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First Match-up at
Fenway: April 20,
1912
Email:
Harvey
Frommer
Website: Harvey Frommer on
Sports and
Culture
Harvey Frommer is the author of
33 sports books, including The
New York Yankee Encyclopedia,
Shoeless Joe and Ragtime
Baseball, Growing Up Baseball and
Red Sox Vs. Yankees - The Rivalry
with Frederic J. Frommer, Rickey
and Robinson: The Men Who Broke
Baseball's Color Line, and A
Yankee Century: A Celebration of
the First Hundred Years of
Baseball's Greatest Team.
IT'S
YANKEES VS. RED SOX
at
Fenway Park April 16, 17, 18, 19.
The historic rivals are at it
again and the "Great Rivalry" -
-and it is a great rivalry
despite some commentary from an
NPR sage - -is at fever
pitch.
Former Baseball
Commissioner - A. Bartlett
Giammati made the statement:
"When I was seven years old, my
father took me to Fenway Park for
the first time, and as I grew up
I knew that as a building it was
on the level of Mount Olympus,
the Pyramid at Giza, the nation's
Capitol, the Czar's Winter
Palace, and the Louvre - except,
of course, that it was better
than all those inconsequential
places." Contrary to some rumors
probably spread by Yankee fans,
the scholarly Giammati was not
around for the start of play at
Fenway, a very long time
ago.
Prior to 1912,
the Red Sox played at Huntington
Avenue Grounds, now part of
Northeastern University.
Fittingly, the first American
League team to visit Fenway Park
was New York -- at that time
known as the Highlanders, soon to
become the Yankees. It was a damp
and chilly New England spring
that year. The Red Sox actually
played their first game at Fenway
11 days before, defeating Harvard
University in an exhibition game
played in a snowstorm.
Then
the Red Sox and Highlanders had
to sit out two rainouts before
facing off on Saturday April 20,
just a few days after the sinking
of the Titanic.
The future
grandfather of President John F.
Kennedy, Boston Mayor John "Honey
Fitz" Fitzgerald was one of the
27,000 in attendance. He threw
out the first ball in the park
that was built at a cost of
$350,000 that would come to be
known as "Boston's Sistine
Chapel."
They played on
into extra innings. Boston
prevailed finally winning, 7-6,
on a Tris Speaker RBI in the
bottom of the 11th inning. Red
Sox spitballer Bucky O'Brien and
Sea Lion Hall defeated New York's
Jumbo Jim Vaughn.
Opening day
turned out to be a good predictor
of the season's fortunes for both
Boston and New York. The Red Sox
took the American League pennant
in 1912 with a 105-47 record,
good for a winning percentage of
.691, and went on to beat the New
York Giants in the World Series.
The Highlanders, suffering their
6th straight loss, went 50-102
(.329), finishing in last place,
a whopping 55 games behind the
Red Sox.
Even after the
BoSox had Fenway as a home park,
they didn't always play all their
games there. From time to time,
they scheduled "big games" at
Braves Field to accommodate
larger crowds than their little
park could accommodate.
But that worry is
way in the past - - now a seat at
Fenway is one of the toughest
tickets in all of
baseball.
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