Fenway 1912 (13 page)

Tim Murnane liked Boston's pitching, but offered that "I don't see how they can head off the Athletics ... every member of the Connie Mack crew will play his head off for one more whack at the big money." He figured that the Red Sox had a shot for second place and would battle it out for the runner-up slot with Cleveland, Detroit, and the White Sox, while Washington, St. Louis, and New York, as usual, were expected to stumble down the cellar steps.

Boston newspapers were already running advertisements for the April 9 exhibition game between the Sox and Harvard at Fenway Park. Two years before, a similar exhibition at the Huntington Avenue Grounds had drawn 7,500 people, and the club hoped that, with the new park as an added attraction, they would draw even more fans. Murnane thought at least 12,000 fans would turn out if the weather was good.

As yet, however, Boston's new facility wasn't ready for twelve fans, much less twelve thousand. Everywhere one looked, from dawn to dusk and even later, there were carpenters and construction workers swarming over the facility, which seemed to change minute by minute as they rushed to finish. Although the treads were finally all in place and the pavilion was more or less finished, the wooden bleachers in center field had yet to be completed, and workers were still spreading slag, a hot mixture of coal tar and cinders, over wood planks to make the roof waterproof.

But the field was beginning to turn green, particularly in the infield, where Jerome Kelley's attentiveness was paying dividends. He had his men working on the field every possible minute, overseeding, aerating, watering, filling holes, patching grass killed by the winter's cold, and chasing away workmen who tried to take a shortcut by walking across the outfield. Fenway Park was beginning to look like a ballpark, but it wasn't quite there yet. The stands had no seats, a protective fence still surrounded the infield grass, and while the ticket office on the first floor of the office building behind the third-base line on Jersey Street was nearly ready for business, the smell of fresh paint wafting through the corridors, the team offices were not even close to being finished. They were framed in, but there was no plaster on the walls or doors on the hinges. Beneath the grandstand, it was still too wet and cold to pour a concrete floor, so every time a laborer walked up the ramp from beneath the stands he left a trail of muddy footprints. Charles Logue and his subcontractors were everywhere at once, already checking off minor tasks that could be put off until later in favor of those that were absolutely necessary for the opening of the park to the general public.

Most significantly perhaps, the perimeter of the park had yet to be fully enclosed by a permanent fence. The grandstand provided a barrier around the infield, but carpenters were scrambling to fence in the park parallel to each baseline and around the outfield. Putting in a wooden fence was yet another example of cost-cutting, for it would have been relatively easy to build concrete poured walls. That is what had been done in Philadelphia, at Shibe Park, but it was more expensive, and now it was too late anyway. On April 1 all the things that would change Fenway Park from a construction site into a ballpark—the seats, the scoreboard, and other creature comforts—were still missing. It would have been possible to play a game on the field, but it would have been almost impossible for anyone to enjoy it. And there was only a week until the exhibition against Harvard.

April 4 in Hot Springs dawned bright and warm and clear, baseball weather for the first time all spring on the team's last day in town. The Red Sox managed to get in a hard two-hour workout that morning before scrambling back to the hotel just before noon to pack. It was finally time to head north. At 1:30 p.m., twenty-five players, forty trunks of belongings, Mr. and Mrs. Robert McRoy, Ray Collins's new bride, four Boston sportswriters, and a few remaining Royal Rooters boarded the train bound for Memphis.

Twenty-four hours later they arrived in Cincinnati to discover that the Reds had failed to secure them a practice field, so after traveling all day they found themselves confined once more to their hotel, with no opportunity to loosen up. Yet even if they had found a field, they wouldn't have been able to use it: Boston's supply of bats had been left in a car that left the train in Memphis. Stahl threw a fit, and club secretary Robert McRoy fell on his sword and took the blame. Although McRoy sent a telegraph to arrange the shipment of the bats to Cincinnati and sent the team's trainer, Joe Quirk, out to buy more bats just in case the shipment didn't arrive in time, the incident was still an embarrassment for the club secretary and caused much snickering among the players. So far Boston's new owners had done little to impress their new employees.

Bats in hand, the Red Sox finally took the field in Cincinnati on April 6, helping the Reds christen their new ballpark, Redland Field, which had replaced "the Palace of the Fans." Along with Fenway Park, Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, and Navin Field in Detroit, Redland Field was one of four new concrete-and-steel parks scheduled to open in 1912. It was a handsome facility that featured a double deck around the infield and a single-deck covered pavilion that extended down each foul line. Of all the concrete-and-steel parks of the era, Redland Field, which was renamed Crosley Field in 1934, would change the least over the course of its history before finally being replaced (by Riverfront Stadium in 1970).

Redland Field's most distinguishing feature was the so-called terrace in left field, a feature that at first drew little comment. The terrace was a gentle, gradual slope six feet high that ran the length of the left-field fence to make up the difference in grade between the field and York Street, which bordered the park beyond the left-field fence. There was little concern that the gradual rise would bother outfielders. With the fence 360 feet away from home down the line, most observers thought it unlikely that anyone would ever hit the ball that far.

The park wasn't quite finished when the Sox took the field to warm up before the contest. Even as the game began nearly fifty workers were still laying sod in the outer reaches of the outfield, but the field was so big—420 feet in center field—that the workers were virtually out of play for hitters. Although the weather was fine, if still a bit cool, the grounds were still wet, and in some places it was downright muddy. Reds manager Hank O'Day stood on a keg of nails for much of the game to keep his feet from getting stuck in the mud.

His players, however, never got unstuck. Veteran Bobby Keefe took the mound for Cincinnati opposite Joe Wood, and the game was scoreless for the first three innings as Boston showed some rust. After all, they'd hardly had a chance to play over the previous ten days. But in the top of the fourth Harry Hooper walked, was sacrificed to second by Yerkes, and then Speaker rolled one up the terrace to the wall in left-center, scoring Hooper, the first of two Boston runs in the inning.

The Sox added two more in the fifth and led 4–0 after six innings as Joe Wood toyed with the Reds, striking out six and giving up only four hits. Boston broke the game open in the top of the seventh when Jake Stahl cleared the bases with a drive that hit the fence down the left-field line. Buck O'Brien mopped up, and the Sox escaped with an easy 13–1 victory.

The Reds evened the score the next day—in what was Boston's twelfth and final contest of the spring, including intrasquad exhibitions—winning 6–2 as they took advantage of some sloppy pitching by knuckleball ace Eddie Cicotte and some sloppier fielding by backup shortstop Marty Krug. He did himself no favors in his effort to make the team, but in Boston's defense, the Sox were just anxious to finish the game so they could leave Cincinnati, leave the spring behind, and start the 1912 campaign. They boarded their train at 6:30 p.m. and were scheduled to make Boston the following evening at 8:00.

At long last, they were going home. And for the first time in their history home meant Fenway Park ... if it was ready.

The sight of the great, mildly sloping stands, dotted thick with the straw hats, was breath-taking. This was baseball gone to heaven ... Fenway Park is a miracle.

—
Boston Globe

E
ARLY IN THE AFTERNOON
of April 9, 1912, the electric streetcars that rumbled through the streets of Boston toward the Fens began to become more crowded, and the passengers more lively. The streetcars were filling up, not with grim-faced businessmen on their way back to the office after a lunch break, but with men—and a few women—with smiles on their faces, chattering excitedly to one another despite the gray skies and stray snowflakes that swirled to the ground outside the window.

While the map of Ireland was contained in the lines and contours of many of their faces, some of the younger passengers spoke in distinctly patrician accents. Normally, these two strains of Boston society rarely intermingled, but on this day both groups—the civil servants and clerks and the students of Harvard University in Cambridge—were headed to the same destination, Fenway Park, for the very first time. At 3:30 p.m. the umpire's call to "play ball" would christen the new park and begin a new era.

Most came by streetcar in a system that crisscrossed much of eastern New England and made it possible to travel from Nashua, New Hampshire, to Providence, Rhode Island, without ever stepping aboard a railcar. As yet, there was no subway service to nearby Kenmore Square, and on the cold gray day few fans felt like walking very far to the park. Those arriving aboard the Ipswich Street cars stepped off at the Jersey Street stop, while those on the Beacon Street line stopped at Deerfield, a short walk away. The ride cost only a nickel.

Many in the crowd were a little surprised by what they saw—a grandstand faced with brick and concrete that stretched down Jersey Street and wrapped around the corner. The stands then continued toward Ipswich Street, surrounded by a rough plank fence that ran from the end of the stands on Jersey Street, paralleled Brookline Avenue, and ran nearly a hundred yards down Lansdowne Street before turning just short of Ipswich Street and running back down the new street (Van Ness) to meet the end of the pavilion. Although there were clearly more people on the street around the new park than usual, and those who were there were obviously excited, few other baseball fans seemed eager to sit in the stands in early April and watch Harvard play, brand-new ballpark or not. The real cranks among Boston fans had seen the park as it was being built. There was little mystery about its contents, for only in the last few days had the view from the surrounding streets been blocked by a permanent fence. Almost every household in nearby Roxbury knew someone who had been working at the park, and until recently it had been little problem to wander into Fenway Park and take a look up close, as long as you stayed out of the way of the workers and didn't try to pocket a handful of nails or abscond with a toolbox or a stray piece of lumber.

Most of the fans arriving at the park from Cambridge had probably never even been to that part of the Fens before. All the museums were on the other side of Olmsted's park. In contrast to those magnificent edifices, Fenway Park looked almost foreign, like a fortress on the edge of the prairie, mostly surrounded by open space and raw land.

Yet fans who attended that first game still had a few experiences upon their arrival at Fenway Park that subsequent generations of Red Sox fans would find familiar, at least those fans who sat in either the grandstand or the pavilion. Those without tickets to the game queued up at the Red Sox ticket offices at the north end of the Jersey Street facade and waited patiently for tickets as they turned away from the wind. Then, depending on the seat they'd purchased, fans were directed to one of several gates. Patrons with tickets for the pavilion or the bleachers had to walk around the park, either down Jersey Street to Van Ness to enter the pavilion or around the other way, up Brookline and then down Lansdowne Street, to find a seat in the bleachers.

For fans who had tickets for a seat in the grandstand or a box, the experience was much the same in 1912 as it is today, albeit without the carnival-like atmosphere that now inhabits Yawkey Way. The Jersey Street facade is one feature of the park that has barely changed over the years: fans today still see the name "FENWAY PARK" cast in hollow relief in concrete atop the rooftop parapet, just as the first fans to arrive at Fenway Park did in 1912. Entering the park through the gate in the facade alongside the club offices, fans handed their ticket to an usher and then entered the park. Although Fenway would soon boast eighteen turnstiles—a new feature for Boston fans, turnstiles would both help control access to the park and allow a more accurate count of those in attendance—they would not be installed for another week.

Beneath the grandstand one had the feeling of entering what then seemed like an immense, dimly lit cavern, the walls and roof of which—the underside of the grandstand—were faced with concrete. The floor was dirt. Not until 1914 would the Red Sox find the time—and the money—to cover the compressed earthen floor with concrete. For the first two years of Fenway's existence fans walked on ground beneath the grandstand, slipping in the mud during wet weather while kicking up dust in the heat of the summer.

Beneath the grandstand were also what then seemed almost an extravagance—two toilet rooms, a large one to accommodate men and another, much smaller one for women, with two similar, but smaller facilities also available up off the promenade. Once again, concrete dominated. The trough-like urinals were made, not of slate or porcelain, but of concrete. In the men's toilet they lined three sides of the room, allowing for dozens of male fans to use the facilities at the same time.

Signs directed fans to the ramps that led to the grandstands, and once each fan began to step toward the light pouring in through the short tunnel atop the ramp, time stopped. Even on this grayest of days the green vision of a baseball field, contrasted against the dank interior of the ballpark, seemed illuminated and inspired wonder, particularly on this day when each spectator first gathered the experience of arriving at Fenway Park deep into his or her own heart. Despite the gray skies, the view was breathtaking. It may have still felt like winter outside the park, but to look out upon the field was to see the summer still to come.