By Peter Golenbock
Do not envy the Yankee fans. Yankee fans are mean-spirited, vengeful, and care about nothing else but winning. They are arrogant and they brag about themselves without remorse. Red Sox fans, on the other hand, are compassionate, long-suffering, and applaud a good effort, win or lose. In other words, Red Sox fans have been given the tools which will help make them successful the rest of their lives.
It wasn’t always this way. Back around the turn of the twentieth century, the Red Sox were the power in the American League, and the Yankees were the door mats. The Red Sox had a group of fans called “The Royal Rooters.” They were the movers and shakers of Irish Boston, including John F. “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, the father of Rose Kennedy and the grandfather of John K. Kennedy. The “Royal Rooters” were also the waiters, house laborers and dock workers. They were men who built Boston’s roads and canals, railroads and other public works.
“Those aren’t cobblestones,” an Irishman once remarked, “they are Irish hearts.”
Even before the turn of the century, baseball had become an Irish passion. Many of the early stars had been Irish. John McGraw, Hugh Jennings, Connie Mack, Ed Delahanty, and Roger Bresnahan were early stars.
Boston’s biggest nineteenth century baseball hero was the son of an Irish immigrant papermaker by the name of Michael K. “King” Kelly. In 1887, Chicago sold him to Boston for $10,000, and immediately he became known as the “$10,000 Beauty.” They wrote a song about him called “Slide, Kelly, Slide.” In the off-season he would appear on the stage performing “Casey at the Bat.”
In 1901 the Boston American League team was founded. The first two years they were called the Somersets, and then they were called the Pilgrims in 1903. They became the Red Sox in 1907. But with the coming of this team to Boston, the Royal Rooters switched their allegiance from the National League team to this one. Why? Because the new team signed some of the best of the National League’s players, including Cy Young, who won 511 games in his long career, and Jimmy Collins, the best third baseman in all of baseball. The other reason was that a ticket to a Boston American League game was 25 cents, half of what it cost to go to a Beaneaters game.
The Royal Rooters made their presence felt at the very first World Series in 1903, when the Pilgrims, the American League winners, played the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Royal Rooters, several hundred strong, marched in a parade to Boston’s Huntington Avenue Grounds. Music signaled their arrival. When they came into sight, they were wearing black suits with high white collars, blue rosettes pinned on their lapels. At the head of the line was their leader, “Nuf Ced” McGreevey.
McGreevey, who owned a bar down the street from the ballpark, wanted the Royal Rooters to have an anthem to play in order to taunt the Pirates players for Game 4 in Pittsburgh. One of the group found sheet music to a song called “Tessie” from the musical comedy Silver Slipper.
When the Pirates took a three to one lead in the series, the Royal Rooters were despondent. Then in Game 5, they began singing the annoying “Tessie” over and over and over. The Bostons rallied. Was it the power of the song? They were sure of it when the Pilgrims won 11-2. When they went on to win the series, the Boston players swore it was because the Royal Rooters had drive the Pirates players to distraction by incessantly singing that damned “Tessie.”
By 1908 the “Royal Rooters” were nationally famous. McGreevey’s face even appeared on early game programs. In 1908 he even posed in the team photo. By 1912, when the Bostons, now called the Red Sox, won their second pennant, the Royal Rooters had become an institution. That 1912 team was led by one of the greatest outfields of all time, with Tris Speaker, Harry Hooper, and Duffy Lewis, and its star pitcher was Smokey Joe Wood, the winner of 34 games. When the Red Sox returned from the road after clinching the pennant, one hundred thousand fans, led by the Royal Rooters, were there to greet them.
In 1912 the Red Sox played the New York Giants, led by manager John McGraw and pitcher Christy Mathewson. Before Game Six, with the Red Sox ahead three games to two and victory within their grasp, the Royal Rooters marched into the new Fenway Park and headed to their seats along the third-base line.
The ticket manager of the Red Sox, meanwhile, had sold the Royal Rooters seats on a first-come, first-served basis. When the Royal Rooters arrived to take their seats, they discovered they were already occupied. The Red Sox management had sold them.
The Royal Rooters didn’t know what to do. They refused to move, blocking the view of the seat holders. The mounted police was called, and things got ugly. The spectators in the seats began throwing peanuts, scorecards, canes, and other makeshift ammunition at the Royal Rooters.
The umpires were threatening to forfeit the game if the Royal Rooters didn’t get off the field. Police forcibly cleared them off the field. They left, cursing all the way.
When the game finally began, the Royal Rooters were sequestered in the wooden bleachers out in left field. Meanwhile, Joe Wood, the starter, warmed up, and he then had to wait a half hour for the game to begin, and his arm tightened, and he last one inning and was shelled for six runs.
After the game, the Royal Rooters stood outside the Red Sox offices singing the Giants’ anthem, Tammany and booing the Red Sox management. Cries were heard, “The hell with the Red Sox.” And “Who cares if we win or lose?”
The next day, the Red Sox fans boycotted and only 17,000 fans showed up. Not a single member of the Royal Rooters attended.
A Red Sox executive was quoted as saying the Royal Rooters would get over it over the winter and would be as loyal as ever in the spring. “They always have,” he said. And of course, he was right. After the Red Sox won the world championship that day, the city of Boston held a parade for their world champs. At the head of the parade were the Royal Rooters.
It was lesson for Red Sox management. Whatever the indignities heaped upon their most loyal fans, team owners from then on could be sure they would be forgiven. And they were. Always.
The Red Sox would go on to win three most pennants, in 1915, 1916, and 1918. One player involved in all three of those pennants was a fellow by the name of George Herman “Babe” Ruth.”
In July of 1914, Ruth, a left handed pitcher, was bought from the Baltimore team in the International League along with pitcher Ernie Shore and catcher Ben Egan for $8,000. Ruth never should have gone to the Red Sox. He was first offered to the Philadelphia A’s, owned by Connie Mack. But Mack, who was going broke, told the Baltimore owner to sell the players to someone who could afford them. Egan wasn’t a factor, but Ruth and Shore led the Red Sox to pennants the next two years.
At first they roomed Shore and Ruth together, but then Shore complained. Ruth was using his toothbrush. In 1915 Ruth’s record was 18-6. But if you look at the records of the pitchers in the 1915 you won’t find Ruth’s name. Manager Bill Carrigan kept him out to teach him a lesson. He wanted to show Ruth, who was young and uncontrollable, that the Red Sox could win without him.
In 1916 Tris Speaker left Boston and went to Cleveland. He had refused to play with Ruth. According to Dick Casey, who was 92 when I interviewed him, Speaker had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and he had a dislike for Catholics. Ruth was a Catholic, even though his parents were Lutherins. And when Speaker was traded to Cleveland, Joe Wood stayed out of the entire season, refusing to pitch. The Red Sox won the pennant anyway.
In 1916, the Red Sox owner, Joe Lannin, became disenchanted with owning the team. After he sold Speaker, the Red Sox fans let him have it. When manager Bill Carrigan retired he had lost his leader. He sold the team to a New Yorker by the name of Harry Frazee, a well-known theatrical figure and known associates of New York gamblers, for $675,000.
At the time Frazee bought the Red Sox he was flush. When Frazee heard the Washington Senators were thinking of selling their great pitcher, Walter Johnson, he offered Washington $60,000 for him. Griffith said no, but it showed that Frazee intended to build a winner in Boston.
As you all know, Boston did win one more pennant and World Championship, in 1918. The war had started and in the winter of 1917-1918, a significant number of Red Sox players left for the war, including Duffy Lewis, Ernie Shore, Herb Pennock, and manager Jack Barry. When Ed Barrow took over as manager, his biggest question was where to play Ruth, the best pitcher in the league. But Ruth could also hit home runs, and Ruth wanted to play every day. In the middle of the 1918 season, Ruth got in a fight with Barrow and left the team. After missing just one game, he came back, and Frazee got Ruth to agree just to pitch. After winning a game, Barrow sent Ruth up to pinch hit. Ruth tripled in two runs to tie the game. The next day Ruth was in the outfield, and he stayed there until late in the season, when Barrow asked him to go back and pitch again.
In 1918, Ruth pitched 20 games, he played 59 games in the outfield, and thirteen times he played first base. He tied Tilly Walker for the American League home run lead with 11.
In the spring of 1919 Harry Hooper convinced Ed Barrow to let Ruth play every day. Hooper said to him, “think of all the customers you’ll draw and all the money you’ll make. In one exhibition game against the Giants, Ruth hit one home run 579 feet.
Ruth did win 9 games as a pitcher in 1919 when he had to fill in for pitcher Carl Mays, who was traded to the Yankees. Then the Red Sox brought up 19 year old Waite Hoyt, and Ruth went back to the outfield. Ruth finished the year with 29 home runs. Of course, he led the league.
Ruth led the Red Sox to the final world series they ever won in 1918. But Harry Frazee’s luck was running out. Secretary of War Newton Baker ordered baseball to shut down by September 1. The loss of revenue from the cancelled games was disastrous for Frazee. Back then, there was no revenue from radio or television. Ticket sales were everything. The 1918 World Series was against the Chicago Cubs. Frazee needed high attendance in the series to recoup his huge losses. He didn’t get it.
A footnote: during the seventh inning of the 1918 world series, Harry Frazee decided that during the seventh inning the band would play the Star Spangled Banner, in honor of the soldiers at war. When it was finished, everyone stood and cheered. This was repeated after Game 4. It wasn’t long before the Star Spangled Banner was played before every baseball game in America.
The attendance was so bad, the players almost went on strike before Game 5. They knew they weren’t going to get the $2,000 promised them. The baseball commissioners appealed to their pride, and they finished the series, with the Red Sox winning 4 games to 2. Each Red Sox got $1,108. Each Cub player got $671.
By the end of 1918, Harry Frazee was overextended. And you know the rest of the story. He sold Ruth to the Yankees, and as a result, Red Sox fans have had to endure years of frustration and emotional trauma. There was Johnny Pesky holding the ball too long in 1946, and lost pennant in 1948 and 1949, and years of mediocrity under Joe Cronin and Tom Yawkey, and then Bucky Effing Dent and Bill Effing Buckner, and then last year Aaron Effing Boone. This year it was “Who’s Your Daddy.”
But as I said at the beginning of this talk, all of this has made you strong, and kind, and compassionate. You have learned that winning isn’t as important as the journey. You have learned the beauty of Carlton Fisk’s home run against the Reds in the 1975 World Series. You have learned to savor the Ortiz two-run home run to win game four, even though it took place at one thirty in the morning. You have learned the important lessons of life. It is you, the Red Sox fans, who are indeed the Chosen People.
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