July 3, 1915
Phillies vs. Boston Braves
Phillies vs. Boston Braves
Athletics @ Boston Red Sox
Athletics @ Boston Red Sox
Like I said the other day, the 52nd anniversary of the
Battle of Gettysburg was commemorated in 1915 with many soldiers that fought in
the battle. After a day of defeat in the fighting of July 2, mostly in a weak assault on the Union’s right flank on Culp’s Hill
and the much more celebrated attack from General James Longstreet’s Corp on the
left in Devil’s Den and Little Round Top that was repulsed Joshua Lawrence
Chamberlain’s 20th Maine amongst others, Confederate General Robert
E. Lee hoped to renew the same tactics as the day before to crush both ends of
the Union line. However, the Union’s XII
Corps on Culp’s Hill unleashed an artillery bombardment that halted any attempt
by the Confederate’s to take the heights.
After careful consideration, Lee opted a general assault at the Union’s
center, an area he assumed would be weakened to due to reinforcement of the
flanks. Lee was wrong and the decision
to attack there was the biggest mistake he made so far in the war, and arguably
in his career.
As you all probably know, the ensuing attack has gone down
in history as Pickett’s Charge, though it is somewhat unfairly named because
Pickett didn’t call for it and he wasn’t the only one to rush his troops across
that open field. Generals J. Johnston
Pettigrew and Issac R. Trimble joined Pickett in what amounted to a march to
death for half of the approximately 12,500 men on that afternoon. As the troops left the woods they were almost
immediately met with artillery fire from all directions as both flanks were in
range of cannon placed near Little Round Top and on Cemetery Ridge. Round after round of cannon blasts lit up the
Confederate line, and man after man fell dead on the field. The troops had to march down one side of a
ridge, through fences and other obstacles, and then up the side of Cemetery
Ridge before they even got to the Union
line. Obviously the charge did not
get far, though General Lewis Armistead’s brigade did momentarily break the
Union line at what is known as the Angle or the High Water Mark of
the Confederacy. At the end of the day
over 1,000 Confederates laid dead in the field.
The Union inflicted over 6,000 casualties, over 50% of the troops
involved. Lee was forced to retreat
after yet another devastating blow, and thus ended the Confederacy’s last
attempt to take the war to Northern soil.
Back in 1915, an assassination attempt was made on J.
Piermont Morgan at his summer home in Ithaca, New York. Morgan took over as the head of J.P. Morgan
& Co. after his father’s death in 1913.
Since the war began in Europe, Morgan lent money to the Allies to keep
their war effort afloat. Many in America
were worried that Morgan’s lending practices were tying the United States to
the Allied cause and would eventually push the nation into a war it did not
want. Frank Holt, a former professor at
Cornell, decided to take matters into his own hands and kill Morgan. Well, that’s not true. It wasn’t his
decision. You see, Frank Holt told the
police that he was “…sent by God to do this.
Morgan is the only one who could end the war and I was a divine agent in
trying to destroy him.”
The attempt on Morgan’s life was like a movie where a
protagonist was heretofore a nobody but was thrust into an illegal scheme that
was beyond his capabilities. Holt
scouted Morgan’s home for days before the attempt. He told the police it was to get a
reconnaissance of the mansion to better fulfill his duty. Yet, when the day came, Holt straight knocked
on the front door to gain entrance. The
servant that met Holt there said that Morgan was busy on the phone with the
British ambassador to the United States.
Holt let it be known that his visit was “very important – that it
concerned the European war,” which I feel like is a tremendously poetic way for
a killer bent on ending the war to attempt to gain access to his victim. He might as well have said, “Oh, he’s talking
about the war, huh? Well, I want to talk
about the war, too,” while he stroked his revolver. Anyway, Holt did not convince the servant to
let him in. Once Plan A failed, Holt
seemed to be at a total loss of what to do.
So he did what anyone without a plan does: he just pulled his gun out
and started firing. Morgan heard the
commotion and came out of his office only to receive two bullets from down the
hall as a greeting. Holt was restrained
and Morgan, whose wounds were not life threatening, received treatment. Later, when questioned by the police, Holt
claimed, “I am very sorry to cause this injury to Mr. Morgan, but I wanted to
ask him if he would stop this slaughter of our European brothers.” The article in the Evening Ledger closes by saying that “Physicians who examined the
prisoner declared he undoubtedly was insane.”
I don’t know, though; God works in mysterious ways.[1]
While all the celebrations and remembrances and assassination
attempts were going on in 1915, the Phillies and Athletics both played doubleheaders. The Red Sox were riding high about two weeks
ago, only 2.5 games behind the White Sox for first place. But since then they dipped into the valley of
the losses and, even after winning their previous four games, sat in second
place, 5.5 games back. This part of the
season was a huge makeup opportunity for Boston. They played doubleheaders on June 26, 28, and
30, then played another one today against the A’s, and would play more on July
5, 6, 7 for a stretch of 15 games in 12 days.
In the first game today, the Athletics turned the tables on the Sox, who
had scored 20 runs in the two games they played on June 30, by scoring runs in
bunches. The game was close until the
A’s opened up in the seventh and eighth innings, the final score ended at 7-3
in favor of Philadelphia. But the
offensive success did not last and, in fact, didn’t even show up for game
two. The A’s failed to score but did
allow Boston to have three crooked number innings. Philadelphia lost game two by the score of
11-0. Connie Mack’s boys stayed chained up in the American League basement, 21.5 games behind the White Sox, and they
didn’t even hit the worst part of their season yet.
The Phillies could identify with the Red Sox more so that
with the Athletics or Braves. They, too,
sat in second place and were knocking on the door, though they were much closer
than the Sox to achieving the coup. In
game one, before what the newspapers called the “largest crowd that had been in
this park for several years,” Eppa Rixey blundered in his first whack at the
Braves. Larry Gilbert started the bash
off with a looping drive down the right field foul line for a double. After an ill-advised sacrifice and a
strikeout, Red Smith laced a single to left to drive in the first run. But, in true Eppa Rixey fashion, he got out
of the inning only touched for one and proceeded to dominate the Braves. Boston worked three hits and three walks for
the entire rest of the game, never truly getting in another position to score. The Phillies, meanwhile, jumped on Dick
Rudolph in the second and third innings, scoring two runs in each, to give
Rixey a three-run lead that would wind up as the final. Phillies took game 1, 4-1.
Lefty Tyler pitched just as well for the Braves in game 2 as
Rixey did in game one. The Phillies
scored three runs, but they only managed four hits and four walks. It wasn’t a great showing for the Phillies
offense, but they did manage to make the most of the few opportunities they
were given. Unfortunately, George
Chalmers had a rough day on the mound. He
only went seven innings because, when his turn came to bat in the eighth, the Phillies desperately needed a pinch-hitter to get back some runs Chalmers gave up. Boston was all over
Chalmers all day. They spaced out 12
hits, worked 4 walks, and scored five runs off of the Phillies starter. The momentum was firmly in Boston’s camp
until the sixth Gavvy Cravath hit a 3-run home run, his 11th on the
year, to bring the Phils within one run.
However, Chalmers went out and gave up the final run of the game in the
seventh and the game finished as a 5-3 win for Boston.[2]
The split left the Phillies in the exact same spot as they
held when they entered the day: second place, two games behind Chicago. It was a positive series for Philadelphia,
taking three of the four games against the Braves, but they only made up half of
a game on the Cubs. When the Phillies
left Chicago it looked like the Cubs were holding onto first place by the skin
of their teeth. Since then, though, they
were winners of 12 of their last 19 games, so for any team to gain ground on
them would have taken a miracle. But the
Phillies were doing their job, beating the teams they should be beating, and
waiting for the Cub’s inevitable slip.
The next club to visit the Baker Bowl was the arch-rival Giants. New York came to town losers of six of their
last 10, which is only slightly worse than they had performed on the season as
a whole. Grover Cleveland Alexander will
have the honors of opening the series for the Phils, hopefully performing his
magic and setting his club down the path of the three-game sweep of New York.
[1]
“J. Piermont Morgan Shot Twice By Former Professor At Cornell, Crazed By War,” Evening Ledger, July 3, 1915, accessed
July 2, 2015, http://1.usa.gov/1Cdw8Xt.
[2]
“Red Smith’s Hit Scores First Run,” Evening
Ledger, July 3, 1915, accessed July 2, 2015, http://1.usa.gov/1Cdw8Xt.
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