• 5 •

“The World Upside Down”

Although the Braves overcame unprecedented adversity in their last-place-to-first-place rise from July through September, in October they faced the most imposing of challenges: one of the greatest teams in baseball, pennant winners and world champions in three of the previous four years—the mighty Philadelphia Athletics.

Dynastic rulers of the American League, the Philadelphia Athletics dominated in every dimension of the game: pitching, hitting, power, speed, and defense. Fortified by one of the greatest infields of all time, the Athletics’ pitching arsenal of Albert “Chief” Bender, “Bullet Joe” Bush, Herb Pennock, Eddie Plank, Bob Shawkey, and Jack Coombs stood ready to gun down the expected feeble attack of the Boston club. “The $100,000 infield” featured Stuffy McInnis at first, Eddie Collins at second, Jack Barry at short, and Frank “Home Run” Baker at third. The Braves’ team batting average rested at .251, with a .317 on-base percentage, while the A’s sluggers led the majors in batting average, at .272, with an on-base percentage of .348. The A’s remained unsurpassed in most of the key hitting categories, including RBIs (627), runs scored (749), runs scored per game (4.74), and on-base plus slugging percentage (.699). The A’s, markedly swifter than the Braves, stole 231 bases, significantly more than the 139 of the Braves, who were last in the majors.1 Oddsmakers rated the battle-tested, powerful champions from Philadelphia 10–4 winners over the inexperienced, vulnerable challengers from Boston.2 And while George Stallings had demonstrated Wellington-like skills in his battles against “Little Napoleon,” John McGraw, he would now encounter baseball’s great dynastic ruler, a founding father of the modern game, and the most respected man in baseball: the Athletics’ Connie Mack. (See tables 5.1 and 5.2.)

Table 5.1. Philadelphia Athletics Monthly Splits, 1914
Month		Games		Won		Lost		Winning Percentage
April		12		5		5		0.500
May		26		16		8		0.667
June		31		18		13		0.581
July		28		20		7		0.741
August		28		23		5		0.821
September		27		14		12		0.538
October		6		3		3		0.500
Source: http://www.baseball-almanac.com.

Table 5.2. Philadelphia Athletics Team versus Team Splits, 1914
Opponent		Games		Won		Lost		Winning Percentage
Boston Red Sox		24		9		12		0.429
Chicago White Sox		22		17		5		0.773
Cleveland Naps		22		19		3		0.864
Detroit Tigers		22		12		9		0.571
New York Yankees		22		14		8		0.636
St. Louis Browns		23		15		7		0.682
Washington Senators		23		13		9		0.591
Source: http://www.baseball-almanac.com.

Stallings appreciated the talent of Mack’s team and immediately tried to seize the high ground by meticulously preparing for his opponent. Stallings never hesitated in requesting the assistance of other teams. The Philadelphia Phillies’ coach, Pat Moran, had scouted every offensive and defensive tendency of the Athletics during the last few weeks of the season. With a day off in New York on Sunday, October 4, the entire Braves team invested hours reviewing Moran’s reports. Pitchers, catchers, coaches, and team captain Johnny Evers would be in tune with every A’s offensive tendency; Stallings would recognize the A’s defensive flaws.

The next day, Christy Mathewson reviewed with the Braves the strengths and weaknesses of the Athletics’ batters, and John McGraw advised the best defensive tactics against Mack’s team.3 The A’s players, in turn, saw no need to prepare. The A’s perceived themselves as invincible world champs who would inevitably triumph over a lucky team from the weak National League. Mack had sent Al Bender to observe the Braves against Brooklyn in an October game; Bender, not recognizing the talent and desire of the young Boston team, instead went on a fishing trip.4

Rallying the Press

Stallings readied his team for the World Series not only by thoroughly scouting his opponent, but also by fiercely jabbing at the psyche of his counterpart, Connie Mack. Before the first game of the World Series, he undertook a wily psychological maneuver that allowed him to appear justifiably wronged and Mack uncharacteristically unsportsmanlike. In a noted incident, and there are multiple interpretations of this event, Stallings publicly scolded Mack regarding the use of the World Series practice field, indignantly claiming that Mack had kept the Braves from practicing on Shibe Field. It was a ploy that fired up the Braves, seeded doubt in the minds of Philadelphia fans, and rallied the national press to support the underdog Braves.5

The Braves arrived in Philadelphia a few days before the incident, on Tuesday evening, October 6, well before Friday’s first World Series matchup. As the National League pennant winner, the Braves planned to practice Wednesday morning at another National League stadium, the Phillies’ Baker Bowl; in the afternoon, the Braves, already exceptionally well-informed observers, would view the Athletics playing against the Yankees in the regular-season finale. Before the A’s–Yankees game, Stallings arrived at Mack’s office and requested that Mack open up the A’s Shibe Park for a Braves’ practice on Thursday. Mack allowed Stallings to practice Thursday morning, but not from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., when the A’s had already been scheduled to practice.

Mack assumed that the practice schedule was in order, yet was shocked, miffed, and infuriated when, on Thursday morning, he read in the Philadelphia newspapers how Stallings had claimed that the Braves could not practice at Shibe Park. In Stallings’s account, Mack had denied the Braves a chance to practice at Shibe, an unsportsmanlike gesture. On Thursday morning, Mack angrily called Stallings, and Stallings answered the phone in a public setting with reporters nearby. Stallings, in a loud voice, self-righteously proclaimed to Mack, and, more importantly, to nearby reporters, that he had been wronged.6 Mack, absolutely livid, broke from his usual gentlemanly manner, as “one word led to another until [they] both spoke things [they] should not have said.”7 The following morning, Boston and Philadelphia sports headlines ran the Stallings version: “Braves Find Shibe Park Closed to Them for Practice. Mack Turns Down Braves.” Reporters voiced doubts about Mack. The A’s had played all year at Fenway, now the home stadium for the Braves. The Braves had never played at Shibe. Stallings had accomplished his goals: an unsettled, angry Connie Mack; a supportive press; and a Braves team that never did practice at Shibe, furious and determined to defeat the seemingly unprincipled A’s.8

66 Years

Stallings had frayed Mack’s nerves, questioning Mack on what he held so dearly: his integrity as a sportsman. Connie Mack, upright and honest, had rightfully earned the designation as baseball’s great gentleman, the game’s most respected figure. He had earned such respect amongst ballplayers that even Ty Cobb, the notorious, vitriolic, sometimes vicious, and always aggressive superstar, viewed Mack as the “supreme master of the diamond,” and the “greatest manager our national game has known.”9 In recent years, Mack’s reputation has been stained by his image as a gaunt, mildly confused octogenarian manager whose major contribution to baseball was simply his ability to endure. Yet, Mack’s greatness extended far beyond his durability. Mack helped found the American League and, consequently, modern baseball. He contributed innovations to the game, and as a shrewd judge of talent, he constructed two of the greatest baseball teams of all time: the Athletics of 1910 to 1914 and 1929 to 1931.10 The lean, six-foot, two-inch manager, always dressed in a suit, starched collar, and bowler hat. Habitually polite, composed, and quietly authoritative, Mack stood above his contemporaries as the great statesman of baseball.

Baseball writers and fans are absolutely on target in their praise of Mack for his lengthy tenure and, more importantly, his unyielding devotion to the game of baseball. Indeed, those inside baseball during his 66-year big-league career could not have envisioned Major League Baseball without him. Mack lived for 94 years, and when he died in 1956, his life had spanned more than half of our country’s history. Born in the year that Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation and Louisa May Alcott signed on as a nurse at a Union hospital, he died in the same year that Cold War Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin and Elvis Presley gyrated in front of millions on the Ed Sullivan Show. In his autobiography, Mack writes about how he won a pennant in 1902, the year before the Wright brothers powered their first airplane from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. In the year of his death, only two years after he had retired from baseball, a B-52 Stratofortress dropped a 3.75-megaton hydrogen bomb on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. As Mack reminisced in My 66 Years in the Big Leagues, sometimes he felt “as old as Methuselah. I was here before the telephone, before electric lights, the talking machine, the typewriter, the automobile, motion pictures, the airplane, and long before the radio. I came when railroads and the telegraph were new.”11

Mack began playing baseball in the late nineteenth century, just as basic rules were being formed; when he left the sport in the mid-twentieth century, the modern game remained firmly in place. In the 1880s, when Mack launched his playing career, the game was so new that the definition of a walk remained unclear. It took a batter eight balls to earn a walk in 1881, seven in 1886, and four in 1889. By 1950, when he retired, the standard rules of play—walks, strikes, and key distances—stood unalterable (although the height of the mound changed in 1969). In 1890, the best ballparks held only 10,000 fans; in 1932, Mack would coach the A’s in front of nearly 77,000 fans at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. During the course of his lifetime, fans began to watch night games; they later viewed contests on television. Ball clubs moved from eastern cities to the west. After Mack’s retirement, even his beloved A’s moved from Philadelphia to Kansas City (and eventually to Oakland).12

By 1914, Mack had already completed an 11-year playing career and coached the Athletics for 14 seasons (he was to complete 50 consecutive seasons for the same organization). While recent accounts of Mack highlight his longevity in the sport, he would be better remembered as an innovator and, as early journalists labeled him, the “Tall Tactician.” His resourcefulness, a trait shared amongst many hardscrabble immigrant families in the nineteenth century in the United States, shone through time and again as he guided baseball into the modern era.

The son of Irish immigrants and a native of Brookfield, Massachusetts, Mack entered the world in December 1862, while his father, Mike, was training with the Union army as a member of the 51st Massachusetts Infantry. Christened Cornelius McGillicuddy, his name was soon altered to Connie Mack. Baseball folklore mistakenly claims that reporters reduced the length of his name when it proved impossible to squeeze it into the scorecard, but the McGillicuddys, like many Irish families, simply shortened their name.13 Mack was molded by his mother, a woman who shared with her son the qualities of “optimism, patience, gentility, stoicism, dignity, faith, and antipathy to alcohol,” and his father, a hard-working East Brookfield mill worker. Joining his father in the cotton mill during his summers away from school from at the age of 10, Mack endured 12-hour workdays, six days a week.14

Epidemic

Lifting himself up out of harsh working-class surroundings, Mack confronted not only the grind of the cotton mill, but also the dangers of widespread disease. He faced family traumas similar to those of McGraw and Evers. He and his seven siblings grew into adulthood at a time when public health and epidemiology remained in its initial stages. When his town was stricken by a scarlet fever epidemic in 1871, he witnessed the death of two sisters, 13-year-old Nellie and tiny Mary: “My little sister, Mary Augusta, only a year old, died in my arms.”15 Connie and his older brother, Michael Jr., had carried the burden of family support, because their father, regularly burdened by severe ailments, could work part-time at best. William Hogan, Mack’s best friend and the player whose connections first set up Mack as a minor leaguer, died of consumption during Mack’s first season in the minors. Hogan’s sister, Margaret, whom Mack married three years later, gave birth to three children, but she died in 1892, at the age of 26, from complications due to childbirth. Mack, having suffered an “overwhelming” loss, started his career as manager in 1894 as a widower with three children.16

Measuring a lanky six feet, one inch tall at the age of 15, Mack quit school to work as a general hand at the Green and Twitchell shoe factory in East Brookfield. Playing the nineteenth-century varieties of baseball—one o’cat, four o’cat, and roundball—during his breaks, and later joining local clubs, Mack eventually received an offer from a minor-league team, Meriden of the Connecticut League. Meriden’s best pitcher, Hogan, had urged the Meriden coach, Albert Boardman, to audition Mack as a catcher. Immediately thereafter, Mack received a telegram offering him a tryout, and he announced his intentions to his family: “That’s what I want to do, play ball.” One day after receiving the offer, Mack gave notice to George Burt, the factory foreman. “I’m quitting Saturday night. I’m going to be a baseball player.”17 Despite Burt’s urging him to stay on for at least another week, Mack firmly stated his intention to leave. Years later, when he would recount the story, Mack, always the upright gentleman, regretted that he had been “too rude.”18

Mack, although straightforward and tough, avoided profanity, a common practice among managers and players who so often practiced “kicking.” Mack expected his players to follow his example, and A’s players rarely received a suspension. Mack, avoiding both fire-and-brimstone sermons and stern reprimands, drew players to his side with judiciousness and wit. According to biographer Ted Davis, Mack described his interactions with one of his star players:

One day, when we didn’t have much of a crowd and the park for some reason was surprisingly still, Stuffy McInnis, my old first baseman, called out “Jesus Christ!” I called him over to the bench and spoke to him about it.

“Did I say that, Mr. Mack?” he said in surprise.

“Only so loud that everyone in the grandstands and bleachers was waiting for you to pray. Don’t do it again.”19

Patience

No one person could exist in the competitive environment of Major League Baseball for so long—a half century—and no one individual could endure the great failures Mack experienced—17 last-place teams between 1934 and 1950, and one of the worst teams in baseball history, the 1916 team, with 117 losses—without the kindest, gentlest of all human traits: patience. Patience, indeed, is the attribute of Mack that most regularly appears in his biographical sketches. The documented examples are countless. And this practice was an acquired habit; he was not instinctively patient.

Mack recalled acquiring his kind, accepting frame of mind when, in 1897, he experienced a baseball manager’s epiphany as coach of the Milwaukee Brewers. Mack had often listened to players’ “hot words” in postgame blaming sessions:

Then one day something came up that made me real sore. I was so mad I knew I couldn’t talk calmly so I waited around until all the players had dressed and gone home. Then I changed my clothes in the solitude of the clubhouse and was alone with my thoughts. I still was hot as I went home, but when I awoke the next morning, it was just another ball game we lost. It was a bonehead play, yes, but the ballplayers are human, and it was all part of baseball.20

And Mack lived up to his own standards of behavior, earning a reputation as a “calm, dignified individual, almost a father figure to his players.”21 He treated all players with respect, never rebuking them in public—even for the most grievous of baseball sins. If a player commited a wrong, Mack might wait a few days and then discuss the omission with him. His patience was rooted in a certain pragmatism, an understanding that players who did not match his standards of propriety could still bring games into the win column.22 A friend, detailing the personal flaws of one of Mack’s pitchers, lamented, “He is selfish, crude, vulgar, a perfect boor. Connie, why must you put up with a person like that?” Mack, with a calm, matter-of-fact disposition, replied, “What you say is true. But we pay that man to pitch. And you must concede that he pitches rather well.”23

Early in his baseball career, Mack had helped to bring victories to the A’s by cajoling, soothing, and sometimes merely tolerating baseball’s problem child and brilliant pitcher, Rube Waddell. Waddell, who, in 1904, earned a spectacular 4:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio, who defeated Cy Young in a famous 20-inning game, and who threw both a nasty curveball and a blistering fastball, earned a reputation as an unpredictable juvenile. Waddell lost concentration when opponents held up shiny toys, he suffered an injury while roughhousing in the days before a World Series game, he once left the team to go fishing, and at one point he disappeared from the team for days while living in a saloon.24 While Mack and others knew that Waddell suffered the burden of alcoholism, Waddell’s chronic absences aggravated A’s players and pushed Mack to the edge. “I went after him strong,” Mack asserted.

I was laying on the words thick and fast, and I saw a nasty look come into Rube’s eyes. Quick as a flash it dawned on me that I had gone too far. Breaking off in the middle of a scorching sentence, I reached out my hand and said, “Say Rube, I had you that time. At that time you thought I was in earnest.” And do you know the great big fellow who was ready a few seconds earlier to throw me through the door actually broke down and cried.25

Mack had the ability to sway even the most problematic players to his side.

The never-smoking, rarely drinking, always-attend-mass-on-Sundays Connie Mack lifted baseball, a game rightfully held in disrepute in the late nineteenth century, to a level of respectability. The tall, gaunt manager wore a fitted suit, a tie with stickpin, a bowler or boater, and a high, starched collar; Mack embodied Victorian respectability, yet he was amiable, approachable, and attractive. As baseball historian Norman Macht describes him, “Off the field Connie Mack made a handsome appearance, his thin frame erect; his face a little fuller, with a deep crease down his cheeks when he smiled; heavy, dark, straight eyebrows over his pale blue eyes; curly black hair neatly combed.”26

Mack, the noble, steadfast executive, stood in contrast to the rough-and-tumble industrial world of the late nineteenth-century United States. In the 1880s and 1890s, as he acquired expertise in baseball, Mack witnessed what he later he described as an “age of violence.” In 1892, at the Homestead steel plant, 12 deaths resulted in a battle between hundreds of steelworkers and Carnegie Steel’s Pinkerton detectives.27 In his autobiography, Mack reflects on the time period—presidential assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley, the Wild West, and industrial violence—commenting, “Early baseball was characteristic of its times.”28

According to Ken Burns and Geoffrey C. Ward, “Fans routinely cursed and threw things at officials, and sometimes rushed onto the field to pummel them. At Washington, they loosed vicious dogs on one. . . . Players attacked umpires, too, with curses, fists, bates, and spikes.”29 So unruly were the fans that, in the eyes of Mack, “An umpire had to be at least a middleweight boxer to hold his own on the diamond. Fistfights were common occurrences. Barrages of bottles and cans showered the field. Some games developed into a free-for-all battle.”30 And in 1901, when the “peacemaker,” Ban Johnson, formed the American League, a league whose goal was to bestow civilization on umpires, fans, and players, Mack stood ready to sign on. Johnson, in turn, recognized that Mack would represent the new league as an exemplary manager.31 In his long career, Mack was baited by others who hoped to agitate him, and as a baseball manager, he was often expected to furiously respond to verbal attacks. Yet, the A’s manager, often exhibiting a keen wit, defused situations and shrewdly established himself as an even greater authority. In 1950, toward the end of Mack’s career, first baseman Ferris Fain threw an errant toss. Instead of condemnation, he earned the following response from Mack: “Now, Ferris, you shouldn’t have thrown that ball.” Fain then snapped, “What did you want me to do with it? Stuff it in my pocket?” “Perhaps,” answered Mack, “that would have been safer.”32

Toughness with Humor

Mack’s patience was built upon another of his prominent traits: toughness. As a player, he challenged management; as a manager, he held his ground with players. When he first reached the big leagues as a player for the Washington Senators, he demanded $800 for his work in the month of September, four times the monthly pay of $200 he had received in the minors.33 And when he managed, any player—even the great ones—who broke the “Mack Rules of Baseball” conduct, suffered the consequences. In the 1890s, when an average manufacturing worker might earn a dollar a day, Mack fined suspended players $25 per day. In the early 1930s, during an away game, after the talented and fiery Mickey Cochrane slammed his catcher’s mask down, Mack sent him packing to Philadelphia.34 In 1935, when pitcher John Cascarella blew an apparently unbeatable lead, Mack directed the player off the field and “out of the stadium before the game is over.”35

Mack’s survival rested not only on the bedrocks of patience and toughness, but also on his sense of humor, wit, and irony. “Get them off there, James,” he once urged Jimmy Dykes as he stepped up to the plate with the bases loaded. Dykes smashed the first pitch into a triple play. “Well, James,” he stated matter-of-factly as he slapped the ever-present scorecard on his leg, “You got them off there, all right.” In a game in the early 1930s, Max Bishop knocked a ball into the outfield that should have been a triple. When Bishop was tagged out at third, Mack wryly noted, “If you hit another triple, Max, please stop at second base.”36

In 1902, Mack’s sense of humor allowed him to parry the thrusts of longtime adversary John McGraw, whose rough, vitriolic style contrasted in every respect with the genteel manner of Mack. McGraw, the player-manager of the Baltimore Orioles, had earned two suspensions from American League president Ban Johnson. McGraw had retaliated against a player with a smash to the jaw; he had later threatened to spike an umpire. In the spring of 1902, McGraw, under suspension, began secret talks with the National League.37 While in the midst of negotiations, he condemned Mack and his Athletics, saying, “Looks like the American League has a white elephant on its hands in Philadelphia.”38 Instead of lashing back at an apparent insult, Mack embraced the derogatory term. In the same way that the Democratic Party welcomed the donkey logo, Mack playfully accepted the white elephant image. At the time, Mack found himself in a position of strength. As a manager in the newly formed American League, he was taking in substantial gate receipts; fans certainly enjoyed watching his 1902 A’s win the pennant. After the A’s earned their championship, they could gaze upward to a white elephant banner that was hoisted over the ballpark. And, in 1905, when Mack and McGraw convened at home plate during the opening ceremonies for the World Series, McGraw, to the surprise of the crowd, broke into an Irish jig; Mack had just honored him with a handheld, carved white elephant.39

The “Tall Tactician”

Mack’s integrity and wit were matched by his skill as a manager; he had deservedly earned the title the “Tall Tactician.” Regarding Mack’s great prowess as a manager, H. G. Salsinger of the Detroit News commented: “He directed players like a great orchestra conductor leads his musicians, except Mr. Mack used a scorecard instead of a baton.”40 Literally directing players with his scorecard, he helped the Athletics secure wins. “Positioning defense,” wrote former Cardinal manager Whitey Herzog, “can be worth five or ten games a year.”41

Ballplayers, including the notoriously headstrong Ty Cobb, admired Mack’s directives. Cobb, who joined the A’s for the final two years of his career after leaving the Detroit Tigers, recalled Mack’s guiding him in the outfield: “I was out here in the outfield just after joining the A’s, and a player came to bat that I had played against for several years. I looked toward the dugout, and Mr. Mack was cutting the air with that scorecard. He wanted me to move to the right.” Not one to accept an order without question, Cobb hesitated: “I ought to know more about this batter than Connie Mack does. I must have shagged a hundred of his flies.” Although he moved to his right, “Mr. Mack kept on waving. And I moved another dozen feet to the right. By this time Mr. Mack was halfway out of the dugout, signaling frantically. He didn’t stop waving until I was ten more feet to the right.”42 Perfectly positioned, Cobb fielded the out.

Mack conceived his defense in the manner that Johnny Evers endorsed, an interconnected band tying together all players. Like Tony La Russa, he understood “. . . that the premium is on the stuff you do to get guys out—positioning and how you are going to pitch particular players. I want to be able to have a comfortable feeling . . . that who ever comes to bat, I have a general idea where the ball is supposed to go.”43 Mack understood the bonds among position players.44 As a Washington Post writer noted, “He is known as the silent man of baseball, but his is an absolute monarch, as absolute as that of the czar of Russia and lots more friendly. . . . He is usually about three steps ahead of his opponents when it comes to that idea thing. . . . What he is, is a clairvoyant.”45 Mack guided his defense to yield outs, to produce results.

An energetic entrepreneur, Mack, in 1900, founded the Athletics baseball franchise as part of Ban Johnson’s start-up organization, the American League. The new league drew teams from three sources: Johnson’s Western League, a minor-league circuit he organized in the 1890s; cities that the National League had vacated; and the Atlantic Seaboard cities that could afford at least two professional teams: New York, Boston, and Philadelphia.46 Johnson sent Mack to Philadelphia to lay the foundation for a new team, and Mack successfully negotiated with Ben Shibe, the industrial baron of baseball manufacturing. Shibe’s company, A. J. Reach and Co., would produce the American League’s baseballs. Both men, Shibe and Mack, had earned reputations of impeccable integrity, and they offered complementary skills to the new club. Shibe provided the capital; Mack offered experience as a player and manager. Shibe grasped the technicalities of business; Mack understood the subtleties of baseball. Shibe would help build the new stadium, Columbia Park; Mack would assemble ballplayers. Ban Johnson, an astute businessman himself, anticipated a successful partnership.47

“Mr. Mack”

Connie Mack, baseball’s courtly statesman, earned a profound, heartfelt respect from writers, players, fans, and umpires. Mack expected to be addressed as “Mr. Mack,” and he, in turn, addressed his players as “Mister.” If a player produced a clutch hit, or if a pitcher worked his way out of a bases-loaded, no-out jam, Mack would stand when the player returned, shake hands, and offer a warm, “Thank you.” Stanley Coveleski, recalling his playing days with Mack, claimed, “He was a very considerate man. If you did something wrong, he’d never bawl you out on the bench or in the clubhouse. In the evening he’d ask you to take a walk with him, and on the way he’d tell you what you’d done wrong.”48

Treating others respectfully also meant that a player should never act brashly or arrogantly, and Mack strove to model that behavior in front of his players. When, in the 1929 World Series, the Athletics engineered a late-inning comeback from an 8–0 deficit, Mack remained placid: “I just sat there, and when we won the game I walked off with hardly a word to the boys. It doesn’t help any to appear to be too pleased before such an important series is won. Such an attitude might lead to overconfidence, and that’s fatal.”49 Following Mack’s unwritten rules for appropriate bench behavior, the Athletics limited obscenities, refrained from nasty comments, and kept the quietest dugout in baseball.50

Mack’s demeanor slowly altered baseball decorum. “Connie Mack,” asserted Rube Bressler, one of Mack’s 1914 pitchers, “did more for baseball than any other living human being—by the example he set, his attitude, the way he handled himself and his players. . . . Over a period of years, others followed, and baseball became respectable. He was a true gentleman, in every sense of the word.”51

As a catcher for the Washington Senators during the rough, boisterous baseball days of the late nineteenth century, Mack admitted, “We got away with a lot back in the days when we played with only one umpire.” Avoiding blunt, profane verbal attacks on batters, Mack, as a catcher, opted for subtle, psychological blows. “Say, that’s a nice little dip in your swing. Always wished I had one like that.”52 Keen to a player’s appearance, habits, or a recent error, Mack, often chattering, would gently annoy batters. Wilbert Robinson, Mack’s friend and the Brooklyn manager, asserted, “Don’t let anyone kid you, that Connie Mack was some kind of a tin god behind the plate. He could do and say things that got under you more than the cuss words that other catchers used.”53

As a player, he pushed the rules to the limit, ingeniously deceiving umpires and players. Before a late nineteenth-century rule change went into effect (Mack helped to inspire the change), a first or second strike foul tip earned the batter an out. Mack learned to slap his hands or click his tongue, stealthily imitating the sound of a foul tip, causing umpires to call batters out prematurely. Mack, one of the first catchers to move up directly behind the batter, often antagonized players by “tipping,” or slightly touching a bat, forcing a player to miss as he swung.54 “Don’t ever say I was a great catchaw,” he once told Bob Considine and a group of reporters, “but I was kind of tricky.”55

Yet, time and time again, Mack proved to the baseball world his great integrity. And when Mack managed, umpires regarded him with such respect that they would welcome his explanation of a rule. According to writer Edwin Pope, during a World Series game a Giants player sprinted home well ahead of Philadelphia’s throw, but he failed to touch the plate. Encouraged by his players to protest the no-call, Mack answered calmly, “He beat the throw, didn’t he?”56

“The $100,000 Infield”

Mack recruited players who demonstrated great integrity and, of course, who, like “the $100,000 infield,” displayed remarkable talent. By 1910, Mack had stocked his team with core players, the seven or eight players who might deliver a championship season. The center fiber of this core, the group that would lead the team to four pennants and three World Series championships between 1910 and 1914, had received the title “the $100,000 infield.” First baseman John “Stuffy” McInnis, second baseman Eddie Collins, shortstop Jack Barry, and, at third base, Frank “Home Run” Baker, stood at the top of the league both offensively and defensively, creating one of the elite infields in baseball history. Baseball writers commonly attest to the 1911 Athletics as one of the all-time greatest teams, ranking it near the 1927 Yankees. In 1911, the “$100,000 infield” led the league in defense and averaged .322 at the plate. By 1914, the A’s infielders had secured three World Series championships, and they were still in their prime, only in their 20s: McInnis was 23, Collins and Barry were 27, and Baker was 28.57 The 1914 A’s loomed with near-Olympian proportions over the callow Braves.

Frank “Home Run” Baker appeared as a distinct threat, not merely because he had earned four consecutive home run titles, but mainly because as a “Mr. October” in 1911, he had slammed two consecutive World Series game-winning home runs against Rube Marquard and Christy Mathewson, the Giants’ two premier pitchers. Baker’s game winners provided him solace and redemption, because he had unfairly received the label of “soft” ever since August 1908, when he had complained that Ty Cobb, sliding into third, had spiked him, gashing his forearm. Although he had finished the game bandaged and wounded, Baker, at the time, had been misjudged as a yielding, spineless player. Pointing to a photo of Cobb sliding forcefully—yet legally—into third, the Detroit Free Press labeled Baker a “soft flesh darling.” A tough, country boy from Maryland, he stoically endured this stigma for years.58

Baker eventually destroyed the misperception that he played “soft.” John McGraw misperceived Baker in 1911, when, in Game One of the World Series, Fred Snodgrass, in attempt to steal third, slid, like Ty Cobb, full force into Baker—spikes high, slashing his forearm and knocking the ball loose. The Giants won that first game, but in the second game, with one man on and two outs in the sixth, the left-handed-hitting Baker, facing Giants left-handed ace Rube Marquard, knocked a game-breaking, two-run homer over the right-field fence. With the World Series tied, the Athletics faced the great Christy Mathewson, who held on to a 1–0 lead until the top of the ninth, when Baker smashed a game-tying home run into the right-field seats.59 The eminent sportswriter Fred Lieb later reflected, “The Giants fans were aghast; a Baker home run off Marquard could happen, but not off Matty. I still can remember the awesome silence that followed the crash of Baker’s bat.”60 As the game shifted into extra innings, Baker kept a rally moving with a pivotal hit and then blocked Snodgrass as he bolted toward third base, again with spikes flying high. Baker executed the play perfectly and, despite bandages on his forearm, went on to gather nine hits (.375 average) and five RBIs, driving Philadelphia to a 4–2 World Series victory. After Baker, the wounded warrior, hit two crucial home runs in two consecutive World Series games, a feat nearly miraculous in the Deadball Era, and after he led the A’s to a championship, he gained new stature. From this point onward, the press viewed him as the mighty “Home Run” Baker.61

Columbia graduate Eddie Collins, self-confident in every respect, proved his extraordinary value in his breakout 1910 season, when he led the American League in steals, placed third in hits and RBIs, came in fourth in batting average, and stood at the top in most fielding categories. A passionate student of the game, like his Braves counterpart Johnny Evers, Collins wrote 10 articles for American Magazine that analyzed all angles of the sport (much to the chagrin of his teammates, he explained how opposing pitchers tipped off their pitches). And like Braves manager George Stallings, he was highly superstitious, wearing gum on his cap button until he had two strikes, at which point he would plug the gum in his mouth and begin chewing. His superstitious rituals coincided with great success on the playing field. As a .421 hitter in the 1913 World Series and a winner of the 1914 American League MVP (the Chalmers Award), Collins held high expectations for the 1914 World Series.62

John “Jack,” or “Black Jack,” Barry, like Mack, was the son of Irish immigrants from Connecticut. Barry, a spectacular fielder, had gained a reputation as a clutch hitter. Noting Barry’s timeliness at the plate, Stony McClinn of the Philadelphia Press commented, “If Barry’s batting average was only .119, and a hit was needed to win a game for the Athletics, it’s a cinch that 99 percent of the fans would rather have Barry at bat than any other man on Mack’s payroll.”63 The Detroit Tigers’ manager, Hugh Jennings, once noted, “I’d rather have Barry than any .300 hitter in the business . . . in a pinch he hits better than anybody in our league outside of Cobb.”64 A first-rate bunter, Barry was so skillful that Mack would give him the green light to try a “double squeeze,” a sensational play where runners on second and third took off even before Barry bunted the ball to third. The runner from second would round third, dash home, and slide into the plate as the catcher tagged the runner from third. Reserved, diligent, and hardworking, Barry anchored the A’s infield, covering such a wide range that third baseman Baker could cover close to third, while second baseman Collins shaded to first. Equipped with a strong arm and sure hands, Barry, along with his keystone partner, Eddie Collins, engineered strategies to stop the widely used double steal.65 Capable of spectacular double plays, Barry, according to Hugh Fullerton, was the “best in the game at taking throws, blocking the base, and holding runners close to second.”66

Barry threw across the diamond to first baseman Stuffy McInnis, the youngest A’s infielder. McInnis, a compactly built, five-foot, nine-inch, 162 pounder, artfully defended first base. He was so agile that he could manage the one-handed reach, a rare feat for the time, and so lithe that he could execute a ground-level split while reaching for a throw coming from across the infield. McInnis led the league in fielding percentage six times. His defensive statistics were at the top in double plays, putouts, and assists.67 Earlier in his career, he had played shortstop so well that fans would cheer, “That’s the stuff, kid, that’s the stuff.”68 The boyish-looking Stuffy could scoop up hard-to-catch throws because of his unmatched flexibility and a technological innovation that he helped to pioneer: the claw-type first baseman’s glove. McInnis, a lifetime .307 hitter, posted RBI numbers that regularly placed him at the top of the league. A contact hitter who could push players around the base paths, McInnis maintained an inconceivable strikeout record, striking out only 189 times in more than 7,300 at bats (Major League Baseball began following this stat in 1913).69 As John McGraw noted after the 1913 World Series, “Baseball never had a first baseman in the class of McInnis.”70

Speed in the Outfield and Skill Behind the Plate

Mack recruited speedsters for the outfield, “men who could travel fast enough to burn their galoshes.” In center field, he chose Amos Strunk, “The Flying Foot,” the “Mercury of the American League,” an outfielder who could track down fly balls that other center fielders could never reach. As baseball writer J. C. Koefed observed, “He moves with the speed you would exert should you accidentally touch a red hot range.” Strunk contributed to his manager’s fame through his key role in Mack’s famous “double squeeze play.” With Barry bunting, it was Strunk, standing on second, who could race from second to third, and then home. Strunk, who, in Mack’s view, “made his job of playing center field look a lot easier than it really was,” led the league in fielding percentage four times between 1912 and 1918. A patient, left-handed hitter, he placed in the top 10 in the American League for slugging three times between 1913 and 1916.71

In right field, Mack placed the left-handed-hitting Eddie Murphy. Murphy measured up to Mack’s standard for speedy outfielders; in fact, he was so fast that in 1914, he stole 36 bases, 11 more than Strunk, “The Flying Foot.” Murphy, a vibrant, blossoming star, batted .295 in 1913 as a 22-year-old; in 1914, he hit .272, with a .379 on-base percentage, sixth highest in the American League.72

Eight-year veteran Rube Oldring covered left field for the A’s. Oldring, in the opinion of early twentieth-century baseball statistician Irwin Howe, was a “fast and reliable outfielder, good at laying down a bunt and . . . a fast and intelligent base runner.” A cornerstone of Mack’s championships, Oldring, in 1913, turned in a Series-changing defensive gem against the Giants, snaring Moose McCormick’s sizzling liner to left field to prevent a runner at third base from tagging and scoring a run. Philadelphia fans later awarded him, as the team’s most popular player, a new Cadillac. Yet, Oldring suffered from nagging injuries throughout much of the 1914 season and performed just below his normal level.73

The A’s guarded home with one of the best, Wally Schang. The gregarious, switch-hitting, second-year player led American League catchers in five categories: batting average (.287), extra-base hits (22), home runs (3), slugging percentage (.404), and RBIs (45). Graceful, energetic, and highly skilled behind the plate, Schang, one of the “wonders of the year in 1913,” had starred in the 1913 World Series, with a .357 batting average and a team-leading seven RBIs. A power hitter, Schang had, for most of his career, earned praise for his defensive work, but, in 1914, he struggled in the field, playing most of the year with a broken thumb on his throwing hand. Still, the young pro was one of the league’s best, and the Braves’ George Stallings first recognized his greatness, recruiting him for the Buffalo Bisons in 1912.74 (See tables 5.3 and 5.4.)

Table 5.3. Philadelphia Athletics 1914 Season Batting Statistics
Pos.		Player		Age		G		PA		AB		R		H		HR		RBI		SB		BB		SO		BA		OBP		SLG		OPS		TB		SH
C		Wally Schangb		24		107		355		307		44		88		3		45		7		32		33		.287		.371		.404		.775		124		7
1B		Stuffy McInnis		23		149		628		576		74		181		1		95		25		19		27		.314		.341		.368		.709		212		29
2B		Eddie Collinsa		27		152		659		526		122		181		2		85		58		97		31		.344		.452		.452		.904		238		28
SS		Jack Barry		27		140		555		467		57		113		0		42		22		53		34		.242		.324		.268		.592		125		31
3B		Home Run Bakera		28		150		637		570		84		182		9		89		19		53		37		.319		.380		.442		.822		252		8
OF		Rube Oldring		30		119		498		466		68		129		3		49		14		18		35		.277		.308		.371		.679		173		13
OF		Amos Strunka		25		122		483		404		58		111		2		45		25		57		38		.275		.364		.342		.706		138		20
OF		Eddie Murphya		22		148		684		573		101		156		3		43		36		87		46		.272		.379		.340		.720		195		10
OF		Jimmy Walsh		26		68		273		216		35		51		3		36		6		30		27		.236		.340		.384		.724		83		23
C		Jack Lappa		29		69		241		199		22		46		0		19		1		31		14		.231		.338		.286		.624		57		10
OF		Tom Daleya		29		28		103		86		17		22		0		7		4		12		14		.256		.347		.337		.684		29		4
IF		Larry Kopfb		23		37		86		69		8		13		0		12		6		8		14		.188		.300		.275		.575		19		5
P		Bob Shawkey		23		38		90		83		6		17		0		5		0		4		22		.205		.241		.229		.470		19		4
P		Weldon Wyckoff		23		34		80		75		7		11		1		6		3		4		15		.147		.190		.187		.377		14		1
P		Bullet Joe Bush		21		38		80		74		6		14		1		8		0		2		25		.189		.211		.284		.494		21		4
P		Eddie Planka		38		34		71		60		6		9		0		5		1		4		14		.150		.203		.183		.386		11		7
P		Chief Bender		30		28		70		62		4		9		1		8		0		4		13		.145		.197		.210		.407		13		4
P		Rube Bressler		19		29		60		51		6		11		0		4		0		6		7		.216		.310		.275		.585		14		2
P		Herb Pennockb		20		28		59		56		7		12		0		9		0		2		11		.214		.241		.286		.527		16		1
Team Totals				25.7		158		5,941		5,126		749		1,392		29		627		231		545		517		517		.348		.352		.699		1804		218
Rank in Eight NL Teams										2		1		1		1				3		3		8		8		1		1		1		1
Nonpitcher Totals				25.8		158		5,398		4,637		706		1,308		26		581		227		516		396		396		.360		.366		.726		1695		194
Pitcher Totals				24.9		158		543		489		43		84		3		46		4		29		121		121		.220		.223		.443		109		24
Note: Individual statistics include only those players who played in twenty or more games. Team statistics include all players. Source: http://www.baseball-reference.com.
a Bats left-handed
b Bats both

Table 5.4. Boston Braves 1914 Season Batting Statistics
Pos.		Player		Age		G		PA		AB		R		H		HR		RBI		SB		BB		SO		BA		OBP		SLG		OPS		TB		SH
C		Hank Gowdy		24		128		426		366		42		89		3		46		14		48		40		.243		.337		.347		.684		127		8
1B		Butch Schmidta		27		147		613		537		67		153		1		71		14		43		55		.285		.350		.356		.706		191		23
2B		Johnny Eversa		32		139		612		491		81		137		1		40		12		87		26		.279		.390		.338		.728		166		31
SS		Rabbit Maranville		22		156		663		586		74		144		4		78		28		45		56		.246		.306		.326		.632		191		27
3B		Charlie Deal		22		79		293		257		17		54		0		23		4		20		23		.210		.270		.276		.546		71		15
OF		Larry Gilberta		22		72		262		224		32		60		5		25		3		26		34		.268		.347		.371		.717		83		10
OF		Les Mann		21		126		425		389		44		96		4		40		9		24		50		.247		.292		.375		.668		146		11
OF		Joe Connollya		30		120		469		399		64		122		9		65		12		49		36		.306		.393		.494		.886		197		13
UT		Possum Whitted		24		66		258		218		36		57		2		31		10		18		18		.261		.326		.376		.703		82		19
3B		Red Smith		24		60		251		207		30		65		3		37		4		28		24		.314		.401		.449		.850		93		14
C		Bert Whaling		26		60		199		172		18		36		0		12		2		21		28		.209		.303		.250		.553		43		4
OF		Herbie Morana		30		41		178		154		24		41		0		4		4		17		11		.266		.347		.299		.646		46		5
OF		Ted Cather		25		50		161		145		19		43		0		27		7		7		28		.297		.338		.400		.738		58		7
OF		Josh Devorea		26		51		151		128		22		29		1		5		2		18		14		.227		.327		.281		.608		36		4
UT		Oscar Dugey		26		58		122		109		17		21		1		10		10		10		15		.193		.267		.239		.505		26		2
OF		Jim Murray		36		39		121		112		10		26		0		12		2		6		24		.232		.277		.304		.581		34		2
3B		Jack Martin		27		33		94		85		10		18		0		5		0		6		7		.212		.264		.235		.499		20		3
OF		Wilson Collins		25		27		37		35		5		9		0		1		0		2		8		.257		.297		.257		.554		9		0
P		Dick Rudolph		26		43		137		120		10		15		0		8		1		11		19		.125		.205		.175		.380		21		5
P		Bill James		22		49		135		129		9		33		0		9		0		0		20		.256		.262		.279		.541		36		5
P		Lefty Tylera		24		38		104		94		6		19		0		4		0		4		20		.202		.235		.213		.447		20		6
P		Dick Crutcher		24		33		59		54		5		8		0		3		1		4		15		.148		.207		.167		.374		9		1
P		Otto Hessa		35		31		48		47		5		11		1		6		0		1		11		.234		.250		.319		.569		15		2
Team Totals				25.7		158		5,979		5,206		657		1,307		35		572		139		502		617		.251		.323		.335		.658		1745		221
Rank in Eight NL Teams										1		2		4		3				8		1		3		4		3		5		4		4
Nonpitcher Totals				25.8		158		5,412		4,687		617		1,208		34		535		137		478		509		.258		.333		.347		.680		1627		199
Pitcher Totals				25.2		158		567		519		40		99		1		37		2		24		108		.191		.229		.227		.457		118		22
Note: Individual statistics include only those players who played in twenty or more games. Team statistics include all players. Source: http://www.baseball-reference.com.
a Bats left-handed

Pitching Depth

Mack’s pitchers excelled in all respects. Four starting pitchers—Chief Bender, Ed Plank, Bob Shawkey, and Bullet Joe Bush—averaged 16 wins apiece; three starting pitchers—Herb Pennock, Weldon Wyckoff, and Rube Bressler—averaged 11 wins each. Few teams in baseball history have enjoyed such a rich and deep supply of starting pitching. The A’s, after all, could call on seven starters who had won more than 10 games. These A’s pitchers completed 87 games and saved 16 others, while compiling a team ERA of 2.78. They carried the team to absolute domination of the American League. Leading the league since June, the Athletics offered no chance to even such talented teams as the Boston Red Sox, winner of 91 games. Leaving the Red Sox eight and a half games behind, the 1914 A’s celebrated victory 99 times.75 (See tables 5.5 and 5.6.)

Table 5.5. Philadelphia Athletics 1914 Season Pitching Statistics
Pos.		Pitcher		Age		W		L		ERA		G		GS		CG		SHO		SV		IP		H		R		ER		HR		BB		SO		WHIP		SO/BB
SP		Bob Shawkey		23		15		8		2.73		38		31		18		5		2		237.0		223		88		72		4		75		89		1.257		1.19
SP		Bullet Joe Bush		21		17		13		3.06		38		23		14		2		2		206.0		184		84		70		2		81		109		1.286		1.35
SP		Eddie Planka		38		15		7		2.87		34		22		12		4		3		185.1		178		68		59		2		42		110		1.187		2.62
SP		Weldon Wyckoff		23		11		7		3.02		32		20		11		0		2		185.0		153		82		62		2		103		86		1.384		0.84
SP		Chief Bender		30		17		3		2.26		28		23		14		7		2		179.0		159		49		45		4		55		107		1.196		1.95
RP		Herb Pennocka		20		11		4		2.79		28		14		8		3		3		151.2		136		56		47		1		65		90		1.325		1.38
RP		Rube Bresslera		19		10		4		1.77		29		10		8		1		2		147.2		112		37		29		1		56		96		1.138		1.71
RP		Boardwalk Brown		25		1		5		4.09		15		7		2		0		0		66.0		64		34		30		1		26		20		1.364		0.77
		Byron Houck		22		0		0		3.27		3		3		0		0		0		11.0		14		9		4		0		6		4		1.818		0.67
		Willie Jensen		24		0		1		2.00		1		1		1		0		0		9.0		7		4		2		1		2		1		1.000		0.50
		Chick Daviesa		22		1		0		1.00		1		1		1		0		0		9.0		8		4		1		0		3		4		1.222		1.33
		Jack Coombs		31		0		1		4.50		2		2		0		0		0		8.0		8		4		4		0		3		1		1.375		0.33
		Charlie Boardman		21		0		0		4.91		2		0		0		0		0		7.1		10		5		4		0		4		2		1.909		0.50
		Fred Worden		19		0		0		18.00		1		0		0		0		0		2.0		8		5		4		0		0		1		4.000
Team Totals				24.9		98		53		2.78		158		157		89		22		16		1,404.0		1,264		529		433		18		521		720		1.271		1.38
Rank in Eight NL Teams						1		8		4						2		2		2		5		4		3		4		4		6		2
Source: http://www.baseball-reference.com.
a Throws left-handed

Table 5.6. Boston Braves 1914 Season Pitching Statistics
Pos.		Pitcher		Age		W		L		ERA		G		GS		CG		SHO		SV		IP		H		R		ER		HR		BB		SO		WHIP		SO/BB
SP		Dick Rudolph		26		26		10		2.35		42		36		31		6		0		336.1		288		105		88		9		61		138		1.038		2.26
SP		Bill James		22		26		7		1.90		46		37		30		4		3		332.1		261		91		70		7		118		156		1.140		1.32
SP		Lefty Tylera		24		16		13		2.69		38		34		21		5		2		271.1		247		113		81		7		101		140		1.283		1.39
SP		Otto Hessa		35		5		6		3.03		14		11		7		1		1		89.0		89		39		30		2		33		24		1.371		0.73
RP		Dick Crutcher		24		5		7		3.46		33		15		5		1		0		158.2		169		73		61		4		66		48		1.481		0.73
RP		Paul Stranda		20		6		2		2.44		16		3		1		0		0		55.1		47		23		15		1		23		33		1.265		1.43
RP		Gene Cocreham		29		3		4		4.84		15		3		1		0		0		44.2		48		30		24		2		27		15		1.679		0.56
		Iron Davis		24		3		3		3.40		9		6		4		1		0		55.2		42		25		21		1		26		26		1.222		1.00
		Hub Perdue		32		2		5		5.82		9		9		2		0		0		51.0		60		35		33		5		11		13		1.392		1.18
		Tom Hughes		30		2		0		2.65		2		2		1		0		0		17.0		14		7		5		0		4		11		1.059		2.75
		Dolf Luque		23		0		1		4.15		2		1		1		0		0		8.2		5		5		4		0		4		1		1.038		0.25
		Ensign Cottrella		25		0		1		9.00		1		1		0		0		0		1.0		2		2		1		0		3		1		5.000		0.33
Team Totals				25.0		94		59		2.74		158		158		104		18		6		1,421.0		1,272		548		433		38		477		606		1.231		1.27
Rank in Eight NL Teams						1		8		4						1		2		8		2		3		3		5		7		6		4
Source: http://www.baseball-reference.com.
a Throws left-handed

It was no great surprise that Mack would select Charles Albert “Chief” Bender for the first game. Bender, labeled “Chief” because of his Ojibwe (Chippewa) roots, had earned a 2.26 ERA and a 17–3 winning record, with a .850 winning percentage. He had pitched seven shutouts; at one point in the season, he won 14 straight times. In the previous five years, he had compiled a 91–31 record. He had won four straight World Series games, two in 1913.76 Before the 1914 Series, F. C. Lane, a writer for Baseball Magazine, commented, “Bender, when it comes to pitching an individual game, has no equals. In a short series like the World Champions’ contests, no pitcher in the business can excel Bender.” The Philadelphia North American placed a simple, telling phrase under a picture of Bender: “The Greatest Money Pitcher in Baseball.”77

The intimidating, six-foot, two-inch pitcher powered his delivery through leg strength. His high leg kick added subterfuge to an already deceptive motion. Biographer Tom Swift wrote of his delivery: “Charles Albert Bender’s body remained closed, his arm hidden, until the last moment, and by the time he reached the release point, he was coming over the top.”78 In addition to his fastball, Bender might throw a sidearm pitch or a submarine fadeaway, a pitch similar to a screwball, fading away from left-handed batters. Bender talked about his “twisted slow one,” a pitch that behaved remarkably like a knuckleball. To this rich repertoire of pitches he added a hard slider and a “slow ball,” or changeup. According to teammate Bob Shawkey, Bender’s great strength was his ability to change speeds: “I’d say his greatest success came on the changeup he threw off his fastball. They’d swing at his motion, and that ball would come floating up there.”79 And despite throwing the likes of a knuckleball, Bender kept the ball in the strike zone, often recording one of the lowest walk rates in baseball. Mack later reflected, “If I had all the men I’ve ever handled, and they were in their prime, and there was one game I wanted to win above all others, Albert would be my man.”80

Any hitter who stepped into the batter’s box encountered not only Bender’s assortment of deliveries, pitches, and speeds, but also his pitching intelligence. Bender considered how each pitch would suit each batter. Explaining his calm, reflective approach to sportswriter Grantland Rice, Bender noted, “Tension is the greatest curse in any sport. I’ve never had any tension. You give the best you have—you win or lose. What’s the difference if you give all you’ve got to give?” Having studied the batter, appearing calm and collected (although admitting to an internal nervousness), Bender, in the eyes of his contemporary, umpire Billy Evans, “knows how to pitch.” When on the mound, “He takes advantage of every weakness, and once a player shows him a weak spot, he is marked for life by the crafty Indian.”81

Evans intended “crafty” as a compliment, yet the compliment found its origins in misgivings, misjudgments, and stereotypes that whites held of Native Americans. The European American treatment of Native Americans took many forms at the turn of the twentieth century: paternalistic acceptance, disrespectful assimilation, or violent extermination. In 1890, when Bender was just seven years old, the U.S. Seventh Cavalry massacred 300 Lakota Sioux at the Battle of Wounded Knee. In 1907, two years after Bender had pitched his first World Series game, the U.S. Fifth Cavalry executed a surprise dawn raid on the Aneth Navajo in southern Utah. The Aneth Navajo had refused to follow the Roosevelt administration’s assimilation policy and prevented their Indian children from attending boarding school, designed to acculturate Native Americans. In 1887, white assimilationists had enacted the Dawes Severalty Act, legislation that required the dispersal of collective Indian lands to individual native farmers. The law allowed “surplus land” to be purchased by land speculators, and Indians subsequently lost millions of acres. Indian boarding schools had preceded the Dawes Act, and these schools were often founded on the assumption held by writer Hamlin Garland, an advisor to Theodore Roosevelt, who claimed that Indians were “like children.”82 They were also built according to Richard Henry Pratt, who believed that whites should eliminate Indian culture: “A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one. . . . In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”83

During his youth, Bender had attended the Lincoln Institution in Pennsylvania, and he later volunteered for the most noted Native American boarding school founded by Pratt, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. A strong student who contributed to the Lincoln Institution athletic program, a program noted for its excellence in football, Bender caught the attention of pro scouts when he played as a teenager in summer semipro baseball leagues. Later, when he pitched for the Harrison Athletic Club, Connie Mack discovered his talents.84

Bender, who grew to understand the workings of European American culture, had hoped that Americans would recognize him simply for his great skills as a pitcher. He asserted, “I do not want my name to be presented to the public as an Indian, but as a pitcher.”85 Yet, European Americans rarely respected his cultural identity. “Chief,” the cultural tag regularly attached to Bender and other Native American ballplayers, resembled, according to Swift, “calling a black man ‘boy.’”86 Scientific racism, popularized in Madison Grant’s 1916 book The Passing of the Great Race, rested on the assumption that the “Nordic Race,” a biological race responsible for advancing the human condition, stood atop other inferior races. Grant’s views had been accepted in the world of baseball, where blacks were denied entry into the major leagues, and Native Americans like Bender were judged inferior. Charles Zuber of Sporting Life wrote about Charles Bender after the 1905 World Series:

Bender, according to reports, is a typical representative of his race, being just sufficiently below the white man’s standard to be coddled into doing anything that his manager might suggest, and to the proper exercise of this influence on the part of manager Connie Mack much of the Indian’s success as a twirler is due. Like the Negro on the stage who . . . will work himself to death if you jolly him, the Indian can be “conned” into taking up any sort of burden.87

Sports cartoonists, players, and fans shared similar racial attitudes. Although Connie Mack always addressed him as “Albert,” cartoonists drew caricatures of Bender as a tomahawk-wielding, headdress-wearing warrior. Players jockeying from the bench oftentimes yelled, “Back to the reservation!” Fans would mimic Indian signals, scream battle cries, and, to his displeasure, shout “Chief.”88 Bender, appearing and acting calm, sometimes protested, stating, “Foreigners! Foreigners!” Yet, taunting wounded him, and Bender reflected that while he was cool “on the outside, I was nervous, just like anyone else—maybe twice as nervous—but I couldn’t let it out. Indians can’t.”89

Revved for a Party

In the fall of 1914, Philadelphia fans held the highest of expectations for Bender and the Athletics. The A’s were world champs and had won the pennant by eight and a half games. Bender, after all, was the championship pitcher, with the 14-game win streak. In the days before the game, lines overflowed with fans and ticket hawkers. Anticipating another great triumph for the city, the first Philadelphia fan lined up to buy reserved seats 26 hours before they went on sale. When the 5,000 tickets went on sale, Philadelphians bought them up in five hours. Thousands of fans were turned away, and if they returned to buy tickets for bleacher seats, they would need to begin queuing up at midnight. Such national magazines as Sporting Life saw no possibility of Boston winning except for the “improbable collapse of the Mack machine or the element of luck.”90 In recent World Series, the A’s had defeated powerful clubs, including the Cubs and Giants. They now faced the inexperienced Braves, merely “a surprise, a wonder, and a problem,” a team that had defied the law of averages to win. Athletics’ fans sensed a victory that would arrive as easily as a July Fourth celebration. Ticket sales surpassed any previous Athletics’ World Series.91 As author Tom Swift noted, “Philadelphia fans were revved for this party as though they were about to celebrate another successful Revolution.”92

Talking Smack

But George Stallings wanted to stifle the partygoers and took on a combative nature with the Philly fans. Tensions between fans and team members deepened as an out-of-town visitor, P. J. Callahan, tracked down Stallings at the Majestic Hotel and began relentlessly and brazenly taunting the Braves’ players for two days, calling them “rotten” and claiming that the A’s were going to “show them.” Stallings tried to avoid Callahan and told the visitor to go about his business, but the fan never let up and, in fact, suggested that he could pulverize Stallings. Stallings, no longer able to endure Callahan, punched him in the face.93 Braves’ players, with the help of the hotel manager, hustled the fan out of the Majestic, and Stallings, exhibiting satisfaction, “strolled back to his post at the hotel desk and lighted a cigar.”94

During the World Series, Stallings drove his players past the edge of baseball respectability, urging them to carry on another commonly practiced Deadball Era tactic: bench jockeying. Verbal harassment of opponents was common. John McGraw’s New York Giants were particularly adept at the craft, but the Braves, under the guidance of Stallings, spewed out vitriol at an unmatched level. Stallings, according to Damon Runyon,

harried them with verbal goad. . . . He spoke rudely of their personalities. He abused their ancestry. Invective fell from his tongue in a searing stream as he crouched there conning the field before him, his strong fingers folding and unfolding against his palms as if grasping the throat of enemy.95

Stallings combed the newspapers for bits of information that he could transform into verbal ammunition. The Braves attacked Rube Oldring for allegedly leaving his wife, and Eddie Collins for accepting a new moneymaking newspaper syndication. “Chief” Bender endured disparaging comments about his Native American ancestry. The A’s might have grown accustomed to this old-school practice, and under Mack’s code of sportsmanship the A’s refrained from attacks while keeping their gentlemanly demeanor; still, the harshness of the Braves’ verbal onslaught, especially as it was directed toward Bender, undoubtedly added pressure to an already strained atmosphere.96 “Get in there and beat that big Indian!”97 Stallings had ordered before the first game, and during the game, umpire Bill Dinneen admonished the Braves to ease up. But the Braves attacked relentlessly: “They reminded the Athletics of debts they owed, troubles in their families, and intimate personal shortcomings.” The A’s youthful catcher, Wally Schang, who received a torrent of invective, allowed the Braves to steal nine bases in four games.98

Play Ball!

Mack responded with guile and, just before the first game, instructed pitcher Eddie Plank to practice with the regulars; Bender, in the meantime, warmed up secretly under the stands. Yet, under the blue skies of October, Albert “Chief” Bender started the first game and, in his usual, masterful way, stifled the Braves in the first inning: Moran, Evers, and Connolly made three quick outs. When the Athletics first brought their overpowering lineup to bat, the Braves, in the opinion of T. H. Murinane, looked “anxious.”99 Braves pitcher Dick Rudolph’s anxiety grew out of not only World Series first-game pressures, but also events going on in his personal life: Rudolph’s wife, back home in New York, was expected to deliver the couple’s first child on game day (she delivered the following day). Rudolph allowed Eddie Murphy to single to right; Oldring sacrificed Murphy to second; and Rudolph, hoping to set up a double play, intentionally walked Collins. Home Run Baker strode to the plate, but instead of matching his previous World Series heroics, he hit a high pop fly that floated near the Braves’ dugout. Braves first baseman Butch Schmidt snared the ball and spotted Murphy, who, trying to catch the nervous Braves off-guard, tagged and charged to third. But Schmidt, calmly and alertly, threw to Charlie Deal at third for a double play.100 As Stallings later mused,

The double play was completed, and Deal’s part in it was beautiful to look upon. I think that happening alone saved us considerable bother, for had the man advanced, a run might have counted, and with the Athletics in front, they would have been possessed of worlds of confidence.101

The Braves’ anxiety fell sharply; the champs appeared vulnerable. As a Boston Globe reporter noted, the “Braves paused, sighed, and suspected that they had a chance.”102

Shouting and jeering relentlessly at Braves’ hitters, Philadelphia fans expected Bender to succeed, as he had so often before in the World Series. In the second inning, the Braves’ Possum Whitted worked the count and earned a walk, sparking a “kick” from the usually composed Bender, who, consequently, provoked umpire “Big Bill” Dinneen. Braves first baseman Butch Schmidt flied out to Oldring in deep left, and then Hank Gowdy, the young, always smiling, although highly anxious catcher, steadied himself and, despite the taunting from the Philadelphia fans, worked the count to three and two, smashing a double to the fence and scoring Possum Whitted. Rabbit Maranville, so often a clutch hitter, then hit a single, driving Gowdy home for the second run of the inning. A Barry-to-Collins-to-McInnis double play ended the inning, but as the Braves took a 2–0 lead, Philadelphia fans quieted.103

Although the shouting coming from the Philadelphia fans diminished in the second inning, the Athletics’ hitters began to live up to their reputation. McInnis drew a walk, and Strunk singled him to second base. When right fielder Herb Moran let the ball bounce through his legs, Stuffy McInnis scored, and Amos “The Flying Foot” Strunk sprinted all the way to third; however, the Braves, despite their inexperience, kept their composure: Rudolph struck out the dangerous “Black Jack” Barry. Team captain Johnny Evers now had his opportunity to perform in one of those pivotal, psychological moments of a baseball game, the game’s crucial moment, which he had described years earlier in Touching Second: When Wally Schang lashed a grounder to second, Evers scooped up the ball and gunned down Strunk at the plate. The Phillies rally had stalled, and the Braves kept their lead.104

In the third and fourth innings, as the three o’clock sun shone directly into his eyes, Rudolph appeared distracted, but he mixed up his pitches: fastball, curveball, change, and spitball. Rudolph, known as a “wise pitcher,” threw a “spitter occasionally, just often enough to remind the batter that he can expect a freak break once in a while.”105 He fooled Oldring into swinging at a pitch inches wide and high off the plate; he set up Baker to take a vicious cut at the ball, “missing it by a foot”; and he even struck out McInnis, the contact hitter who rarely received a K on the scorecard (in 1914, 27 strikeouts in 576 at bats). Rudolph created his own outs, striking out four batters in the third and fourth innings, and the Athletics, with a chance to score, gambled away their opportunity to add a run. In the fourth inning, Strunk tried to stretch a single into a double but was thrown out by left fielder Joe Connolly.106

In the fifth, the Braves added to their lead when Hank Gowdy drove the ball deep to the scoreboard in left center, deep enough that Gowdy, the slowest position player on the team, managed a triple. When Connie Mack told the infield to pull in, Rabbit Maranville blooped a single over McInnis’s head into right, scoring Gowdy. The sixth began with a spectacular catch by Philadelphia’s Jack Barry of a Herb Moran fly ball toward the third-base side. Barry sprinted and lunged, snagging the ball barehanded near the fence. At that point, Bender inexplicably stopped throwing his changeup, and Boston’s batters waited on their pitch. His pitches now appeared far from Bender-like, his fastball down a notch in speed and his curve failing to break sharply. As Swift noted, “No one had ever seen Bender unravel before. Not in such an important contest. Not in such a complete manner.”107

After Johnny Evers singled a sharply hit ball through Bender’s legs and Joe Connolly walked, Possum Whitted, with a 1–0 count, thumped a Bender fastball to right center, tripling his teammates home. Whitted also scored after a single by Schmidt. Sensing that his World Series ace had lost his effectiveness, Mack, according to the Boston Globe, removed “Old Chief Bender from the game.”108 As the New York Times reported, inserting language that caricatured Bender’s Ojibwe heritage, “With six runs in the Indian was escorted to his wigwam, while the young Braves from old Boston town had a quiet little war dance.”109

The Royal Rooters

The Braves’ notorious fan support group, the Royal Rooters, burst into song and revelry—as if the Braves had already won the game. The Rooters, originally led by Michael T. “Nuf Ced” McGreevy of Boston’s Third Base Saloon, were now directed by former mayor John F. “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald. The Rooters chanted, cheered, and sang for their Boston team. Before the first game, seven train cars filled with Royal Rooters had trekked to Philadelphia, and the 300 passionate fans had paraded in the Philadelphia streets the night before.110 Stallings understood their value “To us it certainly was inspiring to know that so many of our own fans had made the long journey to Philadelphia to help cheer us along.”111

But the champion A’s, the best team in baseball, persisted. Philadelphia started a comeback in the seventh: Baker reached base on a nearly uncatchable ball to Evers, and McInnis followed with a walk. Still, the Braves stood firm, their nervousness at a minimum. They played with the same skill and confidence they had maintained since late July. And when Strunk sent a sizzling grounder down the first-base line that looked like a double, Schmidt cut it off for an out. Then, with one out and men on second and third, Rudolph struck out the great clutch hitter Black Jack Barry, the batter Ty Cobb had called the “most feared hitter on the A’s.” Rudolph ended the inning when new catcher Jack Lapp hit a weak grounder back to the pitching mound. In the ninth, the A’s launched another attack when Baker led off with a double, but Rudolph and the agile-fielding Braves stopped the rally. The Braves’ final stand had appeared within the rhythm of the game: whenever Philadelphia threatened, the Braves put together a fielding gem, and if the game situation turned even more precarious, Rudolph shut down the A’s. Stallings later commented on the Braves’ determination, on their capacity to be “game,” saying, “I have been in baseball for 25 years, and the present Boston club is the gamest baseball organization I have ever been connected with. Three times third was occupied, once with none out and again with only one out, yet they failed to score.”112 James Isaminger, of the Philadelphia Inquirer, stressed the Braves’ tenacity: “Boston beat, whipped, licked, tormented, maltreated, belabored, walloped, smashed, gashed, bruised, mangled, and wrecked us.”113

Game Two

The Braves turned to their best pitcher, Bill James, for the second game. Considered the best pitcher in the National League, James had earned the second spot in pitcher WAR, with 8.2, the second-lowest ERA, with 1.90, and the highest winning percentage, with .788. With 26 victories and seven defeats, James had a nearly impeccable second half of the season, winning 19 and losing one since early July. He gained victories against every National League club. Three teams had beat him only once, and two never won against him. He could endure, even pitching extra innings—13—in a winning effort on June 2, against Brooklyn. He would pitch on two days’ rest; he might pitch nine innings and then throw relief the following day. In addition to winning 26 games, he saved three. In the Deadball Era, managers exploited their pitchers as needed. In 1914, the 22-year-old’s last good year, he pitched 332 innings.114

For the second game, Mack chose Eddie Plank, one of his college-trained players (Gettysburg), and a lefty, who threw a fastball and curve, delivering the ball with his cross-fire delivery. The cross fire confused batters because the pitcher, instead of moving the front foot toward the batter, swung the foot to the side and threw with a large, sweeping motion. In other words, Plank threw across his body, landing his right foot on the first-base side of the mound. Although this motion added deception, only a few pitchers could use it and maintain control. Left-handed cross-fire pitchers with control were a rarity, and few batters could handle him.115 As Eddie Collins once observed, “He was not the trickiest, and not the possessor of the most stuff. He was just the greatest.”116

By 1914, Plank was so great that he had already won 284 games, averaging more than 20 games a season and winning 64 percent of the time. He had shut out his opponents 59 times and won 15 games. At 38, Plank still had a lively arm, one that would place him among the winningest left-handers of all time. When a batter confronted Plank, he faced not only the unorthodox delivery of an experienced, crafty left-hander, he endured a time-consuming, annoying set of rituals. “Human rain delay,” a term later associated with Mike Hargrove, first baseman for the Cleveland Indians, applied to Plank’s pitching-mound decorum. After he received the catcher’s signal, he put his cap back in place, tucked his shirt, tugged at his sleeve, pulled up his trousers, and then, perhaps, asked for another ball, one that he might rub with dirt—before starting the entire ritual again. Plank provoked anxiety among fans, writers, and even his own teammates. The time between Plank’s pitches appeared eternal, in part because of his annoying ritual, and in part because games in the Deadball Era lasted just more than two hours. Baseball was an efficient game during in the early 1900s, unless Eddie Plank was on the mound.117

Plank had pitched only 185 innings in 1914. Five times in his career he had pitched 300 or more innings, including 346 innings in 1905. And with his brilliant pitching in the 1913 World Series, Mack would expect another outstanding effort. In 1913, Plank dueled Christy Mathewson in two of the most illustrious pitching contests in World Series history. In Game Two of the World Series, Plank and Mathewson pitched nine scoreless innings, and in a controversial move, Mack sent Plank to the plate with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth. Plank’s fielder’s choice contributed to a scoreless inning. Although Plank lost the game by giving up three runs in the 10th, he came back to battle against Mathewson in Game Five, throwing a two-hitter to clinch the series.118

And the Eddie Plank–led A’s still displayed all the confidence of dynastic champions, especially in front of raucous, fanatically supportive Philadelphia fans. Before the game, “[t]he Athletics were full of pepper . . . and brought the crowd to its feet by some remarkable infield practice . . . the team looked full of fight and determined to regain lost ground.” With another highly skilled, experienced pitcher, the champion A’s still remained clear favorites over the youthful Braves.119

Plank dominated the Braves for eight innings, shutting down the Boston players at every turn. In the first inning, he allowed two Braves to reach base. When the hot-hitting Hank Gowdy, the Braves’ top batter in Game One, stepped to the plate, Plank forced Gowdy to hit a harmless fly to center. Plank allowed two men on with two men out in the fourth, only to have Barry brilliantly spear a ball for the last out. In the sixth, Plank walked Gowdy and hit Maranville, probably trying to keep Rabbit from knocking the ball to right field, but the inning ended when Deal hit a harmless grounder to Baker at third.120

James pitched masterfully, just as effectively as he had been pitching since July. Baker and Strunk swung wildly at his pitches; the A’s often swung at James’s first pitch, hitting harmless grounders. In fact, no Athletic managed a hit until the sixth inning, when, with one out, Schang smashed a James fastball down the left-field line for a double. And with Plank up to bat, Gowdy dropped a James pitch for a short passed ball. Schang darted for third, and Gowdy drilled a strike to Deal for an out—just one of umpire Bill “Lord” Byron’s controversial calls. The A’s wasted a rare scoring opportunity when Plank, a .206 lifetime hitter, grounded out weakly, finishing off the inning. The A’s, now under duress, complained, moaned, and “kicked” much more than their usual gentlemanly selves.121 According to a Boston Globe reporter, “I had never seen so much kicking at the umpiring in a World’s Series game,” with the Athletics kicking “five times.”122 The A’s, for instance, groused loudly in the seventh inning when James picked off Eddie Collins at first base, snuffing out another potential rally.123

Although Plank stopped the Braves from scoring for eight innings, and although “the $100,000 infield” executed spectacular play after spectacular play, Plank could not prevent the Braves from lengthy at bats, the type that wear down pitchers. Plank had thrown more than 120 pitches by the end of the eighth inning, and the Braves in the ninth, after Maranville grounded out to first, stood ready to execute small-ball tactics to earn a run. Deal, who had been relentlessly criticized as a weak hitter, smashed a fly to center that Strunk misjudged. Deal reached second and, during the next at bat, toyed with Plank, a pitcher whose “biggest weakness,” according to Ty Cobb, was his inability to hold runners.124 Deal stretched his lead at second, and catcher Wally Schang threw a pickoff attempt to shortstop Barry. Deal, who had no intention of returning to second, instead scampered to third. Barry—and there are conflicting accounts on the next moment—inexplicably failed to throw to third. James stepped to the plate (no thought of a relief pitcher) and struck out. But Leslie Mann, placed in the lineup for his prowess against left-handers, popped a soft hit to right field that glanced off Collins’s glove, scoring Deal. As A’s scout Al Maul described it,

Collins turned his back, ran as I have never seen a man do, and then, if he had measured the distance and had electric timers, could not have turned and leaped into the air, yes, leaped backward, at a more exact instant. His glove just tipped the ball. It looked like Collins had come up out of a cellar in the ballpark, so unexpected was his appearance. For one fraction of a second I thought that he had the ball, then I saw him tumble to the earth, and Deal shot over the plate. . . . I never expected to see any living man come so close to the impossible.125

Near misses do not count in baseball; the Braves had scored.

Beantown Follows Every Play

In Boston, 12,000 fans packed Copley Square near the Boston Globe scoreboard. With traffic shut down from 1:30 p.m. until 4:00 p.m., when the final score was announced, Boston fans, as part of a true community event, kept track of the game via telegraph. The crowd learned the verdict from telegraph operators a full minute before the score went up. “They whiled the time bandying all kinds of remarks, guying, laughing, fidgeting.”126 Telegraph runners dispersed throughout the crowd in front of the Globe office interpreted every message that came across the ticker—and the crowd noise whirred and droned throughout the square. A runner might yell out, “Mann knocked a single,” or “Deal scored for the Braves.” The crowd would yell, and, if in the next inning, a “goose egg” appeared, the crowd would roar.127

In the last inning, James seemed to be tiring. Barry had walked and reached second when Gowdy dropped the ball; Walsh batted for Plank and also drew a walk. When right fielder Eddie Murphy strode to the plate, Johnny Evers, as both second baseman and manager on the field, clearly perceived left-handed-hitting Murphy’s tendency to pull the ball. Evers knew that Murphy had not hit into a double play all year and ordered an infield shift. With James ready to pitch, Evers called time out.

“Get closer to the bag,” Evers yelled at Maranville, who moved closer to second, five feet from the bag.

With James set to pitch, Evers called time out again. “Come over. What’s the matter, you deaf? He is a dead right hitter and never hits to the left offside of the diamond. Get nearer to second base.”

Always the diplomat, Maranville retorted, “You fathead. I’m almost on second base now.”

Evers just barked, “Get closer,” and commanded third baseman Charlie Deal to play at shortstop. The captain of the Braves, the on-field director, then ordered James to pitch. Murphy smashed the ball between James’s legs, and Maranville performed his magic.128 According to a reporter,

The count down to three and two, Murphy hit a fast grounder that Maranville picked up on the dead run, touched the base just ahead of Walsh, and then while out of position and being interfered with by the runner. The Rabbit overcame all obstacles as if he were inhuman and shot the ball to first, and the game was over.129

Said Clark Griffith, president of the Washington Senators, “It was the greatest play I ever saw in my years of baseball.”130 James’s spitball pitching, Evers’s baseball intelligence, and Maranville’s talent in the field, an unbeatable force since August, secured triumph for the Braves once again.

Boston Erupts

The now-15,000 fans on “Newspaper Row” in front of the Globe office on Washington and Milk Streets went wild in the ninth when the number 1 went up for the Braves and 0 for the A’s. “Hats and caps and newspapers were flung in the air, and that intense exultant shout went up and lasted for some minutes.” A reporter for the Globe, aware of how a pleasant World Series victory contrasted with events taking place across the Atlantic, wrote:

Troubles and cares and war and the high cost of living were all forgotten—had been forgotten for two hours—by the crowd. Antwerp had fallen—what of it? The Braves had won the second game in the World Series, and Boston is the “home of the Braves.” So who can expect Boston to consider international war or peace at such a moment? Tush! Such things are very trivial compared with battle between the Braves and the Athletics.131

A day later, an artist from a St. Louis newspaper drew a globe, half of which was a baseball, and, in the western sphere, precisely in Boston, one found an American flag hoisted atop a baseball bat, with hats and derbies floating through a cloud. The eastern sphere of the same globe was adorned with a black casket bunting, falling from Europe, a part of the world covered with artillery pieces and smoke.132

Thousands of fans jammed the Globe’s telephone lines for hours. Many disbelieved the telephone operator, who, for two hours, had said the score was nothing to nothing. But when the Braves won, fans offered chocolates and other gifts to the operators.

Gaining a second victory against the champions, nearly eliminating the home-field advantage, and knowing that they could win in the closest of games, the Braves, as they left the field, reveled in the cheering of their most loyal fans, the Royal Rooters. In the game’s final act, the Royal Rooters marched across the field behind a brass band: Johnny Evers and former Boston mayor Honey Fitzgerald led the band. Fitzgerald, whose eldest daughter Rose had married Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. on October 7, just two days earlier, could now continue festivities in Boston.133 Stallings ordered the equipment manager to ship the road uniforms back to Boston. “We won’t be coming back here,” he boasted.134 On the night of October 11, Boston fans waited all night to buy tickets. Lines had formed around Fenway before dark. As a Globe reporter notes, “Boston, last evening, was surcharged with a suppressed excitement in anticipation of the great battle which will be renewed at 2 this afternoon.”135

A 70-piece brass band and the city’s most prominent politicians greeted the Braves upon their arrival in Boston. The Braves were now comforted by the hometown advantage and heartened by the knowledge that one more victory just might form a barrier too imposing, even for a great team like the Philadelphia Athletics. By 1914, only one team, the 1907 Detroit Tigers, had faced a 0–3 deficit, and the Tigers had fallen to a hot-hitting (.471 average) Johnny Evers and the Cubs.136 Both the Braves, now captained by Evers, and the Athletics understood that a 3–0 advantage would be overpowering. (Of course, they did not know that no team would ever come back from a 0–3 deficit in the World Series.)

The Royal Rooters, usually associated with the Red Sox, formed the cornerstone of the Braves’ cheering section. “Nuf Ced” McGreevy, the founding father of the Rooters, owned the Third Base Saloon near the Huntington Avenue Grounds—the stadium used by the Red Sox prior to Fenway. The Third Base Saloon, the “last stop before home,” was a precursor to the twenty-first-century sports bar. It included, a “life-sized statue of a player, baseball paraphernalia, lights cast in the shape of balls, sports pictures, and a clock that keeps time with a pendulum made from a ball and a bat.”137 McGreevy, the absolute monarch of the Third Base Saloon, issued final judgment on matters baseball and otherwise; the finality of his judgments had earned him the title “Nuf Ced.”

The Rooters, with a brass band at the front, would march to their special seats and then chant out “Tessie,” a song they had sung to the Red Sox as they battled the Pirates in the 1903 World Series. The Rooters sang special versions of “Tessie” to members of the Red Sox. Instead of singing, “Tessie you know I love you madly,” they would belt out lyrics for individual Red Sox players, for instance, “Jimmy you know I love you madly.” The Rooters would alter lyrics for the opposing players, and their singing was such an annoyance that Tommy Leach, who played for the Pirates against the Red Sox in the 1903 World Series, once quipped, “I think those Boston fans actually won that Series for the Red Sox.”138 Although stiffly attired in suits, ties, starched collars, and bowlers, the Rooters zealously expressed their likes and dislikes. They also refused to back down to any opposition, and in the 1912 Boston–New York World Series, when deprived of their regular seats, they nearly rioted when approached by the Boston Mounted Police.139

Game Three

Pregame festivities before the third game inspired the Rooters and stirred the 35,000 (some estimates say 40,000) fans entering Fenway Park. Guided by mounted policemen, the Rooters paraded in front of both teams’ benches. Boston mayor James Michael Curley gave a gilded bat and gold ball to Gowdy and Maranville. Wearing a silk hat and frock coat, Honey Fitzgerald presented Stallings with a diamond stickpin. Stallings, breaking his superstitious tradition of refusing gifts before games, accepted. The crowd turned to Johnny Evers, who had won the Chalmers Award, judged by baseball writers as the “most important and useful player to the club and to the league.” (Maranville finished in second place.) Recipients received a Chalmers Model 30, a luxury car. To the delight of the Boston fans, Evers took delivery of the automobile right before the game, driving it around the field.140 Buoyed by two victories in Philadelphia, backed by the wildly cheering Royal Rooters, ready to support their pitcher Lefty Tyler, and inspired by their MVP hero Johnny Evers, the gritty, “game” Braves stood ready to battle the Athletics.

Yet, the Braves would now face a pitcher, the Athletics’ Bullet Joe Bush, who had achieved accolades a year earlier in the World Series as a young David overpowering a formidable Goliath, the New York Giants. Bush, a small-town Minnesota ballplayer whose mother was an immigrant from Poland, had skyrocketed to the major leagues. Bullet Joe had attained heroic stature when, as a 20-year-old, in Game Three of the 1913 World Series, he had subdued John McGraw’s Giants. Bush threw, according to Mack, one of the best fastballs in the league. Grunting with each pitch, pirouetting with the singular “Joe-Bush-Twist-Around” delivery, the right-hander mixed an occasional curve with his vicious fastballs. In Game Two of the 1913 World Series, Christy Mathewson and the Giants had slowed Philadelphia’s momentum, pitching a 10-inning, 3–0 shutout in Philadelphia. But a day later, they faced Bush’s blazing fastball and fell 8–2. “Giants Slain by Mere Boy,” proclaimed the October 10, 1913 edition of the Boston Globe.141 Bullet Joe, clearly not a one-game wonder, pitched with great success in 1914, amassing a 16–13 record and 3.06 ERA. If Bush could pitch up to his standards, if he could replicate his 1913 World Series heroics, and if the A’s could swing their potent bats, they could turn the World Series around and repeat as champions.

In the third game, Bush pitched skillfully, and the A’s batters, for the first time in the World Series, hit the ball sharply, as they had all season. They scored in the first inning, as Murphy doubled and Oldring sacrificed him to second. The Braves’ Joe Connolly, playing in left field, just a few yards in front of the rowdy, screaming, “Tessie”-singing Royal Rooters, dropped a Collins fly ball, allowing Murphy to score. But the Braves came back when, with two outs, Rabbit Maranville stole second and Hank Gowdy smashed a double into the section where the Royal Rooters were seated.142

Mr. and Mrs. Horace Gowdy, Hank Gowdy’s parents, cheered on their son—without his knowledge of their presence. The young, self-effacing Gowdy suffered from extreme nervousness and subsequent poor play every time he learned that his parents were observing him. During the summer, Boston had traveled to Hank’s home state of Ohio to play the Cincinnati Reds. In the first game of a doubleheader, Hank, unaware of his parents’ presence, slugged three hits and fielded brilliantly. Between games he learned that his parents were in attendance and then played miserably. Performing poorly when his parents were there to watch him had evolved into a pattern, and his mother revealed that a visit to Hank in grammar school had resulted in “shaking knees and white lips.” The Gowdys, as loyal parents and Braves fans, slipped into Boston under assumed names, only telling George Stallings—their source of tickets—of their venture. And Gowdy, “unburdened of the responsibility of having two pair of found eyes turned on him from the grandstand and believing his parents a few hundred miles away in Columbus, came across with the ‘wallop’ every time it was needed.”143

In the fourth, the A’s regained the lead as McInnis doubled into the left-field bleachers, and outfielder Jimmy Walsh singled him home. Nonetheless, when McInnis hit the ball to left, Connolly sprinted toward the foul line and plunged recklessly into the seats, inspiring the crowd, his teammates, and manager George Stallings. Stallings exulted that Connolly, by taking a “chance breaking his neck,” had “claimed the fighting spirit of the Braves.” Christy Mathewson, observing from the press box, called the Braves the “gamest club” he had ever seen, adding that he had “seen some game ones battling the old Giants, the Athletics, and the old Cubs.”144

When back at the plate, the Braves once again fought back: Schmidt singled, took second on a grounder to second, and then watched as Rabbit Maranville ignored the seriousness of the moment and treated the Fenway fans to one of his lighthearted antics. Maranville had hit a Texas leaguer into right field, just out of reach of Collins, McInnis, and Murphy. Although the ball was judged foul, Rabbit, seeing a chance to please the fans, happily circled the bases. The fans cheered and the Braves’ momentum never waned. Maranville usually combined playfulness with superb performances, and after his return to home plate, he inspired fans again, this time stroking a single that brought home Schmidt for the tying run.145

Strong Defense and “Tessie”

The game proceeded as so many Deadball Era games did: a defensive battle with great pitching. The crucial defensive play transpired in the eighth inning, when pitcher Bush ripped the ball hard down the first-base line. The ball went over the bag and was spinning toward the right-field line, probably for a triple; however, Butch Schmidt blocked the ball, allowing his momentum to carry him two strides beyond it.146 But he dove back—“like a cat after mouse”—fielded the ball, and tossed it to a lightning-quick Lefty Tyler, who “had come over to first simply on speculation.” Globe reporters judged it “one of the greatest plays ever pulled off on a ball field.”147

Between each inning and when the Braves came to bat, the Royal Rooters played noisily, belting out “Tessie” amidst a “jumble of drums, brasses, and cymbals.” They made music when Gowdy faced Bush and hit a home run. A Boston Globe reporter noted that the band, overwhelmed with excitement, blared out “indistinct” sounds, music that merely showed a “suspicion of Tessie emanating from the horns.” The Royal Rooters “cared little whether they were playing, ‘Tessie,’ ‘Sweet Adeline,’ or ‘Michigan,’ as long as they were playing ‘Tessie.’”148 In the 12th inning, “everybody was madly, blindly waving pennants, hats, scorecards, and caps, and hoarse to a whisper, they endeavored to send words of appreciation to the lanky backstop.” The crowd was passionate, intensifying its cries as the Athletics threatened to score in every inning until the fifth. The “lust-lunged shouters” sang “Tessie” with such enthusiasm that the Globe noted that “Connie Mack and Eddie Collins declared that it was ‘Tessie’ and not the Braves that beat them,” that the “incessant repetition of the song caused Bush to weaken in the crucial final inning,” and that “‘Tessie’ ought to be barred at World Series games, anyway.”149

Evers’s Boner

The game played out as a tight pitcher’s duel until the 10th. The A’s, still fighting like proud champions, loaded the bases in small-ball style: Schang singled, Murphy beat out a bunt, and the two runners moved up on a fielder’s choice to Evers. Collins walked, and the bases were full. (Early in the inning, Mack had sent his pitcher, Bush, to the plate. Bush, only 21 years old, had batted .189 and pitched 206 innings during the regular season. Still, Mack considered him his best bet as a pitcher and kept him in. Bush struck out.)150 With the bases loaded at a pivotal moment in the series, Mack would have bet that Johnny Evers would pull through, but when Baker hit a sizzler to Evers at second, the “meanest ball I ever handled,” he fumbled it, allowing Schang to score, and then, letting loose his inner torments and anxieties, Evers began cursing at the ball. Philadelphia’s Murphy, quick to notice the distracted, hesitant Evers, dashed across home plate, giving the A’s a 4–2 lead. Evers lamented, “What did I do but stand there plumb dumb. . . . I wished the ground had swallowed me.”151

The Braves rolled back the A’s attack as Possum Whitted snared an Eddie Collins fly for the last out of the inning. Boston fans feared the worst (Evers knew he might have committed the new “Merkle’s Boner” or “Snodgrass Muff”). But the hero of the World Series up until that point, Hank Gowdy, strode to the plate in the bottom of the 10th. Gowdy had already smashed a double in the second inning, a blast into the Royal Rooter section that had knocked in Maranville. Two days earlier, a writer for the Philadelphia Press had praised Gowdy for a “smile that knows no quit,” adding, “When you’re down on your luck and feeling fit for the hospital or the grave, just think of a chap who wouldn’t quit, Hank Gowdy, the Boston Brave.”152

Not dispirited by Evers’s serious mental lapse, and not bothered by a two-run deficit to the world champs, Gowdy knocked a Bush fastball into Fenway’s center-field seats for a home run. Some pessimistic Boston fans who had shifted close to the exits moved back to the seats. Josh Devore batted for Lefty Tyler but went down swinging. Maranville, in a practice common for Deadball Era players, took over as first-base coach: He began to wave, yell, and jeer at Bush. “Maranville,” Christy Mathewson observed, “slid up and down the coaching box on all parts of his anatomy and turned somersaults and threw dirt into his hair and acted like a tumbler, hollering as if he were crazy all the time.” The Braves’ players, reaching insufferable levels, taunted Bush and the A’s: “The whole Boston team seemed to go insane in an instant.”153

Bush, apparently reacting to the frenzied Bostonians, walked Moran. And Evers, with a chance to redeem himself, whacked a single to right, advancing Moran to third. The Chalmers Award winner had lifted his World Series batting average to above .400. Connolly knocked a fly to the outfield, and Moran scored the tying run for the Braves on their 1914 signature play, the sacrifice. Maranville, displaying his unique first-base coaching style, “turned somersaults, and the crowd went crazy.”154

Desperation at Sunset

A subdued, October twilight cast a glow on Fenway. Bill James, the season’s pitching hero and winner of Game Two in Philadelphia, entered as a reliever in the 11th inning. He stopped the A’s for two innings, despite yielding three walks. When the Braves took their turn to bat in the 12th, Gowdy advanced confidently to the plate; “the conviction seemed to filter through the multitude that the beginning of the end was at hand.”155 Bush pitched cautiously to Gowdy, getting him to foul off a couple of pitches. But Gowdy, who Mathewson judged to be hitting like a “demon,” slugged a Bush changeup for a double into the left-field bleachers.156

George Stallings, fearing that the game might be called because of darkness and sensing a pivotal moment in the series, acted in desperation. He substituted for both his star player and his star pitcher, replacing Gowdy with the former track star Les Mann, and sending Larry Gilbert to the plate for James. After Bush walked Gilbert, leaving men on first and second, Moran put down a catchable sacrifice bunt, but Bush charged toward the third-base line, fielded the bunt, and, anticipating the speedy Mann’s charge toward third, hurriedly threw the ball away from Baker into left field. Moran scored the winning run.157

That run produced the “complete intoxification of the Royals” and, it seemed, thousands of Boston fans.158 The Royal Rooters, clutching blue and white pennants, fought their way over the low fence in left field and pushed their way to the front of the crowd. The band burst into Yale’s famous “Boola,” or the “Undertaker’s Song,” and Honey Fitzgerald led the crowd in “Sweet Adeline.” The Rooters worked their way through swarming fans. They moved past the Athletics’ bench, beyond the grandstand, and out through the gate by the first-base bleachers. Boston’s 35,000 fans flowed across Fenway, a “glorious ending of a perfect day and a great game.”159

Confidence

Mack sensed the importance of the game and later reminisced, “[I]f we had won it, we would have won the series.”160 With the Braves ahead, 3–0, Stallings’s confidence swelled. He ordered the traveling secretary, Herman Nickerson, to cancel the Braves’ train reservations to Philadelphia, scheduled after the fourth game. Nickerson, although beset with anxiety and doubt, complied. He then prayed for one more Braves victory.161

Nickerson, undoubtedly, was not the only Bostonian who prayed. Baseball fans well understood that the Athletics were champions, and that the Athletics, especially if hitters like Collins, Baker, and Schang became untracked, could still win it all. The Athletics possessed stellar pitching, capable of carrying the team through win streaks. The A’s had experienced highs and lows all summer, and their highs—their win streaks—punctuated the entire season: On nine occasions the A’s had won three in a row; two times four games in a row; three times five in a row; twice seven; and, most impressively, a 12-game winning streak in July. The Braves had manufactured their phenomenal comeback, catching the Giants in July and August. Yet, in August, the Athletics had attained even higher winning percentages than the Miracle Braves. While the Braves went 19–6 (.760) in August, the Athletics went 23–5 (.821). The A’s, probably more than any other team, could recover momentum, overcome the deficit, and surprise baseball fans everywhere.162 In addition, they had one of baseball’s greatest minds leading them: Connie Mack. Before the fourth game, Mack, having lost faith in his former World Series stalwart, Albert Bender, shrewdly turned to 23-year-old Bob Shawkey, a second-year pro with a 15–8 record.

Game Four

Mack’s gamble appeared to work. Shawkey, a fastball and curveball pitcher, stymied the Braves for three innings. In the first three innings, the Braves managed four groundouts, two flyouts, and a walk to Gowdy. Before walking in the second inning, Gowdy, now a superstar in the eyes of Boston fans, thrilled the crowd for one brief moment, when he blasted a ball into the left-field bleachers, but foul. Up against the Braves’ Dick Rudolph, the Athletics’ Eddie Collins singled sharply to center in the first; Jimmy Walsh knocked a double to the outfield railing in the second; and Rube Oldring managed his first hit of the World Series, a single, in the third.

But the Braves’ defense always tightened, stifling the Athletics’ struggle to fight back and foiling Mack every time. After his single with two outs in the third, Oldring bolted toward second, but Gowdy thwarted his steal attempt with a perfect throw to Maranville. With one out in the fourth inning, Baker reached first after he smashed a liner down the first-base line that smacked Schmidt in the face, bloodying his nose. With the hit-and-run on, McInnis hit a single to left. As Baker rounded toward third, McInnis, “slow as a turtle,” headed toward second and was gunned down: Connolly to Deal to Evers.163 In the bottom of the fourth, patience and luck rewarded the Braves. Evers, waiting and waiting on each pitch, drew a walk. Connolly hit a hard bounder to Collins, who, despite his reputation as one of the greatest second basemen of all time, bobbled the ball. Although he tossed out Connolly at first, his slight mistake allowed Evers to move on to second. Whitted smashed a grounder toward Collins, a sharp hit into the hole in right, and Collins blocked the ball with his shins, injuring his leg. Collins had prevented Evers from scoring, but the Braves’ captain stood on third. Collins limped, gaining his composure during a time-out. The tall, powerful Butch Schmidt, in typical Braves’ fashion, “pulled something of a squeeze play,” and hacked the ball into the ground at short as Evers raced home.164 A’s shortstop Jack Barry could only throw out Schmidt at first for the second out. Gowdy later grounded out, but the Braves took the lead, 1–0.165

The A’s battled back in the fifth, when Barry, knocking his first hit of the series, reached on an infield hit, a sizzling grounder to third that Maranville gloved behind Deal and fired—too late—to first. Schang dribbled a fielder’s choice to Evers that pushed Barry to second, and Shawkey, waiting on a Rudolph changeup, walloped a ball for a two-run double to center, scoring Barry. But the inning fizzled as Murphy grounded out, and Oldring went down swinging. Still, the A’s remained in the game. The “Great White Elephants,” although wounded, were still standing strong.

In the bottom half of the fifth inning, the Braves’ fortune rose once more, and on “came the Braves with their characteristic rush.”166 After Maranville grounded out to Barry, his counterpart at short, and Deal to his fellow third baseman, Baker, Braves’ pitcher Dick Rudolph knocked a clean hit to center. Moran smoked a ball into left center for a double, sending Rudolph to third. With Moran on second and Rudolph on third, Boston’s captain, the “nervous and irritable” Johnny Evers, strode to the plate and “matched his years of experience against Connie Mack’s last hope.”167 Evers worked the count to 3–2, waiting for his “groove ball,” and then the “tricky batsman” smashed a single to center that scored two runs and put the Braves on top, 3–1.168 The “crowd certainly did howl,” offering its approval for the Chalmers Award winner.169

But the 1913 World Series victors never yielded. Shawkey picked off an unsuspecting Evers for the final out of the fifth. In the top of the sixth, Eddie Collins led off with a vicious liner through the mound, impossible for the pitcher to grab and looking like a “sure hit,” but Maranville speared the ball “as it came sizzling off the ground” and threw Collins out by 15 feet. “Eddie,” a Boston Globe reporter observed, was “dumbfounded and almost paralyzed when he saw the play come off. The crowd just stood up and howled and howled.”170

In the bottom of the sixth, Mack replaced Shawkey with Herb Pennock, the smooth, collected left-hander who had finished the season with five straight victories, achieving an 11–4 record. Stallings, in turn, replaced left-handed-hitting Connolly with the right-handed, defensive-minded Les Mann. Mann flied out to center, but Pennock, who, according to Grantland Rice, usually pitched each game “with the ease and coolness of a practice session,” faltered. Possum Whitted reached first on a hot grounder to Baker at third. Schmidt “banged a rap at Collins, which nearly knocked Eddie over,” and drove Possum to third.171 With Schmidt at first and Whitted at third with two outs, Stallings boldly called for a delayed double steal—one of the most thrilling Deadball Era tactics. With one out and two strikes on Gowdy, Schmidt broke for second, and Whitted then began a dash down the third-base line. Gowdy, for the first time in the series, struck out, and Collins intercepted the throw from Schang, tossing out Schmidt as he attempted to get back to first. No run scored, but the Braves still held the lead, and they were still attacking relentlessly.172

In the seventh inning, the proud champion A’s tried to come back again as Walsh walked and took second on a Rudolph wild pitch. The Braves stifled the rally with crafty pitching and smart defense: Rudolph struck out two of Philadelphia’s best clutch hitters, Barry and Schang, and Gowdy whipped a strike to Evers, who, with a one-handed stab, caught Walsh on second. In the eighth, Murphy crushed a long fly ball to left center for the A’s, a ball that looked as if it would go for extra bases, but Les Mann, Stallings’s defensive replacement for Connolly, sprinted after it for the catch. The A’s went down in order as they managed a groundout and weak fly ball for the other two outs.173

According to Reports

Reporters at the game witnessed the A’s battling up until the eighth but approaching the ninth as a defeated team. Perhaps the struggling A’s in the ninth left the impression that they lacked determination, but sportswriters composed their stories through the prism of hindsight. Reporters who offered their description of the game, and they all wrote their remarks after the Braves won, saw a listless A’s team. The colorful, perceptive Hearst papers’ baseball writer, Damon Runyon, said of the A’s approach to Game Four, “They had little spirit. They have acted all along as if they were carrying the championship in a gallon bucket and were afraid of spilling it. Only on one or two occasions have they displayed the fighting expected of champions.”174 Philadelphia reporter James Isaminger, relating a more visceral metaphor, concluded that the Athletics “didn’t exhibit any more enthusiasm than a missionary being led up to a cannibal king’s soup pot.”175

In the ninth, Mack sent up the heart of the A’s order: Collins, Baker, and McInnis. But the confident American League MVP (Chalmers Award) Eddie Collins struck out on four pitches; Home Run Baker hit a slow grounder to Evers; and Stuffy McInnis, a lifetime .307 hitter, ended the series with a groundout to Deal at third. Perhaps the A’s lessened their intensity, but the crafty Dick Rudolph fooled the A’s as he had deceived opponents all year. He mixed his fastball, change, and spitter, often seeming to throw a spitter when tossing another pitch, and he was always one or two steps ahead of the batter. The Braves, with their craftiness, boldness, and “gameness,” actively fought and won the last inning of the last game of the 1914 World Series.

The A’s faded swiftly in the last inning, and with the final out, thousands swarmed toward the dugout. Stallings addressed the fans, and Maranville, dragged out of the locker room shirt undone, spoke to spectators. Then Boston politicians took their turn. Mayor James Michael Curley and former mayor Honey Fitzgerald, who had briefly battled as political rivals in 1913, spoke to the crowd. Boston fans cheered them both, saving their most enthusiastic applause for the redoubtable Honey Fitz, the leader of the Royal Rooters and their band. The band, amongst thousands of fans, paraded around the field singing “Tessie,” and it then wound its way from the Fen to Huntington Avenue and Copley Square, where they sang to the defeated Athletics as they packed their bags at the Copley Plaza Hotel.176

The Miracle Braves

In October 1914, Damon Runyon praised the Braves, offering a grand tribute: “One of the greatest and gamest ball clubs of all time. There can be no question as to the status of the Braves now. They go into history . . . with the memory of . . . all the other great clubs that have risen to high power over the baseball world.” It was, indeed, the greatest comeback story in sports history, or, as Runyon offered, the “greatest feat in baseball history.”177 The “Miracle Braves,” as they were now being called, had suffered through abysmal season after abysmal season in the first 12 years of the twentieth century, seven times suffering more than 100 losses. In early 1914, they plunged into the cellar with their 4–18 start. They languished in last place as late as July 18. In mid-July, they had even suffered defeat to a minor-league team. Yet, they battled back to reach the top, struggling against such talented teams as Chicago and St. Louis, and most notably John McGraw’s imposing New York Giants, finishing the season with a 51–16 record.178 As the New York Times noted,

The all-conquering spirit of this Boston team carried it through the stormiest campaign baseball has ever known. Inspired by its own ability, the Braves accomplished something no team has ever accomplished before in a World’s Series since the National Commission assumed charge in 1905. It captured four straight games in as many played. It turned the whole real world of baseball upside down. In a year of reversals in sport, the Boston team accomplished a task, which a few days before looked impossible. A ball club which started the season as a joke reached the perch deluxe in baseball in a blaze of glory.179

Heroes of the Modern Game

The Boston team, “inspired by its own ability,” embodied the great tale of the American dream, the Horatio Alger story. In a typical Alger story, a poor boy, through hard work, courage, and honesty, rises up and achieves Victorian respectability. Alger stories had achieved popularity with the publication of Ragged Dick in 1868. But after Alger’s death in 1899, his books sold in the millions, and in the early 1900s, baseball writers, including Gilbert Patten (pen name: Burt Standish) produced another version of the Alger tales: the immensely popular Frank Merriwell stories. In a Patten sports novel, Merriwell, a young man of integrity, attends school, fends off bullies, and then leads a struggling team in victory over a traditional, dominant rival, often securing a last-second victory. Merriwell, who fought for “truth, faith, justice, the triumph of right,” represented to many Americans “muscular Christianity,” where vigorous, masculine role models succeeded because of their gentlemanly, Christian values. Merriwell, although not poor, was impeccably modest, and through strength of mind and character could snatch victory when defeat seemed imminent.180 The Boston Braves, although not always modest, exemplified the grit of a Merriwell character, earning the accolade from countless writers as being “game.” Even Connie Mack remarked, “They are a game club, and they deserve to win.”181 Echoing the characters from boys’ fiction, the Braves, tough and never yielding, shot up from last place to defeat baseball’s perennial victors: the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Athletics.

And the Braves had accomplished this feat as part of a new, legitimized national pastime. Victorian Americans had judged baseball players as unsavory. Davy Jones, who played for 15 years during the Deadball Era, commented that “baseball wasn’t a very respectable occupation back then.” The parents of his intended girlfriend concluded that baseball was in such ill repute that they forbade their daughter from dating him.182 Americans, imbued with a Puritan work ethic, slowly accepted such new leisure pursuits as baseball. As historian Michael McGerr observes, Victorian Americans often disliked ballplayers because “professional athletes seemed to devote their lives to pleasure instead of production, to dissipation instead of self-control.”183

Christy Mathewson’s mother had hoped that her son would train for the ministry; baseball, she feared, offered little career satisfaction. But Mathewson transformed himself into an apostle for the game of baseball, validating the sport as a “Christian gentleman.” He, like the fictional Merriwell, was an exemplar of “muscular Christianity.” While the Braves had their rough side—Stallings’s language, Evers’s anger, and Maranville’s antics—fans and journalists recognized their determination, their “never-say-die” spirit. Catcher Hank Gowdy, the humble, determined hero of the World Series, could have been mistaken for Frank Merriwell. Soon after the World Series ended, fans throughout the country feted the Braves as national celebrities. The Miracle Braves paraded through the streets of Boston as World Series champions. Throughout the winter, Braves players were toasted at banquets. Rudolph, Gowdy, and Evers returned to their hometown as heroes. Two days after the World Series, Dick Rudolph, a Fordham alumnus, attended the Fordham–Middlebury football game and amid parades, “college yelling,” and speechmaking, “received the greatest ovation ever accorded to a former Fordham athlete.”184 When Hank Gowdy returned to his hometown of Columbus, Ohio, in late October, thousands marched, escorting him from the train station to the Ohio Statehouse.185 In Troy, New York, 5,000 citizens, including several drum corps, 10 marching bands, and torch-bearing fans, cheered the National League’s Most Valuable Player, baseball’s Horatio Alger character, Johnny Evers.186

The Braves’ victory validated the new, modern ball game of the new, modern country. When Johnny Evers, a rags-to-riches ballplayer on a rags-to-riches team, drove his Chalmers automobile in Fenway Park, a high-tech concrete and steel ballpark, he signaled how well the American dream matched modern, Progressive America. The season of 1914 formed a bridge to a modern era. Evers exemplified the modern progressive player. He systematically studied every dimension of the game in the way his Progressive Era counterparts had examined education, government, public health, and philanthropic giving. Progressives had promoted systematic charitable giving, not merely random, emotional, heartfelt gifts to the poor; they endorsed “scientific baseball,” not semiskilled players performing in front of raucous gamblers. Evers and his manager George Stallings represented the “revolution in values,” the shift from small-town mores to sophisticated businesslike thinking. Plant managers in the 1910s stressed time studies to improve worker efficiency; baseball managers studied hitting lanes so that players reached first more frequently.

This shift in perspective corresponded to the transformation of baseball venues. Before 1909, the A’s had played in a wooden stadium that held 13,000; by 1914, they were playing in Shibe Park, the first stadium built with concrete and steel (1909). Shibe, with a Beaux-Arts cupola at the entrance and a French Renaissance façade, could hold 32,000.187 The Braves played Opening Day 1914 at the Huntington Grounds, a broken-down wooden stadium that could hold 11,000. They left the field as World Series victors in Fenway Park, a permanent edifice that could hold more than 35,000. Owners invested in the new parks, with the newest technologies: telephones and electric-powered elevators.188 In 1914, fan territory near the ballparks radiated outward, with streetcar lines and roads for automobiles. Indeed, Henry Ford’s assembly line, the quintessential modern apparatus, began producing Model Ts just four months before Opening Day 1914. Americans could buy toasters and blenders; they would have to stop their Model Ts at stoplights as they headed toward the newest retail space, the supermarket.189 They could even drive to the ballpark.

Industrialized technology influenced Americans at precisely the same moment that modern warfare experienced a transformation. As the Braves earned victories in August and September 1914, Europeans, with their steel helmets, machine guns, airplanes, submarines, and eventually poison gas and tanks, rushed into devastating battles, not comprehending the destructive powers of their new technologies. While Americans celebrated the exploits of the Braves, Europeans would soon lament the abhorrent conditions of incessant trench warfare. The day the Braves won the World Series, readers read the following headlines in the New York Times: “The Western Front, Germans Pressing On to Capture Ostend” and “Belgian Government Flees to France.” Americans read about events farther east: “The Russians Fall Back” and “Warsaw Is Threatened.”

As the Braves and their fans celebrated, thousands of refugees fled Belgium for the Netherlands. In Europe, the “August Madness” had transformed itself into a level of death and destruction the world had never before seen. In August and September 1914, hundreds of thousands of German, Russian, French, British, and Belgian soldiers fell to their deaths. But in that same year, the United States refrained from engagement, somewhat oblivious to the anguish of war. One reporter, failing to observe the disjunction between sports and war, observed after the World Series that the Braves had “fought harder than the Belgians at Liege.”190 The Miracle of the Marne, the successful last-ditch defense by hundreds of thousands of French troops to stop the German offensive, took place in the summer of 1914; the battle held no comparison to the Braves’ miracle. That summer, Americans, still peaceful, played baseball, a sport now recognized as a national pastime, but in Boston, as the last game of the World Series ended, as Charlie Deal threw across the diamond to Butch Schmidt, “fans were pouring over the fences in a torrent,” swarming the dugout, “until one wondered how such a great multitude had ever been compressed into the seating space.”191 The Braves, the Boston fans, and all Americans could pause and celebrate.