Fenway 1912

by Glenn Stout

  SILK THE ARBITRARY, NOT THE ARBITER,

  Is Right Title For Umpire O'Loughlin

  After the game the club left for a four-game series with Washington, joined by their owner, who was looking forward to crowing over his former cronies. To most observers, that seemed likely. The Sox appeared to be in fine shape. With a 9-4 record, they were in second place, just a half-game back of the surprising White Sox, and the club still looked down on the Senators. But not all the Red Sox made the trip. Stahl left behind three pitchers—Leonard, Pape, and Hageman—as well as catcher Hick Cady, and ordered the three to get some work in and be better prepared by the time the club returned to Boston for a long home stand on May 5.

  They would not be alone, for as soon as the Red Sox left town groundskeeper Jerome Kelley and his men got going, working dawn to dusk in the team's absence. The poor weather had wreaked havoc on the field, and they needed the four days to roll it flat again and fill some bare spots with sod. It was coming along, but the players had been letting him have it over the condition of the field.

  The trip to Washington was a disaster: Boston dropped three of four. Wood again pitched just well enough to lose as Bill Carrigan's failure to corral a pitch in the ninth cost him a win, and no other Boston pitcher threw well. Even Bedient took a step back when he was given a start and failed to make it to the third inning. The 9-4 second-place Sox left Washington in third place, 10-7, and looking worse than that. As A. H. C. Mitchell observed in Sporting Life:

  Now that the season is nearly a month old one can make some kind of fair criticism. It is yet doubtful if Wagner can come back to old-time form. He is there one day and not there the next. He makes one grand, old-time throw and then tosses one wild ... Joe Wood has hardly shown his best form of last year. He insists on having Bill Carrigan catch for him and Bill cannot seem to hold him. There are usually a number of short passed balls when Bill is behind the bat for Joe. In Washington they were costly. Most of the pitchers want Bill, so the management puts him in most of the time.

  On the way back to Boston the club stopped by Baltimore for an exhibition and then headed toward New York to play a makeup game, but the contest was rained out.

  There was little joy on the train trip back to Boston. The sour look on McAleer's face as he watched the proceedings from a box seat in Washington had told the story, and when he sat down with his manager for the journey back to Boston his mood had not improved. Unlike his predecessor, John I. Taylor, McAleer still thought of himself as a manager and was not shy about telling Stahl how to run his ball club. The Sox had thoroughly collapsed in Washington and made McAleer look bad in his old hometown. In addition to the problems cited by Mitchell, Bradley had stopped hitting, Lewis went hitless for the entire road trip, and Yerkes was out of the lineup with a minor injury. McAleer took Stahl to task over a few in-game decisions and his choice to pitch Buck O'Brien opposite Walter Johnson instead of sacrificing one of his rookie pitchers in what had been likely to be a losing cause. McAleer then made a public complaint to the press, saying bitterly, "We should have taken three games from Washington in a walk. Except for Speaker, we looked like a lot of bush leaguers."

  Fortunately for the Red Sox, they were headed back home. Over the next three weeks they would play their longest home stand of the year. By the time the Red Sox took to the road again in June, they would know a lot more about themselves—and about Fenway Park.

  ILLUS. 1 When Fenway Park was first built, there was very little else in the neighborhood immediately surrounding the park. Van Ness Street did not yet exist. Prior to the building of Fenway Park, as the dotted lines indicate, there were tentative plans to put in streets perpendicular to Lansdowne, running through what is now the outfield and infield. Courtesy of the Print Department, Boston Public Library

  ILLUS. 2 Drawing of Fenway (1911). This drawing, rendered from architect James E. McLaughlin's plans by illustrator J. C. Halden, was widely reprinted when Fenway Park was being built and was used as letterhead on team stationery in 1912 and for several years thereafter. However, the right-field bleachers shown in the drawing were not built until September 1912, part of the expansion made to accommodate the 1912 World's Series. Collection of the author

  ILLUS. 3 Cutaway architectural rendering showing the grandstand in relation to team offices, the field, and the street. Note that the field sits below street level, making the grandstand appear taller from inside the park than from the outside.

  Collection of the author

  ILLUS. 4 Architectural rendering showing details of concrete reinforced beams and columns supporting grandstand seating deck (1912). Note that the floor of the box seats is nearly four feet above field grade. For the World's Series, additional box seats were built and extended to field level. The four-foot gap between the floor of the box seats and grade is the area where fans, on at least one occasion, watched the game.

  Collection of the author

  ILLUS. 5 Fenway Park third-base dugout (1912). The original dugouts were only forty feet long. Virtually cut in half by a concrete column, they featured a slat-style bench similar to those once used in railroad stations. Note the square openings on the dugout wall, which apparently provided ventilation from beneath the stands.

  Collection of the author

  ILLUS. 6 Concrete reinforced columns and beams form a network of support beneath the grandstand deck. This style of construction was state of the art in 1912. Many fans today still reach their seats by walking up the ramp featured here. Collection of the author

  ILLUS. 7 Contractor Charles Logue (1912). Charles Logue, a native of Ireland and father of sixteen, supervised the construction of Fenway Park. Logue is standing at the end of the grandstand, third-base side. Note the poor condition of the field after an extremely wet spring.

  Courtesy of the Logue Family

  ILLUS. 8 Fenway Park exterior (1914). Architect James McLaughlin's inspiration for the Fenway Park facade and team offices was rooted in Gustav Stickley's "Arts and Crafts" movement. Even two years after Fenway Park opened, the lot on Jersey Street opposite the ballpark remained undeveloped and horses and buggies were still familiar sights on Boston streets.

  George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress

  Prints and Photographs Division

  ILLUS. 9 "Seating Plan of Fenway Park as Rearranged for World's Series Games" (1912). In an effort to maximize profit during the World's Series, during a road trip in September the Red Sox added 11,600 seats to Fenway Park, significantly diminishing the size of the field of play, enclosing the field for the first time, and giving Fenway Park the same basic footprint still recognizable today. Actual construction varied slightly from these plans. Collection of the author

  ILLUS. 10 Construction of the right-field bleachers (1912). Workers rushed to build the new all-wood bleachers section before the World's Series in the space between the pavilion in the foreground and the center-field bleachers. Unlike the pavilion or main grandstand, no steel or concrete columns were used to support the bleacher structure. Note the network of wooden scaffolding that supports the center-field bleachers.

  George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

  ILLUS. 11 In combination, these three photos, taken from right field, show the pavilion, the grandstand, the third-base stands and Duffy's Cliff bleachers, and the leftfield wall. Together they provide the best photographic documentation of the interior of Fenway Park in preparation for the 1912 World's Series. Note how the new construction has diminished the size of the field of play and completely enclosed the playing field with stands. The press box has not yet been expanded, but the curious fence in right field, eighteen inches high and topped by a rail, is in place. Balls that bounced over or through the fence were home runs.

  George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

  ILLUS. 12 Fenway Park press box and grandstand roof (1914). Although this photograph dates from 1914, when the Boston
Braves played and won the World's Series in Fenway Park, Fenway looked much the same for the 1912 World's Series. The original press box was removed in September 1912 and replaced by the much larger press box seen here.

  George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

  6. Home Stand

  There is a feeling among base ball men that I have talked with that this is not going to be a big year. There doesn't seem to be the enthusiasm that there ought to be ... But still, there is no knowing what a season will bring forth. Maybe with some warm weather, the base ball fever will return. In late years the seasons in Boston have been later. Time was when May was a warm month here. It isn't any more. As yet we haven't had a really warm day and there is none in sight.

  —A. H. C. Mitchell, Sporting Life

  ONE MONTH INTO the season the reviews were all in. Despite the glowing reaction from the press on opening day, by the time the Sox returned to Boston Fenway Park was starting to lose some shine. After seeing Washington's brand-new park, which had opened in 1911 but had had a second deck added for the 1912 season, Boston's new park seemed a little lacking, somehow unfinished, both too small in capacity and too spacious in the field. A. H. C. Mitchell observed:

  There has been considerable growling among the fans in regard to the new grounds. The bleacher crowds say they are too far away from the diamond, and the 50-centers say they are too far away from first base. As a matter of fact, the Boston fans have always been accustomed to small grounds ... On the old Huntington Avenue Grounds of the American League, the 50-cent seats were close to first base on one side and close to third on the other. On the new Red Sox grounds the grand stand extends way around to first and third bases and this, of course, throws the 50-cent Pavilion further away.

  That was one reason, along with the weather, why crowds had thus far been disappointing. Compared to Huntington Avenue, the scale and layout of the park concentrated fans in three nearly separate locations—the lower reaches of the grandstand, the pavilion, and the center-field bleachers. That made the crowd look smaller than it sometimes was and made spectators feel cut off from one another and, for those in center field, cut off from the game. The team was drawing no better in Fenway Park than it had at Huntington Avenue.

  These different areas of the stands soon developed their own character and reputation. The grandstand was for the swells and the well connected who could afford the pricier tickets. The most-sought-after spots were directly behind the plate, behind the Boston dugout, and in section L (section 27 today), where the Royal Rooters staked out their territory and walked around as if they owned the place, tooting their horns, beating their drums, and singing just as they had been doing at baseball games in Boston for two decades. In that sense the character of the crowd was not so different from Huntington Avenue.

  But elsewhere in Fenway Park the average fan was squeezed out and exiled. The fifty-cent pavilion was farther down the line than comparable seats at Huntington Avenue, so they were less intimate. Also, the best seats were quickly taken over by a rabid contingent of gamblers who bet on absolutely everything imaginable, ranging from the eventual winner to numerous "do they or don't they" bets—wagers on the smallest elements of the game, such as ball and strike calls, or pop-ups versus ground balls, or the number of hits or runs each inning, or even such arcane issues as whether the wind would change direction. In this section of the stands along the first-base line the crowd sometimes behaved like the brokers on the floor of the stock exchange: men stood and waved dollar bills and screamed out odds and bets as if oblivious to the contest on the field, yet somehow they kept a running tally of winnings and losses. While many fans were unbothered by such activities, others not only felt uncomfortable but found the constant betting activity distracting. Yet they were too intimidated to complain. Even if they had, Red Sox management had neither the incentive nor the means to change fan behavior apart from banning gamblers from the ballpark, and they were loath to turn away paying customers of any kind.

  Such activity in the ballpark was not just a Boston problem—though it may have been somewhat more pronounced in Boston than in other big league cities. Gambling and baseball had enjoyed a longstanding relationship and were not yet embarrassed to be seen together. Gambling was as intertwined with professional baseball as the stitches used to hold the ball together, and it had been an integral part of the game from the very beginning.

  For fans who either felt uncomfortable in the pavilion or could not afford a fifty-cent ticket, the twenty-five-cent bleachers were no better. While populated by far fewer gamblers, fans were also more than four hundred feet from home plate, too far to hear or even see most of the calls by the umpires, and for many the new scoreboard was out of view. With much of the game taking place more than a hundred yards away, viewing the game was akin to the experience of following the World's Series on one of the mechanical scoreboards the newspapers erected each October in front of their offices. Bleacher fans could tell what was happening, but little more.

  The stands at Fenway Park were not segregated by race, nor had they ever been segregated at the South End Grounds or the Huntington Avenue Grounds. Although ballparks throughout the South were routinely segregated—and would be until the 1960s—the only major league parks that were segregated in 1912 were in St. Louis. Black fans were rare in Fenway, and they may not have felt welcomed, but they were not banned.

  There was also, as yet, no reason apart from Fenway Park to linger in the area, either before or after the game. When the Sox played at Huntington Avenue, several establishments with longstanding ties to Boston baseball had given some fans reason to arrive early and stay late. Nuf Ced McGreevey's Columbus Avenue saloon and other taverns in the area, such as the first-floor kitchen and tavern at the Putnam Hotel, had long been gathering places for fans on their way to or from both the Huntington Avenue Grounds and the South End Grounds to discuss the contest, most arriving and leaving along well-established routes that created a unique ambiance as one neared the park.

  Amenities of this kind had yet to spring up around Fenway Park. There were few nearby buildings and virtually no taverns or restaurants in the immediate area. Apart from the Buckminster Hotel, built in 1897 as a lone outpost on Boston's western fringe, there were no nearby hotels. Development in Kenmore Square—officially known as Governor's Square until 1932—and the Fenway neighborhood was in its infancy and would not take off until the subway opened in 1914, sparking a building boom around Fenway Park. By 1920 the park would be surrounded by structures as garages, warehouses, and other businesses sprang up around it on Lansdowne Street, Ipswich Street, Van Ness Street, and Jersey Street. In 1912 fans seemed to arrive at the park from all directions and dispersed so quickly that unless the crowd was unusually large, within fifteen minutes of the finish of a game there was little sign that anyone had been in attendance. Some Roxbury fans still made the trek back down to McGreevey's afterward to retain some of the familiar conviviality, but it was not quite the same.

  McAleer and company hoped that those feelings might change during the long home stand that would keep the team in Boston for the remainder of May. The Sox would host every team in the league except the Yankees, and if they played well they could end the month fighting for first place. Then, as now, in order to compete for the pennant the Red Sox knew they had to win at home, and in order for McAleer to survive financially he needed the turnstiles at Fenway Park to start spinning. By June he would know what kind of team the 1912 Red Sox were and just how much of a help—or hindrance—Fenway Park would be to their cause.

  It helped that the players were finally able to use the new clubhouse and stop using the riding school to dress before games. The clubhouse accommodations, though much more spacious than they had been at the Huntington Avenue Grounds, were still spartan compared to facilities at most of the other new parks, some of which provided separate player lounges and even billiard rooms. Boston's clubhouse was a dressing room with an open s
hower bath and little else. Still, compared to the riding school the accommodations were absolutely sumptuous. The team offices in the building on Jersey Street—where the first floor was used for ticket sales and McAleer, McRoy, and other team officials had offices on the second floor—were complete as well, or at least close enough to being finished that they could finally close up shop on Huntington Avenue and move in.

  The Detroit Tigers, who had finished second in 1911 but would struggle to play .500 baseball in 1912, opened the home stand in Boston. As far as McAleer was concerned, the Tigers were a welcome sight. Not that they were pushovers, but outfielder Ty Cobb was one of the biggest draws in the league. The twenty-five-year-old Tiger outfielder was at his peak, playing with a devastating and intimidating combination of speed, daring, and—for the Dead Ball Era—power. In 1911 he had hit .420 and led the league in both average and slugging, and he would do the same in 1912, hitting .409.

  No one was quite aware of it yet, but Cobb had a challenger. Tris Speaker, coming off a season in which he had hit .334 and slugged .502, was about to make a claim that perhaps he, not Cobb, was the greatest player in the game. For just as Fenway Park would prove a boon to the career of Duffy Lewis, so too would Fenway Park work to Tris Speaker's advantage.

  In his first few seasons in the league Speaker had impressed everyone with his all-around play, but entering the 1912 season, although the outfielder was considered a dangerous hitter, his defensive reputation still outstripped his offensive record. His arm, in particular, stood out. During his first full season, in 1909, the former high school pitcher threw out thirty-five base runners from center field. Although that number dropped over the next two seasons as runners became a bit more cautious about running on balls hit his direction, Speaker still managed to throw out twenty or more base runners each year.