April 19, 1915
Phillies @ New York Giants
Athletics vs. New York Yankees
Happy “140-year anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and
Concord if we were in 1915” day, everyone!
To the people living in 1915, the Germans launching a large sea force
towards Britain might have felt a little more paramount. In Philadelphia, though, the Phillies were
winning and still undefeated! The Great
War could wait because there was baseball to be played.
The Athletics game was ugly.
Yankees won 11-6. The game was
pretty exciting, though, as the teams combined for 29 hits. Sadly, the A’s just couldn’t link their 15 hits
together to amass more than six runs.
Another bad omen hit Connie’s club today as Herb Pennock was lit
up. Lit up might not even be strong
enough. Decimated? Maybe too strong. Either way Pennock was supposed to be the
stalwart that the rest of the young rotation could fall in line behind, instead
he let up 8 runs, 12 hits, and 4 walks while only striking four out. The A’s were in the game in the fifth inning
when the score was 4-3 Yankees, but Pennock could not stop New York from
putting up four runs in the top of the sixth.
Philadelphia did go down with a fight, though, but it wouldn’t be enough
to take the lead. Really it wasn’t
close; every time the A’s put a run on the board the Yankees came back the next
inning and added at least one for themselves.
The loss kept the A’s in last place and dropped their record to
1-3. Mack’s experiment with finding
young talent to “excite” the Philadelphia fans was only embarrassing the
club. Before the season Mack was
concerned that Philly wouldn’t support a winner; now it seemed he would get the
chance to experience what Philadelphia is like when supporting a loser. Meanwhile the National League also-rans that
made their home less than a mile down Lehigh Avenue were the best team in
baseball.
“Moran’s miserable mutts, the hogjowled old rummies, showed
so much vim, vinegar, ginger, Tabasco and pepperino at the Polo Grounds
yesterday that they ran right over the Giants like a six-cylinder automobile
with the muffler cut out.”[1] So there you go! Haywood Bourn of the New York Tribune gives a nice recap of the Phillies win. Gavvy Cravath opened the scoring when he
drove in Beals Becker in the third inning.
Once again the Phillies took the first lead in the game didn’t look
back. Al Demaree made his first start of
the season for the Phillies and did not disappoint. He gave up four hits and four walks, but
didn’t allow the Giants to cross home plate.
The only two smashes the Giants got off of Demaree were stabbed by
Cravath and Becker, preventing sure extra base hits from dropping. The Phillies scored two more in the top of
the ninth and won the game 3-0. It was
the Phillies second easy win in a row versus their most hated enemy and fourth
in a row to open the season.
Something special was coming together for the club. They
were hitting the cover off the ball and pitching superbly. Through the first six days of the season the
Phillies scored 20 runs, and while that had them tied for fourth in the league
in total runs, they did it in only four games.
Every other team had played at least five and most had played six. The Phillies were averaging 5 runs a game,
which was first in the National League, and only the Giants and Cubs were
within half of a run (and the only reason the Giants were in the conversation
at all is because they put up 16 on Brooklyn to opening the season. They scored just 6 runs in their next four
games). On top of that the pitching and
defense had only let up two runs all year.
That’s outscoring their opponents 20-2 through four games! And in the process they knocked around the
defending World Champions and their rivals from New York. Everything was going the Phillies way and
they weren’t even a week into the season yet.
Obviously, this also means that it was too early to get really
excited. But Phillies’ fans couldn’t
have asked for a better start…or could they?
Guess we’ll have to wait and see!
[1]
Heywood Bround, “Billy Sunday a Jinx on Bench of Giants,” New York Tribune, April 20, 1915, accessed April 17, 2015, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1915-04-20/ed-1/seq-12/#date1=1915&sort=date&date2=1915&words=Phillies&sequence=0&lccn=&index=19&state=New+York&rows=20&ortext=&proxtext=Phillies&year=&phrasetext=&andtext=&proxValue=&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=5.
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