Fenway 1912

by Glenn Stout

  Matty got two quick outs in the eighth before Fenway Park and Art Fletcher combined to save the day for the Boston. A few innings before, when the sun peeked through the clouds, John McGraw had made a switch, sending diminutive left fielder Josh Devore to right and right fielder Red Murray to left because Murray had trouble with the sun field. Now the sun was gone, but McGraw had not bothered to have the two men switch back to their original places. Duffy Lewis lofted a routine fly ball Murray's way, and the outfielder drifted back on the ball, which, pushed by the wind, headed to earth some twenty feet shy of the wall.

  Of course, because of what Sam Crane disparagingly referred to as "the temporary little low circus seat stand erected behind left field," that meant that the ball was actually dropping just over the temporary fence. Murray staggered back and, not sure of precisely where the fence was, leapt up for the fly ball just as he backed into the low rail. Devore, nearly half a foot shorter than Murray, might not have even tried for the catch, but the taller man did, and the ball and Murray entered the stands together. Murray flipped backward over the fence and tumbled headfirst into the stands.

  Duffy Lewis pulled up at second base, but no one more than ten feet away from Murray was quite sure whether or not the outfielder had caught the ball. Murray himself didn't know. After landing on his head, he was dazed and only semiconscious, and Boston fans were not particularly eager to help him up. Umpire Bill Klem, manning the left-field line, had a good angle on the play, however, and was relatively certain that the ball had landed free. In a matter of seconds he dashed over to where Murray had disappeared and looked for the ball.

  It was not in the groggy outfielder's glove, and Klem, quickly ascertaining that it had not been caught—at least not by Murray—ruled the hit a double. After a minute or two a hatless Murray returned to the field—an enterprising Royal Rooter had taken advantage of the situation and obtained a souvenir—and was given a fine ovation by the Boston crowd, both for his effort and because it had been for naught. The game was delayed another minute while Murray was given a spare cap and a moment to make sure his head was still attached to his neck.

  After watching the delay from the mound, Mathewson turned around to face Larry Gardner, who hit a hard ground ball to Art Fletcher at short. The infielder didn't move, and that was the problem. It should have been the end of the inning, but the ball, wrote the New York Times, "went through his hands and legs as it would a ladder." Lewis scored, and the game was tied, 5–5.

  The ninth inning went fast, and the game entered extra innings, but night was falling quickly. Sunset would be just after 5:00 p.m., and the sun, which had peeked in and out of the clouds until midgame, was now hidden behind a thick bank of low clouds, a harbinger of rain. Players on both teams began to play quickly, taking chances they would not have taken earlier in the day, desperate for the game to end before it was called. Fred Merkle led off the tenth for New York with a long drive to left-center, and by the time Duffy Lewis ran the ball down Merkle, who ran hard from the start, was at third base. Two batters later, McGraw pulled Art Fletcher in favor of pinch hitter Moose McCormick, who came through, hitting a fly ball to left that scored Merkle easily. Now New York led 6–5, and Mathewson, still in the game, needed only three outs to collect a win and knot the Series.

  Steve Yerkes opened the tenth by grounding out, bringing up Tris Speaker. He had hit the ball hard all game but thus far had but one hit, his first-inning bunt. Standing at the plate with his bat held low and flat, like Ty Cobb, this time he swung away and hit the ball square.

  The liner rocketed to center field and came within an eyelash of making it over the fence for a home run, but to New York's good fortune, it smacked against the fence and then rolled away from the center fielder. Speaker tore toward first but nearly stumbled when first baseman Fred Merkle, using a trick that dated back to John McGraw's days with the Orioles, "accidently" wandered in his path. Speaker managed to stay on his feet, however, then rounded second and was nearly at third when Snodgrass's throw came in to shortstop Tillie Schaefer, who had taken over for Art Fletcher. Speaker appeared to be slowing up as he approached third, but when he looked over his left shoulder and saw Schaefer bobble the ball, he suddenly sped up. As he did, third baseman Buck Herzog got in his way, causing Speaker to take a bad step and nearly fall once again before he careened toward home.

  Tillie Schaefer's throw had Speaker beat by ten feet, but when catcher Artie Wilson, set up just in front of the plate, tried to catch the ball and spin to his left to put the tag on Speaker, he couldn't hang on to it and the ball rolled free. Speaker, twisting out of the way behind home, slid past without touching the plate. As Silk O'Loughlin leaned over the proceedings with his hands at his sides, Wilson realized that he didn't have the ball, Speaker realized that he had missed the base, and both men suddenly sprang into action. Wilson grabbed the ball and dove toward Speaker as Speaker, from his knees, launched himself toward home, his right hand reaching out. An instant before Wilson reached him, Speaker slapped home to tie the game, 6–6. Speaker was given a triple on the hit, and an error was charged to Wilson.

  Speaker jumped to his feet and, limping badly, let O'Loughlin have it, claiming in the most profane terms that first Merkle and then Herzog had blocked his path and he had the sprained ankle to prove it, but O'Loughlin claimed not to have seen anything illegal. Speaker then took up his case with base umpire Charlie Rigler, but Rigler hadn't seen anything either. Speaker limped off, still complaining, waving his arms in the air in frustration as the Giants smirked.

  Mathewson was gassed, but McGraw decided to stick with his pitcher, win, lose, or draw. The pitcher tried to wiggle out of the jam and, after toeing the rubber, stepped off and threw to Merkle at first, making an appeal that Speaker had missed first base, but his plea was denied. Then Mathewson took a deep breath, dug deep, and threw.

  Even the bands were tired now, and it was almost too dark to read the music anyway. Fenway Park was nearly silent as he released the pitch, but the crack of the bat as Lewis sliced the ball to right brought the crowd to its feet.

  It was as if Fenway Park was suddenly some billiard table and every ball hit some new trick bank shot. Once again, the Red Sox lost a home run by an eyelash as Lewis's hit found the two-by-four-inch railing and fell back onto the field. Lewis pulled up at second base with another double, incredulous. Gardner, his eye now black from his earlier encounter with the ground ball, tried to win the game with a smash through the hole on the right side, but Larry Doyle reached out with one hand, knocked it down, then threw him out. Stahl then grounded out and the game was still tied.

  As the teams exchanged positions Speaker stopped Buck Herzog near the pitcher's mound, blocking his way like a matador stopping a bull. The two men jawed at one another for a minute and then nearly came to blows until first Larry Doyle and then John McGraw himself came out and kept Herzog from trying to knock Speaker down again, this time with his fist. Jake Stahl, having seen enough of Charley Hall, who had walked four in two and two-thirds innings, made the only move he had left and replaced Hall with Hugh Bedient.

  By then, as Damon Runyon wrote, it was 4:45 p.m. and "somber dusk was shrouding Fenway ... lights were popping up in the windows of houses beyond the wall and electric signs were commencing to twinkle on the roofs of distant buildings." The two clubs were exhausted, yet both knew they needed to work quickly—Silk O'Loughlin had informed each manager that he would call the game at the end of the inning. The Giants got Snodgrass and Becker on in the eleventh on a hit-by-pitch and a walk as Bedient showed nothing but nerves, but both men, desperate to reach scoring position, were cut down stealing. The Red Sox worked quickly in their half as well, swinging at almost everything. When Mathewson threw his 128th and final pitch of the game to Hugh Bedient, he topped the ball back to the mound for the third out in the eleventh inning. Silk O'Loughlin waved his hand and the game was over.

  It was a tie, 6–6, but although it was not yet obvious, for Boston it was far b
etter than kissing your sister. The tie contest—slowly, inexorably, and irrevocably—tilted the advantage Boston's way. As the National Commission had decided earlier, a tie game would be made up in the city in which it had been played. So instead of getting on a train to New York, the teams would stay in Boston for another game at Fenway the next day, and New York's home-field advantage was now less pronounced. Moreover, if the Series was extended because of the tie, Joe Wood might be available to pitch in not just three but four games. So could Tesreau, but the Sox, after discovering that he was tipping his pitches, were not afraid to face him again.

  Fenway Park had done its job. While the vagaries of the ballpark's recent makeover had taken away several potential long hits and created several others, at the most critical time it had also accommodated Boston's eighth-inning comeback and helped the home team avoid a loss. And now they would get to play game 2 again.

  That night, however, more than just the outcome of the game was on the minds of the players. Precisely the situation Mathewson had described to Sam Crane earlier that day had taken place, a tie game, and after the game Mathewson again discussed the issue with his teammates. He explained to them that if the Series went to its full complement of games, the owners were in line to receive a windfall of somewhere between $70,000 and $80,000. While the players were still likely to receive a record payout, none of them were happy at the prospect of playing an extra game without compensation—no one liked to work for free. Mathewson, knowing that he needed as much support as possible before approaching the commission with a complaint, decided he would bring up the issue with the Red Sox before deciding how to proceed. Meanwhile, they would all keep playing.

  After using Collins, Hall, and Bedient in game 2, Stahl had little choice but to pitch Buck O'Brien, the pride of Brockton and 20-13 during the regular season, in game 3. McGraw, on the other hand, was always looking for an edge and remained circumspect. Even though he would later have both Tesreau and Marquard warm up before the game, the Red Sox expected his choice to be Marquard and planned accordingly. They knew that it would take more than Tesreau and Mathewson to beat them. Marquard would have to pitch at some point, and for the Giants to win he would somehow have to recapture the magic that had led him to nineteen straight wins to start the season. McGraw had tried everything to get him to return to form and had used him sparingly in September, hoping the rest would help, but in limited duty he had shown few signs of regaining his form. The Royal Rooters, in particular, salivated at the opportunity to see Marquard on the mound, for after the tie game New York fans were surprisingly confident and Boston backers had found plenty of New Yorkers eager to bet on game 3 at even money.

  On the morning of October 10 Jerome Kelley awoke, heard rain dripping from the eaves outside his bedroom window, and rushed to Fenway Park. All morning, as the rain slowly turned to drizzle, he supervised his crew in the now-familiar task of trying to make the field at Fenway Park playable. Just before noon, with the game still in doubt but the sun just starting to peek through the clouds, Kelley had his men peel back the canvas they had put in place over the infield the previous evening so the umpires could inspect the field. They nodded their approval, and as the clouds skidded off thousands of Bostonians who had heard that tickets had gone wanting for the tie game left for lunch and did not return to work. Those who had purchased tickets in advance were notified in the morning papers that even though the first game at Fenway had ended in a tie, they should use their tickets marked "game 2" for the next contest. In the event the tie caused a fourth contest to be played at Fenway, fans with reserved seats were told that they would need to present their game 3 ticket stubs to acquire tickets. An already confusing situation was getting even more convoluted.

  The crush at Fenway Park was tremendous as more than twenty thousand fans converged and tried to buy a ticket in the final two hours. This time the precious pasteboards disappeared before the line in the street had reached its end, and those who could not manage to find a ticket were forced to improvise. Signs and streetlights that offered any kind of view of the park were commandeered and sagged under the weight of boys and young men willing to risk their lives for a view of the ball game, and a number of enterprising fans even scaled the outside of the left-field wall and watched the game perched precariously on its top edge, the first to sit there since the first game of the season. Others sat atop the fence in extreme center field near the flagpole. An enterprising garage owner on Lansdowne Street erected bleachers on the roof, similar to the seats that have been erected on rooftops adjacent to Chicago's Wrigley Field. Even the bull-shaped sign on the left-field wall was commandeered again. In the Globe an unnamed female reporter wrote that "the great palpitating sea of faces was like one huge round blackboard of life."

  The Rooters indulged in the usual shenanigans before the game, but there was little other pomp and circumstance beyond the presentation of a Chalmers automobile to Tris Speaker, his reward for being named the league's most valuable player. His New York counterpart, Larry Doyle, had received his car before the first game of the Series, and Speaker waved Doyle over to join him in the car. The NL MVP complied, and the New Yorker received a polite ovation, but then Speaker surprised everyone by starting the engine, putting the car in gear, and taking off, turf flying off the rear wheels as they spun in the mud and Jerome Kelley cringed. According to the Times, "Speaker shattered all the Boston speed laws by whirling around the baseball field at such a clip that the crowd's heart was in its mouth for fear that both joy riders would be pitched out." Before the day was over the record crowd of 34,624 would experience many more "heart in the mouth" moments.

  The first two games had come down to the last pitch, and so would the third. Buck O'Brien, the thirty-year-old rookie, was better than Joe Wood had been in game 1 and gave up only two runs, one in the second after Red Murray—again—led off with a double and scored on Herzog's sacrifice fly, and a second run in the fifth when Herzog planted one in the stands in left and then scored on Art Fletcher's single. Apart from that, O'Brien's spitball and the occasional fastball and curve kept the Giants off balance as he scattered only six hits and three walks in one of the better pitching performances of the Series.

  Unfortunately for Boston, Rube Marquard, who had cost the Giants some $11,000 to sign several years before and had been considered a complete bust until his record-breaking streak at the start of the 1912 season, only to turn bust again, improbably turned back the clock. He was once again pitching like the man who could not be beat, using a fastball nearly as dominant as that of Joe Wood. Through eight innings he scattered five hits and struck out six, shutting out Boston while not allowing a man past second base. Only once did the Red Sox threaten, when Jake Stahl walloped one to deep left-center, nearly knocking the men off the bull, a ball that would have been a home run in most ballparks and might have even been one in Fenway Park, albeit of the inside-the-park variety, were it not for the ground rules that held Stahl at second base. In the eighth Stahl, watching the game slip away, became desperate. In the words of Ring Lardner, he "began to rush the militia," using two pinch hitters, a rarity at the time, batting for both Bill Carrigan and O'Brien. Yet neither replacement could crack Marquard. Hick Cady then took over behind the plate, and Hugh Bedient came on to pitch the ninth.

  In his relief appearance in game 2, Bedient had started out by hitting the first batter, and he did so again, plunking Buck Herzog. Cady saved him by cutting down Herzog on a steal attempt, but then Chief Meyers singled, bringing up the much-maligned Art Fletcher. Fletcher hit a flare toward center field, and the lumbering Meyers, eager to give Marquard an insurance run, took off from first without giving a thought to the possibility that the ball might be caught.

  Tris Speaker was in center field, and no man in baseball played the position better. In a play that in another context would probably still be talked about today, he chased down Fletcher's drive, then pulled up, checking on the runner. Meyers, oblivious, was charging toward third. Spe
aker could have beaten the husky catcher to first base had he chosen to, but there was no need. Besides, when he stopped short his ankle, hurt while trying to avoid Herzog the day before and now wrapped in adhesive tape, started to give way. He threw to first for the double play, and Boston was out of the inning.

  Despite the fact that Boston was only three outs away from defeat, not a fan in the stands or perched atop anything made any move to leave. All year long the Red Sox had shown a propensity for making late-inning comebacks, and even as the sun began to dip below the horizon and long autumnal shadows made it hard for fans to track the ball—now darkened by grass stains and tobacco juice—no one left the ballpark. If a season at Fenway had taught them anything, it was that no game was ever, ever over.

  Speaker led off. He could barely walk, but the Giants did not know that, and it stayed a secret when he popped up to Fletcher for the first out. Duffy Lewis then stepped in.

  He had collected Boston's first hit in the second inning, when he looped a line drive to right, but he was hardly feeling confident. The pull hitter had been late on Marquard all day. This time he was not only late but weak.

  The ball bounced harmlessly to the hole between first and second. Fred Merkle, still playing Lewis to pull, was well off first base and went after the ball, which might well have been more easily caught by Doyle. Lewis broke from the box quickly, but Marquard, probably thinking Doyle would field the ball, hesitated before breaking toward first. Merkle threw to the pitcher racing to the bag, but Lewis beat him to the base and was safe.

  For the first time all day Marquard seemed to crack, visibly upset both at himself and at Merkle for not covering first and with Merkle for fielding the ball. He knew it was the kind of mistake that could cost a pitcher a ball game, the kind of bad break that had turned the second half of his year into a nightmare.