April 20, 1915
Phillies @ New York Giants
Athletics vs. New York Yankees
One hundred years ago, on this fine Tuesday April 20, 1915, Phillies, who had defeated the Giants the day before with a convincing shutout, were starting to turn heads back in Philadelphia. The Evening Ledger opined, “Moran has not only a fighting chance, but a real chance, provided, of course, the Phils do not go into their annual state of decay toward the end of July.” Even way back in 1915 fans and the media were just waiting for the bottom to fall out when good things were happening to their sports teams. Some things never change. But they were also sure to mention that they believed Pat Moran to be the man that could hold the team together for a whole season; “(W)hile the Phillies have time and again had a much greater lead than (4 games) in July, they have never had Pat Moran at the helm before, nor have they ever played the peppery style of baseball that they have displayed against the Braves and the Giants.” [1] The Phillies were getting the attention their great play to start the season deserved. Meanwhile, an article promoting the Athletics third game against the Yankees started, “During the last few days, Shibe Park has had the general appearance of a morgue.”[2] This is an interesting because it contributes to the notion that there weren’t factions when it came to Athletics and Phillies fans. Surely fans may have preferred one club to the other, but the lines were not hammered into stone. Usually, in cities with multiple teams, there was a tendency for newspapers to cover one team or another with more sympathy, but not in Philadelphia. The Evening Ledger was running columns about the A’s great chances for another pennant during Spring Training and all but ignoring the Phils. But now that the roles were reversed, the Phillies were the club that garnered the attention. This isn’t necessarily a fair-weathered fan event because there was no basis for factions to emerge. Philadelphia was different from cities like Chicago where the Cubs played in the north and the White Sox occupied the south, or in New York where the Yankees were in the Bronx, Giants in Manhattan, and Dodgers in Brooklyn; the Phillies and A’s were only a few blocks from each other and shared Lehigh Avenue as boundary to their respective ballparks. Identities could not form because fans had to travel the effectively the same distance to the same neighborhood to watch either club play. These dynamics are fascinating to me because we can really examine the Philadelphia Sports Fan in this nascent period and connect dots through time and explain some idiosyncrasies of the present day fans. For example, the lack of factions shows why, about forty years from 1915, the Athletics left Philadelphia without much attempt to keep them even though they were the more popular team for the first half of the twentieth-century.
But I digress. The
Phillies’ April 20th matchup was the third of a four game series
with the Giants. Erskine Mayer took the
mound trying to duplicate his magnificent start against the Braves. The Phillies once again started the
scoring. In the top of the second,
centerfielder Dode Paskert scampered home after a pass ball from Giants’
pitcher Rube Schauer. Fred Luderus
pounded a ball into centerfield to bring home the Phillies second run of the
inning in the form of Bert Niehoff.
Then, in the third, Dave Bancroft doubled and then scored when Gavvy
Cravath supplied a double of his own.
The Phils lead 3-0. Mayer had his
only difficult inning of the game in the bottom of the fourth when he was
banged around and allowed two runs to score.
The Giant’s rally was stymied, however, when Beals Becker hit a two-run
home run in the top of the fifth to put the game out of reach for the Phillies. Mayer shut the Giants down in order from the
sixth inning on and, just like that, the Phillies were 5-0! They were to play one more game at the Polo
Grounds before returning home the Philadelphia open their first homestand,
which was sure to draw a ton of excitement from the local fans.[3]
The A’s managed to send the corpses that attended their game
in the morgue of Shibe Park home with a smile.
Rube Oldring hit his second home run of the season and lead the team to
a 6-2 win over the Yankees. Bob Shawkey
won the game on the mound for the Athletics.
The 24-year old struck out five and allowed two runs to score during his
first complete game of the season.
Sadly, Shawkey wouldn’t last the year with the A’s as Mack continued to
dispense of any talent he amassed for cold hard cash; in this case the talented
pitcher was worth $3,000 dollars from the New York Yankees. Over the next twelve and a half seasons
Shawkey was a mainstay in New York’s rotation.
Four times he won 20 games or more and averaged 3.3 WAR a season for his
career in New York. Poor Connie Mack
would spend the next ten years or so trying to find good starting pitching and
he just let Shawkey go for money. As we
talked about earlier, Mack’s conduct contributes to Philadelphia fans’ distrust
of owners, especially when they are perceived to be cheap. Connie took a championship team and sold it
of to apparently turn a profit.
Obviously, Mack can’t be blame to want to profit in his business, and
there is evidence that the Athletics were not profitable despite their
championships, but it’s hard to understand how he thought he would win over the
fans with this approach. As we will see,
many fans marched down the street to the Baker Bowl during the A’s doldrums,
which confirmed Mack’s bias and hindered development of the club for years.
[1]
“Mayer vs. Marquard In Today’s Phil-Giant Contest In New York,” Evening Ledger, April 20, 1915, accessed
April 20, 2015, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045211/1915-04-20/ed-1/seq-13/.
[2]
“Mack to use Shawkey to Liven Morgue-Like Looks of Shibe Park,” Evening Ledger, April 20, 1915, accessed
April 20, 2015, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045211/1915-04-20/ed-1/seq-13/.
[3]
Heywood Broun, “McGraw Picks Wrong Rube to Stem Tide,” New York Tribune, April 21, 1915, accessed April 20, 2015, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1915-04-21/ed-1/seq-14/#date1=1915&sort=date&date2=1915&words=Phillies&sequence=0&lccn=&index=5&state=New+York&rows=20&ortext=&proxtext=phillies&year=&phrasetext=&andtext=&proxValue=&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=6.
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