AMERICA 1900-1910 -- 'SPORTS' (Part 1)

SEIFERT

Posted By: David (email)
Date: 3/7/2004 at 20:48:06

'AMERICA 1900-1910'

*** 'Sports' ***

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BRAVE DEEDS BY SOME BULLY BOYS

In life, as in a football game, the principle to follow is:
hit the line hard; don't foul and don't shirk, but hit the line hard! -- Theodore Roosevelt

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It was a bully time in American sports. Boxing fans flocked by the tens of thousands to witness fights such as the widely trumpeted "Battle of the Century" between the incomparable Jim Jeffries and the skillful Negro Jack Johnson, who beat white fighters and charmed white girls with equal ease.

Baseball had truly gone big league with the formation of a second major league called the American to rival the long-established National. Now small boys had twice the number of heroes to root for: Honus Wagner and Willie ("Hit 'em Where They Ain't") Keller were joined by new idols like Chief Bender, the full-blooded Indian pitcher for the Philadelphia Athletics, and Tyrus Raymond Cobb, fiery center fielder of the Detroit Tigers.

Amateur sport had also gone big time with a rush. The first Olympics had come to the United States. College football, until recently a muddy sort of grunt-and-push amusement confined to a few Eastern colleges, had begun to blossom as a rival even to baseball. Chunky Willie Heston led the 1901-1904 Michigan squads of Coach Fielding H. ("Hurry-up") Yost to such an awesome string of high-scoring victories that Michigan became known as the "point-a minute" football team. Carlisle Indian School, a tiny school for Indians in Pennsylvania, fell heir to a remarkable athlete named Jim Thorpe, who single-handedly demolished such great powers as Army and Penn. yet in this decade the premier football teams were still those of Harvard and Yale, whose gentleman halfbacks hit the line with a savagery that others found hard to match.

It was not that others did not try. By 1905 college and high-school football had become so ferocious that 19 players were killed during the season. President Theodore Roosevelt, despite his vigorous exhortations about the virtues of bashing headlong into the line, persuaded a group of college presidents to draw up a more humane code of rules. The result of the White House meeting was a newer, more open type of game which Yale and Harvard, naturally, mastered in a trice. Undefeated through the seasons of '05, '06 and its first nine games of '07, Yale met a Harvard team that in the latter season had also not tasted defeat. But Yale, sparked by the slashing runs of its halfbacks -- and a new play called the forward pass, which completely baffled the foe -- swept to a 12-0 victory in a game that Old Blues would swear was the finest athletic contest in history.

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NASTY SURPRISE FOR THE NATIONALS

When a sportswriter named Byron Bancroft Johnson put together the American League in 1900, the tradition-bound, tight-fisted leaders of the 24-year-old National League saw no threat to their hold on the game. But after three years of tense interleague warfare, in which the upstart Americans lured away fans and players, the Nationals gave up and sued for peace. On March 6, 1903, a code of Joint Playing Rules was signed and became the baseball law of the land. Better yet, from the fans' point of view, six months later the Boston Americans, champions of the new league, signed a contract to meet the National-League-leading Pittsburg team in a postseason series for the baseball championship of the world. The first World Series began on October 1 in Boston's Huntington Avenue grounds. The Americans quickly showed themselves equal to the challenge, polishing off the five-out-of-nine series in the eighth game. Following are two condensations from the prideful Boston Post, repo!
rting the highlights of the crowd's interference in the third game, and the victory of the eighth:

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October 4, 1903 -- It was the greatest day in attendance the Boston Americans have ever known, more than 18,000 of the 25,000 being paid attendance. Swarming into the field, the eager thousands put ball playing temporarily out of the question. Finally Patrolman Louis Brown of Station 10 appeared with a long section of rubber hose. Using it partly as a rope, partly as a club, the police gradually drove back the human wall. Members of both nines were using their bats in much the same manner till finally the diamond and a mimic out-field had been cleared. Right here was where Boston lost the game before it was ever started. A ground rule was made whereby a hit into the crowd would be good for two bases. Before the third inning had been completed the visitors made four base hits, three of which should have been easy outs. The two runs resulting were the margin by which the home team lost.

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October 14, 1903 -- Boston's American League team defeated Pittsburgh at the Huntington Avenue grounds yesterday and thereby won the world's championship. It was the eighth and decisive game, Boston winning five to Pittsburgh's three. Big Bill Dineen shut the National League team out without a run. Hardly had the mighty Wagner closed the ninth inning with a third futile swing at Dineen's elusive curves when a wild yell of triumph went up. The Boston Americans had vindicated the confidence of their supporters most nobly. While the grandstand swayed and rocked with the mighty salvos of applause, while Boston's players were borne by the fans in triumph to the dressing room, a dozen grey-clad Pittsburg players, alone and almost unnoticed, walked slowly across the field and headed for the distant gate. Fallen champions they were, who had at last met their Waterloo in Boston.

To Be Continued . . . 'Olympian Confusion in St. Louis'

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Copied by Nancee(McMurtrey)Seifert
March 3, 2004