Fenway 1912

by Glenn Stout

  Unfortunately, it would not be the last time there was talk that the 1912 World's Series might not exactly be played on the square. There was, after all, a great deal of money to be made on the Series by the players, the National Commission, the two leagues, and the ownership of the two teams. Baseball was a game, and the national pastime, but when played for money it was business ... serious business.

  11. The Gathering of the Clans

  The peculiar conditions of the major league races of the 1912 season, the great rivalry between the two leagues, the many unknown quantities entering into this conflict between two teams, one of which has had, and the other lacks, experience in World's Series contests, all have combined to make the 1912 World Championship Series the subject of an amount of comment, speculation, analysis and gossip equaled only by the Athletic-Giants series of last year, to the delectation, and perhaps also confusion and disgust, of the reading public. Of partisan claims, predictions and gush there has been a perfect flood; of sane conservative and non-partisan analyses, only a rivulet.

  —A. H. C. Mitchell, Sporting Life

  THE LETTERS ADDRESSED to Wood, all bearing New York postmarks, started to arrive at Fenway Park in late September, as the Sox played the Yankees after they returned from their road trip. Two were full of misspellings, as if the author—or authors—was trying to disguise his upbringing and background, and the signatures were either missing or illegible. But their meaning was clear.

  "Look out for us. We're gunning for you," read one. "You better stay in Boston, where you are among friends," cautioned another. More disturbing were the letters that were less obtuse. One stated boldly, "You will never live to pitch against the Giants in the World's Series. We are waiting for you when you arrive in town." Another was written in red ink—like blood—and the salutation included a drawing of a knife and gun.

  Joe Wood tried to laugh them off. He was in the public eye, and even then public figures attracted all kinds of odd threats and unwanted attention. Although he was not overly concerned, the letters were still disturbing, and with each new letter his anxiety increased. It was virtually impossible to track down the authors. If they were serious, there was little Wood or anyone else could do to remain safe apart from staying in his hotel room and remaining cautious. As the crowds who sometimes waited for him on his porch at his home in Winthrop demonstrated, players were much more accessible then than now. If someone truly wanted to hurt Wood or any other player, there was little to prevent them from doing so. If he was not careful, Fenway Park could be his mausoleum.

  Wood did his best to ignore the threats as the Sox played out the string, but the letters did underscore just how important the Series was to some people and how much money was at stake. The letters were almost certainly sent by gamblers rather than by fans who simply hoped the Giants would win. They probably had no intention of harming Wood but hoped the letters would prove intimidating and influence the odds. As George M. Cohan had already demonstrated, bets of $50,000 or more—the equivalent of more than $1 million today—were commonplace, and men died in the street every day over much smaller sums. Millions of dollars would change hands over the course of the 1912 World's Series in New York and Boston alone. Apart from a heavyweight boxing championship, the World's Series was the premier gambling opportunity of the era, offering the same opportunities for gamblers that the Final Four, the Kentucky Derby, and the Super Bowl do in combination today, yet all wrapped up in one single event and an orgy of speculation that took place over the course of less than two weeks.

  It is impossible to overstate the role that gambling played in baseball over the first two decades of the twentieth century, or to overstate the degree to which gambling was viewed by most of the people in and around baseball as, if not completely innocuous, at worst a necessary evil. Gambling fueled the game, putting people in the stands and money in the pockets of everyone—players, owners, and sportswriters.

  It was present everywhere baseball was played, as much a part of the game as chewing tobacco and booing an umpire. And baseball was played virtually everywhere, in every town and city across the land, from professional contests to those between semipro or town teams. Every fan and everyone else connected with baseball knew that, on occasion, gambling probably affected the outcome of a game. Yet just as some view the impact of baseball's recent performance-enhancing drug scandal as a wash because "everybody was doing it," most baseball fans and many of those inside the game took the same attitude toward gambling in 1912. Besides, most of them liked to put a bet or two down themselves. Not until 1920, when the fix of the 1919 World's Series was revealed and organized baseball suddenly "discovered" that the game was infused with gambling, did the pursuit have any kind of lasting stigma attached to it. Before then, even the most notorious gamblers, including some who later helped mastermind the Black Sox scandal, such as Arnold Rothstein of New York and Boston's Sport Sullivan, were accepted members of the baseball community. Rothstein, in fact, was once a business partner of Giants manager John McGraw, while Sport Sullivan openly consorted with the Royal Rooters and was known to every Boston player.

  Wood turned over the letters to McAleer, and the Boston owner contacted the authorities, but as the Red Sox traveled first to Washington and then to Philadelphia, Wood and his teammates were, by and large, more concerned with other matters. They wanted to stay healthy and get some rest before the Series. During the final week of the regular season Stahl gave every regular some time off. Wood, in fact, received the longest period of rest he'd had all year, not pitching for seven full days before taking the mound against the Athletics on October 3. He was not sharp when he returned, striking out only five and giving up eight hits and three runs in eight innings, but then again, he didn't need to be as the Sox romped to a 17–5 win.

  The final days of the season were not entirely uneventful. Charlie Wagner's wife gave birth to their third child, a son, and in Washington Bill Carrigan split a nail on a foul ball—a painful injury but one that was not expected to affect his availability for the World's Series. John McGraw also made an appearance in the nation's capital, doing a little personal scouting. He watched the Sox beat Washington, 12–3, on October 1 as Duffy Lewis went four-for-six and Hugh Bedient scattered seven hits. Still, McGraw remained confident. When a reporter asked him whether the 1912 Giants were as good as the team that had lost to the A's in the 1911 Series, McGraw told him to "go back over the records, and I think you'll find that in every case where the same team has played in the World's Series in consecutive years, it was a stronger aggregation the second time than it was the first." That wasn't entirely true, but McGraw liked the way it sounded, and if it gave his team added confidence, it was worth stretching the truth.

  The best thing that happened over the final days of the season for the Red Sox was the return of Larry Gardner. To everyone's relief, he healed quickly and rejoined the club in Philadelphia, his finger still tender but otherwise feeling refreshed from his visit to Vermont. He was pleased to discover that when he taped his little finger to the ring finger of his right hand he could bat and throw without much difficulty, and despite the layoff he exhibited little rust. On the final day of the season he cracked two hits and played errorless ball. On the precipice of the World's Series, both teams appeared to be as close to full strength as possible.

  GARDNER HELPS RED SOX WIND UP WITH A VICTORY

  Back in Boston, work continued at Fenway Park and Robert McRoy struggled to get tickets to the appointed parties as the appointed parties struggled to get tickets. The Royal Rooters, in particular, wanted a block of at least three hundred tickets at the Polo Grounds for game 1. As was their custom during any World's Series, they intended to travel to New York en masse, parade to the ballpark together, and sing and cheer in the stands accompanied by their band. But according to the way tickets were being allotted, there was no way for the group to secure so many seats together without the cooperation of the Giants, and the Giants were not particularly eager to give
the Rooters any help—they were less than thrilled with the idea of several hundred Boston fans driving everyone batty with their incessant singing of "Tessie" and other annoyances. The Rooters, accustomed to special treatment, begged McAleer to intercede, and he promised to look into the matter.

  Meanwhile McRoy and his staff spent every waking moment sorting through stacks of ticket applications and trying to ascertain whether the applicants had sufficient standing to make them worthy of receiving reserved seats in advance. It was a long, laborious, complicated process, one that required them to first ascertain whether the applicant, by way of rain checks, was a regular at Fenway Park, and then they had to determine the number of tickets requested and at what price. McRoy intended to send fortunate applicants a card by mail informing them that they were eligible to purchase tickets. The buyers then had to redeem the card at Fenway at the time of purchase. All tickets were being sold in blocks of three—one for each game in Boston—since according to the schedule set by the National Commission, no more than three games were scheduled to be played in Boston. No single-game ticket purchases were allowed in advance.

  The notices were sent out on October 2, and all over Boston hard-core fans, waiting anxiously for the mail to arrive in one of two daily mail deliveries, were hoping to find an envelope with the return address of Fenway Park. Ticket distribution began at Fenway Park the following morning at 9:00 a.m. and was scheduled to continue each day until the start of the Series in Boston. The ball club expected to sell out all the box seats and the grandstand in advance, as well as a significant portion of the third-base stands—a total of some fifteen thousand tickets for each game. Each individual ticket was keyed to the number of each game played in Boston (game 1, game 2, or game 3).

  There was dissatisfaction from the start on the part of applicants who felt wrongly denied, less well-heeled fans who did not have access to the advance sale and now had to make plans to stand in line for hours on the day of the game to secure tickets, and even the ticket holders themselves. On their way to and from the park they were hounded by fans and scalpers willing to pay top dollar. The Red Sox hoped to prevent scalping by insisting that they had a record of precisely who had purchased each seat, but that did little to slow the trade in tickets.

  The Rooters were having a rough time as well. New York owner John Brush, in poor health, turned McAleer's request down cold. He blamed the National Commission, telling McAleer that since the commission was handling the sale of tickets for the Giants, he "had no justification" to secure tickets for the Rooters. Besides, the Red Sox had already received an allotment of two hundred tickets per game. That was true, but the club had already distributed those tickets.

  The Rooters were desperate. Together they had more than $100,000 to bet on the Red Sox, and they needed to get to New York, where Giants fans were begging for action, before the Series got under way and the odds changed. With Wood lined up to pitch game 1—and in the opinion of the Rooters he was a lock to win—once the Sox went ahead in the Series, New York money was almost certain either to dry up or to demand unrealistic odds. If the Giants came to Boston trailing in the Series, New York backers would keep their money in their pockets.

  Never fear. The Rooters had friends in high places. Mayor Fitzgerald stepped in on their behalf and appealed to both the chairman of the commission, August Herrmann, and Ban Johnson by telegraph. Both men were savvy enough to realize that keeping the mayor of Boston and the Rooters happy was good business, although neither man was particularly thrilled with allowing the Rooters to feel even more important than they already did. They represented the past, and neither McAleer nor McRoy felt it necessary to continue to kowtow to the group, whose members acted like they owned Fenway Park and operated the team. But on October 3 Johnson cabled Fitzgerald, "Have instructed Sec. Heydler to provide 300 tickets for you and Boston rooters." The Giants weren't happy and still balked at turning over the tickets, but Johnson—and the Rooters—eventually prevailed.

  Fenway Park was nearly ready. In the week since the Red Sox had left town the new stands had been completed, and as one report noted, Jerome Kelley and his crew had put the field "in the best possible shape. The diamond has been re-graded, every pebble has been hand-picked and heavy rollers have been hauled back and forth over the infield and baselines until the surface is as smooth as a table." To guard against inclement weather, Kelley's staff kept the infield covered with a heavy canvas when they were not working on it. He planned to leave it on until the beginning of the Series, removing it only to accommodate the practice session the Sox planned to hold two days before the start.

  The biggest change to the park since the Red Sox had left town was obvious on the roof of the grandstand. The original press box could barely accommodate more than a dozen men—and even then, not very comfortably. For the World's Series, hundreds of writers planned to descend on Boston and New York—several representatives from each of the daily papers in each city as well as correspondents from regional papers and major newspapers and wire services all over the country—not to mention copy boys and various underlings. Clearly the size of the existing press box was woefully inadequate. Either it had to be expanded or seats that would otherwise be occupied by paying fans had to be taken out of circulation. In the Polo Grounds that was exactly what the Giants had to do—they turned over box seats behind home plate to the press.

  McAleer shuddered at the thought of losing the income from such pricey seats. To accommodate the crush they decided instead to expand the press box atop the Fenway Park grandstand. One observer later described the new press box as looking like an extended trolley car. The modest original structure, only about thirty feet long, was torn down and replaced by a press box nearly ten times larger, one that stretched from above what is now section 16 around behind home plate to section 25. Compared to the original press box, which looked like a hastily built shed, the new facility was much more handsome. The open-air side facing the field was supported by vaulted columns every ten or twelve feet and was set precisely on the edge of the grandstand roof. Writers in the first of two tiered rows were able to peer almost straight down into the stands. Their view of the field was unimpeded.

  There were other reasons to make the change. Anyone who was anyone in the baseball writing community was covering the Series, and the club certainly wanted to put on its best face. The writers representing the nearly two dozen daily newspapers in Boston and New York were among the best and best-known writers in the country at the time and included many legendary figures known to many fans even today. Some, like Murnane and Sam Crane of the New York Evening Journal, both of whom were often referred to as the "deans" of American baseball writing, were former players whose relationship with the game reached back to its dark ages. After graduating from Holy Cross prep school, Murnane began his playing career in 1869, and in 1872 he became a big leaguer when he joined the Middletown (Connecticut) Mansfields in the National Association. Over the next twelve years he played for a number of teams, and in 1876, while playing for Boston, he was credited with the first stolen base in the history of the National League. Crane's career started only a few years later. The Massachusetts native abandoned his studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in favor of baseball, eventually joining National League Buffalo in 1880 and playing throughout the decade before, like Murnane, becoming a sportswriter. He covered the Giants for the Journal and was as closely identified with the club as McGraw, whom he counted as a close friend.

  Murnane's Boston contemporaries included colleagues Mel Webb and Lawrence McSweeney of the Globe, Paul Shannon of the Post, Herman Nickerson of the Journal, A. H. C. Mitchell of the American, Ralph McMillen of the Herald, and Jack Morse and F. C. Lane of the Boston-based Baseball magazine. All these names were as familiar to Red Sox fans of that era as figures like Peter Gammons, Gordon Edes, Steve Buckley, Amalie Benjamin, Tony Massarotti, and John Tomase are to Red Sox fans today.

  Crane's cronies in New York included Fred Lieb of
the New York Press, Bozeman Bulger of the New York Evening World, Damon Runyon of the American, Heywood Broun of the Tribune, Dan Daniel of the New York World Telegram, Joe Vila of the Sun, Sid Mercer of the Globe and Advertiser, and others, supplemented by writers with more national reputations like Atlanta's Grantland Rice, Chicago's Hugh Fullerton and Ring Lardner, Washington's Joe Jackson, Francis Richter of Sporting Life, J. G. Taylor Spink of The Sporting News, and Cincinnati's William Phelon. Ring Lardner and Damon Runyon would go on to become important literary figures, Lardner as a humorist and writer of short stories and Runyon as a chronicler of Broadway—his work later inspired the show Guys and Dolls. To many of these men writing and reporting on baseball, under a daily deadline, was a writing workshop without peer.

  They were all giants of the field, trailblazers and pioneers, and every day they fought it out with each other in the press box as vigorously as the ball clubs battled on the field, pushing each other to ever more hysterical and breathless fits of prose and occasional poetry as each writer tried to stand out among the others and win for his paper the dedication and loyalty of a growing cadre of readers. While their prose, by today's standards, often appears overwrought, overwritten, and florid, it's important to keep in mind that their reporting filled a role that today is filled not only by newspapers but also by radio, television, and Internet coverage. One hundred years ago the newspapers provided the only coverage of the games available anywhere but in the park itself. Most fans knew about their team from what they read in the newspaper, and the writers had to describe not only what happened but how it happened, allowing the reader to visualize the play. Just as today more fans follow baseball online, in print, or through broadcasts than in person, in 1912 far more fans followed baseball in the papers than in person or by any other method.