Authors: Glenn Stout
Ray Stubblebine,
Gustav Stickley and the Craftsman Home: An Exhibition Presented by the Craftsman Farms Foundation
(brochure, n.d.).
"Rather than using McLaughlin's other public buildings as a reference for his design inspiration at Fenway Park, I have often thought that the more arts and crafts treatment of the Fenway Studio Building by Parker and Thomas, 1905, at 30 Ipswich Street, a couple blocks east of Fenway Park, was on his mind when designing the main elevation. There is a somewhat similar diagonal patterning in stucco and brick on the two facades." E-mail communication of October 5, 2009, to the author from Dr. Keith Morgan, past president of the American Society of Architectural Historians and editor of
Buildings of Massachusetts: Metropolitan Boston
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009).
For basic background information on not only Fenway Park but other ballparks of the era, see Michael Benson,
Ballparks of North America: A Comprehensive Historical Reference to Baseball Grounds, Yards, and Stadiums, 1845 to Present
(Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland Publishing, 1989), and Philip J. Lowry,
Green Cathedrals
(Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1992).
"
New Home of the Red Sox":
Boston Globe,
October 15, 1911.
Details of the sale of the Red Sox are taken from period newspapers as well as from
Sporting Life,
November 1911 through January 1912; the latter details the financial involvement of Stahl and his father-in-law. For a somewhat more detailed overview of the transaction, see Mike Lynch, "A Question of Ownership," February 26, 2010,
http://www.seamheads.com/2010/02/26/a-question-of-ownership
.
Most of the construction details, seating capacity figures, and other data concerning the construction of Fenway Park appear in "A Reinforced Concrete Baseball Grandstand,"
Engineering Record
, Vol. 66, no. 1, July 6, 1912, pps. 20–21, which is a detailed description of the specific engineering used at Fenway Park during its construction written for the engineering and construction industries. To my knowledge this article has never been cited in any previous book or article published on the construction of Fenway Park. Also useful was Mark Monaghan, "The Engineering Features of the Athletics' Baseball Park," paper 1067,
Proceedings of the Engineers Club of Philadelphia
(1911); "Stadium of Syracuse,"
Engineering Record
57 (1908), pp. 78–81, which discusses period building methods and procedures; and
Engineering and Contracting
36, no. 2, which describes the engineering and construction procedures used during the 1911 renovation and rebuilding of the Polo Grounds.
Background information on period excavating machinery and methods was gleaned from Allan Boyer McDaniel,
Excavating Machinery
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1913).
In the late 1970s and early 1980s I spent several years in both commercial and residential concrete construction as a laborer, form carpenter, and foreman supervising the placement of rebar, building slabs, poured concrete walls, "tilt-up" walls, sidewalks, curbs, slabs, and other common types of concrete construction. My own experience in this field was invaluable in translating technical information into layman's terms and decoding period drawings and photographs. My good friend and fellow Red Sox fan Paul Valiquette of Alpha Concrete in North Hero, Vermont, was also kind enough to answer a number of important questions in regard to concrete construction techniques.
Photographs of Fenway Park that appear on the Library of Congress website (
www.loc.gov/rr/print/catalog.html
) provide useful construction details, as do the photographs and Sanborn Insurance maps of the Fenway Park area that appear in the Boston Public Library's online exhibition "Sports Temples of Boston: Images of Historic Ballparks, Arenas, and Stadiums, 1872–1972" (www.bpl.org/online/sportstemples).
The wheeled concrete dumpers, chutes, and manpower used to pour the seating deck are shown in a photo that appeared in the
Boston Globe
on December 21, 1911. The guy derrick used at Fenway Park for the erection of steel is clearly visible in a photograph in the
Boston Globe
on January 28, 1912. It is possible that the paucity of published photos of Fenway during construction is due, at least in part, to lack of access by newspapers other than the
Globe,
which may have enjoyed special access because of the influence of the Taylor family. For this reason I have tended to use more reports on the ballpark from the
Globe
than from other Boston newspapers.
"
Work on Pavilion and Grounds":
Boston Globe,
December 3, 1911.
"
Winter of Old Days Returns":
Boston Globe,
January 7, 1912.
"
Busy Days at Red Sox' New Ball Park":
Boston Globe,
January 28, 1911.
Chapter 3: Hot Springs
I gleaned much of the information about spring training from the 1912 Bill Carrigan scrapbook held by the Sports Museum of New England. Although the provenance of the scrapbook is uncertain, my friend and colleague, curator Richard Johnson, believes that it may have been maintained by Bill Carrigan's younger sister. Most of the scrapbook's clippings are from either the
Boston Post
or the
Boston Globe,
although some are of uncertain origin. In addition, some of the
Globe
clippings are apparently from editions of the
Globe
that are not reflected in the online record of the newspaper. I consulted the Carrigan scrapbook, which covers the entire 1912 season, for the entirety of this book, as well as the Joe Wood scrapbook, the Duffy Lewis scrapbook, and the Nuf Ced McGreevey scrapbooks retained on microfilm by the Boston Public Library in its Boston Tradition in Sports Collection. These various scrapbooks are the sources for any uncredited newspaper quotes, as many of the clippings in them do not include the original source and some may be from newspaper editions that were not preserved in the microfilm record of the newspaper. I have also consulted other Boston newspapers, primarily the
Boston Journal
and
Boston Post,
in this section.
Photos published in contemporary newspapers clearly show that the main grandstand deck was poured long before the treads were added. I created the Fenway Park construction timeline from the period documents cited earlier, brief notes in newspaper stories, newspaper photos, and my own knowledge of construction procedures.
More useful background on Red Sox activities in Hot Springs can be found in Tim Gay,
Tris Speaker
(Guilford, Conn.: Lyons Press/ University of Nebraska, 2007), and Paul Zingg,
Harry Hooper
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993).
"
Stahl Plans Long Hike":
Boston Globe,
March 7, 1912.
"
Red Sox Walk, and That's All":
Boston Globe,
March 23, 1912.
"
Boston Team Lucky":
Boston Post,
April 6, 1912.
The arrangement between Jake Stahl and Charlie Wagner is best described in "A Curious Situation,"
Baseball,
November 1912.
Information on Majestic Park appears at Arkansas Diamonds: The Ballparks of Arkansas and Their History,
http://ballparks.baseballyakker.com
. As stated on the website: "Majestic Park was built in 1909 by Boston Red Sox owner John Taylor, who wanted his own field for spring training in Hot Springs. The city was a hot spot for spring training from the 1880s to the 1940s. Before Majestic Park was opened, the Red Sox and whoever else was training there had to share Whittington Park, the only other usable field in the city."
The website also notes that Taylor held the team's 1908 spring training at West End Park, the home field of the Little Rock Travelers, members of the Southern Association. To pay for the field Taylor gave the Travelers a prospect, twenty-year-old Tris Speaker, who went on to play 127 games that season with Little Rock, batting .350. By season's end the Red Sox had already re-signed him, and the fear of losing another good young player may have been one reason Taylor chose to build his own park for spring training. With the exception of 1911 and 1919, the Red Sox spent spring training there every year through 1920.
The name Duffy's Cliff did not come into widespread use until midseason. By the World's Series, however, it was used in advertising, game reports, and cartoons. Earlier in the year it was simply termed "the bank," or "the embankment." Other nicknames, such as "Lewis's Ledge," did not stick.
Chapter 4: Opening Days
"
The sight of the great, mildly sloping stands":
"The Red Sox as Seen by a Rip Van Winkle,"
Boston Globe,
September 5, 1912. This article, which appeared without a byline, is written from the conceit of an old-time fan who has awoken to see Fenway Park for the first time. Although it was written in September, the sense of wonder at the new park is indicative of the response when the park was first opened.
The train route and reception are described in period newspapers and the
Ohio Public Utilities Commission 1914 Railroad Map of Ohio.
The Copley Square Hotel was built in 1891 and was the Back Bay's first hotel.
The description of Fenway Park during the exhibition game against Harvard on April 9, 1912, and on opening day, April 20, 1912, is derived from a close study of descriptions from Boston newspapers, examination of photographs and drawings reproduced in the newspapers and other sources, such as insurance maps, and information culled from "A Reinforced Concrete Baseball Grandstand,"
Engineering Record,
Vol. 66, no. 1, July 6, 1912, pp. 20–21. Since complete architectural plans no longer exist, some distances and measurements, as indicated in the text, are approximate, for many of the specific dimensions of these 1912 structures, such as the center-field bleachers, are unknown, as far as I have been able to determine, and the photographic record of the park both on the day of the Harvard game and on opening day is far from complete. The best photographic record of the park in 1912 was taken just prior to the 1912 World's Series and is retained by the Library of Congress, but by then many changes to the original structure had already been made. It is quite possible, and even desirable, that subsequent research will provide more specific detail. Information on the Huntington Avenue Grounds can be found in Philip J. Lowry,
Green Cathedrals
(Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1992).
Although today there are standards for the construction of bleacher and stadium seating, they were not in place in 1912. In contemporary bleacher construction seats are generally set at a thirty-degree angle. If the left-field embankment at Fenway Park was forty-five degrees, it would have been extremely difficult for overflow crowds to stand upright, for the embankment was not terraced. This leads me to conclude that the embankment extended from the wall toward the field from between fifteen and twenty feet.
"
Invite Old Timers":
Boston Journal,
April 4, 1912.
"
Boston 2, Harvard 0":
Boston Globe,
April 10, 1912.
In the
Boston Globe,
April 10, 1912, Wallace Goldsmith's drawings from opening day show men on the left-field wall and the unfinished state of the wall.
According to the
New York Times,
Dana Wingate of Harvard died at age thirty of tuberculosis in Saranac Lake, New York. Both the Harvard and Exeter baseball programs still give an annual award in his memory.
For more background on the rivalry with the New York Yankees, see Glenn Stout,
Red Sox Century
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999) and
Yankees Century
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002).
"
Sox Open to Packed Park":
Boston Globe,
April 21, 1912.
Many teams have made the claim that they were the first to use an "electric" scoreboard, but depending on the definition the claim is almost meaningless. Although it is unknown how the first scoreboard at Fenway Park operated, photographs reveal that no lights were used. In all likelihood descriptions of the scoreboard as being either "electronic" or "electric" refer both to the method by which the scoreboard operators were contacted from the press box and the mechanical operation of certain aspects of the scoreboard itself. In their book
Baseball: The Golden Years
(Oxford University Press, 1971), historians Harold and Dorothy Seymour state that the first electric scoreboard was invented by George Baird of Chicago in 1908 and that it "instantly recorded balls, strikes and outs," while all other information was operated manually. Previously, scoreboard operators like those at Harvard University's football stadium were communicated with by way of hand signals from the press box. Buzzer systems such as the one described later became commonplace; they were eventually replaced by telephone systems. Several Wallace Goldsmith cartoons show scoreboard operators peering out of the slots on the scoreboard, and a cartoon drawn during the 1912 World's Series clearly shows that the operator was visible to pedestrians on Lansdowne Street, one of whom Goldsmith shows asking the operator for the score. When Fenway's scoreboard was changed during the 1933–34 reconstruction the Red Sox made the claim that the new scoreboard was the first to use lights—red designating balls and outs and green for strikes.
Chapter 5: The Wall and the Cliff
What with the vagaries of press coverage, it is extraordinarily difficult to determine what took place during a baseball game of this era with absolute certainty. To do so a researcher must compare a variety of press accounts and hope for either a consensus or a layering of detail that creates a complete portrait. The first game at Fenway Park provides a perfect example of this quandary, as no two descriptions of many plays are quite the same. Both Steve Yerkes's first hit at Fenway and Tris Speaker's game-winning hit in the eleventh are described in a variety of ways and with different levels of detail in each newspaper account of the contest. Speaker's hit, for instance, is variously described as a hit to center, a hit to third, a hit to short, and a hit through the hole. In general I tend to side with the account that provides the most detail. In the instance of Yerkes's hit, the
New York Times
notes "Zinn's falling on the left bank" in pursuit of the drive, while in regard to Speaker's hit the
Boston Journal
adds that "the big centrefielder was across the bag and Yerkes over the pan before Chase received the throw"—that is, the throw from Dolan, indicating an infield hit.