Welcome to Opening Day 1915!
It’s a beautiful day for some baseball and we have a full slate of
games. Now, before we jump in, it
behooves me to give a brief account of baseball in the nineteenth century and
during the beginnings of the Deadball Era to get all the readers on the same
page. The 1915 Phillies did not happen
in a vacuum and some context will go far in adding color to the story.
Philadelphia had a love affair with bat and ball games since
before there was even a game called baseball.
I don’t know the exact percentages, but my guess is the majority of
baseball fans think that either Abner Doubleday invented baseball in
Cooperstown, New York or Andrew Cartwright thought of the rules with the
Knickerbocker Base Ball Club. In his
very interesting and exhaustive history of the early versions of baseball
entitled Baseball in the Garden of Eden,
John Thorn explains that baseball most likely evolved throughout the
nineteenth-century from games like Townball and Rounders into what we know it
to be today. Different regions of the
country played by different rules, but the idea was the same: a pitcher throws
to a batter who attempts to hit the pitch and score runs by completing a
circuit of designated safe points. In
Philadelphia, the Olympic Ball Club was playing the Philadelphia Game, probably
a version of Townball, around 1831.
Townball differed from baseball in that you could “soak” or “plug” a
runner (meaning a fielder could hit the runner with a thrown ball to get him
out), pitchers threw overhand (baseball pitchers tossed underhand until about
1884), and all men had to be put out before the side was retired.[1]
The first league was started as an amateur venture 1858 and
was dubbed the National Association of Base Ball Players, though it was hardly
national as all the clubs were stationed in New York City. Players were not to be paid, though there
were certain benefits for partaking in a game for a certain club, such as
having “ferry tolls” paid for. And
gamblers were not shy about making their interests known to the players, if you
catch my drift. But for most of the
1860s, the “no professionalism” rule seemed to only be enforced when there was
a blatant and obvious violation. There
was a market for professionalism in baseball, though, and in 1871 the top teams
in the NABBP formed a professional league called the National League of
Professional Base Ball Players. Clubs
would only have to pay an entrance fee to join the new league. Philadelphia’s
representative was a club known as the Athletics. They brought glory and the first pennant in
professional baseball history home to Philadelphia when they won the
championship in the league’s first season.
Alas, by 1875 the league had too many teams that led to chaos and
corruption: clubs would refuse to complete their schedules if they were out of
the pennant race, players would jump teams in the middle of the season
depending on who was offering the most money, and the same team won every year
from 1872 to 1875 (the Boston Red Stockings, though not the Red Sox, they would come later). The league had grown stale. Someone had to take the reigns, whittle the
league down to a manageable size, and enforce the rules.
William Ambrose Hulbert and Albert G. Spalding meet with
some other club owners and formed the National League of Professional Base Ball
Clubs in 1876. Notice this was the first
time that the clubs, and not the players, were the focus of the league name. Once again the Athletics club represented
Philadelphia, though in this instance it would not be with glory and conquest,
but shame and eviction. The A’s and New
York Mutuals didn’t finish their schedule in the National League’s first season
due to financial restraints and were subsequently given the boot. The NL operated without a team in the two
biggest cities in the United States for six seasons. Philadelphia was without a professional
baseball team from 1877 to 1882, the only time since the beginning of
professionalism that the city would be without a club.
But, as they say, when it rains, it pours, and a storm swept
two teams into Philadelphia in the span of a year. First, an upstart league known as the
American Association challenged the National League’s supremacy in 1882, and for
the third (though not final) time a club known as the Athletics would play for
the city. It’s strange to think about
this now because the Phillies are so entrenched as Philadelphia’s Baseball
Team, but for the majority of baseball’s existence it was one of numerous teams
known as the Athletics that best represented the city best. This Athletics team cleared $22,000 in profit
for the 1882 season, more than any other team in any league. In 1883 the National League saw dollar signs
shooting out of Philadelphia and gave the city a representative: the Philadelphia
Phillies…or Quakers…or Nationals.
Nicknames were fluid back then.
Even during the 1915 season some newspapers would refer to the Phillies
as the Quakers as sort of a nickname of the nickname. Either way, the Phillies became a team in
1883 and quickly fell into a pattern that would haunt them for most of the next
seventy or so years: overshadowed by the Athletics. See the A’s made more money, won more games,
and had a bigger attendance than the Phillies.
And actually the A’s of 1883 outdrew the entire National League of
1881. To make matters worse, the
Phillies had their worst season ever in 1883 as they went 17-88-1. Not the start either the Phillies or the
National League were hoping for.[2]
Luckily for the Phillies, and the National League for that
matter, the American Association folded in 1891, leaving the NL as the only
professional game in town. During their
reign as the dominant club in town, the Phillies provided only mediocre
results. They finished as high as third
and as low as tenth in the twelve-team circuit, but mostly they stayed in
fourth place. Yet, they were always one
of the top draws in the league. They
played in a beautiful state-of-the-art stadium known as the Philadelphia
Baseball Grounds (built in 1887), though it was more commonly called the
Huntingdon Street Grounds and later the Baker Bowl. Baseball crazy Philadelphians fell in love
with the team and the stadium and made the city a staple in the National
League. As the nineteenth-century was
closing out it looked like the Phillies might be on track to put together a
championship run. They had improved from
tenth place, to sixth, to third and sat poised to be in the running for the
pennant in 1901, but it was not to be.
Those damned Athletics were back! Ban Johnson had turned his Western League
into the American League and declared that in 1901 it would compete as a major
league. Johnson gave control of the
Philadelphia franchise to Connie Mack and Ben Shibe. They called their club the Athletics because
of rich history the name had in Philadelphia.
It was a name of champions, and Mack was determined to continue the
tradition. Before the A’s inaugural
season Connie Mack did as most AL clubs did when he raided the NL teams’
rosters. Obviously, the easiest victim would
be the team that he shared a town with.
Of all the players to make the jump to the Athletics, none hurt quite as
much as Nap Lajoie. At 26 years old,
Lajoie had already established himself as a premier second baseman in baseball.
His fielding was fluid and he hit like a mad man. His loss was so big that the Phillies sued
the Athletics for his rights, which they won.
Johnson needed stars in his league if it was ever going to match the NL
and found a loophole by sending Lajoie to the Cleveland team until the legal
troubles blew over. For a few seasons
Lajoie would not join his club when they went on the road to face the A’s
because of fear of legal repercussions.
But he did just fine in Cleveland; he had the distinction of having the
club he played for named after him (Cleveland Naps) while he was playing out
his Hall of Fame career. The loss of
Lajoie, and many others that made the jump to the A’s, meant the Phillies run
up to championship level baseball would be cut off at the knees; it took about
fifteen years for them to recover.
How did the Connie Mack’s Athletics do during those fifteen
years? Oh, they just became one of the
preeminent clubs in all of baseball.
They had seven players that
played before 1915 make the Hall of
Fame. The pitching rotation was made up
of Eddie Plank, Rube Waddell, and Chief Bender, all Hall of Famers. They had the famous $100,000 Infield: Stuffy
McInnis (1B), Eddie Collins (2B), Jack Barry (SS), and Frank “Home Run” Baker (3B). Most importantly, the Athletics won five
pennants and three World Series over a ten-year span from 1905 to 1914. Shibe Park, the first concrete and steel
ballpark in the majors, was built in 1909 and was as beautiful as a cathedral. It became the model for baseball stadiums
like Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, and Yankee Stadium that were built to house
the growing crowds that came in the 1910s and 1920s. Also it was mere blocks down the street from
the now rotting and embarrassingly inefficient Baker Bowl. The Phillies were outclassed in all pursuits
by the shiny new Athletics. The A’s
really should receive more credit for what the accomplished in
Philadelphia. They were by far the most
successful sports franchise the city has even seen, and yet they are hardly
even thought of by the casual fan. But
that’s another topic all together for another day. Let’s just say that the Athletics drew almost
double the fans of the Phillies from 1901 to 1914, and accounted for over
two-thirds of the total attendance to professional baseball games in Philadelphia
during that time.
The Athletics may have won their fourth pennant in five
years, losing in the World Series to the Boston Braves, but for Mack, the 1914
campaign was not a success. Attendance
dropped significantly, and since Mack’s income came only from baseball, he felt
a financial pinch. Now, the economy in
the US was in a recession, a new professional venture called the Federal League
began which raided players from the AL and NL, and Europe had just begun the
biggest war there had ever been. Those
are some huge events that might make the average fan a little reluctant to
spend their money on baseball tickets.
Still, Mack took this drop in attendance to mean that Philadelphia had
grown bored with winning and would no longer support his club, which just seems
so insane to me as someone living a full century later. So, he sold off all of his great players to
save money. And with that the A’s
dynasty was dead, killed by a self-inflicted blow, but fans at the time were
still sure that Mack could mold any team into champions.
The Phillies, meanwhile, had shown a bit of scrap in the
past few years before the Federal League popped up. But, the Phillies team that finished 1913 in
second place lost 11 players to the FL in 1914, once again knocking them off
their championship course.
Strangely enough, the Phillies probably should have been the
ones to sell off their great players.
Why would they expect to compete in 1915? They had a bunch of unproven guys and a sixth
place club. And maybe that’s what fans
thought ownership was thinking when it traded Sherry Magee, the club’s best
hitter, to the champion Braves. The
trade netted the Phillies two more unproven players: Possum Whitted and Oscar
Dugey. In need of shortstop, the team
signed a young man by the name of Dave Bancroft. These men would join guys like Fred Luderus,
the fan favorite first baseman, and Gavvy Cravath, the power-hitting home run
king right fielder to form one of the best teams in Phillies history, though no
one knew it yet. About the only thing
the fans and media were sure of was that the Phillies had the best pitcher in
baseball: Grover Cleveland Alexander.
Old Pete, as Alexander was known, dominated the National League for four
seasons. At a time when pitcher wins more
accurately reflected a pitcher’s skills, Alexander won 20 games three times
(his fourth season he only managed 19.
Ho hum). He was 27 years old
going into the 1915 season and was poised for the best year of his career to
date.
There was something special brewing at Huntingdon and Broad,
but, as we’ve seen, the Phillies wouldn’t just be battling the National League
in 1915. There was the fight to win the
hearts of Philadelphia fans from the Athletics.
This was as good of a time as any since the A’s clubhouse was full of
strangers; at least the Phillies had a some
guys from the previous year’s team. But
real life was casting its shadow over baseball and questions were emerging that
took bigger chunks out of the public debate.
Like, what should be done about the war in Europe? Should America stay neutral or join the
fighting? As the 1915 wore on it became
clear that Great War questions were going to have to be answered with a
definitive; no longer would hypotheticals be sufficient. But, at this point in our story, those hard
times were in the future. For now, let’s
play ball!
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