Fenway 1912 (37 page)

With each additional pitch he threw, Wood become more enraged. He was losing it, and he knew it. When the dangerous Sam Crawford came up, he tried pitching for real again, but Crawford walked as well—Wood's fourth consecutive base on balls—and Covington strolled home.

Now Ty Cobb was at bat, and Wood worked him carefully. Cobb finally lofted a towering fly to short left as the Detroit base runners, with two outs, went tearing around the bases. Marty Krug, filling in for Wagner, went back on the ball but demonstrated why he was only a utility man. He dropped it, and two more men scored to put Wood down 3–0.

The game, he knew, was lost, and so was the record. Now Wood let go, raging at his own players, steam coming out of his ears and bitterness streaming off his tongue. At first base that was all Ty Cobb needed to see. There was no one in the game better at taking advantage of a player who had lost his cool.

As Wood toed the rubber Cobb danced off first, feinting toward second again and again. A flustered Wood threw to first base over and over, a little harder each time, getting more distracted and angrier by the second. When Cobb finally took off Wood was so disconcerted that he never even threw the ball but watched helplessly as Cobb took second unimpeded.

Wood managed to get the third out, but the damage was done. And even though Boston fought back to take a 4–3 lead in the fifth, the Red Sox played indifferently in the field and gave the runs right back when both Engle and Speaker made errors. Wood hung in for the entire game, but his winning streak ended at sixteen games. The defeat was his first since July 4 and only his fifth of the year.

Wood himself didn't have much to say after the 6–4 loss, but Stahl didn't pull any punches. "Defeat was the best thing that could come to Wood," he said. Then, alluding to the pitcher's demeanor during the game, he added dismissively, "Another week of thinking about his pitching record and he would be fit for a nurse." Now perhaps Wood could finally focus on getting healthy for the World's Series.

All the Red Sox wanted to do was go home, but they had one more game to play in Detroit. After the debacle the previous day Stahl went with his usual lineup, minus Wagner and Carrigan. The Sox responded by playing a tight game and entered the eighth inning leading 11–2.

Detroit's Donie Bush led off the inning with a hot smash down the third-base line. Larry Gardner dove for the ball, something he seemed to do nearly every game. Over the course of the season the Vermont native had earned a reputation as one of the best third basemen in the league, the near-equal to Philadelphia's Frank "Home Run" Baker.

In fact, Gardner was also one of the best players on the Red Sox team. Although Wood, Speaker, Lewis, Hooper, Wagner, and even Carrigan all received more press and history, for some reason, has since all but ignored him, Gardner was more than just a tenor in the Red Sox Quartet. He hit fifth in the Boston batting order and was one of the most consistent performers on the team. In fact, the decision to move him permanently to third base was one of the keys to Boston's success. Rather quietly, he had emerged as Boston's best power threat and best base runner after Speaker. Despite hitting behind Duffy Lewis, who led the club in RBIs, Gardner was the next-best run producer on the team. As Paul Shannon wrote, "Gardner has been Boston's man with the 'cleanup wallop,' having broken up more games and done more timely hitting this season than any man on Jake Stahl's team." Based on his performance, Gardner, not Lewis, probably should have been hitting fourth in the batting order.

But his glove had proven to be the real revelation. Gardner had come up as a second baseman, and although he had a strong arm, while playing second he seemed stiff and slow and had trouble turning the double play. When he was transferred to third, Gardner's quick first step, a skill he had gained from hours playing hockey as a boy and in the off-season, gave him surprising range. Despite the diminutive size of baseball gloves at the time, Gardner was also adept at catching the ball one-handed, stabbing line drives and hot ground balls cleanly with only his glove hand—something few other infielders could do—and leading Tim Murnane to note later that "no man ever had a better left hand." Although Gardner is not quite in the class of Red Sox Hall of Fame third basemen Jimmie Collins and Wade Boggs, for a time he was nearly their equal.

Gardner was from Enosburg Falls, Vermont, then a prosperous dairy farming community on the Missisquoi River in northwestern Vermont, a region that supplied milk to New York and Boston. The son of a Quebec immigrant and an American-born mother, he had captained his high school team, pitching them to the state championship. After a year playing semipro ball in and around Enosburg Falls, he had gone on to attend the University of Vermont, where he majored in chemistry and was a teammate of Ray Collins.

Playing third base, shortstop, and a little outfield, Gardner swung the bat from the left side, a trait he developed while playing hockey. Even today most hockey players, particularly Canadian hockey players, tend to use a hockey stick left-handed, a practice that often translates into swinging a baseball bat from the same side. He was a star at the University of Vermont and after the 1908 season left college one year early to sign with the Red Sox, who farmed him out to Lynn for most of the 1908 season. He reached the Red Sox for good in 1909 and finally became more or less a regular in 1911.

But in 1912 he became a star. When he dove for Donie Bush's hard ground ball his teammates and the scribes in the press box thought little of it, for they had grown accustomed to seeing Gardner make such plays. But this time, either Gardner slightly misjudged the ball or, more likely, it took a bad hop. Instead of finding the ball with his glove, then springing to his feet and throwing the runner out, Gardner was struck on his bare right hand when the ball skipped back on him.

His little finger snapped at the joint. Although the bone was not broken, the joint was dislocated, and the bone was jutting through the skin, leaving the top half of his little finger at nearly a ninety-degree angle. As Gardner doubled over in pain, Stahl and the Red Sox rushed to his side.

He left the game immediately. A physician who was called to the ballpark snapped the painful dislocated joint back in place and dressed the wound, placing the finger in a splint and taping it to Gardner's ring finger to hold it in place. The Sox went on to win the contest, 11–4, but the return trip to Boston was less joyous than they had envisioned.

Gardner's availability for the World's Series was suddenly in doubt. His injury had less than two weeks to heal, if it did at all. And if Gardner, who had played almost every inning of every game thus far, could not play, the Red Sox would have no choice but to insert Clyde Engle into the lineup. Engle was a player with no bat, no glove, no power, no speed on the bases, and no range whatsoever in the field, and thus could hurt the Red Sox in nearly every way possible. Every man on the team knew that the loss of Gardner could tip the balance in the World's Series.

Still, by the time the Red Sox made it back to Boston on the afternoon of September 23, the city was in a mood to celebrate the pennant and worry about the World's Series later. The Sox were scheduled to arrive at South Station at 2:55 p.m., but the train was an hour late. By the time it crept up track 13, the band in the train shed was running out of breath and the crowd of well-wishers, which had swelled to several thousand, was running out of patience. To prevent people from being crushed the police had even spread a rumor that the players would actually disembark at Dewey Square, sending part of the mob tearing that direction.

To avoid the massive crowd the players snuck out the baggage car and were pushed, shoved, and lifted into a line of waiting automobiles—all except Larry Gardner, who was caught in the mob until a few fans recognized him because of his bandaged hand and helped him join his teammates. Led by Honey Fitz Fitzgerald and a host of Royal Rooters, including the ubiquitous Nuf Ced, the Red Sox paraded to Boston Common. It was, noted the
Post
accurately, "a reception such as few Presidents have received." All the way up Summer Street to Washington Street a solid bank of humanity clogged the way. Estimated to be as large as two hundred thousand, the crowd made downtown Boston resemble lower Manhattan some fifteen years later when that city welcomed Lindbergh after he flew the Atlantic. It took nearly an hour for the entourage to inch through the horde to Boston Common, where another crowd of ten thousand fans already occupied every available space, boys hanging off streetlights and filling the trees like so many starlings. Once they arrived, Stahl and many of the players spoke, or tried to, through a megaphone, but few could hear a word. Nevertheless, when Joe Wood was introduced and gave a small wave, "the crowd went simply crazy." The World's Series was less than two weeks off, and Boston was mad with anticipation, everyone desperate for a ticket.

That was a problem, for tickets were not yet available. After the Giants had refused to play the Red Sox in the World's Series after the 1904 season, the American and National Leagues had reached an agreement that required their champions to meet after the end of the season. But that was as far as it went. The specific schedule and details of the Series were subject to negotiation. A few days earlier the National Commission, which consisted of Ban Johnson, NL president Thomas Lynch, and commission president August Herrmann, the owner of the Cincinnati Reds, announced that they would meet at the country home of Giants owner John Brush in Pelham, New York, with representatives of the Giants and the Red Sox to discuss plans for the Series. When the Red Sox arrived back in Boston, McAleer was preparing to leave for the meeting.

As the Red Sox discovered when they went to the ballpark the following day, in their absence McAleer and the rest of the organization had been busy. Fenway Park was almost unrecognizable.

Work had gone on in all corners of the park, and the air smelled not of peanuts and cigars but of sawdust and pine sap. The new third-base stands and right-field bleachers were rising and well on their way to being completed. Seven rows of bleacher seats now covered Duffy's Cliff, two new rows of box seats intruded onto the field at the foot of the grandstand, and a low, plain wood fence fronted three rows of seats that encircled the outfield. For the first time in its history, Fenway Park was fully enclosed, the field completely surrounded by grandstands or bleacher seats. The field was unquestionably smaller, and felt smaller still, but during the four-game series against the Yankees its shrunken size had little impact on the game. Work slowed while the two clubs played—no one wanted to watch a game to the accompaniment of saws and hammers—but there was no longer any doubt that the field would be ready for the World's Series.

McAleer and McRoy left for New York at midnight on September 25 to meet with the National Commission. By the time they returned to Boston two days later, plans were complete. Boston had lost two coin tosses—heads to the Giants' tails—giving New York both home-field advantage and their preferred starting date of October 8 (the Red Sox had preferred October 7). Two umpires from each league were selected to work the Series, and the schedule was set. Beginning on October 8, the Series would be played on consecutive days, not including Sunday, October 13. If all seven games were played and it did not rain, the Series, if played to its full complement of games, would conclude on October 15. Owing to the proximity of Boston and New York, the site of the Series would alternate for each game, beginning with game 1 in New York. Each contest would start at 2:00 p.m., leaving plenty of time to get the game in before darkness. To ensure that there would be no repeat of the crowded conditions at Fenway Park during the confrontation between Joe Wood and Walter Johnson, the National Commission decided that "spectators will not be permitted to encroach or stand on the playing field at any point." The erection of temporary stands, like those already going up in Boston, was permitted. All such seats had to be fronted "with a strong three-foot railing," they could "not be less than 235 feet" away from home plate in left and right field, and the center-field seats could "not be less than 275 feet from home plate."

But as would soon become clear, the players themselves had not been consulted concerning any facet of the Series whatsoever. A fledgling players' association had just been formed but was still impotent, and it had not been called upon to represent their interests. Even if it had been, the men who owned baseball were loath to give the players any role in the management of the game. The owners were the kings and the players lowly serfs, an arrangement the kings rather enjoyed.

Other decisions made in regard to the schedule, the distribution of receipts, and ticket sales would also have an impact on the Series in ways no one could yet imagine.

First, the National Commission considered the impact of a postponed game on the schedule; it decided that "a scheduled game, postponed for legal cause, called before it becomes a regulation game or terminating with the score tied, shall ... be played on the grounds for which it was scheduled." Second, the commission decided that "the players' pool of receipts shall be restricted to 60 percent of the receipts of the first four games after the deduction of the commission's ten percent ...
regardless of whether one or more of such games ends in
a tie
.
"

The main reason for the meeting with the National Commission, however, was to discuss the sale and distribution of tickets. One year before, tickets for games in both New York and Philadelphia had been sold directly to speculators in enormous blocks and then resold to the public by scalpers at exorbitant prices. The problem had been most pronounced in New York, and Ban Johnson had even called for the expulsion of the Giants from the major leagues over the issue. That didn't happen, but the National Commission was determined not to run into the same problem in 1912. The commission—or at least the two-thirds of the commission that did not include Ban Johnson—wanted to handle ticket sales itself.