Don't Count Brooklyn Out!
Superbas at Giants, April 22, 1908
Don’t Count Brooklyn Out!
Baseball journalism has never quite equaled the heights it reached back in the glory days of the New York Sun.
Seriously — there’s nothing more fun than reading the extremely detailed accounts of the old New York Giants home openers in 1900 and before within its pages.
Even this brief description from 1908 doesn’t quite do justice to the legacy of this long-forgotten paper:
We didn’t have to worry about strange ground rules or fans being injured by thrown bottles in this one, thank goodness.
Comeback #1
This was a battle of comebacks.
Brooklyn had the first go. The Superbas entered the top of the 7th inning trailing by a 2-0 margin. Doc Crandall had kept Brooklyn’s bats in check up to this point.
Harry Lumley, whose name seems to be coming up frequently in this blog, led things off for Brooklyn with a triple. Lumley then scored when John Hummel hit a fly ball that Giants left fielder Spike Shannon dropped, resulting in a two base error. And that brought up Billy Maloney:
Never mind the caught stealing afte the base hit. Maloney’s single drove in Hummel, tying the game at 2.
And there was more to come in the 8th.
Catcher Bill Bergen led things off for Brooklyn:
Charge that error to Giants third baseman Art Devlin.
That brought up starting pitcher Harry McIntire, who needed to bunt:
Well, it wasn’t much of a bunt. Crandall caught Bergen at second, and McIntire was his slow replacement at first.
Up came Tim Jordan:
That second column triple was like a dagger to the heart of the Giants. Brooklyn now led 3-2, and we were running out of ballgame.
Though Jordan didn’t score, the damage had already been done.
Comeback #2
But the Giants weren’t about to go quietly.
Fred Tenney led off the bottom of the 9th:
That brought up Al Bridwell:
That’s what we call a productive out. I had the hit and run on just to see if New York could get the speedy Tenney to second, and it worked.
Up came Shannon, whose error had led to the first Brooklyn run:
Now it was crunch time. Roger Bresnahan was due to come up with the pitcher on deck. After giving it some thought, I decided to put Bresnahan on intentionally and deal with whoever wound up in the pitcher’s spot:
After looking at the New York bench, I settled on 19-year-old Fred Merkle — a man famous for a single moment in history, but also a player who wasn’t as bad as you might think.
It was worth a shot.
The Giants left 7 on base, and certainly rued those missed chances. Brooklyn, meanwhile, looks good in the early going.