Authors: John Powers
Fenway Park (5 page)
Boston Mayor John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald tipped his hat after throwing out the first pitch on April 20, 1912, the first official game in Fenway Park history.
A view from the stands in 1912.
Even if you didn’t have a ticket, you could view the 1912 World Series through gaps in a fence at the new Fenway Park, where the Red Sox took on the New York Giants.
Mayor John Fitzgerald (standing) and star pitcher “Smoky Joe” Wood (in the back, with bow tie) took part in Boston’s victory parade after the 1912 World Series.
“Smoky Joe” Wood dominated the American League in 1912 with a 34-5 record, including 10 shutouts. He also contributed three World Series victories as the Red Sox vanquished the New York Giants.
When the team returned from Detroit on September 23, a crowd of 200,000 jammed Summer Street for a parade as the players rode in cars from South Station to the Common. “No general and his army, returning victorious from war, were ever received with wilder or more enthusiastic acclaim,” James O’Leary observed in the
Globe
. Pennant fever was contagious. Women wore scarlet hose and carried dolls dressed in Boston uniforms while men sported oversized neckties with large red stockings woven in.
After the Sox took the World Series opener from the Giants in New York, more than 1,000 fans were in line at dawn when bleacher seats went on sale for the first home date. “Many had attendants with them who did their bidding, such as running errands to procure cigars, eatables, and wraps when the night air was biting,” the
Globe
reported.
Not since the Sox defeated Pittsburgh for the 1903 championship had they played in the Series and it was the social event of the year. “Staid citizens of conservative Boston danced in their boxes,” remarked the
Globe
. “They shouted, they hugged their neighbors and punched perfect strangers in the ribs, inquiring opinions they could not hear and didn’t care about.”
More than 6,000 supporters who couldn’t acquire tickets stood 25 deep on Washington Street, watching the game unfold on a scoreboard in front of the
Globe
offices downtown with “the stentorian tones of Frank J. Flynn announcing play after play.”
The game was called for darkness after 11 innings with the score deadlocked at 6-6 and after the visitors won the replay a day later, the stage was set for a Series where winning at home was a challenge. After New York battered Wood with six first-inning runs and went on to win by an 11-4 count to knot the Series at three games each, the season came down to one game at Fenway, and one historic blunder—the “$30,000 Muff” of pinch hitter Clyde Engle’s routine fly by New York outfielder Fred Snodgrass that put the tying run on second in the 10
th
inning.
HOLY SMOKY: WOOD’S SEASON FOR THE AGES
BY BOB RYAN
If you could be one Boston athlete for one year of the 20
th
century, who would it be? Bobby Orr in 1970? Larry Bird in 1986? Ted Williams in 1941? Doug Flutie in 1984? These are all worthy choices.
But my choice is a 22-year-old young man having the ultimate career year playing baseball in a baseball-mad town. There was an aura of freshness and spontaneity because the team had opened a new ballpark. Imagine being 34-5 and dominant enough to have two official nicknames. Imagine being able to help yourself continually with both the bat and the glove. Imagine staring down the immortal Walter Johnson in the most ballyhooed regular-season game ever played in Fenway Park. Imagine winning three games in the World Series. Imagine being that young, that intelligent, that handsome, that gracious, that talented, and that idolized. Imagine being Smoky Joe Wood in 1912. I can’t think of anything better.
Joe Wood had been with the team since the late stages of 1908. He had come out of the West, the true “Wild West,” in his own words—born in the southwestern Colorado town of Ouray on October 25, 1889, and raised in Ness City, Kansas.
He was a sturdy 5-11 and 180 pounds, and Joe Wood had such a fastball that sometimes batters only saw the vapors; hence the nickname “Smoky Joe.”
“Can I throw harder than Joe Wood? Listen, my friend, there’s no man alive who can throw harder than Smoky Joe Wood.” So said Walter “Big Train” Johnson, who had a pretty good heater himself.
Smoky Joe, who was also known as the “Kansas Cyclone,” had 35 complete games in 38 starts, and in the opening game in New York, he beat the Highlanders with a seven-hitter while driving in two runs and fielding his position like a circus acrobat. By the end of May, word was out that the great Johnson had a major pitching rival in this young Mr. Wood. A tremendous crowd turned out at Griffith Stadium to see the two compete on June 26, and Smoky Joe sent them home with newfound respect after dispatching the Washington Senators with a three-hit shutout in the second game of a doubleheader. That made him 15-3 and gave him at least two victories over every opposing club in the eight-team league.
Wood entered August with a 21-4 record. He came out 28-4, and now thoughts were turning to an upcoming visit by the Senators, for Johnson was not relinquishing his title as Mound King easily. He was en route to a record-tying 16-game winning streak. It was becoming clear that a showdown was in order, and it happened on September 6 at Fenway.
It was the custom in those days to allow overflow fans to spill onto the outfield. Ropes were put up, and balls bounding into the crowd were ground-rule doubles. But such was the interest in this game that spectators were also permitted to line the foul lines, which no one had ever seen and would never see again. For the era, it was a massive crowd, estimated at 29,000.
Johnson was 28-10 and had just had a 16-game winning streak snapped. Wood was 29-4, with a 13-game winning streak. “One of the greatest pitching duels that has been fought should result,” said the
Globe
in a front-page story.
With such hype, there was scant chance of the game living up to its billing, except that it did. On a glorious late-summer afternoon, the Red Sox scored the game’s only run in the sixth when Tris Speaker doubled into the crowd in left and Duffy Lewis delivered him with a fly ball to right that ticked off Danny Moeller’s glove for another double.
Wood gave up six hits and walked three, but in the ninth, with a man on second base with one away, he got two strikeouts to end the game and give himself victory No. 30.
The Red Sox clinched the pennant with two weeks to spare and were honored with a parade from South Station to the Common. And guess who rode in the spot of honor?
The Red Sox expected to win the Series for one very simple reason. Sure, John McGraw’s Giants had the great Christy Mathewson, but in 1912, the premier pitcher in the land was Smoky Joe Wood. He beat the Giants, 4-3, in Game 1, finishing the game by striking out Otis Crandall to leave the tying run on second.
Wood pitched again in Game 4, with the Series tied at 1-1-1, Game 2 having ended at 6-6 when darkness prevailed. He mixed his pitches well and beat the Giants, 3-1, prompting Mathewson, in his ghostwritten newspaper column, to say, “His was the work of an artist.” Wood also drove in the third run in the ninth inning.
But given a chance to conclude the Series with Boston ahead, 3-2-1 in Game 7, Joe Wood could not tie the ribbon on the package. He was removed after one horrible inning in which he gave up six hits and was reached for a double steal.
It looked as if Wood’s storybook season would have a very inappropriate ending. The following day, Jake Stahl brought him out of the bullpen in the eighth inning of a 1-1 game. Wood threw two shutout innings before New York pushed across a run in the top of the 10
th
and would have scored another one if Joe hadn’t made a tremendous barehanded stop of a Chief Meyers line drive to the box. At any rate, he was the losing pitcher of record until his team came to bat. But the Red Sox, aided by some storied Giants misplays (the Fred Snodgrass muff of a routine fly ball and a Speaker pop foul that fell among three Giants), scored twice in the bottom of the inning. Joe Wood had his third Series win and the Red Sox had the 1912 world championship.
It is all in the books. In 1912, Wood had a league-leading 10 shutouts. He won 16 straight games. He threw 344 innings. He hit .290 and slugged .435. He won games with his glove. He won three games in the World Series.
Mayor John Fitzgerald (the celebrated “Honey Fitz”) orchestrated a massive civic celebration for the Red Sox. Joe Wood simply got up and said, “I did all I could, and I just want to thank you.”