Authors: Glenn Stout
Robert McRoy
was more fortunate. His close ties with Ban Johnson kept him in the game, and after severing ties with the Red Sox, he joined the Cleveland Indians, serving as vice president and general manager before passing away in 1917.
Jake Stahl
returned to Chicago and resumed his banking career, and although he was rumored to be part of a group that was interested in buying the Cleveland franchise, Stahl, too, never returned to the game of baseball. In 1917 he went to France to serve during World War I as a second lieutenant in the Air Bombing Division of the U.S. Army. The war apparently took a toll: shortly after he returned in 1919 he suffered a nervous breakdown. He spent two years in a California sanitarium before dying in 1922 of heart disease.
Bill Carrigan
took over the Red Sox for Stahl and managed to keep his job even after the team was sold to Joseph Lannin. When the Federal League was created in 1914, an event that weakened rosters in both the American and National Leagues, the Red Sox, rejuvenated by some young pitching talent, including Babe Ruth, suddenly found themselves competitive again. They finished second under Carrigan in 1914 and bounced to the top of the American League in both 1915 and 1916, winning the World's Series each time, but using the new Braves Field, with its higher seating capacity, instead of Fenway Park. Carrigan then chose to go out on top and retired to go into banking in Maine. He was talked into returning to the Red Sox as manager in 1927, 1928, and 1929, but the team was dismal, the game had passed him by, and the ball club finished last all three seasons, making Carrigan both one of the most and least successful managers in club history. Following the 1929 season, he returned to Maine. Over the next few decades he occasionally made appearances at Fenway Park, a symbol of days gone by, before passing away on July 9, 1969.
The influence and popularity of the
Royal Rooters,
and the personal fame of
Nuf Ced McGreevey,
peaked during the World's Series of 1912. The story of the ticket debacle before game 7 was reported in papers from coast to coast. McAleer and McRoy were both forced to make a formal apology, and despite their game 8 boycott, the Rooters had still led the celebration at Faneuil Hall.
Although the Rooters were still influential enough to receive more World's Series tickets in 1914, 1915, and 1916, their preeminence among Boston fans began to wane as their members got older and were not replaced by younger Rooters. When Honey Fitz was forced to drop out of the 1914 mayoral race after a scandal over his relationship with a cigarette girl named Toodles, the group lost a staunch ally, and the opening of Braves Field moved the center of Boston's baseball universe a bit farther away from McGreevey's saloon. Without the baseball crowds, business slowed, and after the 1915 season McGreevey was forced to close the tavern at 940 Columbus Avenue. He reopened several blocks away where he owned some property, at 1153 Tremont Street, on the corner of Ruggles Street, but it wasn't the same. The Rooters attended their last World's Series en masse in 1917, but by then the group was down to only about one hundred members. When the Red Sox appeared in the 1918 World's Series the Rooters were nowhere to be found. Lamented the
Globe
's Edward Martin, "The crowd did not come up to expectations ... It is the first time any Boston club has been in a series that 'Tessie' had not been heard from good and proper." Indeed, only six years after the debacle of 1912, the Royal Rooters were not even mentioned by the press during the Series.
On August 1, 1918, the U.S. Senate adopted the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting the sale of alcohol. The House followed suit on December 17, and the amendment, after being quickly ratified by the states, became law on January 29, 1919. Regrettably, Nuf Ced McGreevey closed his tavern, and he eventually donated the bulk of his collection of baseball photographs to the Boston Public Library. He died of heart failure on February 2, 1943, and with his death a chapter of Boston baseball history also passed, although the recent opening of McGreevy's, a Boylston Street bar and restaurant thoughtfully modeled after the original saloon, has once again made Nuf Ced and the Rooters household names.
Hugh Bradley,
the man who hit the first home run over the left-field wall in Fenway Park, never hit another, and after the 1912 season he never made another appearance in the major leagues. Sold to Jersey City after the end of the season, he resurfaced in the Federal League in 1914, hitting .307 for Pittsburgh but failing to hit a home run. After appearing with both Pittsburgh and Brooklyn in the Federal League in 1915, Bradley returned to the minor leagues in 1916 and played for a variety of clubs before he retired after the 1923 season. He settled in Worcester, Massachusetts, near his hometown of Grafton, and died in 1949.
Although
Hick Cady
never quite lived up to the promise of his rookie season, he remained a backup catcher for the Red Sox through 1917. Then, after injuring his shoulder in a car accident, he was traded with Larry Gardner to the Athletics. He did not appear in a game in 1918 but did appear in thirty-four games in 1919, then played six more seasons in the minor leagues before retiring and becoming a minor league umpire. He died in a hotel fire at age sixty in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1946.
After the 1912 World's Series,
Buck O'Brien,
the man who pitched the first official game in Fenway Park, seemed poised for greatness. He pitched well at the start of the 1913 season, but then faltered. When the war between Jake Stahl and James McAleer broke out into the open, O'Brien was a casualty. According to one news report, O'Brien "hadn't been strong with the Boston manager for a long time. Buck is said to have committed the indiscretion of having smeared his fist over Joe Wood's classic countenance last fall.... So Stahl sent O'Brien to Chicago." On July 2, 1913, O'Brien, with a record of 4-11, was acquired by the White Sox on waivers for only $5,000. He failed to win a game for the White Sox and later that year was sold to Oakland in the Pacific Coast League. After a brief stint with Memphis in the Southern Association in 1914, O'Brien eventually returned to Boston and for much of the next decade was a familiar face on semipro teams in the Boston area, pitching primarily for the Dilboy Club. He passed away on July 25, 1959, and on Fenway's golden anniversary on April 21, 1962, O'Brien's grandson, nine-year-old Tom O'Brien, threw out the first pitch.
Hugh Bedient,
the hero of the 1912 World's Series, never recaptured his 1912 magic either, although he did manage to stay with the Red Sox for two more seasons, going 15-14 in 1913, then 8-12 in 1914. In 1915 he jumped to the Buffalo franchise of the Federal League and compiled a record of 16-18, but when the league folded Bedient was unable to make it back to the majors, and in 1917 he developed arm trouble. After sitting out several seasons, he returned to the minor leagues, where he spent most of his time pitching for Toledo in the American Association, before retiring after the 1925 season and returning to his hometown of Falconer, New York. There he lived on a farm and worked for the Harbison-Carborundum Corporation. He died in 1965.
Charlie "Heinie" Wagner's
arm gave out during the 1913 season, and he was never the same player again. Released during the 1916 season, Wagner briefly returned during 1918 when the Red Sox were caught short during World War I, and he subsequently served several stints as a Red Sox coach, the last time for his friend Bill Carrigan. Wagner took over for Carrigan as Red Sox manager in 1930, but after the team finished last, he resigned and went to work as a supervisor in a lumberyard in New Rochelle, New York. He died of a heart attack in 1943.
After being dumped by the Red Sox in 1914 when he failed to hit, University of Pennsylvania graduate
Steve Yerkes
jumped to the Federal League and played two seasons. He then made a brief appearance with the Chicago Cubs in 1916 before returning to the minor leagues. He retired as a player after the 1923 season. Yerkes later managed in the Canadian American League, and in 1940, before buying and operating a bowling alley, he managed the Yale freshman baseball team. He appeared at Fenway Park's golden anniversary in 1962 and passed away in 1971.
Ray Collins
was the only member of the 1912 starting rotation to pitch well in 1913, winning nineteen games, and he remained effective in 1914, when he won twenty games. But when he pitched poorly in 1915, he decided to retire at age twenty-nine. Collins returned to his family dairy farm in Colchester, Vermont, which he operated for most of the remainder of his life. He briefly coached the University of Vermont baseball team and served in the Vermont legislature and on the board of trustees for the University of Vermont. He died of complications following a stroke in 1970.
Larry Gardner
played another dozen years in the major leagues. In 1918 he was dealt with Hick Cady to the Philadelphia Athletics, and in 1919 he was traded to Cleveland, where he was reunited with Tris Speaker and Joe Wood. Gardner enjoyed his greatest success as an Indian, knocking in more than one hundred runs in both 1920 and 1921, and proved to be a very good, but not quite great, ballplayer. After spending several seasons as a minor league manager, he returned to Enosburg Falls, then moved to Burlington, Vermont, where in 1932 he became head baseball coach at the University of Vermont. After he retired, he worked in a camera store and passed away at age ninety in 1976. Sadly, the University of Vermont baseball program, which contributed both Gardner and Ray Collins to the 1912 Red Sox, was dropped by the university after the 2008 season.
The best outfield in baseball remained intact for the next three seasons as Duffy Lewis, Harry Hooper, and
Tris Speaker
all turned down entreaties from the Federal League and in turn were able to squeeze big contracts out of Red Sox owner Joseph Lannin. But when the Federal League collapsed, Lannin wanted to roll back salaries and cut Speaker's $18,000 salary in half. Speaker held out, and Lannin traded him to Cleveland for Sam Jones, Fred Thomas, and $55,000. Once in Cleveland, Speaker continued to forge a Hall of Fame career. He retired after the 1928 season with a career batting average of .355 and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1937. Following his retirement, Speaker had an eclectic career as a minor league manager, executive, broadcaster, and coach before dying of a heart attack in 1958.
Duffy Lewis
played with the Red Sox through the 1917 season and joined the military in 1918. When the Red Sox had a glut of players at the end of the war he was traded with Dutch Leonard and Ernie Shore to the Yankees for $15,000 and four players, including pitcher Ray Caldwell. Lewis's major league career lasted until 1921, when he returned to the minor leagues. He retired from baseball in 1927. Wiped out by the stock market crash, Lewis returned to the game in 1931, becoming a coach for the Boston Braves from 1931 to 1934 before serving as the club's traveling secretary, a position he held for the Braves in Boston and in Milwaukee until 1961. He died in Salem, New Hampshire, in 1979.
Harry Hooper
played with the Red Sox through the 1920 season, then was sold to the Chicago White Sox. He retired after the 1925 season. After playing several more seasons of professional baseball in California, he became active in the real estate business and also became postmaster in Capitola, California. In 1971 he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, and he died of a stroke in 1974.
Although
Joe Wood
was troubled slightly by a sprained ankle during spring training in 1913, in one April exhibition against the University of Illinois Wood reportedly had terrific speed and control and struck out all twelve men he faced as his infielders, bored, turned around and watched a parade. But in his opening day start against the Philadelphia Athletics a week later Wood lasted only five innings, giving up nine hits and seven runs, his worst regular-season performance in more than a year. Two weeks later it was reported that Wood was experiencing pain in his thumb, and after slipping while fielding a bunt in a game against Detroit on May 12, Wood was telling people that the joint was broken. He missed several starts, then came back. Later he told Lawrence Ritter, "I don't know whether I tried to pitch too soon after that, or whether something happened to my shoulder at the same time. But whatever it was I never pitched again without a terrific amount of pain in my right shoulder. Never again." Wood made no mention of the arm troubles that had plagued him intermittently through the 1912 season. He reinjured the thumb on July 18, 1913, in a game against Detroit while chasing Sam Crawford during a rundown. Apart from one brief relief appearance, his season was over.
His blazing fastball was gone for good. Although he remained effective when he did pitch, Wood could not stand the pain and retired after the 1915 season. In 1917 he decided to try to make a comeback, this time as an outfielder, and the Red Sox sold him to Cleveland, where he was reunited with Tris Speaker. Wood, a fine hitter and athlete, managed to become a valuable part-time player for Cleveland, hitting .366 in 1921 and then .296 as a regular in 1922 before he retired for good, saying he had nothing left to prove. In 1923 Tris Speaker helped him secure a job as freshman baseball coach at Yale. One year later he took over the varsity and held the position until 1942.
In 1928 Wood was implicated, along with former teammates Tris Speaker, Dutch Leonard, and Ty Cobb, in the possible fixing of a game between the Tigers and the Indians on September 26, 1919. Wood cooperated with the investigation, and while he admitted to betting on baseball and holding money for other players, he denied having any involvement in the actual throwing of a game—he did not appear in the contest in question. After leaving Yale, Wood went into business with his brother in California, operating a driving range, then retired in New England. Repeated efforts by his family and others to have him enshrined in the Hall of Fame failed, and Wood died in 1985 at the age of ninety-five, the last surviving member of the 1912 Red Sox.
Tim Murnane
continued to cover the Red Sox as the dean of Boston's baseball writers until he died suddenly of a heart attack at age sixty-five on February 7, 1917, while attending a production at the Schubert Theater in Boston. Much beloved by the New England baseball community, on September 27, 1917, an all-star benefit game on his behalf was held at Fenway Park. Actress Fanny Brice helped sell programs, Will Rogers performed rope tricks, and former heavyweight champ John L. Sullivan coached third base for Boston. In pregame contests Babe Ruth won the fungo-hitting contest with a drive of 402 feet, Joe Jackson made the longest throw of 396 feet, eight inches, and Ray Chapman beat everyone around the bases, circling the diamond in fourteen seconds. Before a crowd of seventeen thousand, the Red Sox, behind the pitching of Babe Ruth and Rube Foster, defeated the all-stars, 2–0, as Boston's hurlers shut down a lineup that included Jackson, Chapman, Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Buck Weaver, Rabbit Maranville, Stuffy McInnis, Wally Schang, and Walter Johnson. The game raised $14,000 for Murnane's widow. No Boston sportswriter before or since has ever been more beloved.