Game 18 - The Big Train Strikes Again

May 6, 1911
Philadelphia 6, Washington 7

[Yeah, I know I've been bad about keeping up the last couple of days, but it's not easy living in the past]

Tell me if this sounds familiar: The A's are on the verge of a sweep of Washington and setting up a legitimate winning streak when Walter Johnson steps in to rain on their parade. The shame of it was that Johnson hit a few rough patches, but the A's couldn't take advantage, as 20-year old Lefty Russell pitched poorly (this was the first time the Nats had scored 7 runs all season). So after a brief flirtation with a winning record, the A's chug out of Washington with a .500 record.

A few notes:

• Eddie Collins, who leads the league in BA, hit his first home run of the year, an inside-the-parker off a Big Train fastball. Here's how the Washington Herald called it:

  Eddie Collins home run poke was a pretty piece of knitting. It happened in the eighth when the little infielder met wone of Johnson's fast ones and sent it smoking on a line toward George McBride. "Mac" stuck out one hand, but missed, and before Milan and Wid Conroy could line up, the ball had bumped up against the center field fence. Collins tore around the sacks like a mad man, and slid triumphantly home amid a cloud of dust. A slower man would never have gotten past third.

• Why was 20-year-old Lefty Russell facing Johnson, who was already becoming known as one of the greats? It seems that Connie Mack in planning for a long season, was planning to lean on young pitching early on so his more experienced hurlers would have plenty of energy for the stretch. And how did that strategy work out? We already know Collamore has pitched his last inning, and Russell has only one more ineffective start to come.
  
  
• Harry Davis continued to serve as manager while Connie Mack remained in Philadelphia recovering from pleurisy. Davis was struggling at the plate though. Sporting Life printed a rumor that he would be replaced as the regular first baseman by Claud Derrick after "Harry Davis Day" at Shibe Park. There were also rumors that Davis would take the freshly vacated managing job for the Cleveland Naps, to which Davis replied "not a chance"for this season. This saga will continue to play itself out over the next few weeks.
  
  
• According to the box score, the teams combined for 7 errors. This is also the first box score to list earned runs, and there were remarkably only 3 combined in a 13-run game. We can't necessarily call that reliable, as earned runs were a relatively new concept, and there was much disagreement at the time over which runs would count as such.
  
  
• A while back I wondered if the term "sweep" had been invented yet as none of the accounts I read used it when the A's suffered one in their opening series. Well it had, as Francis Richter mentioned it in his account in Sporting Life.
  
  
• The A's will now play against the league's western teams for the first time, starting with a 3-game set against the St. Louis Browns. But first, Mack had arranged for an exhibition game against the Baltimore Orioles (of the Eastern League - the modern Orioles are the former Browns). This was a fairly common way to make extra money for the team in this era. The Orioles won 7-6.
  

[Today's sources: http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045433/1911-05-07/ed-1/seq-13 and http://www.la84foundation.org/SportsLibrary/SportingLife/1911/VOL_57_NO_10/SL5710005.PDF]

Game 16 - Consul the Man-Ape Jinxes Nats

May 4, 1911
Philadelphia 6, Washington 2
















(click to enlarge)

Yesterday we had a strange mystery in the game recap, and here we have another one. Let's see if we can make sense of this account from our friend "Senator" of the Washington Times:

No wonder they couldn't win. They were jinxed. Did you see it come in and take a front seat, close to the screen?

Did you see Germany Schaefer* and Kid Elberfeld shake hands with it?

Well - there you are. Jimmy McAleer grunted and groaned as he saw it come in and take its seat there, and when his hired men communed with the strange thing they call Consul, man-ape, Jimmy knew the nifty Nationals were jinxed and couldn't win.

They didn't either.

So what happened in this game, other than a 6-run fifth inning allowing the Mackites to cruise to victory? Well, a quick bit of googling reveals that there were several famous chimpanzees named Consul who acted on the Vaudeville stage and were generally decked out in men's suits. Here's an obituary for one of them from the New York Times. If you read one obituary for an once-famous acting chimp today, read this one.

Well, now we all know it's bad luck to shake hands with a chimp before a baseball game.

In other, more relevant news, for the first time this season, the Philadelphia Athletics are not a losing team. At 8-8, they're 7.5 games back from the red hot Tigers, who are still yet to lose their third contest.

* The other day I mentioned that Harry Davis had once stolen first base from second. Germany Schaefer was the player most associated with this strategy, which MLB eventually outlawed. The idea was to set up a double-steal with a player on third - once the catcher threw to second to catch Schaeffer, the runner on third would dash home. If the steal of second didn't draw a throw, the runner would steal first back in order to try the trick again (it's only confirmed that Schaefer tried this trick once, but it's possible it happened other times as well).

Schaefer was generally an average player, but he achieved stardom for his antics on and off the field. His bio over at the Baseball Biography Project lists some of the best. I love that he tried the old hidden ball trick during the World Series, but my favorite is the bizarre story of showing up at a Philadelphia police court to successfully defend all the drunkards slated to appear that day.

Though we can laugh at the sheer joy of many of his pranks from a safe distance of 100 years. I can't help but wonder what the reaction would be to such a player today. Consider the reaction to Prince Fielder's bombing of home plate a few years ago. Or Chad Johnson/Ochocinco/Johnson's staged antics over in that other professional sports league. Would today's fans find his antics charming or would it come across as unseemly? I'll bet it would start some healthy arguments in barrooms and blogs.

[Today's source for cartoon, box score, and recap: http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1911-05-05/ed-1/seq-14.pdf]

Caught Stealing - A Strange Interlude [UPDATED]

[See below for update]

There was a really unusual turn in the NYT game account for today's matchup, but since it didn't really fit in with the narrative, I figured it should get its own post. In the middle of his otherwise normal recap, the unnamed sports writer for the New York Times drops everything and goes off on a weird tangent:

The only unusual thing that happened was the unpardonable act of Eddie Collins in being caught trying to steal a base. This sort of thing calls for some action by the proper authorities. Things have come to a pretty pass when the wigwag system of the Athletics fails so utterly. It looks as if there was signal tipping going on. That's what it looks like.

The catastrophe happened this way. Collins pumped a two-bagger to left field in the eighth inning. He looked at the bench for instructions - you know that's the way they play this "inside ball" nowadays. Connie Mack rubbed his eye and twitched his ear. That meant for Collins to look and listen. See? He took a lead of thirty feet. He was then sixty feet from third. Close scrutiny shows that it took just 3.1987564 seconds for the ball to travel from Jack Quinn to Sweney and from Sweeney over to Hartzell at third. Connie Mack tipped over a cup of water which was the signal for Collins to tear up the trail to third. If Collins had traveled the required sixty feet in 2.99873 seconds, instead of eighty-nine one-hundredths slower than that, Hartzell would never have tagged him with the leather. As it was, Collins was nailed sliding in, by a margin of three and thirty-seven one-hundredths city blocks. How the king-pin base traveler* of the American League could ever have timed his flight so carelessly is a colossal puzzle to mathematicians.

Why devote two paragraphs in a six-paragraph story about a 13-4 rout to a single irrelevant caught-stealing play? Well my guess is that he's just trying to find a way to keep things interesting in the wake of a frustrating game for the home team. He does so, too, with this delightfully bizarre discourse.

Incidentally, we know that Collins stole a lot of bases, but there's no data for most of his seasons on how often he was caught stealing. Baseball-reference has no figure for how often he was caught in 1911, though he successfully swiped 38 bags (less than half of his total from the prior year). It does, however, list 22 caught-stealings to 63 steals for 1912, a rather pedestrian 74% success rate.

* Collins led all of baseball in stolen bases the prior year with 81. He'll lead the AL three more times in his career, but he'll never approach the 80s again.

[Source: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9D00E6D91439E333A25757C0A9639C946096D6CF]

UPDATE

Ok, so maybe this interlude isn't as bizarre and out-of-place as I thought. In a nice little bit of serendipity, just after I posted this, I spotted a tweet from @wezen_ball that referenced an article from the NYT Magazine from Sunday, April 30, 1911. Here's the full post and a link to the original NYT article.

It turns out it was about how a scientific approach, or "inside ball," was changing the game with new elements of strategy and signaling. The writers of that piece and of today's game recap are uncredited, but I would say there's an excellent chance that they're one and the same. In the first Yankee game since the Magazine piece was published, today's writer is clearly having a little fun in a moment where the "inside ball" approach failed.

Anyway, mystery solved! Many thanks to Larry from Wezen-Ball.

Game 15 - "A Fusillade of Hits All Over the Plateau"

May 3, 1911
Philadelphia 13, New York 4

"ATHLETICS BATSMEN ON WILD RAMPAGE" screamed the headline in the New York Times. Now that's more like it. The A's dispatched the Yankees with ease to take their second series win of the season. But that's a pretty boring and modern way to say it, isn't it? The Times, as usual, was able to summon the proper words:

The Philadelphia Athletics flayed the Yankees into submission on the Hilltop yesterday by a fusillade of hits all over the plateau, until Fisher and Quinn the New York pitchers, were about ready to be rushed to an emergency hospital. The score was 13 to 4, the numerous counts of the Newlyweds coming as a reward for the season's most violent outburst of titanic bat wielding.

It was a rematch of the teams' game 2 starters, but this time Jack Coombs got the best of Ray "Pick" Fisher. In fact, the Yankees only managed four hits off of Coombs, who seems to be recovering nicely from his recent bout with malaria, but his teammates' four errors helped put some runs on the board for New York.

No matter, though. The Macks were able to score seemingly at will and topped their previous season-high for runs scored by two. Moreover, "every mother's son of the world's champions laced the ball safely, a few of them indulging in the diversion so often that after a while it became a habit."

The A's also collected their second and third home runs of the season, one by soon-to-be-regular first baseman Stuffy McInnis (playing short today), and another "a Herculean drive*" by the 3-position's current occupant, Harry Davis.

Davis (left) was a native Philadelphian who bounced around the National League before jumping over to Ban Johnson's brand new American League in 1901, when he was named the first captain of Mack's Philadelphia A's. He was a stalwart and popular presence on the team for its first decade; Davis played a key role in the 1905 pennant campaign and was twice in the top-10 for WAR. Now 37 and having manned first for the A's entire existence, he will soon be stepping aside for the youngster McInnis**.

Incidentally, what does Harry Davis have in common with Babe Ruth, Ralph Kiner and teammate Home Run Baker? They're the only four players to lead their league in home runs for four consecutive seasons. I know, I know...Davis and Baker did it in the deadball era***; it's still cool. Though no one involved knows it, today's will be the last home run for hometown hero and Girard College grad Harry Davis. He hit 75 in his career****.

* During the play, CF Bert Daniels "collid[ed] with the stand and [was] temporarily disabled in his game attempt to reach over the seats and pluck the floating sphere." Would he be a candidate for the new 7-day concussion DL today? He was not removed from the game.

** Can anyone think of any other 37-year old infielders with a distinguished history as team captain whose game succumbed to the ravages of time?

***10, 8, 12, and 8 HR for Davis for 1904-1907 and 11, 10, 12, and 9 for Baker for 1911-1914. The A's were the class of the junior circuit when it came to deadball-era slugging. A member of Connie Mack's team held the league lead in homers for 10 of the league's first 14 seasons.

**** Please take the time to read his page at SABR's bio project. I love that Harry Davis was one of the few players to successfully steal first base from second before it was made illegal.

[Today's Source for box score and game account: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9D00E6D91439E333A25757C0A9639C946096D6CF; Image of Harry Davis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Harry_H._Davis.jpg]

Game 13 - "Clubbers from Clubville"

April 29, 1911
Philadelphia 10, New York 6
















The A's hit the road with a win, taking down the same Yankees that bedeviled them so in the first series of the season. Hippo Vaughn*, who beat the A's on opening day, was unable to repeat his magic and was chased after three ineffective innings. HOFer Eddie Plank started and finished the game for Philadelphia and pitched well but for a four-run sixth. Stuffy McInnis**, the solid Athletics shortstop, went 5-for-5 with 2 runs scored.

According to the New York Times, "This was just the kind of a game baseball fans like. There were smashing hits, circus catches, daring stops of white hot grounders, plenty of action on the base paths, and some costly errors***, all of which went to make up a concoction that you would neglect your business any day to see." But with the Athletics "clubbing the ball with all the fury and terror that gave them the title of champions of the world," it was all just too much for the Yankees.

Despite the loss, it was a special day for the home team, as the Yankees debuted the new center field bleachers of Hilltop Park. In a rare treat for this blog and its faithful readers****, we have actual photos from this game (all from the Times, click to enlarge). Thanks to the excitement of the new addition to the ball park, a raucous crowd of 18,000, one of the largest ever at Hilltop, was there to witness the game.

This is the first game of the A's 22-game road trip, and it's good to start things off with a win. The A's are now 6-7 and in a three-way tie for fourth place. The next game will be on May 2nd.

* Hippo got his nickname thanks to his size, and the Times calls him a "giant southpaw." Vaughn is listed on b-r as 6' 4" and 215 pounds, which in this day and age doesn't strike me as particularly huge. Wouldn't it be weird if Matt Garza were nicknamed "Hippo?"

** From the Times again: "These world's champions are clubbers from Clubville. The lion of the day's clouting was Jack McInnes [sic], from Gloucester, Mass, and he's a whaler. There were just seven balls pitched at McInnes yesterday. One was a three-bagger and four others were one-base hits. The other two spare balls were thrown at him so far on the outside that he couldn't reach them. Five hits out of five times up, and fielding the short-stopper's province with a fine-tooth comb, was a noble day's work for the Gloucester lad.

*** It's interesting that costly errors were included as part of what fans like to see. Errors were a bigger part of the game then, so I guess it makes sense that fans would accept them as such.

**** The plural here might be a bit optimistic.

[Today's source for reporting, box score, and photos: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9805E4DB1431E233A25753C3A9629C946096D6CF]












Otis Johnson Batting




















The Right Field Bleachers

Game 10 - The Haughty Sons of Mack

April 26, 1911
Washington 2, Philadelphia 7
















Wins have eluded the Athletics for most of April so far, so it's nice to see them get their third straight. Let's once again turn the proceedings over to "Senator" of the Washington Times (you can, and should, read the whole account here):

"The haughty sons of Connie Mack, all bedecked with the laurels of the past year and filled with the memories of their triumph over the young bruins, got busy once more and carved the Nationals into choice morsels.
...
Until that fifth inning, nary a man had scored, and it didn't look as if they were going to reach that four-cornered bit of cement, either. For three inning not a hit had been registered off the perpendicular person*. He was a world beater. But that fifth, Murphy opened it with a screaming base hit to right and advanced when Kid Elberfeld booted McInnis' firecracker. Bobby swayed in the gentle breeze, and Ira Thomas received a donation of one bag. Chief Bender whiffed questionably, the last ball being wide, but Amos Strunk, a peculiar looking chap, drew a pass, and Murphy just had to come in.

Rube Oldring was the candy infant** with his fine young two-bagger to left center, clearing the sacks. Bobby was much peeved about then, and didn't feel any better when Collins singled to center, scoring Oldring. Street took Baker's foul, and Zeb Milan ran nineteen miles out to the fence for Davis' clout. Five large man's sized tallies had trickled into the game and counted for the Athletics. It was really painful. Even Mrs. Bender, sitting in the upper tier of the grandstand, could not see the sense of it.

Chief Bender had his second start of the year and it was his second good one, though he took the loss on opening day. He gave up six hits and struck out a dozen Nationals***. Twelve Ks is a good total today, when MLB teams average over 7 per 9 innings. But it was even more impressive for 100 years ago, when hitters were more likely to put the ball in play and AL teams averaged 4.2 per 9. So if you want to do a currency conversion-type calculation, you could say that Bender's total would be worth 20 strikeouts today (this is meaningless, I know, but still fun)

After ten games, the A's are 4-6 and in 7th place in the 8-team AL. But the good news is they're only a half game out of fourth place, so there's hope for them to escape the lower division relatively soon. They're still 5 and 1/2 games out of first, and the Tigers are showing no signs of slowing down. They have two more games against the Senators before their big road trip. It's possible that they can get out of Philly with a .500 record****.


* Bob Groom, who twice led the American League in losses. He is, however, the owner of a no-hitter. And not only that, but one of his teammates no-hit those same White Sox the day before. It's the only time in MLB history that a team has been no-hit on consecutive days (though not consecutive games, as Groom's no-no came on the back end of a double-header). I like that Groom's granddaughter sponsors his baseball-reference.com page. Also, I have no idea where this turn of phrase, "perpendicular person" comes from.

** No clue on this one either.

*** Officially the Senators, this team was nicknamed the Nationals. This is despite the fact that they played in the American League, as it was common to nickname teams by the league they were in, especially in cities with two teams (hence the New York Americans or the Boston Americans for the Highlanders/Yankees and Red Sox, respectively).

**** Will they though? You'll have to wait and see, assuming you don't go off and look up the game results. Please don't, I'm trying to build a little suspense here with these 100-year-old events. I can tell you though that the Big Train himself, Walter Johnson, will have something to say for it, as he's scheduled to pitch for the Senators on the 28th as indicated in the cartoon by that fly-looking mascot (I believe it's a gnat for "Nationals")carrying the medicine bottle labeled "Dr. Walter Johnson, Reviving Drops".

Game 9

April 25, 1911
Washington 2, Athletics 11

















Back home in Philadelphia, the Athletics deliver their first drubbing of the season, welcoming the Washington Senators to Shibe Park with an 11-2 laugher. Today was also the day that the Athletics raised their championship pennant celebrating their big 1910 win.

I found a great game account from the Washington Times (also the source of the above cartoon - click to enlarge it), and rather than me tell you what happened, I think I'll just quote it at length*:

What was it that Admiral Phillips said at the battle of Santiago when he looked from his ship at the poor Spaniards? It was about cheering and dying, wasn't it? Yes**. Well, the same thing might well have been said when "Malaria John" Coombs, aided and abetted by eight fiends from the lower regions mauled and mangled Jimmy McAleer's band of Nationals. The White Elephants had been saving themselves up at Boston in order to take revenge upon McAleer's team. They did. Ow! It hurt, too.

John Coombs was reported in the morning to be ill at his home in Kennebunkport, Me. Yes, he had lost thirty-five pounds In five weeks, was a very sick man, couldn't move, and all that kind of junk. So he walked into the box and gave the Nationals just three wee hits and one of those was a weary thing, born of error of judgment. Yes, Coombs is a sick man, but save us from such sick men on this trip. "Long Tom" Hughes warmed up, and the fans decided that the battle was to be to the death. It was, too, and we quickly died. In the second Danny Murphy hooked the pill over the right field barrier, the ball bouncing up on to a piazza and into a window of a dwelling house. Then in the fourth Frank Baker repeated this stunt, lifting the pellet over that same fence.

For a thorough report of the rest of the game, the Times' game report (written by "SENATOR") is well worth a read. Since I would do no better than "Senator" recounting the game, I'll just offer a few of my own observations.

• I know this all happened a hundred years ago, but it feels good to get a big win.
  
  
• Would someone please tell me why we don't get cartoons in the paper recapping games anymore. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love the access to video replays and pitch-by-pitch accounts that we now have at our fingertips. But would it kill the Inquirer to throw together a cartoon like this every morning to give us the gist of things?
  
  
• I was impressed that Matt Holliday came back so quickly from having his appendix removed, but here's Jack Coombs pitching a three-hitter with malaria. He lost 35 pounds in five weeks!
  
  
• The box scores I've been seeing haven't all been complete, but I'm fairly sure these are the first two home runs that team has hit this season. They only hit 35 total on the year (remember, it's deadball). I believe A's pitchers also have yet to give up any homers.
  
  
• I was impressed that the visiting Senators took part in the pre-game ceremonies of raising the A's championship pennant. They paraded out to the flagpole with their captain "waving an imaginary baton" as he led the bunch. Sportsmanship!

The A's are now 3-6, and most importantly of all, they're no longer in last place! They've jumped over the hapless St. Louis Browns and are in 7th place. I sense good things on the horizon for the Mack aggregation.


* In case you're wondering, I can do all of this, because it's all in the public domain now. I certainly don't intend to pass any of it off as my own, and all credit is due to the unnamed writer of the piece. I love this old writing, and just want people to be able to read it.

** A reference to the Spanish American War, of course. "Do not cheer," Phillips admonished his victorious sailors, "men are dying."

Today's source from the Washington Times, via the Library of Congress: http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1911-04-26/ed-1/seq-15/;words=Mack+Connie

Game 6

April 21, 1911
Philadelphia 4, Boston 13

Philadelphia	0	0	0		0	0	2		2	0	0	--	4	8	4
Boston	1	3	1		0	5	0		2	1	x	--	13	17	2

The Athletics played their first road game of the year at Boston's Huntington Avenue Grounds (above)* to distressingly similar results to their last home game, giving up 13 runs to the Red Sox for their fifth loss of the young season.

The Red Sox teed off against the A's for 17 hits, with every member of their lineup collecting at least one. HOFer Tris Speaker (who, it turns out, was very good at baseball**) went 3-4.

Jack Coombs started for the A's, but only lasted two innings thanks to his case of malaria, an affliction seldom experienced by today's big leaguers. He left the team to recuperate at his home in Maine. Lefty Russell*** replaced him on the mound and, while blessedly malaria-free, he didn't fare much better against Boston's lineup in his six innings of relief. Eddie Cicotte, later notable as a member of the Black Sox, got the win for Boston.

Now just 1-5, the team was hurt by poor hitting and inconsistent pitching and, from some of the accounts I've seen, costly fielding errors. As far as hitting goes, according to Francis Richter of Sporting Life, "Murphy, Collins, and Lapp are hitting the ball best for the Athletics. Men whose eyes are not set right yet are Baker, Davis, Barry, and Oldring." Another explanation came from Mack himself (from Richter's account): "Manager Mack, of the Athletics, is quoted as saying that one reason for the Athletics slump is "too many bridegrooms" and that "being one himself he doesn't know how to handle the case." Mack married his second wife (he was a widow) shortly after the team's victory in the 1910 World Series.

But with such a poor start, you've got to figure that A's fans were starting to get frustrated. Here's an item from that same issue of Sporting Life:

The "Record" voices the general sense of all competent local critics of the game when it says: "the well-balanced Athletic team should be stronger than ever once the men get going right. The weight of World's Championship honors possibly rests heavily on the minds of some of the men and the new benedicts**** naturally take less kindly to hard work than they did of yore. But all of them will come around in time."

I get the sense from the reference to "competent critics" that there was probably significant grumbling about the team's start by certain members of the press. I guess some things about baseball in 1911 weren't all that different from today.

Well, I'll count myself among the competent critics by stating that I feel this team will come around, and the hitters will begin to set their eyes right soon.


* Featuring a 635 foot (!) center field that included a tool shed that was in play. 1912 would be the first year of Fenway Park. I'd say a tool shed is much more interesting than a big green wall as a quirky ball park feature.

**.325/.428/.500 on his career with a whopping 133.0 WAR and 792 doubles, the most of all time.

*** A pitcher whose baseball-reference.com page is delightfully sponsored by a Suzuki extended warranty website. Francis Richter of Sporting Life magazine reports that he was a highly-touted minor leaguer and that "no pitcher in the country has anything on 'Lefty' Russell in holding a base runner on the bag." That may have been so, but his inability to get anyone out made his career a short one.

**** I had to look this up; it means newly married man. I guess the Record agrees with Connie Mack on that count.

Richter's relevant column

Game 3

April 15, 1911
Yankees 7, Athletics 4
-------------------......-..----..------------R H E
New York...... 0 0 0 0 2 0 2 0 0 3 - 7 13 2
Philadelphia.. 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 2 0 - 4 10 1

[click box score to enlarge]
After getting rained out the prior day, the A's fall to 0-3 with a sweep at the hands of the Yankees/Americans/Highlanders. This is the first game in which the Athletics were really able to do any hitting, putting together 10 hits today compared to just 3 and 5 in their first and second games. It wasn't enough to topple New York, though, which won in 10 innings and pulled out of Philadelphia tied with Detroit on top of the standings after the season's first series.

The NYT called the game a rout. The Yanks controlled most of the game, but a late rally by the home team tied it up in the bottom of the ninth to force the extra frame (thanks in part to a key error by player-manager Hal Chase, "the gingery leader of the invaders"). Mack called upon Allan Collamore to pitch the 10th (his major league debut). It was an introduction to big-league play that he'd have likely sooner forgotten, as the Yankees scored three easy runs, and after a 1-2-3 bottom of the 10th, they "galloped gleefully away."

So here we are three games into the season, and the defending champs, their team largely intact from the prior year, are winless. Was there much gnashing of teeth from the local fans? Despair over the meager offensive output, inconsistent pitching, and poorly timed fielding errors? Imagine the reaction from the Philadelphia fans if our highly touted Phillies this year came out of the gate 0-3*. Look at the coverage of this year's Red Sox after they were swept by Texas.

Well, I can't say if Philadelphians were hitting the panic button 100 years ago today; I can't seem to dig up any fan blogs from the time for some reason. But our friend Francis Richter didn't seem concerned after watching the A's struggle in their first series. "Worry over the matter is entirely misplaced," he assured readers of his "Quaker Quips" column. "The Athletics, always slow starters, have the power and ability to push their way to the front in due time, and will be out in front, fresh and strong, when the race begins to tell upon their competitors."

That's the kind of pragmatism and level-headedness I like to see from my sports writers. It makes you feel a lot better about the team's prospects, no?

A few other observations:

• I can't find any mention of a New York "sweep" in either of the accounts of the series I unearthed. Could it be that the term hadn't been popularized yet?
  
  
• Most modern fans wouldn't consider a 3-run win to be a rout. But this was the deadball era, and runs were much more at a premium**, so three runs was a big deal. Secondly, I think of a rout as a game in which one team dominated from beginning to end. The Yankees did lead 4-0 by the top of the seventh, but the A's came back to tie the game and force extra innings. It's tough to call a game that went to extra innings a rout unless the winning team piled on an absurd number of runs in extras.
  
  
• This is the first extra-inning game of the season, and the first use of relief pitching by Connie Mack. Obviously, we'll be seeing a lot less of that than with modern teams. 97 of the A's 152 games were completed by the starting pitcher. Contrast that to today, in which Halladay and Lee the last two days were the first Phillies pitchers to complete back-to-back games in 12 years.
  
  
• Poor Allan Collamore. After his disastrous debut, he'll only pitch one more inning for the Athletics this year. Spoiler alert: his next one is even worse. After that, he disappeared from baseball for two years before turning up for a couple of seasons with Cleveland.
  
  
• The A's NL counterparts from 6 blocks down Lehigh Avenue were off to a better start, with, according to Richter, "two clean-cut victories over their ancient enemies and dearest foes, the New York Giants, on the grounds of the latter." If I had thought of the Giants as our ancient enemies, I would have been madder about losing the NLCS to them last year.
  
  
• With the Yankees moving on, it's time to bid farewell for now to the excellent and readily available articles/box scores from the New York Times until the teams cross paths again. Hopefully I'll be able to keep finding good sources for game reports.
  

Next up, the Red Sox bring Smoky Joe Wood and HOFer Tris Speaker to town for a two game stand starting on the 17th.


* I mean, heck, I was at the third game of the season this year when the team was 2-0, and the yahoos behind me started booing Hamels in the first inning before he had even given up a single run. It seemed like the majority of the fans present followed two innings later when the visitors took a three-run lead. I'd like to think that the 1911 fans were a bit more patient and knowledgeable about how the game of baseball actually works.

** That's true for the general era, but oddly enough, the AL offense of 1911 was roughly on par with 2010 - about four and a half runs per team per game. This represents the leading edge of a short mid-deadball-era spike in scoring. The prior year, AL teams scored about a run fewer per game. This jump will merit a closer look at some point during the season.

"Henceforth there will be no surcease for base ball until next October"

The Local Championship Series

Long before interleague play became a yearly annoyance to hard-core baseball purists, the Phillies and Athletics played an annual 8-game series of exhibition games. The first two took place prior to the season opener, and I was lucky enough to turn up box scores.

April 1, 1911

The World Champs take the first game of the series, 8-4, in front of 6,000 spectators at the Phillies' Baker Bowl.





















April 3, 1911

The Phillies strike back two days later to take the second game, 5-1.























They'll play six more games throughout the year - hopefully I'll be able to find more information as they come up. These box scores come from the "Quaker Quips" column by Francis Richter in Sporting Life magazine. I think this column is going to be a great source for this project.

Richter was optimistic about the upcoming season:

The base ball season of 1911 in this city was inaugurated on Saturday, when the Athletics and Phillies played their first game for the local championship; and henceforth there will be no surcease for base ball until next October, when if local hopes are entirely fulfilled, the battle for the World's Championship will be wholly confined to this grand old base ball town.

Will his hopes be fulfilled? We'll have to wait and see*.


* No, of course they won't; we know that already.

Opening Day Then and Now

It was a lot of fun reading the account of 1911's opening day at Shibe Park from the following day's New York Times. Obviously, baseball was a very different game then, but the experience of opening day sounded both familiar and a little strange at times.

The Weather
Well, even with global warming, you didn't expect early April weather to change that much in 100 years, did you? In 1911, "it was a cold, bleak, unseasonal day for the National sport." I've been lucky enough to attend more than my share of home openers in Philadelphia, and for about 93% of them, the weather has been some combination of cold, bleak, and unseasonal, despite the perfect image of bright sunshine and green grass that all baseball fans hold in their head for opening day.

Patriotism
Baseball teams and fans loved America then, and they love it now. Every Phillies opener in recent memory has featured a giant American flag that covers most of the outfield during the national anthem, along with some sort of military representation (like a color guard or flyover). It's nice, but I think I prefer the previous century's version:

Promptly at 2:30 Kendle's First Regiment Band formed four abreast at the plate and started for the flag pole. Both teams, twenty-one in each squad, assembled in company front at the plate and followed the playing band across the field. The big crowd stood on its feet and cheered frantically as the procession moved to extreme centre field. The flag-raising was of short duration*.

There was not a hitch in the arrangements. When the two teams arrived at the flag pole, Capts. Davis and Chase stepped from the ranks and seized the long halyards. Firmly and steadily they drew the bunting to the top of the tall shaft, when by a quick and dexterous jerk, Chase unloosened the Stars and Stripes to the stiff southeast breeze, and while the band played the "Star-Spangled Banner" hundreds of diminutive flags fell from the mother flag. The crowd jumped to its feet and uncovered and sang to the accompaniment of the band. Then the band and teams returned to the shadow of the grand stand. Again, the players received the plaudits of the assembled thousands.

Presentation of Awards
Second baseman Eddie Collins, "champion base runner of the American League," was presented with an automobile. They still give out cars as awards to players today, but they're generally some GM car (MLB sponsors) given at a world series or all-star game to an MVP. After a brief speech from Collins, "the machine was sent on a trial spin around the field."

First Pitch
In 1911, "Director of Public Safety Clay," who had previously presented Collins with his car, threw out the ceremonial first pitch from the owner's box in the upper pavilion. He threw it to the umpire, who delivered it to the starting pitcher for game use (in Washington that same day, President Taft threw out the first pitch; he was the first president to do so). These days, of course, first pitches are thrown from the field by either a team legend, celebrity, or local honoree. They keep the ball, which is never used in the game.

Attendance
18,000 fans "witnessed the game" on opening day in 1911 (Shibe Park at the time held about 20,000). Over 45,000 fans filled Citizens Bank Park for this year's Phillies opener. The article doesn't specify, but no doubt the 1911 fans were more nattily dressed, as more formal clothes at the game were very much in vogue, and major league baseball had not yet invented merchandising.

Philadelphia Baseball Fans
They're the greatest in the world now, and it sounds like they were a stand-up bunch a century ago. Despite the miserable weather, "the attendance was a personal tribute to the holders of the world's title and a testimonial to the affection with which the great pastime is held by the average American."


* I'm glad the writer included this detail, because I was wondering if it took a long time to raise the flag. I don't want to seem too sarcastic, though, because I really do love this vintage sports writing.

Opening Day

April 12, 1911
Yankees 2, Athletics 1

100 years ago today the Philadelphia Athletics opened their season at Shibe Park against the visiting Yankees*. The Athletics were coming off a World Series win against the Cubs and looking to become the second team to repeat as champs in the short history of World Series play.

New York....... 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 - 2 7 3
Philadelphia... 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 - 1 3 3

Here's the rest of the box score as clipped from the New York Times of the following day:




























The Yankees would win the day with Hippo Vaughn out-pitching future Hall-of-Famer Chief Bender to a 2-1 final. Bender was at the peak of his powers after having won 23 games the previous year and leading the AL in win percentage (he also threw a no-hitter and posted an ERA+ of 150 that year - the highest of his career). Vaughn, a 6'4'' 215-pounder (hence the hippopotamine nickname), was coming off of a terrific rookie year. He'd go on to pitch a few mediocre seasons for New York before finding success with the Cubs**

Indulge me as I quote at length from the NYT's account of the game from the next morning's paper:

The New York Americans, heralded as the most dangerous team to prevent the present world's champions from repeating their brilliant conquest of last year, were victors over the Athletics in the first championship battle of the year at Shibe Park to-day by a score of 2 to 1. Eighteen thousand persons witnessed the game. It was a cold, bleak, unseasonal day for the National sport, and the attendance was a personal tribute to the holders of the world's title and a testimonial to the affection with which the great pastime is held by the average American.

There was nothing to indicate that the Athletics were world's champions for 1911***. Not a sign or a signal indicated that they represented the best in the baseball world, had won its blue-ribboned title, yet they were playing their first contest under their official title of winners of the world's pennant. Another day, later in the season, fitting ceremonies will celebrate their historical conquest of the snapping and snarling Cubs of Chicago.

Lovers of vintage sports journalism are highly encouraged to peruse the entire account of the game.

Despite their lackluster offense, A's fans could take solace in the excellent pitching of Chief Bender, as, according to the Times, "the Indian's performance would have yielded victory nine times out of ten, but he was unfortunate in opposing a youngster whose work was little less than remarkable." And no, they weren't confusing him with a pitcher from Cleveland (after all, they didn't adopt that name until four years later; they were still the Naps), that's just how a newspaper in 1911 would casually reference Bender's Ojibwa ancestry.****

While this pitchers' duel didn't end in the Athletics' favor, brighter things were ahead of them as they geared up to defend their title later that fall.

But all that was still a long ways away. There were still 150 games to play, the A's were 0-1, and they'd dig themselves into an even deeper hole by the end of the season's first week. For now it was just springtime in Philadelphia, and the season was anyone's for the taking.



* The Yankees were still officially the New York Highlanders at the time. They were more commonly known by fans and the press either as the New York Americans (to distinguish them from the Giants of the Senior Circuit) or the Yankees. The team officially adopted the Yankees moniker in 1913.

**Vaughn's best year came in 1918 when he led the NL in wins, ERA, shutouts, innings pitched, WHIP, hits/9, and strikeouts/9. Too bad the Cy Young Award didn't exist then. On a game against the visiting Reds the prior year, he threw nine innings of no-hit ball. The problem was, so did the opposing pitcher, Fred Toney. Vaughn gave up a run in the top of the tenth to lose the "double no-hitter" to Toney, who continued his hitless streak to close out the bottom of the tenth. Vaughn ended his career 178-137 with a 2.49 ERA.

*** Foreshadowing!

**** Charles Albert "Chief" Bender was one of the more fascinating figures of early 20th century baseball and a major key to this team's success; as such we'll be talking about him a lot over the next few months. After his playing career ended, he remained a part of the Athletics organization in various capacities until a few years before his death. He's buried just a few blocks from the house I grew up in.