October 14, 1923: An epic wedding anniversary for Yankees’ battery in Game 5

Fans line up for bleacher seats during the 1923 World Series. (Library of Congress)

In the early afternoon of Sunday, October 14, 1923, two old friends, Alice Wray Bush and Marie Aubrey Schang, found their way to their box seats in the six-month-old Yankee Stadium.1 The women had known each other for a decade as their husbands played together, first in Philadelphia, then in Boston, and most recently in New York. It was a big day. It was both women’s wedding anniversary: the Bushes’ ninth, the Schangs’ eighth. And they were there to watch their husbands, the starting battery for the New York Yankees in the pivotal Game Five of the World Series.2 The Yankees had lost the 1921 and 1922 Series to the New York Giants, but this year things might be different.

The Series was knotted at two games each, with the visiting team having won each of the first four contests. In the Yankees’ clubhouse, a player asked the starting pitcher, Bullet Joe Bush, what he wanted for his anniversary. “Give me 10 runs, boys, and I don’t want anything else,” Bush answered.3

The day had dawned cold and misty, but undeterred, 3,000 fans had already lined up near Yankee Stadium by dawn. A reporter counted license plates from 10 states among the fans waiting in their cars, and there were hundreds of bonfires. The ticket booths opened at 10:00 A.M. The bleachers were sold out by 11:30, and general-admission seats were all gone 90 minutes later.4 Scalpers were doing a brisk business, with $3.30 bleacher seats going for $10. By game time, the going rate had risen to $15.5 In the end, Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert estimated that 50,000 fans were turned away.6

Giants manager John McGraw was showing the strain. He had settled on Mule Watson as his Game Five starter, but Watson became ill in the hours before the game, so McGraw had to go with Jack Bentley.7 McGraw never missed a chance to try to throw Yankees slugger Babe Ruth off his game, so just before the game began, he picked a fight with the umpires, arguing that Ruth was stepping out of the box after each pitch and should be called out. When the umpires declined to act, McGraw did the next best thing and retired to the clubhouse to bellow at his ballplayers.8

Giants shortstop Dave Bancroft led off the game a few minutes after 2:00. He was out on a two-strike roller to second baseman Aaron Ward. After Heinie Groh flied out to Babe Ruth, second baseman Frankie Frisch was out on a groundball to Aaron Ward.9 In the bottom of the first, Yankees third baseman Joe Dugan – whose parents and uncle had unexpectedly arrived from their home in New Haven before the game without tickets and were ushered into box seats by Yankees general manager Ed Barrow – got the team started with a sharp single to right.10 After Babe Ruth drew a full-count walk, Bob Meusel slammed a triple to left, scoring Dugan and Ruth.11 The next day, a New York Times reporter wrote, “Bullets may travel faster than that ball, but it is doubtful.”12 Ross Youngs made a great one-handed catch on the right-field terrace on Wally Pipp’s fly, but Meusel trotted in after the catch, scoring the Yankees’ third run.13

The Giants broke through in the top of the second. With one out, Yankees outfielder Bob Meusel’s older brother Emil “Irish” Meusel pounded a long triple to left. Giants center fielder Casey Stengel hit a roller to first baseman Pipp. Pipp tried to make a quick flip to first for the out, but Bush was a bit slow covering the bag. Although the Yankees got the out at first, Meusel scored on Bush’s mental mistake.14

The Yankees blew the game open in the bottom of the second. After one out, Bush got things started by lining a single to center. After center fielder Whitey Witt drew a walk, Dugan crushed a liner to right-center. Stengel tried for a diving catch, but the ball bounced over his glove, and with Ross Youngs trying for the catch too, the ball rolled to the wall. By the time the Giants got the ball back to the infield, Dugan had a stand-up three-run inside-the-park homer.15 

After first baseman George Kelly misplayed Babe Ruth’s bouncing ball for an error, Giants manager McGraw removed Bentley in favor of pitcher Jack Scott. As McGraw trudged slowly to the mound, a Yankees fan shouted, “Start them two at a time – that way we won’t have to wait for the change later!”16

Bob Meusel greeted Scott with a line-drive single to right, as Ruth came around to third. Pipp sent a bouncing grounder to Frankie Frisch, and when Frisch tried to cut off the run, Ruth executed a magnificent hook slide to evade the tag and score the Yankees’ seventh run.17 “No toe dancer could have come in with such grace,” Grantland Rice wrote.18

The Yankees added an eighth run in the bottom of the fourth when Dugan led off with his third hit of the day, and after Ruth singled him to right, Bob Meusel drove in the run on his third hit. After Pipp drew a four-pitch walk, McGraw yanked Scott, bringing in Virgil Barnes.19 But “by that time, the Yanks were so far ahead they were planning on their fishing and hunting trips when the series would be all over,” according to the New York Daily News.20 A half-inning later, the Yankees mounted another minor threat when Dugan bagged his fourth hit of the day, with a single to right that sent Whitey Witt to second.21

The Giants threatened for only the second time in the top of the seventh. With one out, Irish Meusel sliced a liner past Yankees second baseman Ward for his third base hit of the day. The Yankees got Stengel on a fly ball, but then George Kelly drew a four-pitch walk. Bush managed to ring up Giants catcher Hank Gowdy on a groundball, which Ward tossed to shortstop Everett Scott for the force out.22

After the Giants went out in order in the top of the eighth, with Bush striking out two, the crowd began to file out. Leading off, Ruth got the closest thing he had all day to a homer, crushing a long fly ball to center that Stengel caught at the fence. After the Giants finally got Bob Meusel out, on a bouncer to their latest pitcher, Claude Jonnard, Pipp ended the eighth by striking out.23 

Given that Bush held a commanding lead and had thrown only 101 pitches through the first eight innings, Yankees manager Miller Huggins sent him back to the mound in the ninth to wrap things up. He did so easily, getting Frisch on a bouncer to Dugan and Youngs on a fly ball to Witt. The final hitter was Irish Meusel, the only Giant to get a hit off Bush that day. Bush finally coaxed Meusel into hitting a bouncing ball to Ward to end the game.24 Grantland Rice summarized Bush’s dominating performance: “Against this display of stuff any belated hope of a Giant rally went glimmering where the woodbine twineth and the Wangdoodle mourns its requiem.”25

The day was not just a masterful performance but redemption for Yankee pitcher Bush, who had lost the deciding game of the 1922 World Series and the first game of the 1923 Series. In addition to Irish Meusel’s three hits, Bush struck out three and walked only two. For the day he threw only 107 pitches – 24 called strikes, 10 fouls, 14 infield outs, and 10 outfield outs against 46 balls.26 “His work was away above the expert stuff,” one reporter wrote the next day. “It was the kind that is gained only by years and years of experience and study and effect.”27

The Yankees were “happy as kids” in the clubhouse after the game. Outside, the “two happiest people in all New York” waited, “nervous, modest and almost speechless with joy” after a day “rooting and praying together in the grandstand” – Mrs. Bush and Mrs. Schang.28 The next morning, Babe Ruth predicted that the Yankees would end the Series with a win in Game Six.29 But Giants manager McGraw was putting a brave face on things: “I have just as much confidence as when we started. We feel able to do it. … You can bet there will be a seventh game. Arthur Nehf will see to that.”30 In the end, Ruth was right: Back at the Polo Grounds for Game Six, the Yankees wrapped up the Series, 6-4, their first Series championship. 

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/NYA/NYA192310140.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1923/B10140NYA1923.htm

Notes

1 Babe Ruth, “Wives Boost for Joe and Wally,” Tacoma (Washington) Daily Ledger, October 15, 1923: 13.

2 Ruth, “Wives Boost for Joe and Wally”; James Crusinberry, “Battery’s Wedding Day Celebrated in Style,” New York Daily News, October 15, 1923: 2.

3 “Yankees Rout Giants; Win Fifth Game, 8-1; 50,000 Fail to Get In,” New York Times, October 15, 1923: 12; “Joe Bush Is Hero of Yankee Players,” New York Times, October 15, 1923: 11.

4 “Fans Gather Early at Stadium’s Gates,” New York Times, October 15, 1923: 11; Robert Weintraub, The House That Ruth Built (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 2011), 342.

5 “Fans Gather Early at Stadium’s Gates.”

6 “Yankees Rout Giants; Win Fifth Game, 8-1,” 1.

7 Weintraub, 344.

8 Weintraub, 344.

9 “Terrific Attack Again Carries Yanks to Victory,” Hutchinson (Kansas) News, October 15, 1923: 11.

10 “Pa, Ma and Uncle Make It Dugan Day,” New York Times, October 15, 1923: 11; Grantland Rice, “Brains at Discount Before Yanks’ Drive,” Boston Globe, October 15, 1923: 9; “Yanks Have Giants Backed to the Wall,” New York Times, October 15, 1923: 11.

11 “Yankees Rout Giants; Win Fifth Game, 8-1.”

12 “Yankees Rout Giants; Win Fifth Game, 8-1.”

13 Rice, “Brains at Discount”; “Yankees Rout Giants; Win Fifth Game, 8-1”; “Yanks Have Giants Backed to the Wall.”

14 “Play by Play Story of Yankees’ Easy Victory,” Boston Globe, October 15, 1923: 9; James Crusinberry, “Dugan and R. Meusel Lead Heavy Attack,” New York Daily News, October 15, 1923: 22.

15 Rice, “Brains at Discount.” Rice also wrote, ”The baffled Casey decided to respond with a shoestring catch, but his judgment of the distance cracked under the strain. He couldn’t quite reach the ball, which bounded on beyond and then began rolling like a half-topped mashie shot pointed in the general direction of a flock of bunkers. … Casey whirled and began to chase it with the alacrity of a stocky poodle pursuing a meat wagon, but he never could catch up.” Grantland Rice, “Irish Meusel Only Player to Hit Yankee Sharpshooter,” Bridgeport (Connecticut) Telegram, October 15, 1923: 14; “Yankees Rout Giants; Win Fifth Game, 8-1.”

16 Rice, “Brains at Discount”; “Yankees Rout Giants; Win Fifth Game, 8-1”; Weintraub, 345.

17 Rice, “Brains at Discount”; “Yankees Rout Giants; Win Fifth Game, 8-1.”

18 Rice, “Brains at Discount”; Rice, “Irish Meusel Only Player to Hit Yankee Sharpshooter.”

19 Rice, “Brains at Discount.”

20 Crusinberry, “Dugan and R. Meusel Lead Heavy Attack.”

21 Rice, “Brains at Discount”; “Terrific Attack Again Carries Yanks to Victory.”

22 “Terrific Attack Again Carries Yanks to Victory.”

23 Rice, “Brains at Discount”; “Yankees Rout Giants; Win Fifth Game, 8-1.”

24 “Terrific Attack Again Carries Yanks to Victory”; “Bush Pitched 107 Balls,” New York Times, October 15, 1923: 11.

25 “Rice, “Brains at Discount.”

26 “Bush Pitched 107 Balls.”

27 James Crusinberry, “Bush’s Pitching Places Hugmen One Game From World Title,” New York Daily News, October 15, 1923: 2.

28 “Wives Boost for Joe and Wally.”

29 Babe Ruth, “Yankees Are Happy as Kids – Ruth,” Tacoma Daily Ledger, October 15, 1923: 13. It’s unclear whether the ghostwriter for this article was Westbrook Pegler, Ford Frick, or another ghostwriter employed by Ruth’s agent, Christy Walsh.

30 John McGraw, “Better Baseball Beat Us,” Tacoma Daily Ledger, October 15, 1923: 13; Weintraub, 346.  McGraw’s column was likely written by either Christy Walsh or one of his assistants.