Allan Travers, 1912
May 18, 1912: The Philadelphia Athletics beat the Detroit Tigers, 24-2 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. That simple score suggests that there is a story behind the huge margin. And it's a doozy.
On May 15, the Tigers were playing the New York Highlanders at Hilltop Park in Manhattan. Claude Lucker (whose name has often been misspelled as "Lueker," so it may have been pronounced that way), was described by baseball historian Frank Russo as "a Tammany Hall lackey and two-bit punk." He had a chip on his shoulder, the result of a work accident that cost him one hand and 3 fingers on the other hand. He was then well-known as one of baseball's top hecklers, and he and Tiger star Ty Cobb had bantered with each other before.
At the end of the 6th inning, as the Tigers took the field for the top of the 7th, Lucker yelled out, calling Cobb the worst thing you could call a white Southern man at that point: A "half-(N-word)," implying that his birth was the product of a black man defiling the flower of white Southern womanhood. Cobb heard this, stopped his run out to center field, ran back, jumped into the stands, and assaulted Lucker, who recalled:
He struck me with his fists on the forehead and over the left eye and knocked me down. Then he jumped on me and spiked me in the left leg, and kicked me in the side, after which he booted me behind the left ear. I was down and Cobb was kicking me when someone in the crowd shouted, "Don't kick him. He has no hands." Cobb answered, "I don't care if he has no feet!"
The Tigers' next game was on May 17, against the Philadelphia Athletics, the defending World Champions, at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. Manager Hughie Jennings held Cobb out, and the Tigers won, anyway, 6-3. The next day, again set to play the A's, the Tigers heard of the judgment of American League President Ban Johnson: Cobb was suspended indefinitely.
Cobb had never been popular among his teammates, even though he was their best player. But the suspension was the best thing that could have happened for their relationship: The Tigers banded together, and Johnson's office in New York was called. Tigers owner Frank Navin, who had just opened the ballpark he named Navin Field for himself, and would later be named Tiger Stadium, told Johnson that the Tigers were on strike, and would remain so until 2 things happened: Cobb was reinstated, and better protection against hecklers was provided.
Johnson told Jennings that the Tigers franchise would be fined $5,000 per game -- about $151,000 in 2022 money -- until they returned, and the games they refused to play would be forfeited. Jennings explained his problem to Connie Mack, the manager, treasurer and part-owner of the A's. Mack pointed out that Philadelphia had many baseball-playing colleges, and suggesting borrowing players from them.
That's the story that often gets told. In fact, there was only one player taken from the area's colleges. Most of them were former collegians who never even played one game in the minors leagues. Joe Nolan, a sportswriter for The Philadelphia Bulletin, was a friend of both Jennings and Mack, and he became the contact for the players. He knew of a local team, playing a few blocks away, at 23rd Street and Columbia Avenue (now Cecil B. Moore Avenue), managed by Allan Travers. Years later, Travers told sportswriter Red Smith:
About noon when Nolan told me about the strike of the Detroit players he told me the club would be fined and might lose its franchise if twelve players didn’t show up. He told me to round up as many fellows as I could find, so I went down to 23rd and Columbia where a bunch of fellows were standing around the corner. We thought we’d just go out and appear. We never thought we’d play a game.
But the regular Tigers refused to play. So when Jennings sent a team into the field against the A's on the afternoon of May 18, they had this starting lineup:
* Jim McGarr, 2nd base, 23, from Philadelphia.
* Billy Maharg, 3rd base, 31, from Philadelphia. He was a local boxer, who had reversed the letters of his surname: His real name was William Joseph Graham, or Billy Graham.
* Aloysius Stanislaus "Allan" Travers, batting 3rd even though he was the pitcher, 20, from Philadelphia and a seminarian at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia.
* Dan McGarvey, left field, 24, from Philadelphia.
* Bill Leinhauser, center field, 18, from Philadelphia.
* Joe Sugden, 1st base, 41, from Philadelphia, and the only one of the recruited players with previous major-league experience, from 1893 to 1905. He began his career with the Pittsburgh Pirates, where Mack had been his manager, so that may have been how he was contacted.
* James "Deacon" McGuire, catcher, 48, making him the oldest MLB player ever to that point, from Youngstown, Ohio. He had played in the major leagues since 1884, and was a member of the Brooklyn Superbas' (Dodgers) NL Pennant winners of 1899 and 1900. He was the Tigers' pitching coach in 1912, hadn't played a game since October 9, 1910 (a season finale), and had played only 19 games since 1906.
* Vincent Maney, shortstop, 25, from Batavia, New York, outside Buffalo.
* Joseph "Hap" Ward, right field, 26, from Leesburg, Cumberland County, New Jersey, outside Philadelphia.
Maharg only came to bat once. Ed Irwin, 30, from Philadelphia, pinch-hit for him, and took his place at 3rd base. Later in the game, he was moved to catcher, replacing McGuire, with McGuire's 7th place in the batting order and the 3rd base position taken by Jack Smith, 18, from Oswayo, in north-central Pennsylvania.
Irwin had played in the minor leagues from 1903 and 1911, never getting higher than Class C ball, and thought he was retired. This would be his only major league game as well.
The A's had won the last 2 World Series. On paper, this game was the biggest mismatch in baseball history. On grass, it came pretty close to living up to expectations. Mack was generous, using 3 pitchers, for 3 innings each: Jack Coombs, Carroll Brown and Herb Pennock. But, mostly, he played his regulars. Eddie Collins went 5-for-6 with 2 RBIs. John "Stuffy" McInnis went 4-for-6 with 4 RBIs. Amos Strunk went 4-for-6 with 3 RBIs. Frank "Home Run" Baker, Jack Barry, Harl Maggert, Danny Murphy, and even reliever Brown each got 2 hits, with Barry having 4 RBIs.
Not having another available pitcher, Jennings had to leave Travers in for the entire game. He pitched 8 innings, allowing 24 runs on 26 hits, both major league records for one pitcher in one game. He walked 7 batters, and struck out 1. He told Red Smith:
I was throwing slow curves and the A’s were not used to them and couldn’t hit the ball. Hughie Jennings told me not to throw fast balls as he was afraid I might get killed. I was doing fine until they started bunting. The guy playing third base had never played baseball before. I just didn’t get any support…no one in the grandstands was safe! I threw a beautiful slow ball and the A’s were just hitting easy flies…trouble was, no one could catch them.
Behind him, the paper Tigers made 7 errors: 2 by the aged McGuire, and 1 each by Sugden, Maney, McGarr, McGarvey and Irwin. Irwin hit 2 triples. The Tigers' only other baserunners came on singles by Sugden and McGuire, walks by McGuire and Ward, and McGarvey and Maney were both hit by pitches.
In the top of the 9th inning, knowing that Travers would not have to pitch the bottom of the 9th, Jennings sent himself up to pinch-hit for him. He was still not officially retired as a player, and had been a fine player as a shortstop for the 1890s Baltimore Orioles of the National League, and would be elected to the not-yet-established Baseball Hall of Fame. But the native of Pittston, in eastern Pennsylvania, was 43, had not played since September 13, 1910, and had played only 10 games since 1902. He struck out to end the game. (He would play once more, 1 inning at 1st base on September 2, 1918, a season finale, due to the manpower drain of World War I.)
Athletics 24, Tigers 2. Despite the blowout, the game lasted just 1 hour and 45 minutes. A crowd of 15,000 attended, and some demanded their money back. Travers was given $25 to start the game, and $25 to finish it. The other players were paid $10. (That's $302 in today's money. There was no minimum salary at the time.)
With professional sports on Sunday then illegal in Pennsylvania, and the Tigers having Monday the 20th off before playing on Tuesday the 21st in Washington, there was time to find a solution that wouldn't result in another embarrassment. Cobb told his teammates that this couldn't go on, that they shouldn't risk their careers, or their wallets, for him, and that he would take his punishment. An agreement was reached: Cobb was suspended without pay for 10 days, and the striking players were fined $100. On May 21, George Mullin outpitched Walter Johnson, and the Tigers beat the Washington Senators, 2-0.
Of the Tigers' substitutes, aside from Jennings' last-gasp return in 1918, only Billy Maharg ever played in another major league game, and then, again, only one, the season finale for the 1916 Philadelphia Phillies. He later became involved in the 1919 Chicago Black Sox scandal, as a go-between for the players and the gamblers.
Allan Travers completed his seminary studies, and returned to St. Joseph's to teach. He remains the only man to have been both a player in Major League Baseball and a priest in the Roman Catholic Church.
Father Aloysius Travers, 1962
Ty Cobb died in 1961. Hank Perry, who replaced Cobb in the game where he assaulted Claude Lucker, died in 1956. Ed Irwin was killed in a Philadelphia bar fight in 1916. Hughie Jennings lived until 1928, Deacon McGuire 1936, Dan McGarvey 1945, Billy Maharg 1953, Joe Sudgen 1959, Jack Smith 1962, Allan Travers 1968, Bill Leinhauser 1978, and Jim McGarr was the last survivor, living until 1981.
I can find no record of what happened to Lucker after 1912, or how long he lived.
*
May 18, 1912 was a Saturday. These other baseball games were played that day:
* The New York Highlanders lost to the Cleveland Naps, 10-7 in 10 innings at Hilltop Park in Manhattan. Slugger, 2nd baseman and manager Napoleon "Nap" Lajoie, for whom the Cleveland team was named, did not put himself into the game. He did put "Shoeless" Joe Jackson in, and he went 2-for-5 with 2 RBIs. The Highlanders became the Yankees in 1913, and the Naps became the Indians in 1915 and the Guardians in 2022.
* The New York Giants lost to the Cincinnati Reds, 4-3 at Redland Field (later Crosley Field) in Cincinnati. Rube Benton outpitched Christy Mathewson.
* The Brooklyn Dodgers lost to the Chicago Cubs, 5-4 at West Side Park in Chicago.
* The Chicago White Sox beat the Boston Red Sox, 3-1 at Fenway Park in Boston. Tris Speaker went 1-for-4.
* The St. Louis Browns beat the Washington Senators, 8-2 at American League Park (later renamed Griffith Stadium) in Washington.
* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Boston Braves, 8-7 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Honus Wagner went 1-for-4.
* And the Philadelphia Phillies beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 12-5 at Robison Field in St. Louis.
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