May 10, 1915
Phillies @ Brooklyn Dodgers
On the front page of the New
York Tribune, the Lusitania is
still front-page news. The main
headline, in giant bold blocked letters, let it be known that Alfred
Vanderbilt, the third son of the business magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, was
last seen ushering women in a lifeboat, the lifeboat that was supposed to have
been his ticket to safety after the ship was hit. But instead of rescue he chose death in order
to save the lives of strangers. The
articles about the Lusitania were
zooming from the macro into on individual experiences, putting faces to the
already unbearable lives lost. Certainly
it swayed a certain percentage of the population into the war camp. Below this article was one about Teddy
Roosevelt banging the drum for war. The
former president was quoted as saying, “Duty demands instant action, forbids
delay.” Roosevelt was one of a group
that still saw war as a fun, almost romantic game. And why not?
To him, it was. His military
experience in the Spanish-American War, storming up the famed San Juan Hill
with the Rough Riders, was during an expansionist war against Spain, who was
already fading as an international power.
It was arguably the most one-sided war the United States every
participated in, as exemplified by it accounting for the least amount of
casualties ever in a major American war.
So, yeah, to Teddy, the sport of war was relatively easy. But the call for manliness and joining the
Great War would have consequences that hit home hard for Teddy when his
youngest son, Quentin, was shot down over Germany. Quentin was just one of almost forty million
men that were casualties of the Great War that Teddy so desperately wanted the
generation below him to die in. But most
Americans were following the example of their president and maintained their
neutral stance. “Beyond question the
great majority of Americans stand firm for a firm insistence on our conceptions
of neutral rights and for an unequivocal demand on Germany that she abandon
forever, so far as we are concerned, her policy of criminal aggression on the
high seas.”
The front-page news in Philadelphia was much of the same as
it was nationally. It had gone from
mostly local news with a smattering of war news to being consumed by World War
I news in just a matter of days. I’m
sure the war and America’s part in it (or out of it, as the individual’s stance
may be) was all that was being discussed in Philadelphia because there were no
baseball games in the city today. The
Athletics used today as a travel day, heading out for their western road trip. This would as good a chance as any to turn
their season around, starting tomorrow, because they were playing the last
place St. Louis Browns. Connie Mack,
before departing for the west, insisted that the Athletics would return to
Philadelphia a few notches higher in the standings. As I’ve discussed before, Mack stated that
his he was really disappointed in his pitching and, because they were allowing
so many runs, the offense looked more futile than it actually was. He was asked whether there was any news on
possibility of bringing Home Run Baker back into the fold to boost the offense
and Mack replied, “Do I miss Baker?
Well, naturally, I miss him. His
absence has hurt the club more than one can imagine, but I have forgotten all
about him. Baker is no longer figured as
a member of the club, excepting in the eyes of the powers that be because of
his contract with me.” So there you
go. Baker’s time in Philadelphia was
over.[1]
The Phillies were going through an Athletics-like slump of
their own. They were losers of five of
their last seven games and the offense had really dropped off. Gavvy Cravath, the team’s power-hitting right
fielder, had started hot but was hitting .170 with a .366 slugging percentage
over his last 13 games. The Evening Ledger ran a story about how
Cravath lost his job in the majors years before because of a similar hitting
slump. The article notes, “If one traces
Cravath’s record back he will find that he admits to 33 years of age, and it
possible two years older.”
Baseball-reference says he was 34-years old in 1915, so there was
obviously some confusion about how old he was.
An aging slugger that is prone to slumps, some of which cost him his job
as a big leaguer, was concerning to fans as well as the bosses of the
Phillies. They didn’t have anyone to
replace him, unless they wanted to shift Possum Whitted to right field and give
Dode Paskert or Bud Weiser a shot to show what they’ve got, but neither
solution could ever possibly be as valuable as Cravath when he was
hitting. For now, it looks like the
Phillies would just have to slump with Gavvy and hope the old man could turn it
around soon.[2]
In the final game of their series against the Brooklyn
Dodgers, the Phillies’ struggling offense faced off against Wheezer Dell. Coming into the game, Dell was 3-2 and had a
2.54 ERA. He had pitched against the
Phillies on April 29th and won, though his pitching wasn’t great and
the Dodgers scored seven runs in support of him. On the mound for Philadelphia was baby ace
Erskine Mayer, whose last outing also came in a win against the Dodgers. Today he would not be so lucky. The Dodgers jumped on Mayer early when second
baseman George Cutshaw smashed a two-run triple in the first inning. In the second inning, the defense began to
fail. A hit to left got by Possum
Whitted, allowing runners to take an extra base. Then Garvvy Cravath overthrew the second
baseman on Jake Daubert’s double, allowing the runners to continue their
circuit. When all was said and done,
three Dodgers crossed the plate in the second, giving them a 5-0 lead. Dell took over from there. He pitched another complete game and had the
Phillies batters on their heels all day.
Cravath’s slump continued as he went 0-4, but he wasn’t the only one
flailing at Dell’s curveballs; the Phils only managed three hits today, and all
were in separate innings so as to not be able to mount any kind of rally. The score at the end of the second was the
same as the score at the end of the game, 5-0 Dodgers.[3]
Frustrations were running high for the Phillies today. Erskine Mayer, Ed Burns, and Oscar Dugey were
all ejected for arguing in vain with the umpires. Losing will do that to a club. They had lost six of their last eight games
and allowed the Cubs to get within a half game of first place. Maybe even more concerning was that the
Braves were only a game behind, since the Phillies had beat Boston five times
already this season. That means the
Braves were 11-3 versus the rest of the league and playing their best
baseball. All of a sudden the great
opening of the season for the Phillies was looking like a small bump in the
road that the Braves would have to overcome in order to repeat as champions of
the National League. With that in mind,
you can’t really blame those that were ejected in today’s game. The pressure on the club to take advantage of
their beginning combined with the subpar play that the team just couldn’t shake
was taking its toll. Everyone in that
clubhouse knew they were blowing it, playing well below their standards, and
yet nobody could make the plays that would stop the slump in its tracks. Grover Cleveland Alexander would get the call
to return the Phillies to their winning ways tomorrow as they played their
first series against the middling Pirates.
Hopefully both the Phillies and Athletics could end their struggles
tomorrow.
[1]
“Athletics Bound To Climb, Says Mack; “Baker Forgotten,” Evening Ledger, May 10, 1915, accessed May 10, 2015, http://1.usa.gov/1F73fLq.
[2]
“Cravath’s Batting Slump, Such As Present, Once Cost His Job,” Evening Ledger, May 11, 1915, accessed
May 10, 2015, http://1.usa.gov/1QynDsT.
[3]
“Superbas Keep Right On Beating the Phillies,” New York Tribune, May 11, 1915, accessed May 10, 2015, http://1.usa.gov/1Iu72DG.
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