The Greatest Single Inning of Baseball

Just finished The Glory Of Their Times by Lawrence Ritter. Probably my 3rd reading in 20 years or so. I’m glad I hung on to it.

I started this post on Harry Hooper but I have also included excerpts from Chief Myers and Fred Snodgrass, both NY Giants who lost to Hooper’s Red Sox in what has to be the most amazing inning of baseball ever played: the controversial inning 10 of Game 8 of the 1912 World Series.

Click here to see the series stats in a new window from baseball-reference.com

Hooper wanted to be an engineer and the Red Sox signed him partially with the understanding that his engineering skills would be needed in the construction of the new Fenway Park in 1912. While it was a nice line, I don’t think any of that came to fruition and I’ve actually had employers tell bigger lies to me in interviews so I have no doubt about that.

He signed as a lark for maybe 2 years, before he would get back (he thought) to his engineering. He never did. What he did do was play in the famous (possibly the most famous defensive outfield of all time) outfield of Harry Hooper, Duffy Lewis and Tris Speaker. They won the pennant and World Series in 1912, 1915, 1916 and 1918. Remember when the Red Sox were cursed? And hadn’t won it since 1918? Well it was Hooper and his guys who were the machine of the teens.

Hooper claims that the most exciting of those series was the 1912 one vs the Giants. I have a theory that since everyone hated John J. McGraw so much, just beating him made it exciting. Anyway, the 1912 series is known as the series of “Snodgrass’ Muff”. It seems he dropped an easy ball in the deciding Game 8 in extra innings. It was just vapor lock and it happens to everyone, but to Snodgrass, it followed him his whole life because it plausibly cost the Giants the series. What no one remembers or wants to talk about is that Snodgrass also SAVED that game by making a circus catch on Harry Hooper into the standing room in the outfield to catch a triple.

This just goes to show you that people will focus on the error and never consider anything else. It’s why everyone insists that the Moneyball statistical premise doesn’t work: Because, “…ha ha, Jeremy Brown just got released from baseball and he was supposed to be this great hitter, ha ha…”.

People are dumb. They don’t understand all the elements that make something what it is. They don’t understand probability theory. They got on Bill Buckner, just as they did Snodgrass, because he made a very basic and very VISIBLE error. They don’t remember the great catch. In Buckner’s case, they don’t realize that but for some injuries, the guy was basically a shoe-in for the 3000 hit club! Life is not fair and baseball fans are mostly dumb about this stuff–That is the thing to realize.

And as a corollary to that, there was a play in the final Game of the 1912 WS. The Giants had broken through in the 10th inning on Smokey Joe Wood and led 2-1. Mathewson got Tris Speaker to pop up. The pop up came down in the first base coaching box. But it dropped. Most of the accounts have Mathewson yelling for the first baseman to leave it for the plodding catcher, Chief Myers, to take it. Myers never got there. Everyone agrees that Matty OR Fred Merkle at 1st, could have easily caught the ball. Those accounts pretty much make Christy Mathewson the goat. But he never got a minute’s worth of grief over it–Snodgrass did for his error earlier in the inning. And that’s because Matty was one of the most beloved pitchers in the game, perhaps ever.

Take the 2001 World Series. Game 6. Andy Pettite gets tattooed because he’s tipping all of his pitches out of the stretch. He’s bringing his hands down straight for the fastball and in a looping motion for breaking stuff–The same thing that Koufax did most of his career. But is Pettite the goat? No one even knows this. If you want to hang a world series loss on a guy in 2001, I can’t think of a better candidate. But Pettite was so beloved that he doesn’t get any blame. It makes you think that if Bill Buckner’s error was committed by a Yaz or a Boggs, would have been the same? I think it would have been far less of a hellish experience for an icon. And Gedman is the Christy Mathewson of the 1986 gaffes. He let a pretty catchable ball go to the screen and allowed the tying run to score. The tying run! How many games did the 1986 Mets lose at Shea in extra innings that year? I don’t know the figure but zero wouldn’t surprise me a bit. That game was lost on the wild pitch, not on Buckner’s error, to my mind. But Buckner and Snodgrass are icons of failure, while Gedman, Mathewson and Pettite skate away clean. Hmm…

As an aside, I’ll include Chief Myers’ account of the pop in 1912. He is the only one who DOESN’T say that Matty was calling for him to take it. He doesn’t indicate any of that stuff and just says that Matty or Merkle, “…could have taken it easily”. He does go into a theory that the Red Sox’ bench was calling off Merkle.

Now here’s the psychology part. I find it mighty interesting that Chief Myers has the Red Sox bench calling off Merkle and calling for Myers to take it–the wrong play. Could it be that Myers wants to protect the beloved Christy Mathewson here on this muff? Now the stink if off Matty (who everyone else fingers as the “yeller”) and onto the bad Boston Red Sox bench. Look, I’ve no doubt that they were yelling stuff that day but everyone on the Giants was going to heed only Matty’s voice, and they sure knew his voice. Why would they obey the bench jockeys and ignore Matty himself? It sounds fishy to me but it plays into my theory that only certain people can get true goat horns. Because goat horns are very deliberately hung on people and ONLY certain people.

Hooper’s account reads much differently. He was in the Sox’ dugout that was right on top of it. He clearly has Mathewson yelling for Myers to take it. Not only that, but he cites a direct quote from Tris Speaker, yelling out to Mathewson that, “…you called for the wrong man and now it’s going to cost you the ballgame…” So I think it’s pretty clear that Myers is protecting the great Mathewson and this is the same kind of treatment that Yankee fans give both Pettite and Mariano for blowing the 2001 World Series. Those guys are so beloved that the fans (and even players, as you see with Chief Myers) are not going to let any stink get on them. Stink is for the lesser men, like Buckner and Snodgrass.

When you read Snodgrass’ account, notice that there is a BOOK in PRINT that gets the score and situation of the error WRONG! It got so out of hand that it gets into PRINT! And after that, you can just forget the truth. And that’s very similar to the Buckner play in 1986. If you polled most fans, they don’t know that the error only let in the winning run of an already tied ballgame. Gedman, the forgotten and lucky man, allowed that game to be tied with the passed ball, a ball which, some blame on the pitcher for a crossup. Most fans think Buckner’s error let up two runs and gave away the tie and lead. Not so. But the parallels are great. Both men are victims of a phenomenon of blame. People are mean, rude and stupid and they don’t care if they get something wrong sometimes, so long as they can pad their own insecurities by piling on guys like Buckner and Snodgrass, while leaving the Mathewsons and Gedmans behind.

(The following few panes are from Chief Myers’ story in “The Glory of Their Times”)

The following excerpts are from Harry Hooper’s story in “The Glory of Their Times”:

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For completeness’ sake, the following pages are Fred Snodgrass’ account of the same game from “The Glory of Their Times”: