Authors: Glenn Stout
McAleer, only one year removed from the manager's chair, was not shy about making "suggestions" to Stahl, but he was careful to do so privately. He did not second-guess his manager in public or offer ideas through the press. In turn, neither was catcher Bill Carrigan shy about expressing his opinion to either man. The owner himself wasn't altogether certain who deserved the most credit for Boston's big season—Stahl or the "Board of Strategy," Wagner and Carrigan. Both Hugh Fullerton and Fred Lieb reported, as Fullerton put it the day before the game, that "Stahl is being advised in this Series by Jimmy McAleer and they will have to see how the pitchers look tomorrow."
Somewhere between Boston and New York, McAleer and Stahl sat and discussed who to pitch in game 6. In all likelihood their discussion fell along the lines outlined above, taking everything into consideration and hashing through every argument. Stahl, despite being a part owner himself, argued for Wood. McAleer, with Carrigan whispering in his ear, knew that, while winning game 6 and the Series in New York would be great fun, if the Sox were to lose, then pitching Joe Wood in game 7, winning in Boston, and putting another $30,000 in the owners' pockets would be even better. Damon Runyon, for one, judged that to be the probable case, writing later that the chance for an extra gate was part of "the baseball calculations of the local directors of the game."
By the end of those calculations, and reportedly over the objections of Stahl, one name emerged: Buck O'Brien was chosen to start the game, a selection that may not have been entirely about winning.
When the players reached New York they checked in together at the Hotel Bretton Hall. Tim Murnane, who rode on the train with the team, as did most other Boston writers on the off-day journey, later noted that, "after a time he [O'Brien] retired to his bed, anxious to be in shape for what he considered to be the chance of a life—to win the fourth game and the championship." This account is an indication, if Murnane is to be believed, that by that time Buck O'Brien knew he would get the ball the next day.
It remained to be seen, however, whether O'Brien, like Wood and Bedient before him, could stake his claim as a Giant killer in his own right. Or whether the Giants, flat on their back under Boston's boot and barely breathing, might make a last stand and extend the Series. Over the next three days the baseball world would find out—and all hell would break loose in Fenway Park.
No individual, whether player, manager, owner, critic or spectator who ever went through the World's Series of 1912 will ever forget it. Years may elapse before there is a similar series ... From the lofty perch of the "bleacherites" it was a series crammed with thrills and gulps, cheers and gasps, pity and hysteria, dejection and wild exultation, recrimination and adoration, excuse and condemnation...
—John B. Foster,
Spalding's Official Base Ball Guide
B
Y BREAKFAST
Joe Wood was ready to spit blood. He had learned that O'Brien was pitching that afternoon when everyone knew that it was he who deserved the honor. Wood was not happy, and not shy about letting everyone know. It was an affront not only to his competitive heart but to his wallet as well. Wood's brother Howard, whom everyone knew by his nickname Pete, had reportedly put $100 down on the game, betting on his brother and perhaps even using his brother's money. Another friend of Wood's supposedly bet another $500 on his behalf. And now Wood wouldn't even get a chance to take the ball and make back his money.
He was not the only player who was upset. The Masons were together on this one in support of Wood, just as the KCs were behind O'Brien. By the time the Red Sox made it to the Polo Grounds the team that had played well together, even if they had not particularly liked one another, was starting to come apart.
There was no question who the Giants would pitch. Rube Marquard was the logical solution, and even though McGraw floated a rumor that he had a sore arm, trying to throw Boston off, no one fell for it.
As the Red Sox loosened up for the contest on another gray day at the Polo Grounds the division between the two factions on the club deepened. When Stahl posted his lineup not only was Buck O'Brien pitching, but Hick Cady would serve as his catcher. For the fourth game in a row Bill Carrigan would man the first-base coaching box.
Now Carrigan was mad as well, and his anger probably incited some of the other KCs. It had been bad enough that Cady had usurped his role and become Joe Wood's personal catcher, and Carrigan had kept his mouth shut—publicly anyway—when Stahl chose Cady to catch Bedient, but this was too much. He considered himself Buck O'Brien's personal catcher. The two men were close friends and had even gone to Mass together on Sunday before leaving for New York. Carrigan confronted Stahl, but the manager wouldn't hear it.
Stahl's confidence in Cady, both behind the plate and in the batter's box, had only grown over the course of the Series, and in September, while Carrigan had been briefly sidelined with the split nail and had joined Charlie Wagner in scouting the Giants, Cady had caught O'Brien and the duo had been fine together. O'Brien had won, and Cady had no trouble with his spitball, but now the KCs were as steamed as the Masons. Suddenly every man on the team had a gripe about one thing or another.
When Marquard took the mound just after 2:00 p.m. the Red Sox were a divided team. The Rooters were out in force, as more than six hundred had ponied up $15 apiece to cover the expense of taking the train to New York together—a price that included everything but their hotel rooms—and several hundred more Boston backers had traveled independently to New York. The New York crowd was a bit subdued before the game as the Boston fans went through the usual histrionics, and there was still a smattering of empty seats in the nether reaches of the ballpark. The Polo Grounds was some six thousand spectators shy of capacity, as many New Yorkers expected the Giants, whose cause was next to hopeless, to fold.
But this was a different ball club than the one the Red Sox had played thus far in the Series. After the loss to Bedient, McGraw concluded that his team had been too passive, playing it safe and waiting for something to happen. Hell, the Red Sox were using a rookie catcher and two rookie pitchers, and his club had stolen only five bases the entire Series. It was time to fight, and before the game McGraw addressed his team like a union organizer on a soapbox, exhorting them to play aggressive baseball—swinging at the first pitch, stealing every base possible, and taking the fight to Boston. In short, it was time to play old-style Baltimore Orioles in-your-face baseball. McGraw believed that "if you catch a man from behind you take the heart out of him," and now that was exactly what the Giants had to do to the Red Sox.
Everything started out fine for Boston. Harry Hooper, leading off, worked the count full before knocking a ground ball past Marquard. Larry Doyle got to the ball, but Hooper had an infield hit.
As Yerkes stood in the batter's box, Hooper feinted off first, trying to distract Marquard, but the left-handed hurler caught Hooper leaning and fired to first. Hooper broke for second, then saw what was happening and managed to get caught in a rundown for a moment, but suddenly there was no place left to run and first baseman Fred Merkle slapped the ball on Hooper's thigh and he was out. Yerkes then lifted a routine fly ball out to center, but Speaker worked a walk from Marquard. The pitcher was having a hard time finding the plate.
Speaker, more cautious than Hooper but with his ankle feeling better, stole second, and when Duffy Lewis hit a sharp liner to left it looked as if Speaker might score, but Josh Devore raced in and caught the ball shin high to end the inning. Although the Red Sox had not scored, they had put pressure on the Giants, and Marquard, as Hugh Fullerton later noted, seemed "wabbling and uncertain." It seemed only a matter of time before Boston would break through against Marquard and the Giants would begin to fold.
The bottom of the inning started quietly too—sort of, for John McGraw, coaching third for the Giants, and his cohort, Wil Robinson at first, unleashed a barrage of insults and distractions at O'Brien from the start. They had tried the same thing against Bedient, to no effect, but they had better ammunition to use against O'Brien, who was quicker to anger anyway. Word of his romance with Connie Mack's daughter had made the rounds, and some found his singing in the Red Sox Quartet somewhat less than manly. There was little respect for the thirty-year-old rookie who only a few years before had been working in a shoe factory. He was just a semipro punk.
Josh Devore led off against O'Brien and grounded meekly to third. Then Larry Doyle topped a spitball and beat out the slow roller to second.
Now it was Doyle's turn to dance off base, and he stole second, but O'Brien didn't seem bothered, striking out Fred Snodgrass. His spitball was working fine, dropping just as it should, this time causing Red Murray to top the ball, another bleeder that hung up in the long grass of the Polo Grounds infield before Charlie Wagner could grab it. The Giants now had men on first and third with Fred Merkle at the plate.
It was the kind of situation McGraw's team thrived on—two quick runners on the corners—and he had both men take huge leads, putting pressure on O'Brien, while he and Robinson continued their tirade. O'Brien worked carefully, trying to keep Murray from breaking toward second and giving Doyle a chance to steal home if Cady tried to nab Murray.
Once, twice, three times O'Brien threw to first, and each time Murray made it back free, only to dance off the bag again as soon as Stahl returned the ball to the pitcher. Then, as Murray left the bag once more, O'Brien appeared to begin his wind-up, then stopped and feinted a throw to first, cocking his arm, starting to throw, then stopping as Murray dove back in.
According to Damon Runyon, "for a full ten seconds none of the Giants seemed to gather the import of the act." Then "the hoarse bellow of Robinson rolled across the diamond."
From the first-base coaching box Giants coach Wil Robinson nearly jumped out of his shoes. "Balk," he started sputtering, looking first toward home plate umpire Bill Klem and then to base ump Billy Evans. "Balk! Balk!"
Evans, in the best position to see the play, immediately looked at O'Brien's feet. If his foot was not on the rubber, a fake throw was legal, even to first base. But if his foot was on the rubber, it was a clear balk, an attempt to deceive the runner. If a balk was called, both Murray and Doyle would be allowed to advance, giving the Giants a 1–0 lead.
As Evans later recalled, he was "standing directly behind O'Brien when he made the slip," but when he looked at O'Brien's feet, "I was really in doubt myself" over whether the pitcher had committed an infraction. Evans erred on the side of caution and made no call.
But Robinson kept yelling, and now so too did McGraw, the other Giants, and the fans around the infield. According to Evans, home plate umpire Bill Klem "hesitated several moments before motioning the runners to advance." Doyle ran home, Murray ran to second, and McGraw and Robinson started blasting away again at O'Brien as the partisan crowd roared.
In the field-level press box behind the home plate screen the play looked bad, at least to those sportswriters who were actually watching when it took place. Balk calls, while rare, were usually made when the pitcher made an inadvertent move while his foot was on the rubber. Stopping in mid-wind-up to fake a throw to first base with a foot on the rubber was something professional pitchers simply did not do. Fullerton called it "bone-headed, grammar school baseball."
As the crowd howled and hooted, Evans asked O'Brien, "What in the world were you thinking about?"
"Bill," O'Brien answered back, "I thought my foot was off the rubber." The feint to first was not a mistake but something O'Brien had planned to do, only to have Klem—much farther from O'Brien than Evans—rule that the move was a balk.
O'Brien was shaken by the call. He started overthrowing the ball, and the spitter, instead of dropping, began to stay straight.
Now O'Brien, wrote Lardner, "worked in a trance ... he blew, and never in history did anybody blow harder ... a 10-year-old girl with a bat in her hands could have gone up to the plate and made a base hit." It wasn't a ten-year-old girl but Fred Merkle who was up next. He doubled to deep right, and then Buck Herzog did the same to deep left, and in a flash the score was 3–0.
The other Sox didn't help matters. When Gardner went after Chief Meyers's "slow ugly grounder" to Wagner, he left third base uncovered, which allowed Herzog to advance to third while Meyers beat Wagner's throw to first. As O'Brien, now afraid to do anything that might be ruled a balk, toed the rubber, McGraw ordered a double steal, and Meyers, a slow runner, got a good jump. Cady threw to second as Herzog broke for the plate. Steve Yerkes cut the throw off short and made a quick return throw home, but threw the ball away. Herzog scored, Meyers went to third on the play, and then he scored when Art Fletcher made a perfect bunt. When O'Brien finally ended the inning by picking Fletcher off first—no balk this time—it was 5–0. The Giants and some of the Royal Rooters hadn't even sat down yet. On the Boston bench Joe Wood sat tight-lipped, his jaw clenched, quietly seething.
The Sox tried to battle back, scoring twice in the second when Clyde Engle doubled in two runs, but then, with Ray Collins pitching in relief of O'Brien and Rube Marquard settling down, they played the final seven innings as if they could not wait for the game to end. The first two innings had taken an hour to play—an excruciating amount of time for the era—but after that players from both teams swung at the first pitch and the game ended in a tidy one hour and fifty-eight minutes. Tim Murnane commented that "the game was simply over after the fourth inning" and that "the players on both teams acted as if rather tired."
Immediately after the game, as some Boston players bolted to the clubhouse and others sat stone-faced and angry on the bench, Stahl and McGraw were asked by National Commission chairman August Herrmann to join him on the field. The commission had decided that, since the second game had been a tie, if the Giants beat Boston the next day it would be only fair to have the winner of a coin toss select the location of the final game.