May 5, 1915
Phillies vs. New York Giants
Athletics @ New York Yankees
Happy Cinco de Mayo to all of the Mexican readers out there.
In Philadelphia 100 years ago, there were some strange front-page
headlines from the Evening Ledger
that I’d like to share. The first was a
picture of people standing in front of Curtis Publishing Company with the
headline “Fire Drill Empties Great Building In Six Minutes.” It’s hard for us to think that a fire drill
would constitute front-page news, but at the time it was a big deal. We have to remember that it was not uncommon
for fires to break out and trap people in buildings, killing hundreds. The horrific Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire
happened in 1911, only four years before this fire drill took place. The paper makes sure to draw the parallels
between the drill and the Triangle Shirtwaist fire by mentioning the number of
women that escaped the building at such a fast pace. This is just another little reminder that
things we take for granted today were deadly serious 100 years ago.
The other article I thought was interesting was the one
entitled “Maniacs Roam City, Escaping ‘Blockley.’” The sub-headline reads “Police Hunt Giant
Negro Lunatic From Violent Ward, Fearing He Will Murder Again.” Two men had escaped from “the ward of violent
insane of the Philadelphia Hospital” and were on the loose. The paper mentions that one was “a tall Negro
of powerful build,” the other man was barely mentioned at all except that he
was “Hungarian”. Obviously you can see
the racism here that has an early nineteenth-century flare; we have the stereotype of the violent black
man and the differentiation of whiteness.
Eastern Europeans were considered potentially nefarious, white but not too white, and even though he was in prison for murder, the same as his escape-partner, the newspaper made sure to let the public know that one of the men was black and therefore should be considered more dangerous. This article was written in a major northern city 45 years after the Civil War and slavery had ended and is just a small, almost insignificant example of racism, but it is an example nonetheless and should not be ignored. To think that this sort of subtle racism permeated the culture everywhere and existed for decades after this article was published, and how the atrocities the establishment conducted were easily explained away by it, it’s almost enough to make you understand why African-Americans are more than a little distrustful of institutions in the United States today.
As we flip through the rest of the paper we see that, yes,
baseball was played today! Great. But make sure you watch out for the lunatic
Negro, am I right?! The Athletics pulled
out a victory against the Yankees in the final game of their 10 game road
trip. Weldon Wyckoff pitched his best
game of the year to hold the Yankees to one run, even though he continued the
A’s streak of walking way too many batters.
The offense wasn’t much better than the Yankees’, but a home run and two
RBIs from Ruber Oldring was enough for the win.
The Athletics went 3-7 on their trip through Boston, Washington, and New
York; they still resided in seventh place because, amazingly enough, they were
winning more than the last place St. Louis Browns. The next three games would be at Shibe Park
against the Washington Senators, and then the A’s would make their first
western road trip to Cleveland, St. Louis, Chicago, and Detroit. By the way, the furthest teams to the west at
this time were the Cardinals and Browns.
Hence why those four Mid-West cities were considered the western road
trip.
The Phillies were trying to stop their recent losing skid
and had Grover Cleveland Alexander, the perfect guy to accomplish this goal, on the
mound. This was Alex’s sixth start of
the season; at this point, the big Nebraskan started more than one-third of
Phillies games. It would be a difficult
game for the Phillies, even with the best pitcher in the league on the mound,
because both Fred Luderus and Bill Killefer were out with injuries. The rest of the lineup would have to play
that much harder to make up for the loss of their two best leaders in the
field. Phillies third baseman Bobby
Byrne show a lack of awareness when got himself kicked out of the game for
arguing with the umpire. Byrne was
probably right, as the officiating was apparently horrendous, but he put the club in a difficult position when it was already down three starters in the field with a limited bench.
The Phillies jumped out to an early lead when center
fielders Dode Paskert hit a sacrifice fly that scored Gavvy Cravath. Usually Alexander would take a lead and run
with it until he got the victory, but today was not a usual day for the
Phillies. He ended up surrendering eight
hits and three runs (only two earned) over eight innings. This was the first start of the season that
Alexander did not go the distance.
Byrne’s bonehead decision that got him ejected came back
to bite the Phillies in the ninth when a pinch hitter was needed and only
pitcher Stan Baumgartner was available.
If Byrne were still in the game either Bud Weiser or Milt Stock could
have taken the at bat. Instead it was
Baumgartner making a quick out and the Phillies losing 4-2.
The rivalry got heated during the game today. Alexander and Giants’ second baseman Larry Doyle
got into a yelling match that ebbed and flowed most of the afternoon. Art Fletcher slid very hard into Dave
Bancroft as he was trying to turn a double play n the eighth inning and several Phillies players went after Fletcher
to let him know that he wouldn’t be able to do a thing like that again without
accounting for his actions. Bancroft was
fine, despite a foot long gash in his pant leg, which was good news for the
Phillies because they could ill afford to lose another regular to injury. The fighting may have been fun for the fans,
but the lose added to the concern that surrounded the Baker Bowl in recent
days.[1]
The Evening Ledger
ran a cartoon in the paper on May 6, 1915 that sums up the current
situation. One man named Crepe Hanger (I
had to look this up. A crepehanger is
someone that is always pessimistic) was talking to a man named Mr. Philly
Phan. Hanger says, “Gee Whiz! Phil- Too
bad about Luderus, heh? Giants copped
two straight too! Alex kinda
flopped! And Killefer out, too bad-gee
whiz- heh!” To which Philly Phan
replies, “Don’t annoy me- DON’T annoy me!” as he smiles and stares at a plaque
that lists the Phillies winning percentage and the batting averages of the best
hitters. The two camps fascinate because
it was not even a week ago that there was talk of the Phillies being underrated barely the front-runners to win the pennant.
The papers were publishing stories all the time about other cities not
giving the Phillies the respect they deserved.
Now, after losing four of five, the naysayers and I-told-you-soers were
coming out and casting a pall on the club.
Alexander’s loss, while in the grand scheme of things should only matter
as one game, took on huge importance because of its timing in the season. If they were going to turn this around, it
was going to start with him. When he
failed, the confidence was gone for a few days until he can get back on the
mound. Sure, Erskine Mayer provided hope, but hope is only good until the
game starts. Then if things start going
bad, hope goes right along with them. As
easily as hope momentarily inflates confidence, one bad turn will suck all the wind right out. And to make matters worse for the Phillies
was that their everyday leaders, Luderus and Killefer, were both sidelined with
injuries for the foreseeable future. It
was their job to hold the club together during tough times, but it is
exceedingly difficult to do that when sitting on the bench watching the
action. Times were tough for the Phils
right now. Fans began to wonder: Would
their normal July swoon coming early this season?
[1]
“Athletics Face Crucial Test On First Western Invasion,” Evening Ledger, May 6, 1915, accessed May 2, 2015, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045211/1915-05-06/ed-1/seq-12/#date1=1915&sort=date&date2=1915&words=Phillies+PHILLIES&sequence=0&lccn=&index=1&state=Pennsylvania&rows=20&ortext=&proxtext=phillies&year=&phrasetext=&andtext=&proxValue=&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=12.
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