Hugh Fullerton, a sportswriter for the New York Evening World, looked at the Cubs–Red Sox match-up using a personal statistical formula – “Position Strength” – which included “hitting, waiting out pitchers, long-distance hitting, getting hit by pitched ball, speed” and defense.

Fullerton calculated “each man’s value and then figure[d] how his values, both in attack and defense, will be affected by the opposing team.” Fullerton concluded that the margin was “too small to indicate any marked superiority for either team,” but in his final analysis, he believed the Cubs would prevail in six games.

Many other writers agreed, including Henry Edwards of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Thomas Rice of the Brooklyn Eagle, Bill Phelson of Baseball Magazine, and George S. Robbins of the Chicago Daily News. New York syndicated writer Joe Vila gave the Cubs an edge because of its left-handed pitchers and the “yowling, heartless rooters” at Comiskey Park. (Cubs owner Charles Weeghman had decided to use Comiskey Park, which had a greater seating capacity.)

However, Philadelphia Athletics manager Connie Mack thought the schedule (three games in Chicago and the remaining contests at Fenway Park) gave Boston an edge. Eddie Hurley of the Boston Evening Record said the Red Sox “are the better defensive club” but questioned whether the team could score enough runs to win. Burt Whitman of the Herald and Journal said Boston would win in six games: “On paper, the Cubs figure ‘to beat’ the Red Sox . . . [but] this series will not be played on a typewriter.”

The Cubs had finished the regular season with a better record than Boston (84-45 to 75-51) and a superior team batting average (.265 to .249), on-base percentage (.325 to .322), and slugging percentage (.342 to .327). The Cubs had also scored more runs (538 to 474).

Rookie shortstop Charlie Hollocher led the National League in hits (161) and total bases (202), was second in on-base percentage (.379), third in stolen bases (26), and fourth in runs scored (72) and batting average (.316). He was the only Chicago regular to hit over .300.

Les Mann, Chicago’s 24-year-old left fielder, hit .288 and reached personal bests in doubles, stolen bases and walks. Center fielder Dode Paskert, at age 37, had his best season since 1912, batting .286 and finishing with 125 runs produced (RBI + runs scored – HR), second behind George Burns of the Giants (127).

Chicago’s team ERA was lower than Boston’s (2.18 to 2.31), although the Red Sox led the majors with 26 shutouts (the Cubs had 23). Both teams had the lowest opponents’ batting average in their respective leagues, Boston at .231 and Chicago at .239.

Chicago would rely heavily on its top left-handed pitchers, Jim Vaughn and Lefty Tyler. The Red Sox were 11-18 in games started by lefties.

Vaughn led the National League in wins (22), shutouts (8), ERA (1.74), strikeouts (148), and lowest opponents’ batting average (.208) – the best season of his 10-year career. And while he had a hard fastball and good control, Vaughn also carried a reputation of buckling in important games.

The ERAs of the four Red Sox starters were all between 2.11 and 2.25. Joe Bush had the lowest ERA on the staff, but bad luck and poor run support left him with a 15-15 record. In the season’s last month, Bush had gone 1-6; four of those losses were by scores of 2-0, 1-0, 2-1, and 1-0.

In the 15 years since the National and American Leagues had begun playing a post-season series, a team from either Boston or Chicago had been involved 11 times, but never during the same year.

Thursday, September 5
Comiskey Park, Chicago
Game One: Red Sox 1, Cubs 0

Rain had pushed the start of the series ahead one day. The National Commission’s original schedule had included no weekend games, which puzzled the players on both teams, but now, thanks to the postponement, Game Three would be played on Saturday.

Early rumors were that either Carl Mays or Joe Bush would start for Boston, but manager Ed Barrow went with Ruth in the opener. This was Ruth’s second World Series start. In Game Two of the 1916 series, he beat Brooklyn 2-1, pitching all 14 innings (still the longest World Series game by innings).

Babe had been batting in the cleanup spot since early May, but for the World Series, Barrow put him back down at the bottom of the order.

Ruth got two quick outs in the bottom of the first, before Les Mann singled and stole second. Dode Paskert followed with a single and Fred Merkle walked. With the bases loaded, Ruth got Charlie Pick to fly out to George Whiteman in left-center field.

Whiteman opened the top of the second with a single and was bunted to second by Stuffy McInnis, but Everett Scott and Fred Thomas couldn’t advance him.

Ruth retired the bottom three of the Chicago order in the second and worked around a leadoff single in the third.

Vaughn had control problems early on, going to full counts on several Boston batters and allowing a hit in each of the first three innings. He began the fourth by walking Dave Shean. Amos Strunk attempted to sacrifice him to second, but popped up the first pitch to Vaughn.

Whiteman singled to left – Cubs shortstop Charlie Hollocher seemed out of position – and Shean moved up to second. With McInnis at the plate, Barrow called for a hit-and-run. Stuffy smacked Vaughn’s 1-0 pitch to left field. The ball rolled slowly on the soggy grass and Les Mann’s hurried throw to the plate was not in time.

With a 1-0 lead, Ruth settled into a rhythm, retiring the Cubs in order in the fourth and getting two quick outs in the fifth before hitting Max Flack with a pitch. Hollocher flew out to center to end that inning.

Paskert and Merkle both singled with one out in the bottom of the sixth, and Barrow told Sam Jones and Joe Bush to start loosening up. Charlie Pick moved the runners up to second and third with a ground ball to first base and when Ruth started Charlie Deal off with two balls, the Chicago crowd started to make some noise.

Ruth battled back and Deal fouled off three straight pitches before swinging at what was probably ball four and flying out to Whiteman in left center.

Both teams went down in order in the seventh and eighth innings. The Red Sox tried to get an insurance run in the ninth when Shean lead off with a walk. Strunk sacrificed him to second, but Whiteman struck out and after McInnis was intentionally walked, Everett Scott grounded back to the mound.

Ruth retired the first two batters in the bottom of the ninth – Merkle flew to left and pinch-hitter Bob O’Farrell popped to third – but Deal reached on an infield single. Bill McCabe pinch-ran. Cubs catcher Bill Killefer swatted the ball to deep right field. Harry Hooper caught it on the run and Boston had taken Game One. 

It was the first shutout in a World Series opener since 1905, and only the second 1-0 World Series game in 13 years. Coupled with his victory in 1916, Ruth had now pitched 22 1/3 consecutive scoreless World Series innings. Christy Mathewson’s record of 28 innings was within reach in his next start.

Shean reached base three times (two singles and a walk) for Boston and scored the game’s only run. Whiteman singled twice, and made five catches in left field, three of which were tough chances on a windy afternoon. Ruth went 0-for-3, lining out to center and striking out twice.

The crowd of only 19,274 was roughly 13,000 fewer fans than had attended the first game of the 1917 Series, which had also been played at Comiskey Park.

Friday, September 6
Comiskey Park, Chicago
Game Two: Cubs 3, Red Sox 1

Ed Barrow went with Bullet Joe Bush in the second game, figuring that Carl Mays’s submarine delivery would baffle the Cubs and either put Boston up by three games or break a Series tie.

The weather was perfect — clear skies, 70 degrees — but the turnout was only slightly larger than the day before — a crowd of 20,040. One sportswriter counted fewer than 100 women in attendance, quite low for a World Series game.

Bush and Tyler had faced each other in Game Three of the 1914 World Series at Fenway Park, Tyler for the Boston Braves and Bush for the Philadelphia Athletics. In that game, Bush’s 12th-inning error allowed the Braves’ winning run. Seven players from that Series were in uniform today, including Mann, Charlie Deal, Stuffy McInnis, Wally Schang, and Amos Strunk. Cubs manager Fred Mitchell had been the Braves’ manager in 1914.

Facing another lefty, Barrow again started George Whiteman in left field, which left Babe Ruth was on the bench.

There had been some heckling in the opener, but things got much more intense in Game Two. In the first inning, when leadoff batter Harry Hooper tried to steal second base, Dave Shean stepped across the plate, bumping catcher Bill Killefer’s right arm with his bat. Shean was called out on strikes and Hooper ruled out on Shean’s interference. In the bottom of the first, the Cubs believed Amos Strunk intentionally dropped a popup in shallow center to force speedy Charlie Hollocher at second base, leaving a slower runner on first.

Bush had trouble controlling his fastball, so he relied more on his curve, which was not his best pitch. He walked Fred Merkle to start the second inning, then gave up a bunt single to Charlie Pick. After Charlie Deal popped out, Killefer drilled a first-pitch double down the right field line, scoring Merkle. With the Red Sox infield playing on the grass, Tyler grounded a ball up the middle. Shortstop Everett Scott dove to his left, but it scooted past him. Pick scored and Killefer rounded third. Strunk’s throw home was too late to get Killefer, so Sox catcher Sam Agnew came forward towards the mound, got the ball on one hop and fired to second. Scott slammed a hard tag on Tyler.

Otto Knabe, the Cubs’ first base coach, had been yelling at Bush throughout the three-run rally. Knabe had also baited Babe Ruth the previous day. At the end of the second inning, as the Red Sox left the field trailing 3-0, Heinie Wagner walked across the infield to take his spot in the third base coaching box; he met Knabe going in the same direction, towards the Cubs dugout. It is not clear exactly what was said, but both men started cursing. Wagner pointed to the alleyway leading to the Cubs clubhouse — challenging Knabe to a fight.

Once the men were in the Cubs dugout, Wagner grabbed Knabe’s arm and tried dragging him along the floor. Knabe quickly subdued Wagner, and Jim Vaughn apparently knocked Wagner down before he, Knabe, Claude Hendrix, and a few others started punching. Wagner later claimed Knabe had also kicked him while he was on his back. “I wouldn’t mind it if I was hit with a fist,” he later said.

When Wagner finally emerged from the dugout, his hair was a mess, his face pale and bruised, the back of his uniform torn and muddy. The umpires did not get involved. Afterwards, third base umpire Hank O’Day, who had been close to the Cubs dugout, said he hadn’t seen or heard anything.

After this incident, Bush began pitching almost exclusively inside — way inside. After Hollocher grounded out, Bush buzzed a fastball near Mann’s head. Mann cursed Bush, then pushed a bunt up the first base line. Stuffy McInnis made the play unassisted, but when Bush dashed off the mound to cover the bag, he tried tripping Mann on his way to first. Then Bush made the next batter, Dode Paskert, duck away from a beanball before retiring him on an infield pop-up.

Tyler walked the Red Sox leadoff batter in each of the first three innings, but the Red Sox were unable to exploit his lack of control. They didn’t force him to throw strikes, swinging early in the count and chasing poor pitches.

Chicago had an opportunity to widen its lead in the sixth when Hollocher tripled into the right field corner. With the infield in, Hollocher could not score when Mann grounded out. Agnew tried to pick off Hollocher, but his throw got under Fred Thomas’s glove. Thomas deliberately tangled himself up with Hollocher, so the runner couldn’t get up and advance. Already in a foul mood, the crowd howled at Thomas.

Hollocher broke for home when Dode Paskert chopped a grounder to short. It was a foolish play, perhaps borne of frustration, as Scott’s throw to Agnew was in plenty of time for the out.

Boston had very little luck against Tyler. Over the course of 20 batters, from the second inning to the end of the seventh, the Red Sox managed only one hit. In the eighth, Wally Schang pinch-hit for Agnew and singled. After Bush flew out, Hooper singled to right. Schang tried to go to third, but Max Flack made a perfect one-hop throw to Charlie Deal and Schang was cut down. It was a crucial mistake — instead of runners at first and second and one out, Boston had a man at first and two outs. Shean bounced to first and the threat vanished.

With the Red Sox down to their last three outs, Amos Strunk led off the ninth with a triple over Flack’s head in right. Whiteman followed with another triple, this one over Paskert’s head in center. Chicago’s lead was now 3-1 and the potential tying run (Stuffy McInnis) was at the plate.

Cubs manager Fred Mitchell had Phil Douglas and Claude Hendrix in the bullpen, but he stayed with Tyler. Instead of squeezing the runner home, McInnis swung away. He tapped a weak grounder right back to Tyler, who checked the runner and threw McInnis out. Tyler then walked Everett Scott.

Barrow thought about sending Babe Ruth up as a pinch-hitter, but opted for another pitcher: Jean Dubuc, who batted right-handed. It was an odd choice. If Barrow was intent on having a pitcher at the plate, Carl Mays, whose .357 on-base percentage was fourth best on the team, would have been a wiser choice.

Dubuc fell behind in the count 1-2, then fouled off four consecutive pitches before swinging and missing a curve about a foot off the plate. Schang was next, and Ruth waited on the dugout steps, black bat in hand, ready to hit for Bush if Schang could keep the inning alive.

Considering how hard Tyler had worked to get Dubuc, Schang should have looked at a few pitches. But he swung at the first one he saw, and popped it up. Hollocher moved a few steps to his right, made the catch, and ran quickly off the field, disappearing into the dugout with the baseball still in his glove. The Series was tied at one game apiece.

For the Red Sox, it was a game of missed opportunities. Boston’s leadoff batter had reached base in five of the first eight innings. The Boston sportswriters were dumbfounded by Barrow’s ninth-inning strategy. Eddie Hurley of the Boston Evening Record thought letting Ruth watch the entire inning from the bench was “nothing but criminal”.

Saturday, September 7
Comiskey Park, Chicago
Game Three: Red Sox 2, Cubs 1

The Red Sox were convinced that spitballer Claude Hendrix would pitch for Chicago, so they were shocked when Jim Vaughn came back to pitch on one day’s rest. The fans were also surprised, and they gave Vaughn a standing ovation as he walked to the mound. (Another Cubs lefty on the hill also meant Babe Ruth remained on the bench.)

A light rain started to fall in the top of the second inning. Home plate umpire Bill Klem saw no reason to pause the game, and it drizzled off and on all afternoon.

Boston drew first blood with one out in the fourth inning. Vaughn worked Whiteman inside and hit him in the back. McInnis tried to hit-and-run on the first pitch, but fouled it off. When he swung and missed the next pitch, Whiteman was trapped off the bag. Catcher Bill Killefer hesitated for a moment before throwing to first baseman Fred Merkle, and that slight pause allowed Whiteman to dive back safely.

Vaughn’s 0-2 pitch was high and inside and McInnis punched it into left field. Schang followed with a single to center; Whiteman scored and McInnis raced to third.

Ed Barrow was not a fan of the suicide squeeze, but with Scott, a good bunter, at the plate, the play was on. Scott dropped the first pitch right in front of the plate — a beautiful bunt — too far out towards the mound for catcher Bill Killefer to field it. Vaughn grabbed it, but when he tuned to throw to first, he saw that Merkle also had run in on the bunt and second baseman Charlie Pick hadn’t covered first. McInnis scored and Boston led, 2-0.

Thomas followed with a single to right field, his first hit of the Series. Heinie Wagner wanted Schang to stop at third, which would have loaded the bases and kept Vaughn on the ropes, but Schang ran through the stop sign. Max Flack’s throw was perfect and Schang was easily tagged out. Mays lined out to center field and Vaughn escaped with minimal damage.

Carl Mays was well-rested – he hadn’t pitched since his back-to-back wins against Philadelphia a week earlier – and he was nearly perfect. After walking the first hitter he faced, Mays set down 10 in a row, breezing through the third inning on only five pitches.

Facing Mays for the second time, however, the Cubs had a better read on his delivery and hit him hard. Les Mann doubled with one out in the fourth. Paskert whacked a fly ball to deep left center that looked like it might carry into the bleachers. Whiteman sprinted back, until he was literally against the wall — and grabbed the ball with a leap at the fence.

After his near-disastrous fourth inning, Vaughn was untouchable. He kept the ball in the infield in both the fifth and sixth innings, and at one point retired 13 Red Sox batters in a row. Meanwhile, his teammates repeatedly threatened to come back against Mays.

Charlie Pick’s fifth-inning grounder slipped under Everett Scott’s glove and slowly rolled into center field. By the time Amos Strunk got it back to the infield, Pick was on second. One out later, Killefer banged a single off Scott’s bare hand into left. Whiteman charged in, but there was no play to make. Pick scored, cutting Boston’s lead to 2-1. Killefer, perhaps thinking the Red Sox defense was unnerved, broke for second on Mays’s 2-0 pitch to Flack. Schang’s throw was low, but Scott dug it out of the dirt and put the tag on Killefer’s foot as he slid into the bag.

Mann and Paskert both singled with two outs in the sixth, but were stranded when Merkle struck out swinging. With one out in the seventh, Deal reached on an infield hit to third. All of Chicago’s six hits had come within the last 14 batters — nearly every other Cub was reaching base. Mays battled back: Killefer bounced back to the mound and Vaughn flew to left.

In the eighth, Mays retired the top of the Cubs lineup in order and got the first two batters in the bottom of the ninth. Facing the daunting prospect of needing to win three games at Fenway Park, Chicago tried to rally.

Charlie Pick was safe on an infield hit to second. Left-handed hitter Turner Barber pinch-hit for Deal. Mays’s first offering was ball one. On the next pitch, Pick sprinted to second. Wally Schang’s throw was right on the money — but Shean bobbled it. Pick made a great slide and the Cubs were still alive.

Barber smacked a line drive that landed about six inches foul down the third base line, then Schang set up outside. But Mays threw too far outside. The ball glanced off Schang’s mitt and rolled a few yards to his left behind the plate. As Pick ran to third, Schang fired a throw to Fred Thomas. Pick and the baseball arrived at almost the same time. Umpire George Hildebrand began calling Pick out, then saw Thomas hadn’t held onto the ball. He spread his arms: “Safe!”

Thomas and Pick were tangled in the dirt. Pick had overslid the bag and was on his stomach, trying to crawl back and touch the base with his hand. Thomas was yelling at Hildebrand, arguing that Pick had kicked the ball out of his glove. Cubs manager Fred Mitchell, coaching at third base, shouted at Pick to run home.

The ball had stopped rolling about 20 feet away in foul territory. Pick took off. Thomas finally ran over and grabbed the ball. He had no time to set himself, but his throw was straight and true. Pick slid in, spikes high, and Schang tagged him in the ribs a foot or two from the plate. The game was over – and the crowd exhaled a huge, collective groan. The Cubs had come close, but Boston’s razor-thin victory gave them a 2-1 lead in the Series, with all remaining games at Fenway Park.

Sunday, September 9 – Traveling from Chicago to Boston

Before the 1918 season began, the National Commission decided to allow the top four teams in each league to share some of the gate receipts of the first four World Series games. This decision, coupled with low attendance and reduced ticket prices, meant that the shares for the winning and losing teams could be 75% smaller than they had been in 1917.

During the train ride to Boston, players on both teams discussed whether anything could be done. Some felt the Commission was deliberately exploiting them and wanted to abandon the series immediately. Eventually, the players came up with two proposals: either guarantee shares of $1,500 and $1,000 or postpone the revenue-sharing plan until after the War. Harry Hooper and Dave Shean of the Red Sox and Les Mann and Bill Killefer of the Cubs tried meeting with Commissioner August Herrmann on Sunday afternoon, but he refused to see them, saying that he couldn’t make any official decisions without the other commissioners present. Herrmann and the players agreed to meet in Boston on Monday morning.

Monday, September 9
Fenway Park, Boston
Game Four: Red Sox 3, Cubs 2

On Monday morning, the full Commission refused to speak to the players, saying they needed to know what the actual revenues from the fourth game would be, and suggested getting together after that afternoon’s game.

Game Four was the Red Sox’s first World Series game in Fenway Park since 1912. Their home games in 1915 and 1916 had been played at Braves Field, which had a larger seating capacity.

Babe Ruth took the mound with yellow iodine stains visible on his left hand. He had injured his pitching hand the night before fooling around with fellow pitcher Walt Kinney on the train. Ruth was trying to break Christy Mathewson’s record of 28 consecutive scoreless World Series innings (his streak was at 22 1/3).

Left fielder George Whiteman was again batting cleanup and Ruth was hitting sixth. Babe had been in the sixth spot only once before all season — back on May 6, the day he debuted at first base. Barrow gave no explanation for the switch.

It was obvious from the first inning that Ruth had difficulty getting the proper spin on his curveball. Chicago put men on base in each of the first three innings, but was turned back by Ruth’s gutsy pitching and Boston’s airtight infield.

The game was scoreless in the fourth when Tyler walked Dave Shean. With right-handed  hitters George Whiteman and Stuffy McInnis coming up, Amos Strunk tried to bunt. After two failed attempts, he lined out to center field. Shean took advantage of Tyler’s leisurely windup and stole second without a throw. The Fenway crowd stomped its feet in unison, clamoring for a run. Tyler couldn’t find the strike zone and walked Whiteman. The roar increased as Claude Hendrix came out of the third-base dugout and began warming up.

McInnis hit the ball right back at Tyler. The pitcher grabbed it, then paused for a split second before throwing to Deal at third base and forcing Shean. His slight delay meant the relay to first was late. Boston now had runners at first and second with two outs — and Babe Ruth was up.

Tyler looked over at his dugout, waiting for a sign from his manager. Should he walk Ruth intentionally, loading the bases for Everett Scott (who was 1-for-11 in the Series)? Should he pitch to Ruth? Was Hendrix coming in?

All summer long, Ruth had been walked in situations like this, often as early as the first inning. Ruth hadn’t faced Tyler in Game Two and he had yet to hit safely in a World Series game, wearing an 0-for-10 collar dating back to 1915.

Mitchell decided Tyler should pitch carefully to Ruth, and hope the Big Fellow would chase a bad ball. Max Flack was at normal depth in right field; he had been much deeper on Ruth in the second inning, but Babe had grounded out, and now he stayed where he was.

Tyler’s first three pitches were low and outside, well off the plate. Ruth was patient and everyone could see this was an “unintentional intentional walk.” Then Tyler slipped a slow curve on the inside corner. Ruth took a big swing and missed, spinning nearly all the way around.

Ruth thought Tyler’s next pitch was too high and a bit outside. He tossed his bat aside and started jogging to first. “Strike two!” Brick Owens yelled above the din. Ruth glared at Owens and kicked the dirt.

Killefer called for a curveball — Tyler’s strongest pitch and Ruth’s weakest — but the lefty came back with another fastball, and this time it remained belt high. Ruth pulverized it, sending it screaming into right field. Flack took a half-step forward, not seeing the ball clearly until it rose out of the shade of the grandstand. By that time, it was too late. He turned, ran back towards the bleachers. It was a triple, and Whiteman and McInnis scored easily. Boston led 2-0.

Everett Scott tried twice to squeeze Ruth home before flying to center for the third out. The Fenway crowd never stopped roaring as Ruth ran back to the dugout, grabbed his mitt, and returned to the mound.

Ruth began losing his control in the sixth inning —the iodine on his finger was rubbing off on the ball, causing it to sail — and it was only Boston’s strong infield that saved his lead. Tyler walked to start the inning. Flack grounded straight back to Ruth. He turned and fired to second base, but it was a poor throw that got by Scott. Shean, however, was positioned only a few feet behind the base. He was on his knees when he gloved Ruth’s errant toss, then crawled on his stomach in the dirt, tagging the bag with his mitt just ahead of Tyler’s foot.

The next two Cubs grounded out and it was official: Ruth had set a new World Series record of 28 1/3 consecutive scoreless innings.

But in the seventh, Ruth’s control got worse, as he walked Fred Merkle and Rollie Zeider with one out. Joe Bush began warming up. Pinch-hitter Bob O’Farrell hit the ball hard up the middle. Scott raced over, scooped it up, and flipped to Shean, who fired to first for an inning-ending double play.

After Ruth’s triple, Tyler retired the next seven Boston hitters and prayed his teammates would rally. Killefer walked to open the eighth, Ruth’s third walk to his last four batters, his fourth free pass in two innings. Bush, still warming up, was joined by Carl Mays.

Claude Hendrix, a right-handed hitting pitcher, batted for Tyler. Hendrix had hit .264 in 1918, with three triples and three home runs. Mitchell’s move paid off when Hendrix singled to left. Killefer stopped at second. Flack bunted the first pitch foul, then Ruth threw one in the dirt. It skipped past Agnew’s glove for a wild pitch, and the Cubs had men at second and third.

The Cubs bench was heckling Ruth from the dugout and anxious Red Sox fans were poised on the edge of their seats. Flack bounced the next pitch to first and McInnis gloved it along the line and tagged Flack for the first out. Hendrix must have thought Killefer broke from third on the play because he was halfway to third before he realized his mistake. Everett Scott yelled for the ball, but Hendrix was able to get back to second.

Cubs manager Mitchell noticed the gaffe and even though he had wanted Hendrix to pitch the eighth inning, he yanked him and sent in Bill McCabe as a pinch-runner at second.

Charlie Hollocher, slumping at 1-for-13 in the Series, hit a sharp ground ball to Shean. The second baseman might have had a shot at Killefer at home, but he opted for the sure out at first. Killefer scored and Boston’s lead was 2-1. Les Mann singled to left and McCabe’s run tied the game at 2-2. Ruth avoided further trouble when Paskert grounded out to third. Ruth’s scoreless innings record ended at 29 2/3.

When the Red Sox batted in their half of the eighth, they faced a right-handed pitcher – Phil Douglas – for the first time in the Series. Wally Schang, a switch-hitter batting for Sam Agnew, singled to center and took second on a passed ball. Harry Hooper bunted to the third base side of the infield. Douglas’s throw to first was wild and sailed down the right field line. Schang scored to give Boston a 3-2 lead. Douglas then retired the next three hitters: Shean flew out to left, Strunk flew out to center, and Whiteman grounded to third.

In the top of the ninth, Ruth was three outs away from his second victory in the Series, but he was clearly out of gas. When Merkle singled to left and Zeider walked, Barrow decided he had seen enough. Barrow double-switched, bringing in Bush to pitch and sending Ruth (who would bat second in the bottom of the ninth inning, if necessary) out to left field.

Bush’s first batter was Chuck Wortman, who bunted. McInnis raced in from first and fired the ball to third. Merkle was forced by about 30 feet. Next, Turner Barber came up to hit for Killefer. Barber lined the ball on the ground towards Scott. The sure-handed shortstop flipped the ball to Shean, who threw to first for a game-ending double play. Bush had saved the win for Ruth, and the Red Sox were one victory away from their fifth World Series title.

Tyler pitched a much better game than Ruth, allowing only three hits in seven innings, but had no luck or support. Babe gave up seven hits and six walks, and threw one wild pitch, but the game had been a litany of missed opportunities by the Cubs. Much of Chicago’s inability to bring those runners home could be chalked up to the phenomenal play of Everett Scott. The Deacon handled 11 chances flawlessly, several of which robbed the Cubs of hits up the middle. Scott also started two double plays in the final three innings.

The outlook for the Cubs was grim, but back in the 1903 World Series, Boston had trailed Pittsburgh 3-1 before winning four games in a row. However, that had been a best-of-nine series — no team had come back from a 3-1 deficit in a seven-game series.

That evening, Harry Hooper, Everett Scott, Les Mann, and Bill Killefer went to the Copley Plaza Hotel to meet with the National Commission. However, they were told the commissioners had stood them up and gone to the theater instead.

Tuesday, September 10
Fenway Park, Boston
Game Five: Cubs 3, Red Sox 0

The players were finally able to meet with the National Commission on Tuesday morning, but the discussion was fruitless. The commissioners promised to render a final decision after the game, but the players knew if the Red Sox won, the Series would be over and any leverage they held would be gone. So they decided to wait in their locker rooms until a decision was announced. When two of the commissioners showed up at Fenway drunk and in no shape to discuss financial matters, the players again had a choice to make. With nearly 25,000 fans waiting in the stands, they decided to play the game.

Because of the delay, the game began one hour late. Sam Jones hadn’t pitched in eight days and was a little rusty (or perhaps nervous). Max Flack walked on four pitches to start the game and Charlie Hollocher followed with a hard-hit single up the middle. Carl Mays began warming up.

Les Mann bunted the runners to second and third. The Red Sox infield played back, willing to concede an early run. Dode Paskert’s sinking liner to left was caught on the run by George Whiteman. Without stopping to set himself, Whiteman fired the ball to Dave Shean at second base. Hollocher, thinking the ball would drop for a hit, had taken off for third base and was doubled up for the inning’s third out with Flack still 20 feet from the plate.

After pitching complete game losses in the first and third games, Jim Vaughn was once again on the hill. After a leadoff single by Harry Hooper, Vaughn retired seven batters in a row.

In the third, Hollocher walked on four pitches. He took a long lead off first, daring Sam Agnew to try and pick him off. It worked — the Boston catcher called for a pitchout, McInnis took the throw from Agnew and turned towards the bag — but he swiped at nothing but air. Hollocher was safe at second with a stolen base.  

Mann followed with a double into the left field corner, scoring Hollocher and giving Chicago a 1-0 lead. After 21 innings in the series, Jim Vaughn was finally pitching with a lead.

It was a dull first three innings for the home fans: Hooper’s first-inning single and Jones’s walk in the third was the extent of the Red Sox offense. The Fenway crowd cheered as Amos Strunk led off the fourth inning with a double to deep right. But the rally fizzled when Whiteman popped up a bunt attempt and McInnis lined into a double play to first base, with Strunk being doubled off second.

In the fifth, Vaughn was likely tiring: he was pitching his 23rd inning in six days. The Red Sox began hitting him hard, but for all their line drives, Boston came up empty.

Jones pitched well through five innings, having allowed only two hits and one run. In the sixth, Hollocher singled and Paskert walked. Merkle singled to left, but George Whiteman was able to gun Hollocher out at the plate to keep the score at 1-0.

Babe Ruth came out to coach first base in the bottom of the seventh, and the crowd roared, hoping his presence on the field might spark a rally. With one out, Whiteman singled, but another double play, the third turned by the Cubs in the last four innings, killed any hope of a run.

Flack drew his second walk of the game in the eighth and Hollocher dropped down a perfect bunt. Jones and Fred Thomas watched the ball roll slowly along the third base chalk line. It struck a small rock, veered in about three inches and stopped. It was Hollocher’s third hit of the game, and with minimal effort Chicago had runners at first and second with nobody out.

Carl Mays and Jean Dubuc were busy in the bullpen as Jones retired Mann on a pop-up. Paskert whacked a double off the wall in left-center and two runs scored.

Scott, Thomas, and pinch-hitter Wally Schang went down in order in the eighth. With one inning left for the Red Sox, trailing 3-0, Hack Miller batted for Jones. He smashed the ball to deep left. Mann ran up the embankment, then slipped and fell. But even though he was sitting on the slope, he managed to catch the ball in his lap. It was a tough break for their team, but the Red Sox fans applauded the unlikely play.

Hooper popped to short left field. It looked like it would drop for a hit, but Hollocher, his hands outstretched, raced back and grabbed it. Instead of a double and a single, Boston was instead down to its last out.

Shean singled into the shortstop hole, but Vaughn zipped three pitches past Strunk for his fourth strikeout and the final out of the game.

Wednesday, September 11
Fenway Park, Boston
Game Six: Red Sox 2, Cubs 1

The players’ committee met with Harry Frazee, Charles Weeghman, and several shareholders of both clubs shortly before 11:00 AM. There were rumors that the owners promised the players a little more money from the gate receipts, but nothing was confirmed.

A morning temperature of 48 degrees and rumors that the sixth game would not be played had left Fenway Park half full.

Barrow selected Carl Mays to pitch, telling Joe Bush that he’d start the seventh game, if it was necessary. Fred Mitchell sent Lefty Tyler back to the Fenway mound and so George Whiteman was in left field and Babe Ruth was on the bench.  

Mays was in peak form and retired the first four Cubs on ground balls. Charlie Pick singled, but Mays picked him off first base. Eight of the first nine outs were recorded by the Boston infield.

Tyler faltered in the bottom of the third when he walked Mays on four pitches. After Harry Hooper bunted Mays to second, Tyler walked Dave Shean. Amos Strunk fouled off four pitches before grounding out, putting runners at second and third with two outs. Whiteman’s line drive to right field should have been the final out of the inning, but the ball caromed off Max Flack’s glove for an error. Both Mays and Shean scored easily to give the Red Sox a 2-0 lead.

Flack tried to atone for his error by singling up the middle to start the fourth inning. With one out, Mays hit Les Mann in the leg with a pitch. Catcher Wally Schang recorded a crucial out when he picked Mann off first base. Mays walked Paskert and Flack stole third on ball four. Fred singled to left, scoring Flack and cutting Boston’s lead to 2-1. Pick followed with a hard drive to short right field, very similar to Whiteman’s liner to Flack. Harry Hooper raced in and grabbed it for the final out.

After his stumble in the fourth, Mays regained control and kept the ball down in the strike zone and the Chicago batters hit ground ball after ground ball after ground ball.

In the fifth, Deal and Killefer grounded back to the mound. In the sixth, Mays speared a hot shot headed up the middle and threw to Shean for a force play. The other Red Sox were just as sure-handed. McInnis robbed Hollocher of a hit in the fifth and Schang threw Mann out at second to end the sixth. Fred Thomas knocked down Merkle’s smash in the seventh with his bare hand, recovered the ball in foul territory, and fired a strike across the infield to McInnis.

Cubs manager Fred Mitchell went to his bench in the eighth. Turner Barber lined the ball over shortstop. From the third base dugout, the Cubs could see that the sinking liner was going to drop in front of Whiteman for a single. But just as the ball was about to hit the ground, Whiteman dove forward, stuck his glove out in front of him and snagged the ball a few inches off the grass.

He landed head first and turned a full somersault, bouncing back to his feet with the ball securely in both hands. Whiteman was staggering a bit, but he was also grinning. He tossed the ball in to Everett Scott, who whipped it around the infield. The Fenway crowd leapt to its feet and hollered for a full three minutes.

The next batter, pinch-hitter Bob O’Farrell, popped up to short left field. There was no way Whiteman could reach this one — but Scott glided out and made a difficult catch look almost routine. At that point, with two outs, Whiteman jogged in to the Red Sox bench, rubbing his sore neck. As he crossed the infield, the crowd rose to its feet and applauded again. He was replaced by Babe Ruth.

Mitchell’s third pinch-hitter of the inning, Bill McCabe, lifted a foul ball near the third base stands. Scott caught that one, too, and the inning was over.

The first three hitters in Chicago’s lineup were due up in the ninth and Mays retired them without incident. Flack fouled out to third, Hollocher hit a routine fly to left (when the fans roared, Ruth took a graceful bow), and Mann grounded out to second.

With a 2-1 win, the Red Sox were World Series champions for the third time in four years, and the first franchise to win five World Series titles.

Carl Mays faced only three batters over the 27-man minimum. Chicago hit the ball out of the infield only twice in the last five innings and no Cub reached second base.

Max Flack was immediately compared to Fred Snodgrass, who dropped a routine fly ball that helped the Red Sox beat the New York Giants in the 10th inning of the final game of the 1912 World Series.

Many of the post-game wrap-ups concentrated on how lucky the Red Sox had been.

The Washington Post: “The Red Sox have often been called the luckiest ball club in the world. They lived up to their reputation again today.” Hugh Fullerton also believed “the best team did not win” and that if the Series were played over again, “the majority of the experts who have watched all of the games would wager on Chicago.”

Fred Mitchell was more magnanimous. “All the glory that goes with winning the world championship belongs to Boston. The pitching on both sides was the best in years. It was a tough series to lose. The scores of the games prove that. … I’m not trying to detract anything from the Red Sox. They are a great team and proved it. But I’d like to play the series over again if such a thing were possible. … I shall always contend that with an even break, we would have won. That’s all I have to say on the subject.”

The Red Sox batted only .186 in the series and slugged .233. The Cubs were not much better, batting .210, though Chicago did score 10 runs to Boston’s nine.

Wally Schang led the Red Sox with a .444 average (4-for-9). Both Whiteman and McInnis hit .250 (5-for-20). For Chicago, Charlie Pick was 7-for-18, .389. Merkle, Mann, and Flack each had five hits.

Each team used only four pitchers. For the Cubs, Vaughn and Tyler pitched 50 of their team’s 52 innings.

The winning shares turned out to be $1,108.45 per player, the lowest amount ever awarded to the World Series champions. The Cubs’ losing share was $671 per player.

This is not revisionist history. A number of writers who covered the Series nominated Whiteman at the time for the honor. The Washington Post, for instance, offered as the subhead for its story on the sixth game: “Whiteman Hero of Contest.” J. V. Fitz Gerald of the Post declared that Whiteman “won the 1918 world’s baseball championship for the Red Sox.”

Before the World Series, the up-and-down Mr. Whiteman had only 258 major league at-bats – 12 in 1907 with the Red Sox, 32 more in 1913 with the New York Yankees, and 214 in 1918, again with the Red Sox. But when it came to the Series against the Chicago Cubs, manager Ed Barrow had him start in left field and bat cleanup in all six games. “Whitey” hit .250 with five hits in 20 at-bats, and scored two runs — unimpressive totals by today’s standards, perhaps, but this wasn’t a World Series noted for offense. Of all the batters with at least 10 at-bats, Whiteman’s batting average, hits, and runs scored all tied for his team’s lead.

Although Whiteman was the lone member of the Red Sox team to commit an error in the World Series, it was an inconsequential one. He contributed a number of key defensive plays (such as banging into the left-field bleacher wall in Chicago and robbing Dode Paskert of a long extra-base hit in Game Three) that helped hold the Cubs to their grand total of 10 runs scored over six games. The Red Sox scored only nine runs – but the Red Sox prevailed.

One way or another, Whiteman was involved in the rallies that brought in eight of the Red Sox’s nine runs. It was his “sizzling line drive” in the third inning (dropped for an error by Cubs right fielder Max Flack) that drove in both of Boston’s two runs in the clinching Game Six.

Whiteman’s final moment of glory came on defense, in the top of the eighth, when he made – again according to the Post – “one of the most sensational catches ever seen on a ball field to take a sure triple and possible home run from Turner Barber.” Whiteman wrenched his neck with his somersaulting catch and had to leave the game, but he did so to “one of the greatest ovations that has ever been accorded a world’s series player. Whiteman is the hero of the 1918 championship struggles.”

Hugh Fullerton’s nationally syndicated column ran in the Atlanta Constitution under the headline “Whiteman, Once Adjudged Failure, Becomes Star.” He termed Whiteman “the active principal in all four of the Red Sox victories.”

One could also make an MVP case for pitchers Carl Mays and Babe Ruth. Mays pitched complete game victories in Games Three and Six. In 18 innings, Mays allowed only 10 hits and three walks. The Cubs scored one run in each of his two starts which, of course, gave him an earned run average of 1.00.

Like Mays, Ruth was 2-0 on the mound, though with a slightly higher ERA and – with seven walks – somewhat less dominant (he was lucky to have allowed only two runs). Ruth was the only player on the team to have more than one run batted in; his triple in Game Four drove in two. It was Ruth who took Whiteman’s place in left after Whitey had hurt his neck. Prior to that, the only games in which Ruth played were those in which he pitched. It was Whiteman who played in each and every game and seemed to be a central figure in most of the plays that mattered.

BILL NOWLIN is national Vice President of SABR and the author of nearly 20 Red Sox-related books. Bill is also co-founder of Rounder Records of Massachusetts. He’s traveled to more than 100 countries, but says there’s no place like Fenway Park.

All three teams slumped after July 17. In this article we will view ten players from each team as lenses through which to view the highlights of a campaign dotted with no-hitters,1 blockbuster trades, Black Sox foreshadowing, and a photo-finish pennant race.

Note that standings discussed in this article relate to games ahead or behind, rather than by percentage points.

CUBS CRESTING

After Hank O’Day’s Cubs finished fourth in 1914, Roger Bresnahan took over a team with two offensive mainstays. One, third baseman Heinie Zimmerman, hit .307 or higher in 1911, 1912, and 1913, and in 1914 led Chicago in batting average and slugging percentage. After the season, however, Zimmerman considered quitting,2 failed to win back fines he had paid for misconduct during 1914,3 and fantasized about playing for the Giants.4 Bresnahan “announce[d] … that Zimmerman would not be traded under any consideration”5 then tried to swap him for New York’s Larry Doyle or Cincinnati’s Heinie Groh.6

“In 1912, [Zimmerman] had married seventeen-year-old Helene Chasar, but the marriage quickly dissolved and in January 1915, she had sued for alimony, alleging that Zimmerman had sent … no support.”7 The case hounded Zimmerman, perhaps explaining his subpar 1915 season.

The second potent bat, first baseman Vic Saier, led the 1914 Cubs in walks and OPS; his hitting and health drove the rise and fall of the 1915 Cubs. Unlike Zimmerman, Saier had “a quiet winter … [and] is ready … for the season to start.”8

With Larry Cheney, who’d won 20 games each year from 1912–1914, and Hippo Vaughn, also a 20-game winner in 1914, Bresnahan had “a pitching staff … loaded with holdover contracts,”9 a key given the raids on NL and AL staffs by the Federal League. Bresnahan released George McConnell, who had twelve wins over four seasons, and kept Karl Adams, who briefly appeared with the 1914 Reds. McConnell would star for the Whales while Adams would struggle for the Cubs.10

Chicago moved into a first-place tie May 21 and occupied first place for all but eleven days through July 17. Statistics through that date show Saier providing slugging and George Pierce—who had notched 22 wins in the previous two seasons—offsetting Cheney’s mediocrity with good mound work. Jimmy Lavender won his debut, but hurt his ribs11 and went more than a month until his next start. Bert Humphries, hobbled in training,12 missed the season’s first seventeen games.

Lacking Lavender and Humphries, Bresnahan leaned on Vaughn and Cheney. Yanking George Washington “Zip” Zabel from the hill in the season’s fourth game, Bresnahan used both Vaughn and Cheney in a 7–4 loss. Heinie Zimmerman, kicked out of games more than any other NL player in 1915, “after being good for three whole days in succession, became peevish over being called out at second … and … tried to bean an umpire with a practice ball between innings.”13

In late April, Zimmerman began playing second base, and the Cubs commenced a season-high seven-game winning streak “in spite of the heavy handicap of a short-handed pitching staff.”14

Eleven days after the streak ended, Zimmerman, “threatened … with jail”15 over alimony, nearly blew a Humphries gem. Fielding a bouncer with a man on first, Zimmerman “started to throw to second, saw it was too late, then made a wild peg to first and lost both men.”16 Humphries, however, preserved a 1–0 win over New York.

Lavender returned to the rotation May 21, downing Boston 3–2 to push the Cubs into a first-place tie for the first time since opening day. Chicago swept the series with the defending champions as Zimmerman went 9-for-14 with six doubles and a homer.

Chicago slipped to second after losing two straight to Philadelphia between June 9 and 12, but Vaughn returned the Cubs to first after consecutive starts against Boston. He lasted just one inning in a 6–4 win, but after an off-day tossed a shutout. Cheney started and lost the third Boston game, which Zimmerman exited early with a spike wound.17

The loss kept the Cubs in a first-place tie, but a 19-inning 4–3 win over Brooklyn on June 17 gave Chicago sole possession of first, which it held through July 12. Zimmerman missed this game and the next three, the first four of a six-game winning streak jumpstarted by the extraordinarily long contest during which “Humphries’ hand was split”18 in the first inning. Humphries missed ten days.

Saier’s homer in the bottom of the fifteenth prolonged the June 17 contest; Chicago won on an error, rewarding Zabel for an amazing 18 1/3 innings in relief.

Saier’s power (a single, triple, and two homers) spurred the Cubs to a three-game sweep of Brooklyn. Baseball Magazine raved that Saier’s “tremendous drives seem to come just when they win or tie.”19

Zimmerman dramatically returned on June 24, after Chicago blew a 10–9 ninth-inning lead as St. Louis scored four. With one out in the home ninth, one in, and two on, he pinch-doubled, tying the game. A groundout advanced Zimmerman after which he swiped home “on one leg with the winning tally and made the final count 14 to 13.”20

After beating the Cardinals again, the Cubs had a season-high 4½-game lead, but, in the first of three bad streaks in little more than one month, Chicago scored just six runs in six games and lost four of them.

On June 28, after lollygagging, Zimmerman “was ordered out of the game and fined $100.”21 Replacement Polly McLarry made a key bottom-of-the-ninth fumble in the loss. The next day, Zimmerman filed for divorce after a failed reconciliation.22 The day after that, he was caught looking and ejected for throwing “his bat to the bench … there was nothing short of murder in the second degree in Zim’s eyes and attitude as he started after the umpire.”23 McLarry entered again and made another error, this one figuring in a 1–0 defeat.

On July 2, “the Great Zim … wrecked a splendid stop by a wild throw to first, giving the visitors a run in the fourth inning.”24 Tied 1–1 in the ninth, the game went Chicago’s way on Saier’s RBI single.

Grantland Rice noted similarities among, Saier’s, Ty Cobb’s, and Sam Crawford’s statistics although “no one had figured the quiet, retiring worker on the Cubs even close to their class.”25 Of his ex-teammate, Johnny Evers added, “When you … take fielding and all around work … there is no player … who is a better man than Saier.”26

Facing an eighteen-game road trip that began with a win at Pittsburgh, the first-place Cubs acquired New York’s Red Murray, who “favored … the Cubs because he suspects they are going to win the pennant this year and get a lot of bonus money.”27

The Cubs fell into a bad streak immediately, however, blowing a 7–1 lead at Brooklyn and falling 8–7 in ten. The Cubs scored twice in the first. “They might have had more, but Heinie Zim forgot how many were out and jogged into a putout…. When Saier fanned, with the call three and two, Zim started for second, but although he seemed to have the base stolen, he stopped when he saw Saier had missed … and … was run down.”28

Brooklyn swept four from Chicago, and New York then took two from the Cubs. In the July 12 Brooklyn game, Pierce “strained his side reaching for a high bounder”29 and would sit for eight days. Pierce, 9–1 at that time, was just 2–8 in his next ten decisions.

On July 13, Humphries blew a 3–0 lead against the Giants, yielding a pair of runs in the eighth and ninth in another tough New York City loss.

Chicago recovered to win three of five, capped by Cheney besting Philadelphia’s Pete Alexander 4–0 on July 17, the last day the Cubs shared first place.

SOX SURGING

At 70–84, the 1914 White Sox were Chicago’s only major league team with a losing record. The Sox finished 30 games behind Philadelphia, who would lose to Boston in the World Series; this was one impetus for Connie Mack to dismantle his last great Deadball team. Mack’s moves in turn effected a transformation of the White Sox.

Mack considered dealing 1914 AL Chalmers (MVP) Award winner Eddie Collins to New York, but Chicago owner Charlie Comiskey secured Collins, making “1915 … the dawn of a new era for the White Sox,”30 then announced an unknown minor-league skipper, Clarence “Pants” Rowland, as Chicago manager.

Collins moved one reporter to verse:

He’s a daisy, he’s a dandy,
He’s a wonder at the game,
He’s a corking second-baseman;
Every rooter knows his name.

He’s a peach at stopping grounders
As they skim across the dirt;
He’s chockfull of pop and ginger,
And he plays for all he’s worth.

He is just as good as Evers
When it comes to brain and wits,
And he is just as fast as Milan
At beating infield hits.

They may talk about Joe Jackson,
Tyrus Cobb and all the rest,
But when it comes to picking stars,
We’d pick Collins with the best.

Last year he won the Chalmers car,
He well deserved the same,
So, here’s hats off to Eddie Collins;
He’s a credit to the game.31

Other newcomers would soon join Collins, with “the greatest interest … in ‘Happy’ Felch (sic), the stalwart young outfielder from Milwaukee, who is expected to make good with the south siders.”32

Only a year older than Felsch, Buck Weaver, at 24, had completed three seasons as the Sox shortstop and tied for seventh in the 1914 Chalmers balloting. Interestingly, in an early association with gambling, Weaver “suddenly decided to become a business man. Before the impulse left him he purchased a billiard hall and barber shop on the south side.”33

Ex-Yankees manager Frank Chance liked how the Sox looked, saying, “Rowland has at his disposal a wonderful pitching staff, and the keystone defense—Eddie Collins and Buck Weaver … should form an ironclad infield.”34

In 1914, that wonderful pitching staff included Joe Benz, Eddie Cicotte, Jim Scott, and Reb Russell, with rookie Red Faber relieving more than starting. Rowland, who had first recommended Faber to Chicago, made him a starter. Less successfully, Rowland shifted Lena Blackburne from second base to third due to the arrival of Eddie Collins—the second Collins on the team along with outfielder Shano Collins.

Through July 17, Eddie Collins led the attack. Faber, already exceeding his innings thrown in 1914, and Scott each had ten more wins than losses.

Faber won the first two games of 1915, including a 16–0 rout of the Browns in which he himself had four hits and yielded just seven. St. Louis dealt with Collins the way many teams would in 1915, passing him four times. Collins eventually topped the AL with 119 walks, by far his career high.

Chicago lost six in a row after their first two victories, with a two-out, three-run homer by Hank Severeid transforming a seemingly sure Sox win into a 4–3 loss that dethroned Chicago from first. The Sox then lost four straight at Detroit.

When the team returned home, it got hot again. Starting with a five run rally when down 4–0 against St. Louis in the bottom of the ninth, Chicago won nine of its first ten home games. Shano Collins tied the game with a two-out triple in the ninth, scoring Eddie Collins, and Shano scored the winner on a passed ball. Faber won with six relief innings and would capture his next seven decisions.

Faber reportedly threw just 67 pitches in nine innings (50 strikes and 17 balls), retiring the side on one pitch per batter in both the third and fifth, in a 4–1 win over Washington May 12.35

The Sox moved into a virtual tie for first after beating Boston 3–2 in 17 innings on May 21 behind Faber’s ten winning frames in relief. “From the tenth to the seventeenth he allowed only two hits and walked nobody.”36 Backup catcher Tom Daly’s pinch-single secured the win.

Chicago swept the Boston series. Eddie Collins created an insurance run in the finale with his “nerve and footwork in going from first to third on [first baseman Jack] Fournier’s sacrifice bunt”37 in the seventh in a 4–2 win.

The Sox then swept three from New York to extend its winning streak to nine. Shano Collins saved the second Yankee contest, throwing out speedster Fritz Maisel trying to score from second on a single with two outs in the ninth to preserve a 7–6 lead.

On May 30, Cleveland ended Chicago’s streak, and on June 7 someone—Boston—finally beat Faber. “Faber showed speed, command and a neat moist ball”38 in yielding four hits, two walks, and one earned run but lost 3–0 as Chicago fell from first for the only time between May 21 and July 18.

Chicago took the finale in Boston and the first two in New York. Faber started against the Yanks and had led 8–1 lead in the bottom of the fourth. But Russell, in relief, lost the game, which ended with Daly flying into a double play with the tying run gunned down at home, reversing the ending of the game when Shano Collins had thrown out Fritz Maisel.

Washington took two of three from Chicago, but the streaky Sox took nine in a row and 14 of 15. After a three-game sweep in Philadelphia, Sporting Life predicted “a picnic for the White Sox if they do not become overconfident or get badly crippled.”39

Chicago kept rolling during a week in Cleveland with six straight wins, the last of which took 19 innings. Faber, in the midst of a strange batting streak of seven walks in eight plate appearances,40 survived five Chicago errors in the third of these games, a complete-game triumph over at Cleveland. “Buck Weaver was chief messer of the afternoon, being charged with three mistakes. He dropped a ridiculously easy pop fly, heaved one to the grand stand back of first base, and kicked one all over the infield, which was considerable messing.”41

Weaver redeemed himself in the 19th “when, with two men out, [he] lined a single to left field, his fifth blow of the game, and legged it home a moment later when Eddie Collins crashed a two bagger far down the left foul line.”42 On one day of rest, Faber won, hurling 11 scoreless innings, yielding three hits, and fanning nine.

After losing the Cleveland finale, Chicago took five from St. Louis and Detroit, giving the Sox a season-high six-game cushion in first place before losing five to the same two teams. Faber dropped a pair of games against the Tigers, the second of which occurred when he again appeared with just one day of rest. Down 7–1 after six on July 4, the Sox plated one in the seventh and five in the eighth, but Faber walked in the winning run in the bottom of the tenth for a disappointing 8–7 defeat.

In his 670-game career, Faber stole just seven bases, but swiped second, third, and home in one sequence against Philadelphia on July 14. Chicago led, and rain threatened to end the game before it had become official. Joe Bush “soaked him in the slats with a pitched ball. Red kept right on running after reaching first base, but the Athletics refused to put him out. When Faber was on the way to third Bush tossed the ball back to [catcher Wally] Schang and Schang tossed it back, although the runner was within easy reach of him.”43 The weather held, however, and Faber won a complete game.

Boston followed Philadelphia to Chicago, and after an opening doubleheader split on July 17, the White Sox had a 1½-game lead and seemed well-positioned to snare the 1915 pennant.

WHALES WINNING

The Chi-Feds had the best 1914 record among the local clubs at 87–67, finishing 1½ out of first. Unlike its older neighbors, the Federals kept their manager, Joe Tinker, for 1915. Tinker spent the offseason recruiting players.

Chicago’s powerful catcher, Art Wilson, had the FL’s sixth-highest OPS in 1914, but his two backups hit .188 with no homers, figures that William Fischer of Brooklyn, who jumped to the FL for 1915, would easily exceed.

Eddie Plank rejected Chicago, but days later, a headline blared, “Chicago Feds Sign Walter Johnson for Two Years.”44 The FL St. Louis Terriers had offered Johnson a three-year contract, but Chicago owner Charlie Weeghman suggested the same money for fewer years. Plank “was then awarded to the St. Louis Club for its part in signing Johnson.”45

Johnson, of course, never pitched for Chicago, instead returning to Washington, where he would torment the White Sox, but Plank stayed and went 21–11 with a 2.08 ERA. Instead of Johnson, the newly named Whales, a sublime joy for jokey sportswriters,46 inked Mordecai Brown. “Tinker doesn’t expect Brown to work as often as he did … but thinks he will turn out just as strong hurling … if not called upon more than … every five or six days.”47

Outfielder Les Mann, whose ninth-inning single beat Plank in Game 2 of the 1914 World Series, also joined Chicago. “Tinker wanted [Mann] particularly because he is a right handed hitter, and the Tinx of last year were overset with left handed batters,”48 including first baseman Fred Beck, and outfielders Max Flack, Al Wickland, and Dutch Zwilling. Shortstop Jimmy Smith switch-hit.

Through July 17, the catchers and outfielders led the attack in support of three workhorse pitchers, paced by George McConnell, who could not make the Cubs. Claude Hendrix, who went 29–10 with a 1.69 ERA over 362 innings in 1914, “has been slow in rounding to. He was late in reporting”49 and pitched inconsistently in 1915.

Hendrix bested Plank in the season opener 3–1 as Chicago rallied with three in the eighth. Mann reprised his heroics from Game Two of the 1914 World Series with another late-inning RBI single off Plank, and Wilson had the go-ahead hit.

After rain postponed the rest of the St. Louis series, McConnell, “mixing a good spitball with a terrific fast ball,”50 made his FL debut in relief against Pittsburgh. Down 3–0 in the home sixth, Chicago again rallied, giving McConnell his first win.

Although he yielded but three hits and one earned run in eight innings, Brown lost his debut on April 15, dropping a 3–1 decision to Pittsburgh. Teenage shortstop Jimmy Smith’s two errors gave him four in three games.

Smith also sparked the Whales to two wins, however. On April 16, he worked a ninth-inning walk and scored the winning run. The following day, with Chicago losing 1–0, Smith homered in the sixth and singled in the eighth as Hendrix improved to 2–0. Unfortunately, Kansas City’s Grover Gilmore “ran his spike into Smith’s hand,”51 slowing the rookie down in an April 24 game that rain kept from becoming official.

Brown’s first win sparked a five-game streak that left Chicago, on May 3, two games up in the race. This would be the team’s largest lead of 1915.

Six straight losses, five by one run and one by two, sank the Whales to fourth. Without Smith, Tinker played shortstop on occasion and sometimes played third with Rollie Zeider at short. On May 6, he went 3-for-4 with a double and triple, the last extra-base hits and multi-hit game of his career. Taking pregame infield the following day, Tinker “suffered a rupture in his right side”52 and thereafter mostly managed.

Smith returned May 10, just prior to a Pittsburgh trip where Hendrix, originally a Pirate, no-hit the Rebels. “James Savage was the last man up, and he drove the long foul to Leslie Mann, who made a great running catch … while many … rushed the field and congratulated the big Whale spitball pitcher for his accomplishment.”53

Chicago won another thriller back home, rallying twice against Baltimore’s Chief Bender. Down 5–2 with two outs in the eighth, the Whales got three. In the tenth, McConnell yielded a run, but Chicago once again scored multiple times with two down, getting a two-run pinch-single to win. Smith scored in both rallies, but made his eighth error in fifteen games.

Through the first six weeks of the season, Brown had pitched sparingly. He went nine innings May 22, but then the Whales split a doubleheader and trailed Buffalo 3–2. Buffalo hurler Gene Krapp, who lived down to his name by passing eleven, walked a man with the bases full to force home Flack with the tying tally in the ninth. Flack’s hit in the 14th won the game, making Brown, who yielded three hits in seven and a third relief innings, the winner on one day of rest.

First baseman Beck was hurt in Buffalo and missed six games. Bill Jackson replaced him and drew a bases-loaded walk to force in the winning run in Brown’s next appearance, a complete-game, eleven-inning 2-1 effort in the second half of a May 31 doubleheader against Kansas City. This win brought Chicago into a first-place tie, but the club then dropped six straight to fall to fifth. Led by McConnell (who won nine straight from June 6 through July 8), the Whales then captured 14 of 21 road contests, including the final six.

Brown nearly matched Hendrix on June 18, pitching “a near no hit no run game against the Buffalo Feds. One lone blow was all that separated Brownie from the much coveted record. Percy Dalton was the offender, getting the safe swat beyond question in the eighth inning, and that after Brown had put two strikes over him.”54

On June 19, Chicago seemingly beat Baltimore 8–1. With the bases loaded and one out in the first inning, Smith broke for home after a wild third strike, but the throw beat him, so he left the field thinking the Terrapins had retired him. The other runners advanced, however, and a dispute ensued. “While this was going on Smith ran out from the bench and touched the plate. Umpire Johnstone called him safe and the run counted. He contended that a play had to be made on Smith, as it was not a force out at the plate. [Baltimore] contended Smith was automatically out for running to the bench.”55

The FL upheld the protest, ordering a replay, although more than one month later the official standings still, erroneously, included the game.56 Hendrix lost credit for a complete-game win as well as two hits, including a homer, and the Whales lost a win.

Brown threw a second shutout 11 days after his one-hitter, giving up four Newark hits. Fischer drove in the only run following Flack’s walk and attempted steal of second, which resulted in a fielding error. “Only the great speed of Flack enabled him to score on a close play at the plate.”57

Unlike Brown, McConnell struggled at Newark, and Chicago trailed 6–1 late before breaking through in the ninth. “The sudden rally of the Whales was a thriller and all the serious damage was done after two men were out in the ninth round.”58 Chicago had good-hitting pitchers, which helped on this day. McConnell tripled, one of 25 extra-base hits from Brown, Hendrix, and McConnell in 1915. Fischer later tripled and scored the tying run. In the bottom of the eleventh, McConnell escaped a bases-loaded, no-out jam, and Beck won the game with an RBI single in the twelfth.

The Whales completed the sweep with another extra-inning win. Chicago busted a scoreless tie with three in the top of the twelfth. Flack legged out a double and scored following a sacrifice and Jackson’s bunt single. Although he had started two days earlier, “Brown had been warming up for several innings and was ready to be called upon.”59 Allowing two inherited runners to score by hitting consecutive batters, Brown saved the win and lowered his ERA to a season-best 1.41.

The Whales went back on the road after a home week. A Hendrix-Plank rematch in St. Louis resulted in 13 scoreless frames. Plank yielded one hit in that span, a Hendrix double. In the fourteenth, Jackson walked, took second on a single by Mann—still Plank’s nemesis—and scored when an outfielder played Hendrix’s fly into another double. Mann also tallied, and Hendrix fanned ten in his 2–0 shutout.

His winning streak over after losing in relief, McConnell won at St. Louis on July 14, edging the Whales back into a first-place tie for the first time since May 31. Chicago completed the St. Louis sweep, split a Brooklyn doubleheader, and held sole possession of first on July 17, the last time all three Chicago teams occupied first place. By the end of the 1915 season, fans of two of the clubs would find it hard to believe that such success had actually transpired.

CUBS COLLAPSING

After July 17, the Cubs fell apart. The offense scored nearly one fewer run per game, and Adams pitched horribly. Bolded OPS and ERA figures indicate performance declines compared to earlier data.

Beginning July 19, Chicago suffered its third and worst bad streak with three 1–0 losses, four other one-run losses, and a two-run loss. The July 20 game against Philadelphia encapsulates the Cubs’ sudden collapse.

Zimmerman did not run out a grounder, so Bresnahan fined him $25 after the sixth inning. Next, Saier scored on a double steal but “hooked his foot on the plate and sprained a tendon in his leg so badly that he had to be carried off … for repairs.”60 Finally, after Chicago had taken a 5–2 lead into the bottom of the eighth, Cheney relieved, retired two, but gave up two hits, erred, and threw consecutive wild pitches to help Philadelphia score six and eventually win 8–6. The performance likely expedited Cheney’s exit from Chicago and, worse, Saier never regained his fantastic form.

Bresnahan moved regular catcher Jimmy Archer to first and took over the catching duties until breaking his toe July 23. He would never again have an extra-base hit in the majors. His spirits broke, too: “Bresnahan has lost faith in a lot of his players … He made the statement … that he had only three or four men … who were really trying.”61 John McGraw agreed with his former backstop, blasting the Cubs for “not hustling as hard as they did.”62

On the marathon road trip, “Eighteen games were played, and the Cubs won only four of them. Bad luck, bad playing and injuries put the Cubs out of first place…”63

Saier returned for the first half of a July 30 doubleheader, the last game of the losing streak, but “hurt his lame knee in the second inning … and had to retire.”64 Missing three more games, he would—oddly—pinch-run to score the winning tally on a Murray hit on August 5, the middle match of a five-game winning streak that got Chicago within 1½ games of first.

The Cubs got no closer. Brooklyn beat Chicago four straight, with the nadir “the most one-sided and farcical baseball exhibition staged this season on the West Side grounds,”65 a 13–0 rout during which George Cutshaw went 6-for-6.

Five days later, the Cubs still had some fight in them. Against St. Louis, “an error by Zimmerman let in two runs. After the players returned to the bench, several got after Heinie for loafing after fumbling the ball. Had he hustled after fumbling he might have cut off one of the runs.”66 Zimmerman tried to punch Pierce, but hit a better pitcher, Vaughn, in the mouth instead, splitting the peacemaker’s lip.

Instead of fighting each other, Chicago killed itself with kindness after battling back from a 4–0 hole to tie Boston on August 26. Chicago should have surged ahead, but Archer fell rounding third. A teammate, coaching, “placed his hands kindly on [Archer] … The minute he held his hands on the crippled base runner the alert Evers ran crying to Umpire O’Day, calling his attention to the illegal act, and Hank promptly called Archer out,”67 and the game ended in a tie.

Languishing in fourth in late August, Chicago traded Cheney, who had “trouble with his arm and has been pounded harder than ever before,”68 to Brooklyn for infielder Joe Schultz Sr., who played just seven games for the Cubs. Lavender responded two days later by no-hitting New York. “His mastery of the situation was supreme. The Giants were as helpless as infants before his delivery. Just how helpless is shown by the fact that only twice … was the ball driven beyond the infield.”69

Lavender, however, faltered in relief two appearances after this no-hitter as the Cubs fell to fifth after an excruciating doubleheader loss to the Cardinals. In Game One, Lavender entered in the twelfth and hit a batter with the bases loaded, giving Chicago the loss; the bags had been filled by a hit, a fielder’s choice, and a walk. The Cardinals scored two runs batting out of order, but Bresnahan failed to protest in time, so the tallies counted.

Although not the losing pitcher against St. Louis, Lavender would drop six straight, the last of which dropped the Cubs to last place, albeit only for a day. By closing with seven wins in nine games, Chicago finished fourth, disappointing given the season’s early promise but devastating due to the hasty giveaway of Cheney, the crippled condition of Saier, and the malignant presence of Zimmerman.

SOX SINKING

After July 17, the White Sox scored nearly a run fewer per game. In addition, Faber slumped, perhaps due to his heavy workload. Bolded OPS and ERA figures show performance declines compared to earlier data.

After splitting a doubleheader with Boston on the 17th, the White Sox dropped three straight then won five of six to pull into a virtual tie for first. Although sued for breach of promise by a “very pretty” woman on July 20,70 Jim Scott won two (one by a 1–0 shutout in which he had an RBI single) and saved a third game from July 22 through July 30.

On August 4, the Sox, in the midst of scoring thirteen runs in six straight losses, fell to third for the first time since May 18, where they would remain.

Blackburne, subpar at third base, threw away the first loss. With two on and none out in the ninth, New York bunted, but “‘Lena’ scooped up the ball and heaved it high over Fournier’s head,”71 giving Benz the first in a series of tough losses over the season’s last months.

The August 2 game ended even more excruciatingly. Faber took a 2–0 lead over the Yankees into the bottom of the ninth. With one out and runners on the corners, Faber induced a double-play ball to Eddie Collins, who “handled the ball as if it was an anarchist’s bomb. He picked it up and dropped it and then repeated the operation.”72 The error cut the lead to 2–1; an out and a single tied the game, ending Faber’s day. Scott relieved, issued a walk, and threw a wild pitch to send the Sox to a 3–2 loss.

Chicago left New York, lost two at Washington, and seemed doomed to a fifth straight defeat, trailing Walter Johnson 2–0. But the Sox bats improbably awoke with a six-run eighth-inning rally sparked by Johnson’s throwing error on Shano Collins’ bunt.

With a four-run lead, Mellie Wolfgang relieved for Chicago then gave way to Faber. With two outs in the last of the eighth and the lead trimmed to 6–5, Faber had two strikes on Johnson with runners on second and third. The lead runner broke for home, “but Johnson poked a low fly to short left field. Weaver was running in … possibly with the idea of covering the plate on the steal home.”73 Johnson’s flare drove in two runs; Weaver’s vacating his position had transformed a heartening rally against the game’s greatest pitcher. Johnson would come around to score in the White Sox’s crushing 8–6 loss.

Weaver made the front page of the paper a few days later. In an article sub-headed “White Sox Ball Player Has More Trouble on His Hands; Now Must Explain Dice Gambling,” a brief revealed, “Buck’s poolroom … was going at a little too merry clip at 5 o’clock yesterday morning, so the police swooped down upon it like a bunch of Red Sox with war bludgeons.”74

Chicago got better news in late August with the Sox’ blockbuster acquisition of Joe Jackson, who had flirted with the Whales.75 The Sox needed reinforcements; beginning with Jackson’s arrival, Chicago played 89 innings in six days, with two doubleheaders (the first game of the first DH which Eddie Collins won with an eleventh-inning single) and four straight extra-inning games that Chicago would split. On his third day in Chicago colors, Jackson tripled home Eddie Collins to lift the Sox to an 11-inning win over the Yankees.

Washington was the opposition for the rest of the bonus baseball. On August 24, trailing 5–4 in the bottom of the eleventh with two outs and the bases loaded, the Sox won on Murphy’s walk and Shano Collins’ single before succumbing to Johnson’s arm and bat in the next two games. First, he scored the winning run and got the win in a 7–4 14-inning defeat of Chicago; he then drove in a run and saved a 2–1 13-inning win.

In 21 plate appearances in 1915, Johnson hit .421/.476/.579 against Chicago. On the hill, he posted a 4–1 record with two saves.

Hitting pitchers plagued the Sox into September. With a 1–0 lead at Fenway Park in the bottom of the seventh inning on September 14, Benz faced Boston pitcher Babe Ruth, who “smashed the ball against the left-field fence, sending home the winning run.”76

Chicago won its last eleven games but finished a distant third. This streak made Chicago’s season seem more impressive retrospectively, but the run differentials of the league’s top three teams show that the White Sox should have done far better.

“Comiskey has been prodigal in his expenditures for new talent, and has not obtained a great deal in return…. Eddie Collins was worth every cent … but the keystone monarch alone could not make a winning team out of the collection of ivory that surrounded him.”77 The 1915 additions—Rowland managing, Faber starting, and Collins, Felsch, and Jackson playing—paid off two years later with the 1917 champions. The gambling associations of Weaver hinted, however, that the game’s greatest scandal would soon stagger the Sox.

WHALES WIN!

The Whales declined at bat and on the mound after July 17, but the resilient club nevertheless eked out just enough clutch wins. Bolded OPS and ERA figures show performance declines compared to earlier data.

Starting with the second game of the July 17 doubleheader, Chicago dropped five of six. On July 22, “King Mordecai of the House of Brown brought the Whales up from the sea of despair … by pitching almost perfect baseball against the scrappy Terrapins of Baltimore. Brownie subdued the turbulent Terps with three small hits, and his 4 to 1 victory was clearly earned.”78 Following this game, Brown would not start for an entire month due to kidney inflammation.79

With Brown out, Chicago dropped four straight home games to Newark, including a 3–2 16-inning August 2 loss, the winning run scoring when “Smith cracked at the critical moment,”80 making his 40th error.

Smith kicked two more in the next game, but McConnell threw a critical complete game to beat Brooklyn 3–1. “McConnell varied the mud ball with an ordinary spitter he had, the Brookfeds missing ‘em by six inches, but he fanned only one batter. Properly delivered, the mud ball breaks like an illegal emery ball. It shoots around the plate like a bilious gent wending his way homeward at 3 a.m.”81

Chicago made the short trip from Brooklyn to Newark, and Mann scored the winning run in the ninth inning of the third game against the Peppers on August 12 following a triple82 and a pinch-squeeze bunt by backup outfielder Charlie Hanford, who had been “ejected” two innings earlier “because Umpire McCormick’s sensitive ear was offended … [in Federal League rules] A player ousted merely from the bench, who has not been in the game, may return any time his manager desires, so Tinker was able to recall … Hanford … from exile.”83

Hendrix homered and won the opener of an August 14 doubleheader split with Baltimore. One of these games represented the replay of the June 19 protest.

Chicago dropped the last Baltimore game and then four to Buffalo, dropping from first to fourth in three days. On August 22, Brown again righted the Whales’ ship, returning from illness on a day in his honor for “one of the greatest games of his long career. Against his magnificent labor the wrecking Buffeds were like children, and Tinker’s Whales sauntered to a 4 to 0 shutout victory.”84

Brown dropped three in a row after his comeback and “showed weakness as a result of his recent sickness. His fast ball was lacking in its usual speed.”85

Hendrix also struggled in August, losing the day before Brown’s beauty and twice more before the month’s end. Smith cost him a game in Pittsburgh. With the Whales up 2–0 and a man on first in the bottom of the eighth, Steve Yerkes “rolled an easy one to Smith, who had a perfect double play set before him, but fumbled, and both runners were safe.”86 Smith’s 47th and final error for Chicago set up the tying runs, and a sacrifice fly in the bottom of the ninth brought home the winner.

Tinker hurriedly swapped Smith for Baltimore’s Mickey Doolin, but at first, the Whales played worse following the trade. Given a 6–1 lead in a game Chicago would lose 10–9 against Kansas City, Hendrix “following his usual custom, was knocked off the hill in less than six innings.”87 The Whales slipped a season-high 5½ games behind with less than a month to play.

Another no-hitter turned around Chicago’s season, albeit a no-hit defeat in the first game of a September 7 doubleheader to Dave Davenport of St. Louis. Perhaps embarrassed, Chicago would go 17-4-1 over the season’s final 22 games. Three of the four losses came by one run.

Hendrix started the turnaround with the second-game win over St. Louis. “Previously he had taken part in six games without registering a victory. He worked … with severe pains in his back and limped off after each inning. However he pitched a masterly”88 3–2 Whales win.

Brown pitched a complete-game win over Baltimore in the first of a four-game series. On September 12, in Game One of a doubleheader, McConnell earned his 22nd victory in a wild, 5–4 15-inning affair. The win returned Chicago to second place. Trailing 3–2 in the tenth, Mann doubled and Doolin singled to re-tie the game. Then, down 4–3 in the 15th, Tinker pinch-hit Hendrix for his third-place hitter, Zwilling, the team leader in several offensive categories. Hendrix singled, advanced on a wild pitch, and scored on an error. The winning run scored on a single by Joe Weiss, who had joined the team after winning an amateur newspaper talent contest!89 In Game Two, Hendrix pitched a darkness-shortened shutout to complete his virtuoso day.

In the Baltimore finale after an off day, Brown, on two days of rest, yielded seven runs in seven innings. Hendrix rescued Chicago again, however, saving the 8–7 win with two shutout frames.

On September 19, the Whales met Buffalo in a twin bill. Brown fired a complete-game 3–1 win in the opener; Weiss started a triple play on a line drive to first.90 McConnell pitched a four-hit shutout for his 23rd win in Game Two, in which Weiss had another game-winning hit.

Weiss tallied three more hits September 22 as Chicago earned a critical 4–4 tie against Newark. Trailing 3–0 early, and 4–3 in the bottom of the eleventh, Fischer and Beck delivered pinch-singles that enabled the Whales to draw even in a game that would last 15 innings.

In third place, 1½ behind, Chicago closed the season with home-and-home doubleheaders against Pittsburgh. On October 2, Chicago swept the first twin bill and moved back into first for the first time since August 18.

Brown was the hit of the first game. He went 4-for-4 at the plate, staking the Whales to an 8–1 lead and cruised to a complete game 8–5 win despite yielding 16 hits. In the nightcap, Chicago blew a 3–0 lead in the ninth but escaped with a 6–3 win in 11, the decisive run scoring on Mann’s double and Doolin’s single.

The greatest—and last—day in the Whales’ brief history took place October 3, 1915. In the first of yet another doubleheader, McConnell could not hold a 4–1 lead in the ninth, and Pittsburgh delivered a disheartening 5–4 defeat in 11 innings.

Entering the bottom of the sixth of the last game, neither team had scored. The fans on hand were apoplectic. Doolin singled and advanced to third with two out. Flack “caught one on the nose and drove a terrific drive to left center. [Pittsburgh player-manager Rebel] Oakes … dashed madly after the ball and the Rebel did manage to get his hands on it, but the sphere hopped out into the crowd for two bases, driving in Doolin with the one run necessary.”91 Zwilling and Wilson followed with RBI hits, making the final 3–0 Chicago in a game called after six and a half because of darkness.

By percentage points, the Whales had won Chicago’s only 1915 pennant. By capturing the second and last banner in the brief history of the Federal League, the legacy of the Whales flickers a century later while the White Sox and the Cubs continue to play.

A SABR member since 1990, MARK S. STERNMAN has written for “The Inside Game,” the SABR BioProject, and “The Miracle Braves of 1914: Boston’s Original Worst-to-First World Series Champions.”

Notes

1 Chicago also had Negro League teams. “Dizzy Dismukes of the Indianapolis ABCs no-hit the Chicago Giants on May 9, while Dick Whitworth of the Chicago American Giants also no-hit the Chicago Giants on September 19.” www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/1915_in_the_Negro_Leagues (accessed January 3, 2015).

2 “The Chicago Cubs,” The Sporting Life, October 31, 1914: 7.

3 “National League Notes,” The Sporting Life, November 7, 1914: 8.

4 “Nativity against Him,” The Sporting Life, November 14, 1914: 7.

5 “National League Notes,” The Sporting Life, November 28, 1914: 4.

6 I.E. Sanborn, “Chatter about Cubs,” The Sporting Life, December 19, 1914: 3.

7 Sean Deveney, Before Wrigley Became Wrigley (New York: Sports Publishing, 2014), 208.

8 James Crusinberry, “Eleven Cubs Leave here for Tampa Training Camp,” Chicago Daily Tribune, February 27, 1915: 9.

9 I.E. Sanborn, “Cubs to Battle Cubans Again at Tampa Today,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 15, 1915: 13.

10 “Adams would have had the kind of APBA card that you’d have set fire to if he was on your team. He went 1-9 with a pretty decent team, had an ERA 70 percent over the league norm, and as a hitter went oh-for-thirty.” Bill James, The Baseball Book 1990 (New York: Villard Books, 1990), 183.

11 I.E. Sanborn, “Rain Disappoints 49 Bugs Who Go to Cub Park,” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 22, 1915: 10.

12 I.E. Sanborn, “The Chicago Cubs,” The Sporting Life, April 10, 1915: 5.

13 I.E. Sanborn, “Rally in Ninth Nips Cubs, 7-4, in Real Farce,” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 18, 1915: B1.

14 I.E. Sanborn, “Chicago Chat,” The Sporting Life, May 15, 1915: 6.

15 I.E. Sanborn, “The Chicago Cubs,” The Sporting Life, May 22, 1915: 6.

16 I.E. Sanborn, “Rogers Win, 1-0; Bert Humphries Holds New York,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 19, 1915: 13.

17 “Echoes of the Game,” Boston Daily Globe, June 17, 1915: 7.

18 “Rice,” “Ed Pfeffer Pitches Nineteen-Inning Game,” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 18, 1915: 2.

19 Wm. A. Phelon, “The Season’s Game,” Baseball Magazine, August 1915: 19.

20 I.E. Sanborn, “Zim Steals Home in the Ninth, Winning Wild Battle, 14-13,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 25, 1915: 13.

21 I.E. Sanborn, “Zabel Hurls Three Hit Game, but Seven Errors Beat Cubs,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 29, 1915: 11.

22 “H. Zimmerman Wants Divorce,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 30, 1915: 9.

23 I.E. Sanborn, “Lavender Loses Two Hit Game, but Cheney Blanks Redlegs,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 1, 1915: 13.

24 I.E. Sanborn, “Saier’s Drive Gives Rogers 2 to 1 Victory,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 3, 1915: 11.

25 Grantland Rice, “Giving a Modest Star His Due,” The Sporting Life, July 31, 1915.

26 Ward Mason, “Vic Saier, the Slugger of the Cubs,” Baseball Magazine, September 1915: 78.

27 James Crusinberry, “Murray Joins Rogers’ Squad; Rain Balks Brooklyn Game,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 9, 1915: 11.

28 James Crusinberry, “Cubs Lose to Robins in 10th, After Leading by Six Runs,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 10, 1915: 15.

29 “Dodgers Win But Drop back in the Race,” The New York Times, July 13, 1915.

30 Warren Brown, The Chicago White Sox (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1952), 63.

31 W. A. Carlson, “Eddie Collins,” Baseball Magazine, March 1915: 68.

32 Sam Weller, “Sox Start West Tuesday Night,” Chicago Daily Tribune, February 14, 1915: B1.

33 Keene Gardiner, “Introducing Mr. Buck Weaver in New Role of Business Man,” Chicago Daily Tribune, February 15, 1915: 14.

34 R.S. Ranson, “The White Sox,” Sporting Life, March 27, 1915: 4.

35 “Claims a Pitching Record,” Sporting Life, May 22, 1915: 8.

36 James Crusinberry, “White Sox Beat Boston in 17 Inning Battle, 3 to 2,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 22, 1915: 9.

37 “Daring Stealing by White Hose Leaders, with Some Great Fielding, Spells Defeat for Red Sox,” Boston Daily Globe, May 24, 1915: 7.

38 T.H. Murnane, “‘Smoky Joe’ Pulls White Sox out of Lead,” Boston Daily Globe, June 8, 1915: 6.

39 Chandler D. Richter, “New Sidelights on Baseball,” Sporting Life, June 26, 1915: 8.

40 Tom Ruane, “A Retro-Review of the 1910s (the 1914-1919 edition),” www.retrosheet.org/Research/RuaneT/rev1910_art.htm (accessed January 16, 2015).

41 James Crusinberry, “Sox Lam Ball; Crush Indians Despite Slips,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 23, 1915: 14.

42 James Crusinberry, “Sox Beat Cleveland in 19 Innings, 5 to 4,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 25, 1915: 13.

43 I.E. Sanborn, “Sox Trounce Mackmen, 6-4, in Crazy Game,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 15, 1915: 13.

44 I.E. Sanborn, “Chicago Feds Sign Walter Johnson for Two Years,” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 4, 1914: 11.

45 Clarence F. Lloyd, “St. Louis’ Story,” Sporting Life, December 12, 1914: 9.

46 “Otto Knabe’s Terrapins kicked the sperm oil out of Joe Tinker’s Whales” represents an excellent example. Sam Weller, “Swat by Mr. Zinn ‘K.O.’ for Whales at Baltimore, 9-8,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 7, 1915: 11.

47 James Crusinberry, “Left Handers Beaten in Game at Whale Camp,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 26, 1915: 18.

48 Sam Weller, “Outfielder Mann of Braves Jumps to Local Feds,” Chicago Daily Tribune, February 12, 1915: 16.

49 Philip Morgan, “The Chicago Whales,” The Sporting Life, April 10, 1915: 7.

50 “Notes of the Whales,” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 14, 1915: 13.

51 “Chicago Chat,” The Sporting Life, May 1, 1915: 12. “In August he suffered one of the stranger injuries in baseball history. The Wilkes Barre Times Leader said that ‘Smith leaped for a hot one, lost his balance and doubled backwards wrenching the muscles of his neck and spiking himself in the back of the head. Smith was knocked out completely.’” Jim Sandoval, “Jimmy Smith,” sabr.org/bioproj/person/bcee87a4 (accessed January 15, 2015).

52 “Tinker Is out,” The Sporting Life, May 15, 1915: 13.

53 Sam Weller, “No Hits Made off Hendrix; Beats Rebels,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 16, 1915: B1.

54 Sam Weller, “Brown Blanks Buffeds, 8 to 0, with One Swat,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 19, 1915: 11.

55 Sam Weller, “Whales Defeat Terrapins, But Knabe Protests,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 20, 1915: B1.

56 J. J. Alcock, “Eastland Disaster Closes Whale Gate; Two Contests Today,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 26, 1915: 13.

57 Sam Weller, “Brown Defeats Newfeds, 1 to 0, in Mound Duel,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 30, 1915: 9.

58 Sam Weller, “Whales Score 5 Runs in Ninth; Win in Twelfth,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 1, 1915: 13.

59 Sam Weller, “Three Run Rally in Twelfth Gives Whales Victory, 3 to 2,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 2, 1915: 13.

60 James Crusinberry, “Rajah, Aroused, Levies Big Fines on Zim and Zabel,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 21, 1915: 11.

61 James Crusinberry, “Shakeup Coming Unless Cubs Get Hearts in Game,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 26, 1915: 13.

62 John J. McGraw, “In the National League,” Boston Daily Globe, July 26, 1915: 4.

63 James Crusinberry, “Cubs back Home with Only Coin to Offset Woe,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 28, 1915: 9.

64 James Crusinberry, “Losing Streak of Cubs Ended by Even Break,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 31, 1915: 9.

65 “Cutshaw Poles out Six Hits off Cubs,” The New York Times, August 10, 1915.

66 “Pierce and Zim Fight; Vaughn among Injured,” Chicago Daily Tribune, August 15, 1915: B1.

67 James Crusinberry, “Cubs and Braves Play 4-4 Tie; Archer Falls and Loses Run,” Chicago Daily Tribune, August 27, 1915: 9.

68 “Brooklyn Gets Cheney,” The New York Times, August 30, 1915.

69 “No-Hit Game Won by Jim Lavender,” The New York Times, September 1, 1915.

70 “American League Affairs,” The Sporting Life, August 7, 1914: 9.

71 “Chicago Baseman Tosses Game away,” The New York Times, August 1, 1915.

72 “Scott’s Wild Toss Lets in Winning Run,” The New York Times, August 3, 1915.

73 I.E. Sanborn, “White Sox Fall in Two Battles at Washington,” Chicago Daily Tribune, August 7, 1915: 7.

74 “Buck Weaver’s Poolroom Raided and 12 Arrested,” Chicago Daily Tribune, August 16, 1915: 1.

75 “Plot That Failed,” The Sporting Life, August 28, 1915: 9.

76 T.H. Murnane, “‘Speed Boys owe This One to Ruth,” Boston Daily Globe, September 15, 1915: 1.

77 I.E. Sanborn, “Chicago Gleanings,” The Sporting Life, October 2, 1915: 6.

78 J. J. Alcock, “Brown Allows Only Three Hits; Whales Win, 4-1,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 23, 1915: 9.

79 “Brown Sent to Hospital; Now on Way to Recovery,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 30, 1915: 9.

80 J. J. Alcock, “Whales Lose to Newfeds in Sixteen Inning Combat, 3-2,” Chicago Daily Tribune, August 3, 1915: 11.

81 “Notes of the Whales,” Chicago Daily Tribune, August 6, 1915: 9.

82 Mann had an FL-leading nineteen triples in 1915, including four in July, four in August, and seven in September.

83 Alcock called this quirk “a new wrinkle in Federal league rules.” J. J. Alcock, “Squeeze Play in Last Gives Whales 2-1 Victory Over Peps,” Chicago Daily Tribune, August 13, 1915: 9.

84 J. J. Alcock, “Fed Fans Flock to Whales Park for ‘Brown Day,’” Chicago Daily Tribune, August 23, 1915: 9.

85 “Notes of the Whales,” Chicago Daily Tribune, August 31, 1915: 11.

86 Sam Weller, “Smith’s Error Helps Pittfeds Defeat Whales,” Chicago Daily Tribune, August 28, 1915: 11.

87 Sam Weller, “Whales Beaten in Binglefest at Kansas City,” Chicago Daily Tribune, September, 1915: B3.

88 Sam Weller, “No Hits, No Runs off Davenport; Whales Divide,” Chicago Daily Tribune, September 8, 1915: 11.

89 J. J. Alcock, “Tribune Boy’s Swat Wins for Tinker in 15th,’” Chicago Daily Tribune, September 13, 1915: 11.

90 J. J. Alcock, “Tribune Boys Help Whales Win Twin Bill,’” Chicago Daily Tribune, September 20, 1915: 11.

91 J. J. Alcock, “Whales Win Pennant as 34,000 Fans Cheer,’” Chicago Daily Tribune, October 4, 1915: 13.

3. Edward Burns, “Hack, Cubs’ Rookie Infielder, Plucked Out of Bank on Coast,” Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, NY), January 10, 1932, 27.

4. The winning bid was $370.98. “Stanley C. Hack/SMILE WITH ME” pocket mirror, Hake’s Auctions, hakes.com/Auction/ItemDetail/201987/STANLEY-C-HACKSMILE-WITH-ME-POCKET-MIRROR, March 15, 2016 (accessed December 18, 2022).

5. Bill Veeck and Ed Linn, Veeck as in Wreck, (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1962), 158.

6. Bill Veeck, “Gamesmanship Helped Indians Win 1948 AL Pennant,” News-Journal (Mansfield, OH), September 14, 1962, 14.

7. David Condon, “Cub Fans, Smile if You Loved Stan Hack,” Chicago Tribune, December 16, 1979, 86.

The first home run was hit by Art Wilson of the Chicago Whales in a Federal League game on April 23, 1914. Wilson connected off Kansas City’s George (Chief) Wilson, sending the ball over the left-field wall with a man aboard in the second inning. The Whales went on to win 9-1 before 15,000 fans. It was the inaugural game at the Clark and Addison ballpark, which was constructed at a cost of $250,000 by Charles 0. Weeghman as a home for his Whales.

Two years later the Federal League folded and Weeghman headed a 10-man syndicate that purchased the Chicago Cubs. Gum magnate William Wrigley Jr. was a member of Weeghman’s group.

The Cubs moved from their West Side Grounds, located at Congress and Loomis, for their gala opener on April 20, 1916 at Weeghman Park. The team, managed by Joe Tinker, beat the Cincinnati Reds 7-6 on an 11th-inning single by Vic Saier. But the first National League homer at the North Side park was hit that day by the Reds’ John Woolf Beall with none on in the sixth inning off Claude Hendrix.

For the record, the first official Cub homer was hit by little Max Flack, who knocked the ball over the right-field wall off the Reds’ Gene Dale in the sixth inning with one on base on April 22, 1916.

Weeghman resigned after the 1918 season and Wrigley became the majority stockholder. Weegham Park then became known as Cubs Park. It wasn’t until 1926 that the stadium was renamed Wrigley Field.

Over the years, the most productive homer slugger at Wrigley Field was Mr. Cub, Ernie Banks, with 290. Rounding out the top are Billy Williams, 241; Ron Santo, 212; Hank Sauer, 118; Gabby Hartnett, 115; Hack Wilson, 109; Bill Nicholson, 91; Rick Monday, 68; Andy Pafko, 67, and Jim Hickman, 65.

The longest homer at Wrigley Field? Roberto Clemente hit one to the left of the scoreboard, Bill Nicholson just off to the right, while Sauer and Randy Jackson both hit buildings across the street on Waveland Avenue. But our vote goes to Dave Kingman when he was a member of the New York Mets on April 14,1976.

It was the second game of the season and the Mets were leading the Cubs 3-2 with one on and two out in the top of the sixth inning. Cub manager Jim Marshall strolled to the mound to discuss strategy with reliever Tom Dettore. There was a 20-miles-per-hour jet stream blowing from the plate to left-center and first base was unoccupied with Kingman at bat.

Dettore insisted on pitching to Kingman. Marshall gave his OK, patted the hurler on the rump and departed for the dugout. Dettore worked the count to a ball and a strike. The next pitch was a fast ball. It exploded off Kingman’s bat and soared high into the wind. There was no question about it leaving the ballpark.

The usual gang of kids was waiting outside with gloves poised. But the ball sailed over their heads. They turned and started running north on Kenmore Avenue. The ball struck the porch of the third house from the Waveland Avenue corner and was caught on the rebound by Richard Keiber.

How far did the ball travel? Some say 600 feet. The Cubs went on to win 6-5, but Kingman’s king-sized blow took center stage. Many agreed it was the longest homer ever hit at Wrigley Field. Others say if Kingman could have straightened it out, the ball would’ve hit the scoreboard.

No. Nobody ever homered off the present-day scoreboard. But golfer Sam Snead once hit one over it. He teed off from home plate and sent a golf ball over the scoreboard moments before the Cubs’ 1951 season opener. While there is much debate over the longest homer, there is little doubt about the shortest. It was hit by Rocky Nelson of the St. Louis Cardinals on April 30, 1949. The ball traveled about 220 feet and was dubbed the “inside-the-glove-homer.”

The Cubs were leading the Cardinals 3-2 with two out and one on in the top of the ninth inning when pinch-hitter Nelson strode to the plate, facing Bob Rush. Rocky hit a sinking liner to short left center. Center fielder Andy Pafko ran in, dived for the ball and made a game-saving catch. The Cubs won.. . but wait.

Umpire Al Barlick, standing near second base, ruled that Pafko had trapped the ball. Andy came running in, holding the ball aloft in triumph, while the Cardinal runners raced around the bases.

Pafko then looked at Barlick in disbelief and started to argue. It wasn’t until Nelson was a few steps from home plate that Pafko threw the ball. Nelson was safe and the Cardinals won 4-3 on the shortest homer in Wrigley Field history.

Of the 19 World Series homers (six by the Cubs), none could equal Ruth’s “called shot” in the fifth inning of the third game of the 1932 classic. Ruth had already hit a three-run homer for the New York Yankees in the first inning when he stepped to the plate to face Charlie Root. The Cub bench jockeys were riding the Babe and that made him fume. With one strike on him, Ruth yelled to the Cub dugout that he was going to belt a homer. Root then fired another strike and the Cub players increased their heckling.

Ruth then pointed his bat toward the center-field bleachers, letting them know what he had in mind. Root wound up and delivered and Ruth connected. He sent the ball sailing high and far to the spot he had designated for one of the most dramatic homers in World Series history.

The Cubs’ most dramatic homer was hit by Hartnett on September 28, 1938. It was the famous “homer in the gloamin” against the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Pirates led the Cubs by a game-and-a-half when they opened a crucial three-game series at Wrigley Field.

In the first game, manager Hartnett went with sore-armed Dizzy Dean and he escaped with a 2-1 victory, cutting Pittsburgh’s lead to a half-game. The following day, the skies were cloudy and gray. And the outlook was gloomy as the Pirates led 3-1 after six innings and 5-3 after 7½. But the Cubs put two runs across to tie the score 5-5 after eight innings. It was growing so dark that the umpires had agreed to call the game after the Cubs had batted in the ninth. Burly Pirate reliever Mace Brown retired the first two Cubs. Hartnett was the next batter.

Brown whipped home two quick strikes and was gloating. Brown, figuring Hartnett couldn’t hit what he couldn’t see, wound up and let loose with a fastball. The pitch wasn’t seen by many, but it was heard as Hartnett rocketed the ball into the left-field bleachers for a 6-5 Cub victory.

Gabby had to fight his way around the bases and was greeted by hundreds at home plate. The Pirates were done, and the Cubs went on to clinch the 1938 pennant.

The new generation of Cub fans, however, rate Banks’ 500th homer over Hartnett’s as the most dramatic. On Saturday, May 9, 1970, Banks hit his 499th homer. That set the countdown for No. 500. The following day, a crowd of 40,000 jammed Wrigley Field to see Mr. Cub experience his magic moment against the Reds.

In his first at bat, Banks received a standing ovation. He responded by lining the ball off the top of the ivy vines in left field. Banks started churning the bases. He rounded third, but that was as far as his 39-year old legs would take him. He puffed back to third base as the ball was relayed home. He had to settle for a triple.

On Monday, Banks remained a triple threat with another three-bagger. And Tuesday hardly seemed like a day for heroics. A fog rolled in and out and was replaced by a morning downpour. The skies were murky and it was damp, but the show went on against the Atlanta Braves. This time there was only a smattering of applause from the slim crowd of 5,264 as Banks faced the Braves’ Pat Jarvis in the second inning.

With the count one-and-one, Jarvis delivered a fastball, chest high and a bit inside-and Banks swung. The ball was hit deep, but had a low trajectory. Would it clear the 12-foot high fence? Left fielder Rico Carty went back, back-and then stopped. The ball landed in the first row of the bleachers. Banks ran as fast as he could to first base before he stole a glance, heard the crowd noise and then broke into his familiar home run trot. He doffed his cap as he crossed home plate, and repeated his act as he headed towards the Cub dugout. Play was halted as the ball was retrieved and presented to Banks.

And, finally, here’s one for trivia buffs. In which major league ballpark did Lou Gehrig hit his first homer? Yankee Stadium? Guess again.

On June 26, 1920, Lane Technical High School of Chicago was playing the High School of Commerce from New York for the inter-city baseball championship at Wrigley Field.

The score was 8-8 and Commerce had the bases loaded in the eighth inning, when Gehrig, a high school junior, stepped up and hit the first ball pitched over the right-field fence for a 12-8 victory.

Although it wasn’t one of the official 6,905 Wrigley Field homers, it was a memorable one.

PLAYERS WITH 20 OR MORE HOME RUNS AT WRIGLEY FIELD
(as Cub player or opponent; stats through 1978)

WRIGLEY FIELD HOME RUN FACTS (1914-1978)

• Total homers-6,905
• Total Homers by Cubs-3,427
• Total homers by Cubs opponents-3,396
• Total homers by Federal League teams-82
• World Series homers-19 (6 by Cubs, 13 by Cubs opponents)
• All-Star Game homers-5 (0 by Cubs, 2 by NL; 3 by AL opponents)
• Most homers in one season-201 in 1970 (Cubs 109, opponents 92)
• Most homers in one season by Cubs-109 in 1970.
• Most homers in one season by Cubs opponents-100 in 1966
• Most homers by a Cub lifetime-Ernie Banks 290
• Most homers by a Cub opponent lifetime-Willie Mays 54
• Most homers by a Cub in one season-Hack Wilson, 33 in 1930
• Most homers by a Cub opponent in one season-7
• Gene Oliver, St. Louis, 1965
• Johnny Callison, Philadelphia, 1965
• Mike Schmidt, Philadelphia, 1976 (4 in 1 game)

All-Time Cub Team

• Ernie Banks, 120   1B
• Rogers Hornsby, 29   2B
• Ernie Banks, 170   SS
• Ron Santo, 212 3B
• Billy Williams, 241   OF
• Hank Sauer, 114 OF
• Hack Wilson, 105   OF
• Gabby Hartnett, 115 C

All-Time Opponent Team

• Willie Stargell, 28
• Rogers Hornsby, 23
• Glenn Wright, 10, Johnny Logan, 10
• Eddie Mathews, 36
• Willie Mays, 54
• Hank Aaron, 50
• Mel Ott, 38
• Roy Campanella, 17

Note: Banks is listed at two positions; Hornsby made the Cub team and the opponent team; Stargell edged Gil Hodges and Orlando Cepeda by one homer at 1B; Johnny Bench has 16 homers and will likely replace Campy as the catcher.

*Assisted by John C. Tattersall

Early in the morning of August 14, 1940, Constable Arthur C. Mosley and Deputy Charles Gordon of Clayton, Mo. (a suburb of St. Louis), came upon a strange car parked in a driveway on Lindbergh Boulevard. Upon investigating, they found a horrible sight – lying next to the auto was a man with his throat torn apart by the self-inflicted blast of the 16-gauge shotgun found under his arm. On the dashboard was a note saying, “Call Walnut 4123, Mrs. Ruth Hollocher.” The suicide victim was Charlie Hollocher, who 20 years earlier had been one of the most highly-touted players in the National League.

His was a short life and a meteoric career, filled with triumph, mystery and ultimately sorrow. Born in St. Louis on June 11, 1896, Charles Jacob Hollocher learned his baseball in city streets, back alleys and schoolyards. While playing for a local amateur team called the Wabadas, he caught the eye of sportswriter John B. Sheridan, who taught him the game’s finer points. As young Hollocher graduated from the amateur ranks to semi-professional status, his friends urged both the Cardinals and the Browns to give him a tryout, but the scouts of both teams declined, citing his alleged inability to hit.

On Sheridan’s recommendation, Keokuk of the Central Association signed Hollocher to a contract in 1915. Charlie’s brother Louis, who died in 1937, also appeared on several minor league teams but never made it to the majors.

After a year at Keokuk, Hollocher was drafted by Portland of the Pacific Coast League, then farmed to Rock Island of the Three-I League early in the season.  Recalled to Portland in 1917, he appeared in 200 games, batting .276 and leading the league’s shortstops in putouts, assists and errors. The Chicago Cubs, badly in need of infield assistance, purchased Charlie’s contract for a reported $3,500.

However, it was not Hollocher the Cubs were after but rather Rogers Hornsby of the Cardinals, who had just given baseball a preview of coming attractions with a .327 average. For the next several months the Cubs dangled Charlie and cash in front of the Cardinals as trade bait, but to no avail. They were stuck with Hollocher whether they wanted him or not. (The Cubs did obtain Hornsby years later but via a different route.)

Realizing that his survival depended on his hitting ability as well as his glove work, Hollocher altered his batting stance. The results were amazing.

There were no Rookie of the Year honors in 1918, but had such awards existed Charlie would have been a prime candidate. A quick thrower and a smooth fielder who covered all his ground and then some, Hollocher made the Cubs solid at shortstop for the first time since Joe Tinker had left the team six years earlier. He became especially renowned for his ability to haul down Texas League pop flies.

Nicknamed “Holly” for obvious reasons, the pint-sized (5 feet, 7½ inches and 158 pounds) Hollocher belied his previous reputation by swinging the hottest bat on the team. Charlie’s team-leading .316 average was fourth highest in the league, while he led the circuit in hits (161), at-bats (509) and total bases (202) and was third in  stolen bases (26). Thanks in no small part to Hollocher’s  efforts, the Cubs leaped from fifth place to the pennant.

Hollocher, who generally batted second, was an intense hustler who was adept at beating out bunts and who sometimes even slid into first base on ground balls in hopes of beating the throw. Teammate Bob O’Farrell, the last survivor of the 1918 Cub champions, described Charlie nearly 60 years later as “the sparkplug of the team.”

O’Farrell also recalled, significantly, that “he had a very nervous stomach.”

As World Series time with the Boston Red Sox approached, Ring Lardner waxed poetic in the Chicago Tribune:

H is for Hollocher, Hendrix and Hooper.

You’ll see them all play if you’re not in a stupor.

The young phenom was of little help in the Series, however, batting only .190 as Boston took the  Cubs in six games, with Babe Ruth beating them twice.

In the meantime, Charlie had received “greetings from Uncle Sam.” Scheduled to enter the Army, he was attacked by the influenza epidemic then ravaging the Western hemisphere. By the time he recovered the Armistice had been signed, and as a result he was not drafted.

Perhaps weakened by the flu, Hollocher fell to .270 in 1919 as the Cubs slipped to third place. On September 12 he took part in the first of two triple plays he would participate in during his career. In the sixth inning the Dodgers had Hy Myers on second base and Zack Wheat on first when Ed Konetchy came to the plate. He drove a sharp liner to Hollocher, who stepped on second to double Myers, then fired to first base to retire Wheat.

By the spring of 1920 Charlie’s hitting was back in stride. It was then that the first storm warnings appeared. On June 8 he took ill on a train en route from St. Louis to Philadelphia with what was reported as ptomaine poisoning. He appeared somewhat better two days later when he had three hits in a 9-8 loss to the Phillies, “but was weak from his sickness before the game was over.” By June 16 he was back in the hero’s role when his eighth-inning triple drove in Max Flack with the game’s only run as Jim Vaughn won, 1-0, at Boston.

The attack had been all but forgotten by July 15, when the Chicago Tribune disclosed that “Hollocher was laid up with another attack similar to that which incapacitated him on the last eastern trip. . . .” Charlie returned to the lineup on July 24 but played only two more games before another departure. Following a long silence, it was announced on August 15 that he was hospitalized. Strangely, the papers did not mention what hospital he was in or what he was suffering from.

On August 17 it was announced that Charlie had been released from the hospital but would play no more that season. The Chicago Herald-Examiner passed a comment that would have been funny had future events not taken the sad turn that they did:

Charley Hollocher escaped from the hospital and came out to see the game. He denied that the doctors found a prune seed in his appendix.

While Hollocher was out for the remainder of the 1920 season, nothing appeared wrong the following year as he played in 140 games and performed better than ever defensively. Making fewer errors than any other regular shortstop in the National League, Charlie led the circuit with a .965 fielding average. And on August 30, 1921 he participated in a unique coincidence.

It was the bottom of the third inning at the Polo Grounds, with Johnny Rawlings on second and Earl Smith on first for the Giants. There were none out and the hit-and-run was on. Cub second baseman Zeb Terry snared Art Nehf’s liner and flipped to Hollocher to double Rawlings. Charlie then fired to first baseman Ray Grimes to complete the triple killing. Before the day was over Charlie would go 4-for-4 with a double and a home run, scoring twice in a losing effort as the Cubs bowed, 5-3.

On the same afternoon the Braves pulled a triple play against the Reds with the bases loaded in the sixth. It went from second baseman Hod Ford to shortstop Walt Barbare to first baseman Fred Nicholson. This was the only time in major league history that two triple plays were completed on the same day. Ironically, the Braves were losers also as Cincinnati won, 6-4.

In 1922 Hollocher looked like the reincarnation of Honus Wagner. Again leading the league in fielding with a .965 average, he batted .340 for the highest average by a shortstop since Wagner hit .354 for the Pirates in 1908 and the best by a shortstop in the majors that season. Reaching career highs with 37 doubles, 69 RBIs and 90 runs scored, he became only the second Cub player in history to attain the magic 200-hit figure with 201. Moreover, he set a National League record that still stands (500 at-bat minimum) by striking out only five times in 592 trips to the plate.

On August 13 he became the third of only four Cub players to gamer three triples in a game, leading Chicago to a 16-5 romp over the Cardinals at St. Louis. (The three others are Marty Sullivan in 1887, Bill Dahlen in 1896 and `98, and Ernie Banks in 1966.) Another great performance again came at St. Louis on August 29. Behind 10-5 after six innings, the Cubs rallied for four runs in the seventh, four in the eighth and two in the ninth to outslug the Cardinals, 15-11. Charlie’s contribution was a 4-for-4 outing with four runs scored, two walks and a double.

Just as Hollocher seemed to be reaching superstardom his problem began to resurface. Following a bout with the stomach flu in January of 1923, Charlie seemingly recovered, only to suffer a relapse at the Cubs’ spring training camp at Catalina Island. Returning to.St. Louis, he was examined by the famed Cardinal physician and surgeon, Dr. Robert F. Hyland. Cub president Bill Veeck, Sr., later sent him to a specialist in Chicago. Hollocher did not get into a game until May 11, 1923 at New York.

As had been the case three years earlier, there were no outward signs that Charlie had been ailing. If anything, he came across as being fitter than ever during the next two and one-half months. On June 7 he went 5-for-5 with a double and two runs scored in a 9-7 victory over the Giants at Chicago. Charlie enjoyed a 4-for-5 outing at Boston on July 7 and duplicated this effort against the same team two days later, pulling a steal of home in the latter contest. The Cubs won both games, 9-1 and 4-1. By July 22 Hollocher was hitting .350, but by July 26 he had slipped to .342.

That afternoon he was absent from the lineup and two days later it was announced that he was “ailing.” On August 3 the Chicago Tribune stated that Hollocher was “to be back Sunday,” only to eat its words. That night, without notifying the front office, he jumped the team and departed for St. Louis, leaving the following note to manager Bill Killefer:

Dear Bill –

Tried to see you at the clubhouse this afternoon but guess I missed you. Feeling pretty rotten so made up my mind to go home and take a rest and forget baseball for the rest of the year.  No hard feelings, just didn’t feel like playing anymore.

Good luck,

As Ever,

Holly

Hollocher then wrote to Veeck stating that he was too ill to play and to Commissioner Kenesaw M. Landis asking to be placed on the voluntarily retired list for the balance of the season. Never renowned for his consistency in disciplinary matters, Landis on August 11 gave Charlie a full absolution, even though Hollocher was technically a deserter.

That winter Hollocher held out for $4,200 for the period of his absence, but the Cubs refused to do business on those terms. For the next several months they made no effort to sign him, probably because of his erratic behavior and unknown illness that many thought to be imaginary. Missing all of spring training, Charlie finally signed a two-year contract at $12,000 a year. On May 20, 1924 sportswriter Irving Vaughan of the Chicago Tribune reported, “The X-ray plates of Charlie Hollocher’s stomach have definitely determined that there is nothing organically wrong with the star shortstop.”

Although Hollocher was back at his station, his stomach problem (or perhaps missing spring training) was now taking its toll. After going 0-for-8 in a doubleheader loss to the Braves on August 20, his batting average sank to .245.

For the next two weeks Hollocher was again conspicuous by his absence. On September 4 manager Killefer announced that he had given Charlie permission to return home to regain his health. Ominously, the Tribune admitted that “there is a big question mark around whether he will ever again don a baseball uniform.”

He did, but just barely, appearing at second base in place of Bob Barrett for the last two innings of a City Series game against the White Sox, going hitless in his only time at bat as the Cubs lost, 6-3, on October 3. That was his last appearance on the diamond. Retiring shortly thereafter, Charlie left behind a .304 batting average and 894 hits in 760 major league games. Over the next several years he made some announcements of intended comebacks, the last in 1930, but never went to camp.

Probably to fulfill the remainder of his contract, Charlie returned to the Cubs as a scout in 1931 but left after one year. In an interview with The Sporting News published on January 26, 1933 he lamented:

My health first broke at Catalina Island in the spring of 1923. I returned to St. Louis for an examination by Dr. Robert F. Hyland, who examined me and then turned me over to a specialist. They advised me that I would ruin my health if I played ball that season. But Bill Killefer, then manager of the Cubs, came to St. Louis and urged me to join the team, telling me that I didn’t have to play when I didn’t feel well. I yielded to Bill and, once in uniform, couldn’t stay on the bench. I played when I should have been home. During the following winter I rested up and felt fairly well in the spring of 1924, but my health gave way during the season and I had to go home. Now I realize I made my mistake in playing the 1923 season.

This statement tended to contradict the Chicago Tribune of May 11, 1923, which stated, “The little shortstop declared today that he has entirely recovered from his illness.” Furthermore, if Hollocher’s health problems began “in the spring of 1923,” how did that account for his earlier difficulties in 1920?

In Hollocher’s later years he operated a tavern in suburban Richmond Heights for a while, then became an investigator for the Prosecuting Attorney’s office in St. Louis County while moonlighting as a night watchman at a drive-in movie. In March of 1939 he divorced his first wife, the former Jane Allen, with whom he had a daughter, Ann. Several weeks later he married the former Mrs. Ruth Fleming. Then came the sad, gruesome finale.

When news of Hollocher’s suicide broke, the Chicago Herald-American commented:

The death of Charley Hollocher at his own hand came as no surprise to baseball folks who knew the one-time Cub shortstop when he was rated the top man at his position in the big leagues. Even when he was breaking in at Portland, Oregon, Hollocher  was a moody, neurotic boy.

Hollocher’s mysterious malady was obviously very real to him, because it drove him to self-destruction. His widow stated that he had been complaining of severe abdominal pains when last seen alive. At the inquest, St. Louis County Coroner John C. O’Connell concurred with the police that Hollocher’s death was an apparent suicide, and Charlie was gradually forgotten. Whether his sickness was something unknown to medical science of that era or largely psychosomatic will probably never be known. Equally, one can only speculate on the great career that might have been.

In 1994, this “son-of-a-bitch” was the subject of a film all his own. It was Cobb, written and directed by Ron Shelton, minor-league journeyman turned major-league Hollywood player.

On the field Tyrus Raymond Cobb, the Georgia Peach, had an exemplary major-league career, lasting from 1905 through 1928. No other batter has matched his lifetime batting average of .366.  Only Pete Rose has bested his total of 4,189 hits.

The story goes that, in 1958, Lefty O’Doul was questioned about how Cobb would fare against contemporary pitching. O’Doul responded that Cobb might hit .340. Why so low, he was asked? “You have to remember,” he replied, “the man is 72 years old.”1

Off the field, however, Ty Cobb was something else altogether. He was an unabashed racist who lamented the South’s loss of the Civil War. He constantly carried a loaded gun. He was a vicious, foul-mouthed brawler and tyrant. It is no surprise that he was so disliked by his fellow players.

“Cobb was the original trash talker,” Shelton explained in an interview just after his film’s release. “He was a Southern redneck who taunted everybody all the time, even his own teammates.”2 This is the Ty Cobb that Shelton depicts on screen.

But Cobb does not focus on the man in his playing days. It is set in the twilight of Cobb’s life, and examines what Shelton described as the “curious relationship” between Cobb (played by Tommy Lee Jones) and sportswriter Al Stump (Robert Wuhl). In 1960 Stump was hired to ghostwrite the faded legend’s whitewashed autobiography, My Life in Baseball: The True Record.

The two spent nearly a year together. A truer picture of the man emerged in Stump’s 1994 book Cobb: A Biography, in which Cobb is portrayed as an argumentative, sickly, booze-soaked old man who was, as Stump writes, “contemptuous of any law other than his own.”3

“He’s in very poor health now,” Shelton said of Stump, who passed away in December 1995, one year after the film’s release. “But I got to know him very well before I began writing the film. For this reason it’s filled with many anecdotes about Cobb that had never before been printed.”

Shelton is one for making literary references, in both his films and his conversation. He contrasted the Cobb-Stump relationship to what might have been “if Samuel Johnson hired Boswell at gunpoint.” In Bull Durham, his instant-classic baseball film, which came to theaters in 1988, one of his characters is noted for quoting Walt Whitman and William Blake.

But while the subject of Cobb is a Hall of Fame ballplayer, Shelton does not consider it a baseball movie. He sees no relation between Cobb and Bull Durham, which is as pure a baseball story as has ever been filmed.

“I am fascinated by people like Ty Cobb, who can be so sociopathic and dysfunctional outside their craft and so brilliant in it,” he said. “Cobb was a fascinating set of contradictions. He was an uncommonly brilliant athlete who was equally uncommonly obsessed. You can only marvel at his numbers – and also at his abominable behavior.”

He added that the film also “is about an old man who’s been called immortal, and how he faces his mortality.” In Cobb, Shelton asks questions that are well worth pondering, and which resonate today: Why do we in America make heroes out of people like Ty Cobb? Why do we forgive the abysmal behavior of a man whose main contribution to society is the ability to hit .366?

Not all less-than-saintly sports heroes – and they are endless, and have appeared on big-time rosters for decades – are as downright appalling as Cobb. Others simply are uncouth. “Deion Sanders, for instance, can get away with his outrageous behavior because he’s so damn good,” Shelton noted. “He can pull off all his jive. But if he wasn’t Deion Sanders, he’d just be another boor.”

Others, meanwhile, are more paradoxical. Shelton said his conception of Cobb was being contrasted to O.J. Simpson. It is a comparison he does not buy. “O.J. Simpson is a man with a public image and a private reality,” he observed. “Ty Cobb was completely different. His antics were not hidden. All of them made the front page. But nobody cared. Because he hit .367, he was able to meet with presidents. If he had hit .267, he would have been in jail.”4

The critical reaction to Cobb was what Shelton described as “most curious” and “schizophrenic.” He explained, “I could show you 400 reviews. Two hundred of the critics loved the film; 200 hated it. There’s been no middle ground.”

Two examples: Peter Travers, in Rolling Stone, dubbed Cobb “the Raging Bull of baseball movies,” adding that “Jones gives a landmark performance (and) Shelton’s strong, stinging film (is) one of the year’s best. …”;5 the San Francisco Chronicle’s Peter Stack described the film as a “histrionic portrait (that) comes across like a fly ball that thuds on the ground. …” Stack labeled Jones’s performance “tiresome,” noting that the actor “succeeds only in running the awful and pathetic Cobb into the ground.”6

The uneven nature of its critical reception plus the inability of Warner Bros., the film’s distributor, to properly market Cobb resulted in a limited release for the film. On the other hand, Bull Durham, Shelton’s first feature as director-writer, not only was a smash hit: It earned him the Writers Guild of America’s Best Original Script award, the Best Script prize from the National Society of Film Critics (as well as kudos from critics’ organizations in Boston, Los Angeles, and New York), and a Best Original Screenplay Academy Award nomination.

Indeed, Bull Durham is a film that Shelton was destined to make. He was born Ronald Wayne Shelton on September 15, 1945, in Whittier, California. A shortstop-second baseman, the 6-foot-1, 185-pounder was taken by the Baltimore Orioles in the 39th round of the 1966 major-league June Amateur Draft. From 1967 through 1971, he toiled in the bushes with the Stockton Ports, Bluefield Orioles, and Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs, topping out with the Triple-A Rochester Red Wings. His minor-league numbers were unspectacular: a .251 batting average in 479 games, with 425 hits in 1,691 at-bats.

As any baseball film aficionado knows, Bull Durham contrasts Crash Davis (Kevin Costner), an aging catcher for the minor-league Durham Bulls who during the course of the story breaks the bush-league record for career four-baggers, and Ebby Calvin “Nuke” LaLoosh (Tim Robbins), a raw rookie hurler famously described as possessing a “million-dollar arm, but a five-cent head.”7 The third major character – the one who cites Whitman and Blake – is Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon), a sexy baseball groupie who each spring selects one Bull as a season-long lover.

Across the years all three have become iconic screen characters. In August 2015 Mike Hessman, a (mostly) career minor leaguer, belted his 433rd dinger, setting the all-time bush-league record. In report after report of the accomplishment, Hessman was referred to as the real-life Crash Davis, the modern-era Crash Davis. In fact, later that month, when his Toledo Mud Hens were playing the Durham Bulls, Hessman was presented with a framed Crash Davis jersey. “I don’t mind,” he declared. “I guess that’s me. It’s fun. It’s cool. And I have the record. It’s good to be known for something.”8

As for “Nuke” LaLoosh, the story goes that the character was inspired by Steve Dalkowski, otherwise known as “The Fastest That Never Was.” In the early 1960s Dalkowski pitched in the Baltimore Orioles farm system. Granted, he just may have been the hardest thrower ever, but he was unable to harness his control and never made it to “The Show”; the yarns Shelton heard about Dalkowski (whose career predated his) supposedly added to his creating the character.

However, in Fastball, the 2016 documentary written and directed by Jonathan Hock and narrated by Kevin Costner, it is noted that LaLoosh “was based in part on Dalkowski or Sidd Finch, George Plimpton’s imaginary pitcher who threw 168 miles per hour.”9 Twenty-eight years earlier, upon the film’s release, Shelton told the press, “All characters and fictional people are composites. Every team I played on had one or two wild young pitchers who could throw the ball through a brick wall, but never got the Zen aspects of the game together.”10

At the time, Greg Arnold, a pitcher who played with Shelton before retiring at age 22 in 1971, claimed that he was Shelton’s inspiration. “There was no other (‘Nuke’) LaLoosh,” he stated. “He (Shelton) knows it and I know it, and that’s all that really matters. He’ll go to bed in September with $4 million or $5 million, and I’ll go to bed knowing one thing – that I am the Nuke.”11 (In his career, Arnold appeared in 83 games, walking 315 batters and striking out 413 in 476 innings.)

Lastly, in one of the most oft-quoted passages from any baseball film, Annie Savoy professes her belief in “the Church of Baseball.” “I’ve tried all the major religions, and most of the minor ones,” she declares. “I’ve worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I learned that, I gave Jesus a chance. But it just didn’t work out between us. The Lord laid too much guilt on me.

“I prefer metaphysics to theology. You see, there’s no guilt in baseball, and it’s never boring, which makes it like sex. There’s never been a ballplayer slept with me who didn’t have the best year of his career.”12

Annie Savoy and her super-fandom aside, in Bull Durham Shelton conjured up a knowing ode to minor-league baseball and baseball players, not to mention the pressures faced by wannabes who yearn for their shot in “The Show.” The underlying point here is that, in the end, pro sports is a business. “It’s about the players as people, the very real pressures they face,” he noted. “For example, are they gonna get promoted? Are they gonna lose their jobs?”

Undeniably, the film’s enduring popularity has reverberated across the decades. One of countless examples: On May 28, 2016, New York Post columnist Kevin Kernan casually observed, “Earlier this year, Noah Syndergaard said his pitching world changed for the better over the past year when he finally learned how to loosen his grip on the baseball and hold it like an egg, as they explained in the movie Bull Durham.”13

The film also has transcended the sports page, and has come to define Shelton’s show-biz success. In 2010 TBS announced that he had signed to write and executive-produce the Bull Durham-esque Hound Dogs, an hourlong TV comedy pilot centering on the minor-league Nashville Hound Dogs. “As he did with Bull Durham, Shelton will draw from his own experiences as a minor leaguer,” reported Entertainment Weekly.14 But the show was not picked up, and Hound Dogs emerged as a 2011 made-for-television movie.

Then in 2013, the Topps Pro Debut baseball card set featured Bull Durham cut signature cards of Costner, Sarandon, Robbins, and Robert Wuhl (who plays Coach Larry Hockett); three years later, the Topps Archives set included seven Bull Durham insert cards along with autographed cards of Shelton and various cast members. The property also was transformed into a stage musical, which premiered in Atlanta in 2014. Shelton contributed the show’s book; the essence of the story is summed up in the three-sentence description found on the show’s website: “CRASH loves Annie. NUKE loves Annie. ANNIE loves Baseball.”15

Then in 2016, he was co-executive producer (along with Eric Gagne and Ben Lyons) of Spaceman, a biopic directed by Brett Rapkin and starring Josh Duhamel as Bill “Spaceman” Lee.

Back in the 1990s, while researching the book Great Baseball Films, I queried real-life major leaguers on their feelings toward baseball-on-screen. Phil Rizzuto commented that those who truly know the game should be hired for their expertise. “They should have ex-ballplayers, groundskeepers (and) newspapermen to make (the films more) realistic,” pronounced Scooter.16

Rizzuto easily might have cited Ron Shelton as the ideal baseball-movie architect. So it was not surprising that Bull Durham was lauded by baseball professionals. “I thought it was a great movie,” Don Mattingly told me in a Yankee Stadium pregame conversation. “I played in the South Atlantic League, (and the film) was pretty close to capturing life in the minor leagues. It was pretty cool.”17 “When it came out,” reported Shelton, “Will Clark (then of the San Francisco Giants) was passing out garter belts in the locker room. Apparently, the Giants really embraced the movie.”

Even the comments that were more critical at least acknowledged the film’s uniqueness. “The most true-to-life (baseball films) have been made in recent years,” observed Joe L. Brown, the son of comic actor Joe E. Brown and the longtime Pittsburgh Pirates general manager, who was interviewed for Great Baseball Films. “Bull Durham was good, but I didn’t like all the profanity. Some of the incidents in it seemed outlandish, but there was truth to it as it showed some of the experiences kids have in the lower minor leagues.”18

Shelton’s reason for making Bull Durham, he explained, was that he “felt no one had made a sports movie right.” The majority of baseball films focus on the glory of the game, on-field drama, underdog heroes hitting game-winning home runs in the last of the ninth or striking out a fearsome opponent’s heaviest hitter with the bases loaded. “I generally don’t like them,” he noted. “They’re not relative to anything other than a publicist’s idea of their subjects.”

For example, Shelton cited two celluloid biographies of Babe Ruth: The Babe Ruth Story, a 1948 film starring William Bendix; and 1992’s The Babe, with John Goodman. “Neither of them worked,” he said. “The first in particular is nothing more than a campy exercise. How can you believe William Bendix, who looked to be about 45 when he made this film, in his scenes (playing Babe) as a 16-year-old orphan?”

He added that fans “don’t understand that athletes don’t hate other athletes. The Dodger players don’t hate the Giant players. The fact of the matter is that they all hate management. They all have much in common with labor.

“My view of sports is from the field, the locker room, the team bus. I tend to tell stories from the field, not the 30th row of the bleachers.” With this in mind, Shelton was ideally suited to direct Jordan Rides the Bus (2010), a 51-minute episode of 30 for 30, the ESPN documentary series. There, he charts Michael Jordan’s early 1990s foray into minor-league baseball.

Shelton’s approach remains consistent in the nonbaseball films he has directed and scripted: White Men Can’t Jump (1992), the story of two urban basketball hustlers (Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes); Tin Cup (1996), about a self-destructive golfer (also played by Kevin Costner); and Play It to the Bone (1999), with Harrelson and Antonio Banderas as aging boxers and best pals who agree to face off in the ring. Sports also are present in films that Shelton only scripted or co-scripted: football (1986’s The Best of Times); basketball (1994’s Blue Chips); and boxing (1996’s The Great White Hype).

However, even when baseball is not the focus of the story, Shelton manages to sneak references to the sport into his scenario. For instance, in Tin Cup, it is revealed near the finale that the hero, Roy “Tin Cup” McAvoy, won his nickname as a schoolboy baseball player. In one sequence, McAvoy even yells out “Louisville Slugger” as he belts a golf ball with a baseball bat.

In his earliest films, Shelton is credited only as screenwriter. He was inspired to work behind the camera because, as he explained, “I wanted to direct my own words. I didn’t like the way they’d been interpreted on screen.” One exception is Under Fire, whose script Shelton co-authored with Clayton Frohman: a 1983 drama set in Nicaragua just before the fall of dictator Anastasio Somoza to the revolutionary Sandinista forces. “I was pleased with the way that one was made,” Shelton said.

One of the secondary characters in Under Fire is Pedro, a bomb-throwing Sandinista who greatly admires then-Baltimore Orioles pitcher Dennis Martinez. Pedro autographs a baseball and instructs an American reporter to give it to Martinez when she returns to the United States. With a grand gesture, he dons an Orioles cap and hurls a grenade with pinpoint accuracy, just as his idol would burn in fastballs.

“Kid’s got a hell of an arm,” observes a photojournalist. Pedro then declares, “Dennis Martinez, he is the best. He is from Nicaragua. He pitches major leagues. … You see Dennis Martinez, you tell him that my curveball is better, that I have good scroogie. …”19 Seconds later, Pedro is felled by a bullet.

“I didn’t want to make an ideological movie about the Nicaraguan revolution,” explained Shelton. “I didn’t want to make a movie for the already converted. But how could I make the Sandinista point of view understandable to audiences? I decided to do it through baseball, by having a young revolutionary infatuated with baseball.” Pedro is a character who, as Shelton said, “is not gonna talk about Karl Marx. He’s gonna talk about Earl Weaver.”

In Under Fire, Shelton honors the type of little-known but devoted ballplayer with whom he feels an affinity by naming one of the characters, a political flack, after career minor-league pitcher-manager Hub Kittle. Kittle entered baseball as a player in 1937 and began managing in 1948, but kept returning to the mound for years after his final full season as a pitcher. In 1980, at age 63, he even hurled an inning for the Triple-A Springfield Redbirds. (Kittle finally debuted in the majors in 1971, as a Houston Astros coach.)

Hub Kittle may be a relatively obscure baseball professional. Ty Cobb may be one of the most famous names in baseball history. But which one would you rather have coaching your kid’s Little League baseball team?

Still, Bull Durham – and not Cobb or any of his other films – remains Ron Shelton’s masterpiece. Upon its release, I described it as “a tremendously entertaining film and arguably the most knowing of all baseball movies.”20 This was true in 1988, and it remains so in 2016. 

ROB EDELMAN is the author of Great Baseball Films and Baseball on the Web (which Amazon.com cited as a Top 10 Internet book), and is a frequent contributor to Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game. He offers film commentary on WAMC Northeast Public Radio and is a longtime Contributing Editor of Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide and other Maltin publications. With his wife, Audrey Kupferberg, he has coauthored Meet the Mertzes, a double biography of Vivian Vance and super-baseball fan William Frawley, and Matthau: A Life. His byline has appeared in Total Baseball, The Total Baseball Catalog, Baseball and American Culture: Across the Diamond, NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, The National Pastime: A Review of Baseball History, The Baseball Research Journal, and histories of the 1918 Boston Red Sox, 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers, 1947 New York Yankees, and 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates. He is the author of a baseball film essay for the Kino International DVD Reel Baseball: Baseball Films from the Silent Era, 1899-1926; is an interviewee on several documentaries on the director’s cut DVD of The Natural; was the keynote speaker at the 23rd Annual NINE Spring Training Conference; and teaches film history courses at the University at Albany (SUNY).

Photo credit

Ron Shelton with the Rochester Red Wings. (Courtesy of the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle)

Author’s note and acknowledgments

The original version of this article was published in 1997 in Issue 17 of SABR’s The National Pastime.

Special thanks to Rory Costello and John-William Greenbaum for their comments on the “origin” of “Nuke” LaLoosh.

Notes

1 Earl Gustkey, “Ty Cobb: No Better Player Swung a Bat; No Worse a Person Played the Game,” Los Angeles Times, September 12, 1985.

2 All remarks from Ron Shelton are from an interview conducted by the author in December 1994, unless otherwise indicated.

3 Al Stump, Cobb: A Biography (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1994), 6. 

4 Research by Pete Palmer resulted in two base hits – which had been double-counted – being subtracted from Cobb’s career batting average, edging it down from .367 to .366.

5 https://rollingstone.com/movies/reviews/cobb-19941202.

6 https://sfgate.com/movies/article/FILM-REVIEW-Tommy-Lee-Jones-Strikes-Out-as-3028597.php

7 Line from Bull Durham screenplay.

8 Johnette Howard, “Minor League HR King Mike Hessman – the Real-Life Crash Davis – Had Career Worth Celebrating,” ESPN.com, December 14, 2015.

9 Line from Fastball narration.

10 Mark Hyman, “No Bull: Ex-Player Claims He Inspired ‘Durham’ Character,” Daytona Beach Sunday News-Journal, July 3, 1988: 5D.

11 Ibid.

12 Lines from Bull Durham screenplay.

13 Kevin Kernan, “Get Michael Pineda Out of Yankees Rotation Right Now,” New York Post, May 28, 2016.

14 Mandi Bierly, “Ron Shelton to Pen Minor League Baseball Comedy for TBS. Can We Call Up Costner (or Russell)?” Entertainment Weekly, October 21, 2010.

15 https://bulldurhammusical.com/

16 Rob Edelman, Great Baseball Films (New York: Citadel Press, 1994), 10

17 On-field pregame interview with author at Yankee Stadium, July 1994.

18 Edelman.

19 Lines from Under Fire screenplay.

20 Edelman.

Most protests are quickly dismissed by league presidents. Many suspended games are merely resumed the next day, or perhaps two days later. However, there have been some very peculiar box scores and results after protested/suspended games were finally finished. In addition there was the famous Pine Tar Game of July 24, 1983. George Brett of the Kansas City Royals hit a two-out home run in the ninth off of New York Yankee reliever Goose Gossage apparently giving them a 5–4 lead, but Brett was called out because there was too much pine tar on his bat, seemingly ending the game. However, the Royals’ appeal was upheld and the game was resumed on August 18. The only further oddity of this game was that left-hander Don Mattingly was put in as a second baseman and pitcher Ron Guidry played center field.

ALMOST PLAYING FOR BOTH CLUBS IN THE SAME GAME

No player has played for both teams in a suspended or protested game. There is a misconception that Jim Brosnan did this. This belief probably originated from Harry Simmons’ So You Think You Know Baseball? He posed a hypothetical situation where Brosnan was both the winning pitcher and the losing pitcher in one game because of being traded after a suspended game. Compounding the confusion, Brosnan was involved in a number of suspended games.

There have been a few times that a major league player could have played for both teams in a single game. Of note, this did happen in a National Basketball Association game originally begun November 8, 1978 and completed on March 23, 1979. Harvey Catchings and Ralph Simpson played for the Philadelphia 76ers and Eric Money played for the New Jersey Nets when the game began, but were traded to the opposing teams (February 7, 1979) by the time the suspended game was resumed. All three played for both teams (Al Skinner was also in the trade, but did not play in either game).

Baseball’s first theoretical instance was June 17, 1945 when the Brooklyn Dodgers played the Boston Braves and the game was suspended and finished August 4, 1945. Reserve Dodger Morrie Aderholt (second baseman and outfielder) did not play on either date. However, he was a Dodger until he was sold to the Boston Braves August 1, 1945. Thus, he had the possibility of playing for both teams, though he did not.

The next situation occurred June 17, 1951 in a game between the New York Giants and the Pittsburgh Pirates. The game was suspended and then finished on July 25, 1951. Reserve infielder Hank Schenz pinchran for the Pirates in the eighth inning. He was sold to the Giants on June 30, 1951, but did not play on the resumed date.

Three players had the chance to play for both teams during the April 27, 1952 Chicago White Sox–St. Louis Browns game that was suspended and then resumed July 3, 1952. On June 15, Leo Thomas and Tom Wright were traded by the Browns to the White Sox for Al Zarilla and Willie Miranda (Miranda was sold back to the Sox 13 days later). Thomas had played third base for the Browns on April 27; Cass Michaels replaced him when the game was resumed. However, Thomas did not play for the Sox on July 3. Wright and Zarilla did not play in either part of the game.

Chris Cannizzaro came close to performing this achievement. He was the starting catcher on May 16, 1971, in the first game of a San Diego Padres–Chicago Cubs doubleheader. Bob Barton, the regular Padres catcher caught the second game, which was suspended after six innings. Three days later, Cannizzaro was traded to the Cubs. On August 4, 1971 the game was completed, but Cannizzaro did not play. Ironically, he played in the schedule game that followed later that day.

Dave Hamilton also approached playing for two different clubs in the same game. The second game of a St. Louis Cardinals–Pittsburgh Pirates doubleheader on April 23, 1978 was suspended and resumed June 26, 1978. He pitched in the first game of the double header as a reliever (three scoreless innings). However, he was not used in the second game despite two other relievers being used. He was sold by the Cardinals to the Pirates May 28, 1978 and did not play in the resumed game. Like Cannizzaro, he did play in the regularly scheduled game that followed it that day.

PLAYING FOR TWO MAJOR LEAGUE TEAMS IN THE SAME DAY

Although no baseball player has played for two teams in the same game, seventeen have played for two clubs on the same day (besides Max Flack, Cliff Heathcote, and Joel Youngblood who were not in suspended games). This involved playing in a game for one team, and then being traded to a team that later continued a suspended/protested game.

On June 13, 1943, Dee Moore of the Brooklyn Dodgers pinch-hit unsuccessfully for Frenchy Bordagaray in a game against the Boston Braves. That same day, the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Giants had a 3–3 tie game suspended after nine innings. On July 19, Moore was sold on waivers to the Phillies. When the Philadelphia–New York game was resumed on August 6, Moore played first base for the Phillies in the tenth and again was 0-for-1 at bat. Thus he had played for two different teams in a June 13, 1943 game.

On July 16, 1944 Vern Kennedy of the Cleveland Indians pinch-ran in a game against the St. Louis Browns. That same day, the Giants and Phillies had a suspended game. On July 28, 1944, Kennedy was sold to the Phillies and he pitched in the resumed game. Thus on July 16, 1944, Kennedy played for both the Cleveland Indians and the Philadelphia Phillies in major league games.

Glen Gorbous on April 24, 1955, while playing for the Cincinnati Reds, pinch-hit for Johnny Temple in the seventh inning and was called out on strikes. On that same day, the Phillies and Pittsburgh Pirates had a game suspended with one out in the bottom of the eighth inning. On April 30, 1955, Gorbous, Andy Seminick, and Jim Greengrass were traded to Philadelphia for Smoky Burgess, Steve Ridzik, and Stan Palys. When the trade was completed on June 28, 1955, Gorbous replaced Bob Bowman in the ninth inning for the Phillies. Thus he played on two teams on the same day. Of note, Seminick did play in the resumed game, but had not played for Cincinnati on April 24.

Bill Virdon played for the St. Louis Cardinals against the Chicago Cubs in a May 13, 1956 doubleheader. He went 0-for-4 in each game. He was traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates on May 17, 1956. On May 13, 1956 the Philadelphia Phillies and Pittsburgh Pirates played a game that was suspended and later resumed on July 3, 1956. Virdon pinch hit for Eddie O’Brien in the ninth for the Pirates and singled.

Bob Usher played for the Cleveland Indians against the Detroit Tigers on April 21, 1957. In the ninth he pinch-hit for Don Mossi and walked. He was traded to the Washington Senators May 15, 1957. On April 21, 1957 the Baltimore Orioles and Washington Senators played a game that was suspended and later resumed on May 27, 1957. Usher replaced Whitey Herzog in center field and went 0-for-2.

Danny O’Connell played for the Milwaukee Braves against the Cincinnati Reds on April 28, 1957, getting one double in three at-bats. He was traded to the New York Giants on June 15, 1957 in the Red Schoendienst transaction. He replaced Red in the lineup when the April 28, 1957 suspended game between the Giants and Phillies was resumed on August 16, 1957 and walked in his only appearance.

Ron Northey pinch-hit for Earl Battey for the Chicago White Sox against the Kansas City Athletics on April 28, 1957 (he flied out). He later was released by the Sox on May 29, 1957 and signed with the Philadelphia Phillies the next day. On April 28, 1957 the Giants and Phillies played a game that was suspended and later resumed on August 16, 1957. Playing for the Phillies, Northey grounded out for Turk Farrell. Thus, Northey pinch-hit for two different teams on the same date, in different leagues.

On June 13, 1968, during a California Angels and Boston Red Sox game, Vic Davalillo while playing for the Cleveland Indians, pinch-hit for Tommy Harper and continued in right field. He was 1-for-3. On June 15, 1968, he was traded to the California Angels for Jimmie Hall. On June 13, 1968 the California Angels and Boston Red Sox played a game that was suspended and later resumed on August 8, 1968. Davalillo played center field in the ninth for the Angels.

On May 16, 1971, Leron Lee played for the St. Louis Cardinals and pinch-hit for Moe Drabowski (he struck out). He played right and left field and went 1-for-2. On June ll, 1971, he was traded to the San Diego Padres. On May 16, 1971 the second game between the Chicago Cubs and the San Diego Padres was suspended and later resumed on August 4, 1971. As a Padre, he grounded out for Tom Phoebus.

On May 10, 1979, Miguel Dilone of the Oakland Athletics played right field against the Baltimore Orioles and went 0-for-4. He was sold to the Chicago Cubs on July 4, 1979. On May 10, 1979 the Cincinnati Reds-Chicago Cubs game was suspended and later resumed on July 23, 1979. Then he pinch-ran for Bill Buckner in the 11th inning.

Cliff Johnson, on May 28, 1980, was the designated hitter for the Cleveland Indians against the Baltimore Orioles. He was 2-for-4 with a walk. He was traded to the Chicago Cubs on June 23, 1980. On May 28, 1980 the Montreal Expos and Chicago Cubs played a game that was suspended and later resumed on August 8, 1980. He then struck out pinch-hitting for Mike Vail in the 11th inning. However, he hit a grand slam home run in the 14th to win the game. Thus Johnson drove in five runs that day: one for the Cleveland Indians and four for the Cubs.

On June 9, 1982 Larry Milbourne played second base for the Cleveland Indians and was 1-for-4. He was traded to the Minnesota Twins on July 3 and when the suspended Cleveland Indians-Detroit Tigers game of June 9, 1982 was resumed on September 24, he replaced Migel Dilone in the 14th inning at second base. He went 0-for-1.

On April 20, 1986, Bobby Bonilla was 0-for-4 for the Chicago White Sox against the Boston Red Sox. He was traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates July 23. Also on April 20, 1986, the Pirates and Chicago Cubs played a game that was suspended and later resumed on August 11. Bonilla replaced Mike Brown and played first base. He was 0-for-1 with an intentional walk.

On July 13, 1986 Tom Foley played shortstop for the Philadelphia Phillies against the Houston Astros. Then on July 24, 1986 he was traded by Philadelphia Phillies with Larry Sorensen to Montreal Expos for Skeeter Barnes and Dan Schatzeder. Also on July 13, 1986, the game between the Cincinnati Reds and the Montreal Expos was suspended with two out in the top of the sixth inning. When it was resumed on July 24, 1986 Foley was able to enter the game in the sixth inning and play shortstop “again” in the game of July 13.

On May 4, 1995 Luis Polonia of the New York Yankees played left field against the Boston Red Sox and was 0-for-3. On August 11, 1995 he was traded to the Atlanta Braves. When the May 4, 1995 Atlanta–Florida Marlins suspended game was completed on September 7, 1995, he pinch-hit for Brad Woodall in the ninth and singled.

Also on May 4, 1995 Buddy Groom of the Detroit Tigers faced two Cleveland Indian batters, but did not get either out. Fortunately, the Tigers hung on for a 4–3 victory. On August 7, 1995 he was traded to the Florida Marlins. Also on May 4, 1995, the Atlanta Braves and Florida Marlins had a suspended game. Thus, when their suspended game was resumed on September 7, 1995, he pitched the ninth inning for the Marlins.

On April 28, 2008, Ken Griffey Jr. of the Cincinnati Reds played right field against the St. Louis Cardinals and went 2-for-4. On July 31, he was traded to the Chicago White Sox. Also on April 28, 2008, the White Sox and the Baltimore Orioles had a suspended game. This was resumed on August 25, 2008, and Griffey pinch-hit for Brian Anderson and drew a walk.

Of note, Earl Rapp was in the minors (Oakland PCL) and later played in a suspended game in the majors (June 17, 1951) the same day while Pete Koegel (Eugene PCL) also performed this feat (August 1, 1971).

DEBUTS

The dates of debuts of baseball players become problematic when they later appear in a protested or suspended game. Table 1 shows the players who actually played major league games before their major league debut dates due to suspended games.

LOSING PITCHERS NOT WITH THE LOSING TEAM

There have been a number of instances that the losing pitcher no longer pitched for the team, or lost the game before he actually pitched for the team. Table 2 shows the seven pitchers who lost games despite no longer being on the losing team.

Since Bill Harrelson, Manny Muniz, and Bud Anderson lost games before their official debuts, they had 0–1 records when they officially began their major league careers. Similarly, Jim Hearn had an additional loss two months after he ended his major league career.

Frank DiPino in 1986 had another oddity of losing a game. The April 20, 1986 Pittsburgh Pirates–Chicago Cubs game was suspended until August 11, 1986. At the time of the suspension, DiPino was with the Houston Astros. However, on July 21, 1986, he was traded to the Cubs and was the losing pitcher after it was resumed. Since the loss officially was on April 20, he lost a Chicago Cubs game while with the Houston Astros.

In addition, Cloyd Boyer of the St. Louis Cardinals almost lost a game while on the disabled list. On August 2, 1951, he was the apparent pitcher of record in a suspended game. It was resumed on September 14 and he officially lost the game then. However, he had injured his arm and did not pitch either in the majors or the minors after August 12. The Cardinals had not placed him on the disabled list or returned him to the minors, even though he was injured.

WINNING PITCHERS NOT WITH THE WINNING TEAM

Just as pitchers have officially lost games when they were not with their teams, there have been pitchers who have won suspended games when they were not on the winning team on the official date of victory or on the day the game was actually won. (See Table 3.)

Since Barry Jones was the winning pitcher of the April 20, 1986 game, and Frank DiPino was the losing pitcher, neither the winning nor the losing pitcher was with either team on the official game date. Similarly, since Williams was the winning pitcher of the August 1, 1971 game, and Manny Muniz was the losing pitcher, again neither the winning nor the losing pitcher was with either team on the official game date.

Since Reardon, Jones, and Castillo won their games before their debuts, they had 1–0 records when beginning their official major league careers. Hanrahan had been traded away before his suspended game was completed and thus earned a victory for the Nationals while pitching for the Pirates.

Holtzman was in the National Guard and he was spending two weeks (July 31 – August 14, 1971) with his military outfit when the game was resumed.

UNUSUAL REASONS TO NOT PLAY IN A SUSPENDED GAME

On June 5, 1943 the Philadelphia Phillies played the St. Louis Cardinals in a game interrupted after 7 1?2 innings. Cardinal third baseman Jimmy Brown could not play in the resumption of the game on July 29. He was now in the United States Army (see Ken Holtzman). Whitey Kurowski, their regular third baseman replaced him in that game. There does not appear to be any player who was in the military when a game was suspended and then played in it when the game was resumed.

On June 1, 1958, the Cincinnati Reds and the Philadelphia Phillies played in game suspended with one out in the top of the ninth inning. It was resumed August 11. A number of players were traded or sold by their team or were added to their team before the continuation (Don Newcombe, Johnny Klippstein, Steve Bilko, Walt Dropo, and Jim Hegan). In addition Phillies first baseman Ed Bouchee now played. Bouchee had an outstanding rookie season in 1957, but during the offseason had pleaded guilty to multiple counts of exposing himself to young females. He did not go to jail but was placed on probation. In addition he was hospitalized in the Institute of Living (Hartford, Connecticut) for several months. Thus, he was residing in a psychiatric hospital during a game in which he officially played.

KEEPING A STREAK ALIVE

Stan Musial from April 15, 1952 through August 22, 1957 set the National League record for consecutive games played with 895 (subsequently broken by Billy Williams). However, it took a suspended game to keep the streak alive. After 862 games (beginning on the final game of the 1951 season), Musial did not play in the second game of the July 21, 1957 doubleheader. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “The combination of the doubleheader and the hot humid weather was too formidable,” and Musial did not play. With one out in the top of the ninth, Ken Boyer singled and the game was suspended.

When the game was resumed on August 27, Musial immediately pinch ran for Boyer and then played first base for the bottom of the ninth. This extended his streak that eventually ended after the August 22, 1957 game.

STEPHEN D. BOREN MD, FACEP, MBA has been a member of SABR since 1979. Besides being a board-certified emergency medicine physician, he is medical director for Medicare B in eight states. He was stationed in the US army in Korea where the real “M*A*S*H” took place. In addition to multiple publications in the “Baseball Research Journal,” “The National Pastime,” and “Baseball Digest,” he has 53 medical publications. He believes that he is the only person ever to be published in “Baseball Digest,” “New England Journal of Medicine,” and the “Wall Street Journal” in a single calendar year. Contact him at sdboren@uic.edu.

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to acknowledge extensive use of Retrosheet.org.

Sources

Harry Simmons, So You Think You Know Baseball? (New York: Fawcett World, 1960), 129.
The Sporting News Baseball Guides, 1942–2007.
The Sporting News Baseball Registers, 1942–2008
The Sporting News NBA Guide, 1980.
The Sporting News microfilm.
Reach Baseball Guides, 1902–39
Spaulding Baseball Guides, 1902–39
Reach-Spalding Baseball Guides, 1940–41.
Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball 2005. Neft, Cohen, Neft. St. Martin’s Griffin
Press.
Chicago Tribune microfilm.
Chicago Sun-Times microfilm.
Chicago Herald American microfilm
St. Louis Post-Dispatch microfilm.
The New York Times microfilm.
www.ESPN.com
Who’s Who In Baseball, 1944–2008

Gladys Goodding was more than just an artiste whose musical stylings entertained the Ebbets Field faithful from the early 1940s on. This cheerful, occasionally mischievous woman was a baseball pioneer. Hers was the first organ permanently situated in a big-league ballpark and she predated Eddie Layton, Jane Jarvis, Wilbur Snapp, and other ballyard organists. Her inimitable performance at every Brooklyn Dodgers home game was a foremost part of the Ebbets experience.

Gladys’s roots were far removed from Brooklyn; she hailed from Macon County, Missouri, where she was born June 18, 1893. Her parents were Joseph Allen Goodding, a businessman and amateur violinist, and Meribah Creola (Riley) Goodding, a piano teacher; she was the third of their four offspring. While a youngster, she was taught the rudiments of piano by her mother. After the death of her parents—Joseph in 1901 and Meribah two years later—Gladys and younger brother Hugh were dispatched to St. Louis where they lived in the Masonic Home, an orphanage.1 During this time, she became enamored of baseball. “I learned the game in St. Louis,” Gladys noted in 1942, “when I used to hang over my back fence and watch the B. & O. nine and other good semipro teams play…”2

After leaving the Home upon turning 18, Gladys lived with an older brother in Kansas City, where she learned to sing, and then settled in Independence, Missouri. By then, she had become so adept at piano that she was able to master the fundamentals of the organ in two weeks. “I had to,” she recalled. “The regular organ player at a church in Independence…was going on vacation. And I wanted to be of some assistance.”3

Gladys wed Robert Reinholdt (Bob) Beck and gave birth to two children: Robert (born in 1915) and Maxine (1916). But she and her husband eventually divorced. Meanwhile, she began performing light opera on the Chautauqua and Lyceum entertainment circuits. She was billed as a “soprano-pianist” and garnered positive press. “Gladys Goodding, with the orchestra, is pleasing immensely with her solos,” wrote The Lyceum Magazine in 1922. “Her stage presence is admirable, and this coupled with a winning smile and a beautiful voice make her one of the most popular members of the organization.” 4 She also became a protégé of Thurlow Weed Lieurance, a period composer best-known for penning “By the Waters of Minnetonka,” a popular love song. “Mr. Lieurance was very much interested in Indiana,” Gladys once recalled.5 Her own aspirations, however, far exceeded fame in the Midwest.

Upon her divorce, Gladys reclaimed her maiden name and, in 1923, she and her children moved to New York City. “I wanted to get into musical comedy or light opera,” she explained, “but I was a woman with two children and needed the security of a steady job.”6 To support herself and her family, she became a full-time organist in Loew’s theaters, where she provided musical accompaniment for silent films. She also occasionally went on tour; in October 1931, for example, she was the instrumentalist for the Roxy Male Quartet, performing in concert in Ossining, New York.7 She was the musical accompanist on “Major Bowes Amateurs on Tour,” a unit of prize-winners from the radio talent show that performed at various venues. She also soloed on the radio. At the 12 noon hour and lasting for 15 minutes on February 17, 1930, “Gladys Goodding, songs” aired over WOV radio in New York.8

Her break into sports came in 1937, when she was hired to accompany sporting events at Madison Square Garden; she entertained fans at Rangers hockey and Knicks basketball games and played “The Star-Spangled Banner” at boxing matches. “Ethel Mullany, head of the [Garden] booking department…helped me get my sports job,” Goodding recalled. “She convinced Tommy Lockhart, one of the hockey bosses, that I would be an added attraction.”9

Between 1925 and 1968, the Garden was located on Eighth Avenue between 49th and 50th Streets in Manhattan and Gladys and her organ were situated in Loge 29 of the venue. “The Garden is just like home to her,” the New York Post reported in 1947. “She’s ‘Gladys’ to all the personnel and she calls them by their first names right back.”10 For a while, she also played at the finale of boxing cards. But then, on one occasion, Chick Wergeles, a promoter whose fighter had just been beaten, was complaining loudly during a radio interview—and Gladys employed her musical skill in an attempt to silence him. “I played ‘Good Night, Sweetheart’, and that was the last time I performed after the fights at the Garden.”11

The Brooklyn Dodgers hired Gladys in 1942. The story goes that a Brooklyn hockey fan and Garden regular suggested that she bring her skills to Ebbets Field. She penned a letter to Dodgers Executive Vice-President Larry MacPhail and was immediately hired. “Mr. MacPhail plays the piano and is a lover of fine music,” she noted during that first season. “I got the job.”12 That May the Dodgers brought an electric Hammond organ into Ebbets Field and Gladys eventually found herself “installed in the baseball field ‘organ loft,’ a glass enclosure high above the crowd.”13 The Brooklyn Eagle reported that it “looks as though the (organ) is to become a permanent fixture of Dodger games—Also Gladys Goodding, the virtuoso who plays it…” 14

That first season, two unrelated incidents thrust Gladys into the limelight. First, a retired music teacher who resided near Ebbets Field took her to court because he was bothered by her organ playing. But there was a catch. “The poor darling was hard of hearing,” Gladys recalled. “He couldn’t even hear the judge’s questions. The case was dismissed. The next day the complainant asked me if I would play one of his compositions. I couldn’t refuse him. He was a nice person after all.”15 Then she flaunted her trademark ingenuity when three umpires—Bill Stewart, Ziggy Sears, and Tom Dunn—appeared on the Ebbets Field turf and, to the delight of the fans, she regaled them by playing “Three Blind Mice.” “That was the one and only time I played it,” she explained. “It was done especially for Umpire Bill Stewart. I knew him from Madison Square Garden when he was a hockey referee. After the game I apologized and Bill forgave me.”16 Indeed, during the 1942 season, Tom O’Reilly, writing in PM, described her as “the lady who made so much noise in Ebbets Field, Home of Pandemonium” and the “mood builder for MacPhail’s Mendicants” as well as “minstrel to our Kingly Bums” whose objective was to “sooth the savage breasts of the Flatbush Faithful.”17

As the years passed, Gladys became an Ebbets Field institution. She received fan mail from as far away as Canada and Honolulu. In 1947, she was commissioned to record a “Baseball Medley” on a special V-Disc (a recording made in cooperation with the US military for the entertainment of GIs) produced by the Music Branch of the US War Department’s Special Services Division. Her selections were “Sidewalks of New York,” “Shine on Harvest Moon,” “Alice Blue Gown,” “Down By the Old Mill Stream,” “Margie,” and, of course, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”18 That same year, she penned the music and lyrics for “Follow the Dodgers,” which became the team’s theme song. Her playing was featured on a recording of the tune, with a chorus provided by the Bank of Manhattan Choral Club. “It’s a good rousing song,” she observed, “and I didn’t overdo it like most songs about the Dodgers by predicting victory.”19

There’s a baseball club in Brooklyn
A team they call ‘Dem Bums
That keeps your eye right on them
And watch for hits and runs

Oh, follow the Dodgers
Follow the Dodgers around
The infield, the outfield, the catcher
And that fellow on the mound

Oh, the fans will come a-runnin’
When the Dodgers go a-gunnin’
For the pennant that they’re
Fightin’ for today

So, Dodgers—keep swingin’
And the fans will keep singin’
Follow the Dodgers! Hooray!20

Also in 1947, Gladys was described by New York Post writer Mary Braggiotti as “a warm-mannered, feminine little person with humorous blue eyes, fluffy brown hair and two grown-up children.” And it was stressed that “baseball is her game.” “I enjoy all the sports,” she declared, “but baseball is the game I love. I’m definitely a Dodger fan, of course. I have the best seat in the park and I watch every game right through. There’s a great camaraderie about baseball. It’s the strangest, nicest feeling…” As proof of her horsehide devotion, the profile concluded, “Where do you suppose she went the other night? To a baseball game at the Polo Grounds with Hilda Chester, the famous Dodger fan.”21

By then, her long-established specialty was her unique rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which she simultaneously sang and played in “a spirited interpretation…[employing] a ringing lyric soprano.”22 Like clockwork, her performance was timed at one minute, five seconds. By 1952, she had performed it on thousands of occasions, but she told Val Adams of The New York Times that “it sounds new to me every time I play it.” Adams wrote that Gladys had long-been living “in a hotel just around the corner from Madison Square Garden. On baseball days she rides the subway to Ebbets Field, accompanied by her fox terrier pup, who sits beside her at the organ. Sometimes he stands up for `The Star Spangled Banner’ and sometimes he doesn’t.”23,24 Also that year, Brooklyn Eagle columnist Tommy Holmes noted, “Miss Gladys Goodding celebrates her tenth anniversary as organist laureate at Ebbets Field and it is safe to say that her music has provided more consistent pleasure than the Dodgers.”25

The present-day practice of blaring a specific song for a ballplayer as he comes to the plate or the mound (from Trevor Cahill’s “White Rabbit” and Francisco Cervelli’s “That’s Amore” to Anthony Rizzo’s “Can’t Stop” and Mariano Rivera’s “Enter Sandman”) also may be linked to Gladys. “Mine was a wonderful relationship with the players and fans,” she once declared. “Before the games, I would serenade the players on their birthdays, play their state songs and their favorite popular numbers.”26 Before construction of the organ box, the instrument was near the home team dugout, allowing her to become “acquainted with the boys when they’d come over to me and ask for their favorite tunes. Joe Medwick was the first one to do that. He likes ‘Intermezzo.’” She added that Mickey Owen’s choice number was “Dark Eyes.” Freddie Fitzsimmons had three: “Melancholy Baby,” “Si Si,” and “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.”27

Visiting players could make requests, too. “They call me up or make signs,” she explained. “Now take Red Barrett, the Boston pitcher. He likes the tune ‘Paper Doll.’ The first time he wanted me to play it he kept moving his fingers like scissors, then making believe to rock a doll in his arms—until finally I caught on. Gene Hermanski likes polkas and mazurkas. Red Corriden, the Yankee coach who used to be with the Dodgers…has to have `When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.’ And of course I always play something to do with Dixie when Dixie Walker makes a home run.”28

Gladys maintained this connection during her entire Brooklyn tenure. One of countless examples: On August 18, 1957, the Pittsburgh Pirates were battling the Dodgers in an Ebbets Field twin bill and she serenaded Roberto Clemente and Bob Kennedy on their 23rd and 37th birthdays. Four years earlier, the Brooklyn Eagle reported that she “played the customary rendition on her magic organ in recognition of (New York Giant) Sal Maglie’s 36th birthday. A motion in the Dodger clubhouse to send a horseshoe wreath of poison ivy was voted down.”29

With the advent of television, Gladys’s popularity increased. “During Friday night telecasts of Garden boxing bouts the invisible Miss Goodding has become as much a fixture to the TV audience as a supersized razor,” observed Adams of the Times. “On WOR-TV telecasts from Ebbets Field…her harmonizing at the Hammond is as familiar as the sight of two runners on the same base.”30 And during the pre-game broadcasts of Happy Felton’s Knothole Gang, Gladys feted the host by playing “I Want to Be Happy.” By then, her snappy rendition of “Chiapenecas,” a Mexican folksong, had become a fixture during the seventh inning stretch, with the fans’ cadenced clapping accompanying the music.

On extra-special (albeit none-too-happy) baseball-related occasions, Gladys’s musical choices were extra-appropriate. On their last Ebbets Field appearance in 1952, Dodger fans mournfully filed out of the ball yard—their beloved Bums had just lost Game 7 of the World Series to the hated Bronx Bombers, 4-2. The New York Times reported that Gladys captured the mood of the moment as she “played a medley of tunes that left nothing to the imagination. From a rendition of ‘Blues in the Night,’ Miss Goodding… drifted into ‘What Can I Say, Dear, After I Say I’m Sorry.’” She followed up with “This Nearly Was Mine,” “You Got Me Cryin’ Again,” “Deep Purple,” and “What a Difference a Day Makes.” When “the park was virtually empty… Gladys concluded with ‘Auld Lang Syne’—better known in Brooklyn as ‘Wait ‘Til Next Year’”31

And on the Bums’ last-ever appearance at the Flatbush ballyard—a 2-0 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates on September 24, 1957—Gladys, according to Roscoe McGowan of the Times, “played numerous tunes with the farewell motif.” After Brooklyn scored its first run in the first inning, she serenaded the fans with “Am I Blue?” and “After You’ve Gone.” Run number two came in the third frame, after which she played “Don’t Ask Me Why I’m Leaving.” Also on her playlist were “Thanks for the Memory,” “How Can You Say We’re Through?” “When I Grow Too Old to Dream,” and “When the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day.” McGowan noted, “Miss Goodding at the end of the game, started playing `May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You,’ but somebody turned on the record always played after Brooklyn games, ‘Follow the Dodgers.’ This was eventually silenced and the organist was able to close out her program by playing ‘Auld Lang Syne.’”32

Jack Lang, covering the farewell for the Long Island Star-Journal, augmented this playlist. Before the game began, she “sounded the keynote with her rendition of ‘California Here I Come.’” Among the other “sentimental favorites” were “What Can I Say Dear, After I Say I’m Sorry,” “If I Had My Way,” “Vaya Con Dios,” “Que Sera, Sera,” and “Say It Isn’t So.” “When the game was over,” Lang added, “Gladys was practically crying at the organ. As the fans filed out of the park, she played ‘So Long, It’s Been Good to Know You,’ ‘May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You,’ and, finally, ‘Auld Lang Syne.’”33

Upon the Dodgers abandoning the Borough of Churches, Gladys remained in New York and maintained her Madison Square Garden connection. Her extracurricular activities continued to involve everything from entertaining patrons in department stores and patients at Veterans Administration hospitals to directing amateur shows and binding Braille books for The Lighthouse, an organization which offers assistance to the blind and visually impaired. During World War II, she performed at the Stage Door Canteen, which presented live shows and musical entertainment to Americans in uniform. And she was indeed a New York celebrity. In July 1951, she joined Jersey Joe Walcott, the heavyweight boxing champ, as well as singer Kay Arman and “vocalist” Tony Bennett to perform at a program to raise money for the Brooklyn Amateur Baseball Foundation, which supported 23 sandlot baseball leagues in Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island.34

Upon becoming arthritic, she retired and settled in Arizona; as Dick Young reported in 1959, “Gladys Goodding…is a pretty sick gal in St. Mary’s Hospital, Tucson, Ariz.”35 But she returned to New York and resumed her Garden organ-playing, occasionally landing on the entertainment industry’s version of the disabled list; the following year, a hip fracture kept her away from the Garden for several weeks. But she was well-aware of her good fortune. “I call myself the luckiest woman in the world every time I’m at a sports show.”36

Gladys Goodding passed away on November 18, 1963, at St. Clare’s Hospital in Manhattan; she had suffered a heart attack, and her remains were cremated.37 Her final Madison Square Garden appearance was at a basketball game on the Saturday before her death. A little less than two weeks later, the New York Times reported that, for the “first time since 1937 the national anthem was played at a Madison Square Garden fight without Mrs. Gladys Goodding at the organ….[She] was as much a part of [the] Garden as its basketball players, hockey players and fighters.” 38 But she was as equally beloved in Brooklyn. After the Dodgers copped their first (and only) World Series victory, Brooklyn Borough President John Cashmore gifted Gladys with a silver coffee service.

Her celebrity was resurrected decades later by the Trivial Pursuit board game. Players were asked to name the individual “who played for the Knicks, Rangers, and the Dodgers.” The answer: Gladys Goodding.39

ROB EDELMAN teaches film history courses at the University at Albany. He is the author of “Great Baseball Films and Baseball on the Web,” and is co-author (with his wife, Audrey Kupferberg) of “Meet the Mertzes,” a double biography of I Love Lucy’s Vivian Vance and famed baseball fan William Frawley, and “Matthau: A Life.” He is a frequent contributor to “Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game” and has written for “Baseball and American Culture: Across the Diamond,” “Total Baseball,” “Baseball in the Classroom,” “Memories and Dreams,” and “NINE.“

Notes

1 “Missouri Masonic Museum: Reflected Values—Brotherly Love, Relief and Truth,” last accessed July 6, 2017, https://www.mohome.org/missouri-masonic-museum

2 Tom O’Reilly, “Ebbets Field Organist Soothes Flatbush Faithful,” PM, July 24, 1942: 31.

3 Moe Berger, “Top Player at Garden Never Gets Into Contests,” New York Times, November 15, 1955: 43.

4 “Playmate of Marilynn Miller,” The Lyceum Magazine, July 1922: 44.

5 Tom O’Reilly.

6 Gladys Goodding, Organist, Is Dead,” New York Times, November 20, 1963. 43.

7 “Roxy Quartet To Appear At High School On Oct. 8,” (Ossining) Citizen-Sentinel, September 24, 1931: D10.

8 “Radio Programs Scheduled for Current Week,” New York Times, February 16, 1930, 156.

9 Moe Berger.

10 Mary Braggiotti, “The Glad Gal of Ebbets Field,” New York Post, September 19, 1947.

11 Moe Berger.

12 Tom O’Reilly.

13 “Gladys Goodding, Organist, Is Dead.”

14 Tommy Holmes, “Flack May Run Into Real Poser,” Brooklyn Eagle, May 11, 1942: 9.

15 Moe Berger.

16 Ibid.

17 Tom O’Reilly.

18 “V-Disc 741 Gladys Goodding,” last accessed July 6, 2017,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUcBbi0OSMw

19 Margaret Mara, “Adds Lyrics to Her ‘Follow Dodgers’ Tune,” Brooklyn Eagle, April 26, 1951: 23.

20 “Follow the dodgers (Brooklyn Dodger Tribute),” video last accessed July 6, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNjzf8TvCVA

21 Mary Braggiotti.

22 Ibid.

23 Her longtime residence was the Hotel Belvedere, located at 319 West 48th Street.

24 Val Adams, “The Girl Who’s Heard But Never Seen: Gladys Goodding Provides The Music at Most TV Sporting Events,” New York Times, April 27, 1952: X11.

25 Tommy Holmes, “Robbie Rated Support From Dodger Brass,” Brooklyn Eagle, May 12, 1952: 14.

26 “Gladys Goodding, Organist, Is Dead.”

27 Joan Crosby, “Stars, Umps, Too, Like Gladys’s Tunes,” Brooklyn Eagle, May 4, 1945: 15.

28 Mary Braggiotti.

29 T.H. (Tommy Holmes), “4th Assist For Furillo,” Brooklyn Eagle, April 27, 1953: 15.

30 Val Adams.

31 Louis Effrat, “Dodgers Organist Plays the Blues,” New York Times, October 8, 1952: 38.

32 Roscoe McGowan, “Dodgers Defeat Pirates in Ebbets Field Finale; Phillies Turn Back Giants,” New York Times, September 25, 1957: 33.

33 Jack Lang, “Auld Lang Syne at Ebbets Field,” Long Island Star-Journal, September 25, 1957: 5. An altogether different memory of the occasion was recalled a half-century later by Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully. In an article written by Jerry Crowe, headlined “The last pitch at Ebbets means more to him now,” and published on page D2 of the Los Angeles Times on September 25, 2007, Scully recalled, “Gladys was a very nice lady, known to take a drink or three. And Gladys showed up with a paper bag—and there wasn’t any doubt what was in it. It was too late for lunch….” And he continued, “If I remember correctly, the very first song she played was ‘My Buddy,’ a pretty down song, and it went down from there. All of us in listening to the music were aware of her mental state. And I’m sure she was dipping into the brown bag, and the music kept getting more depressing every third out.”

34 Sam Goldaper, “Joe Walcott Heads Card of Celebrities For All-Star Classic,” Brooklyn Eagle, July 27, 1951: 14.

35 Dick Young, “Young Ideas: Jackie’s Memory Should Be Longer,” Buffalo Courier-Express, July 5, 1959, 7-C.

36 Moe Berger, “Top Player at Garden Never Gets Into Contests,” New York Times, November 15, 1955: 43.

37 According to the “Gladys Goodding” page on ancestry.com (https://www.ancestry.com/genealogy/records/gladys-goodding_35794961), ex-husband Robert passed away on April 25, 1942, in Vallejo, Solano, California. Their offspring did not remain with Gladys in New York. Son Robert married Rose Carolyn Hummel and passed away in December, 1980, in Davenport, Iowa. Daughter Maxine wed Frederick Miles Magnuson and was residing in Florida when she passed away in June, 1988.

38 Deane McGowan, “Persol Upsets Thomas at Garden on Relentless 2-Handed Attack, New York Times, November 30, 1963: 42.

39 “Find A Grave: Gladys Goodding,” last accessed July 6, 2017, https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=111888816

In 1913, the then minor league Chicago Federal League team’s home games had been played on the DePaul University athletic field. The site of Weeghman Park was in a north-side Chicago residential area not far from Lake Michigan, and was formerly a mostly vacant lot at the intersection of Clark and Addison. This property was owned by E. M. Cantillion, Joe Cantillion, and Edmund Archambault, the principal stockholders of the American Association of Minneapolis Millers1. These gentlemen, despite pressure from Organized Baseball, leased the property for the outlaw Federal League’s use. The lease was signed in January 1914, and Charles Weeghman directed work on the ballpark to begin, which it did on March 4, 1914.

Opening Day was scheduled for April 23, less than two months away. The original ballpark site property was a rectangle bordered on all sides by city streets (on the south Addison Avenue, and on the east Sheffield Avenue, Waveland Avenue on the north, and Seminary  Avenue/Clark  Street  on  the  west). The southwest corner of the parcel was at the intersection of Clark and Addison. Clark Street ran northwest-southeast. Seminary Avenue ran north-south and terminated very near the intersection of Clark and Addison. The block of Seminary Avenue between Addison and Waveland no longer exists.

The original ballpark did not utilize all the property. On the northern portion several large residential buildings were located on the south side of Waveland Avenue and abutted the ballpark’s Opening Day 1914 northern boundary. These buildings supplied a substantial rental income and were left intact in the park’s original construction. Along the park’s western boundary there was a nearly 60-foot strip of land (facing Seminary Avenue and Clark Street) that was also not part of the ballpark. The plan was to use this strip for commercial purposes—a kind of ballpark shopping area.

The ballpark’s actual dimensions were: east-west along Waveland Avenue estimated to be about 515 feet, and the north-south dimension along Sheffield Avenue estimated to be about 525 feet. The original ballpark site amounted to about 5.9 acres in size. This was likely about the same size as the then typical major league ballpark used in the Deadball Era (1901—19). The size of the entire property leased by the Chicago Federal League team was some 7.4 acres.

On Opening Day, April 23, 1914, for the Chi-Feds, (as they were called in the press), the park consisted of (1) a single-deck covered steel-and-concrete grandstand that ran from beyond first base to beyond third base, (2) two pavilions (actually uncovered seating at this point in time) down the left field and right field lines, and, (3) the only seating in fair territory, a section of wooden bleachers in the right center-center field area. The seating capacity was variously estimated as 14,000 to 20,000. The orientation of the field was conventional (home plate in the southwest portion of the field), as were all of the American League and National League parks in the second decade of the 20th century. Thus the left field foul line ran north-south, and the right field foul line ran east-west and was parallel to Addison Avenue. The single-deck grandstand and pavilions angled towards the left field and right field foul lines, which meant the first base stands diverged from Addison Avenue as the stands neared the right field fence.2

My estimates, of the 1914 Opening Day dimensions, (see below for basis of estimate) were LF 302, CF 376, left of dead CF 406, RF 298 and home plate to the backstop 62 feet. A substantial brick wall enclosed most of the outfield, with a short fence topped by a low screen in front of the bleachers in right-center field. A large scoreboard, an estimated 30 feet high and 40 feet wide, stood in left field. The configuration detailed above lasted for all of three games (April 23-26).

The layout of the playing field meant the left field distance (at the foul pole) was only 302 feet. In the three games played in this configuration, nine home runs were hit. First of all, nine home runs in three games was unheard of in the Deadball Era. In addition, atypical of the Deadball Era, all nine were Over-the-Fence (OTF) home runs, and eight of the nine were over the short left field fence. Newspaper accounts spoke of these left field home runs as “cheap shots.”

Weeghman admitted that the left field distance was too short, and took immediate steps to correct the problem. An additional strip of land, already part of the lease, was added to the northern part of the park (moving the northern boundary toward but not all the way to Waveland Avenue.) This required the demolition of at least one back porch that had been attached to one of the houses on Waveland Avenue. This additional property allowed the left field distance to be increased 25 feet to 327 while left center was increased by nearly 50 feet to about 390.3

The new and expanded left field dimensions, along with a new LF-CF fence, were in place when the Chi-Feds next played on April 28. The large scoreboard located in left field was moved to left-center three days later. What was of interest was that the even shorter right field distance (estimated at 298 feet) attracted no discussion. As Sheffield Avenue was the eastern boundary of the park, there was no way to increase the right field distance unless the brand-new grandstand and third base pavilion were to be somehow lifted up and moved to the west. The bleachers in RC-CF reduced even farther the in-play area of right center and center field. The estimated right center distance (at 30 degrees) was a mere 307 feet.

Before the 1915 season the park was again expanded. The residential buildings on the north edge of the park were torn down and the occupants relocated (hopefully in the reverse sequence). The ballpark’s northern boundary now extended all the way to Waveland Avenue. The purpose of this additional northern expansion was to permit the replacement of the RC-CF bleacher with a new and larger set of bleachers that were built behind the new LF-CF fence. This also required the second relocation of the scoreboard, this time from left center to center field. The new bleachers ran from the left field foul pole to the left edge of the scoreboard, which was now in center field. The center field scoreboard was at a diagonal to the LF-CF bleachers and faced home plate. The left edge of the scoreboard joined the back of the right edge of the LF-CF bleachers, and was entirely behind the RF-CF fence, and thus was completely out of play.

The new LF bleachers provided a net increase in capacity of several hundred seats. The removal of the RC-CF bleacher also increased the area of fair territory in RC and CF as the estimated RC distance (again at 30 degrees) went from 307 to 344. The park now had an overall north-south dimension estimated to be about 565 feet while the east-west distance along Addison Avenue remained unchanged (estimated at 515 feet). The total park size was now about 6.7 acres.

The next change in the ballpark’s configuration occurred in 1916, and was a midseason installation of an in-play screen on top of the RF wall in response to the—for-the-times—large number of home runs to RF and RC. The screen, 10 feet in height, ran from the RF foul pole nearly to the right edge of the CF scoreboard and raised the RF (as it was called in the newspaper accounts of the day) barrier to an estimated height of 22 feet.4 This was the last change to the configuration of the park until the 1922-23 off-season, except for a name change. After the 1915 season, Charles Weeghman acquired the Cubs NL franchise as part of the agreement shutting down the Federal League. After selling out to William Wrigley, the park’s name was changed to Cubs Park starting with the 1919 season.

The park underwent a major expansion and reconfiguration in the 1922-23 off-season. The Cubs employed the park’s original architect, Zachary Davis, to design and direct a massive rebuilding effort.5 The most significant change was effected by jacking up and placing on rollers the 3B portion of the grandstand and the 3B pavilion, and moving them 60 feet both to the west and north.6

The grandstand section near home plate was moved 69 feet to the west. Many of the remaining sections of the grandstand were rebuilt and new sections added on the south and west sides behind the relocated home plate. This moving of part of the grandstand meant the western boundary of the park was now Seminary Avenue. and Clark Street.7 The southwest corner of the ballpark was now at the intersection of Addison and Clark. The remodeling plan called for an increase in the home plate-to-RF fence distance of 61 feet (from 300 to 361).8 However, this move did not increase the RF dimensions by 61 feet, because new RF bleachers were built in front of the preexisting RF fence.

The playing field was lowered by four feet, and the field was also reoriented by moving home plate about 60 feet to the west and the foul lines were rotated about four degrees to the left. When the remodel was complete, seating capacity was now about 30,000. The new dimensions became LF 325, CF 447, and RF 318.

The park’s configuration had been changed twice (early in 1914 and again in midseason 1916) to curb home runs. What does the data on home runs say about Weeghman Park? Unlike the situation in other Deadball Era parks, at Weeghman Park Inside-the-Park Home Runs (IPHRs) were not common. In the 1914-19 time period, IPHRs accounted for a mere 6.2% of the home runs hit at Weeghman Park, while Bounce home runs amounted to an additional 7.2%.9 In the same six-year time period, at all major league parks, IPHRs accounted for 24.6% of total home runs, while Bounce home runs were 2.3% of the total.10

No great importance should be attached to the larger than average proportion of Bounce home runs at Weeghman Park. Unlike at other parks, such as Philadelphia’s Baker Bowl, where Bounce home runs simply bounced into the outfield bleachers, at Weeghman, Bounce home runs were typically flukes. Examples:

1. Felix Chouinard of the Pittsburgh FL team hit a home run on June 16, 1914, that bounced through the picket fence in RF.

2. Fred Merkle of the Braves was credited with a home run on July 2, 191,7 when the Cubs outfielder thoughtfully kicked the ball through the picket fence in LF.

3. My favorite—and a real example of home park advantage—Max Flack of the Cubs (on June 8, 1919) drove a ball to right that hit the top of the RF wall and bounced under the RF screen that had been erected three seasons earlier to reduce home runs.

In 1914, Weeghman Park was a good park for home runs. In that season home runs at Weeghman Park amounted to 138% of the FL average per park. That season at Weeghman Park there were 51 home runs, of which zero were IPHRs and only one was a Bounce home run. The distribution of the OTF home runs in the 1914 season is shown below:

Recall that the LF distance was increased to 327 and LC to about 390 after only three games, and that LC had the 30-foot-high scoreboard as an additional deterrent to LF OTF home runs. RF by contrast had no distance greater than 307 with a 12-foot wall in RF and a seven-eight-foot-high screen in front of the RC bleachers. As a result the distribution of OTF home runs was sharply skewed towards RF.

The zero home runs to CF is likely due to the reporting conventions of the day. The bleachers, actually located in RC-CF, were usually referred to as the “RF bleachers” and the wall from the RF foul pole to the junction with the LF-CF wall was referred to as “the RF wall.” Thus a home run over the right-side portion of the CF area would usually be reported as a home run to RF or to RC. In the 1915 season with the RC bleachers having been removed, total home runs at Weeghman Park dropped (51 to 31), but the relative distribution of OTF home runs was similar to 1914.

The number and distribution of home runs at Weeghman Park were greatly affected by the addition of the screen atop the RF wall in midseason 1916. In the first half of the 1916 season there were a total of 37 home runs in 39 games—a rate (0.95 per game) greater than the major league average (0.80/game) in the Lively Ball Era 1920s. Nor was the total number of home runs in early 1916 substantially influenced by IPHRs. There were only three IPHRs in the first half of the season and no Bounce home runs.

Why so many OTF home runs? The distribution of OTF home runs provides a clue. RF (at the foul pole) was an estimated distance of only 298 feet. Until July 1916, the wall was an estimated 12 feet in height. When the screen was added the total height of the RF barrier became 22 feet. In the second half of the 1916 season (40 games) with the RF screen in place, there were far fewer (only 18) OTF home runs hit at Weeghman Park, of which three were Bounce home runs. The distribution of Weeghman Park OTF home runs in 1916 is shown below:

From the above data the OTF home runs to RF dropped from 25 to eight after the addition of the 10-foot screen to the RF-RC wall. Since OTF home runs to LF and CF were unchanged (seven in both the first and second half of the season), the 10 foot increase in fence height appears to be the principal cause of the decline in OTF home runs. Other factors may have contributed to the drop in OTF home runs to RF/RC. One which could be measured is the change in opportunities for the Cubs’ home run hitters. Of the 16 OTF home runs to RF in the first half, 14 were by left-handed batters.

If each of the Cubs’ batters (those who hit home runs that season) had hit home runs in the second half of the season at the same rate (home runs per at-bat) as in the first half, the expected number of home runs would have been 9.9. In addition, the Cubs left-handed home run hitters in the second half of the season suffered from a 20% decline in batting average. Adjusting for the 38% fewer opportunities for left-handed batters (measured by at-bats) and a 20% lower batting average in the second half for the Cubs’ home run hitters, the expected (assuming other factors equal) Cubs’ OTF home runs to RF were eight compared to the five actually hit. The visitors’ output of OTF home runs to RF in the second half dropped from nine to three. In total the expected number of home runs (OTF to RF) in the second half was 17, and the actual total was eight. From this one can conclude the addition of the screen a mere 10 feet in height reduced RF home runs by more than 50%.

THE BASIS OF THE ESTIMATED CONFIGURATIONS AND DIMENSIONS

The 1914 listed dimensions: LF: 345, 310, 327; CF: 440, RF 356, 345 were taken from Green Cathedrals.11 These varying dimensions for LF and RF deserve further scrutiny. The source of the LF 310 and RF 345 dimensions was found in a pre-season story in the Chicago Tribune.12 The actual distances in the story were “home plate-LF 310 yards, and home plate-RF 345 yards.”

The fact that the dimensions were expressed as yards and not feet makes one skeptical. In addition the newspaper story was written while the ballpark was still under construction and the playing field was not yet laid out.13 Shortly after Opening Day the team’s management decided to move back the LF-CF fence. The LF dimension was increased by a reported 25 feet from 302 to 327.14 This same newspaper story stated, “Towards LC is now 35 feet more and in LC is nearly 50 feet more.”15

The increased LF-LC dimensions meant that the LF fence now ran at more than 90 degrees to the LF foul line. The land added to the ballpark was an odd-shaped area with increasing depth toward CF. This odd shape resulted from the need to effect the changed configuration quickly. This meant the residential buildings on Waveland Avenue could not be torn down until after the 1914 season. This alignment of the LF fence existed only from April 28 until the end of the 1914 season. A new relocated LF fence for the 1915 season was built which was at 90 degrees to the foul line. This change was to permit the construction of a reported set of rectangular bleachers in LF before the 1915 season. Numerous photos of the 1915-22 LF bleachers show them to have been rectangular in shape.16

The listed dimensions in Green Cathedrals for RF are 356 (April 1914), 345 (June 1914), 321 (1915), 298/299 (1921-22), and 318 (1923).17 These variations are most interesting. As the RF wall was along Sheffield Avenue and could not be moved farther from home plate, the only way to change the RF distance was to move home plate. The RF dimensions for 1921-23 are internally consistent.

Between the 1922 and 1923 seasons the club, now owned by William Wrigley, had the park substantially altered. The principal change was effected by jacking up and placing on rollers the grandstand and 3B pavilion and moving them 60 feet to the west.18 This movement of the stands and home plate allowed the construction of RF-CF bleachers and at the same time an increase in the RF foul line distance from 298/299 to 318.

At this same time the playing field was reoriented by about four degrees to the left such that the LF foul line now hit the LF fence at 86 degrees while the RF foul line now hit the RF fence at 94 degrees. The 1923 ballpark revisions included a new set of RF bleachers. These new bleachers were estimated to be about 42 feet in depth. The home plate to RF distance, if at 90 degrees to the fence as in prior years, would have been 317 feet.

As the 1922 RF distance was 299 and the stands and home plate were moved 60 feet away from RF, the resulting 1923 RF distance, if at 90 degrees to the fence, should have been 317 (299+60-42). The actual RF distance was 318 with the fence at 94 degrees to the RF foul line. This evidence shows that RF was always 298/299 from 1914 through 1922. Home run data for 1915-1919, when LF was 327, and RF by my estimate was 298, show 108 OTF home runs (excluding Bounce and other home runs for which the distribution by field is unknown) with LF/LC: 33, CF: 2, and RF/RC: 73. Clearly, if nearly 70 percent of the OTF home runs were to RF and RC, then the RF distance must have been noticeably less than the LF distance.

The following tables show the dimensions, fence heights, and average outfield distances for each configuration of Weeghman Park (1914-15) and Cubs Park (1919-23).

SUMMARY

Wrigley Field in the 1914-22 time period was somewhat smaller than the average major league park. Home runs were noticeably above average for National League parks with a far lower percentage of IPHRs than was typical in the Deadball Era. The 192223 expansion increased capacity to about 20,000; and later the 1926-28 expansion, that extended the double-deck grandstand to both foul poles, increased seating capacity to about 38,000.

Notes

1. St. Louis Post Dispatch, January 26, 1914.
2. “Baseball in Chicago,” special issue of the Chicago Tribune Sunday magazine, May 23, 2004.
3. Chicago Tribune, April 28, 1914.
4. Chicago Tribune, July 8, 1916.
5. William Hartel, A Day at the Park: In Celebration of Wrigley Field, Coal Valley IL: Quality Sports Publications, 1995.
6. Ibid.
7. Chicago Tribune, Dec. 20, 1922.
8. Ibid.
9. Lowry, Phil. Green Cathedrals—rev. Boston: Addison-Wesley/SABR, 1992.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Library of Congress, Photos ID s060168.
13. Ibid.
14. “Baseball in Chicago.”
15. Chicago Tribune, April 28, 1914.
16. Chicago Tribune, April 4, 1914.
17. Chicago Tribune, December 20, 1922.
18. Hartel, A Day at the Park.