boston Post baseball cartoon illustrated a small Brave being whomped by a husky Giant with a huge bat since the then first-place New Yorkers had won 5-1 and 4-1 on Friday and Saturday. The Monday game was in question but the cartoonist had the disgruntled, tattered Indian get up and thump his Giant tormentor with a larger bat. The hopeful prediction was a day early, as the Giants swept the series by winning 8-4 on Monday – then came Tuesday’s record destruction of Brooklyn.

This article appeared in “Braves Field: Memorable Moments at Boston’s Lost Diamond” (SABR, 2015), edited by Bill Nowlin and Bob Brady. To read more articles from this book, click here. 

Sources

In addition to the sources mentioned in the Notes, box scores for this game can be seen on baseball-reference.com, and retrosheet.org at:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BSN/BSN191805070.shtml

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1918/B05070BSN1918.htm

Notes