Fenway 1912

by Glenn Stout

  "Tell Wood," [Griffith] sneered: The Sporting News, September 12, 1912.

  Two pictures and one drawing reveal the space beneath the stands referred to by Murnane in regard to the August 17 game against Detroit. One is the photograph of Charles Logue standing at the end of the grandstand behind third base. One can see the ground directly behind Logue beneath the stands and what appears to be a wire-covered gap. The second is a photograph of the dugout from Engineering Record that clearly shows the wire-covered gap stretching in both directions from the end of the dugout. James E. McLaughlin's artist rendering of the park from 1911 also shows a space beneath the box seats past the dugout apparently covered by wire fencing.

  The proposed sale of Johnson is described in "Far Too Little, Says Griffith," Boston Globe, August 30, 1912.

  For more on the feud between Johnson and McGraw, see Eugene Murdock, Ban Johnson (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982), and Charles Alexander, McGraw (New York: Viking Press, 1988). Johnson's reaction is quoted in Murdock's book.

  "Wood and Johnson in Pitching Duel Today": Boston Globe, September 6, 1912.

  Accounts of the September 6 game are taken from a number of sources, most notably the Boston Globe, the Boston Journal, the Boston Post, Sporting Life, The Sporting News, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. As was customary in any game of this era, descriptions in individual newspapers varied to some degree—in this instance most dramatically in the pitch-by-pitch account of the game. The Globe, for instance, describes Wood as throwing twenty-four pitches in the first inning, including ten to first, while the Journal puts the number at nineteen with seven throws to first. Although I have taken descriptions from various accounts, for pitch-by-pitch description I have depended on the Globe, which published not only a table listing the pitches of both Johnson and Wood but also a pitch-by-pitch narrative, a detailed at-bat narrative, and a generally more detailed game story than can be found in most other sources.

  Emil Rothe, "The War of 1912: The Wood-Johnson Duel," SABR Research Journals Archive, www.research.sabr.org/journals/war-of-1912.

  "Wood Better Man Yesterday": Boston Globe, September 7, 1912.

  The gate receipts are discussed in "Griffith Took Away $16,000," Boston Globe, September 8, 1912.

  Chapter 10: Giants on the Horizon

  On September 8 the Globe speculated that receipts for the four games totaled $44,000, but admitted that its calculations were "not official figures." Sporting Life estimated Washington's take as $18,000. The American League also received a portion of the receipts for each game.

  In "Work on Pavilion and Ground Goes on Apace," Boston Globe, December 3, 1911, Tim Murnane speculated that team payrolls varied from $50,000 to $85,000 per year.

  The first print mention of the expansion of Fenway Park for the World's Series that I have found appeared in a Tim Murnane dispatch dated August 26, 1912, in The Sporting News. Murnane was the Boston correspondent for the magazine.

  The details of the bleacher construction are taken from John Butler Johnson, Morton Owen Withey, and Terence Hanbury White, Materials of Construction (London: John Wiley and Sons, 1918), and "Grandstand and Bleachers of the Pittsburg Athletic Company," Concrete Engineering, May 1909.

  McLaughlin's diagram of the seats showing the additions made for the postseason appears in one of his drawings under the title "If You're Going to Fenway Park Next Week, This Will Show You Where Your Seat Is, if You're One of the Lucky 6,500," found in Boston Globe, October 4, 1912, and in slightly different form elsewhere.

  Several photographs not reproduced in this book owing to reprint costs bear mentioning, particularly in regard to the insight they provide about the changes made for the World's Series. Getty editorial image 51475552 (available at: http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/51475552/Archive-Photos) shows the Fenway outfield, from left-center field to right-center field, taken from the perspective of home plate, apparently either just prior to a World's Series game or at the end of the regular season. The low wall fronting right field contained advertising, and the center- and right-field bleachers were separated by an alleyway at least twenty feet wide. Another Getty photograph (editorial image 53550663), taken near the end of the regular season from the roof of the grandstand, shows that construction was not yet complete in the left-field corner. Before the World's Series a fence was constructed from the end of the third-base stands to the left-field wall, paralleling the third-base line and creating the small triangle that later figured so prominently in several plays during the World's Series. A photograph available at http://www.vintageball.com/files/1912_Sox_album3.jpg 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.

  Wood's condition is mentioned in "Joe Wood Not Quite Himself," Boston Globe, September 15, 1912, and "Red Sox Make Pennant Certain," Boston Globe, September 16, 1912.

  Jealousy over the "Board of Strategy" in 1912 is reported in "Warring Factions Slump Boston Team," New Castle (Penn.) News, May 13, 1913.

  "Rousing Welcome for Red Sox," Sporting Life, September 23, 1912.

  "Wild Acclaim for Red Sox," Boston Globe, September 24, 1912.

  "Welcome Champions," Boston Post, September 24, 1912.

  The arrangements made by the National Commission in regard to the World's Series were widely reported in local newspapers on September 26, as well as in Sporting Life and The Sporting News. See "World Series Opens ...," Boston Globe, September 26, 1912, and "Commission Rules for World's Series," New York Times, September 30, 1912.

  "Go among the players": "Says Pennant Race Is 'Fixed,'" Boston Post, September 29, 1912. For a more sober accounting, see Harold Seymour, Baseball: The Golden Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971).

  For background on John McGraw, see Charles Alexander, John McGraw (New York: Viking Press, 1987). On Mathewson, see Ray Robinson, Mathewson: An American Hero (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), and Philip Seib, The Player (Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2004).

  Chapter 11: The Gathering of the Clans

  In recounting the story of the World's Series in chapters 11 through 13, I have depended on newspaper accounts from papers in Boston and New York, primarily but not exclusively the Boston Globe, Boston Post, Boston Journal, Boston Herald, New York Times, New York Tribune, and New York World, as well as Sporting Life and The Sporting News. Since game stories generally appear the day after the a game is played, for space reasons—with a few exceptions—I do not reference individual stories here unless a source provided unique information.

  It is sometimes important to disclose not just the sources used but those not used. I did not use New York Post sportswriter Mike Vaccaro's fanciful account of the 1912 World's Series, The First Fall Classic (New York: Random House, 2009). I always prefer to do my own research rather than utilize the work of another author on the same subject anyway, but the book's lack of sourcing, the questions raised by Keith Olbermann on his MLB blog and by others over its accuracy, and the author's admission that he created dialogue used throughout the book render it untrustworthy as a source for any serious work of history.

  The threatening letters appear in an unsourced newspaper account, "Wood Threatened by Mail ...," dated October 7, in the Joe Wood scrapbook.

  "Has $50,000 to Bet on Red Sox," Boston Globe, September 10, 1912.

  "300 Fans Still Waiting," Boston Globe, October 3, 1912.

  "Gardner Helps Red Sox Wind Up with a Victory": Boston Post, October 6 1912.

  For background on the buildup to the World's Series, see "Nine and Fans Eager ...," Boston Globe, October 7, 1912; Hugh Fullerton, "Two Sides to a Big Story," New York Times, October 7, 1912; "Clans Are Gathering for World's Series," Boston Globe, October 7, 1912; "Hub Rooters in New York," Boston Globe, October 8, 1912; and "Fans in Thousands Come to New York," New York Times, October 8, 1912.

  For the National Commission's views on players writing ghostwr
itten accounts, see "Prevent Players from Being 'Expert Writers,'" New Castle (Penn.) News, October 22, 1912.

  "Baseball Frenzy": New York Tribune, October 7, 1912.

  "Base Ball by 'Phone,'" Boston Globe, October 8, 1912, describes the telephone broadcast.

  Although retrosheet.org and baseball-reference.com both indicate that Chief Meyers's ninth-inning double was hit to left field, multiple newspaper accounts state that it was hit to right field. Since several of these accounts note that Boston right fielder Harry Hooper fielded the hit, I have chosen to go with that account.

  "I'd a darn sight": "Mayor Declared This a Holiday," Boston Globe, October 9, 1912.

  Chapter 12: Home Sweet Home

  For train information, see the website of the New Haven Railroad Historical and Technical Association (www.nhrhta.org) and Fred Lieb, Baseball as I Have Known It (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1977).

  "insinuates, or rather threatens": Sam Crane, "Fans Could Not Have Undergone Strain Longer," Syracuse Herald, October 10, 1912. Reports on the dissatisfaction of the players also appeared in several other sources, particularly Sporting Life and the Washington Post, although Sam Crane appears to be the only daily reporter to have pursued the story with alacrity.

  "Thrills, Throbs, Sighs, Smiles": Boston Globe, October 10, 1912.

  Box score reports for each game list umpires as being assigned to either home or field (infield, left field, or right field).

  The bleachers on the garage roofs outside Fenway Park are shown in several Wallace Goldsmith drawings reprinted in the Globe during the World's Series. For the best, see "Impressions of a World's Series Game ...," Boston Globe, October 11, 1912.

  Before embarking on this project, I was unaware of the role played by cloudy weather in the selection of a pitcher during this era. On darker days, most baseball people believed, a fastball pitcher was preferable to any other kind. The logic behind that belief was that after only a few batters the ball would darken with grass stains and tobacco juice and be difficult to see in good light—and even more so on a day without shadows.

  "Giants Win, 2–1": New York Times, October 11, 1912.

  Chapter 13: Giant Killers

  "Joe Wood, the Giant-Killer": Boston Journal, October 12, 1912.

  "With Bedient Pitching the Game of His Life, Red Sox Win, 2–1": Boston Globe, October 13, 1912.

  Although Joe Wood always refuted claims that he or his brother fought with Buck O'Brien, either during the train ride to Boston or before game 7, reports of an altercation and/or dissension on the team over the decision to have O'Brien pitch game 6 appear in multiple sources, including The Sporting News, October 24, 1912; Ty Cobb, Busting 'Em and Other Big League Stories (New York: Edward J. Clode, 1915); "Trouble in Red Sox Ranks," Des Moines News, October 16, 1912; "Wood and O'Brien in Fight Before Game," Washington Post, October 15, 1912; and Christy Mathewson, "Why We Lost Three World Championships: Part 3," Everybody's Magazine, October 1914. According to Mathewson, "No one was more positive than 'Smoky Joe' Wood that we would lose. Wood had been given to understand he would pitch the next game. He had beaten us before, and accordingly he gave $500 to a friend and had him bet on Boston to win the next game ... The sequel comes on a train going to Boston that night. Strolling into a car where O'Brien was sitting, Wood walked up to him and announced: 'Well, you're a fine joke of a pitcher! Put the game on a platter and handed it to the Giants, didn't you?' O'Brien growled something. Then one thing led to another and an altercation ensued. This was one of the causes that engendered friction in the Red Sox; and such friction could not help but interfere with the team-work. Reduced efficiency is the inevitable consequence of internal dissension. In fact, next year we saw a world's-champion transformed into a second division team."

  Fred Lieb, Baseball as I Have Known It (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1977), is the main source for the story about the conversation between Stahl and McAleer. Lieb notes that Wood's brother had placed a bet on the game. The fact that Lieb covered the Series as a young reporter gives his account some credence, but other aspects of his retelling of the final few games are, like much of his book, inaccurate. For example, he has the conversation between Stahl and McAleer taking place during a "leisurely Sunday daytime trip" to New York, but the Red Sox left on their usual 5:30 p.m. train. His description of the snafu with the Royal Rooters tickets before game 7 contradicts the newspaper reporting at the time: Lieb claims that Wood was forced to wait a half-hour, while newspapers reported nearly unanimously that the delay was ten minutes. Since this is approximately the same amount of time Wood would have waited between innings in any game, it is doubtful that the delay was solely responsible for his performance.

  Although some accounts written well after the fact state that Devore caught Cady's drive with his bare hand, I could find no contemporaneous account that mentions it—such reports have about as much credibility as those that suggest that Devore faked the catch. Later writers may have confused this catch by Devore with either Hooper's catch of a ball hit by Devore later in the Series, which was caught barehanded, or reports that refer to Devore making the catch with "one hand." At the time, given the gloves in use, one-handed catches—particularly one-handed catches made on the run—were unique enough to be mentioned in news accounts.

  A report in Sporting Life on October 19, 1912, states that Mathewson brought up the issue of the division of playoff receipts with the Red Sox "on the train to Boston on the night of October 10, the day after the 11 inning tie game." However, there was no such train, as the two clubs had traveled to Boston on the night of October 8 and remained in Boston for game 3 the next day. In the context of the larger story, the author was probably referring to the train to New York on the evening of October 10. Both the New York Tribune and the Boston Herald of October 16 refer to another meeting with the National Commission on October 15, leading me to conclude that there were at least two meetings between the commission and Mathewson in regard to the issue.

  There is one particular error in Mike Vaccaro's The First Fall Classic (New York: Random House, 2009) that bears correcting, and I mention the discrepancy here so that readers of both books will know why our accounts differ so drastically. Vaccaro describes Hooper's key game 5 triple in some detail. But he misplaces the hit in center field and even details how outfielder Fred Snodgrass first came in on the ball "two steps," then went back, and then had to retrieve the ball after it became stuck in a "tiny hole" at the extreme end of the bleachers in center field, leading to a colorful and extended argument between Giants manager John McGraw and umpire Silk McLoughlin.

  None of this took place. As multiple newspaper sources, baseball-reference.com, and retrosheet.org all agree, and as I describe in the text, the ball was not hit to either center field or even left-center field—it was hit down the left-field line and bounced into the small "pie-shaped" triangle of open ground between the third-base stands, the Duffy's Cliff bleachers, and the left-field wall, roughly the location just beyond the roll-up garage door that occasionally vexes left fielders in Fenway Park today. There it was indisputably retrieved by Giants left fielder Josh Devore. Vaccaro evidently confused the pie-shaped triangle of Ralph McMillen's description with the much larger space in center field between the left-field wall and the center-field bleachers, where the flagpole stood. Although this center-field space had been in play for most of the season, the accommodations made for the World's Series blocked this area off with a stockade fence. It is also important to note that neither of these "triangles" is the same as the current "triangle" that exists in Fenway Park just to the center-field side of the bullpen. Later in the book Vaccaro also confuses Hooper's misplaced hit with a later triple by Steve Yerkes. These are but two illustrations of why I chose not to use this volume as a source.

  It is also interesting to note that when McLaughlin's accommodations for the World's Series were first built, this area was much larger and extended to the far end of the new third-base stands. At some point
between the end of the regular season and the start of the World's Series, however, a fence much closer to the foul line was created, presumably to prevent balls from rolling out of sight at the end of the third-base stands.

  Chapter 14: Last Stand at Fenway Park

  "I thought my foot was off the rubber": Billy Evans, "Careless Players Make Blunders, O'Brien's Balk Reminds Many Leading Athletes of Costly Mistakes," New York Times, December 8, 1912.

  "Royal Rooters An Angry Lot": Boston Globe, October 16, 1912.

  "All Knock Wood": New York World, October 16, 1912.

  "Boston Now Supreme in Baseball World": Boston Globe, October 17, 1912.

  Epilogue

  "A War in Red Sox Camp," Sporting Life, July 12, 1913, and "Warring Factions Slump Boston Team," New Castle (Penn.) News, May 13, 1913, outline the breakup of the 1913 Sox.

  "hadn't been strong with the Boston manager": Chester (Penn.) Times, August 7, 1913.

  Subsequent changes in Fenway Park through 1987 are outlined in Glenn Stout, "Forever Fenway," in The Official 1987 Red Sox Yearbook. Major changes after 1987 are described at redsox.com. It is interesting to note that the property on the corner of Brookline Avenue and Lansdowne Street was not purchased by the Red Sox until 1980, to house NESN (New England Sports Network). The lot was first built on in 1913, when former New Hampshire governor John Smith purchased the property. Over the years it served as the home to dealerships for Packard and Cadillac automobiles, Boston's first television station, WMEX radio, a retail store owned by golfer Francis Ouimet, the real estate firm Jeano Inc. (for which Joe Cronin served as president), a bowling alley, and several other businesses.

  Each year major league baseball calculates a "Fan Cost Index" measuring the total price for a typical family of four to see a game. The FCI includes the price of two children's tickets, two adult tickets, four small soft drinks, four hot dogs, two small drinks, two programs, and parking. In 2010 Fenway Park's FCI was $334.78, making it the most expensive ballpark in the major leagues.