Fenway 1912

by Glenn Stout

  As the Boston Journal noted, "The managers of the park very badly guessed what they would be up against." Under the direction of club secretary Bob McRoy, the Red Sox kept selling tickets until it became patently obvious that if they sold any more there would be no room on the field to play the game. With perhaps as many as ten thousand fans still milling around outside the park, looking in vain for scalpers, they forced the gates closed just before 3:00 p.m. Now all they had to do was clear the field to prevent a riot.

  Most of the players had retreated to the clubhouse, but as game time approached and they tried to take the field they found the dugouts packed with fans, some squeezed on the benches and others sitting on the railings and hanging off the roof. The players stood on the infield, surrounded by fans as though they were in a boxing ring, trying to play catch but most of them just gazing in wonder. None of them had ever seen anything like it before. No one had.

  Meanwhile Joe Wood pushed his way onto the field, ball in hand, looking like a lost little boy in need of a playmate, searching in vain for a place to warm up. Although it had long been customary to warm up along the sidelines, over the course of the season Red Sox pitchers had begun to take their warm-up tosses deep in right field, where there was a bit more room. But now that was impossible, for as Paul Shannon observed, fans were "lining the banking of the left field fence some 20 feet deep, hanging on the tops of fences and straddling the back of the bull." He was referring to a bull-shaped sign advertising Bull Durham tobacco on the center-field end of the left-field wall that jutted out just far enough to allow a dozen or so fans to ride it bareback, the first fans ever to watch a game at Fenway Park, not atop the wall or in front of it or inside the scoreboard, but actually on the wall itself in fair territory.

  Wood finally decided to warm up the old-fashioned way. Hick Cady paced out sixty feet in foul ground between the diamond and the dugout and, with fans barely an arm's length away, Wood slowly began warming up. Walter Johnson did the same on the opposite side of the field.

  It was like trying to play catch on the subway platform at Park Station during rush hour. The crowd cleared a narrow corridor between the pitchers and their catchers, and the batteries started throwing the ball gingerly back and forth, Wood and Johnson taking care not to smack anyone in the jaw as they reached in their wind-up or throw the ball wild and knock someone unconscious. As they did the crowd peppered each man with questions and comments that each did his best to ignore, and heads turned back and forth en masse as the mob followed each toss and marveled at the speed of each pitch seen up close.

  After a few moments each man was ready, but it was impossible to start the game with the crowd so close. Club officials, the grounds crew, do-gooders, and cops all tried to herd the throng back away from the edge of the infield, but the fans ignored each entreaty, no one willing to give up his or her hard-won space. Finally, mounted police took the field and roughly cleared fair territory and the baselines, although a ring of spectators six or eight deep still ringed the infield and decided to take their chances with foul balls. For the most part, however, they gave the players a wide berth and remained thirty or more feet from fair territory.

  Players from neither team were able to reclaim their own dugouts. "So thickly were the spectators massed," wrote Webb, "that the players' pits were abandoned, the contestants bringing their war clubs out almost to the baseline." In other words the players simply sprawled on the grass halfway between the baselines and the stands, like kids gathered around a makeshift diamond on the sandlots, waiting for their ups.

  Even though the crowd ringed the outfield, except in left—where fans stood not only on Duffy's Cliff but in front of it—they did not dramatically impinge on fair territory. How many were in the park? When asked by Mel Webb, Bob McRoy insisted that there were no more than twenty-nine thousand fans in the park, a figure that seems absurd and may well have been used simply to dispel any safety concerns. Paul Shannon noted that the crowd was "conservatively estimated by vice president John I. Taylor, who had a long expertise in taking care of big throngs at the old Huntington avenue park, at 35,000, though several others put the figure 5,000 higher." In fact, no one will ever know precisely how many fans squeezed, cajoled, or otherwise bribed their way into the park that day, but it seems reasonable to assume that Taylor's figure was more accurate, for several crowds in the previous few weeks had pushed thirty thousand without any fans left standing in foul ground behind the plate. Regardless, it is safe to say that no other game was ever played at Fenway Park under such conditions. Yet despite the mass of humanity and cramped conditions, only five fans found the conditions so uncomfortable that they asked for a refund, and only one, a young boy, was hurt by a foul ball. This game was not for those who viewed the game as merely a pleasant pastime, but for those who loved the game for its passion.

  Some fifteen minutes after the scheduled 3:15 starting time, umpires Tommy Connolly and Bertie Hart gathered representatives of both teams at home plate to go over the ground rules. After some discussion they decided that unless a runner was particularly fast and an outfielder inordinately slow, there would be no triples or home runs. Any hit that made the crowd would be ruled a ground-rule double. That rule, combined with the proximity of the crowd to the field, which drastically reduced the amount of foul ground, made the task of Joe Wood and Walter Johnson just a little more difficult, and the possibility that the matchup might fall flat a little more likely. A few routine fly balls that fell into the crowd for ground-rule doubles could break a game open, and the lack of foul ground seemed likely to give hitters an extra chance or two. In the stands James McAleer summed up the feelings of everyone when he was overheard saying before the game that "it is going to be a great fight between two great pitchers. I wish the score might be 1–0 and that we might make the one."

  While Johnson, in the minds of most, was the champion and Wood the challenger, the smart money was on Wood. Pitching at home gave him a bit of an edge, but even more important was the surrounding cast. There wasn't a player in the Washington lineup who was better than his Boston counterpart, either offensively or defensively. That alone was enough to make Wood the favorite.

  When Wood took the mound at the start, Fenway positively rumbled, the singing of the Royal Rooters silenced by the sound of thirty thousand throats. When he poured his first pitch, a fastball, past Washington's center fielder Clyde Milan, the crowd roared and the stands shook. In the press box on the roof of the grandstand, nearly a century before the phrase "pitch count" made its way into the lexicon of the game, Herman Nickerson of the Journal, Paul Shannon of the Post, Mel Webb of the Globe, and other local baseball scribes began charting each pitch as if it were a move in a chess game between two grandmasters—as indeed it was. On this day nothing was overlooked. Perhaps no other game in the history of baseball to date had ever been covered with such thoroughness.

  Milan took Wood's second pitch for a ball and then hit a bouncer in the hole. Larry Gardner ranged far to his left, but couldn't quite reach it. Charlie Wagner did and smothered it, but realizing he had no chance to throw the runner out, he held on to the ball as Milan, a poor man's Tris Speaker, streaked past first base with a base hit.

  Milan, who would lead the league in 1912 with eighty-eight stolen bases, knew full well the trouble Wood had holding runners on base and how much it bothered him to do so. Wood had gotten better at holding runners on since spring training, particularly with Cady behind the plate, but daring base runners still made him nervous. Batting second, Washington third baseman Eddie Foster stepped in. Wood got a quick strike and then threw over to first. He preferred not to do so, particularly because Clyde Engle, not Jake Stahl, whose ankle often seemed to act up against better pitchers, was playing first base.

  Joe Wood, like McAleer, was also thinking that one run might be the difference in the game. He was determined to hold Milan close. He threw to first a second time and then got another strike, then threw to first twice more before Foster fouled o
ne back, the crowd behind the plate ducking and sprawling out of the way. Wood went to first again, then threw a ball, then threw to first once, twice, four times in a row, Milan diving back in safe each time as the crowd grew restless and tense. Then, with the count 1-2, Wood got the payoff.

  Foster hit a comebacker straight to the pitcher. He captured it clean, spun, and threw toward Wagner who was racing toward second base. Milan, after ten pickoff attempts, got a poor jump and was just beginning his slide when Wagner's relay whistled by his ear on its way to first. Engle pulled it from the air as Wagner turned a neat double play.

  The crowd cheered, knowing how rare it was to double up Milan. Wood looked relieved and now could return to his full wind-up. He was a different pitcher then, and he struck out Danny Moeller to send Boston up to the plate. Wood had kept Washington from scoring, but including his throws to first, it had taken him twenty-four tosses to get three outs. In another age, his manager would already be thinking about the bullpen, but in 1912 the thought never crossed Jake Stahl's mind. The game belonged to Joe Wood and Walter Johnson and no one else, no matter how many innings it went.

  The Red Sox hitters were also thinking that it might be a one-run game, and in the first, after working the count to 2-2, Harry Hooper hit a weak flare straight to shortstop George McBride. Johnson then got a strike on Yerkes, but the Boston second baseman, who seemed to hit only when the crowds were largest, rapped a sharp ground ball down the third-base line. Eddie Foster tried to backhand the ball, but only knocked it down, and Yerkes made first base. With Speaker up, Boston fans shook Fenway Park to its foundations.

  Speaker pulled Johnson's first pitch hard and long and foul into the crowd along the first-base line, the roar of excitement at the sound of the bat striking the ball quickly dissipating as the crowd peeled away from the path of the ball. Then, with the count 2-1, he ripped a ground ball down the first-base line. Chick Gandil fielded it cleanly and tossed to second to put out Yerkes, but Speaker reached first.

  Now it was Johnson's turn to keep the runner close, and he alternated strikes to Lewis and throws to first before Speaker broke for second, but Johnson and catcher Eddie Ainsmith were prepared. The throw to second and the tag beat Speaker.

  The first inning was over, but the tone was set: every pitch would be a battle. Wood retired Washington easily in the second on ten pitches, but in Boston's half, with one out, first Gardner and then Engle slapped hard base hits through the left side and Boston had men on first and second.

  One hit could make a man a hero, but Johnson had made a living off of stifling a reach for the stars. He overpowered first Wagner and then Cady, getting each on weak pop-ups, and through two innings the score on Fenway's left-field wall told the story, 0–0.

  As the hitters for each team sprawled along the grass between the crowd and the field, they all agreed on one thing—it was hard enough to hit either Wood or Johnson on a normal day, but on this one it was even harder. Each man was on his game, and the hitter's background, usually fine in Fenway, was made much more difficult by the surging crowds in center field. The contrast between the ubiquitous straw hats and white shirts and the dark jackets of the fans made a poor background for hitters. That still afflicts Fenway Park and is the reason a portion of the center-field bleachers is blocked off during day games even today. After the game home plate umpire Tommy Connolly would admit that he'd had a hard time seeing the ball, and his infield counterpart, Bertie Hart, would say that he'd found the background around the infield so poor because of the crowd that all he could see was "the pitchers making their motions and the catchers putting up their hands." Although the bad visibility would not cause any errors, several ground balls just managed to make it past the infield that otherwise might have been caught, probably owing to the late reaction of the fielders trying to pick the ball up out of the crowd.

  In the early innings the game moved like the early rounds of a boxing match between two heavyweights of equal ability as each club probed the other with jabs, only to be repulsed. In the third George McBride drove a pitch from Wood over Duffy Lewis's head and onto the Cliff, which Lewis could not climb because of the crowd, for a double, and he moved to third on a sacrifice. When Walter Johnson, a fine hitter, hit a sharp ground ball, McBride broke for home on contact. But Wood stabbed Johnson's hard grounder and flipped the ball to Cady. McBride braked hard and tried to scramble back to third, but Gardner and Cady chased him down. The Senators went on to put two more men on base. Wood ended the threat by fanning Moeller, but through three innings he had already thrown nearly sixty pitches. In the fourth Speaker walked and took second on a fielder's choice but was left stranded, and in the fifth, after Ainsmith walked and Walter Johnson beat out an infield hit, Duffy Lewis and Tris Speaker nearly collided going after Clyde Milan's fly ball. At the last second Speaker pulled up and Lewis cut in front, stuck his glove up, and managed to hang on.

  Johnson, apparently getting stronger, fanned the side in the bottom of the fifth, dispatching Wood on only four pitches for the final out. Washington threatened again in the bottom of the inning when former Red Sox infielder Frank Laporte drove a ball that bounded into the crowd between Speaker and Hooper for a double, but Wood escaped the jam by striking out Roy Moran.

  Entering the sixth inning, the game was still scoreless, but although neither team had pushed across a run, Johnson seemed to have the edge. Wood was using more curves and seemed to be saving his best fastballs for when he needed them most. Meanwhile Johnson, as he had demonstrated in the fifth, seemed to be settling in, his fastball a straight stream of milk from his hand to the plate.

  Johnson got two quick outs in the sixth, bringing up Speaker. He blew a fastball past the outfielder on the inside, and then broke a rare curveball in on his hands for strike two. After wasting a pitch, Johnson came back with a fastball over the outer half.

  The pitch beat Speaker, but he still got the fat part of the bat on the ball, lacing a line drive over Foster's head at third. Speaker ran hard out of the box, but the ball made the crowd before Roy Moran could gather it up, and Speaker loped into second with a ground-rule double. It was no cheap hit—even if Moran had gotten to the ball before the crowd scooped it up, he probably would have had no play on Speaker.

  Now the Boston crowd came to life again, for they knew that a base hit of almost any kind would be certain to score Speaker. Over the years they had grown accustomed to seeing Duffy Lewis, who led the Red Sox in RBIs, do just that.

  Then the Senators made a mistake. Knowing that the right-handed-hitting Lewis was a pull hitter, they sent their outfield around toward left. With any other pitcher on the mound, it was the smart move, but with Johnson on the mound, perhaps not. Over the last two innings he had overpowered Boston's hitters—and even Speaker had been late getting around on the ball. Not even a dead pull hitter like Lewis could get around on Johnson.

  Lewis worked the count to two balls and a strike when Johnson poured a high fastball over the outside corner. Lewis flailed at the pitch, and as Mel Webb described it in the Globe, "He could not get his bat around far enough to hit to his accustomed field. Instead the ball shot off to right field, and without much fire on it." It soared through the air, in the parlance of the day, like a "dying quail."

  Paul Shannon captured best what happened next.

  The bleachers rose en masse as the ball sailed over the head of first baseman Gandil and down towards the right field fence.

  Like a deer the fleet footed Moeller raced for the fence, trying to corral the sphere in its course and thereby retire the side. One stride more and the game might well have gone into extra innings. But Moeller's desperate run was all in vain.

  Though his outstretched fingers just touched the elusive leather it dropped safely and fell at his feet, Speaker scoring from second and Lewis getting second.

  Moeller in fact even dove for the ball, but could not make the catch.

  Boston led 1–0. The potential difference between victory and loss, Wood's wi
nning streak and defeat, and the crown as the King of the Pitchers, was only a scant inch or so, if that.

  With his throne in sight, Wood seized the day, striking out the first two Washington hitters in the seventh inning on only six pitches before getting Johnson to ground out to third. Johnson too settled down in the seventh and did not give up a base runner. After watching one Johnson pitch pass by for a strike, one of the Washington players was overheard to call out to Wagner, "Why don't you hit it?" Wagner stepped out, turned his head, and replied, "I can't see anything except a streak," before grounding out weakly. Washington threatened in the eighth when Eddie Foster singled and stole second, and for a moment it looked as if the game would be tied, for Chick Gandil hit a near mirror image of Speaker's earlier double with a line drive over Engle's head at first, but the ball curved foul. Although he then hit a pop-up foul off third that on any other day would have been an out but on this day made the crowd, Wood finally got him on a weak infield fly.

  In the ninth inning, as the Rooters and the crowd chanted and swayed back and forth as one, Washington almost broke through again. Laporte hit a hard shot past Gardner at third for a single, and then Moran dropped a bunt, sacrificing him to second. All at once the singing and chanting stopped, and for the first time all game the crowd fell silent, knowing a hit would tie the game, as Moeller stepped to the plate.

  All eyes were on Joe Wood, and Wood went with his best, a fastball. For the first time all game it was possible to hear the sound as it smacked into Hick Cady's mitt, but the pitch missed the plate for a ball. Fastballs had gotten Wood this far in his career, and at this moment there was no other thought in his mind besides reaching back and throwing as hard as he could, his wind-up starting as soon as Cady flashed the sign. Moeller fouled off three straight, but on the fourth pitch the crowd again heard the ball collide with Cady's mitt. Moeller shuddered, the bat frozen to his shoulder, and umpire Tommy Connolly's right arm shot up in the air. Moeller spun away from the plate, out on strikes.