The Entertaining, Tempestuous, Not-Always-There-in-Body-or-Spirit, 1904 New York Giants
In the process of clicking around Baseball Reference as I do, I ended up on a ballplayer (and a Hall of Famer, no less) named Jim O’Rourke, and saw that he appeared in 1 major league game in 1904, a good 11 years after he really retired. It would turn out that he appeared in this game at 54 years old. O’Rourke began his major league career in 1872, making for a truly astonishing span between his first year and his last, and leaving those of us insecure about the quality of that National Association of 1872 feeling better. O’Rourke did not fall on his face in 1904, literally or metaphorically.
Yet I felt like I’d heard this song before and was not as alive to the wonder as I would have been if I believed it a true novelty. Our modern points of reference for stunt comebacks are Minnie Minoso and Satchel Paige, but I sensed it would require less patience to find these cases in the Deadball Era. For instance, either shortly before or after finding O’Rourke, I encountered the case of Hall of Famer Sam Thompson, who played 8 games for the Tigers in 1906 after an eight-year hiatus.
I maintain two channels on Substack, one for these posts and one for “notes,” and intended to dash off a “note” with the essence of the information and thoughts contained above. But before I did, I thought I would search for news accounts of O’Rourke’s 1904 game. From a decent treatment in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, along with other sources, I learned that much of the intrigue centered around O’Rourke’s trying not just to play a comeback game as an arguably old man, but to do it at catcher, and for the whole nine innings. Given the demands of the position, which were probably even greater then (no catcher in the majors played more than 107 games in 19041), the anticipation was understandable. O’Rourke also had mainly been an outfielder during his career proper, although he had always shown remarkable versatility, appearing at every position at one point or another, and at every position except second base at least 6 times. The Democrat & Chronicle gives the impression that he’d converted to catcher (I guess an athlete is never too old to learn new things!) after leaving the majors as a player-owner with Bridgeport of the Connecticut League, a position he was still holding in 1904. But, in truth, O’Rourke had ample previous experience as a major league catcher, with 231 games total there, and appearances in 20 of his 22 seasons.
The whole thing sort of reminds me of a television show that was on in the ‘80s (“Sports Fantasy” with Len Berman) where fans partook in a challenge of their own devising, setting the parameters as carefully as if they were children and their parents had given them carte blanche for a birthday dinner. In this case, the setup might have selected to tickle the fans’ fancy more than O’Rourke’s, but another aspect of theatre was to have Jeems catch Joe McGinnity. There is an intimation in one of the articles that I read that McGinnity would have been a tough test for a catcher, perhaps because of his unorthodox, underhand style, and his variety of offerings. Or maybe O’Rourke’s age enabled the fans to identify with him, despite his previous athletic achievement, and as a fan, it would naturally be more of a thrill to catch McGinnity than Claude Elliott, say.
For context, it is also essential to note that O’Rourke played in New York from 1885-1892 and had an ownership interest in the Giants at the time of his reappearance. This was not some random guy, or even some random future Hall of Famer, getting this chance. It would still be interesting to know just how it came about, how long it had been in the offing, and who proposed it first.
The game of O’Rourke’s appearance was on September 22, 1904, and the Giants got out ahead of things a bit having this auxiliary entertainment when they did. While they were running away with the National League, up 18 games, they still had not clinched. However, they took this game 7-5 over the Cincinnati Reds, and in the process, made it mathematical. O’Rourke got a hit and, if he didn’t impress the reporters with his work behind the dish, it can only be said that their accounts made a good show to the contrary.
The win was the Giants’ 100th of the season, something also noted in the press. Noting this was only against 37 losses, I thought, wow, that was some record. But when I noticed that the team’s final record was not quite as strong, 106-47, I saw the Giants had finished 6-10, and this got the wheels turning for me. Years of informal study suggest to me, that, while baseball is a game played at the center, and generally any team can be a winner or a loser over a short period, that rule basically does not apply to great teams like the ‘98 Yankees. The Giants also played 15 of their last 16 games at home, making their late futility even more unlikely. So I began to wonder if the O’Rourke stunt might not have represented a one-day dispensation to a fan favorite, but might have been a symptom of a team simply not playing seriously. Was there more from where the O’Rourke incident came?
Adding to the intrigue was the 1904 Giants place in history. One could imagine that this was an angry team, thumbing its nose at the world, because this was the team that refused to play the 1904 World Series after Boston and Pittsburgh had made for the first meeting of National and American League champions the year before. McGraw, of course, could be said to have been perpetually thumbing his nose at the world.
It’s important to note, however, that it was the Giants choice to skip the World Series, and they would have more logically been angry and more likely to make a mockery of the last weeks of the 1904 regular season if they felt they were being gypped out of something that was their due. And, since the World Series, or at least the American League, was relatively new2, a season that ended anti-climatically would not have felt like that would feel today, or indeed feel strange at all. If you play enough meaningless games, they cease to be meaningless.
I will not pretend to be a scholar of the famous subject of the 1904 World Series feud, but the public may have learned what was in store for it in the same way that I boned up on the subject: by following tit-for-tat statements from the two leagues over the summer. Although it was not until late August that the Giants were quite running away with the pennant, they had a healthy lead from July forward, so the positions of McGraw and Giants’ owner John Brush took on critical importance. The American League often responded to their statements, naturally, through Ban Johnson: not only was he the American League president, McGraw had often called him out.
McGraw got the ball rolling on July 21.3 The first statement on a subject may or may not generally be the most honest one, but on this occasion, McGraw couldn’t have been more clear about his intention, which was not to play a World Series, and his motivation for it, which was spite. He said, “…my team will have nothing to do with the American League so far as I have a word to say, and no influence brought to bear on me by National League people can make me change my mind.” His motivation is best distilled in a separate quote: “The reasons for my decision are that Ban Johnson has not been on the level with me personally and the American League management, to my knowledge, has been crooked more than once.”
McGraw had a financial beef with the American League. He had managed the league’s Baltimore Orioles in 1901 and for the first half of 1902 ,and, according to him, had covered players’ salaries, presumably because the team was out of cash. The team eventually went under, and with it went McGraw’s money. Reading between the lines, McGraw apparently thought Johnson should have stepped in and had him repaid. The disillusionment would have been all the greater because McGraw had once considered Johnson his best friend.
The crookedness McGraw alleged also extended to umpiring. “The method he [Johnson] used to ‘queer’ me, and just at a time when the Baltimore club was beginning to pay, was to suspend me indefinitely and otherwise persecute me by jobs that he framed up with his umpires.”
That McGraw was suspended indefinitely by the American League in 1902 is a fact, but here one wants details of the conspiracy McGraw alleges. One surmises that he thought the umpires called a slanted team in favor of the other team, but maybe McGraw just thought the suspension was undeserved, or that he was thrown out of games for little more than the crime of breathing. According to Baseball Reference Bullpen, the source of the conflict was that “the new circuit was not as open to the ‘rough-house’ sort of play which the National League encouraged in the 1890s.” Whether McGraw might actually have had to fear that a 1904 World Series would not be a fair contest, it seems to me, depends on what exactly McGraw was alleging. Crooked umpires seems like a more valid concern than different interpretations of clean play. Was the issue of the past umpiring a pretext, or reasonable grounds for a lack of trust?
In McGraw’s mind, the reason Johnson had it in for the Orioles was that his long-range plan was to boot Baltimore out of the league and replace the franchise with a New York team.4 This did eventually come to pass: The New York Highlanders were established in 1903, replacing the Orioles, although with new management.
Therefore, McGraw did not just nurse a grudge against the American League, but against the Highlanders specifically. He saw them as the apple of Johnson’s eye. He also naturally saw them as a rival since they competed for New York fans. (I also ran across references to the management of the Cubs and the White Sox having particular dislike of each other.) However, while it is true that the Highlanders were only 3 1/2 games out of first in the American League on July 21, and people did foresee a possible all-New York World Series, McGraw’s stance in the Buffalo Evening News article I quote is reported to be irrespective of opponent.
Johnson’s response, by way of “a signed statement,” was reported 10 days later in the New York Times. He did not get in the mud with McGraw, but it cannot be said that he took the high road, either (more like a high tone), first commenting on what “calibre” of man John Brush was, and then “declar[ing] that [Brush and McGraw] have done more toward the detriment of baseball in America than the worst enemies of the game could possibly have done,” according to the Times.
Unlike McGraw, Johnson did want there to be a World Series, so a complete victory in his case required more than just the confutation of McGraw in the court of public opinion. To put pressure on the National League and leverage support, he invoked, first, the “public demand” for a Series and second, the National League’s honor, as the “joint Schedule Committee of the American and National Leagues last Spring” had unanimously agreed to a World Series, according to Johnson.
The Times article also contains an important nugget, which is that the Giants and Cubs, ultimately 1-2 in the National League, had agreed to go on a foreign tour after the season. It is clear to me that this was to be of the ilk with which we are familiar, with one example being the annual postseason ambassadorial trips to Japan involving quasi all-stars or Yankees teams that took place for years.
Two August articles I found5 report the Giants relenting on their World Series stance, although the team had made no public statement to this effect. The articles explain the about-face from the standpoint that, first, the world tour had gone over with the public like a led balloon. Additionally, forsaking a World Series for a world tour required immense sacrifice of the players, who would be footing some of the travel costs to go abroad, while the World Series might have netted them more than $2,000 each in additional income. One of the articles labels McGraw as selfish in dictating this course and suggests the players had discussed playing a World Series without him. The other article says that the married players in particular balked at the world tour. Ultimately, in backtracking, “McGraw wishe[d] to avoid a dissension which he has come to realize will seriously endanger the pennant chances of his club next season.”
I do not know, as team manager, whether McGraw would have been eligible for a World Series share (although just 31 years old and four seasons away from leading the NL in OBP, the player door wasn’t really open to him, as he’d only appeared in 5 games for the Giants in 1904), but it certainly seems that in general, when it came to benefiting financially from a World Series, management interest and player interest would have been one. But apparently the players on World Series champion Boston had negotiated a surprisingly good deal for themselves in 1903. Consequently, Reds business manager Frank Bancroft said, “none [of the clubs] made too much on the postseason games.”6
It is also possible to take a more holistic view of financial success than just the immediate effect on your own bottom line. One of the August rumor mill articles says that, just as the Giants felt competitive spite toward the AL, John Brush bore the same financial malice toward the AL. A collaborative World Series ran the risk of helping the American League, and Brush didn’t want to be a party to that.
The Sporting News seemed to report a 1904 World Series as inevitable, as agreed upon and just not announced, but the next step never came. And, strangely, for a period of weeks, I did not even see speculation about the matter, perhaps suggesting a World Series was not a dominant concern of the public. Maybe the 1903 World Series was looked upon as a possible one-off, and the possibility of there not being a sequel was not generally upon as a cause for despondency. Finally, on September 24, there was this short item in The Day of New London, Connecticut. “There will be no post-season series with the New York National league champions. That goes and is final,” it read. How the reporter came to this knowledge, he does not share with us, but that he bothers to share it, presumably reflects that it was not common knowledge. I would surmise that, while a postseason trip abroad might not have proved feasible, the Giants had never truly come around on the World Series.
The last day of the regular season was October 10. On October 2, Highlanders’ president Joseph Gordon made a formal and public proposal to the Giants to face them in a World Series should his team beat out Boston for the pennant. His arguments for a Series mirrored those that Johnson had made a couple of months before, with the only addition that he disavowed his motivation was rooted in finances.
“As far as the Greater New York Club [the name the Highlanders’ management seemed to prefer for their team] is concerned, gate receipts cut an insignificant figure. The New York public, which has supported the game loyally through years of vicissitudes, is entitled to consideration, and the time has now arrived, in my estimation, when this support should be rewarded by the playing of a series that will be memorable in baseball history.”
The Times article says that Boston was also in favor of a World Series. They would also have needed the Giants acquiescence, since the Giants had clinched the pennant by this point.
Rather lamely, in my estimation, the Giants not only took a few days to respond to the Highlanders (although not so long that the AL pennant winner had been decided), but claimed that the delay resulted from John Brush’s having been sick and unaware of the challenge. When they did answer, it was McGraw who spoke for the team. Dating to earlier months, he had been seen in some quarters as regularly taking the public relations hit for Brush on the “no Series,” a perception that was probably only enhanced when McGraw led off his statement this time by disavowing the notion, saying that the decision not to play lay solely with him. He suggested that a Series might have been lucrative, but unlike Gordon, said that the moral thing to do was not to play. He insinuated again that the American League could not be trusted. The Giants were “afraid of no team” but did not want to play without “protection and safeguards for square sport.” The most straightforward interpretation of this, again, would be that a team is at the mercy of the umpires, but it is interesting that McGraw does not directly invoke umpires, and the subtext seems to be that McGraw considered American League ball in some ethical sense inferior to National League ball. McGraw also makes much of the importance of the pennant. He did not want to see that tarnished by a World Series loss, something that could have happened, despite the team’s greatness, because of the lack of protections and safeguards.
In a mood of sabermetric projection, I wondered if McGraw had qualms about a short series deciding a winner. But in fact, when negotiations took place for a 1905 World Series, it was Ban Johnson making the case that, as much as he wanted the face-off, he thought nine games would be more fair than seven. The National League, on the other hand, prioritized length of regular season and wanted seven games (which it got).
Indicating to me that the understanding teams had of the bottom line usually went well beyond just a passive monitoring of attendance or a vague sense that winning would be beneficial, McGraw pointed out in his statement that the Giants’ runaway pennant win had in fact been bad for attendance down the stretch. Yet, he said, that had not stopped the team from pushing to clinch as early as they had. The Giants cared about finances, yes, but he gives this example to show that honor still took precedence with them, and says the same mindset will govern their decision on the World Series. To what extent he was being truthful is a matter of debate.
The history is very interesting, and I could not resist relating the verbal sparring that took place in the summer of 1904, as well as the speculation I encountered about the Giants’ true motivation in refusing to play the World Series. But, in case my failure to stay on topic made you lose sight of it, I am really concerned in this essay about why the Giants played so poorly down the stretch. And, in getting all of the background about the World Series dispute, I uncovered a new possibility, which is that the players may have been disgruntled. I had already considered that they may have been bored, but I hadn’t thought what missing a 1904 World Series might have meant to their pocketbooks, as well as what that might have said to them about how the team viewed them. So the immersion in history paid some dividends when it came to the narrow question I assigned myself.
We can quibble about just how many of the final games the Giants should have won as they cratered, but in the main it was not a case of a team playing respectably yet ending up with a poor record. They were legitimately bad during this time, in my estimation. To break such a short period of time into additional periods, as I will do, may seem odd, but it is natural and helpful to do it: first because the team was streaky, and second because the changes in fortune make it difficult to pinpoint when the slide started. So here is a map to the end of the season.
They actually came into the O’Rourke game on a three-game losing streak, their first of the season.7 The losses were competitive, all by two runs.
The Giants allowed only 474 runs on the season, coming out to just over 3 a game, but right after the clincher, they not only lost twice, but gave up 7 runs each time while scoring a total of 3.
They then won four in a row, but that was followed by a six-game losing streak.
To finish their season, they won twice in their last three games, although they were officially 2-2, as they were forced to forfeit another game.
The six-game losing streak was certainly what made this a swoon that drew and deserves attention. It also makes sense that, whatever ailed the Giants, the later in the season we look, the more likely we are to understand it, as the team’s restlessness probably only grew as the team marched to the end (i.e., motivation is usually harder to find in the last week of school than it is in the penultimate week). So, while there were signs of the Giants slipping beforehand, my analysis will largely focus on the six-game losing streak, the three subsequent games, and the forfeit.
Perhaps the Giants could have done a bit better record-wise over these 9 games, as they scored 35 runs and allowed 52. However, none of the losses were by 1 run, although one was in 10 innings.
Beyond just record and even run differential, there is also the matter of how the performances appeared to observers. The New York Times began rumbling after the fourth loss in the six-game streak, describing the team’s play as “indifferent” and “careless.” But it was not until after a doubleheader loss brought the streak to 6 that the paper lowered the full boom. Charles Leehrsen’s opinion aside8, I strongly believe that sportswriters of this era did not always weigh their words carefully and in fact were more partial than they are today. But the tone of the piece the Times ran can only be described as alarmed, and was incongruent with what we would expect in the reporting of “meaningless” games.
“After being beaten in both contests of the double-header with St. Louis yesterday, making six consecutive defeats…many of the ‘rooters’ at the Polo Grounds were quite skeptical as to whether the New Yorks would be able to win another game.9 Their sudden collapse from championship form to the inferior grade of play they have shown in the last six games has been a disappointment to many of their supporters.”
The writer’s skepticism comes through clearly with his description of the collapse as “sudden.” The inference is that what has happened has not been natural, and the team has not been giving one hundred percent.
The pointed criticism continues.
“Except at a few stages yesterday the playing of McGraw’s men was indifferent to a marked degree, [Sam] Mertes being particularly prominent in this respect. He made one excellent catch in the second game, but in other cases his fielding bordered on the ridiculous.”
We can read the writer’s comments in one of two ways. On the one hand, like executives, writers tended to look down on players and not consider their feelings and rights, so he may have been talking almost as a fan on a barstool would today, not needing to feel a high level of confidence before raising potentially damaging questions. But on the other hand, he seems to be imploring the public to read between the lines. Those little words (“sudden” before collapse; “marked” before indifference) seem specifically chosen to signal that what happened here was not normal, that it crossed a line. I cannot help thinking of the reports of Ring Lardner and co of the 1919 World Series. I think it is possible, if unlikely, that throwing games for money is the suspicion the writer harbored, but in my mind, he is absolutely writing with the same tone as the 1919 skeptics.
Sam Mertes is obviously the player most directly called out, and on the next page of the Times, in a short subheading entitled “Gossip of the Baseball Field”, is written:
“Mertes’s indifferent playing of late is said to be due to a report that this would be his last season as a member of the New York team, and that he would be exchanged for Sheckard of the Brooklyn team. It is believed, however, if such an event occurs that Mertes will decline to play in Brooklyn.”10
Not trying on a baseball field is damning under any circumstances, if true, but even this detractor of Mertes’s apparently did not think the worst of him, which is that he was throwing games for profit. Whether he was truly absolving the rest of the team of that as well, or how he explained their indifference, is not clear.
When he announced the Giants’ decision not to play the World Series, which came when there was only one game left in the season and obviously after the team’s play had fallen off, McGraw made a point of tackling the rumors of the rift between the team and management over the Series. As with his comments disavowing that he was Brush’s front man, he appears to have been acutely aware of what people had been writing. “[The players] are with me to a man in my stand. I put it up to them one by one and they showed their colors” he said. McGraw may not have been being truthful in his representation, and even if he was, the players’ solidarity in opposing the series would not mean that they gave a good effort at the end of the season. But it does suggest they would have been willing to play hard if the situation had called for it or if McGraw had leaned on them, and does cast their slump in a benign light.
More efficient than news account in suggesting possible dysfunction is the starred capital “V” in Baseball Reference by an 10/4 Giants game, indicating that they forfeited. This happened in the second-to-last scheduled game of the season, which was also the second half of a doubleheader. It was a Tuesday and the Giants last scheduled home game of the season. Their last game wasn’t to be until Saturday, so one can imagine that in their minds the season was, for all intents and purposes, over.
I am not precisely sure from the Times report of the game what was the straw that broke the camel’s back in the forfeit, but it was more or less occurred because they went overboard arguing calls. The team was set off initially when a Giant (the name given in the Times article, Dann, does not match anyone on the roster) had a home run taken away for not touching first base. For some reason, John McGraw wasn’t around, and the fill-in manager (also a rookie player who had already switched major league teams three times on the year)11, Doc Marshall, was thrown out arguing. Then, in the top of the third inning, a Cardinal stole second, and the Giants double play combination of Billy Gilbert and Wild Bill Dahlen took issue and were thrown out themselves. If I am reading the account correctly, this brought the fans to the verge of riot, with one fan in the role of “ringleader.” The police were called. There was “no evidence that the New Yorks12 intended to resume play,” the article says, and they were ultimately not afforded the opportunity. Elsewhere in the paper, the reason for the forfeit is stated to be that the ejections did not leave the Giants with enough players, although obviously that did not have to be true; they could have used pitchers in the field. The Cardinals had gone ahead in what had been a 1-1 game, but the official score was recorded as 9-0. (Today, it is recorded as just a loss, one of the Giants’ 47 on the season, with no runs scored or allowed, and the statistics for the game are struck from the record.)
Two days later, the Giants held a “Field Day”, with the contours of that very much what you would think if you had such a thing in school. The team did not go halfway in their field day, however, playing an intrasquad game and hurdling in addition to having a long-throw contest (Doc Marshall won, throwing the ball 367 feet) and a race around the bases, among other activities. This frivolity is described in detail in the Times without mention of the forfeit. Judging by this, we might gather that the level of disruption the Giants caused wasn’t exceptional by the standards of the day — more the case of a typical ejection than grounds for a suspension, to analogize from the realm of individual players. All was forgiven in the light of morning, it would seem.
But as I grope around for the right adverb that might be inserted in front of “outrageous” to describe the Giants’ behavior, I return to the way our perhaps same critic in the Times introduced the report of the forfeit. He called it “a spectacle.” His reporting is laden with references to the Giants’ having won a championship. He means to impress upon us, I believe, the contrast between that honor and the team’s recent play and conduct.
If I had been wanting to find other instances from the James O’Rourke playbook, I needn’t have looked too far, for the Giants went to the well again with 19th-century great Dan Brouthers on October 3. Brouthers hadn’t played in a game since 1896. He was a good deal younger than his one-time Buffalo teammate O’Rourke: “just” 46. While he went 0 for 4, the Times reported that he gave the ball a ride three times. Showing that the Giants were not too concerned about winning, he batted 3rd. Brouthers also had a pinch-hit appearance the next day, but could not get that final hit.
I hope I am not giving the impression that I regard these exemptions for future Hall of Famers13 as less than proper. Since the Giants had clinched, I in fact approve. If they had carried it farther and done it more often in the waning days, certainly I might have a different opinion. I do think the moves are revealing about their approach to the end of the season.
I mixed in a positive term in my title, declaring the Giants entertaining, and these final ten games had real highs besides lows. (Maybe I should have used “the good, the bad, and the ugly” instead in my title?) When the Giants broke their losing streak, Christy Mathewson had 16 strikeouts that day. Knowing that strikeouts were harder to come by in that era, and that Mathewson was a notch below the “great” category when it came to punching out hitters14, I suspected right away that I had chanced on something notable. This was a hunch, it turned out, that checked out from every perspective.
The only statistical perspective the Times gives on the 16 strikeouts is that it set a new top for the season (I was surprised to read that it had only been a Judge over Maris eclipsing, as Fred Glade had had 15 earlier in the year in the American League. And in fact, the Times was not counting Rube Waddell’s 16 strikeouts in a 12-inning game in April).
“Game” records, at least as shown by Baseball Reference Stathead, only begin in 1901. That very year, Noodles Hahn preceded Mathewson with a 16-strikeout game. So one can sort of understand why the Times would not have appreciated what Mathewson had done. In 1908, Waddell would also go on to have a 16-strikeout, 9-inning game. But the tip-off to the magnitude of the achievement is that no one would strike out 16 or more again in 9 innings again until Dizzy Dean struck out 17 on July 30, 1933.15
So these 16 strikeouts would also end up a career high for Mathewson. His second-best total was 14, achieved two years later in a September game against Brooklyn. In 1904, he was only in double digits one other time, when he had 11 against Cincinnati on August 11. On the other side of the spectrum, he had no strikeouts going 5 innings on May 30 (winning a blowout game, in which Babe Ruth-finder Jack Dunn would get the save, making his one pitching appearance of the season), and had just 1 strikeout going eight-and-a-third on May 20.
It is natural for us to use models like the 26-inning, Joe Oeschger/Leon Cadore game and think pitchers always remained in when effective, and a whole different set of game pitching records applies if we include extra-inning games. Even when he went extra innings, however, Mathewson never struck out 16. He struck out 11 in four extra-inning games. In fact, you may be surprised to learn that Mathewson never pitched more than 14 innings. Perhaps McGraw imposed a limit on him, and if he did, that is interesting. Or perhaps the tendency of games to end before the 14th is why Mathewson never went longer. But that the same guy, Jack Coombs, who wasn’t a notable strikeout pitcher, had both of the high-strikeout games (18 in 24 IP on 09/01/1906, and 18 in 16 IP on 08/04/1910) before Bob Feller came along suggests to me that our assumption about the extremity of starting pitcher outings is a bit off, at least in this narrow respect (for a bit more about Coombs, see Coombs).
It might sound silly to say about a meaningless game, but, from the space of 120 years, Mathewson’s 16 strikeouts transcend the statistics for me. They are a statement. The team was embarrassing itself. Being called out for “marked indifference.” Right after that happened, Mathewson went out and struck out 16. I believe he was pitching angry. I believe he was determined not just to pitch well, but to take the risk of emptying out completely, when he had no material incentive to. His explanation of pacing and not going for strikeouts in Pitching in a Pitch has become the go-to for understanding both his approach and the era’s, but there is no way of understanding 16 strikeouts in a game without thinking that he abandoned it. If the performance wasn’t so conspicuous in light of what had been going on with the team, maybe I would believe he achieved it with his normal game plan, believe that it was about the Cardinals and not Mathewson16 , or that the umpire had gone full Eric Gregg mode, or something, but I can’t believe the timing was a coincidence.
If Mathewson’s goal was solely winning the game and not demonstrating his character, then his efforts almost failed. The contest was scoreless until the 6th, when Homer Smoot knocked in Hugh Hill to put the Cardinals up 1-0. But the Giants scored 3 in the 8th to pull clear. The Times still regarded the Giants as in a funk, calling the victory “not earned” because it was keyed by a Danny Shay error. Mathewson went all the way, of course, and gave up 6 hits while walking 3.
Adding to the interest, this was a matchup of the 3rd- (Mathewson is actually tied with Grover Alexander for 3rd) and 7th-winningest pitchers of all time. Kid Nichols, who was winning 20 games for the 11th and last time of his career, was the twirler for the Cardinals. While he only recorded 1 strikeout, he bettered Mathewson in terms of baserunners, allowing just 5 hits and 2 walks.
This was the worst-attended game the Giants played in all season, home or away. Indeed, it was almost not attended at all. The number was 300. Normally, the refrain for a historic game is that perhaps a million people say they attended it. In this case, we had better tamp that down a multiple or two, don’t you think? (I like to at least think that exaggeration has a basis in fact.) Actual witnesses to this game were more plentiful than T206 Honus Wagners would be, but not my much. There is no mention of bad weather in the game story17, by the way, but the Times does mention “the small crowd.” Adding insult to injury for Brush, this was also the game of the Dan Brouthers stunt, and yet just 300 came.
The Giants hadn’t been putting much of a product on the field in preceding days. But not coming out to watch maybe the best hitter of the 19th century return, as well as Mathewson versus Nichols, would certainly have been criminal under normal circumstances. In a way, though, the empty stands were the perfect backdrop for the statement Mathewson made.
If Mathewson earned redemption for the Giants by striking 16 and snapping the skid, Sam Mertes earned personal redemption by hitting for the cycle the very next day. Not surprisingly, I do not know if the criticism of the New York Times woke him up, or if leaders on the Giants had a talk with him. Another interpretation which, given the smoke, seems unlikely to me, is there never had been an issue, and Mertes simply proved the doubters wrong by having a big game. Anyway, I’m not sure how established booing was at the time18, but at least on a thematic level, this was the guy coming in for extreme heat and responding.
The Giants, still playing the Cardinals, lost the game in which Mertes hit for the cycle, 7-3. Not only does the Times not note Mertes’s cycle, it doesn’t even mention that he got 4 hits (the team had 9, with no extra base hits outside of the ones Mertes produced). The second game of the doubleheader was the forfeit, so it makes sense that that is what sucked up the oxygen, and may be one explanation of how his big day went overlooked.
Mertes had a 10-year career and averaged 128 games from 1898-1906 (remember that the schedule was only 140 games from 1900-1903). In that span, he never had a better OPS+ than 126, but never had a worse one than 98. He was a neat player, particularly in his three full years with the Giants (1903-190519), when he peaked as an offensive player. He was in the top five in the league in extra-base hits each of those years, as well as in the top five in stolen bases, with totals ranging from 45-52. He had 104 RBI in 1903 to lead the National League, then proved that was no fluke with another 100 RBI season in 1905, finishing second to Cy Seymour. He was the Giants cleanup hitter in 75% of his starts from 1903-1905, hitting 5th in the other games. That prime position in the lineup probably aided his RBI. Since his record shows a nice array of extra base hits, the cycle is a good testament to him: other than Honus Wagner, I have to think he was the most logical player in the league to do it.
The Boston Beaneaters’ Duff Cooley had hit for the cycle earlier in the year, and Fred Clarke did it in both 1901 and 1903, so I won’t overstate the history Mertes made. (I’m not a big cycle guy, anyway.) I might have thought it happened less in the Deadball Era than it does today, since home runs were a rarity, but maybe the greater incidence of triples canceled that out.
Besides any possible alienation caused by their management electing not to pursuit a World Series, another possible source of motivational drain for the players was that 1904 featured the first 154-game schedule outside of an experiment in 1898 and 1899. Maybe, in increasing the number of games, the National League did not make a realistic plan (after the season, Cubs’ President James Hart expressed satisfaction at having gotten what he described as a full six months’ worth of work from the players for a change) and did not allow enough time to play the games, what with rainouts. And skimming the schedule results, I was incredulous at how many doubleheaders appeared. One can see how, late in the season, the Giants might have been ready to have the season over with, or at least were dead tired, none the less because they had already clinched the pennant.
I moderated this opinion some on review. First, the pattern was that the doubleheaders were crammed into the second half of the schedule. They were not a constant fact of life. In both 1903 and 1904, the first doubleheader didn’t come until Memorial Day. The 1903 Giants played just two more doubleheaders before August, the 1904 Giants four. Other doubleheader statistics for the two seasons are as follows.
The 1904 Giants played 26 doubleheaders in all, the 1903 Giants 19. Coincidentally or not, the difference of 14 games does equal the expansion in the schedule (even though the 1904 Giants actually ended up playing 16 more games than the ‘03 Giants, with “decisions”, or non-ties, in 13 more games). The 1904 Giants season, though, began 3 days earlier than the 1903 season, and ended 12 days later.
In 1904, after August 1, 61% of the Giants’ games were part of doubleheaders. The comparable percentage for the 1903 Giants was 56%.
The most condensed period for doubleheaders for the Giants in 1904 featured 8 doubleheaders and 18 total games in 15 days. The most condensed period for doubleheaders for the 1903 Giants featured 7 doubleheaders and 17 total games in 15 days.
The 1904 schedule was not one I would wish on any player, and the increase in doubleheaders did not go entirely unnoticed in the press. It seems like it was a step-level increase, though, not something that was oblivious of all precedent.
It is also true that 11 of the 1904 doubleheaders, or almost half, did not have the second game go the full 9 innings, I would guess because of darkness. On these occasions, the second game typically was 7 innings, so I would guess the length was predetermined beforehand, rather than the teams just playing for as long as it was light. One media reported described a 7-inning, second game of a doubleheader as 7 innings “by agreement.”
In any event, absent comments from players and observers, what effect the increase in the rate of doubleheaders had on motivation is pure speculation.
It would be natural to think that, with all of these doubleheaders, this must have been the year Iron Joe McGinnity became Iron Joe and sometimes pitched both ends. It would be all the more natural to think this because 1904 was his best season: he won his most games and led the league in E.R.A. But actually, the Iron Joe legend traces to his work in 1903.
It was during that 1903 period of doubleheader peak, in August, that McGinnity was a doubleheader warrior. He pitched both ends of doubleheaders on August 1, August 8, and August 31, never registering a shutout, but winning and pitching very well in all six games.
Baseball Reference doesn’t have game logs for McGinnity’s 1899 and 1900 seasons, his first two, but his only other “game log” doubleheaders as the solo starting pitcher came in 1901, on September 3 and September 12 (he was with Baltimore, not with the Giants, but McGraw was his manager). So, interestingly, after pulling off the doubleheader feat for the last time in 1903, he never embarked upon it again.
Mathewson’s surprising low career high in innings in a game suggested McGraw was mindful of the workload of his starting pitchers, and by retiring the McGinnity gambit, we now have a direct indication that he was not all about what he could do and about today, but also about what he should do. In fact, in the August story where the Sporting News declared the Giants would play in the World Series after all in 1904, the magazine also reported that, after the team clinched the pennant, McGraw planned to “send Pitchers Mathewson and McGinnity to their respective homes in order that they may rest for the post-season series.” The article goes on to say that, once the Giants got to the World Series, McGraw would only pitch Mathewson and McGinnity. That, famously, is what he did to great effect in 1905, although he did not make good on the plan to shut his aces down after the team clinched: the 1905 race was closer than in 1904, with the Giants only clinching on September 30,20 but both pitchers tuned up for the World Series in an October 5 doubleheader.21
We know that Mathewson and McGinnity were not sent home early in 1904, let alone 1905, but what was the composition of the lineup at the end of the season? Were key players sent home, or at least to the bench? Of course, there was the one start given to O’Rourke and the one start given to Brouthers, but the Giants actually won both of those games, and obviously the isolated game played by non-regulars wasn’t going to cripple the team. But if backups logged enough time, while I suppose one could argue McGraw was making a mockery of the game, if that was the explanation for why the team fell off, certainly the case is less nefarious and more easily explained than I have been letting on.
The poor play at the end of the season, however, was a case of the regulars not playing well, not of their not being in there. Even if I don’t fully accept it as having been necessary, that business about the forfeit occurring because the Giants ran out of players is instructive. The regulars were necessarily playing at the end of the season because there was hardly anyone else. There weren’t September call-ups. The regulars had to play.
If you look at the team stats on the season, you notice that six Giants had at least 564 plate appearances. In the outfield, there was a bit of changeover, but only because Roger Bresnahan had gotten hurt in mid-September, and because Mike Donlin, who was a star and someone who you usually very much wanted in your lineup, was acquired for fellow outfielder Harry “Moose” McCormick on August 7. The Giants did alternate Jack Warner (47 OPS+ in 316 PA!) and Frank Bowerman at catcher. But from the bench proper, on the season, no one notched more than 204 plate appearances (Jack Dunn, the Babe Ruth finder).
I totaled up statistics for all individual Giants from September 28, the day that the team’s six-game losing streak began. The only abnormality was that the second baseman, Billy Gilbert, and the shortstop, Bill Dahlen, were both banged up some, combining to play only 7 of 18 possible games (you will remember that they both managed to get thrown out of the forfeit, however). Largely in their place, Dunn played, in fact cracking the starting lineup every game. Since he hit .333 with a .906 OPS, though (closing out his career), he hardly held the team back. Otherwise, Doc Marshall, the rookie player/coach who joined the team in September, started 2 games at catcher and 1 at second base down the stretch. Other than this, it was the regular guys. So the picture on this point is clear.
By no means did the Giants hit well during the slump, but pitching, or at least pitching and fielding, were more to blame. Over the last 9 games, their offensive performance was down only 0.82 runs a game, while they allowed 2.71 more runs than their seasonal average. They committed 27 errors, exactly 3 a game, while their season average was just under 2 errors a game. Poor fielding both corresponds with our notion of a team lacking intensity and with the emphasis in the Times games reports, not to mention with the White Sox throwing of the 1919 World Series.
In terms of pitcher usage, one can maybe see a slight concession to the time of the season, but the fundamental fact remains that the Giants’ roster size didn’t give them much option except to pitch their guys, and their guys were all good. They were breaking in two rookies that year, Red Ames and Hooks Wiltse, both power pitchers, and both real finds, if not Mathewson or McGinnity. They ultimately posted similar numbers for the team (Ames 108-77, 117 ERA+, 212 starts; Wiltse 136-85, 113 ERA+, 222 starts). Dummy Taylor was better than them, the #3 starter. Over the last 9 games, the Giants basically used a five-man rotation. This was partially just necessary, given the doubleheaders, but, since Mathewson and McGinnity both started more than 25% of the games during the season, obviously it was not what the team had done all year.
Wiltse, in particular, came in for more work. He started 3 of the last 9 games, while on the season, he only started 16. He was bad in his first two starts, then brilliant in the season finale, shutting out Brooklyn with an “89 game score” to boot. He actually allowed fewer runs per 9 innings (5.40) than the rest of the team over the last 9 games. The team had relied on him heavily as a starter at one other juncture on the season: he started for them on 6/19, 6/22, 6/25, and 6/28, only allowing 9 runs over 32 innings, and getting the win in each game.
The one real indulgence taken with the pitching staff was that in the first game of the 9/30 doubleheader against the Cubs, McGinnity left after 7 with the team down 5-4. This was not necessitated by a pinch hitter. He was replaced by rookie Claude Elliot, who had been purchased from the Reds in August, but had only appeared in 2 other games for the Giants. Elliot gave up 7 runs in the 8th. Since the Giants eventually added 5 runs of their own, taking out McGinnity arguably cost them the game. It is true that Elliot did not end up “making it,” with the rest of his big league career only consisting of sporadic outings for New York in 1905, but he was hardly a guy coming down from the stands: he had a 99 ERA+ with the Reds in 57.2 innings in ‘04, and had gone 24-10 in the American Association in 1903.
Looking for markers that could show that the final games were atypical, I came upon that Christy Mathewson’s outing before his 16-strikeout game was completed in only an hour and 15 minutes. While, of the Giants’ 138 games in 1904 with a “time of game” given, only three were faster, this wouldn’t necessarily be worthy of attention, but this was something of an offensive contest, with 28 hits. There was only one double play. The time isn’t necessarily significant, among other reasons, because it may not be accurate, but it is food for thought. If the result were no object, we could see “speed baseball” of an extreme kind. (Think of golf and “gimme” putts.) Is that short time a sign of the indifference that the Times reporter alleged? Mathewson’s 16-strikeout game, by the way, was also supposedly finished in 75 minutes, but that was a pitcher’s duel, and also had one less half inning, as the Giants won.
Faced with topics similar to this surprising Giants’ swoon, Bill James tendency was usually to explain as much as he could through boring, commonsense factors. His philosophy seemed to be that gathering all the facts and marshalling them could take you a long way, and that by doing that, we could often correct our erroneous sense of the abnormal. In this case, I think he might start by pointing out that four of the six games in the Giants’ losing streak came against the 93-60, second-place Cubs. The Giants’ run differential in the last games was not pretty, but only one of their losses in their 2-7 finish was officially a blowout loss, meaning a loss by 5 or more runs. That is actually a lower percentage of blowout losses than they had on the season as a whole, when 9 of their 46 losses (not counting the forfeit) came by 5 or more runs.
And I remember the 2017 Dodgers. They were 91-36, and I took if for granted they were on their way to a historic season. But they finished 13-22. Not only were the Dodgers not tanking, if I remember correctly, they were embarrassed by the losing. It is true they were .027 behind the 1904 Giants in winning percentage at the Giants’ apex, but it is also true that their losing skein lasted about twice as long.
These mitigating factors are offset somewhat by the fact that the Giants fell part while playing almost exclusively at home, as I mentioned.
One question often asked is, “If you could visit any time and place in baseball history, which would you choose?” Normally, I am as flummoxed by this question as I am when asked my favorite color, holiday, or city. The answer I give differs by the day, and I am consumed with paralysis not passion. But doing this research was such an adrenaline rush that I wondered if I had my answer. I mean, also in New York in 1904, you had the legend Wee Willier Keeler. You had Jack Chesbro winning his 41 games, and throwing his famous wild pitch.
Learning how acrimonious and mysterious the standoff had been over the World Series, I could imagine the elation of Giants’ fans when the Giants finally consented to play in ‘05, and backed up their haughtiness with their play. Not only was the bitterness between the leagues of an order we today associate with Democrats and Republicans, but the Giants put immense pressure on themselves by not playing in ‘04. Perhaps no contest can live up to the names World Series and Super Bowl, perhaps they reduce to hyperbole, but that there was an extra level to the 1905 World Series, that what was being determined was not just a year’s champion but something more, seems like something that absolutely needed to be recognized. It is the unimaginable that captures our imagination, and that was the 1905 World Series.
However, can I honestly say that baseball in New York in 1904 and 1905 was more exciting than baseball in New York in 1951?22 When there was that pennant race, with that final series, and that final inning? When Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle were both rookies, and Duke Snider an all-star? No, I can’t go that far. Revisionist history must remain credible. So, for now I have hit upon a more conventional yet still pleasing answer to the question that beleaguers me, and you have a story I enjoyed telling, with the normal overload of facts and figures, to boot.
40-year-old Deacon McGuire of the Highlanders was 3rd with 97 games caught.
The World Series template actually began with matchups of the National League and American Association champions, with Series beginning in 1884 and ending with the death of the AA in 1892.
The source is an article in the Buffalo Evening News.
To whatever degree you buy that there is New York bias now, and that leagues want the New York teams to win, I can report that this was at times naked in the 19th century. There were sales of players, for instance, explicitly done to make New York stronger and thereby prop up the league. So it’s hardly far-fetched to think Johnson had his sights set on having a New York American League team, but whether McGraw’s conspiracy theory was reality is a different matter entirely. Did Johnson really go to such lengths, and choose such an arduous method of running Baltimore down, as McGraw alleged?
The first was in the 8/19 Evening Express of Portland, Maine, but I believe it was reprinted from the Sporting News. The second was in the 8/28 Minneapolis Star Tribune.
The 1903 face-off of course was only between Boston and Pittsburgh, but I’m not sure if Bancroft was just misspeaking when he said “none" of the clubs instead of neither. He may also have been referring to the lack of financial success of other postseason intra-city contests between American and National League teams.
Not only had the Giants not lost three in a row all season, but they had had an 18-game winning streak that ran from June 16 through July 4.
Before they had the three-game losing streak their record was 99-34, which comes out to a .744 percentage. I found a note in the September 24 Day of New London, Connecticut saying the Giants would be hard pressed to achieve a .740 winning percentage. This seems curious, and I can only understand it from the standpoint that the 1902 Pirates had won at a .741 clip, going 103-36. That writers were cognizant of a comparison with the Pirates is also apparent from a New York Times headline and lede when the Giants won their 103rd game, thus tying the Pirates. 1904 was the first season of the 154-game schedule, so you can see that we might have had a Ruth and Maris controversy here, with some people propounding the Pirates’ winning percentage the true mark to surpass.
There were four more to play.
This last bit being of special interest to me because I have long had in the works a piece exploring the history and concept of trades, with one of my main curiosities, players’ evolving attitudes towards them.
This makes more sense when you note that he was originally a Rule 5 draftee, and later caught up in a loan system that still existed then.
I call them the Giants, and that is their official nickname in 1904 and for many years prior on Baseball Reference. This is what sounds right to our modern ear. But in all the articles I read, I probably saw them referred to in this way once, and I think then as the “Baby Giants.” They were the New Yorks, or the New York Nationals. The Highlanders might be referenced as playing up on the hill, but were generally the Greater New Yorks.
In a fun convergence, both O’Rourke and Brouthers went inducted in 1945, as was another 1904 Giant, Roger Bresnahan.
I decided to keep this wording, but in evaluating it I saw that Mathewson not only led the NL in strikeouts this season, but was in the midst of five strikeout titles in six years. Going by strikeouts-per-inning, however, he was only best in the NL once. In fact, four of these strikeout-per-inning titles from 1903 to 1908 went to his teammates Hooks Wiltse and Red Ames. On a per-inning basis, Ames was clearly the superior strikeout pitcher.
Dean’s career high in strikeouts, by the way, was just 199, well below Mathewson’s best of 267.
The evidence seems to go in the opposite direction. The year before, Jake Beckley had had the best strikeout rate in the NL, as I happened to mention in my Ginger Beaumont post. Mathewson struck him out 3 times in this game. Beckley started 777 games from 1901-1907, the years for which Baseball Reference has game-level data for him, and this game was the only time he ever struck out 3 times.
The front page of the Times for October 3 has a forecast of showers, with fresh north winds.
Although, if you think about the Glory of Their Times account of Germany Schaefer’s drawing the audible ire of the fans not a day removed from being a home run hero, something along the lines of booing clearly occurred. I don’t remember exactly how the rustlings the fans engaged in were described.
You can see that he was not traded to the Superbas, so got to celebrate, and contribute to, the 1905 World Series win.
I was not able to find a newspaper article giving the clinching date, but working from the Giants lead and the number of games left, it appears right around in there.
If McGraw had sent the M&M boys home after the team clinched early in 1905, the Sporting News article would have been redeemed, since the scoop about McGraw only using Mathewson and McGinnity in the World Series did come to fruition. I guess overall the article was 1 for 3 in its information….If you don’t remember (and I had to Casey Stengel), after starting game 1 of the World Series on 10/9, Mathewson made his second start on two days’ rest, and his third on one day’s rest. McGinnity made his two World Series starts on two days’ rest.
If there was something unsavory about the Giants in 1904, then the parallel certainly extends to the “Say It Ain’t So, Joe” aspect of the ‘51 Giants using a telescope to steal signs. I would rather witness untainted greatness, to be clear, but the 1951 New York baseball season still blows me away.