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).

Baker Bowl

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. (In the 1910s, the last decade of the "Dead Ball Era," Cravath hit the most home runs: 116. He led the NL 6 times, peaking in in this 1915 season, with those 24.

Gavvy Cravath

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.

February 13, 1920: The Founding of the Negro National League

Rube Foster

February 13, 1920: A meeting in Kansas City results in the birth of the Negro National League.

There had been baseball teams made up entirely of black players for as long as there had been baseball teams made up entirely of white players. All-black professional teams emerged alongside all-white ones. In the 20th Century, black baseball was one of the leading black-owned businesses.

Andrew "Rube" Foster, a pitcher for the Chicago American Giants, realized that it could be a bigger business, because, as the all-white major leagues had proven in the 1919 season, the appetite for baseball after World War I was stronger than ever. (Supposedly, Foster had been nicknamed "Rube" because he had once outpitched George "Rube" Waddell in an exhibition game.)

So Foster held the meeting, and the NNL featured 8 teams. One was Foster's team, the Chicago American Giants. Another was called simply the Chicago Giants, but had previously been known as the Leland Giants, named for Frank Leland, a former partner of Foster's. Leland died in 1914, and the team continued under the ownership of Charles "Joe" Green. Had Leland still been in charge, Foster might not have admitted the team to his new league.

The other original teams were the Detroit Stars, the Indianapolis ABCs, the Kansas City Monarchs, the St. Louis Giants, the Dayton Marcos and the Cuban Stars. At the time, "Cuban" -- like "Lincoln," as many teams were called -- was a thinly-veiled code for "black," even though there had been players from Cuba in the white majors. Such men were compared to the white men of Spain, rather than the black men of Africa, and were said to be "as white as a bar of Castilian soap."

The NNL was a Midwestern league. In 1920, a Negro Southern League was founded, and lasted until 1936. This league included the Birmingham Black Barons. Like several black teams, they simply named themselves after the established white minor-league team in town, and added "Black" to their name. Which became problematic when the Atlanta team tried this, becoming "The Atlanta Black Crackers."

In 1923, the Eastern Colored League was founded. In 1924, the two leagues began holding a "Negro World Series" between their champions. But the ECL's team owners rarely agreed on anything, and they disbanded during the 1928 season.

Sadly, Foster fell victim to mental illness. In 1926, his paranoia had reached a stage where he was institutionalized. He died in 1930, and the NNL fell victim to the Great Depression after the 1931 season.

In 1933, a new Negro National League was founded, led by the Homestead Grays, who played "home games" in both Washington and Pittsburgh, and featured Josh Gibson and Buck Leonard. In 1937, the Negro American League was founded. The Black Barons joined it, and in this league in 1948, they would have Willie Mays on their roster. But the NAL's dominant team would be the Kansas City Monarchs, featuring ace pitcher Leroy "Satchel" Paige. The NNL and the NAL would have a midseason East-West Game as an All-Star Game, and a postseason Negro World Series.

But the admission of black players to the previously all-white majors in 1947 led to the demise of the Negro Leagues. The NNL folded after the 1948 season, while the NAL continued until 1962, not just a victim of integration, but, like the previously all-white minor league, a victim of television: Why should a black baseball fan drive 20 miles, and pay $2.00 for a ticket and another $1.00 for a hot dog and a drink, and watch a game in the heat of a Summer night, when he could sit in his air-conditioned living room, with food and drinks he's already paid for, and watch an integrated major league game on TV for free?

In 1990, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum was founded, and opened its current location in 1997. Unlike the Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown, New York, this museum opened where it was supposed to, where the Negro Leagues were invented, at 1616 East 18th Street in Kansas City, Missouri, a few blocks from the site of Municipal Stadium, home of the Monarchs, and later the American League's Athletics (1955-67) and Royals (1969-72).

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February 13, 1920 was a Friday -- a Friday the 13th. Baseball and football were out of season. Professional basketball barely existed. And the NHL had no games scheduled. So there were no scores on this historic day.