Fenway 1912

by Glenn Stout

  The number probably would have been even higher if Speaker, like other Boston outfielders, had not had to play so deep, owing to the vast dimensions of the Huntington Avenue Grounds. If a ball made it over his head or between outfielders, it was a certain extra-base hit. And though Speaker was one of the fastest runners in the league and could go get the ball with the best of them, shallow flares hit to center field that would have been outs elsewhere sometimes fell for hits at Huntington Avenue.

  No one was more familiar with the old park than pitcher Cy Young, who had taken the rookie Speaker under his wing in 1908. Young recognized that Speaker, because of his speed and instincts, was uniquely equipped to diminish the park's effect, something that was clearly in Young's interest. As Speaker later told a writer, "When I was a rookie, Cy Young used to hit me flies to sharpen my abilities to judge in advance the direction and distance of an outfield-hit ball."

  All that extra work underscored something Speaker already sensed. "I know it's easier, basically, to come in on a ball than go back," Speaker said years later.

  But so many more balls are hit in front of an outfielder ... it's a matter of percentage to be able to play in close enough to cut off those low ones or cheap ones in front of him. I still see more games lost by singles that drop just over the infield than a triple over the outfielder's head. I learned early that I could save more games by cutting off some of those singles than I would lose by having an occasional extra-base hit go over my head.

  But it was not until he began playing at Fenway Park that Speaker was able to demonstrate his remarkable ability to play shallow enough to cut off flares over the infield while still managing to catch most balls hit over his head. In fact, on at least six occasions during his career he turned an unassisted double play at second base, racing in to catch a ball on the fly and then outrunning the base runner to second base, doubling him up. Significantly, however, Speaker performed that feat for the first time at Fenway in 1912, having never executed the play at Huntington Avenue or in other spacious Dead Ball Era parks. For just as the left-field wall allowed Duffy Lewis to play shallower than at Huntington Avenue, the presence of the center-field bleachers in Fenway Park allowed Speaker to play shallower as well. Unless a ball hit over his head was aimed directly at the flagpole, where Fenway's back fence was nearly five hundred feet from home, the center-field bleachers, more than four hundred feet away from home at their nearest point, still gave Speaker some cover and allowed him to play closer than at the Huntington Avenue Grounds.

  Although observers would occasionally estimate that Speaker played as close as forty feet from second base, that is likely to have been either hyperbole or a description of his play under special circumstances, such as late in a game with the winning run on third and less than two outs, a situation in which anything more than a short fly ball would be certain to score a run. Most outfielders have an effective range of about 125 feet when pursuing high fly balls, which rarely stay in the air more than five seconds. During the Dead Ball Era a long drive was one that traveled between 325 and 350 feet in the air, and anything longer was an anomaly—so rare as to not be worth worrying about. In all likelihood Speaker generally played two hundred feet or so from home plate, or about seventy-five to one hundred feet behind second base, but still some seventy-five to one hundred feet shallower than the average center fielder does today.

  Speaker was suited to the position not only physically but temperamentally, once saying, "I was raised to it. I feel better in the outfield, in center field, with room to swing my elbows. I think maybe the feeling was born down in me down in Texas. I got used to the idea of space all around me."

  At the same time—and for an entirely different reason—Fenway Park also served Speaker as a hitter. Like Lewis, Speaker was a pull hitter, but as a left-handed batter he favored right field. Speaker himself once noted that "I cut my drives between the first baseman and the line, and that is my favorite alley for my doubles." Relatively speaking, right field is much larger than left field in Fenway Park, a fact that was even truer in 1912 than it is today, since the construction of the bullpen, among other reconfigurations, has diminished the size of the outfield. And while conventional wisdom has always held that the left-field wall is helpful to right-handed power hitters—particularly home run hitters—the relatively small size of the outfield in left can hold down batting averages. In right field, while home run power is suppressed, there is simply more room for hits to fall in. That is the major reason why most left-handed hitters in Fenway Park have tended to hit for a higher average. Ted Williams, for example, hit twenty-five points higher in Fenway than elsewhere, Wade Boggs hit .328 for his career but .369 in Boston, and through 2010 David Ortiz, a career .281 hitter, had batted .306 in Fenway Park.

  During the three-game series against Detroit that began Boston's home stand, Fenway Park continued, like a curtain slowly rising, to unveil both its offensive and defensive impact on the game. In the opener, on yet another cold and damp day, Joe Wood took the mound opposite Tiger ace George Mullin. In the first inning Ty Cobb sent a line drive to center field that in another ballpark might have fallen in for a hit, but Speaker, playing shallower in Fenway Park, was able to snag the drive. Although the Tigers hit Wood rather freely, Boston rode a four-run sixth-inning outburst to a 5–4 win.

  The two teams were rained out the following day, and players from both clubs were feted at a banquet by 1,500 members of the local Elks Club, an evening that, among other things, featured the singing of Buck O'Brien. But the most interesting exchange took place when Major P. F. O'Keefe, the exalted ruler of the Boston Lodge, introduced Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker together, as if the two were equals.

  Cobb played the southern gentleman to the hilt, but as the Globe noted, "he sent some hot ones in the direction of Tris," each barb delivered with a disingenuous smile frozen on his lips. He concluded by damning Speaker with faint praise, saying that "I am not much of a talker, but as there is the greatest 'Speaker' of all to follow me, I waive the privilege of taking any more of your time." Speaker spoke only briefly and failed to respond in kind, but on the field the next day Speaker stood his ground as he and Cobb waged a bit of a private battle against one another.

  GEORGIA PEACH SPECKED BY BRADLEY BLIGHT AND NIPPED BY SPEAKER FROST

  Boston won 7–4 behind Hall in a steady rain, but the final score was perhaps the least important part of the contest. In the third inning, with Boston nursing a 3–2 lead, Cobb cracked a double to the gap. Sam Crawford followed with a fly ball to center field, which Speaker caught with little effort.

  Nevertheless Cobb tagged up after the catch and lit out for third. It made little sense strategically, for Cobb was already in scoring position, but the volatile outfielder was always playing for something more than the score. In this instance he was looking for an opportunity to assert his dominance over Speaker.

  Speaker was not playing as deep as the Tiger star was accustomed to, and his throw to Larry Gardner beat Cobb to the base, where despite Cobb's usual hard slide Gardner's tag put him out. In the fifth inning, however, Cobb was able to extract a measure of revenge. With one man on, Charley Hall threw Cobb a low curve. He golfed the ball high down the right-field line.

  As Cobb raced toward first base and Harry Hooper chased after the ball, both catcher Bill Carrigan and umpire Billy Evans lined up behind home plate, watching as the ball curved toward the short pole, perhaps twenty feet tall, that marked where the foul line met the stands. As the ball came down it curved toward the line, then plopped over the four-foot-high barrier and into the seats where the extreme end of the pavilion jutted into fair territory, just out of the reach of Harry Hooper. Had the ball been hit a few more feet fair, it would have been far short of the fence and an easy out.

  Evans waved his hand toward fair territory, and Cobb fairly chortled as he toured the bases with the second over-the-fence home run in the history of Fenway Park, one that barely traveled three hundred feet in the air. Cobb's home run w
as also the first down the right-field line and around the much shorter genetic ancestor of the now famous "Pesky Pole," the name that pitcher Mel Parnell gave the right-field foul pole after Red Sox infielder Johnny Pesky hit a similar home run a generation later. Bill Carrigan put up a mild protest, but Evans was certain of his call. Speaker may have made Cobb look bad on the bases, but the home run put the Tigers up by a run.

  Fortunately the Red Sox, behind Bedient in relief, stormed back to win. The Tigers then avoided a sweep in the finale by scoring three ninth-inning runs and holding on as the Red Sox fell short and lost 6–5. Once again Fenway Park played a part in determining the winner.

  It was sunny for a change, which must have brought a smile to Jerome Kelley's face. Because of the weather, the infield at Fenway Park was still a mess. The Post referred to the ground around second base as being in "frightful condition," featuring a "glaring hole" filled with quicksand, and blamed the field conditions for the pathetic fielding performance by Clyde Engle, who was still filling in for the injured Yerkes at second base. The husky infielder, who had little range to begin with, made two blatant errors and failed to reach several other balls as he trudged after them through the mud.

  Even the sun was a mixed blessing. Although the players much preferred sunshine to rain, since the game started at 3:15 p.m., toward the later innings, when the sun hung low in the western sky, it shone directly into the eyes of the right fielder.

  With Detroit nursing a one-run lead in the top of the ninth, the Tigers' Ossie Vitt looped one to right field. Hooper, with little but open space behind him, was playing deep, and Clyde Engle, lumbering out from second, couldn't come close to the ball, which fell for a hit. Cobb followed with a hit through the hole between second and first, bringing up Sam Crawford.

  The Tiger outfielder hit the ball on the nose, right at Hooper but over his head. The outfielder looked up but saw only the sun and did not even turn around until Speaker, closing hard from center field, yelled that the ball had landed behind him and was now rolling unimpeded in no-man's-land. By the time Hooper ran it down all three men had scored, and Crawford received credit for a home run.

  That would not be the last time a right fielder at Fenway Park had a hard time seeing the ball in the late afternoon sun—none more famously perhaps than the Yankees' Lou Piniella, who lost Jerry Remy's ninth-inning fly ball during the 1978 playoff game between Boston and New York and avoided the goat horns only by making a blind stab to catch the ball on the hop. That is one reason why outfielders today are glad that the day games generally start several hours earlier. The game is generally over by the time the sun is low enough on the horizon to cause a problem, and modifications to Fenway Park have increased the height of the grandstand, which now starts blocking the sun when it is somewhat higher in the sky.

  When St. Louis followed the Tigers into Boston, the Sox hoped to gain some ground in the pennant race by beating up the lowly Browns. While the Red Sox were alone in second place, the Chicago White Sox, to everyone's surprise, had sprinted into first place. With a record of 18-5, they were threatening to run away with the pennant.

  No one in the game thought the White Sox could sustain that pace, but then again, no one had thought they could get off to such a good start either. They had last won a pennant in 1906 with a squad the press had dubbed "the Hitless Wonders." The White Sox still found crossing home plate a challenge. On offense they were a rather nondescript group that lacked a bona fide star, and the pitching staff, by and large, was not much more impressive. The exception was spitball ace Ed Walsh.

  In the early days of the season Walsh was almost unhittable. As Sam Crawford once told author Lawrence Ritter, when Walsh threw his spitter, "I think that ball disintegrated on the way to the plate, and the catcher put it back together again. I swear, when it went past the plate, it was just the spit went by." The White Sox were riding Walsh hard: he was pitching every third or fourth game and also appearing in relief, a breakneck pace that no other pitcher could maintain. With the White Sox due to follow the Browns into Boston, the Red Sox needed both to beat up on the last-place club and to get into a groove before they faced the White Sox, who were gaining more confidence every day.

  BROWNS ALWAYS AT WOOD'S MERCY

  They needn't have worried, as the Browns were compliant in both areas. Joe Wood won the first and last games of the series, striking out a total of sixteen and nearly throwing a no-hitter as the Red Sox won in every way possible—scoring big, scoring late, coming back, and hanging on—to sweep all four contests. Nearly every Red Sox player came out of the series on fire and brimming with confidence. Speaker, in particular, feasted off St. Louis pitching and lifted his average to nearly .400.

  The big story that day, however, was not Boston's victory but what had taken place in New York, where the Yankees were playing host to the Tigers. A fan named Clyde Leuker heckled Ty Cobb for most of the game, and when he called the southern slugger a "half nigger," Cobb lost it. In a rage he ran into the stands, climbed over other spectators until he reached Leuker, then proceeded to beat him senseless as hundreds watched in horror. When some fans told Cobb that Leuker, who had been in an industrial accident several years before, had no hands and was essentially defenseless, Cobb responded, "I don't care if he doesn't have any feet," and continued to pummel the heckler.

  Ban Johnson, who was in the stands and witnessed the altercation, immediately suspended Cobb indefinitely. Cobb's teammates, seeing their chance for a pennant slipping away, backed their star and howled. They went on strike to protest the suspension. Not until the Tigers took the field a few days later with a replacement squad of amateurs and lost 24–2, making a travesty of the game, did Johnson back down. He cut Cobb's suspension to ten games, and the real Tigers returned to the field. Although Cobb was unaffected upon his return, the Tigers never got back on track as a team, and the Red Sox had one less contender to worry about.

  Boston's four-game winning streak ran their record to a stellar 16-8, but they were still three and a half games behind Chicago, which led the league with a 21-6 mark. The opening game of the series, scheduled for May 16, was also "Dedication Day" at Fenway Park, McAleer's final attempt to use the new park to drum up a big crowd.

  VIPs were sent engraved invitations that featured the 1910 drawing of the park, which was also reproduced on the header of the club's new official stationery. Apart from including a few design elements, like the right-field bleachers, that did not exist, the drawing lacked what was thus far Fenway Park's most distinguishing characteristic—rain clouds. Dedication Day was no exception. It poured all day, which not only left huge puddles on the field but, according to Paul Shannon, "cost the Red Sox many thousands of dollars" when the contest was postponed for a day. Nevertheless McAleer entertained the distinguished guests and VIPs at the ballpark, crammed into the team's offices for drinks and a catered meal.

  The sun came out the next morning, and Jerome Kelley's men once again tried to whip the park into shape. Apart from sweeping the field of water, his staff had strung bunting along the grandstand and placed potted plants along the sidewalk outside and the walkways inside the park. Most of the luminaries who had tried to attend opening day were now on hand for the dedication, including Charles Comiskey, Ban Johnson, Charles Logue, and James M. McLaughlin. The latter two men finally had an opportunity to see the park not only nearly full—seventeen thousand fans turned out for the game—but bathed in sunshine. For the first time all season Fenway Park looked and felt warm and welcoming. The players paraded before the game to center field, where the largest American flag ever seen in the city of Boston was raised on the flagpole as the Letter Carriers' Band played "The Star-Spangled Banner."

  But when Jake Stahl learned that the White Sox planned to pitch Ed Walsh in what was already his eighth start of the year, he chose to back off, Dedication Day or not. Joe Wood, with only one day of rest since facing St. Louis, was unavailable, but everyone else on the pitching staff was ready to go, includin
g Buck O'Brien, Charley Hall, and Hugh Bedient. Rather than risk wasting one of his better pitchers against Walsh, however, Stahl all but gave up on the game and selected Larry Pape to make only his second start of the season. In the Boston clubhouse eyes rolled.

  It would not be the first time Stahl's choice of a hurler caused observers to scratch their heads, but for the first eight and two-thirds innings Pape made Stahl look like a genius as he scattered twelve hits yet somehow managed to give up only one run. Although the Sox scratched out two first-inning runs off Walsh, after that the pitcher was his usual magnificent self.

  When Walsh came to bat in the ninth, Pape was one out away from a win, and when Walsh tapped the ball back to the box, Pape was only one soft toss to first base away from a victory.

  But there was a reason Pape had barely pitched all season long. He botched the ground ball for an error, and Walsh reached first base.

  The end came fast as Pape then gave up a double, a walk, and a hit batsman before another error by Clyde Engle and a single gave the game to Chicago, 5–2, and let all the air out of Boston's balloon.

  The club stayed deflated the next day as the White Sox outhustled them to a 3–1 win, beating Bedient and stretching their lead over the Red Sox to five and a half games. "What has become," wondered Tim Murnane aloud in the Globe, "of the star pitchers whom fans are looking to land the money this year?" Boston players were asking the same question as the fractures between the club's two factions increased each day.