The Miracle Braves of 1914: Boston's Original Worst-to-First World Series Champions: SABR Digital Library, #18

The Miracle Braves of 1914

Boston’s Original Worst-to-First

World Series Champions

Edited by Bill Nowlin

Associate editors Bob Brady, Clem Comly, and Len Levin

Society for American Baseball Research, Inc.

Phoenix, AZ

The Miracle Braves of 1914: Boston’s Original Worst-to-First World Series Champions

Edited by Bill Nowlin. Associate editors Bob Brady, Clem Comly, and Len Levin.

Copyright © 2014 Society for American Baseball Research, Inc.

All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.

ISBN 978-1-933599-69-4

(Ebook ISBN 978-1-933599-70-0 )

Design and Production: Gilly Rosenthol, Rosenthol Design

Cover photograph: George Grantham Bain Collection/Library of Congress

Back cover images: World Series program courtesy of National Baseball Hall of Fame. World Series badge courtesy of Robert Edward Auctions.

All interior photographs courtesy of the George Grantham Bain Collection/Library of Congress, except as noted.

Page 1 - Underwood and Underwood, photograph of Heritage Auctions.

Pages 29, 51, 69, 157, 188, 209, 260, 276, and 314 - Collection of Dennis Goldstein.

Pages 79, 98, 105, 114, 174, 266, and 275 - National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Page 133 - source unknown, located by Mark Fimoff.

Page 140 - Chicago Daily News, American Memory Collection, Library of Congress.

Pages 298 and 300 - Courtesy of Jonathan Fine.

Page 308 - source unknown.

Pages 311 and 315 - Courtesy of Bob Polio.

Pages 327 and 378 - Boston Public Library.

Page 328 - Courtesy of Bob Brady.

The Society for American Baseball Research, Inc.

4455 E. Camelback Road, Ste. D-140

Phoenix, AZ 85018

Phone: (800) 969-7227 or (612) 343-6455

Web: www.sabr.org

Facebook: Society for American Baseball Research

Twitter: @SABR

Table of Contents

THE 1914 BOSTON BRAVES

FOREWORD: Bob Brady

THE BRAVES

Ted Cather: Jack V. Morris

Gene Cocreham: Thomas Ayers

Wilson Collins: Charlie Weatherby

Joe Connolly: Dennis Auger

Ensign Cottrell: Peter Cottrell

Dick Crutcher: Jerrod Cotosman

George Davis: Rory Costello

Charlie Deal: Charles F. Faber

Josh Devore: Peter Gordon

Oscar Dugey: Charlie Weatherby

Johnny Evers: David Shiner

The 1914 Evers-Zimmerman Incident and How the Tale Grew Taller Over the Years: Bob Brady

The Evers Ejection Record: Mark Sternman

Larry Gilbert: Jack V. Morris

Hank Gowdy: Carol McMains and

Frank Ceresi

Tommy Griffith: Chip Greene

Otto Hess: Gary Hess

Tom Hughes: Greg Erion

Bill James: David Jones

Clarence Kraft: Jon Dunkle

Dolf Luque: Peter Bjarkman

Les Mann: Maurice Bouchard

Rabbit Maranville: Dick Leyden

Billy Martin: Bob Joel

Jack Martin: Charles F. Faber

Herbie Moran: Charles F. Faber

Jim Murray: Jim Elfers

Hub Perdue: John Simpson

Dick Rudolph: Dick Leyden

Butch Schmidt: Chip Greene

Red Smith: Charles F. Faber

Paul Strand: Jack V. Morris

Fred Tyler: John Shannahan

Lefty Tyler: Wayne McElreavy

Bert Whaling: Charles F. Faber

George Possum Whitted: Craig Hardee

MANAGER

George Stallings: Martin Kohout 

COACH

Fred Mitchell: Bill Nowlin

OWNER

Jim Gaffney: Rory Costello

The Braves’ A.B.C.: Ring Lardner

1914 Boston Braves Timeline: Mike Lynch

A Stallings Anecdote

1914 World Series: Mark Sternman

Game One

Game Two

Game Three

Game Four

I Told You So: O.R.C.

The Rest of 1914: Mike Lynch 

How An Exhibition Game Contributed To A Miracle: Bob Brady

The National League Pennant Race of 1914: Frank Vaccaro 

The Press, The Fans, and the 1914 Boston Braves: Donna L. Halper 

Return of the Miracle Braves: Bob Brady

Miracle Teams: A Comparison of the 1914 Miracle Braves and 1969 Miracle Mets: Tom Nahigian

An Unexpected Farewell: The South End Grounds, August 1914: Bob Ruzzo

The Time(s) the Braves Played Home Games at Fenway Park: Bill Nowlin

The Kisselkar Sign

The Trail Blazers in Indian File: R. E. M. - poems for 1914 Braves, collected: Joanne Hulbert

The Story of the 1914 Braves: George Stallings

Mr. Warmth and Very Superstitious – two George Stallings anecdotes: Bob Brady

By the Numbers: Dan Fields

Creature Feature: Dan Fields

Contributors

Foreword

A Symbol of Hope for a Hundred Years

by Bob Brady

As the president of the Boston Braves Historical Association, I’ve taken on the challenging assignment of keeping alive the memory of a team that abandoned the city of its birth more than 60 years ago. Each year I’m aided in this daunting task by the recollection of a never-to-be-forgotten (some might even say miraculous) performance a century ago by the Boston Braves during the second half of the 1914 baseball season. That event not only is an integral part of the history of our national pastime but also a source of eternal optimism for those sports fans of underperforming teams and perennial underdogs.

Once a dominating franchise during baseball’s early days, the Braves had been in a serious state of decline for many years prior to 1914. Some of that deterioration could be attributed to the birth of the American League in 1901 and the introduction of the Boston Americans (later the Red Sox) as a neighboring competitor. Weakened by the junior circuit’s player raids, frequent changes in ownership, and an obsolete ballpark, the Braves struggled both on the field and at the gate. Even their band of loyal followers, the Royal Rooters, had shifted their allegiance to the Red Sox. The Braves’ new owner, James E. Gaffney, a New Yorker with ties to Tammany Hall, sought to reverse the team’s fortunes. After residing in the National League’s basement for four consecutive seasons, Gaffney’s Braves surprisingly ascended to fifth place in 1913, led by the irascible George Stallings in his first year at the Tribe’s helm. Gaffney also laid out plans to construct a state-of-the-art concrete and steel ballpark at the site of a former golf club a little over a mile away from Fenway Park to replace the Braves’ antiquated South End Grounds. Still, expectations for the following season were modest: a return to the senior circuit’s first division — a feat not accomplished since 1902.

Mired in the National League cellar in mid-July, the ragtag ’14 Braves not only rose from eighth to first place in a little over two months, this legendary team played .781 baseball (50 wins, only 14 losses) from July 1 to season’s end and finished atop the National League standings an amazing 10 1/2 games ahead of its nearest rival, John McGraw’s New York Giants. Much of the credit belonged to the tough and often profane Stallings, who once described his team as comprising one .300 hitter, the worst outfield that ever flirted with sudden death, three pitchers, and a good working combination around second base.¹ To capture the pennant in the face of his roster’s limitations, Stallings deftly refined the art of platooning to capitalize upon strengths and mitigate weaknesses. The eminent baseball writer, historian, and statistician Bill James regards Stallings’ skillful maneuvering in 1914 as having an almost revolutionary impact on baseball managers.² However, despite such adept leadership and a half-season of heroics, the Braves were given little chance of besting the mighty Philadelphia Athletics in the World Series. Their fall classic sweep of the highly favored Mackmen was the final piece needed to forever brand this team the Miracle Braves.

The Tribe’s extraordinary achievement 100 years ago perennially gets dusted off by the media during the dog days of summer whenever a bottom-dwelling ballclub exhibits some signs of life. An unexpected winning streak that ignites a spark of hope among a franchise’s heretofore frustrated followers often leads them to ask themselves: If the Miracle Braves could do it, why not us? The front offices are challenged not to throw in the towel and begin rebuilding efforts while the team still retains the glimmer of a chance of replicating the Braves’ legendary 1914 climb to the top of the standings.

Divisional play and an expanded playoff structure have enhanced the odds that a 21st century version of the Miracle Braves will emerge and follow in the ancient footsteps of Stallings’ warriors. However, Boston will always retain its place as the original Home of a Miracle when it was the Home of the Braves.

Notes

1 John C. Skipper, A Biographical Dictionary of Major League Baseball Managers (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2003), 298.

2 Bill James, The Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers from 1870 to Today (New York: Scribner, 1997), 46.

1914 Boston Braves - L to R (bottom row): Joe Connolly, Fred Mitchell, Willie Connor, Dick Rudolph, Rabbit Maranville, Dick Crutcher, Jack Martin, Johnny Evers. Middle row: George Whitted, Oscar Dugey, Lefty Tyler, Paul Strand, Josh Devore, Larry Gilbert, J. C. Smith, J. H. Moran. Top row: Bill James, Ted Cather, Charlie Deal, George Davis, Ensign Cottrell, Gene Cocreham, Otto Hess, Les Mann, Hank Gowdy, Butch Schmidt, Bert Whaling. Underwood & Underwood photograph, courtesy of Heritage Auctions.

Ted Cather

By Jack V. Morris

A

baseball player

fighting during a game isn’t that unusual. A player fighting twice in less than a year is probably a little rarer. Fighting twice in less than a year with your own teammates — during a game — may be unprecedented. But that’s exactly what happened to St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Ted Cather. The resulting fallout led to him becoming a Boston Brave and helping the Miracle Braves to the National League pennant in 1914.

To the Cardinals and their future Hall of Fame manager Miller Huggins, one incident may have been an accident but twice was certainly a trend. So when Cather got into a fistfight with pitcher Dan Griner during a game in late June of 1914, Huggins had enough of his streak-hitting player and Cather was traded to the last-place Boston Braves.

Little did Huggins know that the trade would help propel the Braves from last to first as Cather, as a right-handed-hitting platoon player, was one of several pieces that fell into place for the Miracle Braves. In the 50 games the 5-foot-10, 178-pound Cather played for the Braves after the trade, against almost exclusively left-handed pitching, he hit .297 with 27 RBIs. Sporting Life took notice after the season in a review of the Braves’ incredible run when it wrote that the team was considerably strengthened by the acquisition.¹

It was quite a turn of events for Cather who, at the end of the 1913 season wasn’t even sure if he would be in the major leagues in 1914, let alone play in and win the World Series.

Theodore Physick Cather, born on May 20, 1889 in Chester, Pennsylvania, was the youngest of three sons born to Samuel and Mary Cather.² He was named after his maternal grandfather, Theodore Physick.

His father, Samuel, who was a carpenter, was of Scottish descent and pronounced his last name Car-ther.³ Both parents had been born on Maryland’s Eastern Shore but had moved to Chester, 15 miles south of Philadelphia on the Delaware River, before Ted’s birth.

By the time Ted had turned 11, his father was no longer living with the family in Chester but had moved to Rising Sun, Maryland. Ted lived with his mother, two older brothers, his grandmother, and an uncle. By 1902 he was getting noticed as a pitcher while playing for the Larkin School team.⁴ As he got older, he found himself pitching for local semipro teams.⁵

Before he got his break in Organized Baseball, Cather worked many jobs to help his family. He was a plumber, barber, druggist, roller-skating instructor, and an asbestos coverer in a locomotive works.⁶

By 1909 Cather was a pitcher of some note in the Philadelphia semipro community. His break came that year when the Johnstown Johnnies of the Class B Tri-State League came to Chester to play a game. Pitching for the Delaware County All-Stars, Cather shut out the Johnnies. Curtis Weigand, manager of the Johnnies, signed him to a contract soon after the game.⁷ He made a big splash right away, pitching a two-hitter against Lancaster on May 4.⁸

Weigand also noted Cather’s ability to hit the ball and played him in the outfield on occasion.⁹ Cather played with the team until July 3. It’s not clear whether he was let go or left the team on his own.

But he must have made an impression because Lancaster manager Marty Hogan signed him in January for the 1910 season.¹⁰ Cather responded with a fine season in which he went 20-9, finishing second in the league in wins.¹¹ It was a good year for Cather: Immediately after the season he was sold to Toronto of the Eastern League¹² and then he was married on November 1 to Martha Worshaw. At the age of 21, Cather’s life seemed to be heading in the right direction.

Cather started the season at Toronto in 1911. The Harrisburg Patriot reported early in the season that he was doing good work on the mound¹³ but by midseason his record was only 3-4 and Toronto, with a chance to add former major-leaguer Les Backman, demoted Cather to Troy of the Class B New York State League.¹⁴ Cather finished at Troy with a 6-7 record. What was once a promising career seemed to be headed in the wrong direction.

But just as in 1910, another opposing team picked him up. This time it was the Scranton Miners of the Class B New York State League. Instead of just pitching for the Miners, Cather was called on to both pitch and play the outfield. In his first game as a pitcher, he took a no-hitter into the ninth inning and went 4-for-4 at the plate with a triple.¹⁵ He played in 80 games for the Miners, 49 as an outfielder.

Cather ended the season batting .312, a figure that caught the notice of the sixth-place St. Louis Cardinals. Looking to find any kind of hitting, the Cardinals drafted Cather from Scranton at the annual meeting of the National Baseball Commission on September 16.¹⁶ A week later he made his major-league debut in Brooklyn in a 7-2 Cardinals’ loss to the Superbas.

Playing in the outfield, Cather was red-hot in the five games he played in, batting .421. The buzz began to grow in the offseason that Cather would become a key player for the Cardinals in the 1913 season.