Fenway 1912 (26 page)

Winning made everything easier, but it was not a time for gloating. The Red Sox realized, as one Boston writer noted, that their spot in first place "was accomplished not so much by the superior playing of Boston as by the unlooked for slump of the Chicago team." Besides, Washington still had not lost since Memorial Day, and truth be told, Boston worried more about the Athletics, a sleeping giant lurking in fourth place, than about either Washington or the White Sox.

A's manager Connie Mack thought his 1912 team was the most talented he had ever managed, but after winning two pennants the A's were both overconfident and wracked by dissension. Much of that was due to a series of articles that A's second baseman Eddie Collins authored in
American
magazine during the off-season. In one, he revealed how opposing pitchers tipped their pitches. Collins's teammates were incensed that he revealed such critical information for his own personal gain at their expense. The A's clubhouse began to fracture and slowly split apart.

The next day the news got better for Boston by getting worse. Charley Hall, using what the
Post
called "a variety of benders and shoots that had the Browns ducking and backing away," was working on a 4–0 shutout. Then, with one out in the third inning, St. Louis shortstop Bobby Wallace took a cut and fouled a pitch straight back. Boston catcher Les Nunamaker didn't have a chance. A week before, in Cleveland, he'd taken a pitch off his bare hand, and it was still sore and swollen. Now the ball split the skin between his thumb and forefinger. He bent over double as blood spurted to the ground like a fountain. He was rushed to the hospital for stitches, and Bill Carrigan came into the game.

George Ellard, catcher for the old Red Stockings in 1869, once captured the catcher's plight in verse:

We wore no mattress on our hands
No cage upon our face
We stood right up and caught the ball,
With courage and with grace.

Nunamaker and other catchers of his era had benefited from some improvement to the equipment, such as a padded glove, a thin chest protector, a wire face mask, and rudimentary leather shin guards, but compared to today's catchers, decked out in high-tech armor, they were almost defenseless. Few catchers at the major league level had all their teeth, most had had their nose broken multiple times, and their fingers were usually contorted and misshapen from repeated breaks.

Nunamaker's bad break, however, proved fortuitous to the Red Sox. Boston was due to play in Chicago next, and there was some speculation that Stahl would hold Joe Wood back a day to pitch the opener. But with the White Sox on the skids, he once again chose to avoid wasting Wood opposite Ed Walsh, and Wood got the call to pitch the series finale against St. Louis.

Despite the injury to Nunamaker, his catcher would not, however, be Bill Carrigan. Forrest "Hick" Cady, Boston's third-string catcher, drew the surprise assignment.

The hulking, twenty-six-year-old rookie from Illinois—whose nickname was an abbreviated version of his childhood nickname, "Hollick," though it could have described his rural upbringing and naïveté—had been a professional since 1906. He was so raw when he started his pro career that he later liked to tell a story about the time his minor league manager ordered him to call for a pitchout. He did not, and when his manager asked why, Cady explained that he didn't think it was in his pitcher's repertoire. The catcher himself had not known what a pitchout was. Nevertheless Cady learned fast, and in 1911 he had benefited from catching the aging veteran and former Giants great "Iron Joe" McGinnity for Eastern League Newark, impressing Boston scouts. After the season the Sox, worried about the condition of Bill Carrigan's broken leg, acquired Cady in exchange for $6,000 and two players.

He impressed observers from the outset, particularly with his arm. Tim Murnane noted that Cady threw "dead to the mark all the time." Even though the Sox did not really need him after Carrigan proved relatively sound, in the spring of 1912 Cady made the roster to keep him from being grabbed by another club. Yet he hardly ever played. An ankle injury early in the year had slowed him down, and with Carrigan and Nunamaker on the roster he was still, at best, Stahl's third choice behind the plate. He spent most of his time warming up the pitchers Stahl tried not to use.

Cady was a large player for the era, standing 6'2", and although not very fast, he was quick and agile. For the rest of the season—and for one season only—he was the answer behind the plate for Boston, just as veteran catcher Elston Howard would be for the Red Sox in 1967 after being acquired in midseason. As A. H. C. Mitchell accurately observed later in
Sporting Life,
"Wood has more confidence with him [Cady] behind the bat." He wasn't alone. From the time he entered the lineup virtually every Boston pitcher threw the ball better with Cady behind the plate, and the rookie also hit better than any other Boston backstop. If there was one change that made a difference for the Red Sox during the course of the 1912 season, it was when Hick Cady entered the lineup. He helped make Joe Wood a star.

As Carrigan and Nunamaker looked on the next day Wood pitched to Cady for the first time in competition since spring training. At the start of the game Nunamaker, Cady's roommate, called for him to "keep up the reputation of the room!" Cady, normally soft-spoken, took that as a challenge. He turned to the bench and called out, "If they give me the chance, they'll never miss you." The remark raised some eyebrows, but Cady was correct. Although he and Wood were not yet on the same page—Cady did not know the strengths and mostly weaknesses of the Browns hitters, and Wood shook him off repeatedly, in essence calling his own game—that was probably for the best. That gave Cady a chance to see how Wood liked to work, and for the first time all year Wood got to throw exactly what he wanted, when he wanted.

It worked. Wood dispatched the Browns 5–3 as Cady chipped in with a hit and a sacrifice, and Wood blasted a home run to help his own cause, although he gave it back when a base runner took advantage of his slow wind-up and stole home. Still, it was a nice start for what would soon become Boston's best battery. And in a superstitious age Wood's victory with Cady behind the plate gave Jake Stahl a great excuse to continue to have Cady catch Wood instead of Carrigan—it was considered bad luck to break up a winning combination. As Cady predicted, Nunamaker was not missed and barely played the rest of the year. Wood was now 12-3 and finally starting to pitch up to his record.

A happy ball club boarded the train that night for Chicago, eager to face the White Sox. The Red Sox led by a game and were winners of six of their last seven, including five straight. If the Red Sox could stay hot against the White Sox and take the series, they could take command of the pennant race.

In the National League there was no race at all, except for the record book. The New York Giants, 36-8, led the second-place Cincinnati Reds by eleven and a half games. The Giants had already run off two winning streaks of nine games each and another of ten, and they were about to take off on a record nineteen straight victories. New York baseball writers were already arguing over who should start in the World's Series, Christy Mathewson, Rube Marquard—who thus far was undefeated for the season—or rookie Jeff Tesreau. Manager John McGraw's biggest worry was staying awake as he watched his team club the opposition senseless, for so far the Giants had outscored their opponents by nearly a two-to-one margin.

In an effort to boost the gate White Sox owner Charlie Comiskey declared that Flag Day, June 13, the first game of the series against the Red Sox, would also be "Boston Day." The weather cooperated and provided Boston weather—rain—for most of the contest as the umpires didn't even allow players to warm up in an attempt to keep the field playable. As both Ban Johnson and Comiskey looked on, the White Sox tried to kill the Red Sox with kindness before the game. James McAleer was presented with a silver case, Robert McRoy received a gold watch, and Jake Stahl limped off with several enormous floral arrangements.

Instead, Boston should have just asked the White Sox to pitch anyone but Ed Walsh. He scattered three hits and beat Ray Collins 3–2. The victory pulled the White Sox back into a tie for first place. When game 2 of the series was rained out, manager Jimmy Callahan of the White Sox turned to Walsh once more, starting him for the fourth time in five games against Boston for the season.

Comiskey Park was nearly overflowing as twenty thousand Chicago fans turned out for the contest, most of them hoping to see the White Sox regain their lead. The concrete-and-steel park had opened in 1910 and featured a double-decked grandstand flanked by two pavilions. The symmetrical field was among the more spacious parks of the day—362 feet down each line and 420 feet to center field. This time Jake Stahl was given a silver case before the game by his hometown admirers and the crowd was serenaded by a band as Chicago, with Walsh on the mound opposite O'Brien, seemed prepared to celebrate. As the big pitcher took the mound to start the game exuberant fans spontaneously broke out in song, singing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow."

The Red Sox thought he was jolly good as well. They finally solved the spitballer, boxing him around for three runs in the first and driving him from the game after only two innings, then hanging on as O'Brien won his third straight with a 4–3 win, leading Jimmy McAleer to predict that, "if Buck makes good on last year's record with Boston the Red Sox will win the championship." The win pulled them back into first place, but also cost them the services of Bill Carrigan.

In the fourth inning Carrigan came to bat against Chicago relief pitcher Joe Benz and took an "inshoot," a running fastball, off the side of his head. Carrigan dropped to the ground, almost knocked out, but eventually he sat up, then stood and tried to continue, walking like he was on the deck of the
Titanic
as it was going down. Stahl wisely pulled him from the game and sent Cady in to catch.

It was the best thing that could have happened. Cady made a diving catch of a foul ball that Carrigan would not have come close to. Then, in the ninth, with two outs and Boston nursing a one-run lead, Cady gunned out Rollie Zeider trying to steal second base to end the game.

Cady was behind the plate the next day as well, again catching Joe Wood. He made good once more, making two perfect throws to second to shut down Chicago's running game, blocking a runner off the plate on a play at home, and knocking out a hit to spark the winning rally. And that wasn't the half of it. Wood won again, 6–4, but pitched better than the score: with one bad error and two dropped throws, shortstop Charlie Wagner was responsible for most of Chicago's runs. Wood gave up only five hits, and Tim Murnane noted that over the course of the game, as the pitcher became more comfortable with his catcher, he threw more and more fastballs. Cady clearly had no trouble handling Wood's best pitch. No one realized it yet, but everything was now in place. For the remainder of the season the 1912 Red Sox would play as well as any team in Red Sox history, and Joe Wood was almost unbeatable.

The White Sox tried Walsh again in the finale, but Boston had broken his spell and knocked him around for thirteen hits in their 4–1 win behind Charley Hall. Hick Cady had two more hits, threw out another base runner trying to steal, and made another spectacular, sprawling catch of a foul ball. The Sox didn't miss Carrigan, who stayed in the game by coaching first, or Charlie Wagner, who had been suspended for three games the day before after dressing down umpire Jack Sheridan in language that left the umpire flushed with anger.

The Red Sox left the ballpark only ten minutes after the victory and rushed to the station to make their train for New York. They could not wait to play the Yankees. Three wins against the White Sox had left them two games up on their rivals. The Senators, after winning sixteen in a row, had finally lost, giving the Sox even more confidence going into New York, where the Yankees, at 17-36, were doing a fair imitation of the Browns. After New York the Sox would visit Washington, where they hoped to discard the surprising Senators like something on their shoe before returning to Fenway Park to start a home stand with another series against New York. If everything broke right, it was not unthinkable that the Red Sox might open up a double-digit lead on the rest of the league.

Pitching, which had been the issue when they left Boston three weeks before, was now the least of Boston's concerns. With Cady manning the plate almost every game, it had been two weeks since anyone had scored more than four runs in a game off Boston pitching. The Red Sox suddenly felt so secure that the club worked out a deal to trade Eddie Cicotte to Cincinnati and put him on waivers, hoping he'd clear the league so they could make the transaction and fill a hole. Reserve infielder Marty Krug was hurt, and the Sox needed an experienced man to back up Wagner, Yerkes, and Gardner. But the White Sox, now desperate for a pitcher to take the load off Walsh, put in a claim and blocked the deal. Cicotte remained with Boston, but his status was in limbo. He wasn't needed, not even to mop up. Jake Stahl, like other managers at the time, rarely pulled an effective starting pitcher no matter what the score.

Over the next five days, as if apologizing for allowing the pitching staff to carry the load on the road trip, the Red Sox offense exploded. After Hugh Bedient won the first game of the series 5–2, Boston made the Yankees look like a semipro club and battered them in the next four games, winning 15–8, 11–3, 13–2, and 10–3 as O'Brien, Hall, Wood, and Collins all collected victories. Cady continued to prove to be a revelation, both at the plate and behind it, and even the loss of Harry Hooper for a few games to a minor injury seemed not to matter to Boston. Although Bill Carrigan was healthy again, Cady was Wood's full-time catcher and split the other duties with Carrigan, who now found himself coaching first base almost as often as he caught. Over time the role of each catcher would become more clearly defined. Just as Cady became Wood's personal catcher, Bill Carrigan would generally catch O'Brien. Boston arrived in Washington with a record of 40-19, the winners of eight straight, and with a four-and-a-half-game lead on the White Sox and a five-game lead on the Senators.