May 8, 1915
Phillies @ Brooklyn Dodgers
Athletics vs. Washington Senators
The United States was still reeling over the news of the Lusitania. The reports were coming in fast and all
they had were bad news. There were
reportedly 32 Philadelphians on the ship when it sank and all were presumed
dead. The captain of the ship had
admitted that he was warned about the dangers of travelling through that
stretch of ocean but did nothing to make an attack more difficult. Surprisingly, considering how they would react late in the century, Americans were willing
to wait for the facts to come in before jumping to any rash decisions. President Wilson was engaging the German
government to figure out how the whole mess could be made right again. Eventually, as I have written previously, the
tension would be released, but for now America was as close as it ever was to
engaging in foreign entanglements.[1]
The Phillies, meanwhile, reengaged with the Dodgers for the
second time in this series. Jack Coombs
was on the mound for Brooklyn. The
former Athletic had not pitched in a game since he beat the Phillies on April 30
and, unfortunately for the Phillies, he was even better today. Over nine innings he held the Phillies bats
quiet; only Gavvy Cravath seemed able to get to connect with Coombs, hitting a
home run and sacrifice fly to account for the only two runs the Phillies would
score on the afternoon. The newspapers
made sure to say that this was not the same hard-throwing Coombs from his
heyday in Philadelphia, but he mixed his pitches up enough to baffle Phillies’
hitters. He was said to have out-pitched
Eppa Rixey, but that was probably only due to the fact that the Dodgers
won. Rixey had a nice game for himself
and was maybe a little unlucky that his defense (or offense for that matter)
didn’t support him better. A string of
misplays that don’t show in the box score and a pass ball account for most of
the Dodgers’ offense. This was Rixey’s
third start of the season and the poor guy was 1-2 despite having a 1.73 ERA.
The Phillies played their past seven games in a tailspin and
all of a sudden there were challengers to the club's hold on first
place. The Chicago Cubs didn’t play
today but gained a half game on the Phillies and were now only one game back. Boston beat the Giants today to pull within
two games of the Phillies. Almost all of
the wiggle room they had acquired from their hot start was spent a month
later. Now it was as if they were back
at square one. The good news about the
losing streak was that it wasn’t a complete collapse like the Athletics were
embroiled in; the Phillies still have some of the best pitching in
baseball. It was the lineup that all of
sudden stopped scoring runs that was the problem. We have discussed Fred Luderus’ injury and
Gavvy Cravath’s slump, but at this point it was like the whole team was
struggling to make good contact. Guys weren’t getting on base,
guys weren’t hitting with runners in scoring position, and the power guys
weren’t driving the balls in the gaps. The
vigor and energy that defined the opening week or two of the season was nowhere
to be found in the beginning of May. The
club had one more game in Brooklyn before they returned to Philadelphia for an
extended home stand against Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Chicago. Hopefully some home cooking against a slew of
second division clubs was all the Phils would need to reinvigorate them for their
clash with the second place Cubs at the end of May. Nothing like feeding on the weak to help turn
a season around.
[1]
“Thirty-two Philadelphians Lost Lives on Lusitania,” Evening Ledger, May 10, 1915, accessed May 5, 2015, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045211/1915-05-10/ed-1/seq-2/.
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