Fenway 1912

by Glenn Stout

  George Edward "Duffy" Lewis (1888–1979) Collection. The Boston Tradition in Sports Collection, Boston Public Library (Microtext Department). A scrapbook of items on the Red Sox left fielder.

  Michael T. "Nuf Ced" McGreevey (1867–1943) Collection. The Boston Tradition in Sports Collection, Boston Public Library (call number GV865.M29A3). Donated by the well-known owner of the Columbus Avenue tavern Third Base, this collection consists of more than 170 photographs of professional baseball in Boston and personal scrapbooks from the 1890s to 1912. Originally displayed at McGreevey's saloon, the photographs form the largest collection of its kind.

  "Smoky Joe" Wood (1889–1985) Collection. The Boston Tradition in Sports Collection, Boston Public Library. Scrapbooks of material on the early Red Sox pitcher.

  Online Resources

  baseballalmanac.com

  baseballfever.com. Researcher Bill Burgess maintains a remarkable archive of biographical information on American baseball and sports writers.

  baseball-reference.com

  bioproj.sabr.org

  RedSox.com

  retrosheet.org

  Notes

  Introduction

  Portions of the introduction appeared in somewhat different form in the magazine Boston Baseball.

  The precise spelling of both Michael T. "Nuf Ced" McGreevey's surname and his nickname have always been uncertain. Period newspaper dispatches used "Nuf Ced" and "Nuff Said" and "McGreevey" and "McGreevy" interchangeably. For consistency, I have chosen to use the nickname "Nuf Ced" exclusively. Both spellings of both names appear on period advertisements, but a photograph of the front of Third Base dating from 1903 clearly states, "M. T. McGreevey and Co." The same spelling of the surname appears on U.S. census records for both McGreevey and his relatives and has always been used by the Boston Public Library in bibliographic records. I used "McGreevey" in the text for Red Sox Century and in other earlier work, and that spelling still seems most common among Internet search engines. The surname itself is derived from Mac Riabhaigh, lords of Moylurg in County Roscommon. In the thirteenth century they were subdued by the MacDermots, eventually to disperse throughout Ireland. Over time the Gaelic surname Mac Riabhaigh was corrupted and anglicized, appearing in some locations as Kilrea or MacIlrea, in others as MacGreevy, Mac Creevey, Magreevy, McGreavy, McGreevy, Creevy, or in other similar combinations. By the nineteenth century the name was common in such disparate locations as Sligo, Ulster, Down, and Antrim.

  Although in recent years several publications have chosen to use the spelling "McGreevy," and that is the name that now appears on a tavern on Boylston Street based on Nuf Ced's original saloon, in 1993 McGreevey's granddaughter, Anna Thompson, his only direct descendant, told me that she was certain the correct spelling was "McGreevey," evidence that I find particularly compelling. Others are free to disagree (after all, in regard to Nuf Ced, some kind of argument seems wholly appropriate), but I have chosen to retain that spelling throughout.

  Prologue

  Background information on Jerome Kelley is taken from Boston city directories and U.S. census records.

  "Busy Days at Red Sox' New Ball Park," Boston Globe, January 28, 1912, reports that Kelley had removed the sod "at the end of the 1911 season," which was October 6, 1911, and presumably before the charity soccer game of October 15, 1911.

  The "Huntington Avenue Base Ball Grounds" sign appears in earlier photographs of the Huntington Avenue Grounds but is absent in photographs from 1911.

  Chapter 1: 1911

  "Red Sox Drop Two Games": Boston Post, September 4, 1911.

  Ban Johnson's role in the creation of the Boston franchise in the American League and the early history of the club are discussed in greater detail in Glenn Stout and Dick Johnson, Red Sox Century (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), and Eugene Murdock, Ban Johnson (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982).

  Information on Francis Dana can be found in The Biographical Directory of the United States Congress at: http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=D000021.

  Although today we refer to the postseason championship as the "World Series," in 1912 it was still referred to as the "World's Series." I have chosen to use that term throughout.

  Players' backgrounds are taken from various clippings, bioproj.sabr.org, and the player scrapbooks cited in the Bibliographic Notes and Sources.

  "fairly cool head": "Has Faced the Big Fellows," Boston Globe, July 29, 1908.

  According to baseballalmanac.com, since 1881, both Hooper and Lewis were among the first seventy-five major league ballplayers from California, a state that has since sent hundreds of players to the major leagues. Tris Speaker was only the fifteenth Texan to play in the majors. Joe Wood was born in Missouri, the birthplace of many major leaguers, but he was only the second from Kansas City, on the state's western border. Both states have since sent hundreds of players to the major leagues. In contrast, the New England states, such as Maine and Vermont, sent many players to the majors before 1920 but have since sent very few.

  The division on the team between its Catholic and Protestant members is mentioned in many accounts, ranging from Fred Lieb, Baseball as I Have Known It (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1977), to Tim Gay, Tris Speaker (Guilford, Conn.: Lyons Press/ University of Nebraska, 2007), and in many different press accounts, such as "Warring Factions Slump Boston Team," New Castle News, May 13, 1913, which provides perhaps the most comprehensive delineation of the split.

  Although from today's perspective it seems almost impossible that there could be such enmity between any group of Protestants and Catholics in the United States, I remind the reader that until very recently social intercourse between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland was extremely limited—and often violent.

  "Fading Is the Last Chance of the Crippled Sox," Boston Post, September 6, 1911.

  "McAleer Will Own Half of Red Sox," Boston Journal, September 13, 1911.

  "No Decision at Conference," Boston Journal, September 15, 1911, and "Red Sox Deal Not Perfect," Boston Globe, September 15, 1911, detail the meeting at the Algonquin Club.

  "Red Sox Deal Goes Through ...," Boston Globe, September 16, 1911; "McAleer Winds Up the Red Sox Deal," Boston Journal, September 16, 1911; and many other articles during this time period, including accounts in both The Sporting News and Sporting Life, chart the sale of the club to McAleer.

  In "Progress and Prestige of the National Game," Boston Globe, March 12, 1911, Johnson states his desire for more modern ballparks throughout the league.

  "New Home of the Red Sox; Plant Ideal in Equipment and Location," Boston Globe, October 15, 1911, provides seating capacity and a drawing of the park by illustrator J. C. Halden for McLaughlin, showing an early design.

  "To Develop New Baseball Park in the Fenway," Christian Science Monitor, September 25, 1911, notes the groundbreaking on September 25, although I found no reference to any kind of formal ceremony.

  "For Development": Boston Globe, September 30, 1911.

  "The park was considered": "Red Sox Move Up to Fourth Place," Boston Globe, October 8, 1911.

  Chapter 2: Hot Stove

  I culled background information on James McLaughlin and his family from U.S. census records, World War I draft registration records, and Boston city directories.

  "a compromise between Man's Euclidian": John Updike, "Hub Bids Kid Adieu," The New Yorker, October 22, 1960. Updike's famous essay is apparently the source for subsequent observations that the layout of Boston streets is responsible for Fenway's misshapen dimensions. As various Sanborn Insurance maps show, this contention is incorrect: the streets bordering Fenway Park were laid out according to a basic grid pattern.

  Background information on Charles Logue and the Charles Logue Building Company was provided by James Logue, his great-grandson, and Kevin Logue, his great-great-grandson, of Logue Engineering, in the form of both interviews and clippings provided by the family.

  For background on architectural training, see Dani
el D. Reiff, Houses from Books: Treatises, Pattern Books, and Catalogs in American Architecture, 1738–1950: A History and Guide (State College: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001).

  For background information on the history of concrete construction, see R. E. Shaeffer, Reinforced Concrete: Preliminary Design for Architects and Builders (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992).

  As can be seen in Ray Stubblebine, Stickley's Craftsman Homes: Plans, Drawings, Photographs (Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith, 2006), the brickwork of one Stickley-designed home in particular, designated as number 106 (p. 390), is particularly evocative of Fenway. An anomaly when compared to Stickley's other work, this structure not only uses Tapestry brick work but reveals some of the design shapes that were used, on a different scale, in Fenway. (Tapestry brick was a patented style made by Fiske and Company of New York.) This design was originally published in January 1911, when McLaughlin was at work on the design of the ballpark.

  Ray Stubblebine, Gustav Stickley and the Craftsman Home: An Exhibition Presented by the Craftsman Farms Foundation (brochure, n.d.).

  "Rather than using McLaughlin's other public buildings as a reference for his design inspiration at Fenway Park, I have often thought that the more arts and crafts treatment of the Fenway Studio Building by Parker and Thomas, 1905, at 30 Ipswich Street, a couple blocks east of Fenway Park, was on his mind when designing the main elevation. There is a somewhat similar diagonal patterning in stucco and brick on the two facades." E-mail communication of October 5, 2009, to the author from Dr. Keith Morgan, past president of the American Society of Architectural Historians and editor of Buildings of Massachusetts: Metropolitan Boston (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009).

  For basic background information on not only Fenway Park but other ballparks of the era, see Michael Benson, Ballparks of North America: A Comprehensive Historical Reference to Baseball Grounds, Yards, and Stadiums, 1845 to Present (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland Publishing, 1989), and Philip J. Lowry, Green Cathedrals (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1992).

  "New Home of the Red Sox": Boston Globe, October 15, 1911.

  Details of the sale of the Red Sox are taken from period newspapers as well as from Sporting Life, November 1911 through January 1912; the latter details the financial involvement of Stahl and his father-in-law. For a somewhat more detailed overview of the transaction, see Mike Lynch, "A Question of Ownership," February 26, 2010, http://www.seamheads.com/2010/02/26/a-question-of-ownership.

  Most of the construction details, seating capacity figures, and other data concerning the construction of Fenway Park appear in "A Reinforced Concrete Baseball Grandstand," Engineering Record, Vol. 66, no. 1, July 6, 1912, pps. 20–21, which is a detailed description of the specific engineering used at Fenway Park during its construction written for the engineering and construction industries. To my knowledge this article has never been cited in any previous book or article published on the construction of Fenway Park. Also useful was Mark Monaghan, "The Engineering Features of the Athletics' Baseball Park," paper 1067, Proceedings of the Engineers Club of Philadelphia (1911); "Stadium of Syracuse," Engineering Record 57 (1908), pp. 78–81, which discusses period building methods and procedures; and Engineering and Contracting 36, no. 2, which describes the engineering and construction procedures used during the 1911 renovation and rebuilding of the Polo Grounds.

  Background information on period excavating machinery and methods was gleaned from Allan Boyer McDaniel, Excavating Machinery (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1913).

  In the late 1970s and early 1980s I spent several years in both commercial and residential concrete construction as a laborer, form carpenter, and foreman supervising the placement of rebar, building slabs, poured concrete walls, "tilt-up" walls, sidewalks, curbs, slabs, and other common types of concrete construction. My own experience in this field was invaluable in translating technical information into layman's terms and decoding period drawings and photographs. My good friend and fellow Red Sox fan Paul Valiquette of Alpha Concrete in North Hero, Vermont, was also kind enough to answer a number of important questions in regard to concrete construction techniques.

  Photographs of Fenway Park that appear on the Library of Congress website (www.loc.gov/rr/print/catalog.html) provide useful construction details, as do the photographs and Sanborn Insurance maps of the Fenway Park area that appear in the Boston Public Library's online exhibition "Sports Temples of Boston: Images of Historic Ballparks, Arenas, and Stadiums, 1872–1972" (www.bpl.org/online/sportstemples).

  The wheeled concrete dumpers, chutes, and manpower used to pour the seating deck are shown in a photo that appeared in the Boston Globe on December 21, 1911. The guy derrick used at Fenway Park for the erection of steel is clearly visible in a photograph in the Boston Globe on January 28, 1912. It is possible that the paucity of published photos of Fenway during construction is due, at least in part, to lack of access by newspapers other than the Globe, which may have enjoyed special access because of the influence of the Taylor family. For this reason I have tended to use more reports on the ballpark from the Globe than from other Boston newspapers.

  "Work on Pavilion and Grounds": Boston Globe, December 3, 1911.

  "Winter of Old Days Returns": Boston Globe, January 7, 1912.

  "Busy Days at Red Sox' New Ball Park": Boston Globe, January 28, 1911.

  Chapter 3: Hot Springs

  I gleaned much of the information about spring training from the 1912 Bill Carrigan scrapbook held by the Sports Museum of New England. Although the provenance of the scrapbook is uncertain, my friend and colleague, curator Richard Johnson, believes that it may have been maintained by Bill Carrigan's younger sister. Most of the scrapbook's clippings are from either the Boston Post or the Boston Globe, although some are of uncertain origin. In addition, some of the Globe clippings are apparently from editions of the Globe that are not reflected in the online record of the newspaper. I consulted the Carrigan scrapbook, which covers the entire 1912 season, for the entirety of this book, as well as the Joe Wood scrapbook, the Duffy Lewis scrapbook, and the Nuf Ced McGreevey scrapbooks retained on microfilm by the Boston Public Library in its Boston Tradition in Sports Collection. These various scrapbooks are the sources for any uncredited newspaper quotes, as many of the clippings in them do not include the original source and some may be from newspaper editions that were not preserved in the microfilm record of the newspaper. I have also consulted other Boston newspapers, primarily the Boston Journal and Boston Post, in this section.

  Photos published in contemporary newspapers clearly show that the main grandstand deck was poured long before the treads were added. I created the Fenway Park construction timeline from the period documents cited earlier, brief notes in newspaper stories, newspaper photos, and my own knowledge of construction procedures.

  More useful background on Red Sox activities in Hot Springs can be found in Tim Gay, Tris Speaker (Guilford, Conn.: Lyons Press/ University of Nebraska, 2007), and Paul Zingg, Harry Hooper (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993).

  "Stahl Plans Long Hike": Boston Globe, March 7, 1912.

  "Red Sox Walk, and That's All": Boston Globe, March 23, 1912.

  "Boston Team Lucky": Boston Post, April 6, 1912.

  The arrangement between Jake Stahl and Charlie Wagner is best described in "A Curious Situation," Baseball, November 1912.

  Information on Majestic Park appears at Arkansas Diamonds: The Ballparks of Arkansas and Their History, http://ballparks.baseballyakker.com. As stated on the website: "Majestic Park was built in 1909 by Boston Red Sox owner John Taylor, who wanted his own field for spring training in Hot Springs. The city was a hot spot for spring training from the 1880s to the 1940s. Before Majestic Park was opened, the Red Sox and whoever else was training there had to share Whittington Park, the only other usable field in the city."

  The website also notes that Taylor held the team's 1908 spring training at West End Park, the home field of the Little Rock Travelers, members of the South
ern Association. To pay for the field Taylor gave the Travelers a prospect, twenty-year-old Tris Speaker, who went on to play 127 games that season with Little Rock, batting .350. By season's end the Red Sox had already re-signed him, and the fear of losing another good young player may have been one reason Taylor chose to build his own park for spring training. With the exception of 1911 and 1919, the Red Sox spent spring training there every year through 1920.

  The name Duffy's Cliff did not come into widespread use until midseason. By the World's Series, however, it was used in advertising, game reports, and cartoons. Earlier in the year it was simply termed "the bank," or "the embankment." Other nicknames, such as "Lewis's Ledge," did not stick.

  Chapter 4: Opening Days

  "The sight of the great, mildly sloping stands": "The Red Sox as Seen by a Rip Van Winkle," Boston Globe, September 5, 1912. This article, which appeared without a byline, is written from the conceit of an old-time fan who has awoken to see Fenway Park for the first time. Although it was written in September, the sense of wonder at the new park is indicative of the response when the park was first opened.

  The train route and reception are described in period newspapers and the Ohio Public Utilities Commission 1914 Railroad Map of Ohio.

  The Copley Square Hotel was built in 1891 and was the Back Bay's first hotel.

  The description of Fenway Park during the exhibition game against Harvard on April 9, 1912, and on opening day, April 20, 1912, is derived from a close study of descriptions from Boston newspapers, examination of photographs and drawings reproduced in the newspapers and other sources, such as insurance maps, and information culled from "A Reinforced Concrete Baseball Grandstand," Engineering Record, Vol. 66, no. 1, July 6, 1912, pp. 20–21. Since complete architectural plans no longer exist, some distances and measurements, as indicated in the text, are approximate, for many of the specific dimensions of these 1912 structures, such as the center-field bleachers, are unknown, as far as I have been able to determine, and the photographic record of the park both on the day of the Harvard game and on opening day is far from complete. The best photographic record of the park in 1912 was taken just prior to the 1912 World's Series and is retained by the Library of Congress, but by then many changes to the original structure had already been made. It is quite possible, and even desirable, that subsequent research will provide more specific detail. Information on the Huntington Avenue Grounds can be found in Philip J. Lowry, Green Cathedrals (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1992).