The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman’s dramatic, Pulitzer Prize–winning narrative on the early months of World War I, has shaped our collective memory of the summer of 1914. Those who reflect on the early months of World War I invariably connect that summer to the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the diplomatic blundering that led to World War I, and the Battle of the Frontiers, where millions of soldiers were mobilized to fight what military historians have called one of the bloodiest battles in history. Tuchman and other historians have seized our historical imaginations with the “August Madness,” where, after the announcement of war declarations, high-spirited crowds in London, Paris, Vienna, St. Petersburg, and Berlin shouted, raised flags, and jubilantly sang patriotic songs.
But in the summer of 1914, crowds in the United States often devoted their energies to a madness of a different sort: a baseball pennant race, a pennant race in which the Boston Braves, a perennial woeful team, rose from the ashes of last place—15 games behind in early July—and battled for the National League crown against the New York Giants, one of the most dominant teams of all time. Americans delighted in the Braves’ “Miracle” season; they savored their Deadball Era baseball heroes, players who, instead of smashing home runs, stole bases and sacrificed base runners across home plate. They cheered wildly and sang fervently from the first pitch to the final out in such new concrete and steel stadiums as Chicago’s Wrigley Field and Boston’s Fenway Park.
Fenway Park signified a growing, changing, turn-of-the-century Boston. The city had recently constructed a new fine arts museum and a symphony hall; it had invested millions to revitalize the harbor. The bustling port had offered thousands of jobs to the Irish as they immigrated to Boston in the nineteenth century. At the turn of the new century, thousands of immigrants poured in from Southern Europe and Eastern Europe. Italians and East European Jews founded new neighborhoods in Boston, and, by 1910, the city’s population had mushroomed to 670,000. City politicians ceaselessly strove to cope with the problems caused by rapid urbanization. Political bosses adhered to the old formula based on ethnic loyalties and the neighborhood ward system; others formed a Progressive Good Government Association that sought to eliminate waste and corruption in city hall. Shrewd bosses turned to progressivism, often promoting genuine reform, at times expressing vote-getting political rhetoric. In 1906, John Francis “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, a ward boss in the North End and Boston’s first Irish Catholic mayor, campaigned for the city’s top office on a Progressive platform of efficiency and businesslike principles.1
Once elected, Fitzgerald operated municipal services in the manner of the urban boss. He consumed his days negotiating with office seekers, lobbyists, and contractors; he spent his evenings attending wakes, banquets, and public celebrations.2 Honey Fitz, the great patriarch of the Kennedy political family, had little inclination to pursue progressive reform. Progressive reform is an amorphous concept that historians still grapple to understand, but many agree that progressive reformers attempted to regulate business, improve working conditions, and mitigate class conflict, and that they promoted a set of middle-class values based on rationality and professionalism. Most scholars concur that progressivism reached its peak in the years before World War I. Progressives at the local and state levels won elections, and, in 1912, Woodrow Wilson, a Progressive Democrat, defeated the Republican William Howard Taft and Teddy Roosevelt, founder of his new Progressive Party. By 1914, the year of the Braves’ success, Wilson had signed into law a series of Progressive measures like the Clayton Antitrust Act, which sought to stop anticompetitive practices, and the Federal Reserve Act, which set up the country’s central banking system.
It was during the Progressive Era that baseball emerged as the national pastime. Successful minor leagues sprouted up throughout the country; attendance at major-league games soared. Baseball magnates capitalized on the trend as they witnessed the value of major-league teams shoot upward. Baseball publications, flooding the market, promoted the notion that the game offered a healthy, morally sound way of life.3 As historian Steven A. Riess notes, “The baseball creed coincided with the prevailing broad-based progressive ethos that promoted order, traditional values, efficiency, and Americanization by looking back to an idealized past.”4 Woodrow Wilson, a college player, attended 11 major-league games during his two terms in office and, in 1915, became the first president to attend a World Series.5
In 1914, progressives and their counterparts delighted in the Braves’ success. Americans enjoyed the rise of the Boston Braves, in part because it was so unexpected, in part because the experience reflected traditional values of hard work and determination, and also because Americans, who were well aware of the death and destruction in Europe, found solace in their peaceful national pastime. As the “Guns of August” maimed and killed thousands of young European soldiers, American sports fans discovered the Braves, a team of likeable, determined, and highly unconventional ballplayers. Baseball fans rooted so enthusiastically for the Braves because the team followed the lead of Walter “Rabbit” Maranville, Johnny “The Crab” Evers, and George “Big Daddy” Stallings, three of the most memorable characters in baseball’s past. Rabbit Maranville, the cheerfully madcap, brilliant fielding shortstop, Johnny “The Crab” Evers, an obsessively driven, yet highly sensitive, team captain, and George “Big Daddy” Stallings, a clever, yet fanatically superstitious manager, pulled together a band of youthful players, almost all of whom had met a similar fate from other major-league teams: rejection. And the Boston Braves played like rejects for the first half of the 1914 baseball season. They found themselves 15 games out of first place on July 4; three days later, the Braves lost to a minor-league team in an exhibition game.
In July and August, the Braves fought back, finishing the season with a miraculous 68–24 record as they battled such competitive teams as the Chicago Cubs and John McGraw’s powerful New York Giants. The Giants were led by the crusty John McGraw, sometimes tagged “Little Napoleon.” McGraw, a brilliant strategist and ruthless competitor, had guided his team to three pennants in the last four years. McGraw publicly cursed owners, baited umpires, and brawled with opposing players and fans. Fans so vehemently disliked McGraw’s Giants that they fired stones and bottles at his team as they rode carriages to the ballpark. Yet, even if the Braves could achieve victory over the Giants, the Braves knew that they would most likely meet the great Philadelphia Athletics, who, in late August, stood 13 games ahead of the second-place Boston Red Sox. Connie Mack, the A’s manager, coached a team so talented that they had won three out of the last four World Series, including a 1913 victory over the Giants.
The rise of the 1914 Boston Braves is the core of this book. Although this volume surveys the 1914 season chronologically, it weaves in glimpses of the time period, the early battles of World War I, and the events of the Progressive Era. More importantly, this book examines five major figures from the summer of 1914: George Stallings, Johnny Evers, “Rabbit” Maranville, John McGraw, and Connie Mack. These five men reflect the values of progressive era baseball; all five helped to produce a joyous baseball season—the season of the “Miracle Braves.”