The First Fall Classic

by Mike Vaccaro

  Those were the dark old days, before the National Commission had all but eliminated the shady element from the Series by sticking fast to its policy of paying out only the first four games. Now these games were above reproach. Or so they said.

  Still, history was history. “And there’s no time like the present,” Jeff Tesreau said Sunday, “to repeat the history of the 1903 world’s series, is there?”

  After spending most of his Sunday in solitude, John McGraw was happy to see his Game Six pitcher, Rube Marquard, show up late in the afternoon to loosen up his arm. He was less pleased by what he saw next: Marquard rubbing his shoulder, unable to get it loose, unable to get any life on his practice pitches. Already in a dark mood, the manager was turning downright morose.

  “What else can befall the Giants?” he asked a reporter. “Why us?”

  But Marquard tried to reassure his boss, calling him at home later on, saying, “Really, it’ll be fine. It always hurts more when there’s not a real game to be played.” And later still, when a few sportswriters cornered him at his Harlem home, Marquard insisted that he would pitch through whatever ailed him: “The old arm flies right off at the shoulders if necessary to beat these alleged Boston sluggers,” he said. “McGraw stuck with me when I was about as popular as the measles and I still owe him for that. This is the day that I will forever put the quietus on that ‘$11,000 Lemon’ title.” For the rest of his life, Marquard never would forgive the newspapers for dubbing him with that sour nickname.

  But even those reassurances hadn’t lightened McGraw’s mood, as he’d had a contentious conversation with the members of the National Commission early in the day. He did score one small victory: The Commission agreed that the ball Steve Yerkes had hit into the small opening in center field in Game Five should have been ruled a ground-rule double and not a triple, and Herrmann said he would instruct the umpires that if another game were played at Fenway Park, they should honor that switch. But the other matter on the agenda had really gotten McGraw’s goat. McGraw had assumed that if his team won Game Six at the Polo Grounds, and then won Game Seven back at Fenway, they would quite reasonably receive the final game at home, keeping with the alternate games in alternate cities. “Maybe I am being too optimistic,” McGraw said, “but how else am I supposed to think? Our backs are to the walls but our bodies aren’t in the grave just yet.”

  The Commission, however, ruled that in the event of an eighth and deciding game, there would be a coin flip held to determine who should get the home-field advantage. So, somehow, in a World Series in which the Giants were originally scheduled to get four of the seven games at home, in the Polo Grounds, there stood a reasonable chance that they would get only three home games while the Red Sox were granted five. And you want to talk about breaks … ?

  “By what standard do you consider that fair?” McGraw asked Herrmann.

  “The tie caused a lot of problems,” he was told.

  “The tie caused me a lot of problems, and it caused my nine a lot of problems,” McGraw ranted. “As far as I can tell, it was the best damned thing that ever happened to the Boston Americans. There’s no way to justify granting them extra home games!”

  But McGraw quickly learned the lessons his players already had: The National Commission was judge, jury, and bailiff. They ruled the whole operation.

  “It’s nonsense,” McGraw seethed. “Pure nonsense. Nothing more.”

  He went to sleep angry, awoke even angrier, hoping his team would be just as furious. Dubious, in truth, that it would make a damned bit of difference if Smoky Joe Wood was on top of his game.

  The word spread quickly, as bad news often does. Jake Stahl was the first man in the lobby for breakfast, and not long after that he saw Joe Wood arrive downstairs with Tris Speaker, the two of them already bearing the confident gait of champions.

  “Joe,” Stahl said. “I need a word. Alone.”

  Speaker shook his head, said he’d get a table, left the two men alone, and watched from a distance as his best friend’s jaw seemed to collide with the parquet floor. He saw Stahl put his hand on Wood’s shoulder, what looked like a consoling gesture. Did someone die? Is someone in his family hurt? By the time Wood reached the table, Speaker was genuinely concerned.

  “Are you OK?” Speaker asked.

  “Not really, no,” Wood said, still sounding stunned. “I’m not pitching today.”

  “What do you mean you’re not pitching today? Who’s pitching today, Collins?”

  Wood shook his head. “O’Brien.”

  The fury inside Speaker was immediate and it was palpable. O’Brien? The last anyone had seen O’Brien, as everyone else was heading up to bed the night before, he was on his way out, into the New York night, a few beers in him already and surely plenty more to come. O’Brien? Had Stahl lost his mind? No, there’s no way Jake made this decision. No way in hell.

  “This is McAleer,” Speaker said. “This has to come from him. Has to.”

  Wood shook his head in agreement. “Greedy son of a bitch. Jake said it was his call, but he couldn’t look me in the eye when he said it. This ain’t his call.”

  And across the next hour, as player after player came bubbling into the cafeteria, the news would hit and their shoulders would slump and the bile in their throats would thicken. The last one downstairs was O’Brien, his eyes red and his skin clammy, a view Stahl saw clearly when he broke the news to him.

  “You’re going today, Buck,” Stahl said.

  “Going where?” the pitcher asked.

  Perfect, Stahl thought. Just bloody perfect.

  They were all oblivious. The happy Royal Rooters, all six hundred of them, who’d repeated the march up Broadway that had made them famous before Game One. The low-key Giants fans, who found plenty of good seats available when they walked from the elevated trains and saw small lines at the Speedway ticket entrance. The folks preparing the scoreboards in Times Square and Herald Square and Madison Square Garden in New York, where the crowds were expected to be quiet and sparse, and the ones readying the stages in Boston Common and Washington Street, where police were expecting the most raucous local gathering since the Boston Tea Party (no exaggeration).

  Paul Wood was among the unaware, which was just as well, because there was nothing he could do about the money he’d already wagered on his brother and his baseball team. Certainly compared to the Red Sox themselves, who’d spent the morning stewing over winner’s shares they’d already spent, to say nothing of personal wagers that suddenly seemed less than a sure thing. Joe Wood tried to send a hopeless message to his brother when he took the field at the Polo Grounds wearing a catcher’s mitt, having a spirited catch with utilityman Clyde Engle. If it occurred to Paul or anyone else that this was unusual, the starting pitcher not throwing in the bullpen, it was probably muted because nobody was warming up in the bullpen. At one o’clock—less than ninety minutes before the scheduled starting time—there was no sign of Buck O’Brien. Same thing at 1:15. And again at 1:30. It wasn’t until 1:45 that O’Brien staggered onto the field, walked slowly to the bullpen, and began his workday.

  Joe Wood just glared at him, shook his head, returned to his catch, his fury building with every peg to Engle.

  Marquard, meanwhile, could still feel a whisker of stiffness in his shoulder but figured he could live with it. Larry Doyle, spying him in the bullpen, yelled, “How’s the wing treating you?”

  “My arm is sore and kinky, but I believe it will work out all right,” he said. “And if I’m wrong, I guess I’ll have quite a long time to recover.”

  “All of us will,” the captain said, winking.

  The day was dark and foreboding, a heavy blanket of clouds catching Bill Klem’s eye as he watched the end of pregame practice. Klem knew how lucky everyone had been with the weather, knew that the last thing anyone on either side needed was another day away from the ball field, especially with the stakes as high as they were now. That’s what his concern was, and where his mind was
focused when he absently accepted the lineup cards from Jake Stahl and John McGraw and then prepared himself to call out the batteries. The startling information made him do a double take.

  “Hey, Jake!” the umpire called. “You sure you got the right names on here?”

  Stahl, shaking his head ruefully, nodded.

  “Marquard and Meyers for the Giants!” Klem announced, to scattered applause from the pessimistic gathering of Giants fans that would total only 30,622, leaving close to 10,000 seats unsold and unoccupied.

  “And for the Red Sox,” Klem bellowed through the bullhorn, “O’Brien and Cady!”

  The ballpark gasped. The Giants, as one, snapped their heads to the bullpen, where at last they noticed that it was Buck O’Brien, not Smoky Joe Wood, who was getting in his final few tosses out there. Up in the press box, the buzz was instant and the verdict practically unanimous.

  “Son of a bitch,” more than a couple of scribes surmised. “The fix is in.”

  Even the Red Sox, who’d been steeled to the news earlier than anyone else, seemed taken aback. Or maybe that was merely the collective look of twenty-two men convinced they’d just had their wallets stolen.

  Bill Klem wasn’t interested in any of that. He was interested in getting his ballgame in before the storm clouds could have their say.

  “Play ball!” he yelled.

  William Howard Taft was back in New York, back on the banks of the Hudson River, reviewing the whole of the U.S. Naval fleet for the amusement of an assortment of honored international guests, but he made no pretense about where he’d rather be—and with which historic engagement, other than his own, he’d prefer to be engaged—which was about a hundred blocks north and a few avenues east. He’d taken great delight in the Red Sox’ victory in Game Five, the reports streaking in constantly to the Mayflower, and afterward he’d asked his aides to furnish him with a full accounting of runs, hits, errors, and pitching statistics. Told that the Red Sox rookie, Bedient, had outdueled the mighty Mathewson, the President had roared and said, “See? The experts don’t always know who’s going to win and who’s going to lose.” And then, after a pause, “Or who’s going to finish third.” Taft took consolation that the sailors in all the boats he was reviewing would be getting wireless updates from the games. He would be kept abreast of the game inning by inning.

  That same afternoon, Woodrow Wilson was home in New Jersey tending to his own sporting jones, watching the Princeton Tigers practice football. Theodore Roosevelt, meanwhile, had just arrived in Milwaukee, at the Hotel Gilpatrick, where he’d enjoyed a filling lunch with aides and where he hadn’t noticed that a solitary figure on four separate occasions over forty minutes had tried to gain entrance to the dining room. And on all four occasions the man, a New York City saloonkeeper named John Flammang Schrank, was told that he would have to wait until later before he could see the Colonel, who was busy and wasn’t to be disturbed.

  As the afternoon papers had already dutifully reported, as bad as most Giants fans thought their lot was, they surely hadn’t had nearly the terrible day that another Giants fan named Charles Becker had already had, even before Marquard’s first pitch was stroked to center for a single by Henry Hooper, eliciting one of the earliest groans the Polo Grounds had ever witnessed. One of Becker’s former friends, Bridgy Webber, the operator of an uptown opium den, told the hushed courthouse that the day after Beansie Rosenthal was gunned down, he’d been riding in Becker’s car and Becker had calmly declared, “If I had seen that squealing Rosenthal I’d have got out and backed him up against a wall and shot him.” Becker himself laughed at the allegations the moment they fell out of Webber’s mouth, but no one else found anything about the proceedings terribly amusing, least of all John William Goff, the judge, who announced shortly thereafter that he knew his courtroom was overrun each day with gangsters, hoods, and thugs.

  “These people, whoever they are, have even obtained my private telephone number and have been calling me up almost every hour of the night since the trial started,” Goff declared.

  John F. McIntyre, Becker’s defense attorney who’d been angling for a mistrial all week, immediately jumped up and screamed, finger pointing skyward, “And I have received death threats as well!” and to the judge: “I can show them to you!”

  “I don’t care to see them,” Goff sniffed. “Next witness.”

  Marquard seemed determined to terrify himself, his manager, and the 30,000 people who still believed the Giants weren’t dead yet. After Hooper’s leadoff single he’d picked him off first right away, eliciting a nervous cheer from the faithful, but after then issuing a walk to Tris Speaker, Speaker showed that an extra day’s rest had done wonders for his ankle, stealing second and setting the Sox up nicely. Marquard nonchalantly wiped the rubber with his spikes, reached into his back pocket for his pouch of tobacco, and stuffed his cheeks with a huge chaw, but the act was a thin one. He was visibly shaken, enough so that McGraw paid a quick visit to the mound, hoping to quell his nerves. It worked. Marquard retired Duffy Lewis on a fly ball to left and issued a long sigh of relief as he walked back to the dugout, nearly choking on his chaw. “The most terrified I’ve ever been on a ballfield,” he would later say, describing that first inning of Game Six.

  Now it was his teammates’ turn to feel the butterflies. Yes, they felt like they’d been spared the electric chair when they saw Smoky Joe Wood put on his mackinaw jacket and retire to the dugout bench, but now there was even more pressure on them, somehow. They’d already lost to one rookie, Hugh Bedient. How would it look to lose to another rook, in the game that could shut them down for the winter? How would they possibly explain that away? McGraw, who wasn’t usually in the business of delivering rah-rah speeches, nevertheless gathered his men around him before the bottom of the first and tried to fill them with the same spirit, the same rage now coursing through his veins. “Look,” he told them. “They still have to figure out a way to beat you, and you’re the best damned team I ever saw. Play like you believe that, too.”

  He didn’t ever have to tell Larry Doyle that twice. With one out, the Giants’ captain singled and stole second, pounding his hands together when he narrowly beat Hick Cady’s throw, dancing off second base, trying to unnerve O’Brien, whose nerves, unbeknownst to Doyle, were plenty jangly. Still, O’Brien fanned Fred Snodgrass (suddenly unable to get out of his own way) and looked to be in good shape as he threw two quick strikes to Red Murray. But Murray fought off an inside fastball, rolled it on the slow turf toward Wagner at short, and beat the throw. Now there rose a desperate din from the grandstands and the bleachers, Giants fans offering up this final request for a miracle. Fred Merkle stepped to the plate, first and third, two outs. By now, everyone could see that O’Brien was vulnerable. Murray had thrice stepped out of the box to try to throw off the pitcher’s timing, to great effect. Now Doyle darted and danced off third base, and Murray shouted illegibly at him from first, and O’Brien, almost visibly terrified that the Giants would try to pull off a double steal, kept throwing over to first to keep Murray close to the base.

  Finally, O’Brien seemed to focus in on Merkle, and he brought his arms to a set position, and he swung his arms high over his head and … stopped. He just stopped: suddenly, stunningly, inexplicably. It took the Giants a while to realize—or even believe—what they’d just seen O’Brien do. No pitcher had ever committed a balk in the World Series before, but after a few awkward seconds it became plain to everyone that that’s precisely what O’Brien had done. It was Wilbert Robinson who finally screamed “BALK! He balked! You can’t do that!” before McGraw also started screaming at Klem, “Did you see that Bill? Did you see that?” Klem had seen it, and so had Billy Evans on the basepaths. Klem waved Doyle home, and Rigler signaled Murray to second. It was 1–0, Giants, and most of the fans had no idea what had happened, or why it happened, would have to read in the next day’s paper the official explanation for what a balk was—according to the rulebook, “Any motion made by the
pitcher while in position to deliver the ball to the bat without delivering it.”

  Whatever worked. It was good enough for a run. And good enough to completely destroy Buck O’Brien, whose last defenses crumbled after committing one of the greatest gaffes to that point in Series history. Fred Merkle, who surely kept a soft spot in his heart for fellow sufferers of baseball brainlock, nevertheless piled on immediately, doubling to deep right field, scoring Murray for a 2–0 lead. Buck Herzog followed with a booming double to left, plating Merkle for a 3–0 cushion.

  McGraw was ecstatic. “He’s gone now, boys!” he roared. “He’s all done!”

  Now, for the first time all Series, McGraw could taste blood, and he went for the kill. After Chief Meyers continued the assault with a single, sending Herzog around to third, the Giants’ manager called for a double steal, a shocking decision with the slow-footed Meyers on base. But Cady seemed just as shaken as his pitcher, and his throw to second was late, Herzog dashing home when Yerkes couldn’t get the ball out of his glove. Four-nothing. And even Art Fletcher got in the action, singling home Meyers with the fifth run before showing mercy on O’Brien and getting himself picked off first to end the deluge.

  The inning had taken thirty-three minutes to play, and it had completely turned the World Series upside down. For five games, the Giants and Red Sox had circled each other like wary heavyweights, neither seemingly capable of getting more than a run or two ahead of the other. Yet here the Giants were now, up 5–0, with a twenty-six-game winner on the mound and a rejuvenated team bursting out of the home dugout. It was a sight to behold.

  Which contrasted nicely to the sight of Buck O’Brien staggering off the field. Even the Royal Rooters—still bug-eyed from the shock of not seeing Joe Wood out there in a clinching game—felt no sympathy for the battered Buck. “Hey, Irish!” one of them screamed in his direction. “When did old Johnny McGraw sign you up to play for them? Back in the old country?”