The First Fall Classic

by Mike Vaccaro

  He went home to California, became a successful businessman and banker in Oxnard, and then served three terms in the City Council before being appointed acting mayor, a job he held for about a year before making a final move to Ventura, where he grew lemons and walnuts and regaled anyone who asked him with tales of his playing days. He was especially grateful one evening, many years after the Series, when he ran into Harry Hooper at a function in downtown Los Angeles. All those years later, Hooper still couldn’t believe the catch Snodgrass had made on his line drive immediately after the muff, and he told Snodgrass, as he’d told anyone who would listen for fifty years, that it was the greatest defensive play he’d ever seen.

  “Well, thank you,” Snodgrass said, smiling. “Nobody ever mentions that catch to me. All they talk about is the muff.”

  “Well, people can say what they want,” Hooper said. “I still see the catch like it happened yesterday.”

  A few years earlier, speaking to a reporter on the thirtieth anniversary of the Series, Snodgrass had said: “Hardly a day in my life, hardly an hour, that in some manner or other the dropping of that fly doesn’t come up, even after thirty years. On the street, in my store, at my home, in Oxnard or Ventura, it’s all the same. They might choke up before they ask me and they hesitate—but they always ask.

  “Now, if I honestly felt that I, Fred C. Snodgrass, was really alone to blame for losing that series to the Red Sox I don’t think I could go on. I could not have played baseball later and I could not now be in business. Many things happened to lose that series, and I’m sure you’ll understand.”

  Funny thing, though? It’s doubtful anyone understood. When Snodgrass died on April 5, 1974, this was the headline that appeared above his obituary in the New York Times, of all places:

  FRED SNODGRASS, 86, DEAD;

  BALL PLAYER MUFFED 1912 FLY.

  In response to this, the next week’s edition of The New Yorker featured an editorial that Snodgrass himself would no doubt have enjoyed and endorsed.

  “It often happens with the Times that when a man dies certain unpleasant aspects of his life are given charitable short shrift in its obituary. For example, if a once-honored member of Congress has been convicted of a crime and put in prison, the Times obit writer nearly always makes as little as possible of this ugly, necessary fact: in the writing of his life, the dead man receives a sort of posthumous pardon in ellipsis and abbreviation.

  “There is an exception to the rule. When it comes to sports, and especially to baseball, the Times rarely follows the principle of de mortuis nil nisi bonum: it would seem our National Pastime is too important a subject to be tampered with in the name of kindness.”

  Here, the magazine reprinted the headline.

  “With a brisk matter-of-factness, the Times might have hesitated to employ the obituary of an unregenerate mass murderer, the account began, ‘Fred Carlisle Snodgrass, who muffed an easy fly that helped cost the New York Giants the 1912 World Series, died Friday at the age of eighty-six.’

  “Note that the deed took place sixty-two years ago. The passage of six long and presumably penitent decades has done nothing to soften the heart of the implacable obituary writer. Mr. Snodgrass isn’t to be let off with a simple, unmodified fly. Oh, no, it was an ‘easy’ fly that Mr. Snodgrass had the misfortune to muff.

  “How lucky we are, those of us who go to the grave without having played a professional sport! Our errors, whatever they may be, are not in the record books. The Times will be gentle with us, and a miscalculation that occupied less than a second on a sunny fall day when we were twenty-four will not be made the means by which we win a place in history.”

  Still, for all the tumult, it was a hell of a life, being a baseball player and a hell of a time to be a baseball player, and for the rest of their lives, they understood what a privilege it had been. And they almost certainly would have echoed the words of Fred Snodgrass, as told to author Lawrence S. Ritter half a century after the 1912 Series was played, contested, and decided:

  “My years in baseball,” Snodgrass said, “had their ups and downs, their strife and their torment. But the years I look back at most fondly, and those I’d like most to live over, are the years when I was playing center field for the New York Giants.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  All of us who delve into the wonderful, practically limitless world of baseball history will eternally owe a debt of gratitude to Lawrence S. Ritter, who for several years in the 1960s traversed the country with a tape recorder in his hand and a special inquisitiveness in his brain and made it his mission to get into the public record the recollections and the remembrances of old-time baseball players before these wonderful athletes—and their memories—were lost to us forever. The resulting masterpiece—The Glory of Their Times—not only established an entire genre that those of us of future generations hungrily read for pleasure, it established a limitless supply of subject possibilities. Baseball is a magnificent game in 2009; it was magnificent in 1912, and in 1893, and for as long as it has been played and people have cared about it.

  I am an avowed junkie of both history and of baseball, so this project was a joy in too many ways to count. Ninety percent of the research for this book took place in libraries and archives, in darkened microfilm rooms and in basements and attics where hidden scrapbooks almost always yield priceless results to patient eyes. I am indebted to the research staffs at both the New York and Boston Public Libraries, as well as to the men who filled the newspapers and magazines of 1912 with so much copy that if you closed your eyes every now and again during this project, it was impossible not to feel like you were wearing an old fedora, clacking away at a manual typewriter, and listening to paperboys screaming “Extra! Extra!” on every street corner. Primary source material was found everywhere you wanted to look, but specifically from these newspapers:

  In New York City: The Journal. The American. The Herald. The Tribune. The New York Times. The New York Post. The Daily Press. The Daily Mail. The Telegraph. The Telegram. The Sun. The World. In Boston: The Globe. The Evening Globe. The Boston Post. The Boston Record. The Herald. The Traveler. Elsewhere: The Los Angeles Times. The Washington Post. The Chicago Tribune. The Sporting News.

  Several books were very helpful, serving as road maps for some of the key figures of this book, among them: The Glory of Their Times, by Lawrence S. Ritter; Sportswriter: The Life and Times of Grantland Rice, by Charles Fountain; Baseball As I Have Known It, by Fred Lieb; Tris Speaker: The Rough-and-Tumble Life of a Baseball Legend, by Timothy Gay; Red Sox Century, by Glenn Stout and Richard A. Johnson; John McGraw, by Charles C. Alexander; John McGraw: My Thirty Years in Baseball, by John McGraw; The Giants of the Polo Grounds, by Noel Hynd; Matty: An American Hero, by Ray Robinson; 1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft & Debs—The Election That Changed the Country, by James Chace; and Boston’s Royal Rooters, by Peter J. Nash.

  On the Internet, there were two sites that were absolutely invaluable on an almost daily basis, and they are resources I urge all baseball fans—not just authors—to visit every day they sit in front of a computer. The first is www.baseball-reference.com, which is the greatest invention for baseball fans since the scorecard. The other is the Baseball Biography Project, put together by the amazing people who comprise the Society for American Baseball Research. Access that site here: www.bioproj.sabr.org, and if you have even a little interest in baseball’s history, its legacies, and its amazing assortment of characters past and present, I urge you to join SABR.

  I have been blessed to write three books now, and for all three I have had the great good fortune to work alongside Jason Kaufman, my editor at Doubleday, who not only shepherds the words but also manages to make the craft of writing seem, and feel, as joyful and as fulfilling as all writers want it to be. My career, and my life, are immeasurably richer for having collaborated with him. My thanks also to his assistant, Rob Bloom, who never fails to provide an encouraging voice and a helpful hand when it is needed most, and to Peter
Grennen, a fellow Flyer who took such care and skill in copyediting the manuscript; whatever errors remain are mine alone to answer for. Frank Scatoni and Greg Dinkin, my agents at Venture Literary, are the reason I have been able to live out this wonderful dream of writing books; they were the ones who showed initial faith and have provided endless support, and I can never express properly the depths of my gratitude for that.

  As marvelous a life as it is to write books, it almost seems like an excess of riches that I also have a day job that I treasure. Greg Gallo is the man who hired me to write a sports column at the New York Post, which means all he’s done for me is open the door to the rest of my life, a debt I’ll never be able to come close to repaying. Every day I appear in that newspaper is a joy to me, and honors the memory of my father, Mickey, who encouraged my dreams from the start and helped foster them by bringing the Post home with him every day. It was my humble honor to work under Dick Klayman for five years, and my lone regret that I didn’t get twenty more under his guidance and friendship. The daily encouragements of Tim Sullivan, Pat Hannigan, Dave Blezow, Mike Battaglinio, and Kevin Kenney all bring me to a better place with my words and my work. And every day Col Allan, the big boss, inspires me to want to kick a little more ass than I did the day before.

  Baseball has become such a deep part of my professional life, it’s been a privilege to work alongside the best baseball columnist in the country, Joel Sherman, who has helped broaden my depth of knowledge with his wisdom and his generosity. He is just one of an amazing corps of professional confidantes who would make any newspaperman look smarter than they really are. Chief among these are Marc Berman, Les Carpenter, Jack Curry, Ian O’Connor, Joe Posnanski, Steve Politi, and Adrian Wojnarowski. Ours is a proud fraternity, even if it seems to shrink in numbers by the day, but for now and forever I wish to salute the folks who are not only my friends but continue to make this such an honorable vocation, notably: Dominic Amore, Dave Anderson, Marty Appel, Harvey Araton, Don Burke, Dave Buscema, Pete Caldera, Rich Chere, Brian Costello, Chris D’Amico, Mike Fannin, Chris Faytok, John Feinstein, Pat Forde, Kevin Gleason, Dan Graziano, Vahe Gregorian, Mark Hale, Jon Heyman, Kim Jones, George King, Bob Klapisch, Kevin Manahan, Dave Lennon, Dinn Mann, Tom Missel, Chuck Pollock, Steve Popper, Ed Price, T. J. Quinn, Lenn Robbins, Mike Rodman, Michael Rosenberg, Bob Ryan, Ben Shpigel, Tara Sullivan, Wright Thompson, Chuck Ward, Charlie Wenzelberg, Dan Wetzel, and Steve Wright. And it isn’t just newspaper folks who help a guy out with a project like this, so I must also recognize Charlie Albanese, Eddie Burns, Amy Carr, Pamela Curry, Nick Cusano, John Egan, Esq., Dr. George Evans, Bill Going, John Hammersley, Bro. Robert Lahey, John Lovisolo, Scott Mackenzie, Mike MacDonald, Tim McMahon, Dr. Jim Martine, Tom Pecora, Kevin Quigley, Melanie Rolli, Neil Rothenberg, Paul Sabini, and Dr. Richard Simpson.

  As I mentioned in the dedication my mother, Ann, is a constant source of strength and faith, a glass-half-full soul in a glass-half-empty world. And then there is Leigh Hursey Vaccaro, Molly to my Desmond, Diane to my Jack, Brenda to my Eddie (though I suspect she would never go for deep-pile carpets and a couple of paintings from Sears). The remarkable thing isn’t that we’re this happy after this many years together; it’s that, if anything, the laughter is louder and longer now than it was at the start. And yes: I’ll get to work cleaning the staircase now. Deadline is past. Back to the world.

  Mike Vaccaro

  Hillsdale, New Jersey

  September 2008