Fenway 1912

by Glenn Stout

  Although today there are standards for the construction of bleacher and stadium seating, they were not in place in 1912. In contemporary bleacher construction seats are generally set at a thirty-degree angle. If the left-field embankment at Fenway Park was forty-five degrees, it would have been extremely difficult for overflow crowds to stand upright, for the embankment was not terraced. This leads me to conclude that the embankment extended from the wall toward the field from between fifteen and twenty feet.

  "Invite Old Timers": Boston Journal, April 4, 1912.

  "Boston 2, Harvard 0": Boston Globe, April 10, 1912.

  In the Boston Globe, April 10, 1912, Wallace Goldsmith's drawings from opening day show men on the left-field wall and the unfinished state of the wall.

  According to the New York Times, Dana Wingate of Harvard died at age thirty of tuberculosis in Saranac Lake, New York. Both the Harvard and Exeter baseball programs still give an annual award in his memory.

  For more background on the rivalry with the New York Yankees, see Glenn Stout, Red Sox Century (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999) and Yankees Century (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002).

  "Sox Open to Packed Park": Boston Globe, April 21, 1912.

  Many teams have made the claim that they were the first to use an "electric" scoreboard, but depending on the definition the claim is almost meaningless. Although it is unknown how the first scoreboard at Fenway Park operated, photographs reveal that no lights were used. In all likelihood descriptions of the scoreboard as being either "electronic" or "electric" refer both to the method by which the scoreboard operators were contacted from the press box and the mechanical operation of certain aspects of the scoreboard itself. In their book Baseball: The Golden Years (Oxford University Press, 1971), historians Harold and Dorothy Seymour state that the first electric scoreboard was invented by George Baird of Chicago in 1908 and that it "instantly recorded balls, strikes and outs," while all other information was operated manually. Previously, scoreboard operators like those at Harvard University's football stadium were communicated with by way of hand signals from the press box. Buzzer systems such as the one described later became commonplace; they were eventually replaced by telephone systems. Several Wallace Goldsmith cartoons show scoreboard operators peering out of the slots on the scoreboard, and a cartoon drawn during the 1912 World's Series clearly shows that the operator was visible to pedestrians on Lansdowne Street, one of whom Goldsmith shows asking the operator for the score. When Fenway's scoreboard was changed during the 1933–34 reconstruction the Red Sox made the claim that the new scoreboard was the first to use lights—red designating balls and outs and green for strikes.

  Chapter 5: The Wall and the Cliff

  What with the vagaries of press coverage, it is extraordinarily difficult to determine what took place during a baseball game of this era with absolute certainty. To do so a researcher must compare a variety of press accounts and hope for either a consensus or a layering of detail that creates a complete portrait. The first game at Fenway Park provides a perfect example of this quandary, as no two descriptions of many plays are quite the same. Both Steve Yerkes's first hit at Fenway and Tris Speaker's game-winning hit in the eleventh are described in a variety of ways and with different levels of detail in each newspaper account of the contest. Speaker's hit, for instance, is variously described as a hit to center, a hit to third, a hit to short, and a hit through the hole. In general I tend to side with the account that provides the most detail. In the instance of Yerkes's hit, the New York Times notes "Zinn's falling on the left bank" in pursuit of the drive, while in regard to Speaker's hit the Boston Journal adds that "the big centrefielder was across the bag and Yerkes over the pan before Chase received the throw"—that is, the throw from Dolan, indicating an infield hit.

  Opening day accounts include "Sox Open to Packed Park," Boston Globe, April 21, 1912; "Fenway Park Is Formally Opened with Red Sox Win," Boston Post, April 21, 1912; and "Red Sox Win Opening Game at Fenway Park," Boston Traveler, April 21, 1912.

  Information on Lewis, Speaker, Wood, Cady, Wagner, Stahl, Hooper, O'Brien, and Gardner and other profiles and vignettes of notable Boston players that appear throughout the book generally make use of information from Deadball Stars of the American League, edited by David Jones (Dulles, Va.: Potomac Books, 2006), and from http://bioproj.sabr.org, supplemented with period newspaper and scrapbook reports. Although these sources were invaluable for basic biographical data, such as place of birth and death date, many provide only limited insight into the career or personality of a player, beyond the recitation of annual statistics, and most of them lack details about the 1912 season. The profile of Bill Carrigan, for example, notes that he "caught the majority of innings for the 1912 pennant winners." The next sentence notes that he had only seven at-bats in the World's Series, yet does not explore that discrepancy. The reason, as noted in the text, was the emergence of Hick Cady. As far as I have been able to determine, no previous account of Red Sox history has made note of Cady's emergence or its impact on the 1912 season.

  Additional information on Lewis appeared in an "as told to" series that he did with Joe Cashman of the Boston Daily Record in January 1951. His putouts rose from 203 in 125 games in 1911 to 301 in 154 games in 1912.

  Fielding statistics are from baseballreference.com.

  "Bradley's Terrific Smash Good": Boston Globe, April 27, 1912. See also "Hugh Bradley the Hero," Boston Post, April 27, 1912.

  The proposed Hal Chase trade is detailed in "New Chase Deal Planned," New York Times, May 23, 1912.

  "Braves Battle Uphill to a Tie," Boston Globe, May 23, 1915, mentions other early home runs over the wall. I was later able to confirm Rube Oldring's home run.

  A more contemporary account of opening day and Bradley's home run appeared in the Boston Herald, April 17, 1992.

  I spent a great deal of time trying to determine the specific origin of the use of the phrase "Green Monster" in regard to Fenway Park. Although William Shakespeare often used the phrase "green-eyed monster" to denote jealousy, despite the way the wall has made some visiting sluggers feel, there appears to be no connection. In a search of all available online newspaper resources through Proquest and newspaperachive.com, as well as in my own hard-copy print research over the past twenty years—indexes that survey literally billions of articles (although the major Boston dailies are not indexed in these sources before 1980, many other Massachusetts newspapers are) and not, significantly, the major Boston dailies—the earliest reference I have found for the use of the phrase "Green Monster" in regard to the left-field wall at Fenway Park dates back to a story distributed by United Press International on August 24, 1960. One day earlier the Cleveland Indians had come from behind to beat the Red Sox 3–2 in ten innings, and they scored the winning run on two doubles off the wall, the first by pitcher Jim "Mudcat" Grant and the second by Cuban rookie shortstop Mike de la Hoz. The story states that "the right-hander [Grant] pounded a double off the left field wall then scampered home as rookie shortstop Mike De La Hoz also stoked a two bagger off the Fenway Park's Green Monster." One year later, on August 2, 1961, the Angels dropped a doubleheader to the Sox at Fenway Park, 7–2 and 8–7, during which the Sox hit twelve balls off the left-field wall. In his game story for the Long Beach Press Telegram that appeared the next day, "Red Sox Chinese Handball Court Too Much for Angels," Ross Newhan wrote: "The Boston Red Sox put a black border—or more properly, a green one, around the Angel's fine July record by sweeping a doubleheader ... And the reason Bill Rigney is looking doubly green this morning is because of the green monster that stretched across left field at Fenway Park. It is the American League's answer to the [Los Angeles] Coliseum's Chinese screen." In a 2010 e-mail exchange, Newhan informed me that he has no recollection of when he first heard the phrase used or first used it himself.

  Jack Mann's 1965 Sports Illustrated story on the Red Sox and the left-field wall, "The Great Wall of Boston," makes no mention of the phrase. In fact, the phrase di
d not appear in Sports Illustrated until October 16, 1967. The Associated Press story of October 3, 1967, referenced in the text states that "the Cardinals, who flew in late Monday, are due to see Fenway and the 'green monster' as the handy left field wall is known, Tuesday afternoon." It is interesting to note that the author found it necessary to explain the phrase, which indicates that it was then unknown to most readers. Subsequent AP stories throughout the Series continued to use the phrase, and after that date it is more likely to be used in regard to Fenway than to either Art Arfons or Oakland Hills in newspaper databases. Searches in books through Google's book search function and my own library find no book references to the phrase before the 1970s, and even before the 1980s usage was relatively rare. Although it is certainly possible that someone could find the phrase used in print sources earlier than those cited here, the larger point remains. Like the misleading phrase "Curse of the Bambino," which dates back to 1986, the use of the term "Green Monster" is of relatively recent vintage. Anecdotally, when I first moved to Boston in 1981 the most common term for the left-field wall was still simply "the wall." Significantly, in Benson's Ballparks of North America, his entry on Fenway Park makes no mention of the "Green Monster," but only three years later, in 1992, Philip Lowry's entry on Fenway Park in Green Cathedrals does use the phrase, suggesting that it began to come into regular use around 1990. I suspect, however, that as more period newspapers become available in a searchable format, subsequent researchers may well find the phrase used in print to describe the left-field wall before 1960.

  "Silk the Arbitrary": Boston Globe, May 1, 1912.

  Chapter 6: Home Stand

  For a history of Kenmore Square, see Grahm Junior College Memorial Page at http://www.grahmjuniorcollege.com/Kenmore_Square.html. Although Kenmore Square was usually called Governor's Square until 1932, to avoid confusion I have chosen to refer to it as Kenmore throughout this book.

  Estimates of the range and depth of outfielders is based on both observation and an examination of photographs and videos. When running from first to second, most players take eleven or twelve full strides to cover eighty feet or so when stealing a base (ninety feet minus the length of their lead off base) or a stride or two less when running through the base. Through observation, I have noted that most outfielders catching a long drive on the run, depending on speed and stride length, have a range of thirteen to nineteen strides while pursuing a fly ball, for an effective range of between 100 and 150 feet. Given his speed, it seems reasonable to presume that Speaker was at the upper range. A photograph available at http://www.vintageball.com/files/1912_Sox_album3.jpg, although in poor condition, shows the right-field fence before it was altered for the World's Series. Clearly, the distance to this fence before the construction of the right-field bleachers was nearly four hundred feet. For more on my methodology here, see http://verbplow.blogspot.com/2009_05_01_archive.html. Estimates of how deep outfielders play today are from aerial photographs taken during games. Contemporary outfielders generally play at least three hundred feet from home plate in right and center field at Fenway Park, and often even a bit deeper than that.

  "Georgia Peach Specked": Boston Globe, May 10, 1912.

  "Browns Always at Wood's Mercy": Boston Globe, May 12, 1912.

  A Google Earth image of Fenway Park taken on April 8, 2008, clearly shows that in April the sun is in almost direct alignment with the right-field line.

  Chapter 7: The Big Trip

  F. C. Lane, "The Greatest Pitcher on the Diamond Today," Baseball, September 1912. Although Lane's article did not appear until later in the season, given magazine deadlines, it was probably written in June.

  Information on Joe Wood is taken from sources previously cited and various clippings, including "Joe Wood the Wizardly Perplexing Pitcher of the Red Sox," Boston Globe, September 15, 1912.

  Wood's nickname "Smoky" did not come into widespread use until September, following the matchup with Walter Johnson.

  Joe Wood discussed his off-field life in Baseball Digest, May 1981.

  It is interesting to note that even after Wood injured his arm in 1913, which effectively ruined his pitching career, when he did pitch he still threw virtually as hard as he did before his injury. His problem was not his fastball but the pain produced when he threw it: Wood could barely raise his arm after pitching a game. He described the pain as being in the shoulder joint—almost certainly a rotator cuff tear.

  Much of the impression we have of Wood today stems from the recorded interview he gave Lawrence Ritter in his classic oral history The Glory of Their Times (New York: Macmillan, 1984). Ritter's book—the first of its kind in baseball—does a terrific job capturing the mood and tenor of the age, but in places its veracity is questionable, for the players interviewed are speaking from memory and, understandably, tend to be self-serving. Ritter, while well intentioned, did not know enough baseball history at the time to ask many of the questions that beg to be answered today. Most of his interviews are occasionally wrong on the facts, and transcripts held by the National Baseball Hall of Fame reveal that in some instances Ritter's editing of the interviews made them less than authentic. His interview with Wood is emblematic of these problems: there is no mention of the controversy during the 1912 World's Series or the betting scandal that later drove Wood from baseball, even though Ritter's book also includes interviews with Rube Marquard, Harry Hooper, and other period players. For these reasons, I chose to make only limited use of this source.

  For more on Bill and Tom Yawkey, see Glenn Stout and Dick Johnson, Red Sox Century (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999).

  "If they give me the chance...": Olwein (Iowa) Daily Register, April 25, 1913. According to Baseball Digest, the quote was from a clipping in a scrapbook maintained by Wood and quoted Johnson as saying, "Nobody can throw harder than Joe Wood." Wood later told Roger Angell, "I don't think anybody was faster than Walter Johnson."

  For more on Walter Johnson, see Henry W. Thomas, Walter Johnson: Baseball's Big Train (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998).

  Chapter 8: Home Safe

  For more on Harry Hooper, see Deadball Stars of the American League, edited by David Jones (Dulles, Va.: Potomac Books, 2006), and Paul Zingg, Harry Hooper (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993).

  The story about Buck O'Brien and Connie Mack's daughter appears in Norman L. Macht, Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007).

  "It's All Red Sox": Boston Globe, July 4, 1912.

  For population data, see Campbell Gibson, Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places in the United States: 1790–1990 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population Division, 1998).

  "Sox Get Two Tiger Pelts": Boston Globe, July 13, 1912.

  The Day (New Haven, Connecticut), October 5, 1915, discusses the makeup of the "Board of Strategy" and states that during the 1912 World's Series Wagner, Carrigan, and Stahl met twice each day to plot strategy and discuss the events of the game.

  Ty Cobb, Busting 'Em and Other Big League Stories (New York: Edward J. Clode, 1915), is one of many sources that make note of the internal dissension on the 1912 Red Sox.

  For a good midseason summation of the Red Sox, see "Baseball Now on Homeward Route," Boston Post, July 21, 1912, and "Thrilling Success of the Boston Red Sox Team ...," Boston Globe, July 21, 1912.

  "Our Sox Going Good": Boston Globe, July 22, 1912.

  While growing up, I was an amateur pitcher. I recall first experiencing shoulder pain when pitching as a fifteen-year-old in a fifteen- to seventeen-year-old summer league, my first season throwing from the major league distance of sixty feet, six inches. Nevertheless, I was still effective and even threw a no-hitter. But something was not right in my arm, and a little over a year later, pitching in a fall league, the pain eventually became so bad that I could neither brush my teeth nor brush my hair with my right arm. A visit to the doctor, in which a barium solution was injected with a hypodermic needle
into my shoulder so the doctor could track the blood flow in my shoulder via an X-ray television monitor, confirmed that I had a class 4 tear of the rotator cuff. This was in 1975, and apart from invasive surgery, which could cause even more damage, there was no treatment available at the time. My baseball career was over, and for the next seventeen years my arm continued to bother me—although I eventually regained my range of motion, it remained weak and I could not sleep on my right side.

  At age thirty-three, I was able to take advantage of medical advances. A physical trainer began a rehabilitation program for my shoulder consisting of lifting very light weights to build up the rotator cuff muscles. One year later, after doing some additional research on my own, I began a "pre-hab" shoulder exercise routine, joined an over-thirty adult baseball league, and began pitching again. Over the next nine seasons I pitched around five hundred innings and was never again bothered by shoulder trouble. Unfortunately, this knowledge was not available during Joe Wood's career.

  Chapter 9: Heavyweights

  "deadly 'snap ball'": "Wood's Strong Wrist Great Aid in Pitching," Sporting Life, November 30, 1912. The article quotes Johnson from a conversation held the previous May.

  "Red Sox Celebrate with a Double Win": Boston Globe, August 15, 1912.

  "[Johnson] had a chance to win the game": Sporting Life, September 7, 1912.

  "No More Moonlight Baseball, Silk": Boston Globe, August 28, 1912.