April 15, 1915
Phillies @ Boston Braves
Athletics vs. Boston Red Sox
Happy Tax Day, everyone! Have we all squared away our
dealing with the IRS? Good. Our subjects would not have been
feeling the vague sense of uneasiness that is Tax Day 100 years ago because
they would have had the joy about a month earlier in March. For them,
today would have marked the three-year anniversary of the Titanic sinking in
the black waters of the North Atlantic Ocean. There were very few
mentions of the grand liner's demise in the newspapers of 1915, but since it is
still in our public consciousness over century later, I'm sure it was on the
minds of many. Or, perhaps, there were more important matters to worry
about. There was the news of German Taubes planes doing battle with the
British high above London, marking the furthest German planes had gone into
England during the war. And on the ground the Battle of Shaiba had ended
the day before with British victorious in defending Basra and wresting control
of Mesopotamia from the Ottomans.
Back in Boston, the Phillies were engaged in their second game of
the season against the Braves. Manager Pat Moran turned to Erskine Mayer
to continue the pitching magic started when Grover Cleveland Alexander shut the
champs out the day before. Mayer was a six-foot right-hander from
Atlanta, Georgia playing in his fourth season with the Phillies. He had
been a star pitcher at Georgia Tech before working his way through the minor
league system until 1912 when the Phillies signed him after a dazzling year
playing at Portsmouth, Virginia.[1]
His first two years with the club were good, but Mayer had his breakout
season in 1914 when he won 21 games with a 2.58 ERA (114 ERA+) and 5.8 WAR.
Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, 1914 would mark Erskine's peak in the
major leagues, though he continued to play until 1919. On this day he
took the ball in rain, snow flurries, and hail that can occasionally occur
during Aprils in Boston, hoping to match his friend and roommate's performance
from the day before.
The Braves sent Tom Hughes to the mound. Hughes had pitched for the Yankees
sporadically and with varying degrees of success. He wasn’t in the majors from 1911 to 1913 and
only pitched 2 games for the Braves during their miracle run. Hughes managed an ERA+ of 86 in his career
before the 1915 season, so to say he was not very good might be an
understatement. The Phillies took full
advantage of his subpar twirling, pounding out four runs in the fourth
inning. Boston cut the lead to three in
the bottom of the fourth, but that was all Mayer would allow. When the Phillies hung another three runs on
Hughes in the top of the seventh it was all she wrote. During his career Mayer was often
overshadowed by Alexander, but in the second game of the new season Erskine lived
up to his reputation as the second ace of the staff and pitched a similarly
excellent game to Old Pete.
The Phillies were now 2-0 and sat in a first place tie with their
rivals the New York Giants. Amazingly,
the only other undefeated team in professional baseball (including the Federal
League) after the April 15th games were played was the Chicago White
Sox. This was a good omen for the
Phillies and they eagerly looked forward to completing the sweep of the Braves
the following day. Alas, Mother Nature
would step in a ruin the Phillies grand debut.
The good news was that the Giants and White Sox did play on April 16th and lost to the Brooklyn Robins
(or Dodgers) and St. Louis Browns respectively, leaving the Phillies in first
place in the National League for the first time that season and the only
undefeated team in major league baseball. The rain allowed the Phillies to travel to New
York a day early and prepare for a four game series that would give them a
chance to put some space between them and the Giants.
Meanwhile the Athletics did not continue their winning ways like
their North Philadelphia neighbors.
Bullet Joe Bush made the start for the A’s against the Red Sox and began
what would be his most forgettable season.
He was wild all game, walking five and giving up six hits and, despite
only allowing two runs, Connie Mack pulled him with two outs in the fifth for
Weldon Wyckoff. The A’s seemed to right
the ship after the pitching change as Rube Oldering and Stuffy McInnis
contributed a double and a RBI each while Amos Strunk had two hits and a
RBI. Going in to the top of the seventh
the Athletics had a 3-2 lead and were poised for their second win of the season. But Wyckoff could not hold the lead,
surrendering three runs over the final three innings right as the A’s bats
cooled off. Final score was 5-3 Red Sox.
This probably looked like a slight bump in the road to Mack and
fans, but we know now that this loss was the beginning of an epic collapse of
the illustrious Athletics. After this
game, it would take an Opening Day win in 1920 before the Athletics had a
winning record at any point in a season.
Let me say that again. The A’s,
winner of the four of five AL pennants led by the best manager in the league,
would not have a winning record at any point in any season from April 14, 1915
until April 15, 1920. Five full years of
losing records. To make matters worse,
the A’s lost on April 16, 1920 and spent two more seasons without a winning
record. It wasn’t until 1922 that the
Athletics had two days in a row with more wins than losses. Over this eight-year dive into the deepest
canyon of shit the A’s would ever know, they lost 799 games, just fewer than
100 losses per season. It’s amazing to
sit in 2015 and think about a manager losing that many games over that period
of time and not have the fans run him out of town. But Mack did hang around and he did manage to
build a second dynasty at the end of the 1920s.
What’s truly amazing, though, is that during the decade of the A’s
self-destruction the Phillies only managed to be equally as popular to the
American League club in attendance. One
would assume that what the Phillies were building in 1915 would carry the day
over the worst team in baseball, but it just wasn’t the case.
[1]
“Erskine Mayer,” SABR Baseball Biography Project, accessed April 15, 2015, http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/4c1d7d5d.
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