THE WORLD SERIES: 1916 REPLAYED?

By Edwin Cooney

The just completed  2018 World Series was hardly a duplicate of the 1916 fall classic, but the result was pretty much the same.

Each year as the names of the participants become clearer, the media, the cities,  mayors and local celebrities proclaim their favorites and the denizens  of the other 28 major league cities whose favorites have been eliminated resignedly but usually gracefully pay respectful interest in the outcome of the event. Mayors and governors often indulge in public bets with each other. Fans are invariably encouraged to take advantage of the odds on the series out of Las Vegas. After all, where baseball matters most, the significance of the outcome intensifies. Usually, there’s something significantly unique about each World Series.   

In 2018, the American League Red Sox played the National League’s pennant winner  the Dodgers for only the second time in 102 years.

In 1916, the World Series and indeed the world itself was so much more informal than today. An example of what I mean can be found in the very name of the Brooklyn franchise. Although they were officially the Brooklyn Dodgers, their manager, a lovable roly-poly gentleman by the name of Wilbert Robinson, was known as Uncle Robbie. Thus, the Red Sox played the Brooklyn Robins, not the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Red Sox manager, Bill Carrigan, like Uncle Robbie, was a catcher during his playing career.

Boston hosted Game One of the 1916 series on Saturday, October 7th. The venue was the Braves field, home of the 1914 National League champions and World Series victors known as “The Miracle Boston Braves.” The reason for the switch was because the Braves’ field had a larger fan capacity than Fenway Park. Thus, 36,117 fans were on hand as Ernie Shore took on Richard (Rube) Marquard of the Brooklyn Robins. The final score was 6 to 5 with the Robins scoring 5 runs in the ninth to make it close.

Game Two took place on Monday, October 9th after rain spoiled play on Sunday the eighth. The big story was the pitching of Babe Ruth who started and completed a 14 inning game. Ruth struck out four batters and walked just three in front of 41,373 Bostonians. No World Series game would go more than 14 innings until — guess when! The big left hander who would become known for his hitting rather than his pitching, was pitching in only his second full season in the Majors.

The third game which was played at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn on Tuesday, October 10th before 21,087 would be the Robins’ only series victory. The final score was Robins 4, Red Sox 3. Jack Combs became the first pitcher to get World Series victories for both American and National League pennant winners. In 1910 and 1911, he’d pitched and won games for Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics. One-hundred and two years later, Game 3 would be the only victory for the Los Angeles Dodgers over the Red Sox..

On Wednesday,  October 11th, before 21,662 Brooklynites, the Robins scored twice in the first inning, but that’s all they would get off Red Sox left-handed pitcher Hubert Benjamin (Dutch) Leonard. The Sox won 6 to 2.

On Thursday, October 12th (Columbus Day), Red Sox manager Bill Carrigan announced that should Boston win this day, it would be his last as manager. Then, before a World Series attendance record crowd of 42,620, Boston became baseball’s World Series champions for the second year in a row, for the third time in five years, and the fourth time in their history. Note: the Boston Americans or Pilgrims (take your pick) won the first modern series over the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1903. They would win their last in 1918 until the year 2004!

I’m sure most readers know few of the men among those in the Red Sox and Robins of 1916, but two names still shine today in the baseball hearts of fans everywhere. The leading Sox pitcher with a 0.64 earned run average was Babe Ruth. The Brooklyn Robins’ leading batter for the series with a .364 mark was a former Kansas City left-handed dental student by the name of Charles Dillon (Casey) Stengel.

As for the two managers, Bill Carrigan of the Sox would retire to his native Lewiston, Maine where he would become a successful banker. Note: Ten years later, Carrigan would be brought back to lead the Sox out of their doldrums. Sadly, the game Carrigan had known and conquered had changed so much that after three seasons he returned home from the baseball wars for the last time. (One winces to recall that banking during the early 1930s wasn’t doing so well either!) Fortunately, Bill would survive until 1969 in his native Lewiston, Maine. 

Uncle Robbie’s managerial career would continue through the 1931 season. It would include another trip to the World Series in 1920 against the Cleveland Indians. That series would go six games with the Indians winning four games to two. There would also be that incredible unassisted triple play in Game 5 by the Indians’ second baseman Bill Wambsganss. The Robins would go from World Series contenders to being losers — but lovable losers as the Mets would be later under Casey Stengel in the 1960s. The Robins would be known affectionately as “the Daffiness Boys.” (It has been said that when Robins fans were told that there were men on base, they would invariably ask, “which base?”) Robbie would leave Brooklyn after 1931 and move to Atlanta as President of the Southern League Crackers. He died of a stroke in August 1935.

As in 1916, the Red Sox would need only five games in 2018 to conquer the Dodgers of Los Angeles. Much has changed from the days of Uncle Robbie, Carrigan, Ruth and Stengel. Planes have long since been substituted for trains. Free agencies have inflated players’ pay envelopes. The layback social and political cultures have become stunningly intense.  Still, men named Mookie Betts, Steve Pearce, J. D. Martinez, Clay Kershaw, Cody Bellinger, and Manny Machado excite the imagination and increase the pulse rates of fans from Boston Harbor to the West Coast. Every World Series has at least one incredible game. In 2018, it was Game 3. Down two games to one, it took the Dodgers 7 hours and 20 minutes and eighteen innings of play to beat the visiting Red Sox by a score of 3 to 2. A total of 45 players were used between the two teams. Exhausted as both teams must have been, Games 4 and 5 followed without a break.  .

World Series play brings forth the player’s adrenaline, fills the bank account, inflates the sense of belonging and professional pride just as it did 102 years ago. The world of 1916 and the world of 2018, as different as they are, have one thing in common. The uncertain future looms in the distance, so close and so unpredictable. Red Sox and Robins’ fans of 1916 hoped to stay out of “the Great War” in Europe. Many even voted for Woodrow Wilson because thus far he’d kept them out of war. Within two years, however, hundreds of Sox and Robins’ fans would be casualties of World War I. Exactly what lies in wait for you and me is just as unpredictable as the fall of ancient European states and dynasties in the fall of 1916.

A thought occurred to me last Sunday night, October 28th, as the Los Angeles Dodgers and their fans for the second time in two years saw the visiting team win the series in their home ball park. As vital as ambition and competition are in the minds and hearts of fans and players, there lurks below the surface of immediate awareness a healthy sense of perspective. Unlike that which exists in our political culture, there is a sense of social equity, a realization that if there’s to be value in a future victory, there must be a recognition of the legitimacy of today’s champion. As thousands of Dodgers’ fans cleared out of Chavez Ravine and sadly made their way home, the Red Sox and their fans could celebrate on Dodger turf sure in the knowledge that even the most rabid Dodger fan, as jealous as he may feel for the moment, would still grudgingly salute them. That salute, as difficult as it must have been, insures the value of success when it is at last your turn to bask in its glory.

President Trump, you should be taking notes!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY