April 30, 1915
Phillies vs. Brooklyn Dodgers
Athletics @ Washington Senators
The Phillies faced a blast from the Philadelphia Athletics’
past with Jack Coombs on the mound for the Dodgers. Good ol' Colby Jack began pitching for the
Athletics in 1906 and was a key role player during the dynastic years. In 1910 Coombs he stepped up and became a
star, ranking amongst the best pitchers in baseball. He had a 31-9 record with a 1.30 ERA (182
ERA+!). It was the only time in his
career that he threw over 350 innings and struck out at least 200 batters. Between July and September of that year he
completed 12 shutouts. Twelve in three months! Coombs became a hero when he pitched and won
three games against the Cubs in the 1910 World Series, the first World Championship
for Philadelphia. The A’s repeated in
1912 and Jack earned himself a win against Christy Mathewson and the hated
Giants, avenging Mathewson’s historic World Series performance against the A’s
from 1905. Needless to say Jack Coombs
would always have a special place in the hearts of Athletics fans.
Sadly, just as Coombs career was on the rise, his health
gave out on him. During Spring Training
in 1913 he developed a fever that was initially downplayed as food
poisoning. The pain didn't subside and another visit to the hospital a month later revealed that he
typhoid fever. He lost two years of his
prime to the disease. After the 1914
season Mack began to disband his championship club and Coombs was one of the
casualties. The Brooklyn Dodgers gave
the now 32-year pitcher a chance and he proved in 1915 that he had a little bit
left in the tank.[1]
Much of the crowd in the Baker Bowl was pulling for Coombs
to play well. They may
not have wanted him to win, necessarily, but a nice showing would
bring a nice bit of good old-fashioned nostalgia. (Now remember, Jack Coombs was an Athletic and
would have had no emotional connection for Phillies fans if the Venn diagram of
Phillies and A’s fandom did not overlap significantly. This is more proof that it did because Jack
was cheered as a hometown hero). Today
was not Jack’s best game with the Brooklyn club, but the team rallied around
him and took the win. Coombs gave up eight
hits and six walks to the Phillies, which normally would equate to a bunch of
runs for Philadelphia’s high power offense, but today they only managed
one. Coombs seemed to out-think the
batters, especially when runners were in scoring position and the big sluggers
were up. Eppa Rixey took the hard-luck
loss. He only allowed two runs in his
second complete game of the season. The game ended when our boy Bud Weiser, in
as a pinch runner with two outs in the ninth, took a stroll of second without
realizing he had stranded himself. A
quick throw behind Weiser and that was the end of that. Phils lost 2-1.[2]
Before the game, Dodgers’ manager Wilbert Robinson was asked
if he would be throwing his best lefty against the Phillies this series. Robinson was said to have answered, “No more
southpaws against that club. They seem
to have southpaws beaten before the game even starts.” The Phillies faced ten righties and three
lefties so far this season before today’s game.
They were 8-2 against righties and 3-0 against lefties. Do you see much of a difference between the
two? It looks pretty similar to me. The truth is the Phillies were smashing all
pitching from all teams from all sides of the rubber. But, you know what this sounds like? It sounds like a Philadelphia sports writer
trying to find fault with an otherwise almost perfect team. “Uh oh, I noticed this nonsensical, minute anomaly
that is probably the result of a small sample size, but it must be the hidden weakness
I’ve been searching for to confirm my false narrative! I better promote it as though it were the
only truth!”
It’s a tactic that today we would call clickbait. It’s total nonsense unless it is believed;
because then what it does is create concern that an exploitable weakness has
been discovered, even when there is none.
And when there is concern and two
losses in a row you start to lose confidence.
And when your confidence wanes as you hit the valleys that inevitably
occur during the ups and downs of a baseball season you start to believe it’s
because of your “weakness.” The next
thing you know you’ve got yourself so deep in a circular reasoning trap you can’t
see a way out of the tailspin.
This is basically what the Phillies will do until July.
This is basically what the Phillies will do until July.
Grover Cleveland Alexander will pitch tomorrow and cover up
the slide the team is already in. Over
the next two months Alex will start 30% of the Phillies games and get 44% of
the Phillies total wins; the Phils will only win 33% of the time when Alex
doesn’t pitch from now until July. I
don’t know if the 1915 Phillies believed they had a weakness, but I do believe
the zeitgeist around the club was prepared for them to fall apart. For the next couple of months the club will
fulfill this prophesy and play like a mediocre team. But it is what happens when they come out the
other side that makes them one of the best teams in Philadelphia history and
deserving of a remembrance. It is how
they dealt with the hard times that allows the second half of the season to be
so fulfilling and important.
In writing these entries I am trying to give context to what
life was like 100 years ago. Baseball
from a century ago is easily understood because the game remained relatively
constant through the years. The problem
is that tactics and terminology of the Deadball Era game seem quaint and
childish to us nowadays. They allow us
to belittle the past. It’s funny to us
that pitchers were called twirlers or that fans were known as bugs or that the
Phillies’ roster not only had a guy nicknamed Possum but also a man whose
actual name is Bud Weiser. There is a
separation of the generations that I suppose is natural, but gives us in 2015
an undue feeling of superiority over our ancestors.
That’s why it’s so shocking to see headlines like the one
from the Evening Ledger on May 1,
1915: “Women In Mighty Pageant Give Splendid Impulse To The Charge Of
Suffrage.” If you are a woman, you were
not able to vote in Pennsylvania 100 years ago.
This article from 1915 claimed that both men and women in Philadelphia
were now openly in favor of giving women the right to vote, and yet the
Nineteenth Amendment would not be confirmed for five more years. Progressive, yes, but the fact that the
newspaper names the event’s grand marshal as “Mrs. William Albert Wood,” you
see just how far the women’s movement would have to go for equality. Still, these few years before 1920 were a
culmination of tiresome, thankless work from hundreds of women that began
before the nation was founded to give all women the same political and social rights as men. The majority of women that
fought for this right never even saw a glimmer of the outcome for their
sacrifice. Now we mostly take their
sacrifice for granted. And “One Hundred
Year Ago” seems like ancient history, but I’m positive that you or I don’t
know someone personally that was alive during this time, we definitely are
close with someone who knew someone that was around during this turning point
in history. That’s how close the past
actually is. Many of us will live to
meet a person that will be alive in 2115.
How incredible is that? This is why I
find history so compelling. The past
can simultaneously be quaint and transcendentally transformative. It is the full range of what it is to be
human. I may have a laugh at how silly
ancestors can be when having their photograph taken and at the same time I am
awed by the incredible strength and perseverance they had in the face of strife
I couldn’t imagine having to handle today.
I’m hoping that by writing this series I can show that people from 100
years ago weren’t much different at their core than we are today.[3]
[1]
C. Paul Rogers III, “Jack Coombs,” SABR Bio Project, accessed April 28, 2015, http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/f64fded8.
[2]
“Phillies Feast On Southpaws, But Enemy Has Found Out,” Evening Ledger, May 1, 1915, accessed April 28, 2015, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045211/1915-05-01/ed-1/seq-11/#date1=1915&sort=date&date2=1915&words=PHILLIES+Phillies+PHILLY&sequence=0&lccn=&index=9&state=Pennsylvania&rows=20&ortext=&proxtext=phillies&year=&phrasetext=&andtext=&proxValue=&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=11.
[3]
“Women In Mighty Pageant Give Splendid Impulse To The Cause Of Suffrage,” Evening Ledger, May 1, 1915, accessed
April 28, 2015, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045211/1915-05-01/ed-1/seq-1/.
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