Phillies 100 Year Ago: Memorial Day Doubleheaders Spell Doom For Philly Teams

May 31, 1915

Phillies @ Boston Braves

Phillies @ Boston Braves

Athletics vs. Boston Red Sox

Athletics vs. Boston Red Sox

A double dose of doubleheaders 100 years ago today!  In fact it was doubleheader day all across baseball as the nation celebrated Memorial Day.  It was common in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to schedule doubleheaders on national holidays to attract fans to the ballpark on days when they had off from work.  This tactic rose and waned in popularity over the next few decades before it hit a steep decline in the 1950s.  Before the American and National Leagues joined forces major leagues were competing against each other and doubleheaders were a nice way to attract more fans to a game.  The BOGO of early baseball.  By the 1950s the games were so popular that clubs didn’t have to use the doubleheader as a marketing tool anymore and were actually losing money to play them.  So, once the money got into the game the doubleheaders on holidays went out of fashion.[1]

Phillies 100 Years Ago: A's Beat the Babe and the Braves Beat the Phils

May 29, 1915

Phillies @ Boston Braves

Athletics vs. Boston Red Sox

Athletics vs. Boston Red Sox

The Athletics had their first taste of doubleheader action of the 1915 season 100 years ago today at Shibe Park.  In the first game, Red Sox manager Bill Carrigan gave the ball to Babe Ruth.  This was the Babe’s sixth start of the year and so far it wasn’t going exceptionally well.  He had lost his last three starts and his ERA had ballooned to 3.93.  Though, to be fair, one of those starts came a few weeks ago against his future team, the New York Yankees, and he dominated them until the 13^th inning when allowed his fourth and deciding run.  You can’t really blame him if he keeps the other club at bay for over 12 innings and the rest of his team can’t bail him out.  Today was the third appearance Ruth made against the A’s this season; in the previous meetings he only allowed five hits and three runs over ten and a third innings.  The Mackmen had their work cut out for them.

Phillies 100 Years Ago: Phillies Play Boston In Their First Doubleheader Of The Season

May 28, 1915

Phillies @ Boston Braves

Phillies @ Boston Braves

Athletics vs. Boston Red Sox

The magnates that owned the professional baseball clubs 100 years ago were beginning to get restless.  It was now more than a month into the season and attendance was nowhere near where it had been in previous years.  That fact that the decline was ubiquitous across all leagues meant that the Federal League couldn’t be blame for diluting the product.  There had to be another reason that fans were not willing to come out to the ballparks.  Ban Johnson, President of the American League, believed that he had the answer: rainouts.  Nineteen-fifteen happened to have more rainouts in the first month of the season than any other in the recorded history of the game; between the three major leagues 79 games had been rained out.  The Phillies were involved in eight cancellations thus far, three in the past week, while the Athletics had been relatively lucky to only miss four scheduled games.  All of these games needed to be made up, obviously, which meant doubleheaders, both a blessing and a curse to the magnates.  Fans could watch two games for the price of one, which meant the clubs missed out on a game’s worth of profit, but it was also true that fans were more likely to show up to a mid-week doubleheader than a single game.  For example, say the usual weekday game drew 5,000 fans (which would be a good day), the doubleheader might draw two or three times that, meaning the club would profit in the long run.  So, for the owners, the short-term plight of rainouts would be a long-term gain in doubleheaders.  An interesting side note, the author of the recap of the A’s and Phillies games in the Evening Ledger said that Philadelphia fans “generally tire of double-headers.”  He provides no explanation, maybe it was common knowledge to his readers, but I haven’t found an answer as to why Philadelphia fans didn’t like doubleheaders.  Sucks for them, though, because the Phillies had a lot of games to make up.

Phillies 100 Years Ago: Phillies Sweep Cubs To Take First Place & the Athletics Come Home From Dreadful Road Trip

May 27, 1915

Phillies vs. Chicago Cubs

Athletics @ Cleveland Indians

Today was the last day of the Athletics woeful western road trip.  The trek that Connie Mack believed would be the turning point of his club’s season turned out to be a nineteen-day reality check.  The A’s were losers in 9 of the 14 games so far on the road, though today’s match with the Indians was a chance for progress.  A win represented a sweep in Cleveland, the team directly ahead of them in the standings, and their first winning-streak this season of more than two games.  Unfortunately, not too much time passed between the umpire’s shout of “Play Ball!” and the wind being sucked out of the Athletics’ sails.  Chick Davies allowed four Indians to score in the bottom of the first and another in the next frame, putting his club in a deep hole and jacking his season ERA to 8.71.  His replacement after the second was Bud Davis, another unreliable reliever that allowed four more runs to score over the next six innings.  To the Athletics’ credit they did managed to mount a comeback in the fifth and eighth, scoring eight runs of their own.  But, alas, it was one short.  The A’s limped back into Philadelphia with a 12-22 record, 10 games out of first place and firmly entrenched in the American League basement.  A cartoon was printed in the May 28^th edition of the Evening Ledger where the White Elephant, with a forlorn look and a beat up suitcase in his hand, was greeted by a Philadelphia Fan who wanted to welcome “the old cripple” back to town, encouraging him that “now’s your chance” to get back in the AL pennant hunt.  This was not to be, but here is that strange occurrence where Phillies fans were always looking for the omens of doom and the Athletics fans were encouraging and hopeful.    

Phillies 100 Years Ago: Alexander Pitches Gem to Bring Phillies Back to First Place

May 25, 1915

Phillies vs. Chicago Cubs

Athletics @ Cleveland Indians

We are back after a substantial break in the action.  The Phillies were rained out or had the day off for four straight days.  The Athletics beat the Tigers on May 21^st to momentarily escaped from last place, but then lost the next two to reclaim the basement slot.  Today they beat the Indians for the second day in a row, but this was still not enough to pull them up to seventh place.  In fact, they had been in last place for four days in a row, which, as we talked about in an earlier post, were more days in last place than in their entire existence before 1915.