On June 3, 1919, shortly before the start of a game between the Giants and Phillies at the Polo Grounds, he took a seat in the press box and checked the lineups. He was surprised to see George Whitted, a toothy reserve known as “Possum,” playing first base for Philadelphia. Fred Luderus, a dependable veteran, had manned first base for the Phillies for most of the past decade.
Elias asked around, wondering why Luderus was out. A Philadelphia sportswriter explained that he had a “charley horse,” a sore thigh muscle. He had played with it the day before as the Phillies were swept in a doubleheader at the Polo Grounds, going hitless in the first game before leaving the second game early due to the injury. Jack Coombs, the Phillies’ manager, felt he needed a rest.
As the game began in bright sunshine before several thousand fans, Possum Whitted, aptly nicknamed for his buck teeth and big eyes, made Coombs look smart, singling to lead off the top of the first and coming around to score. In the fourth, he bashed a drive to deep center that was misplayed, enabling him to circle the bases for a three-run inside-the-park homer.
Elias watched with growing unease. He was looking for statistical material and knew Luderus had a lengthy consecutive-game streak: 446 straight, it turned out. In the sixth inning, Elias left the press box, descended to the stands, stopped by the Phillies’ dugout, leaned in, and signaled to Coombs. Gaining the manager’s attention, he shouted that “Luddy” should get into the game to keep his consecutive-game streak going.
Coombs squinted up at Elias as if he were a visitor from another planet. Elias had breached basic protocol by invading the sanctity of the dugout during a game. Coombs growled that he did not care about some damn streak; Luderus was injured.
Elias persisted, pointing out that Luderus only needed to bat once to keep his streak going. Coombs did not appreciate a denizen of the press box telling him what to do. The manager was a bona fide baseball man, a former pitcher who had once won 31 games in a season. The Phillies had put him in charge partly because he had a chemistry degree from Colby College in Maine; he was a smart guy. But while he was not anxious to accede to Elias’s suggestion, Coombs did not see the harm in letting Luderus bat, especially since the Phillies were well ahead. He gave in. When Whitted was due up in the ninth, Luderus pinch-hit for him.
A thick-bodied, square-jawed German American from Wisconsin, Luderus walked gingerly to the plate, clearly favoring his injured thigh. But after taking two pitches, he swung hard at a fastball and lined a single up the middle. Then he manned first base in the bottom of the ninth as the downtrodden Phillies wrapped up a rare victory.
Though it was not a long workday, Luderus received credit for playing in the game, extending his streak. Seven years earlier, the National League had adopted guidelines for what counted as an official game appearance. Before 1912, the league had not credited most pinch runners, pinch hitters, or defensive substitutes with playing; only starters received that recognition. But as of 1912, “all appearances by a player in a championship game count as a game played,” according to the modern encyclopedia Total Baseball. The American League had adopted the same guidelines in 1907.
Back in the press box, Elias positively beamed as the ninth inning unfolded. Due strictly to his persistence, Luderus had now played in 447 straight games. It was one of the longest streaks the major leagues had witnessed. Elias could provide sportswriters with numbers and facts extolling the achievement. There would be articles in the papers. Elias had done his job.
His involvement illustrated an unusual fact about consecutive-game streaks that soon became evident as they emerged from history’s mists as a viable achievement and, for some players, a goal. Unlike most other feats and records, a playing streak could be manipulated. Several players, including Lou Gehrig, would take considerable advantage of that in the coming decades.
On August 3, when Luderus ran his streak to 479 straight games, breaking Eddie Collins’s record and becoming “the new ‘Iron Man’ of the majors,” according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the paper did not report that Pinkney actually had a streak that was 99 games longer; that fact was still buried in the game’s annals. But the paper did note that Luderus had made it this far only because Elias had convinced Coombs to use him as a pinch hitter in the ninth inning on June 3.
Luderus ended up playing in every game of the 1919 season for the Phillies, who endured two 13-game losing streaks and finished 47½ games out of first place. Luderus generated what little positive publicity they received, and near the end of the season, the Phillies honored their first baseman in a ceremony at the Baker Bowl in Philadelphia. Heydler, the league president, and the Phillies’ owner, William Baker, brought Luderus to home plate between games of a doubleheader. Heydler gave a speech and presented Luderus with a gold stickpin from the league. Baker also spoke and gave Luderus a gold watch.
It was “the first occasion in which a big league president has appeared at home plate to present a testimonial from the league to one of its players, and no more deserving player than Luderus could have been selected for this honor,” the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote. Although he was being honored for his years of solid play and not his consecutive-game streak, his streak embodied the dependability that made him valuable. The few fans at the park gave him an ovation.
With so many statisticians digging around, Pinkney inevitably received recognition for his achievement, now three decades old, of playing in so many games in a row. On January 4, 1920, Pittsburgh sportswriter Mac-Lean Kennedy identified him as the true holder of the consecutive-game record.
“A statistician informs us that Fred Luderus holds the record for playing the greatest number of games consecutively, and his mark of 533 is by all odds the true record of all modern day players,” Kennedy wrote in the Pittsburgh Press. “However, someone is always taking the joy out of life by digging up old-time records and here is one which is genuine and the player deserves credit for his wonderful steadiness.”
Kennedy did not identify his sources, so it was not clear whether he had made the discovery himself or “borrowed” it from a statistician or sportswriter colleague. Either way, he accurately detailed Pinkney’s Illinois background, playing career, and record of playing in 578 straight games. The record “is the best ever made and stands for all the reliables to shoot at,” Kennedy wrote. “Eddie Collins had a mark of 478 in a row, which was the mark Luderus overcame. Now this old one which had slipped the memories of present-day [statisticians] was dug up.”
The Associated Press picked up on the discovery and circulated a story about Pinkney. Now 60 years old, Gentleman George experienced a brief burst of limited fame. A sportswriter for the Peoria Journal came to his house to discuss his record.
“I paid little attention to it at the time I played,” Pinkney said. “But I knew, of course, that I had established a mark for others to shoot for.”
And here they came.
6
Ironmen
DEACON
Though they played decades apart, Everett Scott and George Pinkney shared many qualities. Both were infielders with Midwestern roots, Pinkney from Peoria, Illinois, Scott from Bluffton, Indiana. Both were known for their defense more than for their hitting; Scott often led all American League shortstops in fielding during his heyday with the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees. Both earned respect for their off-field habits; Scott’s teammates nicknamed him “Deacon” after watching him rise early on Sundays to attend church while they slept off their Saturday nights.
Also, Scott, like the egg-shaped Pinkney, did not seem a likely exemplar of toughness and determination. He stood five feet eight and never weighed more than 145 pounds during his 13-year major league career. His flannel jersey fit loosely on his bony body, the excess cloth flapping when breezes swept through the infield. With his bugged-out eyes and broad ears jutting from his football-shaped head, Scott was an adult version of what kids call a pipsqueak.
But as with Pinkney, those initial impressions did not paint an accurate picture. Scott
had sure hands and a knack for knowing where to position himself against different batters, enabling him to get to more ground balls before they reached the outfield. Once he had the ball, he threw it across the diamond on such a taut line that Brooklyn manager Wilbert Robinson nicknamed him “Trolley Wire” during the 1916 World Series. He also had an “uncanny” ability to hit his first baseman in the chest no matter where he threw from, according to Baseball Magazine. Most of all, Scott shared Pinkney’s burning desire to play in every game, even when dealing with injuries and ailments that would have sidelined others. “I just thought I was supposed to play ball as long I was needed and able to,” Scott told the New York Times in 1922, when he was just gaining a measure of fame for fashioning the longest consecutive-game streak in major league history.
A star pitcher in high school, Scott was a slender 19-year-old infield prospect on a minor league team in Youngstown, Ohio, in 1912 when the Red Sox, Boston Braves, and Washington Senators all noticed him. The Senators declined to pursue him, deciding his slight frame would not allow him “to keep up the strenuous pace demanded in the big show,” their scout wrote. Scott weighed all of 120 pounds. He signed with the Red Sox, who had won three pennants and two World Series titles since their inception in 1901.
As a rookie in 1914, Scott hit .239 while playing in most of the games that year. Boston’s player-manager, Bill Carrigan, who was part of the team’s catching platoon, liked having Scott anchoring the defense; he could win a game without reaching base, Carrigan thought. Even when Scott really struggled at the plate and hit just .201 the next year, Carrigan still played him in roughly two of every three games as the Red Sox won another pennant. Decades later, when baseball mathematicians developed advanced statistical analytics and applied them to prior seasons, Scott ranked in the top 10 in the American League in 1915 in “defensive wins above replacement”—a calculation assessing a player’s value as a defender. He would later lead the league in that metric four times.
Still, in 1915 he was one of Boston’s younger, least heralded players, overshadowed not only by veteran teammates Tris Speaker, Harry Hooper, and Duffy Lewis but also by another youngster, George Herman “Babe” Ruth, a barrel-chested 20-year-old left-handed pitcher who won 15 games for the Sox that season. At six feet two and more than 200 pounds, Ruth commanded attention with his bearish physique and broad face dominated by a bulbous nose and wide, flaring nostrils. A prodigious talent, he not only cleverly mixed the speeds and locations of his tosses but also could play the outfield and hit—really hit. Ruth smacked four home runs in 1915, including one that traveled so far it broke a window at a Chevrolet dealership next to Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis.
But though Ruth generated more headlines than Scott, he barely left the bench during the 1915 World Series, while Scott played every inning, a measure of Carrigan’s growing confidence in him. Scott collected just one hit in 18 at-bats, but he did not commit an error as the Red Sox defeated the Philadelphia Phillies in five games. Afterward, Carrigan noted his key contribution.
The next year, Detroit’s Ty Cobb spiked Scott on a play at second base early in the season, prompting Scott to borrow longer spikes from a teammate to better fight such battles. Unaccustomed to the new footwear, he tripped and turned an ankle, forcing him to miss several games. After returning as a defensive replacement late in a loss to the Yankees on June 20, he reclaimed his starting spot on June 21 and did not miss another start all season.
The Red Sox were in fifth place when he returned, and his steadying presence helped them. In the end, they won their second straight pennant, and Scott led the league’s shortstops with a .967 fielding percentage, committing just 19 errors in almost 600 chances. It was the first of eight straight seasons in which he would lead the league’s shortstops in that statistic.
In Game 2 of the 1916 World Series, the Red Sox defeated Brooklyn, 2–1, in a 14-inning affair that lasted just 2 hours and 37 minutes. Ruth threw every pitch. He had won 23 games and compiled the league’s lowest earned run average during the season, but this was his finest hour. The victory gave the Red Sox a 2–0 lead in the series, and they went on to win in five games.
But though Ruth’s play on the field drew ovations, his behavior off the field was becoming alarming. A Baltimore saloonkeeper’s son, he had spent his youth at St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys, a strict Roman Catholic orphanage, and now that he was on his own, he acted as if he had just been released from prison. He ate and drank excessively and chased women until sunrise. It was rumored he had enough sex to satisfy the whole pitching staff. Although his broad smile and guileless nature made his behavior easier to take, some teammates considered him a selfish distraction.
Scott was a milquetoast by comparison, quiet and watchful, married to his high school sweetheart. His idea of fun was a night of bowling. (After his baseball career, he would own an alley and participate in national tournaments.) Unlike the self-centered Ruth, Scott exhibited adult priorities. When his wife became ill and needed surgery before the 1917 season, Scott left the team and missed a week of exhibition games to help her convalesce in Indiana. But he was back on Opening Day and played in every game of the season for the first time as the Sox finished third.
The next year, with the country’s involvement in World War I at a peak, the major league season was shortened by a month as more than 200 players left their teams to comply with a federal “work or fight” directive requiring draft-eligible men to enlist in the armed services or work in a war-related industry. The Red Sox lost 11 players, and as minor leaguers filled in, Ruth campaigned to play the outfield as well as pitch. Given a chance, he hit eight home runs in a month, a startling total; only one other American League player hit more than six home runs all season. Never again would Ruth just pitch for his team.
Scott played in every game of the abbreviated season as the Red Sox won another pennant and defeated the Chicago Cubs in the World Series. His .221 average illustrated his ongoing offensive struggles, but he was now a three-time World Series winner and emerging team leader whose opinions were valued. When the Red Sox and Cubs almost went on strike before the World Series after discovering their postseason bonuses had been slashed, ostensibly as a necessary wartime restriction, Scott was among the players who negotiated with the sport’s leaders, to no avail.
On May 16, 1919, Scott played in his 400th straight game, going hitless in four at-bats in a loss to the Chicago White Sox. His daily presence in the lineup was assured, regardless of how low his batting average sank. Boston’s manager, Ed Barrow, who had replaced Carrigan the year before, valued his defense. Baseball was at the end of its “dead-ball era,” marked by the dominance of pitching, defense, and “small-ball” offensive strategy over the raw power of home run hitting, a set of priorities Ruth would soon invert, leading to sweeping changes in the game’s very nature. But those changes were just beginning to percolate in 1919, so a shortstop’s offensive shortcomings were tolerated if his defense was as strong as Scott’s.
Scott still encountered challenges to his consecutive-game streak. One day in Philadelphia, a rookie pitcher for Boston, Waite Hoyt, uncorked a wild throw that plunked Scott in the back of the head during warm-ups. Knocked out cold, the shortstop lay facedown in the grass for 10 minutes as concerned teammates stood in a circle around him, watching a trainer work to revive him. But then he abruptly stood up and, head clearing, played all nine innings that day, later telling reporters, “I was out but recovered in time; can’t beat that for luck, can you?”
He also was beset by small, painful skin infections, known as boils, which would trouble him for the rest of his career. They cropped up on his arms, legs, both feet, scalp . . . just about everywhere. “Boils of all shapes and sizes; I had it bad,” he later told the New York Times. The infections oozed pus and often throbbed, but he could play with them, he discovered, if he wrapped bandages around them so tightly that he lost feeling in the afflicted areas. Thus began a pregame ritual he would follow for
the rest of his career: while his teammates put on their uniforms and sharpened their spikes, Scott sat by his locker patiently wrapping bandages around his boils, a process that could take an hour.
Years later, when asked to reflect on Scott, his teammates usually started with stories about his boils and the thick bandages he painstakingly applied that enabled him to play. A New York Times sportswriter, John Kieran, compared him to Job, the biblical figure also beset by boils. Scott, Kieran wrote, played at times “when he was suffering from an attack of boils that would have made Job look like an advertisement for skin food. The shortstop won out by sheer persistency. He simply refused to quit, even when he appeared on the ball field with bandages enough to justify the suspicion that he had just lost an argument with a threshing machine.”
On August 28, 1919, Scott played in his 500th straight game. The press paid no attention. The once-mighty Red Sox were experiencing a surprising decline, with the focus on Ruth, who was losing interest in pitching as he hit more home runs. Fans across the league flocked to ballparks hoping to see him uncoil his all-or-nothing swing and swat a majestic fly over the fence. They screeched with delight when he hit one, and Ruth loved the attention. As his star rose, he ran wilder at night, ignored Barrow’s attempts at discipline, and held out for a raise in the middle of the season. The nonstop controversies sank the Red Sox, who wound up in fifth place.
Ruth would end the year with 29 home runs, an all-time major league record, after skipping the last game of the season to grab a paycheck for appearing in an exhibition game in Baltimore, his hometown. Scott, playing in his teammate’s expanding shadow, quietly churned on. By the end of the 1919 season, he had appeared in 524 straight games. The Phillies’ Fred Luderus had a longer streak by nine games, but Luderus sat out the first game of the 1920 season with a sore back, and Scott kept going. He passed Luderus on April 26, 1920, hitting a home run in a Red Sox victory in Philadelphia. He now had the longest active streak in the major leagues, having played in 534 straight games.
The Streak Page 8
