Red Sox Flashback: The First World Championship
With
the Sox on the cusp of winning another World Series, with fans all over New
England savoring the time, a look back to 1912 provides a marvelous historical
treat.
Business
in Boston virtually shut down on September 23,1912 as 100‚000 cheered the Red Sox returning from a
western trip by train into South
Station. So popular and so successful were the Sox that on the Boston Common,
Mayor “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald gave the team the keys to the city.
That
1912 team was loaded with talent, especially pitching. In addition to 34 game
winner Joe Wood, Buck O’Brien and Hugh Bedient were 20 game winners.
Boston posted a home record of 57-20, .740 winning
percentage. Winning a record 105 games, losing just 47, the Red Sox
glided to the American League pennant. Their competition in the World Series
was the Giants of New York.
Additional
wooden bleachers were in place in center and right-center. Seats on the slope
cost one dollar, the same as for the left field bleachers.
The Boston Royal Rooters, Red Sox fanatics to the core, traditionally
paraded on the field before games in step with the rhythms of a big brass band.
Now, on the eve of Game One of the World Series, having traveled down to New
York City, hundreds of them were accompanied by two brass bands. Led by Mayor
Fitzgerald and by “leading man” "Nuff Ced" McGreevey, they marched
around Times Square in Manhattan, singing to the tune of Tammany:
Carrigan, Carrigan,
Speaker, Lewis, Wood, and Stahl,
Bradley, English, Pape, and Hall,
Wagner, Gardner, Hooper, too;’
Hit them! Hit them! Hit them! Hit them!
Do boys, do.
The word in the street was that if John J. McGraw’s
Giants could beat Joe Wood, they could win the series. Before the opening game, Wood received death threats in
letters postmarked New York. One, written in red ink and adorned with a drawing
of a knife and gun, proclaimed: “You will never live to pitch a game against
the Giants in the World Series. We are waiting to get you as soon as you arrive
in town.”
But the
22-year-old right-hander who threw “smoke” was not the type to be intimidated.
Pitching and prevailing, 4-3, in Game One at the Polo Grounds going the distance,
striking out eleven Giants, Wood stood up to all
challenges. After the game, he said: "I
threw so hard I thought my arm would fly right off my body."
The Royal Rooters followed the team to
the Polo Grounds and back to Fenway Park as the series alternated between both
venues. On October 15th, as the Royal Rooters prepared to take
their seats at Fenway for the seventh game of the World Series, they discovered
their usual accommodations had been sold out from under them, a consequence of
some box office confusion. The Rooters made up their mind that without them,
there would be no game. Ignoring pleas that they leave the ballpark, their
bands blaring “Tessie,” they remained in place until their “stay-in” was
resolved by ranks of mounted police who swept across the field, nudging them
out of the park. One Royal Rooter, as
disoriented as he was disenchanted, tumbled over the right-field fence on his
way out and bellowed "To hell with Queen Victoria!"
The
“Rooters” fumed and postured outside the park until they were presented with a
compromise: they would be allowed to view the game from along the left field foul line.
Winner of
Games One and Four, Wood was on the mound for Game Seven. But it was
not his day. Seven of the first nine Giants in the first inning reached base –
six of them scored. The Giants romped, 11-4. The series was knotted at 3 games each, one
tie.
Game Eight was for the world championship -- October 16th at Fenway Park.
The Red Sox won the coin flip and were awarded the home field advantage. The
riveting finale of the 1912 World Series would be played before a half-capacity
crowd as a result of it being scheduled at the last minute as a makeup due to
the Game Two tie, as well as the game-fixing rumors that swirled about and the
Royal Rooters' rhubarb.
Ace Christy Mathewson of the
Giants, winless in this Series, after going the distance in the tie game and
dropping Game Five, matched up against Boston’s 22-year-old Hughie
Bedient. The game was 1-1- after nine
tense innings. Mathewson was still out there. Wood took over in the eighth for
Bedient.
New York scored a run in the top of the tenth. Boston pinch-hitter Clyde Engle started the
home 10th by hitting a routine fly ball to center field.
"And
now the ball settles,” The New York Times reported. “It is full
and fair in the pouch of the padded glove of (Fred) Snodgrass. But he is too
eager to toss it to Murray and it dribbles to the ground."
Engle reached second base. Harry Hooper was
robbed of a hit when Snodgrass made a nifty grab of his long drive. But Engle
moved to third base. Yerkes walked. Speaker singled. Engle scored. And the game
was tied. Duffy Lewis was walked
intentionally, loading the bases. Third baseman Larry Gardner belted a deep fly
ball to Josh Devore in right field. Yerkes tagged up and scored.
And
the Red Sox had their second world championship. Fred Snodgrass'
error would go down in history as "the $30,000 muff," the difference
between the winning and losing shares for the two teams in the series. And brand
new Fenway Park was off to a glorious start.
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