The First Fall Classic: The Red Sox, the Giants, and the Cast of Players, Pugs, and Politicos Who Reinvented the World Series in 1912
by Mike Vaccaro
Rating: 3.5/5.0
Publisher: Doubleday
The World Series wasn’t always the larger-than-life extravaganza it is today. For several years after its inception, it wasn’t even the World Series; it was just the world’s series, a mere regional point of interest and gambler’s commodity that appealed only to a modest subculture of Americans. In his new book The First Fall Classic: The Red Sox, the Giants, and the Cast of Players, Pugs, and Politicos Who Reinvented the World Series in 1912, Mike Vaccaro examines the history behind the Series that, he alleges, prompted baseball’s ascent into the hearts of mainstream America. Even if the 1912 Series wasn’t as classic as the author would have us believe, Vaccaro’s colorful account is an engaging read that tells the story of a sport and a nation battling through one of the most deceptively volatile periods of the 20th century.
Any sporting event is only as remarkable as the circumstances leading up to it, and it’s in this area that Vaccaro excels, painting a vivid and engrossing picture of the hostile conditions that surrounded this contest. The Series pitted the swaggering New York Giants, led by legendary hurler Christy Mathewson and revered and hated manager John McGraw, against the favored Boston Red Sox, dubbed “The Speed Boys” and featuring future Hall of Famer Tris Speaker and phenom Smoky Joe Wood. Certainly some of the Sox had more than a slight vendetta against their New York opponents: McGraw’s Giants, the National League champions in 1904, refused to play the Red Sox in the postseason that year, boycotting the Series because, they insisted, the American League was inferior and playing such a team would be an insult to the senior circuit’s superiority. The Red Sox and their zealous fans (the “Royal Rooters”) had been waiting to extract revenge on the despised McGraw ever since.
What Vaccaro immediately makes clear is that your great granddaddy’s version of baseball was far different than the sport we see today. There were no pitch counts, middle relievers or left-handed specialists in 1912; moreover, players exhibited an element of toughness that would make today’s pampered athletes squirm in their custom-designed cleats. Smoky Joe Wood, pale from exhaustion and with an arm feeling like a wad of hamburger meat, fought through nine indomitable innings in Game One to give the Sox an early series lead. Giants hurler Jeff Tessreau’s fingernail would later be ripped off his middle finger, but the pitcher didn’t even ask for a Band-Aid because, well, baseball players were real men, and real men don’t use Band-Aids. Players on each side limped and hobbled like gimpy old men, battling injuries (some courtesy of McGraw’s spike-wielding Giants) and boarding trains immediately after games so that they could drag their weary bodies back onto the field in another city the next day. As for bulletin board material, players and coaches on both teams fed the media with a constant barrage of politically incorrect trash talk, second guessing the other team’s coaching decisions and openly insulting each other.
Still, not every aspect of the sport was dramatically different from its modern version. Vaccaro points out that ballplayers were generally well-paid even in 1912, earning an average of $5,000 more than the average citizen and collecting additional payouts from endorsing everything from cigarettes and tobacco to Cadillacs and booze. Although stadiums didn’t yet have corporate names attached to them, advertisements for Adler gloves, BVD underwear, Bass Ale and Philip Morris cigarettes littered the walls of the Polo Grounds, alongside advertisements for gum, ginger ale, whisky, cigars and bottled water. Curmudgeonly old-timers who grouse that baseball was once a purer sport played for the love of the game will be sorely disappointed by this book.
With its bribe-prone players and disreputable owners, Vaccaro also presents baseball’s seedier side. The shenanigans that took place in 1912 predated the infamous Black Sox Scandal and are nearly as disturbing. With his team leading the Series 3-1, Sox owner James McAleer strong-armed manager Jake Stahl to bench a rested Wood in New York in order to force an additional home game and thus an extra day of gate sales. Not to be out-disgraced, Wood’s fastball mysteriously lost its speed and movement in that pivotal game, prompting Giants players to comment that his pitches resembled a slower, softer version of batting practice.
Not just a mere sports saga, The First Fall Classic is also a poignant snapshot of the American consciousness during one of the country’s most conflicted periods. It may have been the Progressive Era, but Vaccaro paints a picture of a nation that was far from forward-thinking. Police corruption and organized crime ran rampant; Vaccaro interjects courtroom scenes from the ongoing trial of the young century, in which Charles Becker, a corrupt NYPD lieutenant with underworld ties, was accused of arranging the murder of whistle-blowing Jewish bookmaker Herman Rosenthal. Life for African-Americans, meanwhile, offered little promise: lynching was common throughout the South and segregation was the standard. On the campaign trail, the three Presidential hopefuls offered little hope of social or racial equality. Vaccaro depicts eventual victor Woodrow Wilson as an overt racist, while even Progressive nominee and behind-the-scenes civil rights pioneer Theodore Roosevelt avoided making racial issues a focal point of his campaign. The early part of the 20th century may indeed have been a simpler time in many regards, but Vaccaro is quick to illustrate that this was also an era of bigotry and intolerance.
Despite the book’s strengths, the majority of baseball fans who aren’t from New England or New York may be aggravated by the author’s apparent East Coast bias. Though Vaccaro claims that the Series elevated baseball to a national obsession, he presents no evidence that any cities outside of New York and Boston gave two drops of pine tar about the matchup. The level of play, meanwhile, was less than stellar. True, the Series had its moments – Wood’s dominant performance in the opening game, Josh Devore’s game-ending, barehanded catch to even the Series two days later – but it was mostly little more than a comedy of errors, featuring bonehead decisions by the coaching staff and sloppy play from slipshod players who combined for a staggering 28 errors (by comparison, the fixed 1919 series produced 25). The Red Sox didn’t even win the Series as much as the Giants gave it away: Outfielder Fred Snodgrass botched an easy fly ball to put the tying run on second base, before three hapless Giants watched a routine pop up fall to the ground in foul play, giving Speaker a second chance at the plate. The Series didn’t end with a Joe Carter-style walk off home run or even an Edgar Renteria-like clutch base hit, but instead with an anti-climactic sacrifice fly, to the delight of a half-empty Fenway Park.
Vaccaro also never explains how a Series that included an owner who tampered with his own team and an ace pitcher who possibly chose a gambler’s purse over team loyalty can be considered even remotely credible, much less classic. Readers may find themselves rooting against both clubs, hoping that each game will end (like Game Two) in a victor-less tie. Sympathetic figures are hide to find, though some emerge: President Howard Taft, a diehard baseball fan who once quipped that only a fool would choose a day of work over a day of baseball, and Roosevelt, who delivered a full 90-minute speech despite having a bullet lodged in his chest. These colorful characters stand in sharp contrast to the mostly unsavory players. McGraw’s Giants consisted largely of arrogant trash talkers, while the Red Sox were even less appealing. Divided between Catholics and Protestants, many teammates could hardly tolerate the sight of each other and even engaged in a drunken fist fight on the train after their Game 6 loss. Before the decisive game, they barely spoke to each other in the locker room and some players were apparently motivated only by financial gain: knowing the victors would receive a greater piece of the World Series bonus money, they rallied around battle cries like “Let’s go for the big money!” Not exactly a win-one-for-the-Gipper moment.
Though Vaccaro doesn’t explicitly broach the subject, the ultimate redeeming factor of The First Fall Classic is that it demonstrates the profound role that baseball has played in American society. When stacked against the weight of the political unrest, organized crime and racial conflict that dominated this period, baseball seemed to be little more than a fleeting, inconsequential commodity. Despite this, Vaccaro’s narrative proves that the game also gives people something to believe in, providing a source of inspiration, reverie and, yes, heartbreak. 1912 may not be the masterpiece Series that Vaccaro contends it is – too much scandal and sloppiness surrounded this contest to propel Giants vs. Red Sox into any discussion of Best Series Ever – but Vaccaro still does a masterful job of pitting the game of baseball against the backdrop of an unpredictable and tumultuous time in our nation’s past. The result is an engrossing, though slightly biased, tale that is sure to educate and entertain sports junkies and history buffs alike.
by Marcus David
