Both teams were 98-55, with the Pittsburgh Pirates, led by Honus Wagner, just 1 game behind them at 97-56. The Giants won 11 of their last 16, the Cubs 8 of their last 10, and the Pirates 9 of their last 10 before losing a makeup game against the Cubs on October 4, which eliminated them and kept the Cubs in position to win the Pennant, if they could win the makeup game against the Giants. It was the greatest Pennant race in National League history, and would remain its only real 3-team race until 1964.
And, judging from the newspaper accounts collected in G.H. Fleming's 1981 book The Unforgettable Season, we can only imagine that ESPN would have had wild coverage of the race, and that social media would have been absolutely poisonous.
Officially, the 1890-1911 version of the Polo Grounds was full to about 40,000 people. Unofficially, reports have suggested anywhere from 80,000 to 250,000 outside. This could very well have been the most people that ever showed up for a baseball game, regardless of whether they got in or not. Reports at the time told of people who died falling out of trees trying to watch, and of a man electrocuted while trying to watch from the elevated railway which then overlooked the ballpark.
Giant manager John McGraw, "the Little Napoleon," of course, started his best pitcher, the best pitcher in the game at that point, Christy Mathewson, who was 37-10. "Matty" had told McGraw, "I'm not fit to pitch today. I'm dog-tired." Although he had a full 4 days' worth of rest, he'd previously pitched 384 innings that season -- even in the Dead Ball Era, that was a lot -- and from September 12 to October 3, had pitched 10 games in 22 days, including 2 relief appearances.
Cub manager Frank Chance, "the Peerless Leader," started Jack Pfeister, who was only 12-10 on the season, but whose record against the McGrawmen earned him the nickname "Jack the Giant Killer." Jack would kill no Giants today: He began by hitting Fred Tenney with a pitch (in spite of all the passions running around the game, it was definitely not intentional), then walked Buck Herzog, picked Herzog off 1st base, gave up a double to Mike Donlin to score Tenney, and walked Cy Seymour.
Chance went against his name and took no more chances. He removed Pfeister, and brought in his best pitcher, the one man in the National League (along with Ed Walsh of the Chicago White Sox and Addie Joss of the Cleveland Naps in the American League) who could challenge Mathewson for the title of baseball's best pitcher: The man whose childhood farm accident had left him with a grip that gave him the best curveball in baseball at the time, Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown. Brown got Art Devlin and Harry "Moose" McCormick out to end the threat.
It was still 1-0 New York in the bottom of the 3rd. Joe Tinker led off with a triple, and was singled home by Johnny Kling. Johnny Evers drew a walk. Frank "Wildfire" Schulte hit a double that scored Kling. Chance helped his own cause with a 2-run double. It was 4-1 Chicago, and the Polo Grounds crowd grew despondent.
Brown allowed a run in the bottom of the 7th, and the crowd picked up a little. But no more. The final score would be Cubs 4, Giants 2. The Cubs had their 3rd straight Pennant.
The game over, the Cubs, knowing that the crowd would be furious over having the Pennant "stolen" from them, made a mad dash for the clubhouse in center field. Most of them made it, but someone took a dagger and slashed Chance on the shoulder, and he had to be stitched up.
McGraw ordered pocket watches made, and given to all the Giant players, inscribed "THE REAL CHAMPIONS 1908." And for the rest of his life -- he lived until 1934, outliving Chance by 10 years -- he stood by Merkle, calling him the smartest player he'd ever managed, in spite of the "Bonehead" nickname that still stuck to him.
The Cubs went on to beat the Detroit Tigers, with young superstar Ty Cobb, in the World Series. They didn't win another Series for 108 years. The Giants would win 7 over that stretch, although they left New York for San Francisco after the 1957 season.
Merkle, as it turned out, outlived every Cub who played in the game, except for right fielder Jimmy Slagle, who outlived him by 2 months, both dying in 1956. The last survivor from either the September 23 game or the October 8 game was Giant shortstop Al Bridwell, who lasted until 1969.
As the last survivor, Bridwell was interviewed about it by Giant fan Lawrence S. Ritter for his 1966 book of baseball interviews The Glory of Their Times. He got the hit that would have scored the run in the September 23 game, had Merkle actually touched 2nd base, and, for all the grief it brought Merkle, told Ritter he wished he'd never gotten that hit.
October 8, 1908 was a Thursday. There was 1 other game in the major leagues that day. The Washington Senators beat the New York Highlanders, 7-5 at American League Park in Washington. Earle Gardner -- not to be confused with Earle Stanley Gardner, author of the Perry Mason novels -- went 4-for-5 for the Highlanders, to no avail. They finished 51-103, the most losses in franchise history to this day. In 1913, they would officially change their name to what many observers were already calling them: The New York Yankees.
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