World Series Centennial Review: 1925

I do this review of earlier World Series — 100 years ago, and 75, and 50, and 25 — every year. But this time, let’s back up a bit to see how we got here.

In 1924 the formerly hapless Washington Senators — “first in war, first in peace and last in the American League,” in Charlie Dryden’s famous phrase — nipped the New York Yankees, winners of three straight pennants, by a scant two games. In the eighth inning of Game 7, a Bucky Harris grounder hopped over Freddie Lindstrom’s head at third base to score the tying runs. In extra innings, old Walter Johnson, who had lost his two starts, was pitching in relief. In the twelfth, after Johnson had set down the New York Giants for a fourth consecutive frame, Earl McNeely hit an easy grounder to Fred Lindstrom. It hit another pebble, Johnson recalled, “and arched over his head into safe territory. I could feel tears smarting in my eyes as Ruel came home with the winning run.”

In 1925, however, Babe Ruth developed an abscess during spring training, possibly from drinking moonshine. Bill McGeehan of the Herald Tribune wrote that Ruth had eaten a dozen hot dogs; a legend was born: “the bellyache heard round the world.” After surgery, he played in only 98 games, batting a mere .290 with 25 home runs. The Yanks finished seventh, and Washington repeated easily.

Roger Peckinpaugh, for many years the Yankees’ shortstop, helmed the infield for Washington in 1925, winning the league’s Most Valuable Player award — as pitcher Johnson had done the year before. (The National League’s MVP, Rogers Hornsby, at .403, had batted 109 points higher than Peckinpaugh.)

In the World Series, Pittsburgh spotted Washington a 3–1 lead, then became the first club to overcome such a deficit to win the title. The rain-soaked victory was locked up in Game 7 with a 15-hit pounding of Johnson, who had allowed only one run combined in winning Games 1 and 4. Peckinpaugh’s defense was so horrid (eight errors, including two in Game 7) that Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis thought he might have been in debt to bookmakers.

The legacy was that the Senators returned to the World Series in 1933, then never again (unless one brings in Minnesota, Texas, and Montreal). The Pirates, swept by the Yankees in 1927, were dismal until a belated revenge in 1960. But let’s get back to the Series of 1925 and its memorable Game 7.

“It was a great day for water polo,” quipped New York Times sportswriter James R. Harrison. “Johnny Weissmuller would have been in his element. The web-footed amphibians would have had a field day. But it was the last possible afternoon that you would pick out for a game of baseball on which hung the championship of the country.”

Landis had the umpires cancel Game 7 for the all-day torrent on October 14, but on the 15th he was determined to play, despite mud puddles in the outfield and the quagmire that described the infield and pitcher’s mound.

Pirates starter Vic Aldridge, who like Johnson had won his two starts, gave up four runs in the first inning and was pulled. Johnson struck out two while retiring the Pirates in order in their half of the first. Things looked rosy for Washington, but in the third frame Johnson weakened. “After the Pirates scored their first run, the crowd began to howl,” wrote Harry Cross of the Times. “They howled and screamed and forgot about the darkness and rain. They were cold and damp” but saw their lads score two more, cutting the deficit to 4–3.

Washington scored two more in the fifth and Pittsburgh one more. Now the game was official, and Landis was ready to shut it down. But Senators owner Clark Griffith told him, “Once you started in the rain you’ve got to finish it.”

Peckinpaugh’s seventh error of the Series, a record, helped the Pirates tie the game in the seventh frame. “If there ever was a stage set for a hero, that scene grabbed Peckinpaugh as he came up in the eighth,” wrote Pittsburgh’s Regis M. Welsh. Water dripped from the bill of Roger’s cap as he came to the plate with one out and nobody on base in the top of the eighth. The Pirates’ Ray Kremer made his pitch; Peckinpaugh connected and the ball went out. Washington was now back in the lead, 7–6.

Johnson retired the first two in the bottom of the eighth, but Earl Smith, the Buccaneers catcher, hit a double. Pinch hitter Carson Bigbee came through with a solid hit over Goslin in left to score Smith with the tying run. Johnson, wearing down, issued a walk. The next batter, Max Carey, grounded directly to Peckinpaugh, who was unable to extricate the wet ball from the mire. Too late to get the speedy Carey, he threw to second base but pulled Bucky Harris off the bag. Peckinpaugh was charged with his eighth error.

With the bases loaded and two outs, Kiki Cuyler drove the ball down the right-field line. The ball landed fair but skidded foul, rolling under the tarp. That ground-rule double gave the Pirates a 9–7 lead, which they held as Washington went down in order in the top of the ninth.

In his brilliant game account for the Times, Harrison concluded: “… the Senators need to have no sympathy wasted on them. They won the golden laurels last October because of the freakish vagaries of two badly bouncing balls, by pure luck, as Bucky Harris himself admitted. If Fate chooses to turn her face from Washington it is tough luck for Washington, but otherwise not very deplorable. Things have a way of squaring up in this world.”

75 years ago:

Philadelphia’s Whiz Kids won the pennant with a final-day homer by Dick Sisler against the Dodgers, who would know more heartache next year. It was the Phils’ first flag in thirty-five years, but once again they did not emerge victorious.

Star reliever Jim Konstanty, who was the National League MVP with 74 relief appearances, started his first major league game in four years to open the Series, and held the Yankees to just four hits and one run in eight innings … but Vic Raschi threw a shutout.

Robin Roberts and Allie Reynolds dueled to a tie after nine innings of Game 2. Then Joe DiMaggio led off with a home run to the upper deck in left. Reynolds held the Phillies in the bottom of the tenth for another Yankees win. Then he finished Game 4 for Whitey Ford by fanning the final batter to secure the sweep.

50 years ago:

The Red Sox entered the Series as underdogs to the mighty Cincinnati Reds, who had won 108 regular-season games. Yet behind another brave start by Luis Tiant, they battled back to tie the Seres at two games apiece. They lost Game 5 and trailed the Reds 6–3 in the eighth inning of Game Six, facing elimination.

A day of travel to Boston and three days of rain between Games 5 and 6 brought Tiant back to the mound for a third time. But he yielded an early three-run lead, derived from rookie Fred Lynn’s homer, and the Bosox trailed 6–3 in the eighth. Then Bernie Carbo delivered a memorable three-run pinch-hit homer and the game wore on. Carlton Fisk, Boston’s leadoff hitter in the last of the twelfth, ended the game dramatically with a home run to left.

After Game 6, ranked by some as the greatest World Series game ever, the finale was an anticlimax, though the Reds went home with their first world title in 35 years.

25 years ago:

Beyond this tilt for the title being the last of New York’s “Subway Series,” it is little remembered. The Mets lost to the Yankees in five games.

The first Subway Series may be said to have taken place in 1921, though in truth the home of both the Yanks and the Giants was the Polo Grounds. Ditto for 1922. But in 1923 their home parks were separated by the Harlem River, and thus by a single subway stop. The Yanks played the New York Giants again in 1936, 1937, and 1951, and the Dodgers in 1941, 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953, 1955, and 1956. Of all these Subway Series, the Bronx Bombers lost only one (besides those of 1921–1922).

This intracity brand of World Series went back to 1889, when the NL Giants played the AA Dodgers, but may be said to have begun in earnest in Chicago in 1906 (when a subway did not link the parks of the Cubs and White Sox), and then again in 1944 (when the Cardinals of St. Louis defeated the Browns). Boston’s Red Sox never played a World Series against the Braves, nor did the Philadelphia A’s against the Phils.