Fenway 1912 (58 page)
Authors: Glenn Stout
Mack, Connie.
My 66 Years in the Big Leagues.
Philadelphia: John C. Winston, 1950.
Murdock, Eugene.
Ban Johnson: Czar of Baseball.
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982.
Nash, Peter J.
Boston's Royal Rooters.
Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Books, 2005.
Neft, David S., and Richard Cohen.
The Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball.
New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997.
Ritter, Lawrence.
The Glory of Their Times.
New York: Macmillan, 1984.
Seasholes, Nancy S.
Gaining Ground: A History of Landmaking in Boston.
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003.
Seymour, Harold.
Baseball: The Early Years.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1960.
———.
Baseball: The Golden Years.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.
Thomas, Henry W.
Walter Johnson: Baseball's Big Train.
Lincoln, Neb.
:
Bison Books,
1998.
Thorn, John, and Pete Palmer, eds.
Total Baseball.
New York: Harper/Perennial, various editions.
Voigt, David Q.
American Baseball,
vols. 1–3. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983.
Walton, Ed.
Red Sox Triumphs and Tragedies.
New York: Stein and Day, 1980.
Zingg, Paul.
Harry Hooper: An American Baseball Life.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993.
Notable Articles
"Careless Players Make Blunders, O'Brien's Balk Reminds Many Leading Athletes of Costly Mistakes" by Billy Evans.
New York Times,
December 8, 1912.
"Commission Rules for World's Series."
New York Times,
September 30, 1912.
"The Engineering Features of the Athletics' Baseball Park" by Mark Monaghan.
Proceedings of the Engineers Club of Philadelphia,
paper 1067, 1911.
"Fans Could Not Have Undergone Strain Longer."
Syracuse Herald,
October 10, 1912.
"Forever Fenway" by Glenn Stout.
The Official 1987 Red Sox Yearbook.
"The Grand Exalted Ruler of Rooters' Row" by Glenn Stout.
Sox Fan News,
August 1986.
"The Great Wall of Boston" by Jack Mann.
Sports Illustrated,
June 28, 1965.
"The Greatest Pitcher on the Diamond Today" by F. C. Lane.
Baseball,
September 1912.
"Hugh Bradley the Hero...."
Boston Post,
April 27, 1912.
"If You're Going to Fenway Park Next Week, This Will Show You Where Your Seat Is, If You're One of the Lucky 6,500."
Boston Globe,
October 4, 1912.
"Jimmy McAleer and the 1912 World Series" by Mike Kopf.
www.robneyer.com/book_05_Serious1912.html
.
"McAleer Winds Up the Red Sox Deal."
Boston Journal,
September 16, 1911.
"New Home of the Red Sox; Plant Ideal in Equipment and Location."
Boston Globe,
October 15, 1911.
"Prevent Players from Being 'Expert Writers.'"
New Castle
(PA)
News,
October 22, 1912.
"A Reinforced Concrete Baseball Grandstand."
Engineering Record
, Vol. 66, no. 1, July 6, 1912.
"The Red Sox as Seen by a Rip Van Winkle."
Boston Globe,
September 5, 1912.
"Red Sox Deal Goes Through...."
Boston Globe,
September 16, 1911.
"Royal Rooter" by Glenn Stout.
Boston Herald,
October 3, 1993.
"To Develop New Baseball Park in the Fenway."
Christian Science Monitor,
September 25, 1911.
"A War in Red Sox Camp."
Sporting Life,
July 12, 1913.
"Warring Factions Slump Boston Team."
New Castle News,
May 13, 1913.
"Why We Lost Three World Championships: Part 3" by Christy Mathewson.
Everybody's Magazine,
October 1914.
"Work on Pavilion and Grounds...."
Boston Globe,
December 3, 1911.
Special Collections
Bill Carrigan (1883–1969) Archives. Sports Museum of New England.
Harold Kaese (1909–1975) Collection. The Boston Tradition in Sports Collection, Boston Public Library (call number GV742.K343A2). A reporter for the
Boston Transcript
and
Boston Globe,
Kaese wrote more than seven thousand daily columns, now available in microfilm form. The collection also includes correspondence, clippings, notebooks, manuscripts, press guides, programs, rule books, photographs, and other sports-related material. Although Kaese's primary interest was baseball, the files also cover local college football, golf, track and field, squash, handball, boxing, and tennis.
George Edward "Duffy" Lewis (1888–1979) Collection. The Boston Tradition in Sports Collection, Boston Public Library (Microtext Department). A scrapbook of items on the Red Sox left fielder.
Michael T. "Nuf Ced" McGreevey (1867–1943) Collection. The Boston Tradition in Sports Collection, Boston Public Library (call number GV865.M29A3). Donated by the well-known owner of the Columbus Avenue tavern Third Base, this collection consists of more than 170 photographs of professional baseball in Boston and personal scrapbooks from the 1890s to 1912. Originally displayed at McGreevey's saloon, the photographs form the largest collection of its kind.
"Smoky Joe" Wood (1889–1985) Collection. The Boston Tradition in Sports Collection, Boston Public Library. Scrapbooks of material on the early Red Sox pitcher.
Online Resources
baseballfever.com
. Researcher Bill Burgess maintains a remarkable archive of biographical information on American baseball and sports writers.
Introduction
Portions of the introduction appeared in somewhat different form in the magazine
Boston Baseball.
The precise spelling of both Michael T. "Nuf Ced" McGreevey's surname and his nickname have always been uncertain. Period newspaper dispatches used "Nuf Ced" and "Nuff Said" and "McGreevey" and "McGreevy" interchangeably. For consistency, I have chosen to use the nickname "Nuf Ced" exclusively. Both spellings of both names appear on period advertisements, but a photograph of the front of Third Base dating from 1903 clearly states, "M. T. McGreevey and Co." The same spelling of the surname appears on U.S. census records for both McGreevey and his relatives and has always been used by the Boston Public Library in bibliographic records. I used "McGreevey" in the text for
Red Sox Century
and in other earlier work, and that spelling still seems most common among Internet search engines. The surname itself is derived from Mac Riabhaigh, lords of Moylurg in County Roscommon. In the thirteenth century they were subdued by the MacDermots, eventually to disperse throughout Ireland. Over time the Gaelic surname Mac Riabhaigh was corrupted and anglicized, appearing in some locations as Kilrea or MacIlrea, in others as MacGreevy, Mac Creevey, Magreevy, McGreavy, McGreevy, Creevy, or in other similar combinations. By the nineteenth century the name was common in such disparate locations as Sligo, Ulster, Down, and Antrim.
Although in recent years several publications have chosen to use the spelling "McGreevy," and that is the name that now appears on a tavern on Boylston Street based on Nuf Ced's original saloon, in 1993 McGreevey's granddaughter, Anna Thompson, his only direct descendant, told me that she was certain the correct spelling was "McGreevey," evidence that I find particularly compelling. Others are free to disagree (after all, in regard to Nuf Ced,
some
kind of argument seems wholly appropriate), but I have chosen to retain that spelling throughout.
Prologue
Background information on Jerome Kelley is taken from Boston city directories and U.S. census records.
"Busy Days at Red Sox' New Ball Park,"
Boston Globe,
January 28, 1912, reports that Kelley had removed the sod "at the end of the 1911 season," which was October 6, 1911, and presumably before the charity soccer game of October 15, 1911.
The "Huntington Avenue Base Ball Grounds" sign appears in earlier photographs of the Huntington Avenue Grounds but is absent in photographs from 1911.
Chapter 1: 1911
"
Red Sox Drop Two Games":
Boston Post,
September 4, 1911.
Ban Johnson's role in the creation of the Boston franchise in the American League and the early history of the club are discussed in greater detail in Glenn Stout and Dick Johnson,
Red Sox Century
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), and Eugene Murdock,
Ban Johnson
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982).
Information on Francis Dana can be found in
The Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
at: http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=D000021.
Although today we refer to the postseason championship as the "World Series," in 1912 it was still referred to as the "World's Series." I have chosen to use that term throughout.
Players' backgrounds are taken from various clippings, bioproj.sabr.org, and the player scrapbooks cited in the Bibliographic Notes and Sources.
"
fairly
cool head":
"Has Faced the Big Fellows,"
Boston Globe,
July 29, 1908.
According to
baseballalmanac.com
, since 1881, both Hooper and Lewis were among the first seventy-five major league ballplayers from California, a state that has since sent hundreds of players to the major leagues. Tris Speaker was only the fifteenth Texan to play in the majors. Joe Wood was born in Missouri, the birthplace of many major leaguers, but he was only the second from Kansas City, on the state's western border. Both states have since sent hundreds of players to the major leagues. In contrast, the New England states, such as Maine and Vermont, sent many players to the majors before 1920 but have since sent very few.
The division on the team between its Catholic and Protestant members is mentioned in many accounts, ranging from Fred Lieb,
Baseball as I Have Known It
(New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1977), to Tim Gay,
Tris Speaker
(Guilford, Conn.: Lyons Press/ University of Nebraska, 2007), and in many different press accounts, such as "Warring Factions Slump Boston Team,"
New Castle News,
May 13, 1913, which provides perhaps the most comprehensive delineation of the split.
Although from today's perspective it seems almost impossible that there could be such enmity between any group of Protestants and Catholics in the United States, I remind the reader that until very recently social intercourse between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland was extremely limited—and often violent.
"Fading Is the Last Chance of the Crippled Sox,"
Boston Post,
September 6, 1911.
"McAleer Will Own Half of Red Sox,"
Boston Journal,
September 13, 1911.
"No Decision at Conference,"
Boston Journal,
September 15, 1911, and "Red Sox Deal Not Perfect,"
Boston Globe,
September 15, 1911, detail the meeting at the Algonquin Club.
"Red Sox Deal Goes Through ...,"
Boston Globe,
September 16, 1911; "McAleer Winds Up the Red Sox Deal,"
Boston Journal,
September 16, 1911; and many other articles during this time period, including accounts in both
The Sporting News
and
Sporting Life,
chart the sale of the club to McAleer.
In "Progress and Prestige of the National Game,"
Boston Globe,
March 12, 1911, Johnson states his desire for more modern ballparks throughout the league.
"New Home of the Red Sox; Plant Ideal in Equipment and Location,"
Boston Globe,
October 15, 1911, provides seating capacity and a drawing of the park by illustrator J. C. Halden for McLaughlin, showing an early design.
"To Develop New Baseball Park in the Fenway,"
Christian Science Monitor,
September 25, 1911, notes the groundbreaking on September 25, although I found no reference to any kind of formal ceremony.
"
For Development":
Boston Globe,
September 30, 1911.
"
The park was considered
": "Red Sox Move Up to Fourth Place,"
Boston Globe,
October 8, 1911.
Chapter 2: Hot Stove
I culled background information on James McLaughlin and his family from U.S. census records, World War I draft registration records, and Boston city directories.
"
a compromise between Man's Euclidian":
John Updike, "Hub Bids Kid Adieu,"
The New Yorker,
October 22, 1960.
Updike's famous essay is apparently the source for subsequent observations that the layout of Boston streets is responsible for Fenway's misshapen dimensions. As various Sanborn Insurance maps show, this contention is incorrect: the streets bordering Fenway Park were laid out according to a basic grid pattern.
Background information on Charles Logue and the Charles Logue Building Company was provided by James Logue, his great-grandson, and Kevin Logue, his great-great-grandson, of Logue Engineering, in the form of both interviews and clippings provided by the family.
For background on architectural training, see Daniel D. Reiff,
Houses from Books: Treatises, Pattern Books, and Catalogs in American Architecture, 1738–1950: A History and Guide
(State College: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001).
For background information on the history of concrete construction, see R. E. Shaeffer,
Reinforced Concrete: Preliminary Design for Architects and Builders
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992).
As can be seen in Ray Stubblebine,
Stickley's Craftsman Homes: Plans, Drawings, Photographs
(Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith, 2006), the brickwork of one Stickley-designed home in particular, designated as number 106 (p. 390), is particularly evocative of Fenway. An anomaly when compared to Stickley's other work, this structure not only uses Tapestry brick work but reveals some of the design shapes that were used, on a different scale, in Fenway. (Tapestry brick was a patented style made by Fiske and Company of New York.) This design was originally published in January 1911, when McLaughlin was at work on the design of the ballpark.
