Fenway 1912 (39 page)

One other factor made the Giants a particularly formidable opponent for the Red Sox—the rebuilt Polo Grounds, New York's home park.
Baseball
magazine called it "the mightiest temple ever erected to the goddess of sport and the crowning achievement among notable structures devoted to baseball." It was easily the most intimidating place to play in the major leagues. Although the Red Sox had gained some experience playing there in their series with the Yankees a few weeks before, they had yet to play in the park when it was full of Giants partisans, who responded to McGraw's tactics like a lynch mob cheering on the hangman. Boston's Royal Rooters, with their bands and songs and whistles and drums, were cute, and when singing "Tessie" they could be particularly annoying (they had rightly received credit for unnerving the Pirates during the 1903 World's Series), but they were not menacing. The fans in the Polo Grounds treated the opposition like the Christians whenever the lion entered the arena.

The dimensions of the Polo Grounds also made it unlike any other field in baseball. It was essentially a horseshoe, only 277 feet down the line in left and 256 feet in right, but from where the line met the fence the stands angled away perpendicular to home plate, making the power alleys more than 400 feet from home. Over the course of the 1912 season the Red Sox had adapted and become adept at playing in the smaller confines of Fenway Park, now made even smaller by the addition of McLaughlin's extra seats. The Polo Grounds was a radically different place. Outfielders had to play somewhat deeper to cover the gaps, leaving plenty of room for hits to fall in, and the Giants used this to their advantage, scurrying around the bases with abandon. In a short series the Red Sox had precious little time to adjust—one misplayed ball or out-of-position outfielder could cost them the Series—and the possibility of playing as many as four games in the Polo Grounds, versus three at Fenway Park, did not make the task any easier.

And if all that were not intimidating enough, on September 28 a story out of Chicago was. Former Giants manager and sportswriter Horace Fogel was the frontman for a syndicate of investors and served as the president of the Philadelphia Phillies. He made a public accusation that the National League, through its umpires, had fixed the 1912 pennant race to ensure that the Giants would reach the World's Series.

"Go among the players of the other teams," he challenged, "and see how quick they will tell you that New York gets the best of the umpiring ... the reason for it is that the umpires are afraid of McGraw and the influence the New York club has with the President of the league. Then go ask each club owner how many games his team lost to New York this year that would have gone the other way if the umpires had not given the Giants all the best of it in any close decision." He then went on to say that the umpires were easily swayed by the promise of extra pay during the World's Series.

Fogel did not stop there. He also charged that other teams in the National League intentionally took it easy on the Giants, most specifically the St. Louis Cardinals, whose manager, Roger Bresnahan, had played for McGraw. Indeed, the Giants had won an inordinate number of close games during the season, going 32-14 in such contests, and the Cardinals had been only 7-15 against the Giants. But then again, all good teams generally have good records in one-run games. Fogel's own Phillies had finished only 5-17 versus New York, although Fogel blamed the umpires for at least six of those defeats.

NL president Thomas Lynch was quick to refute the charges, but Fogel did have a point. Just as Ban Johnson owned portions of some American League teams, there were some interlocking financial interests between teams in the National League as well, with some owners owning stock in clubs other than their own. Termed "syndicate baseball" by the press, such arrangements had undermined the integrity of the game in the late 1890s and now threatened to do so again.

The National League bristled over the charges, and even though they receded into the background as the Series approached, pending an investigation after the season, they still cast a shadow over the Series. As soon as it ended the NL would act, slapping down Fogel swiftly and banning him from baseball entirely without thoroughly refuting the charges. Still, on the precipice of the World's Series, the whispers that the Giants had an "in" with umpires could not have set well with the Red Sox. Beating the Giants and McGraw would be hard enough even on a level playing field. If it were tilted toward New York ...

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.

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

T
HE 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.

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).