Fenway 1912 (20 page)

In 1952 two brothers from Ohio, Art and Walt Arfons, began building dragsters and competing on the drag racing circuit. Their first car, which the brothers painted with green tractor paint, was dubbed "the Green Monster" by track announcer Ed Paskey. The brothers then retained the name for each dragster they subsequently built together, becoming one of the sport's best-known teams. In 1962 Art Arfons, taking aim at the world land speed record, built a jet-powered car, which he also dubbed "the Green Monster," to race at the Bonneville Salt Flats. There was intense competition for the record in the mid-1960s, and his efforts received widespread press coverage. In 1964 and 1965 he set the record on three separate occasions in his "Green Monster." Any sports fan anywhere in the United States asked at the time to identify "the Green Monster" probably would have responded by citing Arfons's vehicle.

The name was not used as a nickname for the left-field wall at Fenway Park until the late 1950s at the earliest, and then probably only by the players and sportswriters who covered the team. The phrase appears sporadically in newspaper and magazine accounts during the early and mid-1960s, but players, fans, and sportswriters alike were still far more likely to refer to the left-field fence as simply "the Wall." Significantly, the term does not appear in classic Boston baseball reportage of the era, such as John Updike's signature report on Ted Williams's retirement in
The New Yorker,
"Hub Bids Kid Adieu," or Ed Linn's similar portrait published in
Sport
magazine.

That began to change during the 1967 World Series. When the national press came to Boston it seemed as if the entire country discovered Fenway Park for the first time. Associated Press stories that previewed the Series and were carried by newspapers all around the country popularized the phrase, as did references to it during the broadcast of the Series, giving the expression a toehold in the national lexicon. Nevertheless, use of the term remained far from common. Roger Angell's account of the 1967 season in
The New Yorker,
"The Flowering and Deflowering of New England," makes no mention of it.

The same pattern was repeated during the 1975 World Series and was underscored by Fisk's famous home run to end game 6. Yet even then, fans and scribes alike were still more likely to refer to the left-field fence as "the Wall" rather than as "the Green Monster," as if "the Wall" were the proper name and "Green Monster" simply a nickname. In his famous account of Fisk's home run, esteemed
Boston Globe
baseball writer Peter Gammons still called it "the Wall." It was not until the mid to late 1980s that use of the phrase "Green Monster" became widespread.

Neither Hugh Bradley nor anyone else, of course, had any idea that his home run would still be talked about one hundred years later. Although the blast proved to be the winning margin in the game, and the victory over the A's was important, in terms of the 1912 season the home run was not even the most important occurrence that day. Mild-mannered Hugh Bedient, who pitched the final four innings to collect the win while giving up only one hit, got the attention of his manager. Stahl was beginning to realize that his team's biggest problem was not hitting the ball against or over the left-field wall themselves, but preventing the opposition from doing the same.

Bedient's relief performance appeared to be a small step in the right direction. Only Charley Hall and Joe Wood had come close to pitching as well as Stahl had hoped, and even Wood had been inconsistent. With Wood on the mound the following day, the Sox hoped to get on a roll.

Fat chance. The hardheaded Wood was rocked early, staking the A's to a 5–1 lead. Boston, led by Bradley again, stormed back to take the game, 6–5, but Stahl and everyone else knew that even though the Red Sox were winning, unless the pitching came around, they were not playing championship baseball. In the Dead Ball Era it was virtually impossible to win consistently without strong pitching. Offense—what there was of it—was built around steals, sacrifices, place hits, bunts, and stolen bases—what was referred to at the time as "scientific" or "inside" baseball. Even Hugh Bradley, who led Boston's comeback with a couple of hits, including another double, had been called upon to sacrifice with two on and none out in the eighth inning. The ploy had worked, and Boston went on to score three runs and take the game. Afterward one sportswriter noted that Fenway Park seemed uniquely predisposed to come-from-behind wins: "Nobody will think of leaving Fenway Park until the last out if we have any more of these hair-raising finishes." While the influence of the park on such finishes was as yet debatable, the observation contained a grain of truth—so far the Sox were a tough team to beat in their new ballpark.

O'Brien got the call for game 3 of the series, but he failed in the sixth, followed by Bushelman and Hageman, neither of whom was impressive, and the Sox fell, 7–1. Stahl's doghouse, which already included Hageman, Pape, and rookie Dutch Leonard, who hadn't even pitched, got a bit more crowded as Bushelman forced his way in the door, and O'Brien and Cicotte both seemed likely to follow him inside. Ray Collins, for the time being, had a deferment due to a sore knee, the result of an infection he suffered from a spike wound during spring training. Stahl's ankle was still in such bad shape that he had to use a cane to get around.

Charley Hall got the next start and seemed to be the answer as he nursed a 3–1 lead into the fourth. But with two on and two out, Hall took exception on a ball four call by umpire Silk O'Loughlin that loaded the bases and started to squawk. The arbiter, a former player, was supremely confident of his ability, having once said, "A man is always out or safe or it is a ball or a strike. The umpire, if he is a good man and knows his business, is always right. I am always right." O'Loughlin didn't like Hall telling him otherwise, and as the pitcher continued to stomp around on the mound the partisan crowd at Fenway Park unloaded on the umpire. Hall stepped up his antics and with a flourish finally tossed his glove to the ground.

When he did O'Loughlin stepped toward the pitcher and raised his arm in the air, tossing the bellowing Hall, whose nickname was "Sea Lion," from the game.

Now the crowd really cut loose, hissing at the umpire and tossing debris onto the field as Hall took his time following O'Loughlin's directions and the umpire stoically tried to wait out the crowd. Thinking fast, Stahl had Bedient throw some warm-up tosses on the side so he would not have to enter the game cold.

There was no bullpen at Fenway Park, not even a practice pitcher's mound. Technically, there was no need for one. Pitchers warmed up in the foul ground alongside the outfield. Even though most teams built up the ground around the rubber several inches, the practice was illegal, and new pitchers loosened up on flat ground. When Bedient entered the game he managed to escape the inning, and then he once again held the A's to a single hit the remainder of the game as the Sox went on to win, 6–1. Philadelphia's only highlight came when outfielder Bris Lord made like Duffy Lewis on his Cliff and snagged another drive by Bradley while lying on his back.

After the game the club left for a four-game series with Washington, joined by their owner, who was looking forward to crowing over his former cronies. To most observers, that seemed likely. The Sox appeared to be in fine shape. With a 9-4 record, they were in second place, just a half-game back of the surprising White Sox, and the club still looked down on the Senators. But not all the Red Sox made the trip. Stahl left behind three pitchers—Leonard, Pape, and Hageman—as well as catcher Hick Cady, and ordered the three to get some work in and be better prepared by the time the club returned to Boston for a long home stand on May 5.

They would not be alone, for as soon as the Red Sox left town groundskeeper Jerome Kelley and his men got going, working dawn to dusk in the team's absence. The poor weather had wreaked havoc on the field, and they needed the four days to roll it flat again and fill some bare spots with sod. It was coming along, but the players had been letting him have it over the condition of the field.

The trip to Washington was a disaster: Boston dropped three of four. Wood again pitched just well enough to lose as Bill Carrigan's failure to corral a pitch in the ninth cost him a win, and no other Boston pitcher threw well. Even Bedient took a step back when he was given a start and failed to make it to the third inning. The 9-4 second-place Sox left Washington in third place, 10-7, and looking worse than that. As A. H. C. Mitchell observed in
Sporting Life
:

Now that the season is nearly a month old one can make some kind of fair criticism. It is yet doubtful if Wagner can come back to old-time form. He is there one day and not there the next. He makes one grand, old-time throw and then tosses one wild ... Joe Wood has hardly shown his best form of last year. He insists on having Bill Carrigan catch for him and Bill cannot seem to hold him. There are usually a number of short passed balls when Bill is behind the bat for Joe. In Washington they were costly. Most of the pitchers want Bill, so the management puts him in most of the time.

On the way back to Boston the club stopped by Baltimore for an exhibition and then headed toward New York to play a makeup game, but the contest was rained out.

There was little joy on the train trip back to Boston. The sour look on McAleer's face as he watched the proceedings from a box seat in Washington had told the story, and when he sat down with his manager for the journey back to Boston his mood had not improved. Unlike his predecessor, John I. Taylor, McAleer still thought of himself as a manager and was not shy about telling Stahl how to run his ball club. The Sox had thoroughly collapsed in Washington and made McAleer look bad in his old hometown. In addition to the problems cited by Mitchell, Bradley had stopped hitting, Lewis went hitless for the entire road trip, and Yerkes was out of the lineup with a minor injury. McAleer took Stahl to task over a few in-game decisions and his choice to pitch Buck O'Brien opposite Walter Johnson instead of sacrificing one of his rookie pitchers in what had been likely to be a losing cause. McAleer then made a public complaint to the press, saying bitterly, "We should have taken three games from Washington in a walk. Except for Speaker, we looked like a lot of bush leaguers."

Fortunately for the Red Sox, they were headed back home. Over the next three weeks they would play their longest home stand of the year. By the time the Red Sox took to the road again in June, they would know a lot more about themselves—and about Fenway Park.

ILLUS
. 1 When Fenway Park was first built, there was very little else in the neighborhood immediately surrounding the park. Van Ness Street did not yet exist. Prior to the building of Fenway Park, as the dotted lines indicate, there were tentative plans to put in streets perpendicular to Lansdowne, running through what is now the outfield and infield.
Courtesy of the Print Department, Boston Public Library

ILLUS
. 2 Drawing of Fenway (1911). This drawing, rendered from architect James E. McLaughlin's plans by illustrator J. C. Halden, was widely reprinted when Fenway Park was being built and was used as letterhead on team stationery in 1912 and for several years thereafter. However, the right-field bleachers shown in the drawing were not built until September 1912, part of the expansion made to accommodate the 1912 World's Series.
Collection of the author