When the Red Sox Ruled by Thomas J. Whalen

Author:Thomas J. Whalen [Whalen, Thomas J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ivan R. Dee
Published: 2011-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Smokey Joe Wood was another unexpected departure. Although he had fallen from his lofty 1912 pitching heights, he had still managed to record fourteen victories in 1915 in spite of crippling arm pain. (Courtesy of the Boston Red Sox.)

Eventually Wood got it into his head to make a comeback, albeit not as the lights-out right-hander who had once effortlessly mowed down opposing batsmen. “So what if I couldn’t pitch anymore?” he asked himself. With the Red Sox front office blessing, he managed to work out a deal for himself, landing in Cleveland for a $15,000 purchase price.

“Lee Fohl was managing Cleveland at the time, and he encouraged me every way he could,” Wood said. “And for my part I tried to show him that I could do more than pitch. I played in the infield during fielding practice, I shagged flies in the outfield, I was ready to pinch-run, to pinch-hit—I’d have carried the water bucket if they had water boys in baseball. The hell with my pride. . . . I was just another ballplayer who wanted a job and wanted it bad.”

Acknowledging that the departure of Speaker had dealt a serious blow to team morale, Bill Carrigan characteristically decided to confront the issue head on. Overhearing an early season clubhouse conversation between Babe Ruth and several other players lamenting their predicament, the feisty Boston manager gave the pep talk of his life. “All right, we lost Speaker,” he tersely said. “But we’re still a tight ball club. We got good pitching, good fielding, and we’ll hit well enough. If you guys stop your moaning and get down to business we can win the pennant again.”

Luckily for Carrigan, he had an unexpected ace up his sleeve. Just prior to dealing Speaker to Cleveland, Joseph Lannin sent $3,500 over to the St. Louis Browns for the services of temperamental outfielder Clarence “Tilly” Walker. Though it didn’t seem like much of a deal at the time, Walker’s arrival in a Red Sox uniform saved the club from having to scramble for a quality replacement for Speaker once the Cleveland deal went down. That’s because Walker was a seasoned pro with considerable outfield experience and a strong throwing arm. He had even led the AL in assists with twenty-seven in 1915.

But it was with his bat that this one-time telegraph operator from Limestone, Tennessee, staked his big-league reputation. Over the previous five seasons, he had averaged over .280 while blasting a career-high sixteen triples in 1914. The one major knock against him, however, was that his frequent mood swings could get in the way of his performance on the field.

As one highly critical account put it, “He is said to be quite a hitter when he feels like hitting, but grouches and sulks when he does not whang a double or a triple every few minutes. In other words he worries more about his batting average than about the club’s record of games won.”

Although Walker’s performance with the Red Sox did

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