Fenway 1912

by Glenn Stout

  Now the crowd could taste it, and so could Wood, and Cady hardly had to put a sign down. Ainsmith topped the first pitch he saw, then swung through another. With the count 0-2, he watched one pass, and this time the umpire's arm stayed at his side, making the count 1-2.

  Then, for the 121st time in the game, Wood toed the rubber, took the sign, and threw. Ainsmith waved at the ball, Cady's mitt caught the sound, and the catcher rose from his crouch in triumph as Connolly called Ainsmith out. Jake Stahl raced to embrace Wood, and Fenway Park burst open like a fat man loosening his belt after a big meal. The crowd poured onto the field, and in seconds Wood was enveloped as he was half-carried and half-pushed by his teammates toward the Boston dugout.

  With his thirtieth victory—making him an ungodly 30-4 for the season—and his fourteenth win in a row, Wood came away with Johnson's AL record of sixteen straight wins still within reach. In every way the game had lived up to its billing. Johnson had given up only five hits while throwing 103 pitches, including throws to first, and Wood had thrown 121 pitches while giving up six hits, but Boston's finest had struck out nine to Johnson's five, and Johnson's record fell to 29-10. The Washington Post's Joe Jackson wrote that "the result proved nothing save that luck broke with Wood," and even Sporting Life offered that "Johnson ... pitched the best game," but no one in Boston agreed. "The challenger," wrote Mel Webb, "went down before the challenged." "All hail to Joe Wood," wrote Shannon, "uncrowned king of American League pitchers!"

  WOOD BETTER MAN YESTERDAY

  Johnson Not Quite His Equal—Their Match One That Will Never Be Forgotten

  As the throng of happy fans stayed on the field and celebrated, and Joe Wood finally let a smile escape from his lips in the clubhouse, James McAleer, Robert McRoy, and John I. Taylor surveyed the mob that had filled every nook and cranny of the ballpark. Looking around, they could not help but share the same thoughts. After smiling for a moment at both the result of the game and the amount of money they had earned over the preceding one hour and forty minutes, each man next thought ahead to the World's Series. Watching the mayhem on the field and the logjams in the aisles and in front of each exit, they surely wondered how precisely they were going to accommodate the crowds that were certain to come in October. "Oh," wrote Tim Murnane a few days later, "for a ballpark large enough to accommodate all the people who would gladly pay double to see the World's Series."

  Fenway Park, less than a season old, was already too small.

  10. Giants on the Horizon

  Baseball fans who visit Fenway Park next week to see the new American League Champions perform will be surprised at the changes that have been made since the team went away ... The work is being rushed and, according to the contractors, will be finished a few days previous to the opening game of the big series.

  —Boston Globe

  THE LIGHTS WERE on late in Red Sox offices on the evening of September 6. As Robert McRoy supervised the counting of receipts following Wood's victory over Johnson he could hardly believe it. Never before in the history of the Red Sox had a single game, or a single series, been more lucrative. The first-place Red Sox and Wood's winning streak were the reasons, of course, but the mechanism was Fenway Park. Crowds in excess of 30,000 fans had turned out in the past at the Huntington Avenue Grounds, but with fewer than 2,500 higher-priced grandstand seats and so many twenty-five-cent admissions, even when the outfield was ringed with people and the stands were sagging beneath the weight of the crowd, it was impossible to take in more than $8,000 or $9,000 for a single game.

  Not so at Fenway Park, where admission to the grandstand, which held nearly fifteen thousand fans when one included standing-room seats, ranged from seventy-five cents for unreserved seats to $1.25 for reserved seats in the first ten rows and $1.50 for a box seat. Another eight thousand fans paid fifty cents to sit in the pavilion. The only twenty-five-cent tickets were those in the bleachers and an unknown number of standing-room seats elsewhere in the park. Only God and Robert McRoy knew what everyone else had paid to stand on the field, for there were certainly some who had paid full price for a seat elsewhere but simply couldn't get to their seat or chose not to.

  After the series finale on Saturday, which the Red Sox lost 5–1 before a crowd of twenty thousand, local newspapers tried to guess just how much the Red Sox took in, both for the entire series and for the Wood-Johnson contest. The Red Sox never released an official tally of receipts, but it is safe to conclude that, on September 6 alone, the club must have taken in, conservatively speaking, at least $15,000 and perhaps as much as $20,000, while receipts for the other three games of the series probably totaled more than $10,000 for each contest. In less than a week the Red Sox grossed around $50,000, nearly the cost of their player contracts for the entire season. Clark Griffith left Boston with Washington's share of the gate, a hefty check for almost $20,000. He was delighted and gave Walter Johnson an extra $500 for his role in bringing out the crowd.

  President McAleer was not so generous with Joe Wood, who found nothing extra in his pay envelope, but a few days later, when speaking of Wood, McAleer said, "When my boys make good I am willing to pay the money." He was referring to Wood's next contract, and in 1913 Wood's salary would indeed more than double, to $7,500. For the present, however, the best pitcher in baseball was also one of the best bargains in the game.

  As the Red Sox players made their way to Chicago for an extended road trip that would take them away from Fenway Park for nearly three weeks, McAleer, McRoy, and John I. Taylor pondered both their fortune and their good fortune. The Giants may have been on the horizon, but so were some gigantic crowds—and some enormous challenges. All three men knew that something had to be done, and quickly, to maximize their profits during the World's Series. As the Washington series had made abundantly clear, Red Sox fans were already half-mad with excitement. Even at inflated World's Series prices, Boston fans could fill Fenway Park on their own. But with New York only a few hours away by train, thousands of Giants fans were certain to make the trek to Fenway Park, and the Red Sox had to reserve some seats for them as well. A certain number of tickets had to be made available to both leagues, other AL and NL teams, the players of both teams and their families, former players, club employees, local VIPs like the Royal Rooters, club vendors and advertisers, city, state, and county politicians, the archdiocese ... the list went on and on and on.

  The solution was obvious. Several weeks before, they had called on architect James E. McLaughlin and contractor Charles Logue and asked both to prepare plans to accommodate larger crowds. Now the men had a little less than three weeks to make Fenway Park bigger.

  No one was more familiar with the park than McLaughlin, and during the course of his design of Fenway Park he had, at various times, already created drawings that included seats in the two most obvious locations—the empty space between the grandstand and the left-field wall and the open space in right field between the pavilion and the center-field bleachers. The former area, which McLaughlin dubbed "the Third Base Stand," could provide seating for as many as another 5,000 fans, while the latter area could hold 4,500. It was a relatively easy process for McLaughlin to resurrect his basic plans for seating in these areas (see illustrations 9 and 11).

  The Red Sox, in fact, had always hoped to add concrete stands along the left-field line but had put those plans on hold in the event that they gained possession of the small wedge of land adjacent to the park on Brookline Avenue. It had been for sale, but the price was too dear for McAleer and Taylor, and it had fallen into the hands of investors. All around Fenway Park, in fact, investors were suddenly snatching up property that a year or so earlier had gone wanting.

  An extra 9,500 seats, however, still wasn't enough. McAleer and Taylor directed McLaughlin to maximize seating throughout the facility, and McLaughlin came up with a plan almost overnight. In addition to seats along the third-base line and in right, he designed accommodations for another 1,200 fans in seven rows of bleacher seats on Duffy's
Cliff. And since the base of both the center-field bleachers and the new right-field bleachers stopped about five or six feet above the field, there was room to create three new rows of seats for another 1,200 fans that skirted the edge of the field from the center-field end of the left-field wall in front of the center-field bleachers to nearly all the way around to the grandstand. Roughly speaking, these seats stretched from in front of section 34 of the bleachers today to the foot of the grandstand in front of section 8. McLaughlin also created two additional rows of box seats in foul territory wrapping from the near end of the new third-base stands, around behind home plate to the pavilion in right field, from section 8 to section 30 of the grandstand today, a total of 122 boxes that could accommodate another 900 fans. The end result was seating for a total of 11,600 fans, bringing the seating capacity of Fenway Park to 36,100—38,600 when one included standing-room space at the back of the grandstand.

  All these new seats would, of course, impinge upon the field. In left field the seats required the construction of a low plank fence in front of Duffy's Cliff, which removed both the Cliff and the left-field wall from play and dramatically reduced the distance needed to hit a ball over the fence in left field. In this new configuration a home run would now presumably only have to cross the new, much lower, and much closer barricade in front of the wall, and not the full height of the wall and cliff itself, which was approximately thirty-five feet.

  The new seats in center field had a similar impact: the addition of benches and a fence in front of the bleachers cut the distance to the stands by some twenty or twenty-five feet. In right field the change was even more dramatic. The front edge of the new grandstand more or less followed the path of the preexisting fence, but three new rows of seats that sat directly behind a low fence cut from the center-field bleachers to the right-field pavilion, roughly from section 42 to section 8 today (cutting off the right-field "belly"). This left an open space some thirty feet wide between the right-field seats and the fence and drastically cut the distance from home plate to right field from nearly 400 feet at its farthest point to only about 360 feet, and the distance was much closer as the fence angled toward the line. There the impact was even more striking. According to McLaughlin's original design, the seats along the right-field line were supposed to run in front of the pavilion, intruding onto the field and making the distance down the line far shorter than left field—certainly less than 300 feet, and probably only about 270 or 280 feet from home plate. But in the end a portion of this final stretch of seats would not be built, and the distance down the right-field line at the foul line would not be affected.

  One section of the new fence included a feature that today's fan would recognize as unique to Fenway Park. The stockade fence in dead center field, presumably because it was part of the hitter's background, was painted green, the first time that color scheme was used in Fenway. The rest of the fence that ran from center to right was not only unpainted but also not impenetrable. The bottom eighteen inches or so of the fence was made of horizontal plank stockade fencing, but the rest of the fence was wide open, topped only by a rail. Balls that rolled to the fence would be stopped by the planks, but those that bounced higher than eighteen inches, unless they ricocheted off the top rail, could go through or over the fence.

  Foul territory behind home plate and the infield at the foot of the existing stands was similarly decreased to accommodate the installation of the two new rows of box seats, a total of 122 boxes averaging eight seats per box. These seats were roughly equivalent to the dugout box seats that were added in 2003. The distance from fair territory to the stands had originally been some sixty feet, but the addition of the new seats cut that distance to less than fifty feet. All told, the new arrangement of seats for the World's Series cut the amount of fair territory in Fenway Park by more than 10 percent, and foul territory even more than that. These new accommodations created the most dramatic set of changes in the history of Fenway Park, alterations that helped hitters at the expense of pitchers. Fenway Park would be transformed from a facility that had been nominally a pitcher's park to one significantly more accommodating of offense. This change did not necessarily work to the advantage of the 1912 Red Sox, but that was not a concern. Everything was secondary to profit.

  There was not enough time to build any of these new seating areas in concrete and steel. The decision was made to turn back the clock and build the new stands, like the existing right-field pavilion, out of wood—plain white pine, the cheapest and most abundant material available. And just as the center-field bleachers rested on wood piers, so would the new stands along the third-base line and in right field, to ensure that the work was completed by the time the Red Sox returned from their road trip. Even though building with pine would create a significant fire hazard and render the stands less than permanent, this would be no ad hoc construction project. Design loads and other engineering specifications for such structures were published and readily available, and McLaughlin had already done similar work in designing the right-field pavilion. He had little more to do than adapt his earlier plans to scale. As soon as the Red Sox went on the road the work began almost immediately.

  That was where Charles Logue and his crews of carpenters and laborers came in. While Boston's train chugged its way toward Chicago, surveyors got to work immediately laying out foundations and driving stakes all over the field to position the new stands. Logue brought stationary, fuel-powered ripsaws, crosscut saws, and power boring machines on-site. As soon as the first of hundreds of truckloads of lumber were delivered to the park, dozens and dozens of carpenters and laborers got to work. For the next two and a half weeks the sounds of saws and hammers echoed through the Fenway almost nonstop and the smell of sawdust was omnipresent.

  As work went on in every corner of the ballpark Kelley and the grounds crew were charged with readying the field for the postseason. Most of their work was devoted to the infield, where they dug up the pitcher's box and replaced the soil. With cooler weather on the horizon, they would finally have an opportunity to spend some time repairing Kelley's precious turf. As one report stated, "New dirt [was] added and rolled out hard so that the infield will resemble a billiard table in regard to smoothness."

  The result would change Fenway forever. Although the new stands, made of wood, were not technically "permanent structures"—the life span of untreated pine is generally no more than a decade—the new third-base stands along the left-field line and the right-field bleachers would remain in place for many years after the 1912 World's Series. The third-base stands would eventually burn in 1926, but the right-field bleachers, though getting more rickety by the year, even as portions were repaired, would remain in place until the 1933–34 reconstruction. These adaptations for the World's Series of 1912 locked into place Fenway Park's now-familiar angular profile of quirky nooks and crannies that have since proven so popular and given the park so much of its character. Subsequent creation and renovation of field-level seating, bleachers, and grandstands, both during the 1933–34 reconstruction and after, has done little more than duplicate or enhance the adaptations first made to accommodate the 1912 World's Series. The Red Sox probably would have added stands in right and along the left-field line at some point anyway, but had the work not been rushed to be completed in time for the World's Series, it is likely that the stands would have been built in concrete and steel and according to a more unified design. It is doubtful that many of the irregularities that fans have since grown to appreciate and consider an essential part of Fenway's character would have been created.

  While the Red Sox played in the West, they were doing more than just playing out the string. There was still Joe Wood's winning streak to play for, the chance to officially clinch the pennant and win one hundred games, plus the opportunity to gain a psychological edge over the Giants. Even so, Stahl, for the first time all year, began to lift his foot from the accelerator. Young pitcher Ben Van Dyke was added to the squad and would soon receive a tryou
t. Players who normally would have played through minor injuries or maladies now received the occasional day off as Stahl recognized the importance of keeping everyone healthy.

  But there would be no rest for Joe Wood, at least not until he either set the record or blew his arm out trying. He wanted the mark and took the mound next with only three days' rest against Chicago. Although he faded badly at the end and had to turn the game over to Charley Hall in the ninth after giving up two hits and not recording an out, he nonetheless escaped with a 5–4 win, his fifteenth in a row.

  The Red Sox were on a roll, and their subsequent sweep of the White Sox gave them thirteen wins in their last fourteen games. Only once since early June had they lost as many as two games in a row. All of a sudden their lead over the rest of the league was approaching fifteen games.

  That lead increased in St. Louis, although the Sox finally dropped a game when they lost the front end of a doubleheader to the Browns on September 15, but Wood continued his mastery over the Browns with a 2–1 win in game 2, tying Johnson's AL mark with his sixteenth win in a row, eliminating Washington from the pennant chase, and virtually clinching a tie for the pennant for Boston.

  The record was in sight, but Wood was exhausted. He looked gaunt, and one report noted that he had "a slight case of tonsillitis and is far from feeling right." Another noted that he had to work "uncommonly hard" to beat the Browns and that by the end of the game "his uniform was as wet as if he had been dipped in a river."