The Original Curse

by Sean Deveney; Ken Rosenthal

  “[Mitchell] has employed a system of percentages in his attack and defense, and indications are he has installed the system well into the mind of each one of his players,” James Crusinberry wrote in the Tribune. “There are managers in baseball who play ‘hunches’ and there are others who yield to sentiment and some who play favorites and perhaps some who simply trust to luck or main force, but Fred Mitchell sticks to the system of percentages, no matter what happens.… Mitchell will always know whether the percentages favor success in doing a thing one way or whether they favor his doing it some other way.”7

  The percentages were undoubtedly in favor of surprising everyone and bringing back Hippo Vaughn for Game 3, even on one day’s rest, rather than using either of his right-handers. Spitballer Phil Douglas had a good ERA (2.13), but after an 8–2 start, he had lost seven of his most recent nine decisions. Hendrix, at 20–7, had a very good season, leading the league in winning percentage, but Mitchell could see Hendrix’s numbers for what they were: the product of luck. Hendrix’s 2.78 ERA was slightly higher than the league average. He allowed 229 hits in 233 innings, an average of 0.98 hits per inning. The league average was 0.93. Hendrix was just an average pitcher who was lucky enough to play for the team that led the league in runs and won him some games he should have lost. There also was a report that “Claude complained of a sore arm yesterday, and unless the wing had entirely recovered in the just-before-the-battle warmup, Shuffling Phil Douglas was to hurl.”8

  Even if his arm was strong, putting Hendrix on the mound meant Barrow would insert the left-handed Ruth in left field, and Mitchell did not need to look at the percentages to know that Boston was much more difficult to handle with Ruth in the batting order. A fatigued ace left-hander—like Vaughn—with no Ruth was a better choice than a well-rested, average right-hander like Hendrix facing a lineup anchored by Ruth. Mitchell might have been overly cautious with Ruth, who had not homered since July and hit just .259 over the last five weeks of the season. But Mitchell had seen batting practice. He was not afraid to announce that he had no intention of messing with the Babe. “A right hander would have had Ruth coming up to hit,” Mitchell said, “and if he got hold of one, good night. He is a wonderful natural ballplayer, and nobody I’ve seen takes the cut at a ball he does. He is liable to knock any kind of pitch anywhere.”9

  As the 2:30 start time for Game 3 approached on September 7, temperatures were comfortable, but the sky was overcast. Still, things at Comiskey Park were looking generally brighter. A flock of “dipper girls” strolled the stands collecting donations for the soldiers’ tobacco fund, “to keep our boys in smokes over there.”10 The girls likely took in a good amount, because for the first time in the Series the ticket business was brisk. It helped that it was a Saturday, the only weekend game on the World Series schedule—and it was on the schedule only because of the Game 1 postponement. Many questioned why the National Commission did not juggle the schedule to ensure that both a Saturday and a Sunday game, always the biggest draws, could be played in Chicago. (Boston’s blue laws did not permit baseball on Sundays.) It also helped that the Cubs had shown some life and evened the Series, bolstering the enthusiasm of the locals. The 20,040 fans at Game 2 had been a slight improvement on Game 1, but the pool of money generated by that crowd actually decreased (the players’ pool was $16,198.38), as fans passed on the more expensive boxes to sit in the cheap seats. But the crowd filing in for Game 3 looked more like a World Series crowd, with 27,054 fans showing up.

  Carl Mays was penciled in as the Boston starter, and there had been enough rumors suggesting Vaughn would start Game 3 for the Cubs that, as the Red Sox took outfield practice, both Ruth and Whiteman manned left field. When Vaughn was announced as the starter, Whiteman remained and Ruth—who had, earlier in the week, stated that he hoped he would not have to sit out an inning—again went back to the bench, dejected. Vaughn was given a loud ovation by the home fans as he loped to the mound.

  Vaughn didn’t disappoint. He allowed a cheap hit to Hooper in the first inning and a single to Whiteman in the second but in both cases was able to pitch out of trouble with ease. After a three-up, three-out third inning, the Red Sox got to Vaughn in the fourth. Vaughn tossed a curveball inside to Whiteman, who leaned in and was hit by the pitch. Stuffy McInnis and Wally Schang followed with singles, scoring Whiteman and setting up a first-and-third situation with one out. Everett Scott attempted a suicide squeeze, and when Vaughn reached the ball, all he could do was hold it—Merkle had charged the bunt too, and no one was covering first base. McInnis scored on the play, and the Red Sox had a 2–0 lead.

  Fred Mitchell’s percentage system hadn’t figured on two things, starting with Whiteman. His run scored in the fourth inning meant that he now had figured in the scoring for three consecutive games. There was no way Mitchell could have guessed that Whiteman, a 35-year-old journeyman who had 86 games of big-league experience and had been purchased from the minors for just $750, would hit. 400 in the first three games of the World Series off the best one-two punch in the National League. Nor could the percentages have possibly shown that the Cubs would have such bum luck against Carl Mays. Certainly Mays was well rested—he had not pitched since tossing the back-to-back games of the doubleheader against Philadelphia on August 30—and it hurt the Cubs that no one in the National League pitched submarine style like Mays. But Mays managed to hold the Cubs to just one run, coming on an RBI single in the fifth by Killefer. The Cubs had chances, moving a man into scoring position against Mays in five of the last six innings, but were consistently frustrated in clutch situations.

  The frustration climaxed in the ninth inning, when, with two out, Charley Pick beat out a ground ball to Shean and stole second. Pick broke for third when one of Mays’s pitches got away from Schang and, as Pick slid, he raised his spikes, ready to inflict some pain should third baseman Fred Thomas try to tag him. Pick got tangled up with Thomas as the throw from Schang arrived, and the ball trickled away from Thomas’s glove. Immediately, Mitchell—coaching third—yelled to Pick, telling him to score. Pick got up, hesitated, and emerged from the cloud of dirt toward home. But the ball had not gotten very far into foul territory. Thomas recovered and zipped a perfect throw to Schang. Pick, again with his cleats up, “slid home with a running broad jump.”11 Schang grabbed the throw from Thomas and slapped a tag on Pick, whose spikes did not find Schang’s calf as planned but, rather, tore into the right shin of Bill Klem, the umpire. Klem called Pick out, sealing one of the most thrilling game-winning outs in World Series history.

  Pick’s failed dash put the Red Sox up, two games to one, with the rest of the Series to be played in Boston. The game ended at 4:30, giving the teams three and a half hours to clean up, have a bite to eat, and board the Michigan Central at the LaSalle Street Station in Chicago’s Loop. The train was scheduled to leave at 8:00 P.M. on Saturday and arrive in Boston at 10:50 P.M. on Sunday. The usual frills of World Series travel were gone. The Red Sox booked two cars, while the Cubs, the newspaper writers, and the National Commission booked one each. Through the night, players, writers, and team officials stayed up playing whist, poker, and craps, smoking all the while. Between the noise and the smoke, sleep was impossible. Charles Dryden wrote of the train, “Our combination World’s Series and Monte Carlo special … entered the home stretch for Boston, leaving a pale blue haze of cigarette and cigar smoke along the right of way.”12

  It wasn’t all gambling and tobacco. There still was the lingering possibility of fisticuffs. After bad blood developed over the thrashing that Wagner took under the stands in Game 2, concern was raised about putting ticked-off players together on a train for 27 hours. “There was an unconfirmed rumor last night that F. Otto Knabe was to be blasted apart or something in revenge for spilling Heinie Wagner on his back during the second game,” the Herald Examiner noted. “President Weeghman said he heard threats to that effect, but could not state who uttered them.”13 Aboard the train, though, a more important topic of conv
ersation spread. A group of players from both teams put aside on-field antagonism and poker games to discuss the jarring reality that was settling in with the players after the first three games in Chicago: the gate receipts were terrible.

  This was especially troubling when taken in combination with the action of the National Commission the previous January. At the time, Ban Johnson, Garry Herrmann, and John Tener (replaced by John Heydler after Tener’s August resignation) altered the rules for the division of money generated not only by the World Series but by all postseason series—in cities with two clubs, like Chicago, Boston, St. Louis, New York, and Philadelphia, the American League team would play the National League team in a postseason, crosstown series that usually drew healthy crowds and good payouts for the teams and players. In changing the split, the Commission’s goal was to allow more players to share in postseason money. The players’ World Series pool was to remain the same, 60 percent of the gate receipts for the first four games. But the payouts would be capped at $2,000 for each player on the World Series winner and $1,400 for the losers. At 25 players per team, that figured to be $78,000 total for the two teams—$50,000 for the winners and $28,000 for the losers. Whatever money was left in the players’ pool beyond $78,000 would be divided by the teams finishing in second, third, and fourth place in each league. That way, half the league shared in the big World Series payouts.

  But there was some fine print to consider. For one thing, the new rules had been based on the receipts of the incredibly expensive and well-attended 1917 World Series. The players hadn’t stopped to consider what would happen if the receipts didn’t match those of ’17. There was also the provision in the new rule that allocated a share of the gate receipts from all crosstown postseason series to the World Series pool. When the A’s played the Phillies in Philadelphia, for example, half the player money was to be added to the World Series money, bolstering the payout World Series players would get. With the work-or-fight order in effect, though, there were no crosstown postseason series. Players participating in the World Series were giving up part of their winnings to teams that had finished second through fourth, but they weren’t getting anything in return.

  Aboard the train, players figured out what was happening. The gate receipts for the three Chicago games were terrible. It wasn’t so much the sparse crowds that were draining the pool. It was the reduced ticket prices. Even the sizable crowd at the third game had generated total receipts of only $40,118. But 10 percent of the pool had been promised to war charities, lowering the Game 3 receipts to $36,106.20. The players would get 60 percent of that, or $21,663.72. The three-game players’ pool total was just $54,230.02. Even if Game 4 in Boston was a sellout, it was obvious that this Series would not come close to matching 1917’s $152,000 player pool. With the commission still planning on giving payouts to teams that finished second, third, and fourth, stark reality sank in for the Cubs and the Red Sox: the winners were not going to get $2,000, and the losers would not get $1,400. On the train, the players were told that the winners’ share would be just $1,200 and the loser’s share $800. Even those numbers, it turned out, were optimistic.

  The players were angry. Some wanted to abandon the Series then and there—hollow chatter, because that would ensure no one got any money. But not long before, the Red Sox had used a strike threat successfully, demanding that Harry Frazee pay their usual salaries for the first two weeks of September. “It is pitiful to read that the Boston Red Sox, preliminary to entering the World’s Series, organized a strike for their salaries through September 15,” The Sporting News reported. “They told Owner Harry Frazee that if they did not get the half a month’s salary they would not play the series. It is to be regretted that Frazee was not in a position to take them at their words and call off the whole show.”14 Frazee had given in. Now the Red Sox were threatening to strike again.

  It was decided that a committee of players would approach the National Commission with a demand for full shares, and if that did not work, a willingness to compromise at $1,500 for the winners and $1,000 for the losers. Hooper, along with Shean, would represent the Red Sox. Mann and Killefer would represent the Cubs. When Hooper told Herrmann the players wanted to meet Sunday afternoon, he was told that Ban Johnson had taken a later train and the players would have to come back and meet with the commission at the Copley Plaza Hotel in downtown Boston on Monday morning, before Game 4.

  Not everyone was worked up about the payout fuss. Ruth, for one, didn’t much seem to care. Not that he didn’t like money; he just didn’t worry about it—money, it seemed, was always there when he wanted it. As Fred Thomas would later explain, “Babe was an irresponsible guy. I’d never go out with him. He’d spend money all right, but he’d spend your money. He made more money than anybody but he never had any.”15 Instead, Ruth spent the afternoon moving up and down the aisles, plucking straw hats off passengers and punching out the tops. It was past Labor Day, after all, and a straw hat after Labor Day was a fashion faux pas. As part of his horseplay, Babe got tangled up in some roughhousing with pitcher Walt Kinney and wound up smacking the middle finger of his left hand. It swelled up and would need to be treated with iodine. Barrow was not pleased, because Ruth was his Game 4 starter.

  But now there was some doubt as to whether there would be a Game 4 at all.

  THE ORIGINAL CURSE: HIPPO VAUGHN

  Luck was not smiling on Hippo Vaughn in his first two appearances in the 1918 World Series—he’d allowed three runs in 18 innings and had two losses to show for it. Three years later, more bad luck would end his career prematurely.

  From 1914 to 1920, Vaughn was among the best starters in the National League, posting 143 wins in seven seasons. But in 1921, at age 33, things went sour. On July 9, Vaughn had a terrible outing in New York, dropping his record to 3–11. He’d given up the first career home run to his old teammate, pitcher Phil Douglas, walked off the mound, and, according to the Tribune, “Big Jim hasn’t been seen since.… He failed to come to the hotel where the Cubs are stopping and hadn’t been located tonight.”16 Vaughn, it turns out, was as unhappy with Johnny Evers (then the Cubs manager) in 1921 as Red Sox players had been in the spring of ’18. “I could have hung on for a few more years, I guess, but my arm was hurting and Manager Johnny Evers told the newspapers the trouble was, ‘in my head,’” Vaughn later explained. “Kind of made me mad.”17 Vaughn was suspended by Evers and turned up back in Chicago with a semipro outfit. Evers was fired shortly thereafter and replaced by Bill Killefer, prompting Vaughn to report back to the team. The Cubs attempted to reinstate him.

  Not so fast. In the view of Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Vaughn had jumped his contract by signing with the semipro team. Landis ruled that Vaughn could not play for the remainder of the season. Even after the season, the Tribune reported that Vaughn’s semipro team, the Beloit Fairies, agreed to tear up Vaughn’s contract to allow him to return to the Cubs, but, “semi-pro men, however, claim Vaughn’s case was taken before Landis and turned down. ‘Hippo’ then went back to Beloit and signed another contract.”18 Vaughn may have had a sore arm, but it certainly got better. He pitched semipro ball around Chicago until he quit at 47 years old—and even then, he insisted, it was his legs that gave out, not his arm. Landis’s excessively tough ruling brought a premature and ignominious end to what had been a brilliant career.

  SIXTEEN

  World Series, Games 4 and 5, Boston

  SEPTEMBER 9–10, 1918

  As the Red Sox and Cubs were speeding across the Midwest toward Boston aboard the Michigan Central on Sunday afternoon, a Hamburg-American liner pulled into the city’s navy yard. On the ship were 195 soldiers who had been “invalided” by the war. Among that group were 52 stretcher cases, those who were so badly wounded that they could not get out of bed. They were sent to Boston City Hospital. There were 13 cases of shell shock taken to the Boston Psychopathic Hospital. The other soldiers went to various naval hospitals around the area. Their arrival was heralded by
newspapers across the country. Even in Chicago, a picture of one of the wounded—a forlorn, one-armed young soldier sitting with a smiling nurse—appeared in the Herald Examiner. In Boston, executives at the Globe contacted the hospitals and offered to buy tickets to the upcoming World Series games for all the injured men who were fit enough to attend.

  At the same time, it was decided that another group of debilitated soldiers—200 sailors at Commonwealth Pier in East Boston—had to be transported too. But they had not yet been to war. They were sick, far too sick to be put into a hospital. They had contracted Spanish influenza, a particularly virulent form of the flu that led to lethal pneumonia. It had been passed around on the battlefields of the front, but between the usual high death tolls of the war and military censors who did not want the enemy to know about the illness, the flu had not been reported widely. (Spain had remained neutral in the war, and because the press there reported on the epidemic, it became known as “Spanish flu.”) It had shown up in pockets around the United States in 1918, but not until men began returning from the front were concerns raised about an outbreak here. When the illness of the sailors on Commonwealth Pier became known, they were quickly quarantined. While preparations were being made for Game 4 at Fenway, state guardsmen went to the top of Corey Hill in Brookline, one of the highest points around Boston, and built a tent camp. By that evening, the 200 flu-stricken soldiers were transported into the tents.