World Series Reflections: The Muff, The Cat and the Power of 12

Madison Bumgarner's brilliant pitching in the World Series and the Giants' escaping harm from Gregor Blanco's error bring to mind Harry Brecheen and Fred Snodgrass (not necessarily in that order), and let's not forget that Pablo Sandoval and Hunter Pence both had 12 hits apiece. 

World Series Reflections: The Muff, The Cat and the Power of 12

When Gregor Blanco played Alex Gordon's single into effectively a triple (he was charged with a two-base error), Giants' fan versed in their team's history dating back to the Polo Grounds in New York City and the dead ball era might have had nightmarish visions of another Giant center fielder's misplay which in fact cost the Giants a World Series.

The year was 1912. The place was Fenway Park. The Series was tied at three games apiece. The deciding Game 8 (Game 2 had ended in a tie called by darkness) was tied at 1-1 going into extra innings. The Giants scored a run in the top of the tenth off Red Sox ace Smokey Joe Wood (34-5 during the season), working his third inning in relief. As their ace, Christy Mathewson, took the mound for the last of the tenth, the Giants needed three outs to win their second World Series (having won in 1905 but lost the previous year). Working on his third complete game start of the Series, Mathewson had given up only one run in the game, just three earned runs in 28 innings in the Series so far for a 0.96 ERA, and in nine starts over three World Series in his career to this point had an ERA less than one (0.99), having surrendered only 9 earned runs in 82 Fall Classic innings.

Clyde Engel, who hit only .234 in 58 games during the season, pinch hit for Wood to lead off for Boston in the tenth and reached second with the tying run when center fielder Fred Snodgrass dropped his routine fly ball. Having committed the error that would keep his name from being forgotten in baseball history, Snodgrass then made a great running catch to rob Harry Hooper of an extra base hit, but he could not prevent Engel from advancing to third with the would-be tying run after the catch. A walk put runners on the corners and Tris Speaker--one of the greatest hitters in the game--hit a pop foul along the first base line that should have been an easy second out in the inning for the Giants ... except that catcher Chief Meyers and first baseman Fred Merkle let the ball drop between them. With a new lease on the at bat, Speaker singled to right field and the game was tied. Significantly, the runner on first who was the possible winning run sped around to third on Speaker's hit and Spoke himself went to second on the throw toward third. After an intentional walk to load the bases and set up a double play situation, a sacrifice fly drove home the World Series-winning run. In 11 World Series starts, including two the next year (1913), Mathewson had a 0.97 ERA in 101.2 innings of classic Classic work.

(When Salvador Perez hit that foul popup off the third base line that secured the Series, Giants fans with historical perspective might have had visions of catcher Buster Posey and third baseman Pablo Sandoval perhaps also miscommunicating between them and allowing a sure out foul ball to drop and Perez, with a new lease on his at bat, driving in the tying run or perhaps even hitting a Game 7 walk-off come-from-behind game-winning, World Series-winning home run--something never before done in World Series history; Mazeroski's seventh game walk-off home run to win the 1960 Series came with the score tied and nobody on base. Posey stayed clear of the play, Sandoval caught the pop foul, and Blanco was spared having to be remembered in history for an error that cost his team the World Championship--unlike Snodgrass and his "$30,000 Muff," so called because that was the amount he and his teammates would have had in extra earnings had they won the World Series.)

Madison Bumgarner's two stellar starts followed by five innings of shutout relief on just two days of rest after pitching a complete game shutout in Game 5 to put the Giants in command of the Series brings to mind the work of St. Louis Cardinals southpaw Harry "the Cat" Brecheen in the 1946 World Series.

Brecheen, who had a 15-15 record with a 2.49 earned run average, was not the ace of the St. Louis staff in 1946--that was fellow-lefty Howie Pollet with a 21-10, 2.10 record during the season--but he was superb in the final two months of the season allowing only 19 runs in 99 innings (a 1.73 ERA) while going 8-5 in 13 starts and earning 3 saves in 4 relief appearances. These were critical games because his team's fight with the Brooklyn Dodgers for the National League pennant ended in the first-ever tie after the 154-game schedule was completed, forcing a best-of-three games playoff for the title. Brecheen pitched a complete game in the next-to-last scheduled game to keep the Cardinals in a tie with the Dodgers, and three days later in the second game of the playoff (St. Louis with a one-game lead) came on in relief in the ninth inning to staunch a Brooklyn rally and secure the final two outs of an 8-3 victory that sent St. Louis to the World Series ... against the Red Sox, who were in their first Fall Classic since 1918, back when Babe Ruth was still resident in Boston.

After his team lost the first game, Brecheen threw a complete game 4-hit shutout in Game 2 to even the Series at one game apiece. Six days later, in Game 6 with the Red Sox holding a three games-to-two advantage as the Series returned to St. Louis, the Cat gave up one run on seven hits in another complete game to force a Game 7. With the Cardinals holding a 3-1 lead in the decisive seventh game, Brecheen was called on to bail out St. Louis starter Murry Dickson in the eighth inning with runners on second and third and nobody out. Not up to Bumgarner standards, Brecheen allowed both runners to score, which tied the game, but was himself bailed out by Country Slaughter's scoring from first base on aggressive base running when Boston shortstop Johnny Pesky double clutched on the relay from the outfield. Brecheen gave up back-to-back singles to start the ninth but, facing the bottom third of the order, retired the next three hitters to win his third game of the Series and send the Cardinals home for the winter as World Series champions for the third time in five years (shades of the 2014 Giants).

Harry Brecheen gave up only one run and 14 hits in 20 innings for a 0.45 ERA in the 1946 Series. All told, appearing in three Fall Classics, Brecheen had a 4-1 record and a 0.83 ERA in the 32.2 innings he pitched in World Series competition, including complete game victories in each of his three career World Series starts.

Finally, lost in the spectacular World Series pitching performance of Madison Bumgarner--arguably the best ever after that of Christy Mathewson's three complete game shutout victories in the 1905 Series--was the equally-important hitting prowess of Pablo Sandoval and Hunter Pence, batting fourth and fifth for the 2014 World Series champion San Francisco Giants. Sandoval and Pence each had 12 hits. The record for hits in a World Series is 13, reached by only three players (Bobby Richardson in 1964, Lou Brock in 1968 and Marty Barrett in 1986--all three, ironically, in losing causes). Only 16 players--now including Sandoval and Pence--have had 12 hits in a single World Series. Sandoval and Pence are only the third pair of teammates to both have 12 hits in one World Series, following Willie Stargell and Phil Garner of the 1979 World Champion Pittsburgh Pirates and Paul Molitor and Roberto Alomar of the 1993 World Champion Toronto Blue Jays. Sandoval and Pence accounted directly for 70 percent of the Giants' 30 total runs in the Series, scoring or driving in 21 (not double-counting Pence driving in himself with his two-run home run in Game 2 on behalf of Mr. Bumgarner).

Giant Years, Part I: Winning the National League's Napoleonic Wars

The San Francisco Giants have advanced to their third World Series in five years, with a chance to also win their third in five years. Should they do so, this San Francisco team would have a legitimate claim to call themselves the best in franchise history over any five-year period--and the Giants franchise is the most successful in the National League since 1901 with their 21 pennants, including this year, the most in major league history after the Yankees' 40. Nearly half of those pennants were won in the first quarter of the 20th century. This Insight is the first of two looking chronologically at the Giants' best teams, beginning with New York's Napoleonic Era--when John McGraw was their manager.. 

Giant Years: Winning the National League's Napoleonic Wars

The Giants were a losing franchise at the time John McGraw defected to New York from the upstart American League in July 1902, where he had been manager of the Baltimore Orioles and had endless conflicts with league president Ban Johnson, but they had a priceless asset in the right arm of one Christy Mathewson. McGraw brought his pitching ace Joe McGinnity and the versatile catcher-outfielder Roger Bresnahan with him from Baltimore, wasting little time building the New York Giants into a baseball powerhouse. 

McGraw's first great team was the 1904-08 Giants, who won back-to-back pennants the first two of those years in dominating fashion: 106 wins and a 13-game margin of victory in 1904 and 105 wins, nine games ahead of their closest competitor, and a World Series championship over Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics in 1905. The Giants then had the misfortunes of having to contend against the 1906-10 Chicago Cubs of Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance fame that won four pennants in five years; having one relatively bad season in the mix--1907, when they were a poor man’s fourth, 25½ games back of the Cubs; and enduring the frustration and heartbreak in 1908 of having a critical late-season victory over the Cubs in a tense three-team race for the pennant taken from them on a technicality because rookie Fred Merkle, running from first, failed to touch second (which was not an unusual practice at the time) on what was otherwise a walk-off game-winning single. With the two teams tied at the end of the 1908 season, the Giants lost the make-up game to the Cubs, who went on to capture the last World Series they would ever win. 

Mathewson was at the peak of his career--vying with the Red Sox' Cy Young as the best pitcher in baseball during these years--with three 30-win seasons, including 37 in 1908, and McGinnity won 35 in 1904 and 27 in 1906 before ending his career in 1908. Third baseman Art Devlin and catcher Bresnahan were the offensive stars on this team, both among the ten best National League position players by the WAR metric between 1904 and 1908. 

Mathewson remained central to McGraw's next great team, the 1910-14 Giants that won three consecutive pennants from 1911 to 1913, all by at least 7½ games and twice winning better than 100, sandwiched between second-place endings. This was McGraw's most dominant team relative to their time. Mathewson won at least 23 games all five of those seasons, Rube Marquard had the three best years of his Hall of Fame pitching career--and his only three 20-win seasons--when the Giants won three straight, Jeff Tesreau won 20 in both 1913 and 1914, and Doc Crandall was the first pitcher to be used by his manager almost exclusively in relief over successive seasons. Second baseman Larry Doyle, who said "It's great to be young and a Giant," was the best position player on a team that led the league in scoring in each of the even-number years between 1910 and 1914. 

The legacy of this team, however, is undermined by the Giants losing all three of their consecutive World Series appearances and was irrevocably damaged by what happened one hundred years ago this season--in 1914, when they were overtaken by the Boston "Miracle" Braves, who surged from last place in late July to win the pennant by 10½ games over McGraw's Guys. Mathewson had the last of his twelve consecutive 20-win seasons in 1914, with a 24-13 record, but it was his least impressive performance. His  ERA of 3.00 was Mathewson's highest since breaking into the starting rotation in 1901, and the Giants’ record indicates that age and fatigue may have caught up with him in the stretch drive of 1914. After July 18, when the Braves began their drive from last place, the Giants were only 9-9 in games started by Mathewson and 5-14 in games started by Marquard, whose record that year was a horrible 12-22.

The Giants won their sixth pennant in 1917, but lost their fourth straight World Series to the White Sox (who would be mired in scandal after consorting to throw the Fall Classic two years later). Despite winning the pennant by a convincing 10 games, the 1917 Giants were a team in transition between the 1910-14 Giants and the 1920-24 Giants. 

After finishing second in 1920, McGraw's Giants became the first major league team in history--including the 19th century--to win four straight pennants. They also won the World Series in 1921 and 1922, and--but for catcher Hank Gowdy tripping over his mask and failing to catch a foul pop and a pebble or divot causing a bad hop over rookie teenage third baseman Freddie Lindstrom's head--the Giants might have won the 1924 World Series as well. Four of the Giants' six core position players during these years are in the Hall of Fame. Frankie Frisch, a versatile infielder who didn’t settle full-time at second base until 1923, is beyond question deserving of his Cooperstown enshrinement, but the selections of first baseman George Kelly, shortstop Dave Bancroft and right fielder Ross Youngs--all eventually voted in by the Veterans Committee--remain controversial.

While indisputably the best team in the National League during these years, the Giants were hardly a dominant team when winning four in a row between 1921 and 1924. Only in 1923 were the Giants relatively comfortably ahead for most of the season, and in 1924 the Giants squandered the 9½-game lead they held on August 8 to spend all of September never more than two games ahead of pennant rivals Brooklyn and Pittsburgh. As was typical of McGraw teams, this Giants team won with a combination of the best overall offense and some of the best pitching in the league. While Babe Ruth and the New York Yankees in the early 1920s were offending McGraw’s "scientific baseball" sensibilities with their power game, the Giants were not averse to playing such a game themselves. The Giants were consistently one of the NL’s top teams in extra-base hits and were first or second in the league in slugging percentage each of the four years they won the pennant. 

These were the last pennants won by John McGraw, baseball's Napoleon, giving the Giants 10 pennants but only three World Series championships in the first quarter of the 20th century.

Next UP: Giant Years since their Napoleonic Era