Fenway 1912 (42 page)

Meanwhile Wood scuffled. He had plenty of speed, but was not quite sure where each pitch was going. In the third the Giants reached him for two runs when, after a one-out walk to Devore, Larry Doyle popped a fly to short left.

In Fenway Park no fielder on the left side had much to worry about from the sun, which was generally over his right shoulder, but the orientation of the Polo Grounds was different. Magnetic north was in line with the first-base line behind the grandstand, making left and left-center the sun field.

Both Larry Gardner and Heinie Wagner drifted back for the looping fly, but when they looked up they saw only the sun. Duffy Lewis dashed in, but he was playing deeper than at Fenway and also got a late start because of glare from the sun. As Doyle tore around the bases the ball landed free. He collected a single, and Devore made third base on a ball that had not even traveled 150 feet in the air. Doyle went to second on the throw. It was the kind of play that could change a ball game.

Wood bore down and struck out Fred Snodgrass, but that brought up Red Murray. In the 1911 World's Series Murray had been pathetic, going hitless in twenty-one at-bats and earning an acerbic nickname he detested, "the Hitless Wonder." This time, however, he was no such wonder, for he smacked the ball up the middle for a base hit, scoring both Devore and Doyle. Cady, taking Speaker's late throw, then gunned the ball to second, where Murray was trying to take the extra base. The throw beat the runner, but Wagner and Murray collided violently. They jumped up and started jawing at each other before base umpire Billy Evans got them to knock it off, but the damage was done. The Giants led 2–0.

Tesreau carried the 2–0 lead into the sixth, and after he retired Steve Yerkes to start the inning he was only eleven outs away from victory and perhaps immortality as the first pitcher to hurl a no-hitter in the World's Series. Then Speaker smacked a fly ball into the gap in left-center. Snodgrass, the center fielder, and Devore both closed on the ball, but neither called for it, or perhaps both did. The two men nearly collided, but neither caught Speaker's drive. "The ball belonged to Devore," wrote Ring Lardner later, "but Josh was scared away by Fred's rush." The ball ticked off Snodgrass's glove and rolled to the fence. On another day Speaker might have collected an inside-the-park home run, but he hadn't run hard out of the box and only landed at third.

Now McGraw, in retrospect, made a mistake. Nursing a two-run lead, instead of playing the infield in to cut the run off at home, he kept the infield back, conceding the run. Lewis hit a routine grounder to third, and Speaker scored easily, making the score 2–1.

Wood held it there, and in the seventh Tesreau got Stahl to ground out to open the inning. Wagner and then Cady each followed with a single, and suddenly the Bear Hunter seemed to shrink. Joe Wood, one of the best-hitting pitchers in baseball, came to the plate, and Stahl and Bill Carrigan, coaching first base, let him swing away. He grounded to Doyle, but the second baseman fumbled the ball. Instead of hitting into a double play, Wood made first and Wagner stood on third.

Tesreau suddenly seemed to be a different pitcher, and in a sense he was. The Red Sox had been watching him closely all game long and discovered that Tesreau was tipping his pitches. Like most spitballers—indeed, like most pitchers of the era—Tesreau went to his mouth to moisten his fingers before every pitch. But each time he planned to throw a spitball, he allowed his hand to linger near his mouth for an extra split-second, just long enough to let the Red Sox know he was loading up the ball. They stopped swinging at the pitch, which dipped toward the ground like today's split-finger fastball. And now Tesreau, with a runner on third, was half-afraid to throw the pitch anyway, worried that his catcher might not be able to handle it. Nuf Ced McGreevey, sitting with the Rooters behind third base, ordered the band to play "Tessie," the old war hymn. The song—and a bit of foreknowledge by Harry Hooper—worked its magic once more. Hooper laid off the spitters, and with two strikes, he swung at a fastball and lifted a soft pop foul back of the plate. New York catcher Chief Meyers—so named because of his Native American heritage, and not the fastest man in the majors—raced after it, but the ball trickled off his fingers. Hooper then took advantage: armed with the knowledge that Tesreau was throwing him yet another fastball, he smacked a double over the first baseman's head, scoring Wagner and making the Rooters apoplectic. When Steve Yerkes followed with a clean single to center, Tesreau, who had been invincible, suddenly was not, and the Red Sox, trailing 2–1 only a few moments before and counting the outs until their train left for Boston, now led 4–2.

The game sped to the finish. After Boston was finally retired, Wood took care of the Giants in the bottom of the seventh. Doc Crandall took over for Tesreau, and then both pitchers shut down the opposition in the eighth. Boston took the field in the bottom of the ninth still clinging to a 4–2 lead and needing only three more outs. Then, just when it looked as if the game was over, it was not. As the
New York Tribune
later noted, "Nine tenths of the excitement was compressed in the last half of the ninth inning."

For most of the game New York hitters had been patient. As Damon Runyon noted, the Giants, under the instructions of McGraw, "tried waiting him [Wood] out." But now, with young Wood presumably anxious to escape with a victory, McGraw changed tactics and told his hitters to swing at the first good pitch. Red Murray, up first, obliged. He hit the ball sharply to right field—but right at Harry Hooper, for the first out.

All over the Polo Grounds Giants fans stood and started plotting their escape to the exits, but they hardly had time to do so before Fred Merkle fought off a fastball and dumped it just over the infield for a single. Buck Herzog followed him to home plate and wasted little time, reaching out to swing at a pitch off the plate, dropping another single to right field. Suddenly the winning run, catcher Chief Meyers, was at home plate, and Giants rooters, who had been outgunned all game by Boston's more exuberant fans, went off.

Every fan was on his or her feet, and a litter of seat cushions rained down on the field. Wood suddenly seemed small and nervous as Chief Meyers, New York's leading hitter with a .358 average for the season, stepped in. Wood was teetering, and every one of the nearly forty thousand fans in the ballpark knew it.

So did Meyers. He swung at the first pitch and drove it hard to right. It made the wall and kicked off the concrete barrier directly back to Hooper. Merkle scored, and Hooper's strong throw home kept Herzog at third, but Meyers went to second on the play.

McGraw called time-out, and Stahl took advantage of the break to walk to the mound and speak to his pitcher.

McGraw had a decision to make. Meyers represented the winning run, and he knew he had to replace the slow-footed catcher with a faster base runner. But Art Fletcher was due up, and the shortstop had been helpless against Wood's fastball. Lardner later wrote that he "had looked all afternoon like a high school freshman." Even though Fletcher had struck out only twenty-nine times all year, he had already gone down swinging against Wood twice. McGraw's best left-handed bat on the bench, outfielder Beals Becker, was also his best available base runner, and if he pinch-hit for Fletcher and the Giants tied the game, he had little faith in the fielding of Fletcher's backup, shortstop Tillie Schaefer.

Becker thought he was being called out to hit and had his bat in hand when McGraw first waved him onto the field, only then learning that his manager wanted his legs. Becker ran onto the field to replace Meyers, and Fletcher prepared to face Wood in the biggest at-bat of the game. Said Becker afterward, "I'd a darn sight rather been in there hitting instead of running."

It was, as the
Times
noted, "a question of whether Wood's nerves were steel or cast iron"—and whether his arm, after 344 innings in the regular season and eight more on this day, could still throw a baseball faster than any man alive, or at least fast enough to get two more outs. Boston brought the infield in, knowing they had to cut off the run at the plate. A ground ball anywhere but directly at a fielder would tie the game. So would a fly ball, and a base hit would win it for New York.

Wood worked carefully and threw to second base several times to steady his nerves and keep Becker close, for although the Red Sox could weather Herzog crossing the plate, Becker's run would mean defeat. Fletcher let the first pitch pass, and Bill Klem's strike call echoed through the ballpark as Boston's Rooters cheered and the rest of New York groaned. Then Wood blew a pitch over the middle, and Fletcher fouled the fastball straight back.

Wood, wrote Hugh Fullerton, "was white around the gills," gasping for air, living on fumes. His arm may well have been on fire, for on his next pitch Cady called for a curve and Wood did not shake him off. Fletcher flailed at the pitch and missed it, striking out for the third time.

Now all that stood between Wood and victory was pitcher Doc Crandall. McGraw, coaching third, made no move for a pinch hitter. The pitcher, who in the past had occasionally filled in on the infield and as a pinch hitter, was a better hitter than some men in the regular lineup. In 1910 Crandall had hit a robust .342 and led the team in slugging, and in 1912 he had hit .313.

The at-bat took forever. Wood needed every ounce of his strength, and he abandoned the stretch for the full wind-up. Off third base, McGraw's voice rang out, exhorting Herzog to feint and dash and try to unnerve the pitcher, while Christy Mathewson, coaching at first base, also called out to Wood and tried to distract him from his task.

It almost worked, for one pitch by Wood sailed directly at Crandall's head, sending him to the ground. Cady had to leap to his feet to knock down the ball and prevent a wild pitch and tie game.

And then the count was full, 3-2, two out, the score 4–3, and men on second and third, forty thousand fans in the Polo Grounds screaming each other hoarse, an exhibition hall in Boston filled with fans gathered around an electric megaphone, crowds along Boston's Newspaper Row watching the electronic scoreboards, telegraph operators listening intently, farmers in small towns watching a boy with a piece of chalk reach to mark on slate, and everyone, everywhere, watching and waiting for the next pitch.

Then Wood wound up and threw the ball, a small white dart he aimed at Cady's glove, "one of the swiftest pitched balls," wrote Runyon, "they have ever seen delivered and which was straight as a foot rule." The ball was waist high, in, over the plate.

Crandall swung and missed.

Next stop, Fenway Park.

ILLUS
. 13 Smoky Joe Wood was nearly unbeatable in 1912, going 34–5 in the regular season and winning another three games in the World's Series.

George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

ILLUS
. 14 After injuries sidelined Bill Carrigan and Les Nunamaker, rookie catcher Hick Cady stepped in. With Cady behind the plate, Boston pitchers, particularly Joe Wood, thrived. Cady served as Wood's personal catcher for the last half of the 1912 season and in the World's Series.

George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division