Fenway 1912 (49 page)

Devore raced into the triangle, with umpire Bill Klem close behind him to make sure the ball remained accessible. If it became wedged against the bottom of the fence or bounced beneath the bleachers, Klem would have no choice but to rule the hit a ground-rule double.

It did not. Devore scrambled into the piece of pie, spotted the ball, and then, completely out of sight of most of the press box and everyone else in the park except for those far across the field in the stands along the first-base line, picked it up. He wanted to throw, but from his vantage point he could not see third base or extend his arm to throw. Devore was forced to take a few quick steps out from the piece of pie and into the outfield where everyone, including Harry Hooper, who was now well on his way to third, could see him. "When the relay finally reached the infield," wrote McMillen, "Hoop was resting comfortably on the final hassock" (third base), and the Boston crowd was shaking the park to its foundations.

Fenway Park had never been more friendly to the Boston cause. With a strong assist from McLaughlin and Logue, the ballpark had just made the difference in the game. Hooper's hit may well have been the key at-bat for the entire Series, for it left the Red Sox in position to win the game and put themselves only one game away from a world championship.

Mathewson, who rarely allowed anything to bother him, seemed taken aback, as if he could not believe that Hooper's bouncing little line drive had resulted in a triple, and Buck Herzog went out to the mound to steady him. Steve Yerkes stepped to the plate. In center field the crowd pelted Snodgrass with a constant barrage of abuse, and the center fielder edged a few steps closer to home plate. Hooper ran well, and Snodgrass knew that if Yerkes hit the ball to center, his only chance to catch Hooper at the plate would be on a short fly ball.

His opening day heroics notwithstanding, Yerkes had been considered the weakest link in Boston's batting order for the rest of the season, and the player least likely to drive the ball for extra bases. But thus far in the Series he was doing better than he had any right to. Playing the best baseball of his career at the best possible time, Yerkes was outperforming his New York counterpart, NL MVP Larry Doyle, by a wide margin.

Mathewson threw, and Yerkes connected, driving the ball over Fred Snodgrass's right shoulder toward left-center field. The outfielder was slow to react—they were saying some really awful stuff to him in center field—and then the ball hit the left-field fence near where it met the center-field fence and caromed away. Snodgrass ran a gauntlet of verbal abuse as he tracked the ball along the fence, and by the time he ran it down and threw it back in to shortstop Art Fletcher, Yerkes was on his way to third, where he avoided Herzog's tag on the relay with a beautiful hook slide to the outfield side of the base. Hooper walked home, and Boston led, 1–0.

Trailing 1–0 had not overly concerned the Giants, but trailing 2–0 did. With the heart of Boston's batting order coming to the plate, McGraw moved the infield in to cut off a potential second run at the plate. He also sent pitcher George Wiltse to warm up in foul ground along the right-field line. Desperation had replaced confidence.

Tris Speaker knew his role. He got a good pitch and hit it hard, a ground ball that under normal circumstances would have knocked in a run. But this one was hit directly to Larry Doyle.

Yerkes, running on contact, lit out for home. "It was a tense moment," reported the
Times
later. "The crowd jumped to its feet as the hot bouncer steamed toward Doyle, who set himself to check its course.

"Shame on Larry! Set as he was for the ball the sphere didn't even tarry to flirt with his hands as he dug them into the dirt. The place where he dug was not the place where the ball passed." In other words, Doyle missed it, the hard ground ball going right between his legs. Yerkes, who would have been out by a mile had Doyle fielded the ball cleanly, danced home. Even though Speaker killed the rally when he forgot about his sore ankle and tried to take second, only to be thrown out by right fielder Red Murray, Boston now led 2–0.

That was it. Pitching with a lead, Bedient, who had seemed nervous early, was now the epitome of calm as one Giant after another came to the plate and lifted an easy fly to the Boston outfield. Mathewson, too, seemed changed by the outburst—not another Boston hitter reached base the remainder of the game as he slammed the door.

New York's only real chance to do any damage against Bedient came when Merkle hit a ground-rule double into the Duffy's Cliff bleachers to lead off the seventh and later scored on Larry Gardner's error. Bedient just yawned and got back to work, however, retiring the next seven hitters without incident. The Red Sox won, 2–1.

"Four hundred and ten years ago today," wrote Hugh Fullerton after the game, "Mr. Columbus discovered America and this afternoon Mr. McGraw and some other millions of more or less transient New Yorkers discovered to their astonishment that the Boston Americans possessed more than one pitcher." Hugh Bedient's performance left the Red Sox only one win away from a world championship, and the Giants were now in the precarious position of needing to defeat Boston in three straight games.

The young pitcher was lauded after the game, a Giant killer suddenly equal in status to Wood. In the
Globe
Wallace Goldsmith drew the pitcher as an actual giant of lore and legend, equal in size, next to Fenway Park, as the Prudential Center tower is today and crushing the baseball Giants beneath his grandstand-sized feet. As far as the championship aspirations of the Giants were concerned, the cartoon was no exaggeration. If they were to come back and win the Series, the Giants would somehow have to play David to the Goliath the Red Sox had become.

Now the Giants, who had been so confident only a few hours before, turned on each other. Larry Doyle, he of the critical eighth-inning error, berated Fred Snodgrass for misplaying Yerkes's triple, and some members of the New York press unloaded on McGraw for not managing aggressively early in the game, when the Giants had had a few opportunities to put pressure on Bedient.

The Giants left immediately after the game for New York since the next day, Sunday, was an off day—the first of the Series, due to the Sunday baseball ban. Meanwhile the Red Sox, who did not intend to leave for New York until Sunday evening, stayed in Boston.

It might have been better if the Red Sox had not had time to stop and think. Over the next twenty-four hours the Red Sox players, manager Jake Stahl, and owner James McAleer had a chance to ponder the variables, and that might have been the worst thing that could have happened.

No matter where you went, from McGreevey's saloon in Roxbury to the Oak Room at the Copley Plaza Hotel or the lobby of the Hotel Bretton Hall in New York, and no matter who was talking, from bartenders and sportsmen to newsboys, ballplayers, and chambermaids, if you were a baseball fan in either Boston or New York on Sunday, October 13, 1912, there was only one question on everyone's lips: who would the Red Sox pitch against the Giants on Monday? Not until 1948, when Sox manager Joe McCarthy selected Denny Galehouse to pitch the playoff game against the Cleveland Indians in Fenway Park, would the choice of a starting pitcher by a Boston manager be more controversial.

Nearly everyone, except Bedient, was ready—Wood, Collins, and O'Brien—and there were sound reasons to select any of them. By Monday Ray Collins would have four full days of rest and Buck O'Brien three, and both had pitched effectively against the Giants earlier. In the
Herald,
Ralph McMillen speculated that "it looks very much like Buck O'Brien" and pointed out that Collins had warmed up before game 5 and would probably do the same in game 6. In the
Post,
Paul Shannon also thought Stahl would pick O'Brien, writing that, "while with Wood in the box the Boston team would not have the slightest doubt of the issue, the players are anxious to see the Buck return to the rubber and redeem himself." But in the
Globe,
Tim Murnane reported that "Joe Wood is anxious to go again." Although he cautioned that "Wood with two days' rest will not be at his best," he admitted that one reason not to pitch Wood was that if Wood were to pitch the contest and then lose, "the Giants would be in the stronger position" for the rest of the Series. In addition, if Stahl held Wood back a day, then Bedient might also be available for game 7. The players, in their various ghostwritten columns, were blandly magnanimous, evincing confidence in victory no matter who pitched. The
New York World
reported that "opinion was about evenly divided" among the Red Sox players over who would pitch, and another report suggested that half "the boys" expected Wood to take the mound and half either Collins or O'Brien. Their preference probably split along ethnic and religious lines between the KCs and the Masons. Everything else did, and this situation was no different.

There were many reasons for Stahl to pitch Wood. For one, Wood wanted the ball, and that was not insignificant. He had carried the Sox this far and felt he deserved to have the ball in his hand when they won. For another, many observers believed that whenever a team had a chance to win a championship, they should do so with all due haste. That meant using the best pitcher if at all possible. Although, after pitching on Friday, Wood would have to pitch on only two days' rest, that was not a major concern. In his last start he had handled the Giants after only two days' rest between games 1 and 4, and Wood had lost only five times all season, no matter how much or how little rest he had. Were he to lose on Monday, in theory he might still pitch the finale on Wednesday, and no one thought he could lose twice, not even when pitching on one day of rest. These were the days when pitchers were ironmen, and little thought was given to the future.

But that argument also assumed that Wood's arm was healthy. No one, apart from Wood himself, knew if that was the case. While he had appeared stronger in his two World's Series appearances than he had late in the regular season, his change of speed and his dependence on "drop" balls during game 4, as noted in the press, were either red flags for a sore arm or a sign that he was becoming a pitcher, not just a thrower, one who had successfully changed his approach to keep the Giants off balance.

Although the question of who Stahl would select to pitch made great conversation, the Red Sox, needing only one more win, had the Giants on the run, and most players were anxious for the Series to end regardless of who pitched. The season had been long, and the finish was in sight. Some players were already making plans to leave for their homes directly from New York after Monday's game—Charlie Wagner had a new son to spend time with, and Bedient, Hall, and Collins all had new brides waiting at home. The Giants were down on the ground; it was time to step on their neck and put them out of their misery. All Stahl had to do was make a decision.

If in fact the decision was Stahl's to make. When Stahl and the Red Sox boarded their train for New York at five-thirty Sunday evening, the manager may well have learned that the choice was not his alone.

Barely a hundred fans saw the club off, for most of the Rooters had already left for New York. "The boys feel pretty sure of the result," quipped Stahl as he boarded the train. The question of who would pitch was still up in the air, but as he climbed aboard Joe Wood told a New York reporter, "I am ready to pitch tomorrow if wanted, but I have not heard yet whether I am to be called on."

James McAleer had stayed in the background for much of the Series, allowing his manager and his players to do most of the talking for the team, saying little more than that he had faith in his club and expected to win. But McAleer was under some financial pressure—he had gone into debt to buy into the team, and the other investors in the club were at least as concerned with dollars and cents as with hits and runs. Although the World's Series had been lucrative so far, everybody could do the math: every additional game the Red Sox played meant money in the bank because, from game 5 forward, the players didn't get another dime. Ten percent of the gate went to the National Commission, and the Sox and Giants split the rest, giving the Sox around an extra $30,000 for each game played—nearly half their operating expenses for the year.

That was something to consider. If the Series ended with game 6, the two teams were leaving as much as $60,000 on the table. Not that anyone was suggesting that the Red Sox should throw the game ... but if you owned a piece of the Red Sox there
were
worse things than losing game 6 and making an extra $30,000.

There is a baseball axiom that if a team is concerned about anything other than winning, it is destined to lose. On the train ride to New York the evidence suggests that the Red Sox—both players and management—thought the Series was in the bag and may well have started to be more concerned about money than they were about winning.

Although they would not receive any more of the proceeds from any of the games, the players still had ways to pick up some extra cash on the Series. Few were shy at all about gambling. It was an open secret that players often bet on baseball, a practice no one was much concerned about as long as it stayed quiet and as long as the players did not bet against themselves or their own teams and did not try to fix games. Joe Wood, for example, loved to gamble and liked few things more than wagering on his skills with a cue stick in a billiard hall. Almost a decade later both he and Tris Speaker would admit to betting on baseball. In the wake of the Black Sox scandal, the incident may have played a role in Wood's premature retirement after the 1922 season, a year in which he hit almost .300 for the Cleveland Indians as an outfield regular after injuries forced him to give up his pitching career.

The disagreement with the National Commission over the tie game left most players thinking they were due a little more, and making a smart bet or two was one way to recoup what they felt had been unfairly taken from them. Although the odds had tilted in Boston's favor—the Sox were now overwhelming favorites to win the Series—there was still money to be made on game 6, particularly if Wood, who they felt could not lose, was on the mound and Marquard, who had renewed Giants backers' confidence in him, was pitching for New York. As the train chugged to New York making money—not necessarily winning the game—became more and more important.