October 16, 1912: The Fred Snodgrass Game

October 16, 1912: Game 8 of the World Series. Game 2 had been called due to darkness while tied – no lights at ballparks in those days – so this will decide it. The greatest pitcher the game had yet seen, Christy Mathewson, hero of the 1905 Series, squares off against Hugh Bedient in quest of his 1st win of this Series.

Matty takes a 1-0 lead into the 7th‚ but with 1 out‚ Boston manager Jake Stahl hits a pop-up to short left field. The ball drops among Art Fletcher‚ Josh Devore‚ and Fred Snodgrass. Heinie Wagner walks‚ and with 2 outs‚ pinch hitter Olaf Henriksen doubles home the tying run. Smoky Joe Wood relieves Bedient‚ and the 2 aces match zeroes until Red Murray doubles and Fred Merkle singles in the 10th to give New York a 2-1 lead. It looks like the Giants will win the Series.

But in the last of the 10th‚ pinch hitter Clyde Engle lifts an easy fly, a "can of corn," to center fielder Snodgrass. Interviewed about it in 1965, Snodgrass said, "Well, I dropped the darn thing." Engle reaches 2nd base on the error.

In the next at-bat, Snodgrass makes a great catch of a long drive by Harry Hooper. If only Snodgrass had made an ordinary catch of Engle's popup, and let Hooper's drive drop for a hit, the final score would have been exactly the same, but the perception of how the teams got there would have been totally different, and Snodgrass wouldn't have gone down in history as the man who made "The $30,000 Muff," a figure equivalent to the difference between the totals of the winning and losing teams’ shares. (About $877,000 in today's money.)

To be fair, though, Snodgrass wasn't a bad ballplayer at all, and dealt with it far better than teammate Merkle did with his "boner" that helped to cost the Giants the 1908 Pennant. As it is, Merkle has, for the moment, the RBI that will win the World Series, and stands to have been completely redeemed.

But Mathewson, for a decade the very definition of a control pitcher, walks Steve Yerkes, bringing up Tris Speaker. The all-time leader in victories by a National League pitcher, with 373, faces the all-time leader in doubles, with 792, a true classic confrontation.

"Matty" gets "Spoke" to pop a high foul along the first-base line. Catcher John Meyers -- a member of the Cahuilla Indian tribe and thus nicknamed "Chief" -- chases it‚ but it drops a few feet from Merkle‚ who could have taken it easily. Much more so than the 1908 "boner," this is something for which to fairly criticize Merkle.

Reprieved‚ Speaker didn't need a written invitation to put his .345 lifetime batting average to work. He singles in the tying run and sends Yerkes to 3rd. After Duffy Lewis is walked intentionally‚ 3rd baseman Larry Gardner hits a long sacrifice fly to a retreating Devore that scores Yerkes with the winning run.

Just as in the playoff necessitated by the Merkle's Boner game in 1908, Mathewson, often hailed as the greatest pitcher of all time (especially back then), did not get the job done.

The Red Sox win the World Series in their 1st season in Fenway Park. By the time Fenway has hosted 7 seasons, the Sox will have won 4 World Championships there, plus the 1st-ever World Series from when they were playing at the Huntington Avenue Grounds. In their next 85 seasons at Fenway, the Sox will win a grand total of no World Series.

If either Merkle or Meyers had caught Speaker's popup, the Giants might have held on to win. In fact, you can make a better case for Merkle being a "bonehead" on October 16, 1912 than you can for him being such on September 23, 1908. Ordinarily, both he and the Chief were very smart players, but they both blew it big-time on this one.

Then there's Mathewson. Even more than a century later, it seems like sacrilege to blame "The Christian Gentleman" for this loss. But, just as in the Merkle playoff 4 years earlier, if he had pitched like Christy Mathewson, the Giants would have won both games.

Most of all, the Red Sox were better. True, the Giants won 103 games and were defending NL Champions. But the Sox won 105, a record for Boston baseball that stood until the 2018 Red Sox won 108. And the Sox did win 3 of the 1st 4 decisions in the Series. While the Giants won the Pennant again in 1913 and again in 1917, the Sox would win the World Series again in 1915, 1916 and 1918 -- the Giants wouldn't win another until 1921.

Snodgrass was a standup guy about it all for the last 62 years of his life, becoming a banker in Oxnard, California, and later being elected the city's Mayor. He died on April 5, 1974, at the age of 86.

The last survivors of this Series were: For the Red Sox, Wood, who lived on until 1985, at the age of 95; and, for the Giants, Hall of Fame lefthander Richard "Rube" Marquard, who lived on until 1980, at the age of  93.

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October 16, 1912 was a Wednesday. It was the last game of the baseball season. Football was in midweek. Professional basketball barely existed, and the hockey season was a few weeks away. So there were no other scores on this historic day.

Clifford Hansen was born on this date. A Republican, he served the State of Wyoming as Governor from 1963 to 1967, and then as a U.S. Senator until 1978.

October 8, 1908: The Merkle Playoff

Three-Finger Brown

October 8, 1908: In a make-up game necessitated by 19-year-old 1st baseman Fred Merkle's baserunning "boner" on September 23, the New York Giants met the Chicago Cubs at the Polo Grounds to decide the National League Pennant. Officially, Major League Baseball does not recognize this game as a "Playoff," but as a makeup of the September 23 game.

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.

September 23, 1908: Merkle's Boner

September 23, 1908: The New York Giants thought they'd beaten the Chicago Cubs, 2-1, in a big game in a dogfight of a 3-way Pennant race that also involved the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Only they hadn't. Al Bridwell had singled home the winning run, but the fans came running onto the field at the Polo Grounds in New York. And the runner on 1st base, a 19-year-old rookie named Fred Merkle, got scared, and ran for the clubhouse that stood behind the center field fence.

He didn't touch 2nd base.

This had happened many times before. The rule stating that a player had to get to the base was usually not enforced under such circumstances. You know: "Everybody does it."

But Cub 2nd baseman Johnny Evers saw this, and yelled for the ball, got it, stepped on 2nd, and got the attention of umpire Hank O'Day, who called the force play at 2nd. This time, the rule was enforced, Merkle was out, and the run didn't count.

Play could not be restored, as there was no way to clear the field of fans. By all rights, the Giants should have been declared losers by forfeit, for an inability to control their home grounds. Instead, it went into the books as a 1-1 tie.

I won't bore you with the details of the recriminations that went back and forth between the Giants and the Cubs, and between the Giants and the National League office, other than to say it was ugly, and it looked more like Republicans vs. Democrats than rival sports teams. I'll cut right to the chase: The NL race finished in a tie between those 2 teams, with the Pirates just 1 game back. And the league office ordered the September 23 game to be replayed on October 8.

Despite having Christy Mathewson, perhaps the greatest pitcher the game has ever known and the most popular athlete of the time, starting that game, the Giants lost, 4-2, with the Cubs bringing in for relief one Mordecai Peter Centennial Brown, known as Three-Finger Brown because of a childhood accident that left him with only 3 usable fingers, and as a result with a nasty curveball.

Merkle was 19, and for the rest of his life, he was known as "Bonehead," and the play became known as "Merkle's Boner." He played on until 1922, and was hardly a bad player.

In 1950, the Giants held an old-timers' day at the Polo Grounds, and invited Merkle. He accepted. When introduced, the fans -- most of them not old enough to have been there 42 years earlier, but nearly all having heard his sad story -- gave him a standing ovation.

Merkle deserved a better fate even than that. Even his manager, John McGraw, said it wasn't his fault. McGraw, along with Connie Mack 1 of the 1st 2 managers elected to the Hall of Fame, said it was the team that let Merkle down, not vice versa. If one of the sorest losers in the game's history could forgive Merkle, and later Giants fans could...

Baseball still thinks of him as the Bonehead. And for a man who has been dead since 1956 and is unable to defend himself, that's just not fair. On the 100th Anniversary of the game in question, in the spirit of ESPN, I wrote The Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame Fred Merkle for the New York Giants Losing the 1908 National League Pennant. 

Though the Cubs won that 1908 World Series, for whatever reason, or collection of reasons, they did not win another until 2016 -- 108 years. They did not even win a Pennant from 1945 to 2016. Some spoke of the Curse of the Billy Goat. But did the Cubs win that 1908 Pennant unfairly? Is there a Curse of Fred Merkle? After all, the Goat Curse came in 1945. How do you explain the Cubs' 0-6 record in World Series play from 1909 to 1944?

I don't think Merkle was a mean enough person to put a curse on the Giants, even if such a thing were possible. I think the Cubs' century-long drought was attributable to bad management. We who are baseball fans, instead of blaming Fred Merkle for his "boner," or even forgiving him, should declare that there's nothing to forgive. Let him rest in peace.

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September 23, 1908 was a Wednesday. There was a full slate of games that day, in addition to the Merkle's Boner game:

* The New York Highlanders lost to the Cleveland Naps, 9-3 at League Park in Cleveland. Frank LaPorte hit a home run for the Highlanders, but it was for naught. Jack Chesbro was the losing pitcher, and only pitched 2 more games for the team. In 1913, the Highlanders officially changed their name to what many people were already calling them: The Yankees. The Naps were named for their manager and 2nd baseman, Napoleon "Nap" Lajoie. After he left in 1914, they changed their name to the Cleveland Indians.

Lajoie did not have an official at-bat in this game, but drew a walk and was hit by a pitch, and scored both times.

League Park was torn down and replaced by another ballpark of the same name in 1910, which was home to the Indians until 1946.

* The Brooklyn Superbas lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 2-1 at Washington Park in Brooklyn. Honus Wagner went 2-for-4 for the Pirates. The Brooklyn team had once been managed by Ned Hanlon, and there was a famous circus troupe named Hanlon's Superbas. The team became the Dodgers in 1911, the Robins under the managing of Wilbert Robinson in 1914, and the Dodgers again in 1932, before moving to Los Angeles in 1958.

* The Boston Doves swept a doubleheader from the St. Louis Cardinals at the South End Grounds in Boston. The hosts won the 1st game 7-2, and the 2nd game 4-1. They were then named for their owners, brothers George and John Dovey. In 1912, they were bought by James Gaffney, an officer in the Tammany Hall political organization, a "Brave," and he changed the name of the team to the Boston Braves.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 1-0 at Baker Bowl in Philadelphia.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Detroit Tigers, 4-1 at Bennett Park in Detroit. Tris Speaker went 0-for-4, but won. Ty Cobb went 2-for-4, but lost. Cy Young outpitched Will Bill Donovan. Bennett Park was torn down before the 1912 season, with a new ballpark built on the site. It was named Navin Field, renamed Briggs Stadium in 1938, and renamed Tiger Stadium in 1961.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 3-2 in 10 innings at South Side Park in Chicago.

* And the St. Louis Browns beat the Washington Senators, 5-4 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. That ballpark was torn down in the off-season, and replaced by another ballpark of the same name, which lasted until 1966.