The Glory of Their Times

by Lawrence S. Ritter

  By this time, of course, there were thousands of people milling around on the infield, absolute bedlam around there. Frank Chance, the Chicago manager, went into the umpires’ dressing room and insisted that the two umpires—Hank O’Day and Bob Emslie—come out and see what was going on. Chance claimed Evers had gotten the ball and touched second base with it, so that Merkle was out and the game should continue, still a 1–1 tie. And since the field was now total chaos, that the game should be forfeited to Chicago both because of McGinnity’s interference and because the Giants couldn’t clear their own field. So Chance dragged the umpires out there and said, “Look at this.” They saw these thousands of fans on the field, arguing, milling around, not knowing what was going on, complete pandemonium. Everything was in an uproar.

  Finally, Hank O’Day, who was the senior umpire, ruled that Merkle was indeed out, the third out, that therefore McCormick’s run didn’t count, and that the game had ended in a tie, 1–1. It was appealed to the highest league levels, but after three days of deliberations they finally upheld the umpires and ruled that it was a tie game and would have to be replayed as a play-off game after the season, if necessary. Well, it was necessary. We ended the season tied for first place with the Cubs, and the game had to be played over to decide the pennant race. As you know, the Cubs beat us in that play-off game, so we didn’t win the pennant in 1908.

  In that famous play-off game, by the way, we tried to get Frank Chance thrown out of the game, but didn’t succeed. Before the game we talked over in the clubhouse how in the world we could get Chance out of there. Matty was to pitch for us, and Frank always hit Matty pretty well. We felt if we could get him out, in some way, that we had a better chance of winning the play-off game and the pennant. Besides, we thought the pennant was ours by right, anyway. We thought the call on Merkle was a raw deal, and any means of redressing the grievance was legitimate.

  So it was cooked up that Joe McGinnity was to pick a fight with Chance early in the game. They were to have a knockdown, drag-out fight, Chance and McGinnity, and both would get thrown out of the game. Of course, we didn’t need McGinnity, but they needed Chance. McGinnity did just as he was supposed to. He called Chance names on some pretext or other, stepped on his toes, pushed him, actually spit on him. But Frank wouldn’t fight. He was too smart. And they beat us, with Chance getting a key hit and Three-Fingered Brown beating Christy Mathewson. I believe that was the year Brown won 29 games and Matty won 37.

  It is very unfair to put all the blame on Merkle for our losing the pennant in 1908. McGraw never did, and neither did the rest of us. It was mostly the newspapers. They were the ones who invented the term “bonehead.”

  How could you blame Merkle, when we lost the play-off game, and besides that we lost five other games after the Merkle incident? If we had won any one of those five games we would have won the pennant in the regular season, and we wouldn’t even have had to play a playoff game. We lost a double-header to Cincinnati, and then we played the Philadelphia Phillies and Harry Coveleski pitched against us three times in one week. He pitched against us on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, and beat us all three times. That’s when he acquired the nickname “Giant Killer.” Coveleski beating us three times in one week surely wasn’t Merkle’s fault.

  And do you know that we ran Harry Coveleski clear out of the league the next season. It was the craziest, most foolish thing that ever happened. McGraw was told by a friend of his who had managed Coveleski in the minor leagues, before he came up to Philadelphia, that Coveleski always carried some bologna in his back pocket and chewed on that bologna throughout the game—and that he did this more or less secretly, maybe somewhat ashamed of his habit. It was sort of an obsession with him.

  So this manager told McGraw, and McGraw saw to it that some of us players would always meet Coveleski as he was going to and from the pitcher’s box whenever he pitched against us. We’d stop him and say, “Hey, give us a chew of that bologna, will you?” Well, this so upset this fellow that he couldn’t pitch against us to save his life. He never beat us again, word got around the league and the other clubs started doing the same thing, and it chased him right back to the minors—or at least that’s what we Giants always claimed.

  Often when the Merkle “bonehead” is recalled, in the next breath they talk about Snodgrass’ “$30,000 muff.” I’ve had to live with it for years—“Oh yes, you’re the guy that dropped the fly ball in the World Series, aren’t you?”

  I never lost that World Series. I never took the blame for losing any World Series. I was terribly incensed a few years ago when a book on baseball facts and history came out. A friend of mine said to me, “Have you seen the book?” I said that I hadn’t.

  “Well,” he said, “you’d better get a copy. They have a section in there on World Series Heroes and Goats, and you’re listed as the Goat in the 1912 World Series.”

  So I got hold of a copy and read it. It said that in the 1912 World Series, the Red Sox versus the Giants, in the 10th inning of the last game Fred Snodgrass, the center fielder for the Giants, dropped an easy fly ball and let the tying and winning runs score. And thereby lost the Series for the Giants.

  I did drop a fly ball. There’s no doubt about that. But I didn’t let the tying and winning runs score; I couldn’t very well, because it happened with the first man up in the bottom of the 10th inning. It was the eighth and last game of the Series (one game had ended in a tie) and the score was tied, 1–1, at the end of the regulation 9 innings. In the top of the 10th we scored a run—on a hit by Fred Merkle, by the way—and went into the bottom of the 10th with Matty pitching and a one-run lead. If we could have held that one-run lead, we would have won the World Series.

  The first man up for Boston in the bottom of the 10th was Clyde Engle, who was pinch-hitting for Smoky Joe Wood. He hit a great big, lazy, high, fly ball halfway between Red Murray in left field and me. Murray called for it first, but as center fielder I had preference over left and right, so there’d never be a collision. I yelled that I’d take it and waved Murray off, and—well—I dropped the darn thing. It was so high that Engle was sitting on second base before I could get it back to the infield.

  Well, Harry Hooper was the next batter. And in the 10th inning of a tie game, the last game of a World Series, we were just certain that he would bunt to move the man over to third. So my position in center field was fairly close in behind second. Matty was holding Engle close to second, so that we could get him at third on the bunt, and I was in pretty close, figuring that if Matty threw to second and the ball got by second in any way I could still keep Engle from going to third.

  But instead of bunting, Hooper cracked a drive way over my head. I made one of the greatest plays of my life on it, catching the ball over my shoulder while on the dead run out in deep left center. They always forget about that play when they write about that inning. In fact, I almost doubled up Engle at second base. He was turning third when I caught the ball. He thought it was gone, you know, and the play at second was very close.

  So that’s one out. Then Matty walked Steve Yerkes, unfortunately, with what proved to be the winning run. Two men on and only one out. And up comes Tris Speaker, one of the greatest hitters in the game. The crowd was making so much noise it was deafening.

  What does Speaker do but take a swing at the ball and hit a nice easy pop-up, a foul ball, over near first base. Suddenly the crowd was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop. And that ball was never touched. Merkle didn’t have to go thirty feet to get it, it was almost in the first-base coaching box. Chief Meyers, our catcher, tried to catch it, but couldn’t quite get there. It was too far from home plate. Matty could have put it in his hind pocket himself. But no one ever touched it.

  Well, given that reprieve, Speaker hit a clean line drive over the first baseman’s head that scored the man I put on and put Yerkes on third base. Another long fly to right by Larry Gardner and Yerkes scored after the catch. The game is over and, according to the
newspapers, Fred Snodgrass lost the World Series. I did drop that fly ball, and that did put what turned out to be the tying run on base, but that’s a long way from “losing a World Series.” However, the facts don’t seem to matter.

  Oh, those were stormy days. I always seemed to be getting involved in hassles of one sort or another. Like the time when they claimed I spiked Home Run Baker. That was in the 1911 World Series, when we were playing Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics. In fact, that was the Series in which Frank Baker acquired his famous nickname of Home Run Baker. He hit two home runs against us in that World Series, and in those days that was an extraordinary performance.

  Before the Series began, we had been told by friends that Baker was spike-shy, that he’d get out of your way at third base if the occasion arose. But to start at the beginning: in the 1905 World Series, six years before, the Giants had beaten the Athletics four games to one. That was the Series in which Matty had shut out the A’s three times and Joe McGinnity had shut them out once. In that Series the Giants had been dressed in black broadcloth uniforms.

  So superstitious McGraw, and he was superstitious, he ordered new black broadcloth uniforms for the 1911 Series. We went out on the field first, all dressed in black, and as we sat on the bench waiting for the Athletics to walk past us to get to the visiting team’s bench, we all had a shoe off in one hand and a file in the other, and we were all busily sharpening our spikes. We figured that might have some effect on them, because we were a base-running club and we wanted them to get the idea that they’d better get out of our way. As I said, we stole 347 bases that season.

  Well, I happened to be the first man in the game to get to second base who had occasion to try to go to third. Chief Bender was pitching for the A’s, and throwing his beautiful curve in the dirt, and the catcher was having trouble digging it out. One pitch got away from the catcher and I lit out for third base.

  Part of the crowd at Shibe Park in Philadelphia awaiting the start of the 1911 World Series. Although it hardly looks it, 20th Street runs between the right-field wall and the crowded rooftops across the street.

  But Baker knew that we had been told that he was spike-shy, and he just had guts enough to try to block me off that base. So he was down on one knee in front of the bag, with the ball, waiting for me to slide. Well, I couldn’t hook the bag, in or out, because he’d ride me right off, so all I could do was go hard into him and try to upset him, which I did, and I was safe. In doing so I cut his pants, from his knee clear to his hip. They went and got another pair of pants and a blanket, put the new pants on him right at third base, and the game proceeded.

  This same play happened again a few days later. I’m on second, a passed ball, and I take off for third. This time I was out, but I ripped his pants again, plus a little abrasion on his leg. Not a cut, no blood, nothing like that. Oh, I was the dirtiest player in baseball! Newspaper stories told how I’d jumped at Baker waist high, which wasn’t true at all, and how I’d deliberately spiked him. Was I ever roasted! They built it up until Baker’s bone showed from the knee to the hip.

  In fact, a news report went out that some fanatic had shot Snodgrass in the hotel, and it was reported that I had been taken to the hospital in critical condition. They didn’t have radio then, and that story went out over the wires. My parents out here in California heard that I had been killed, and it was several hours before a retraction came out and they found out I was all right.

  And then there was that crazy incident in Boston, when Mayor Curley tried to have me thrown out of a game. That was in 1914, the year of the Boston Braves “Miracle Team,” which came from last place on July 4th to beat us out for the pennant. We had been leading the league all season. But the Braves made this wonderful climb up the ladder from last place until by Labor Day, playing against the Giants, they had a chance to pass us and go into first place.

  The crowd that wanted to get into the ball park in Boston that day was far greater than the seating capacity, so they started putting spectators in the outfield. In fact, the Boston Braves borrowed Fenway Park from the Red Sox that day, because the Braves’ own park was too small to hold the crowd. They put ropes up in the outfield and thousands of people were sitting and standing behind the ropes, right on the playing field. They were standing right behind my back in center field.

  We had a big inning in about the sixth or seventh inning and scored four runs to go well ahead of Boston. I came up to bat after we’d scored all those runs, with nobody on base and two men out. George Tyler, who was pitching for the Braves, was pretty disgusted by then, and he took it out on me by aiming four shots straight at my head. I hit the dirt four times, and the fourth one hit the button on my cap. So on my way to first base I went by way of the pitcher’s box. I stood in front of that guy and called him everything I could think of. He never said a word. Finally, when I ran out of adjectives, I went over to first base. Meanwhile, that huge crowd was hooting and hissing and booing me, and making a terrific din. They knew they weren’t going to get into first place that day, and they were pretty sore about it.

  Fred Snodgrass

  When I got to first base, Tyler looked over at me and tossed the ball into the air and dropped it, a pantomime of the fact that two years before I’d dropped that fly ball in the World Series. Well, the crowd just loved that, and the hooting and booing got even louder, if that was possible. The next man made the third out, and I started out for my position in center field. And as I approached the crowd behind the ropes out there, booing and yelling at me, I just thumbed my nose at the whole bunch of them. Just an old-fashioned nose-thumbing, to let them know what I thought of them.

  Well, that really set them off. It was the signal for all the pop bottles and trash of any kind that people had to come flying out on the field, in my general direction. The place was in an uproar.

  And just then a fellow jumped out of his box seat near the home dugout, and marched onto the field, accompanied by a couple of high-helmeted policemen. He had on a long-tailed coat, spats, and a top hat, and he paraded over to the umpires. It was the Honorable James M. Curley, the Mayor of Boston. He said I had insulted the good citizens of Boston and demanded that I be removed from the field immediately. It was just before election time, and he was making what you might call a grandstand play for votes.

  After a big argument, Bill Klem, who was umpiring, chased him off the field, and the game was finally finished without further trouble. But you can bet I didn’t play a very deep center field the rest of that game, and they tell me that after the last out was made in the ninth inning I ran in from center field so fast that I was easily the first one into our dugout.

  Well, life has been good to me since I left baseball. My lovely wife, Josephine, and I have enjoyed success and things have gone well, very well, through these many years. In contrast, my years in baseball had their ups and downs, their strife and their torment. But the years I look back at most fondly, and those I’d like most to live over, are the years when I was playing center field for the New York Giants.

  8 Stanley Coveleski

  Stanislaus Kowalewski was born in 1890. Thirty years later, as Stanley Coveleski, he became one of the few pitchers in the history of baseball to pitch three winning games in a single World Series. Pitching for Cleveland in the 1920 World Series, he hurled three complete games, permitted Brooklyn but five hits in each, and triumphed over the likes of Rube Marquard, Leon Cadore, and Burleigh Grimes.

  Coveleski played in the major leagues from 1916 through 1928, winning 214 games over that 13-year period, mostly for the Cleveland Indians. In five of those seasons he won 20 or more games, and in all but four he won 15 or more.

  Older brother Harry gained early fame with the Philadelphia Phillies, later won over 20 games three years in a row with the Detroit Tigers. The two together won far more major league games (297) than any other pitching brothers. Jesse and Virgil Barnes won 213, Dizzy and Paul Dean 200, in both cases less than the number won by Stanley alone.*r />
  HAD FOUR BROTHERS, all ballplayers. Oldest was Jacob, a pitcher. Killed in the Spanish-American War in 1898. They say he could throw a ball fast as you could hit one. Next was Frank. Got the rheumatism. Played with an outlaw league in Philadelphia. The rheumatism ended that. John, he tried out with the A’s. Eddie Collins beat him out. Then Harry and me. Five of us. I’m the youngest.

  Harry and me, we both made it to the Big Leagues. Harry was a lefty and I was a righty. Harry started first. He was four years older than me. He signed with the Phillies in 1905 and they optioned him to Lancaster in the Tri-State League. That’s where he was when the Phillies recalled him in September of 1908. Harry came up and beat the Giants three times in one week, and knocked them right out of the pennant.

  Most people think it was Merkle lost the 1908 pennant for the Giants. Well, they’re wrong. It was Harry Coveleski. He was just a rookie, but he beat the Giants three times in the last week of the season. Pitched every other day for a week, and beat them three in a row. That was after the Merkle business and that’s what lost the pennant for McGraw that year. The Giants would have won the championship if they’d beat Harry even one of those three games.

  “Giant Killer” Coveleski they called him after that. They say McGraw never forgave Harry for that. A lot of nonsense. They also say that the Giants ran him out of the league next season. Something about harmonicas or bologna or something. Supposed to have gotten Harry’s goat. What a lot of bull that story is.

  Nobody ever ran Harry out of any league. What happened is that he got hurt the next season. Went back down to the minors for a few years. But his arm came back later, and he came back up with Detroit and did fine. He was with Detroit when I was with Cleveland. They always wanted us to pitch against each other, but we refused. Wouldn’t do it. And they never forced it. Hard to say what would have happened if they had.