1918
Looking back at the 1918 World Series is like looking at the present through a funhouse mirror.
We’re back!
The Sports Stories team has spent the past few weeks working on a top secret project. But what better day to awaken from our internet slumber than Labor Day? What better time than now?
It’s been a month since our last newsletter but it feels like more. It feels like the world won’t sit still for long enough to even attempt to process what’s happening, much less write about it. So we’ll do what we always do, which is look backwards and hope we might gaze upon something interesting, useful, or maybe even enlightening.
This time we’re looking back 102 years at the 1918 World Series. Just like there is now, there was a lot going on in 1918. There was a deadly influenza pandemic sweeping its way around the world. There was a massive and relatively pointless war going on in Europe. There was a major social movement afoot as labor unions took to the streets across America to protest and strike for better working conditions..
This was all happening as fans filed into Fenway Park in Boston for Game Five of the World Series between the hometown Red Sox and visiting Chicago Cubs. The Cubs finished the year with a better record, but the Sox had the better track record -- they had already won the World Series in 1912, 1915, and 1916. And now they were in control of Chicago. The previous afternoon, a young pitcher named Babe Ruth had carried the Red Sox to a 3-1 series lead.
There must have been a buzz in the air as the Boston fans waited for the players to take the field. Amidst the war and the pandemic and the sense that that the world was changing in ways that nobody could yet explain or understand but could certainly feel. This, baseball, was something to grasp. The ensuing victory -- and it was sure to come -- would be something to celebrate, something simple and joyous and actually good.
We know that in times like this, times when everything is amiss and we are actually being reminded by the world how meaningless sports are, they can somehow attain more meaning. Their meaninglessness is what holds all the power. The promise of release. The promise of forgetting.
That possibility must have been on the minds of the Boston fans as they waited for the Sox and the Cubs to take the field. It must have been building and building as they waited for the managers to exchange lineups. For Boston pitcher Sad Sam Jones to take the mound and begin his warmup tosses. But then...they didn’t. First pitch was scheduled for 2:30 EST, but the players were nowhere to be seen. Five minutes went by and then ten. The field remained empty.
Just as the 2020 baseball season has been played in abbreviated, ungainly fashion, so too was the 1918 version. In the middle of the season, the U.S. government declared that all men employed in non-essential professions (and what is less essential than pro sports?) would be henceforth eligible for the draft. It was known as the “work or fight” policy.
The league -- already short on players due to the war -- decided to cut its season from 154 games to 130. Meanwhile, clubs lost dozens more players to the service. It bears mentioning here that there was another factor that limited the big league labor pool before, during, and after WWI: the racist color barrier that limited clubs like the Cubs and Red Sox to white players only. Instead of opening up to non-white players and infusing the league with tons of available talent, baseball elected to continue limp along, make due with minor leaguers and even forcing some of the established players who stuck around into double duty. One such player? Babe Ruth himself.
Going into the 1918 season, Ruth was primarily a pitcher. But the depleted roster forced the Red Sox into using him at first base and in the outfield between his starts. In abbreviated duty, he tied for the league lead with 11 home runs. By the end of the season, Ruth was well on his way to becoming the greatest slugger who ever lived. He was also a major reason the Red Sox found themselves in the World Series that September.
Yes, September. In 1918, the World Series, which is so deeply associated with the month of October that MLB has literally trademarked the phrase “Fall Classic,” kicked off in early September. It was a Summer Classic that year -- or something close to it. The temperature in Boston for Game Five was in the 70s . So at least the fans were comfortable as they waited, waited, waited for the players to appear on the field.
When the Milwaukee Bucks refused to take the court last month to protest the police shooting of Jacob Blake, there were no fans in the arena who had to file out and return home. The same was true when the wildcat strikes spread from the NBA to the WNBA and Major League Baseball. The cardboard cutouts sat as silent as always. But at the same time, word of the labor action spread instantly on television and social media. And its impact was felt instantly. The players were heard.
It didn’t go that way for the players on the Red Sox and Cubs. For one, they were not protesting against social injustice. The issue at hand was simple: money. Earlier in the season, the powers that be in organized baseball had ruled that the year’s World Series share would be spread among first, second, third, and fourth place teams -- not just the World Series winner and runner up. This was a big deal at a time when baseball salaries were small and World Series shares were comparatively large. It was also a big deal because nobody informed the players of this change until after the World Series was underway.
The players didn’t like it. And while this was long before pro athletes unionized, the players could see what was happening around them. The country was about to explode. The following year would be defined by labor strikes, one after another: from police officers in Boston to steelworkers across the country to a general strike in Seattle. It was one thing for the owners to cut the players’ World Series pay, but it was another thing to do so without bothering to let them know.
The morning before the game, the players had met with the National Commission -- baseball’s organizing body, a 3-person board which consisted of the American and National League Presidents and a chairman named Garry Herrmann. They expressed their grievances and decided that they would not take the field again until the Commission had ruled on the issue. The players understood that the boycott had to happen now. The Red Sox were one victory away from claiming the title. If they played, and the Sox won, the series would be over and any leverage the players had would have instantly vanished.
The Fenway crowd grew confused and restless. Ban Johnson, the President of the American League, supposedly went down to the locker rooms and drunkenly berated the players. There are dozens of fellow ballplayers in Europe fighting for their country, he said. Think about how it looks to hold out and refuse to play over a few bucks?
Johnson was apparently convincing. He also agreed to not punish the players for their action. The players took the field to loud boos from the 25,0000 in attendance at Fenway. They accepted their meager World Series shares. The Cubs won that afternoon, but the following day the Red Sox would clinch the title -- their last one before Ruth was sold to the Yankees and the infamous curse took hold in Boston.
It’s hard not to think back on the argument that Ban Johnson made in that clubhouse and see echoes of the way we talk about and think about sports in 2020. Sports continue to be leveraged in service of patriotism and militarism. Athletes continue to be disregarded as inessential beyond their function on the field or the court.
The balance of power has since shifted, but not much. It looks different now: player activism is instantly co-opted and corporatized by leagues and sponsors. In baseball, clubs celebrate the official version of progress but not the ugly work that progress actually entailed: lots of Jackie Robinson celebrations, but nobody’s dwelling on the slow, brutal process of integrating the minor leagues. Fun player appreciation day jerseys, but very little talk about how clubs still manipulate the Collective Bargaining Agreement to suppress the salaries of young players.
There’s another version of events from the 1918 World Series boycott. This one is probably the more accurate : Johnson was too drunk to actually talk about money when he got to Fenway Park that day in September. He yelled, but it would have been futile for the players to even try to negotiate. So they shrugged their shoulders and took the field and did their jobs.
And remember that promise that Johnson made not to punish the players for their fleeting labor action? Well, he broke it. After the season, Johnson and the National Commission voted to deny the players their World Series emblems -- which were essentially the 1918 equivalent of World Series rings. Some things never change.
Related Reading
The first stop here is the new book War Fever: Boston, Baseball, and America in the Shadow of the Great War by Johnny Smith and Randy Roberts. Smith and Roberts follow not just Ruth and the Red Sox, but bring the entire city of Boston and the Great War to life.
If you want to learn about the 1918 Red Sox and World Series, I highly recommend the SABR publication When Boston Still Had the Babe. (Digital access to the entire SABR library is free for members; another great reason to sign up.)
I also enjoyed this writeup from the website “This Great Game” that gets deeper into how the war upended the 1918 season.
Finally, for a fictional look at the 1918 World Series, the Spanish Flu pandemic, labor unrest in America, and especially the aforementioned Georege Herman Ruth, you can read Dennis Lehane’s big old novel The Given Day.
The Original Curse?
Everybody knows that the 1919 World Series between the White Sox and Reds was fixed. But what about the 1918 World Series we’ve been talking about? Is it possible that the abbreviated labor action before Game Five actually occurred in the middle of a World Series that was in the process of being thrown?
About a decade ago, the Chicago History Museum published a testimony by Eddie Cicotte, a member of the maligned 1919 Black Sox, who alleged that they were inspired to throw the World Series by the 1918 Cubs. I can’t find the original document online now, but it was covered in local media and sports media at the time.
In a deposition, Cicotte said: “Well, we had heard the Cubs did it the year before and they got paid $10,000 [apiece] to throw the series to Boston, so we figured if they could do it, why not us?’’
The possibility that the Cubs threw the 1918 World Series was covered more extensively in a book called The Original Curse by author Sean Deveney.
The Pre-Anthem
It’s also very likely that the 1918 World Series is why we still hear the Star-Spangled Banner performed ahead of sporting events. Apparently during Game One in Chicago, the Navy Band performed the song spontaneously during the seventh inning stretch. The war was ongoing. The day before, a young Pirates prospect had died during a military training exercise. The week before,a federal building in Chicago had been blown up by anarchists.
The song wasn’t even the national anthem yet. But in the moment, it struck a chord as players from both clubs removed their caps and turned to face the flag. Here’s a great story on it from WBUR.