October 9, 1915: The 1st President at a World Series Game

Woodrow Wilson. Edith Galt is under his left arm.

October 9, 1915: Game 2 of the World Series is played at Baker Bowl in Philadelphia. President Woodrow Wilson becomes the 1st incumbent President to attend a World Series game, and the 1st to throw out a ceremonial first ball at one. He is accompanied by his fiancée, Edith Galt.

The Philadelphia Phillies, in the National League since 1883, had won their 1st Pennant, managed by Pat Moran. Their pitching staff allowed the fewest runs in the NL, led by Grover Cleveland Alexander, who, though no one thought of the term at the time, won "the Triple Crown of Pitching": Leading the NL in wins (going 31-10), strikeouts (241) and earned-run average (ERA, 1.22). And right fielder Clifford Carlton "Gavvy" Cravath, the NL's top slugger in that "dead ball" decade, led it in home runs with 24 and RBIs with 115.

The Boston Red Sox, World Champions in 1912, were back, managed by Bill Carrigan, led by center fielder Tris Speaker, and a starting rotation of Smoky Joe Wood, George "Rube" Foster, Ernie Shore, Hubert "Dutch" Leonard, and a rookie lefthander named George Herman "Babe" Ruth, who was 18-8 with a 2.44 ERA. Had there been a Rookie of the Year award at the time, he surely would have won the AL's award.

At the time, home-field advantage in the World Series was decided by a coin flip, which the Phillies won. William F. Baker, their owner, who had renamed the ballpark for himself, chose to have Games 1 and 2 at home. The Phillies won Game 1, 3-1, with Alexander outpitching Shore. Ruth pinch-hit for Shore in the 9th inning, and grounded to 1st. It would be his only appearance in the Series.

No one knew it at the time, but the Phillies would not win another World Series game for 65 years.

Wilson threw out the first ball for Game 2, and Foster not only went the distance for Boston, but singled home the winning run in the top of the 9th. The Red Sox won, 2-1.

The season before, when the Boston Braves won the NL Pennant, they were in the process of building Braves Field to replace the small, antiquated South End Grounds, and the Red Sox offered them the use of the larger Fenway Park. They won the World Series. This time, with the even larger Braves Field opened, the Braves returned the favor, and the Red Sox played their World Series home games there in 1915, 1916 and 1918, instead of a mile to the east at Fenway.

They felt right at home on Commonwealth Avenue: They won Game 3, 2-1, with Leonard beating Alexander; Game 4, 2-1, with Shore outpitching George Chalmers; and Game 5, 5-4, with Harry Hooper hitting 2 home runs, aiding Foster as he outpitched Eppa Rixey to clinch the title.

The Red Sox won again in 1916, beating the Brooklyn Dodgers. Carrigan then resigned, and remains the only manager to lead a Boston team to back-to-back World Series wins. Under Ed Barrow, they won again in 1918.

Pat Moran had been a catcher, and had retired after the previous season to become the Phils' manager. He was fired after the 1918 season, was immediately hired by the Cincinnati Reds, and led them to win the 1919 World Series. Rixey would later pitch for him on the Reds, and reach the Hall of Fame.

Shortly before the 1924 season began, while still officially the Reds' manager, he died at the age of 48, of nephritis, a kidney ailment known as Bright's disease -- treatable with antibiotics today, but, at the time, a death sentence within 5 years. Boxer Billy Miske, who had fought Jack Dempsey for the Heavyweight Championship of the World, had just died from it. So did Wilson's 1st wife, Ellen, in 1914. So did Theodore Roosevelt's 1st wife, Alice, in 1884. And so did former President Chester Arthur, in 1886.

In 1978, the Phillies instituted the Philadelphia Baseball Wall of Fame, electing a Phillies figure every year since, and a Philadelphia Athletics figure every year until 2003. From the 1915 Pennant winners, the Phils have elected only Grover Cleveland Alexander and Gavvy Cravath.

It says something about the quality of the Phillies' 1st 90 years of existence that, of the players who played for them from their founding in 1883 until 1914, but not on the 1915 Pennant winners, the only ones elected to that Wall of Fame have been Sam Thompson, Billy Hamilton, Ed Delahanty and Sherry Magee. And that, of the players who played for them from 1916 to 1949, but not on the 1915 or the 1950 Pennant winners, the only ones have been Cy Williams and Chuck Klein.

Thompson, Delahanty, Alexander, Cravath, Williams, Klein and Bucky Walters -- Walters mainly because he was from Philadelphia but excelled elsewhere, with the Cincinnati Reds -- have also been elected to the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame.

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October 9, 1915 was a Saturday. Author Belva Plain was born on this day. So was Clifford Hansen, who served as the 1st President of the University of Nebraska system, and as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture from 1969 to 1971.

Among the college football games played that day were these:

* Army beat Gettysburg College, 22-0 on The Plain at West Point, New York.

* Navy lost to the University of Pittsburgh, 47-12 at Worden Field in Annapolis, Maryland.

* Harvard beat the post-Jim Thorpe Carlisle Indian School, 29-7 at Harvard Stadium in Boston.

* Penn State beat the University of Pennsylvania, 13-3 at the original Franklin Field in Philadelphia.

* Notre Dame beat Haskell Indian Institute, 34-0 at Cartier Field in South Bend, Indiana. Now the Haskell Indian Nations University, they compete in the NAIA, essentially NCAA Division IV.

* The University of Chicago beat Northwestern, 7-0 at Northwestern Field in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois.

* Colorado Agricultural College beat the University of Colorado, 23-6 at Gamble Field in Boulder, Colorado. CAC became Colorado A&M in 1935, and Colorado State University in 1957.

* And in New Jersey, Rutgers beat Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), 96-0 at Neilson Field in New Brunswick; while Princeton beat Syracuse, 3-0 at Palmer Stadium in Princeton.

And in English soccer, North London team Arsenal went to Hertfordshire, and lost to Watford FC, 1-0 at Cassio Road in Watford.