Crazy '08 by Cait N. Murphy

Author:Cait N. Murphy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061844324
Publisher: HarperCollins

Baseball’s most controversial game, a contest that gives the nation a new verb, begins conventionally enough: Mathewson retires the first three Cubs, without a ball passing the infield. Second baseman Buck Herzog chips in a nice play ranging up the middle. He had been spiked the day before by Frank Chance—yet another reason the Giants want this game badly—but Herzog is showing no ill effects. In the second inning, New York left fielder Harry “Moose” McCormick is nailed in the ribs with a Pfiester fastball. When he crumples to the ground, the Giants hustle out their physician to treat the wounded man. Dr. Joseph Creamer does so by dumping a bucket of water over the prone figure. Thus refreshed, McCormick rises and makes his unsteady way to first.

Through four, neither team scores. Jack the Giant Killer has given up a couple of walks, and the Cubs’s fielding is uncharacteristically porous—a poor throw from the outfield, an error by Tinker, a fumble by Evers. But the Cubs also show the knack of making big plays that has served them well all season. In the third, Tinker stops a rally dead when he notices Herzog has strayed too far off first, and throws him out after catching a pop fly. Double play: Tinker to Chance. In the fourth, Evers makes a running, one-handed catch of a line drive and then throws to first for the third out. Double play: Evers to Chance.

For their part, the Giants defense is flawless. Much to everyone’s relief, first baseman Fred Merkle is looking like a seasoned pro. He had arrived in New York in late 1907 for a look-see and made the team in 1908 after an impressive spring training. The New York Globe describes him as a “fellow who uses intelligence in everything he does.”38 Soft-spoken and polite, Merkle’s usual station is at McGraw’s side, listening to the master and observing how the regulars ply their craft. A few weeks before, Sporting Life had published a short profile of Merkle, describing the young player as possessing “plenty of pepper…and good judgment on the bases.”39

This may be true, but the lad’s record is thin. He has played in only thirty-five games this year, with fewer than forty at bats. Typically, his most strenuous exercise in uniform comes at the end of the game, when he sprints from the bench to the clubhouse to escape the surging crowds that are allowed onto the field at the Polo Grounds. “All they wanted to do was touch you, or congratulate you, or maybe cuss you out a bit,” recalled Fred Snodgrass, another young Giant whose name would live in infamy (for muffing a fly ball in the 1912 World Series). “But because of that, we benchwarmers made it a practice to spring from the bench to the clubhouse as fast as we could.”40 On September 23, the regular first baseman, Fred Tenney, wakes up with a crippling dose of lumbago; he can’t play. It is the only game he misses all season.

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