All language subtitles for Baseball A Film By Ken Burns S01E02 (Baseball A Film By Ken Burns S01E02) (ENGLISH)

The fundamental reason
for the popularity of the

game is the fact that it
is a national safety valve.

A young, ambitious and growing
nation needs to let off steam.

Baseball serves the same
purpose as a revolution

on Central America or a
thunderstorm on a hot day.

A tonic, an exercise, baseball is
second only to death as a leveler.

So long as it remains our national
game, America will abide no monarchy.

And anarchy will be too slow.

Alan Sangreen.

There's a lot of wonderful
stillness in baseball that I love.

Many seconds of stillness.

But when the pitcher has got the sign,
the batter is crouched, the ball players

all lean forward with
their hands on their knees,

and then very shortly
the ball is delivered.

But in that tiny period when the pitch
and the fever of the crowd is tangible,

there's a moment of absolute
stillness that I treasure.

It

takes two score points
between somebody that is

rubbing it on against
another person's regime.

A war between America and
war between Russia and Japan.

Pablo Picasso
shattered the art world.

And Sigmund Freud published
the interpretation of dreams.

In America, Orville and
Wilbur Wright flew at Kitty Hawk.

Henry Ford began
turning out Model Ts.

And D.W.

Griffith began making
motion pictures.

Geronimo and Susan B.

Anthony and Henry Chadwick died.

Charles Lindbergh and Louis
Armstrong and Lou Gehrig were born.

It was the Progressive Era.

A time when America's
faith in the inevitability of

progress was as boundless
as the continent itself.

But the American
frontier was closing.

American cities were
filling with tenements.

And racism and fear of foreigners was
setting Americans against Americans.

Major League Baseball entered the
20th century in trouble, beset by declining

attendance, rowdyism, unhappy
players, and feuding, greedy club owners.

But then divided itself
in two, cleaned itself

up, and succeeded beyond
anyone's wildest dreams.

The World Series began.

And season after season,
more than five million

fans filled stadiums to
see their heroes play.

And countless millions more, who had never
been lucky enough to watch them in person,

followed their every
move in the sports pages.

It's the first game that I think as
children we ever saw adults play.

And I remember being enormously taken
by the fact that I walked out and saw that

extraordinary expanse of green,
and that there was an adult on the

pitcher's mound, a man, I
mean, the age of my father.

And there he was, throwing a ball,
something that I did as an eight-year-old.

And I suddenly thought,
you know, this is something

that I can do when I
get to be 22 years old.

Between 1900 and 1910, country boys
and immigrant sons and factory workers and

streetwise toughs played
on thousands of teams

in hundreds of leagues
from Maine to California.

For the first time, big
league scouts began to travel

the countryside on the
lookout for future stars.

Sports writers called
them ivory hunters.

It would be an era that placed
a premium on pitching and

speed, in which runs were
assembled slowly, one base at a time.

It would see one pitcher win
41 games in a single season,

and the hardest-hitting
team hit just 16 home runs.

It would see the rise of
an unassuming farm boy

with the fastest arm
anyone could ever remember.

It would see a rookie's simple
base-running error cost his team the

pennant and haunt
him for the rest of his life.

The game would be graced by a
hulking, infinitely skilled shortstop, so

fair-minded that he almost
never quarreled with the umpire.

But the decade would also see the swift
rise of an angry southern schoolboy whose

astonishing skills, barely
masked his uncontrollable rage.

I think maybe the biggest
appeal of baseball is

that it looks so simple,
it looks so familiar.

And in its outward dimensions, it is
still almost exactly the same game

that we played when
we were kids, that we first

saw with our fathers
when we sat on the stands.

There is a continuity there that is very
attractive to us because so many other

institutions that we have known
have disappeared or fallen into disarray.

Our families, our
cities, our politics.

But baseball feels the same.

It feels very much the same.

And I think this is
probably its prime attraction.

At the turn of the century,
Major League veterans

often refused even to
speak to new players.

Once, early in his career, a
shy young outfielder dared

compliment a New York
Giant for hitting a home run.

Nice hit, he said.

The veteran
answered, go to hell.

The young player was Johannes Peter
Wagner, Honus Wagner, on his way to

becoming the greatest
player in the National League.

If a man with a voice loud enough to make
himself heard all over the United States

should stand on top of Pike's feet
and ask, who is the greatest ball player?

Untold millions of Americans
would shout, Wagner.

U.S.

Fullerton, American Magazine.

No one ever saw anything graceful or
picturesque about Wagner on the diamond.

His movements have been likened to
the gambles of a caracoling elephant.

He's so ungainly and so bowlegged that
when he runs, his limbs seem to be moving

in a circle after the
fashion of a propeller.

Mardi Gras.

New York American.

A Pennsylvania coal miner
who had once hoped to become a

barber, Wagner became a
star in the Iron and Oil League.

And in 1900 joined the Pittsburgh Pirates
where he played shortstop for 18 years.

He hit better than 315 seasons in a row,
stealing 722 bases, setting league records

for at-bats and number of games
played that stood for four decades.

And it turned out that old Honus was
the best third baseman in the league.

He was also the best first
baseman, the best second

baseman, the best shortstop
and the best outfielder.

That was in fielding.

And since he led the league in batting
eight times between 1900 and 1911,

you know that he
was the best hitter, too.

As well as the best baserunner.

Tommy Leach.

He had a powerful build.

His 5-foot-11-inch, 200-pound frame, it
was said, featured a massive chest that

might have come from
a barrel maker's shop

and shoulders broad
enough to serve dinner on.

His legs were badly bowed, but he had huge
hands and arms so long, opposing players

swore he could tie his
shoes without bending over.

Nothing seemed to get past him,
and he threw so hard to first base that

pebbles scooped up as he fielded grounders
were said to arrive along with the ball.

February 1901.

If we had waited for the
National League to do something

for us, we would have
remained a minor league forever.

The American League
will be the principal

organization of the country
within a very short time.

Mark my prediction.

Ban Johnson.

Byron Bancroft Ban Johnson was a
big man with even bigger ambitions.

A professor's son, Johnson became a
sports writer for the Cincinnati Commercial

Gazette, then took over a
struggling minor league circuit called

the Western League in 1894
and made it a financial success.

In 1900, he changed its name to the
American League and began to talk of

moving east, to challenge
the big city monopoly of

Albert Goodwill Spalding's
troubled National League.

He promised honest baseball, cheaper ticket
prices, and a wholesome family atmosphere.

At first, the National League
owners simply ignored him.

When he asked to address their annual
meeting, they kept him waiting in the

hall, then adjourned without
even giving him a hearing.

It was a major miscalculation.

Johnson was
humorless and dictatorial.

He looked, one reporter said, as if
he had been weaned on an icicle.

But he was also able,
resourceful, and determined.

When the National
League dropped four of its

less profitable teams,
Johnson saw his chance.

He established new clubs in Boston,
Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington,

snapped up newly unemployed players,
then began raiding and looting active

National League rosters.

Lured by an average of $500 more per
season, 111 National League players jumped

to Ban Johnson's brand-new American
League, including the great pitchers Cy

Young and Rube Waddell,
and the notorious John McGraw.

By the end of the 1902 season, even
Spalding's Guide to Baseball admitted

that the American League
has more star players, to furnish

a better article of baseball
than the National League.

The National League owners complained,
threatened, mounted lawsuits, quarreled

among themselves, but
they could do nothing.

Ban Johnson was
not going to go away.

What's the matter with these
National League magnates?

What a shame it is that the greatest of
sports should be in the hands of such a

malodorous gang, as
these magnates have proven

themselves to be on
more than one occasion.

Leak meetings are characterized
by mudslinging, brawling, corruption,

breaches of
confidence, dishonorable

conspiracies, and threats
of personal violence.

In 1903, weakened by their own squabbling,
the National League owners sued for peace.

Ban Johnson had won.

A new national
agreement was negotiated.

Now there would be two major leagues,
separate but equal, honoring one another's

contracts, both retaining
the reserve clause

that kept players bound
to their owners for life.

A three-man national
commission was appointed to settle

disputes and see that the
regulations were enforced.

Power was supposed to
be shared equally, but Ban

Johnson saw to it that
he was really in charge.

The players were
not represented.

The idea of going to the ballpark,
say in 1900, was that the urban masses

would get a taste of country pastoral
air, that they would breathe in, that their

lungs would expand by
cheering, nonsense like this.

Baseball grew in the cities.

It is an outgrowth of
gambling, it's an outgrowth

of crookedness, it's an
outgrowth of drinking.

It's a roistering,
boisterous event.

It is as wild as the Wild West.

Just outside the old Huntington Avenue
ballpark, home of the Boston Pilgrims of

the New American League,
stood the Third Base Saloon,

so-called because it was the
fans' last stop on the way home.

Its owner was the bartender, Mike
McGreevy, known as Nuff Said, because he

was the final arbiter
of all barroom disputes.

His customers, Irish immigrants mostly,
called themselves the Royal Rooters,

and considered themselves
the most loyal of all Boston

fans, though their loyalty was
actually comparatively new.

They had been National
League fans until the National

Leaguers raised ticket
prices two years earlier.

And now it's the New Yorkers.

At 11 o'clock, four hours
before the game began, a

crowd of nearly a thousand
was clamoring for admission.

With the opening of the
gate at 12 o 'clock, there

began a steady rush which
grew into a surging mass.

The long lane leading to the ticket office
was completely choked with excited fans.

And in the offices,
there was a veritable din

The din caused by the
merry ring of the coins.

Boston Globe.

On October 1st, 1903, Nuff said McGreevy
and his royal routers were among the first

to pass through the turnstiles to see
the Boston Pilgrims take on the Pittsburgh

Pirates in the very first championship
series between the two leagues.

It would be a
best-of-nine-game contest.

Realizing that this was a golden
opportunity to prove the superiority of

his new league, Van Johnson ordered
the Boston owner to beat Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh had been favored
to win, but Boston was aided

by a series of disasters
that undercut the Pirates.

One pitcher had been injured.

Their star shortstop, Honus
Wagner, was playing hurt.

And just as the series got
underway, Ed Doheny, another

pitcher, was the first to
pass through the turnstiles.

Suffered a mental breakdown
and was sent to an asylum.

That was probably the
wildest series ever played.

Arguing all the time between the teams,
between the players and the umpires,

and especially between
the players and the fans.

That's the truth.

The fans were part of
the game in those days.

They'd pour right out onto the field and
argue with the players and the umpires.

It was sort of hard to keep the game
going sometimes, to say the least.

Tommy Leach.

The Pirates took an early 3-1 lead in
the series, thanks to Deacon Philippe,

who pitched and won
every one of Pittsburgh's

three victories, beating
the great Cy Young twice.

But spurred on by the zeal of Nuff
Said-McGreevy and his Royal Rooters,

Boston roared back,
winning the next three games.

I think those Boston fans actually
won that series for the Pilgrims.

We beat them three out
of the first four games, and

then they'd start singing
that damn Tessie song.

You could hardly play ball, they
were singing Tessie so damn loud.

Only instead of singing Tessie, I love
you madly, they'd sing special lyrics.

Like when Honus Wagner came to bat, they'd
sing, Honus, why do you hit so badly?

Sort of got on your
nerves after a while.

Before we knew what had
happened, we'd lost the series.

Tommy Leach.

In the eighth inning, the Boston
final game, Boston shut out Pittsburgh,

three to nothing.

By defeating the National League champions
from Pittsburgh at the Huntington Avenue

grounds yesterday, the Boston Americans
made it five victories out of eight games

played, which gives them
a clear title to the highest

honor ever achieved in
baseball, Boston Globe.

The games proved so
popular that the two leagues

decided to hold a
championship series every year.

Boston manager Jimmy
Collins raised the very first

championship flag over the
Huntington Avenue grounds.

A team from Boston had beaten a
team from Pittsburgh, just 650 miles away.

But the owners insisted on
calling it the World Series.

The Pilgrims would soon change their name
to the Red Sox and would go on to win the

World Series four times
in the next 15 years.

Philadelphia is the home of the
Declaration of Independence, the number

eight pretzel, and the
translucent ham sandwich,

all of which are served
at the Ball Orchard.

A slice of boiled ham through which
an eclectic eclipse of the sun could be

observed with comfort is stretched
to cover the area of a baker's bun.

The sustenance derived
from the ham is equal to

that of a similar portion
of a red toy balloon.

Inflated.

Sporting news.

Bad food and overpriced drink had
been sold at ballparks since the 1850s.

But it took one very
ambitious British-born

caterer to turn
concessions into an empire.

Harry M.

Stevens had begun his career hawking
scorecards in the 1880s, all the while

regaling the crowds with quotes
from Byron and Shakespeare.

By 1901 he was peddling
hard-boiled eggs, ham sandwiches, ice

cream and slices of pie in
stadiums from New York to Ohio.

Then, one cold winter and a cold
afternoon, when ice cream sales slowed at

the polo grounds, he sent out
for German sausages, which

he put in long buns so fans
could hold and eat them.

He had made his
greatest contribution to the

game, introducing hot
dogs to the ballpark.

It's all mixed up with
peanuts, tobacco juice, and

a hearty feeling among
the fans joshing each other.

Always this
raucous, good spirit.

He seemed to have a good time.

That's the way I remember it, a
whole stands full of people all roaring.

I guess it's true of any sport, but
in baseball, I've never known an

instance where so instantly a whole crowd
could be brought to its feet roaring with

delight over just a clean
crack of a bat against the ball.

It's a great sport that way.

Van Johnson never missed an
opportunity to make a speech.

It was always the same speech,
how he, single-handed and alone,

had made baseball
a gentleman's sport.

And it must be kept forever clean because
sportsmanship spoke from the heart of

America and he would
lay down his life to save our

beloved nation, at which
he would begin to cry.

Although the first World Series had been
a huge success, the reputation of the game

continued to suffer as brawling
fans drove away paying customers.

Now, Van Johnson ordered
his American League owners to

have their stadiums patrolled
to keep rowdiness down.

Players and managers, as well
as fans, were expected to behave.

But there was one man who
constantly challenged his authority.

John Joseph McGraw, player-manager
of the contentious Baltimore Orioles,

was one of the first National Leaguers
to jump to the American League in 1901.

But he had not liked it there.

He could not bear to have anyone
tell him how to play the game.

When McGraw refused to
stop the constant abuse of

umpires, for which he was
infamous, Johnson suspended him.

McGraw never forgave Johnson.

He returned to the National League
as manager of the New York Giants,

a job he would hold
leading his team to ten

pennants and ending in
the first division 28 times.

He would play his furious brand of ball
at the Polo Grounds, a lopsided, majestic

stadium hard against Coogan's
Bluff in northern Manhattan.

It was an important part of McGraw's great
capacity for leadership that he would take

kids out of the coal mines and out of the
wheat fields and make them walk and talk

and chatter and play
ball with a look of eagles.

Heywood Broome.

Couldn't

come around and second
guess McGraw's players in

his presence without
having a fight on your hands.

He stood up for us at all times.

We always called him Mr. McGraw.

Never John or Mac.

Always Mr. McGraw.

McGraw's very walk across the field
in a hostile town was a challenge to the

multitude wrote the sports
writer Grantland Rice.

And the ferocity of McGraw's teams
aroused such resentment on the road that he

routinely demanded police
protection against irate fans.

He was profane,
pugnacious, unrelenting.

No one made a move on
the field without his consent.

McGraw was said once to have fined a
player for hitting a home run that drove

in two runs because he
had ordered him to bunt.

The main idea John
McGraw said is to win.

And to help him win he
carried in his pocket as a good

luck charm a piece of rope
once used at a lynching.

When McGraw won the
National League pennant in

1904 he made a sweet
revenge on Dan Johnson.

Rather than have anything to do with the
league that had suspended him he simply

refused to play the Boston
Pilgrims for the championship.

There was no
World Series in 1904.

In Mr. McGraw I at last
discovered the real and

most authentic most
remarkable man in America.

George Bernard Shaw.

August 3, 1903 to the editor
of the Jewish Daily Forward.

It makes sense to teach
a child to play chess.

But what is the point of a
crazy game like baseball?

Here in educated America
adults play baseball.

They run after a
leather ball like children.

I want my boy to grow up to be a
mensch not a wild American runner.

But he cries his head off.

Dear sir let your boy play baseball
and play it well so long as it does not

interfere with his education
or get him into bad company.

Let us not so raise the
children that they should

grow up foreigners
in their own birthplace.

Abraham Cahan Editor
Jewish Daily Forward

My mother always said that she loved to
go to church but not to hear the preacher.

She could read her Bible at home but
she could only be in church in church.

And baseball has some of that same
sense of peace that has nothing to do with

ideology but simply with ritual
familiarity small truths sort of lessons

of the day that we are
familiar with before but

may get a little more
light on them that day.

In 1900 the Giants had
taken a huge risk to find the

greatest pitcher Amos
Roussey for a 19 year old rookie.

Roussey had 245 wins behind him
and as it turned out none ahead of him.

The Hoosier Thunderbolt went
back to digging ditches in Indiana.

The rookie had no major
league wins when he

joined the team but he
had 373 ahead of him.

His name was Matt Eave.

Matt Eave was without a peer.

He had a greater variety of stuff
than any pitcher I ever knew or handled.

His fastball was the equal of
Walter Johnson's or Amos Roussey's.

He had the fadeaway down to perfection and
he utilized his knowledge of batsmen with

greater effect than
any twirler in the game.

He possessed wonderful
control remarkable fielding ability

and was one of the finest
sportsmen the game has ever known.

John McGraw.

John McGraw may have
championed the old brawling brand

of baseball but his greatest
star was Christy Mathewson.

A pitcher with a record for clean play
so spotless that his wife once felt she had

to defend him by saying that while he
was a good man he was no goody-goody.

Christy Mathewson was
Frank Meriwell in the flesh.

He was so virtuous he
would not give interviews to

sports writers who he
heard cheated on their wives.

Small boys had
admired other players.

They worshipped
Christy Mathewson.

He was the perfect
hero for his age.

He seemed to have
sprung from the pages of the

dime baseball novels
American boys now devoured.

Sports writers and fans across the
country called him the Christian gentleman.

No one did more to
improve the reputation of

the baseball player
and he did it with style.

Mathewson would always wait until
just about ten minutes before game time.

He would cross the field in a long linen
duster like auto drivers wore in those

days and at every step the
crowd would yell louder and louder.

He was a commanding presence
on the mound methodically

directing the rhythm
and pace of each game.

He could throw a ball into a tin cup at
pitching range a player remembered.

And he took a scientific approach to
his work carefully cataloging his pitches.

His fast ball could
arrive with an inward, an

outward or an upward
shoot he once explained.

He also threw a slow ball a drop curve,
an out curve a rise ball, a spit ball and

the fall away what pitchers
later called the screw ball.

The fall away which I have used if I
may be pardoned for saying so with greater

effectiveness than any other
pitcher is an exceptionally

slow ball and calculated to
deceive the greatest batter.

As it rushes toward him it
looks like a fast high ball.

Six feet from him when it begins to drop
it has the appearance of a slow drop ball.

And then as he swings it is
traveling in two directions at once.

In 1905 John McGraw won the National
League pennant again and this time when

Connie Mack's Philadelphia
Athletics took the American League

championship he agreed to
take them on in the World Series.

His decision not to play the
year before had cost his players

$1,000 each as much as
one half their yearly salaries.

Mathewson who had won 31 games that
season easily deceived the hitters on the

athletics in the series and
won two shutouts in six days.

27 innings and not a single run.

The greatest pitching
performance in World Series history.

The Giants easily
beat Philadelphia.

Four games to one.

The opening day of the new
season the World Champions took

a victory lap around the park
in a new kind of conveyance.

With Christy Mathewson
New York looked unbeatable.

Mathewson was the
greatest pitcher who ever lived.

It was wonderful to watch him pitch
when he wasn't pitching against you.

Connie Mack.

Thomas Jefferson when he wrote the
Declaration of Independence made proper

provision for baseball
when he declared that all

men are and of a right
ought to be free and equal.

That's what they
are at the ball game.

Banker and bricklayer.

Lawyer and common laborer.

Baseball Magazine.

In 1901 John McGraw had tried to add a
black second baseman named Charlie Grant

to his roster by renaming
him Charlie Tuckahoma

and claiming he was
a Cherokee Indian.

Grant played along but black friends who
came out to cheer him on gave him away.

He never got the job.

For African Americans it
remained the worst of times.

858 blacks were lynched
during the decade.

Separate but unequal laws held them in
virtual bondage in the south and helped

drive thousands north
to already dangerously

crowded cities in
search of a better life.

The national pastime
too had nothing to offer.

Blacks were still barred from
playing in organized white baseball.

Back in 1887 Moses Fleetwood
Walker the first black man to

play in the major leagues
had been driven from the game.

He became the editor of
his own newspaper and

published a pamphlet
entitled Our Home Colony.

In it he urged black
Americans to emigrate to Africa.

They could expect nothing in America
he wrote but failure and disappointment.

In 1901 a 20 year old elementary
school teacher managed to

scrape together enough money
to enter Ohio Wesleyan University.

His mother sent him
a dollar bill each month

to help him out but
he always returned it.

Ricky was determined to make something
of himself and to do it on his own.

To pay his school bills he helped coach
the Ohio Wesleyan baseball team urging his

players on with a booming
voice no one ever forgot.

Ricky is one of the noisiest
men who ever played

on the field wrote a
campus sports writer.

When the team stopped at South Bend
Indiana a hotel manager refused to allow

the team's star a catcher
named Charlie Thomas to register.

The memory of the players
humiliation never left Branch Ricky.

There's nothing about baseball that calls
for any sort of superhuman proportion or

skill or it at least appears that way
there's the illusion that it doesn't as

boys and girls we grow up playing it or
we grow up playing softball and we see the

people who are playing it professionally
now and they don't look that different

from us they're not 6'8 they don't weigh
275 pounds they're not on skates they're

not doing something that is beyond our
reach so the connection for those of us

who played it on sand lots and in
school yards is very easily grasped.

I found that you can't play ball in skirts
I tried and nearly broke my neck finally I

was forced to discard it and now I always
wear bloomers but made so wide that the

fullness gives a
skirt-like effect Alta Weiss

Alta Weiss was a doctor's daughter from
Ragersville, Ohio who began to pitch for

boys teams at the age of 18 at 17 she
joined a men's semi-professional team Miss

Weiss can easily lay claim to being the
only one who can handle the ball from the

pitcher's box in such style
that some of the best sebi pros

are made to fan the atmosphere
the Lorraine Times Herald

1200 people turned out to see
her make her professional debut

She gave up only four hits
and a single run in five innings.

Soon, special trains were being run
out from Cleveland whenever she pitched.

And thousands
paid to see her play.

In 1908, her father
bought her a barnstorming

semi-pro team, which he
renamed the Weiss All-Stars.

She eventually put herself through medical
school with her earnings, practiced as a

physician, and spent her
last years sitting on her porch

in Ohio, watching children
play the game she loved.

But it would be four decades
before women finally got

a chance to play in their
own professional league.

Waiting for every player
is the absolute knowledge

that somebody out there
that day is going to fail.

That's it.

This is how games are won, because
statistics are kept and someone will be

sought out in the open and there will be
no sharing of blame and that person will

be responsible for what
won or lost the game.

These are the saddest
of possible words.

Tinker to evers to chance.

Trio of bear cubs and fleeter
than birds tinker to evers to chance.

Thoughtlessly pricking
our gonfalon bubble.

Making a giant
hit into a double.

Words that are weighty
with nothing but trouble.

Tinker to evers to chance.

Franklin P. Adams.

The 1906 Chicago Cubs
are believed by many to

have been the best
team in baseball history.

They moved smoothly
to the pennant that year.

Winning 116 games
and losing just 36.

One key to the Cubs
consistency was their infield.

The celebrated double play
combination of tinker to evers to chance.

Chicago fans loved them, but
they did not much like each other.

Or anyone else for that matter.

First baseman and manager Frank Chance,
once called the greatest amateur brawler

in the world, fined his
players $10 if they so

much as shook hands
with an opposing player.

Second baseman Johnny
Evers was so touchy

that his teammates
called him the human crab.

And he missed one entire season
after suffering a nervous breakdown.

Shortstop Joe Tinker was
ordinarily a cheerful man.

But even he refused to
speak with Evers for two

whole seasons after
a quarrel over cab fare.

Well, I'm of the school that believes
that we know the names Tinker, Evers,

and Chance more because they fit
the metric requirements of Franklin P.

Adams' poem.

Evers was a great ball player.

Tinker was a damn
good shortstop.

And Chance could hit well.

But if you look at their record, they
didn't make any more double plays

than anybody else in
the league at the time.

They just sounded awfully good.

The Cubs pitching mainstay was an Indiana
farm boy, Mordecai Peter Centennial Brown.

Better known as Three Finger Brown because
of a boyhood accident with a feed cutter

that destroyed most of his right
index finger, paralyzed his little finger,

and gave him a
devastating curveball.

Brown won 20 or more
games six years in a row.

In the 1906 World Series,
the Cubs were heavily favored

to beat their crosstown
rivals, the Chicago White Sox.

Called the Hitless Wonders
because the team averaged

just 230 and hit only
seven home runs all season.

But no one had counted on the superb
pitching of White Sox ace Ed Walsh,

master of the spitball.

Big Ed Walsh?

Oh, brother.

You talk about spitballs.

I think that the ball
disintegrated and got

back together when
the catcher got hold of it.

I think when it went past the
plate, it was just spit going by.

Sam Crawford.

Ed Walsh totally
overpowered the Cubs.

He pitched a masterful
two-hit shutout to win

the third game and then
went on to win the fifth.

To everyone's astonishment, the White Sox
had taken three of the first five games.

Now the mighty Cubs
had to win just to stay alive.

Almost 20,000
spectators turned out there.

That was for game six.

Cub fans felt confident.

Their ace, three-finger
Brown, was on the mound.

But the White Sox scored five runs off
Brown before driving him from the field.

Then scored three more off his
replacement to win eight to three.

The hitless Wonders
had won the World Series.

The invincible Cubs
had been defeated.

Ball players have to be able to cope with
defeat more constantly than anyone else.

It isn't just that they
lose four times out of six.

It's they have to
play again tomorrow.

And if they lose tomorrow,
that's two in a row.

In a week, you can
lose seven in a row.

A losing streak can mount up
on you so much faster than a

winning streak that it's a
kind of terror that grips a team.

It's like the spooky music
that runs under baseball.

For nearly 20 years, a vaudeville comedian
and baseball fanatic named DeWolf Hopper

had been reciting a lengthy poem by Ernest
Lawrence Thayer called Casey at the Bat,

A Ballad of the Republic.

He had first tried it out on a
Broadway audience in 1888

and gotten such applause
that he kept it in the act.

He would go on to recite the
poem, more than 10,000 times.

Between seasons,
baseball's brightest star has

supplemented their salaries
on the vaudeville circuit.

Outfielder Turkey Mike
Donlan of the New York Giants

married an actress and
performed with her on tour.

Cap Anson recited a monologue
written for him by George M.

Cohan.

Even Christy Mathewson
once played the palace.

John McGraw, who had no act,
he didn't sing, he didn't dance,

not that the other players
necessarily did, but they tried.

John McGraw would go
on the vaudeville circuit

in the off season and
simply beat John McGraw.

He would recite, he
would answer questions.

It was a sort of a Chautauqua
form in a low-life territory.

Of Casey's low, low.

Somewhere.

But Casey,

Casey has struck out.

One summer day in 1908, a popular
vaudeville entertainer named Jack Norworth

boarded a Manhattan train and saw an
advertisement that read, Baseball today,

polo grounds.

He had never been to a professional
game, but by the time he reached his stop,

he had written out the lyrics
for a song about baseball.

When Norworth introduced the song in
his act at the Amphion Theater in Brooklyn,

it fell flat.

But when Nickelodeon
audiences were encouraged to sing

along with lantern slides,
it became a nationwide hit.

The song would become
baseball's anthem.

People who longed for the
good old days before ballplayers

got rich should have
been a ballplayer back then.

It was hard.

They slept two to a
bed often in the hotels.

In fact, Ruebois Dell's bunkmate required
Connie Mack to put in his contract that

Ruebois Dell was not
allowed to eat crackers in bed.

One of the crosses that
Connie Mack had to bear

was Ruebois Dell of
Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.

When he went to sign Ruebois to his first
contract, he was met at the station in

Punxsutawney by all
the town leaders as he

and Ruebois were
about to get on the train.

And Mack was terrified that they had come
to tell Ruebois not to sign for so little

money or that they wanted
to keep him for the local team.

And one of them stepped
forward and said, Mr. Mack,

we're here to thank you for
getting him off of our hands.

George Edward Ruebois
Dell may have been the

strangest man ever to
play in the big leagues.

A farmer's son from Punxsutawney,
Pennsylvania, he possessed a fastball

fearsome enough and a curve wicked enough
to lead the American League in strikeouts

for six straight years and to
out-pitch Cy Young for 20 innings.

But in the end, it was his personality
that most people remembered.

He poured ice water on his
arm before he pitched because

he said otherwise he'd
burn up the catcher's glove.

And when he won a game, he
sometimes turned cartwheels on the mound.

He drank too much.

The sporting news
called him the Southpaw.

And he couldn't quite remember
how many women he'd married.

Between seasons, Ruebois
Dell wrestled alligators and

toured in a vaudeville melodrama
called The Stain of Guilt.

On the field, his attention
tended to wander.

Opponents could break his concentration
by holding up puppies or bright shiny toys.

He loved fires.

And when a fire bell clanged,
he had to be restrained

from leaving the game
to chase the fire engine.

Exasperated teammates and opposing
players never knew what he'd do next.

But fans loved him.

Sunday would come, and the little park
would be packed way before game time.

Everybody wanting to see
the great Ruebois Dell pitch.

Nowhere to be found.

Manager would be having a fit.

And then just a few
minutes before the game

time, there'd be a
commotion in the grandstand.

You'd hear people laughing and yelling,
here comes Rueb, here comes Rueb.

And there he'd come
right through the stands.

He jumped down on the
field, cut across the infield,

the clubhouse, taking
off his shirt as he went.

In about three minutes, he
never wore any underwear.

He'd run back out in uniform
and yell, all right, let's get him.

Sam Crawford.

Players like Waddell, with their
drinking, with their bad acting, with their

inability to take their profession
seriously, they came to baseball in its

early years in very
large numbers because

baseball, though popular,
was outside social norms.

The instability of a career where you might
work for a year or two and then be gone.

The jumping from team to
team seemed to be suited toward

individuals who couldn't fit
as well in the rest of society.

Now, it helped in the case of Rueb
Waddell and many of these other sociopathic

figures that in addition to
being sociopaths, they also

had incredibly strong arms
or very good batting eyes.

In 1904, Waddell struck
out 349 batters, a record

for American League
left-handers that still stands.

But he was just
too hard to handle.

Though he was one of the greatest pitchers
in baseball, his unreliability infuriated

his teammates, and he was driven out of
the big leagues and then out of the minors.

Waddell contracted
tuberculosis, helping victims of

a flood, and died on April
1, 1914, at the age of 37.

I love watching close-ups.

What I think is this psychological duel
between the pitcher and the batter as well

as a physical duel, knowing that each
one is anticipating what the other one is

going to do and that one of them
is going to win, one is going to lose.

I mean, that's what's
so wonderful about it.

I mean, people who don't
understand baseball think

about, well, what is it,
these nine guys on the field?

If you love it at that moment, it's just as
exciting as a heavyweight boxing match.

These two people
are dueling each other.

And with all of their memory of the
other person and the great pitchers,

and the great batters, have
studied the other person.

That's what's so wonderful.

Season after season, the
Washington Senators were

one of the least impressive
teams in baseball.

But in the summer of 1907,
their fortunes suddenly brightened.

On August 2, 1907, I
encountered the most

threatening sight I
ever saw on a ball field.

He was only a rookie, and we
licked our lips as we warmed up.

Evidently, manager Pongo Joe
Cantillon had picked a rube out

of the cornfields of the deepest
bushes to pitch against us.

He was a tall, shambling galoot, with
arms so long they hung far out of his

sleeves and with a sidearm delivery
that looked unimpressive at first glance.

One of the Tigers
imitated a cow mooing, and

we hollered, get the
pitchfork ready, Joe.

Your hayseed's on the
way back to the barn.

The first time I faced him, I
watched him take that easy windup.

And then something went
past that made me flinch.

The thing just
hissed with danger.

We couldn't touch him.

Every one of us knew
we'd met the most

powerful arm ever
turned loose in a ballpark.

Ty Cobb.

Earlier that season, Washington manager
Joe Cantillon had received a report about

a 19-year-old pitcher said to be
tearing up the Idaho State League.

This boy throws so fast you can't see him,
the scout said, and he knows where he is

throwing because if he didn't, there
would be dead bodies all over Idaho.

Walter Perry Johnson was a modest country
boy from Humboldt, Kansas, with broad

shoulders, long arms, and a curious motion
that delivered the ball fast enough to hit

the ball faster than any other pitcher had
before him, and perhaps none has since.

He was a Kansas farm boy, but when he
was found by the scouts or the Washington

Senators, he was pitching in a
league in Idaho, 1,500 miles away.

And the very idea of the scout traveling
out there and finding this unlikely

league, and in that league finding a
diamond, a true jewel like Johnson,

it represents to me this notion of the
game's national spread and national appeal.

Still, he was cautious.

Before signing up, he
asked for a return ticket

home, just in case things
didn't work out back east.

Things did work out.

Johnson hurled the ball so fast that
one batter left the box after two swings.

The umpire told him he
had a third swing coming.

I know, he said, and you
can have the next one.

It won't do me any good.

There's only one way to time it.

The first time Johnson's
fastball, said Bertie

McCree, when you see
the arm start forward, swing.

Another batter
simply shook his head.

You can't hit
what you can't see.

Well, Walter Johnson
probably wasn't a patch

on some of the fastball
pitchers we have today.

It's not that a pitcher throws
faster than anybody else in

history, but did he throw much
faster than the people of his time?

And certainly Johnson did.

In the words of the umpire, Billy Evans,
he said, was it hard to call a game that

Walter Johnson was pitching when
you would call the balls a strike?

Did the players second
guess you much?

And he said, well, it
wasn't really that hard.

They wouldn't second
guess me because not only

were my eyes closed,
their eyes were closed, too.

Walter Johnson's record
of 110 shutouts still stands.

He once held the New York Highlanders
scoreless three times in four days.

And although he rarely had the backing
from the Senators that he deserved,

he managed to win 417
games over his career and

to win 20 or more games
for 10 successive seasons.

The relentless velocity of his pitching
won him the nickname Big Train.

Sometimes he's
referred to as a legend.

He isn't a legend.

A legend, according to
Webster, has yet to be proved.

It's a bit mythical.

There's nothing mythical
about Walter Johnson.

He existed and was probably
the best pitcher of all time.

New York writers were
determined to make Christy

Matheson the best pitcher,
the pitcher hero of all time.

And in that sense, they
tended to ignore Walter Johnson.

They couldn't do this because Walter
Johnson surpassed Matheson in so many ways.

If Walter Johnson were pitching for a
team that had the winning percentage of

Matheson's Giants, there
would have been no contest.

But for all Johnson's skill and speed,
there was one hitter whom he could not

seem to intimidate, a
young Georgian playing for

Detroit, who soon found a
way to get hits off Johnson.

Walter Johnson was a
kindly man, the Georgian

explained, and never really
wanted to hurt anybody.

It was useless to try for
more than a single off Johnson.

You had to poke and
try to meet the ball.

If you swung, you were dead.

After he told me he was afraid he
might kill a hitter, I used to cheat.

I'd crowd the plate till I
was actually sticking my toes

on it, knowing he'd be so
timid that he'd pitch me wide.

Then with two balls and no strikes,
he'd ease one up to get one over.

That's the Johnson pitch I hit.

Ty Cobb.

The greatest
ballplayer of all time?

I picked the Detroit man, because he is,
in my judgment, the most expert man of his

profession, and is able
to respond better than

any other ballplayer to any
demand made upon him.

He plays ball with
his whole anatomy, his

head, his arms, his
hands, his legs, his feet.

I have never seen a man
who had his heart more

centered in a sport than
Cobb has when he's playing.

I believe Cobb would continue to play
ball if he were charged something for the

privilege, and if the only
spectator were the groundskeeper.

Charles Comiskey.

Baseball is a red-blooded
sport for red-blooded men.

It's no pink tea, and
mollycoddles had better stay out.

It's a struggle for supremacy,
a survival of the fittest.

Ty Cobb liked sentimentality in his
opponents because he had none himself.

Baseball, he said, is
something like a war.

Ty Cobb is one of the great
natural forces of baseball.

He is testament to how far he has come and
how far you can get simply through will.

I don't think Ty Cobb had
tremendous, tremendous natural ability.

I don't think he would
be a great athlete today.

But his intensity, his
drive was unparalleled.

Cobb was pursued by demons
from his childhood, from his parentage,

from his racial
consciousness, and he took out

all of his aggressions
on the playing field.

Everyone was his enemy.

It was easy for Cobb to play the game
of baseball as if it were the game of life,

and it was a violent struggle
every day, 154 games a year.

He was born on a Georgia farm in 1886 and
named Tyrus after the ancient city of Tyre

that stubbornly refused to
surrender to Alexander the Great.

His mother, Amanda, was just 15.

His father, William H.

Cobb, was a schoolmaster who had made
good and was grimly determined that his son

make good, too, in
medicine or law or the military.

His father was
distant, demanding.

The only man who ever made me do his
bidding, his son remembered, and nothing

young Tyrus could do
ever seemed to satisfy him.

The tense, skinny boy took out his anger
on the diamond and on his schoolmates.

In the fifth grade, he
beat up a fat boy whose

error had let the girls'
team win a spelling bee.

He left home at 17 to play in the
minors in Alabama and Tennessee.

His father warned him,
don't come home a failure.

That admonition, Cobb recalled, put
more determination in me than he ever knew.

My overwhelming need
was to prove myself as a man.

When no big league offers came right away,
he forged letters praising his own skills

and dispatched them to Grantland
Rice, sports editor of the Atlanta Journal.

Finally, Rice wrote, there's
a young fellow named Cobb

who seems to be showing
an unusual amount of talent.

He eventually got a job playing
left field for Augusta in the

South Atlantic League and
soon led that league in hitting.

Sale to a major league team seemed
only weeks away, a sure sign of the success

with which he hoped
to win his father's favor.

Then, Cobb got a telegram.

His father was dead.

Shotgunned.

Cobb's own mother had shot him.

Her husband thought she was having an
affair and when he tried to slip into her

bedroom window at night to trap
her with her lover, she shot him twice.

Later, she said, she had
mistaken him for a prowler.

My father had his head blown off when I
was 18 years old by a member of my own

family, Cobb told a writer
when he was an old man.

I didn't get over that.

I've never gotten over it.

Three weeks after his father
was killed, on August 3rd, 1936,

1905, Ty Cobb played his
first game for the Detroit Tigers.

Every rookie gets a little hazy, but
most of them just take it and laugh.

Cobb took it the wrong way.

He came up with an antagonistic
attitude which in his mind

turned any little razzing
into a life and death struggle.

He always figured everybody
was ganging up on him.

He came up from the South and
he was still fighting the Civil War.

As far as he was concerned, we were
all damn Yankees before he even met us.

Sam Crawford.

Sure I fought.

I had to fight all
my life to survive.

They were all against me.

Tried every dirty
trick to cut me down.

But I beat the bastards
and left them in the ditch.

It's an old baseball
aphorism that you can't

play baseball with
your teeth clenched.

You have to be sort of
relaxed, balanced temperament.

Ty Cobb played all his career with
his teeth clenched, his fists clenched.

Despised often by his teammates,
once when they thought he'd lost a batting

title, his own teammates sent a telegram
of congratulations to the man who beat him.

A man of such fierce
determination to play that

one time in an exhibition
game in Toledo, Ohio.

He had tonsillitis.

He went and had his tonsils out by a quack
who was later sent to an insane asylum

without anesthetics,
played later that day.

He developed ulcers, took to sleeping
with a revolver under his pillow, and soon

began to display an obsessive
animosity toward blacks.

One day, when a black groundskeeper
tried to shake his hand, Cobb slapped him,

chased him into the
dugout, then tried to

strangle the man's wife
when she came to his aid.

And when Cobb's teammates pulled
him off her, he tried to punch them, too.

One sports writer said he would
climb a mountain to punch an echo.

Another suggested that he
was possessed by the Furies.

He waited at the plate with his hands wide
apart so that he could bunt or punch or

slap the ball just where
he wanted it to go.

Few could match the speed of his takeoff
from first, and it took a brave man to

block the base path when
he slid in, spikes high.

One pitcher covering home, as Cobb came
in with what he called my steal showing,

is said to have
fled from the field.

If I hadn't been determined
to outdo the other

fella at all costs, I doubt
I would have hit .320.

In other words, my lifetime batting
average has been increased at least 50

points by qualities
I'd call purely mental.

He was the biggest draw in
baseball, more admired than loved.

All across the country,
fans now began to argue

over who was better, Cobb
or the great Honus Wagner.

Cobb's ferocity drove his team to
the pennant in 1907, and himself to the

batting championship
of the American League.

At 20 years and 10 months,
Ty Cobb was the youngest

man ever to win a
big league batting title.

He would win seven more
in a row, 12 in 13 years.

He was, one writer said, a
cyclone, a tornado, a typhoon.

All rolled into one.

The cruelty of Cobb's style fascinated
the multitudes, but it also alienated them.

He played in a climate
of hostility, friendless by

choice in a violent world
he populated with enemies.

He was the strangest of all our sports
idols, but not even his disagreeable

character could destroy the image
of his greatness as a ball player.

Ty Cobb was the best.

That seemed to be all he wanted.

Jimmy Cannon.

I think baseball is a great
support to people who

have emotional voids,
gaps, emotional difficulties.

That is to say, all of us.

Those parts of us that don't function
well, those parts of us that are sad or

depressed, not every day,
they can really use baseball.

It isn't just the child in a
wheelchair or the shut-in

senior citizen listening to
the radio that needs the game.

There's part of us, part
of everybody who's a

baseball fan, that needs
the game at that level.

Next to Abraham Lincoln and
George Washington, the name of A.G.

Spalding is the most
famous in American literature.

It has been blazing forth on the
cover of guides to all sorts of sports,

upon bats and
gloves for many years.

Young America gets its knowledge
of the past in the world of athletics from

something that has Al
Spalding on it in big black letters.

And for that reason as
much as any other, he

is one of the national
figures of our time.

Boston Herald.

Albert Goodwill Spalding,
the sporting goods king,

could look back on a
long career in baseball.

First as a superb pitcher,
then as a ruthless club owner.

Finally as the man who had
made the game big business.

But he still had one
more service to perform.

He was determined to prove that baseball
was an exclusively American invention.

The brainchild of some
ingenious American lad.

He appointed a
commission to prove it.

But two years of research
turned up almost nothing.

Then in 1905, a letter arrived from a
frail old man who claimed that General

Abner Doubleday had
invented baseball as a boy

in Cooperstown, New
York one afternoon in 1839.

It wasn't true.

But it was just what
Spalding had been looking for.

It proved, he said, that baseball
truly was the national game.

Played by Americans, watched by
Americans, now invented by an American.

We need Doubleday because as a
culture we have to have origin myths.

Now baseball has
no point of origin.

It evolved, we know that.

So they set up a commission and they
ginned up this absurd story about Abner

Doubleday who, as one writer said,
probably didn't know of baseball from a

kumquat, but he did fire the first
responsive Union volley at Fort Sumter and

he did briefly command
the troops at Gettysburg.

So to have an American
hero as the originator

of the game seemed
very appropriate indeed.

It's total mythology.

In fact, there is no
single point of origin.

Let's not try to find a
starting place for baseball.

Let's consider it to be the Darwinian
product of centuries of movement of people

and continents and oceans and something
rising from the sea and then turning

eventually after years of
evolution into Barry Bonds.

During the first decade of the 20th
century, Americans sought to solve their

country's problems by
organizing everything.

They formed children's
aid societies, consumer

associations, municipal reform
leagues, and baseball teams.

They played for the Redding Alerts,
Utica Pentups, Binghamton Bingoes,

Scranton Choctaws, Hagerstown Antihills,
and New Jersey McClellans, the Laredo

Apaches, Union City
Greyhounds, Cincinnati

Porkers, Evansville River
Rats, and Iola Gas Bags.

They played for the Greenville,
Mississippi Buckshots, Troy Collar and

Cuff Makers, Providence Clam Diggers,
Terre Haute Hottentots, Des Moines

Undertakers, Lebanon Pretzel Eaters,
Yakima Pippins, Bangor Bangers,

and the Hartford Wide Awakes.

So eager to play, they got up at dawn to
get in a game before they went to work.

And they also played for the
All-American Black Tourists, the

Meridian Southern Giants, and
the Monarchs of Kansas City.

The colored ballplayer suffers a great
inconvenience at times while traveling.

All the hotels are
generally filled from the

cellar to the garret
when they strike a town.

It's a common occurrence for them
to arrive in a city late at night and walk

around for several hours
before getting a place to lodge.

With the color question uppermost in the
minds of the people at the present time,

such proceedings on
the part of hotel keepers

may be expected and
will be difficult to remedy.

Sol White.

For years, the so-called gentlemen's
agreement among the owners had excluded

one-tenth of the nation's
citizens from the playing field.

But African Americans played wherever
and whenever they could for dozens of

independent teams that
barnstormed all across the country.

Their names were as splendid
as the men who played for them.

The Cuban X Giants, the New York
Lincoln Giants, the Indianapolis ABCs,

the French Lick Plutos, and the
Hot Springs Majestic White Sox.

The Cuban Giants, originally made up
of waiters from the Argyle Hotel on Long

Island, are said to have spoken gibberish
on the field when away from home to fool

the crowd into thinking
they were speaking Spanish.

The Page Fence Giants, sponsored by a wire
manufacturer, spun through the streets on

bicycles to drum up crowds and toured
the country in their own private railroad.

Black Chicago alone supported three
great teams, the Leland Giants, the Unions,

and the Union Giants.

Baseball should be taken
seriously by the colored player.

An honest effort of his great ability will
open the avenue in the near future wherein

he may walk hand in
hand with the opposite race

in the greatest of all
American games, baseball.

Two players
dominated the decade.

John Henry Pop Lloyd
was a hard-hitting shortstop

whose fans called him
the Black Honus Wagner.

The authentic Wagner said he
was honored by the comparison.

But best of all was Andrew Rube Foster,
star pitcher and manager of the Chicago

Leland Giants, who got his nickname by
beating the great Rube Waddell in 1902.

Foster's team had a record one
season of 123 wins and only six losses.

John McGraw himself
quietly hired Foster to show

the New York Giant
pitching staff what he knew.

Christy Mathewson is
said to have learned to

throw his celebrated
fadeaway from Rube Foster.

Excellent mind.

Excellent mind.

He was born to be baseball.

Rube was.

And he was actually more or
less two innings ahead of him.

Rube Foster was one of them.

Rube gave all of the signals.

Rube put on all of the plays.

And he had the men that could
do just what he wanted them to do.

Abandoned by the federal government,
segregated from the rest of society,

Black Americans
were on their own.

They established colleges,
started newspapers,

formed organizations
to stop lynching.

And now Rube Foster began to dream
of organizing a league of black teams,

which would one day compete
with the major leagues as equals.

W.E.B.

Du Bois, editor of The Crisis,
the journal of the new National

Association for the Advancement of
Colored People, recruited Bois to sell

subscriptions door-to-door by
promising them baseball equipment.

Baseball is a
most popular sport.

In every hamlet, town, and city
may be the future Rube Foster's.

Romping over
corner lots, batting,

pitching, and learning
how to play the game.

Organize your team.

W.E.B.

Du Bois.

Monday, September 21, 1908.

Here is something for
the Giant fans to consider.

Suppose Fred Tenney
should be crippled.

That would be a
calamity, wouldn't it?

Yes, it would in one way, but it wouldn't
keep the Giants from winning the pennant.

There is a young fellow on the bench named
Fred Merkle who can fill that job better

than nine-tenths of the
first baseman in the league.

He is crying for
a chance to work.

Chicago Tribune.

The final weeks of the 1908 National
League season saw a fierce struggle

between the Chicago Cubs and
their arch rivals, the New York Giants.

With the pennant on the line, they met
at the polo grounds on September 23.

John McGraw had to make a
last-minute change in the Giant lineup.

First baseman Fred
Tenney was injured.

Substituting for him was an eager
19-year-old rookie named Fred Merkle.

In the bottom of the ninth, there were
two outs and two men on for the Giants,

with the score tied one to one.

Giant pinch hitter Moose McCormick
was on third, representing the winning run.

Fred Merkle was
the runner on first.

Al Bridwell, the Giant
shortstop, was up to bat.

He lined the very first pitch
past Cubs second baseman

Johnny Evers into center
field for a clean single.

Moose McCormick lumbered home.

The Giants had won the game,
and most likely the pennant.

Jubilant Giant fans began
pouring onto the field.

At that moment, Fred Merkle
was on his way to second.

Alarmed by the oncoming crowd,
and convinced the game was over,

he turned and ran
for the clubhouse.

Johnny Evers saw that
Merkle hadn't touched second.

If Evers could get the ball,
and touch second himself,

the winning run would be
canceled by the foursome.

The Cubs would
still have a chance.

But first, he had
to find the ball.

Joe McGinnity, the Giants third baseman,
his coach, saw what Evers was up to,

won a scramble for the ball,
and threw it into the stands.

A fan and a brown bowler caught
it, and started home with his trophy.

But two Cubs chased the man through the
mob, knocked him down when he resisted,

grabbed the ball, and tossed it to Joe
Tinker, who related to Evers at second.

Evers then jumped up and down on the bag to
make sure the umpire saw what he had done.

Soon we saw Frank Chance arguing with
Hank O'Day, who was the umpire in charge.

But we really didn't find
out what it was all about

until we got into the clubhouse
and somebody told us.

Johnny Evers claimed
he had gotten the ball and

touched second base,
so that Merkle was out.

Al Bridwell.

Both teams claimed victory.

It took Harry C.

Pulliam, the league president,
two days to disallow the Giant run,

and declare the game a
tie, to be replayed at the

end of the season if the
two teams were deadlocked.

Trying to explain the Merkle
boner in 25 words or less

is like trying to explain
relativity to kindergarteners.

It's a force-out, and under the rules of
baseball, and this had happened in a game

umpired by the same umpire three weeks
earlier, so Evers knew where he stood.

Under the rules of
baseball, the play was not

completed so long as there
was a force-out possible.

And with the force-out concluded,
the run that scored didn't count.

It ended up determining who
won the pennant that year.

It also ended up leaving poor Fred Merkle
with this eponym created to embarrass and

humiliate him and his ghostly
presence even to this day.

As a result of the Merkle
boner, the Cubs and Giants

were deadlocked when
the regular season ended.

And on October 8, 1908, a one-game
playoff was held at the polo grounds.

Christy Mathewson, having the best year
of his career, was to pitch for the Giants.

Even New York had
never seen anything like it.

The polo grounds quit selling tickets
by one o'clock, and thousands who held

tickets couldn't force their way
through the street mobs to the entrances.

The umpires were an
hour getting into the park.

By game time, there were thousands
on the field in front of the bleachers.

The stands were jammed.

The elevated lines
couldn't run because people

had climbed up and
were sitting on the tracks.

Mordecai Brown.

Firemen drove onlookers
off the elevated tracks

with hoses, but they just
climbed back up again.

Fans without tickets tried
to burn their way into the

park and had to be beaten
back by mounted policemen.

Thousands more covered the
rock-faced cliff called Coogan's

Bluff that offered views
of only part of the field.

Never in the history of the
game, one reporter wrote,

have there been so many to
see a game who didn't see it.

From the stands,
Three Finger Brown

remembered, there was
a steady roar of abuse.

I never heard anybody
or any set of men called as

many foul names as the
Giant fans called us that day.

The Cub pitcher Jack
Pfister was rattled.

He hit Fred Tenney
and walked Buck Herzog.

Turkey Mike Donlan
doubled, scoring Tenney.

The Giants led one to nothing.

Pfister walked the next batter.

It looked as if the Giants were
about to get their revenge for Merkle.

Then Cub manager Frank
Chance sent for Three Finger Brown.

Brown had started, or relieved, in eleven
of the last fourteen games of the season.

He had received six
letters threatening him

with death if he dared
pitch against the Giants.

And he had to shove his
way to the mound through the

hostile muttering crowd that
had spilled into the outfield.

But he was ready.

Arthur Devlin was a low average hitter and
great fielder, but tough in the finches.

But I fanned him.

And then you should
have heard the name that

flew around me as I
walked to the bench.

I was about as good that
day as I ever was in my life.

Mordecai Brown.

In the third inning, the Cubs,
sparked by Joe Tinker's triple,

scored four runs off
Mathewson, despite the ceaseless

angry hissing that greeted
every Chicago batter.

In the seventh, New
Yorkers had reason to

hope again, as Fred
Tenney drove in one run.

The score was now
four to two Cubs.

And it stayed there through the
eighth and the top of the ninth.

The tension became too much
for the Giants and their fans.

The scene was really the most
disgraceful ever pulled off around here.

Once when Kling was chasing a
foul from Doyle's bat, two beer bottles,

a drinking glass, and a
derby hat were thrown at him.

Is that baseball?

Does that do New York any good?

Gee whiz, if we can't lose a pennant
without dirty work, let's quit altogether.

New York Evening Journal.

Play was stopped for a time
because of fist fights in the stands.

A newspaper reported the next day that
seven men had been carted away, raving mad.

Three-finger Brown stayed calm.

Three Giants came up in the
ninth, and three went down.

It was all over.

The Cubs had won the pennant
and had to run for their lives.

Some of our boys got caught by the mob
and were beaten up some, Brown remembered.

The manager, Frank
Chance, was hit in the throat.

Jack Pfister was
slashed in the shoulder.

They just barely made it into the
clubhouse and had to be driven to their

hotel in a paddy wagon
guarded by six armed officers.

The Giants owner had
gold medals struck for his

players anyway, reading,
The Real Champions, 1908.

John McGraw never
blamed Fred Merkle.

It is criminal to say
that Merkle is stupid and

to blame the loss of the
pennant on him, he said.

We were robbed of it, and
you can't say Merkle did that.

But the public did blame him.

Merkle stuck it out for 14 years
in baseball, but never got over the

reputation of being the man
responsible for the boner play.

Even Al Bridwell, who's
single should have won

the original game, came
to sympathize with him.

I wish I'd never gotten
that hit, Bridwell said.

I wish I'd struck out instead.

If I'd done that, then it would have
spared Fred a lot of humiliation.

The Cubs' five-game World
Series victory over Ty Cobb and

the Detroit Tigers came as
something of an anticlimax.

Although the Cubs have never
managed to win another since.

I grew up in central Illinois,
midway between Chicago and St.

Louis, and I made
a historic blunder.

All my friends became Cardinal
fans and grew up happy and liberal.

And I became a Cub fan and grew
up embittered and conservative.

I remember reading a story one time
about Cobb in the minor leagues, playing,

and they didn't
shower in the ballpark.

They would go back to their little
apartment or house, whatever it was.

And every day, Cobb was always
in the tub ahead of the roommate.

And this one particular day, the
roommate got back to the house.

And the roommate
got into the tub.

And Cobb came in and dragged him out
of the tub and said, from the bottom of his

heart, don't you
understand, I have to be first.

I was like a steel spring with a
growing and dangerous flaw in it.

If it is wound too tight
or has the slightest weak

point, the spring will fly
apart and then it's done for.

Ty Cobb got into
trouble again in 1909.

During a crucial August game between
the Tigers and the Philadelphia Athletics,

he was accused of deliberately
spiking the third baseman, Frank Baker.

Even the normally courtly
Philadelphia manager, Connie

Mack, called Cobb the
dirtiest player in baseball.

And Van Johnson himself suggested that
if he didn't stop this sort of playing,

he will have to quit the game.

Cobb ignored them.

He went on playing his sort of game,
snarling, swearing, shoving, spiking,

while hitting 650 in 16 games at home and
averaging one stolen base every afternoon.

But in Cleveland, he
stabbed a black hotel night

guard who had dared
ask him to identify himself.

The Tigers paid the
watchman's medical expenses in

exchange for the victim's
promise not to prosecute.

In the midst of the
controversy that followed him

everywhere, Cobb led
the league in hitting in 1909.

And his Tigers took the
pennant for the third year in a row.

They would play the Pittsburgh
Pirates in the World Series.

And for the first time, Ty
Cobb would have to face his

great rival and near opposite
in all things, Honus Wagner.

For most of the decade, Wagner had played
quietly and efficiently, winning seven

National League batting
titles, staying out of the limelight.

Even members of opposing teams came out
just to watch him take batting practice.

Now, in the opening game
of the 1909 World Series, the

two greatest players in
baseball were about to meet.

The nation waited to see
who would come out on top.

They met today for the first
time, these Cobb and Wagner.

It was an interesting
study in contrast.

On the one hand was the Georgia
boy, lithe and trim as a greyhound,

his bills speaking to him.

Seeing the athlete
in every line.

And on the other, the
enormous, heavy-bodied German.

A picture of
strength and stability.

Without, however, any apparent
suggestion of quickness or movement.

The Detroit News.

Pleasantries ended
when the series began.

Once, when Cobb got to first, ready to
steal, he shouted, watch out, crowd head,

I'm coming down.

I'll cut you to pieces.

Come ahead, said Wagner.

And when Cobb did come, Wagner tagged
him hard in the mouth, splitting his lip.

The series took the
full seven games.

When it was all over,
Pittsburgh had beaten the Tigers.

And Honus Wagner had
completely outplayed Ty Cobb.

Wagner hit 333.

Cobb just 231.

Cobb had managed
to steal two bases.

Honus Wagner had stolen six.

Including home.

It is important to remember, in an
imperfect and fretful world, that we have

an institution which is practically
above reproach and above criticism.

Nobody worth mentioning wants to change
its constitution or limit its powers.

The government is not asked to inspect it,
regulate, suppress, guarantee, or own it.

There is no movement of
foot that we know of to uplift

it like the stage or to
abolish it like marriage.

No one complains that it is
vulgar, like the newspapers,

or that it assassinates
genius, like the magazines.

It rouses no-class
passions, and while it has

magnates, they go
unhung with our approval.

This once comparatively perfect flower
of our sadly defective civilization is,

of course, baseball.

The only important institution, so
far as we remember, which the United

States regards with a
practically universal approval.

Saturday Evening Post.

Who discovered the land
of the brave and the free?

I don't know.

I don't know.

T'was Christie Columbus
is what they tell me.

Maybe so.

I don't know.

There's only one
Christie that I know at all.

One Christie that I ever saw.

He's the one who
discovered the fadeaway ball.

And he pitches for
Muggsy McGraw.

Baseball, baseball,
ain't it a wonderful game?

Old Christie Columbus is country by
gum, but the extras don't carry his name.

If old man Columbus had sat in the stands
and seen many pitching men fade or so

grand, he'd have said, boys,
I'm glad I discovered this land.

Gee, it's a wonderful game.

Who lost out in the
battle of old Waterloo?

I don't know.

I don't know.

They say t'was Napoleon
may beat his troop.

Maybe so.

I don't know.

The pink sheets don't
print Mr. Bonaparte's face.

No stories about him today.

Cause he never could hold
down that old second base.

Like his namesake,
Big Nap lay away.

Baseball, baseball,
ain't it a dandy old game?

The general of France
couldn't lead him

like chance, so no
wonder his Waterloo came.

If down in his pocket Napoleon had dug
and paid his five francs to see Tyrus Cobb

slug, he'd have said,
I give up, I'm a bug.

I'm a bug.

Gee, it's a wonderful game.

Baseball, baseball,
ain't it a dandy old game?

The general of France
couldn't lead him

like chance, so no
wonder his Waterloo came.

If down in his pocket Napoleon
had dug and paid his five francs...