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“DIARY OF A WINNER”
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THE 1914 "MIRACLE" BRAVES August 29, 1914 ... By fighting hard, the Boston Braves won both ends of the doubleheader with the St. Louis Cardinals before the largest crowds that ever to see a ballgame in St. Louis. The crowd was estimated at 30,000. It was a very Cardinal crowd as the Braves had few fans rooting for them. The fans in St. Louis have visions of a pennant winner in their own team, and were out to encourage them to their utmost ability. They probably did not think much of their team's prospects tonight, as they did on Thursday night after the Cardinals had worked the Braves out of second place and stepped in there themselves. With Bill James on the mound, the Braves won the first game by 4 to 0 score, and with pitchers Otto Hess, Dick Crutcher and Paul Strand working in the second game, they were able to win that one by a score of 6 to 4, putting over four runs in the eighth-inning. After the Cardinals had batted in their half of the eighth-inning, the game was called by umpire Lord Byron on account of darkness. Bill James limited the Cardinals to four hits, but one of these was made by the first batter up in the inning and the other two by the second man up. Twice James passed the first man up, and once the leadoff man got on through an error, so James had to pitch very well to stay out of trouble. Three doubleplays by the Braves infield helped him considerably. Pol Perritt also pitched a good game for the Cardinals, allowing only four hits, but allowing base on balls that put him in the hole, and two squeeze plays were pulled off by the Braves for two runs. Dan Griner came in and pitched just one inning, the ninth, and two hits, one of them a double by Rabbit Maranville were good for two more runs and a 4 to 0 final score in game number one. In the fourth inning the Braves worked over a run. Joe Connolly drew a base on balls, went to second on Larry Gilbert sacrifice and to third on Butch Schmidt single. He came home on a squeeze play, as Red Smith bunted the ball to the firstbaseman Lee Magee. The Braves squeezed in another run in the eighth. Hank Gowdy waited and drew a base on balls to start. James singled to short center and Moran sacrificed them over to second and third. Then came the squeeze. Evers poked the ball toward first and Gowdy walked over the plate. It was a very well executed play all around, especially by Johnny Evers. That made the score 2 to 0. In the ninth-inning, with Larry Gilbert and Butch Schmidt on third and second, and one out, the Rabbit was at bat. The Cardinals were guessing as to whether or not another squeeze play might be sprung on them. Then Maranville erased any thought with a double to right-field, clinching the first game without any doubt. The Braves had taken a two run lead, scoring one run in each of the third and fourth innings of the second game. In the third inning the Braves got a cheap run. Hank Gowdy singled to center and went to second on a sacrifice by Hess. Moran hit a grounder which Dots Miller grabbed behind third and threw wildly in trying to cut off Gowdy. Hank scored and Moran made it to second, giving the Braves a 1 to 0 lead. In the fourth inning Schmidt led off with a single to center. Red Smith attempted to sacrifice, but Lee Magee fielded the ball and failed to touch Schmidt as he passed by. He then threw the ball over Miller Huggins head as he was covering first base. On the play Schmidt went over to third. Smith next tried to steal second and Huggins muffed the throw, allowing Schmidt to score the second Braves run from third making it 2 to 0. In the Cardinals fourth inning, that lead was wiped out by a single and two doubles off the bats of the first three men to come to the plate, and in the sixth inning they dissolved a tie by putting over another run on a single, a sacrifice and two more singles in succession. The last single was followed by an error, which put runners on first and third. Dick Crutcher then went into pitch and had a ball hit straight at him. He grabbed the ball and turned to make an attempt of a doubleplay at second base, but both Johnny Evers and Maranville expected him to cut off the runner at the plate and neither covered the bag. Instead Crutcher turned and threw to first, allowing the second run of the inning to score. He got the next man out, but the Cardinals were two runs to the good, 4 to 2, and it looked as if the game might be lost. But in the eighth-inning, pitcher Bill Doak passed Evers, and as it was getting dark, manager Huggins pulled out Doak and sent in Slim Sallee to pitch. Stallings countered by pulling out Joe Connolly and sending in Ted Cather, a right-handed batter to face the southpaw. Cather struck out and Possum Whitted was sent out in place of Larry Gilbert, working Sallee for a pass. Sallee then passed Butch Schmidt to fill the bases. Red Smith came up and poked a long fly ball into the crowd bordering the outfield in left, and the fans gave way to let Cozy Dolan a chance to make the catch. He did and on the catch, Evers came home making it 4 to 3. Then up came Maranville with runners now on first and second. He took a healthy wallop at the ball and it went sailing over Joe Riggert's head in center field. Riggert made a great play for the ball and it glanced off his glove continuing out to the wall. Whitted and Schmidt came over the plate and the Rabbit was on third when the ball got back to the infield. The Braves were now up by a 5 to 4 score. The Braves increased their lead one run to make it 6 to 4, when Sallee tried to pick the Rabbit off third and threw the ball wildly past Zinn Beck, the thirdbaseman. The Braves picked up a game on the Giants in the process as they split a doubleheader with Chicago, winning the first game by a score of 1 to 0 and losing the second by a 7 to 5 score. A double by Vic Saier and Frank Schulte's single scored the only run of the game for the Cubs in the fourth inning of the first game. Jimmy Johnson's three errors in the second game helped the Giants, who bunched some hits after the misplays, including a double, a single and a walk to score three runs in the fourth inning. The Giants scored their winning run in the fifth on a single by Fred Snodgrass, who stole second and two doubles by Larry Doyle and George Burns. Art Fletcher's single and Wilbur Good's wild throw to the plate, clinched the game for New York in the eighth-inning. |
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