Let’s Play Three!

Late in the summer of 1914, Doc Reisling, the ballplaying dentist from Ohio, found himself at the center of one of the most bizarre pennant races in baseball history. It was September 6, the penultimate day of the Canadian League1 season, and Reisling’s London Tecumsehs2 trailed their archrivals, Shag Shaughnessy’s Ottawa Senators,3 by two games.

Seven weeks earlier, the Tocumsehs had led the Senators by ten, and appeared to be a shoo-in to avenge a final-day pennant loss to Ottawa in 1913. The Tecumsehs had got off to a 46-23 start in 1914, but had won only 23 of their next 43 games. They stood at 69-43. The Senators, meanwhile, had made up for a sluggish 34-32 start by going on a 41-13 tear,4 which brought their record to league-leading 75-45.

September 6 was an off-day for the Tecumsehs, as it was a Sunday, and Sunday ball was not permitted in the Methodist-dominated province of Ontario. Catholic Quebec was a different story. Of Canadian League clubs (all Ontario-based in 1914 except for the Erie, PA, Sailors), Ottawa was uniquely situated to take advantage of Quebec’s tolerance of Sunday fun. And, since the beginning of the season, the Senators had been playing Sunday doubleheaders to good crowds at Dupuis Park in Hull, Quebec, just across the Ottawa River from the capital.

On this last Sunday of the season, Ottawa was slated to play two against the third-place Sailors. A sweep by the Senators would give them a three-game margin over the Tecumsehs with only a Labor Day doubleheader remaining for each team. Now, in most circumstances, a three-game lead with two games to go would have the leaders popping champagne corks. But not in the Canadian League in 1914.

The arithmetical anomaly was the result of a marked disparity in the number of games each of the contenders had played that summer. London, because of an inordinate number of rainouts and ties,5 had recorded only 112 decisions, compared to Ottawa’s 120. Going down to the wire, the difference in games played actually favored the Tecumsehs, even giving rise to the possibility of London finishing the season in first place one game behind Ottawa. A Senators split of their final four games, combined with a Tecumsehs sweep of their Labor Day doubleheader, would leave Doc’s boys a game back of Ottawa. But it would also hand them the pennant by virtue of a superior winning percentage, .623 to .621. It was shaping up to be a strange weekend.

In Hull, it poured down rain all day Sunday, and the games between Ottawa and Erie were called off. With that, the balance shifted very slightly in favor of the Senators. Certainly, in the event of a virtual tie atop the standings—which would result from a pair of London wins and a pair of Ottawa losses on Labor Day—the Tecumsehs would still emerge victorious, .623 to .615. But now, because of the Sunday washout, an Ottawa split of its remaining games would trump a London sweep, and the Senators would capture their third title in three years by perhaps the closest margin in baseball history, .62295 to .62281. That much was relatively clear.

But outside there lingered a major element of uncertainty. A sluggish low-pressure system had blanketed the lower part of the province for several days, from London all the way to Ottawa, 350 miles to the northeast. What if either team were unable to play one or both holiday games on account of the weather? Again, some of the more exotic meteorological scenarios favored Reisling’s teams. If, for example, London won one game on the field and lost the other to the weather, and Ottawa dropped two, the Tecumsehs would finish first by five percentage points. Or, if London swept a pair, and Ottawa lost a single, the Tecumsehs would win by three percentage points. Or, if London didn’t play at all and Ottawa lost two, the Tecumsehs would win the pennant by a single percentage point, .616 to .615. Still, any sort of bet on London didn’t seem very wise.

But Doc Reisling had something up his sleeve. It was the notion of playing a third game on Labor Day against visiting St. Thomas. Ostensibly, the additional game would be a makeup for a late August rainout with the fifth-place Saints. A third contest would guarantee nothing, but it would provide Doc with an extra piece in this most intricate of pennant endgames: whereas, for example, a doubleheader sweep by the Tecumsehs wouldn’t be enough to overcome a Senators split, a tripleheader sweep would be.

At the same time, there were some tripleheader traps Reisling would have to be mindful of. If, for example, London won a pair, while Ottawa played only a single game and lost, the Tecumsehs would be on top by three percentage points. In this event, a third game was to be avoided, because a loss would simply hand the flag back to the Senators. For Reisling then, it would be a tripleheader if necessary, but not necessarily a tripleheader.

But first the Tecumsehs would have to get the blessing of the Saints. St. Thomas, no doubt welcoming an opportunity to pick up a little extra gate money and perhaps also a chance to stick it to Ottawa’s overbearing Shaughnessy, agreed to go along with the scheme. Whether Reisling was aware of them or not, there were certainly precedents for desperation tripleheaders, even at the major league level.6 On September 1, 1890, Bill McGunnigle’s Brooklyn Bridegrooms had beaten the hapless Pittsburgh Alleghenys three times on their way to the National League title. And on September 7, 1896, Ned Hanlon’s pennant-bound Baltimore Orioles had swept a Labor Day triple bill from the doormat Louisville Colonels. In the minor leagues, games had been played in even greater multiples.7 On September 15, 1889, Sioux City of the Western Association had swept baseball’s first quadrupleheader from visiting St. Joseph. In 1903, the Hudson club of the Hudson River League had also won four in a single day, beating up the Poughkeepsie Giants.

Then there was the rabidly contested New England League pennant race of 1899, which had seen Manchester, in a wild attempt to overtake league-leading Newport, stage a season-finale sextupleheader against Portland. The Manchesters had won all six, including a final-game forfeit when the punching bag Portlanders finally threw in the towel and walked off the field. Rival Newport, meanwhile, had countered with a triple bill of their own, and had swept the Taunton club. In the end, though, an unimpressed league executive had recognized only a single win for each of the contenders, and the league title had gone to Newport.

On Labor Day morning8 in Ottawa, the rain finally let up, and the Senators, still oblivious of Doc Reisling’s gambit, took the field at Lansdowne Park against the sixth-place Peterborough White Caps. Almost immediately, the skies opened up again. There was nothing to do but get the tarps out and wait. In London, the weather lifted in time for the morning game and the Tecumsehs beat the Saints 4-1, behind the solid pitching of Carlos Hammond (10-7).

Back in Ottawa, the rain finally stopped about one o’clock. Shaughnessy, knowing he had to win at least one to nail down the pennant, sent his groundskeeper out to round up 20 gallons of gasoline, which they sloshed over the soggy infield. Then someone tossed a match in, and they burned off some of the damp. When the smoke finally cleared, umpire “Buck” Freeman9 examined the scorched infield and gave the go-ahead. And with the smell of burnt gasoline hanging in the air, Ottawa’s 23-year-old rookie sensation Urban (but everyone called him Herb) Shocker10 slogged out to the mound in search of his 20th win and the Canadian League championship. The sun even came out for a moment.

In London, Reisling decided to go with his hot hand and brought back first-game winner Hammond to face the Saints in game two. But a tired Hammond faltered early, and sore 19-game winner Bobby Heck had to step in to nail down an 8-3 victory. So far, so good. In Ottawa, the Senators knocked out 14 hits in support of Shocker and beat the White Caps 6-2. And, as far as anyone in the capital knew, the defending champs had just clinched another pennant. Shaughnessy’s gamble of starting his ace, Shocker, in the opener appeared to pay off. Now he wouldn’t have to count on his last healthy hurler, struggling journeyman Hank Gero, to beat Peterborough flash Louie Schettler (20-12, with a league-leading 174 strikeouts) in the finale. Gero had won just four of ten decisions since being purchased from Brantford at the end of July for $525. Schettler, on the other hand, had won 10 of his last 12 decisions for the second-division White Caps. The former Phillie had already recorded several wins over the Senators that season, including a two-hit shutout in late May.

With Ottawa’s victory in game one, there were now three things that would have to happen in order for the Tecumsehs to overtake the Senators. The rain would have to hold off in both cities, the Tecumsehs would have to beat the Saints a third time, and Schettler would have to shut down the Senators.

In the end, all three conditions were met—no rain, a 9-3 London win in game three, and Schettler’s continued mastery of the Senators—and yet Doc Reisling’s Hail Mary play still fell short. What happened was this: after a couple of scoreless innings in the capital, umpire Freeman decided to call the game—on account of the cold, he said, although it was reportedly no colder than it had been all day. And so ended one of the strangest pennant races in baseball history. With the no-decision, Ottawa had finished at 76-45 (.628), compared to London’s 72-43 (.626). Shaughnessy and the jubilant Senators adjourned to a hotel to get warm.

“It is more likely that Shag had cold feet when he called off that second game in Ottawa,” the London Free Press said in speculating on who was really responsible for the truncated match between the Senators and the White Caps. The rival London Advertiser grudgingly conceded: “Shag is a foxy boy and if you win any pennants from him, you have to sit up nights and dope out a fancy line of stunts to get ahead of him.”

Whether it was Shaughnessy’s foxiness that saved the day, or just dumb luck, is not clear. Certainly, the Ottawa skipper would have kept himself apprised as best he could of the goings-on in London over the course of that final day. But at what point he might have become aware of Doc Reisling’s tripleheader is not clear. The evidence at least suggests that Shaughnessy realized Reisling’s ruse about the second inning of game two, and, understandably anxious about the prospect of beating Schettler, he somehow prevailed upon umpire Freeman to call it a day. Otherwise, why start a second game at all, especially one the participants understood to be meaningless?

At least, that’s the way the Free Press saw it. Their writer complained about the appearance of “fix up baseball” in Ottawa. He pointed to the fact that “there was no complaint of cold weather during the playing of the first game,” and that none seemed to arise until “the discovery of what a loss to Peterboro [sic] in the second game meant.”

The speculation was rendered moot the following day, however. Canadian League president James Fitzgerald,11 perhaps miffed that Reisling hadn’t sought his blessing to play three, announced that London’s final game would not count in the standings. The club’s record would be rolled back to 71-43. Fitzgerald cited a little known rule of organized baseball, apparently inspired by the infamous New England League sextupleheader of 1899, that no team could play more than two games on one day.12

Had Reisling appealed to the league beforehand, Fitzgerald might well have done what National League President John Heydler did six years later when he overruled the two-game limit to allow Pittsburgh to host Cincinnati in the major leagues’ most recent triple bill. The October 2, 1920, triple was staged to decide who would take home the share of World Series money allotted in those years to the club finishing third in the standings. However, the Reds quickly snuffed the day’s drama by beating the Pirates 13-4 in the first game to clinch third spot. The teams then clowned their way through two more, now meaningless, games. Somewhere, Doc Reisling must have been grinding his teeth.

DAVID McDONALD is a writer and filmmaker. He lives in Ottawa.

 

Notes

1. The Canadian League was founded in 1911 as an all-Ontario, Class D outfit. Thanks to the addition of larger centers Ottawa (1912) and Toronto (1914), the Canadian operated as a Class B league in 1914 (Class A being the highest minor league designation of the day). Or, at least, it thought it did. The league was apparently unaware that it was supposed to remit an increase in dues to the National Association for its upgrade to Class B—at least until it received only Class C fees for the players it lost in the 1914 draft. The league decided not to press the issue because it felt it would be better off operating as a more modest Class C circuit in subsequent years. However, the economic upheaval of the Great War caused the league to suspend play after 1915. It never resumed.

2. The London team, also called the Cockneys in the press, took their nickname from Tecumseh, war chief of the Shawnees, who allied his people with Britain and her Canadian colony against the United States in the War of 1812. Tecumseh was killed in the Battle of the Thames in southwestern Ontario in 1813. Among Doc Reisling’s Tecumsehs was one future Hall of Famer, speedy, hard-hitting (.325 in 1914) center fielder Edmund Lamy, the world professional speed-skating champ. Lamy was elected to Speed Skating Hall of Fame in Minneapolis a year before his death in 1962.

3. Two more Hall of Famers—this time Hockey Hall of Famers—were involved with Shaughnessy in the ownership of the Ottawa Senators. They were Frank Ahearn and Tommy Gorman, later elected to the Hockey Hall in the builders category. The Senators began play in 1912, and, in four seasons in the Canadian League, they won four pennants, making them probably the most successful short-lived franchise in baseball history.

4. An eventful period during which Canada declared war on Germany (August 4), and Babe Ruth hit his only minor league home run, at Toronto’s Hanlan’s Point park (September 5).

5. Ties being a far more common result in the days before ballpark lighting allowed late-running games to be played to a conclusion.

6. Thanks to SABR members Mike Emeigh, Joe Haardt, Clifford Blau, and Dave Smith for providing information on major league tripleheaders.

7. Thanks to SABR members Mike Welsh, Bill Deane, Wayne McE!reavy, and Josh Raisen for providing information on minor league multipleheaders.

8. Doubleheaders in the Canadian League were generally morning-afternoon, separate-admission games.

9. Not Buck Freeman, the two-time major league home run champ, but one of a number of Freemans in baseball in those years—including at least four major leaguers—who, thanks to the old slugger, sported a secondhand nickname.

10. Shocker spent one more season in Ottawa, as the Senators cruised to a fourth pennant, this time by a comfortable 12½-game margin. Shocker won 19 and lost 10 in 1915, with a league-leading 303 innings and 186 strikeouts, and was drafted that fall by the Yankees.

11. Fitzgerald was also the “sporting editor” of the Toronto Telegram.

12. Probably the last tripleheader in organized baseball was played August 13, 1972, when the Cocoa Astros of the Florida State League swept the Orlando Twins, with Eleno Cuen throwing a no-hitter in the middle game.