1918 –The Curse of the Bambino!
1918 was a horrible year for humanity and baseball. The war to end all wars was raging and for the only time in baseball history the season was shortened. Uncle Sam had ruled that baseball players had to “work or fight” and the season was to end on Labor Day with the World Series to follow immediately afterwards. There would also be restricted travel rules. If the war continued the 1919 major League baseball season would almost certainly be cancelled as most players expected to be drafted. The Brooklyn Dodgers had already agreed to lease Ebbets Field in 1919 to the government as a storage facility.
There was a flu pandemic that was just starting to sweep the world and would eventually kill 20 million people worldwide. 10,000 Chicagoans died in the pandemic that began in the Chicagoland area at the Great Lakes Naval Station when sailors started to get sick on September 8, 1918.
The war and the rumors of a flu epidemic kept attendance down and most teams in 1918 lost money and many of the top players had been drafted.
The world was worrying but the Chicago Cubs were confident and doing good as they were flush with cash as new owner Charlie Weeghman had bought the club in 1916 with a group of investors that included some of the wealthiest businessmen in Chicago including meatpacker J. Ogden Armour, Sears-Roebuck CEO Julius Rosenwald and chewing gum magnate William Wrigley. The Chicago Tribune estimated on January 23, 1916 that the Cubs were a “100,000,000 million dollar ballclub.”
The new owners wanted to win at all costs as the White Sox were winning and in the winter of 1917 they allocated $250,000 to buy some superstars. One of the first big trades that Weeghman made was trading two nondescript players and $55,000 cash to Philadelphia for perhaps one of the greatest pitchers of all time, Grover Cleveland Alexander and catcher Bill Killefer. Alexander was by far the best pitcher in baseball and at 30 years old was just hitting his prime. The previous four seasons he had won 121 games averaging 30 wins a season. The Cubs were loaded coming into the 1918 season and were prohibitive favorites to win the title and they did not disappoint as they ran away with the National league pennant by 10.5 games with a .651 winning percentage.
Grover Cleveland Alexander only pitched in three games for the Cubs in 1918 because on April 12, the draft board of Howard County, Nebraska drafted Alexander as the 10th of a 12 man quota it was required to send to Camp Funston. When the Cubs started play in the 1918 World Series, Alexander was a Sergeant fighting for the 342nd Field Artillery of the 89th Division on the front lines in France where he suffered shell shock that left him deaf in his left ear and suffering epileptic fits.
Alexander was the basically the Cubs only big loss for the 1918 season but the American league champions Boston Red Sox roster had their roster raided by Uncle Sam as 11 Red Sox players from 1917 were in some branch of the military service. The first game of the Series was postponed by weather and that same day a bomb ripped a hole in Chicago’s Federal building killing four people and a horse. Chicago was on alert and a massive manhunt was set up to find the suspected IWW members who were said to have planted the bomb. There was fear in Chicago when on September 5 umpire Hank O’Day screamed “Play Ball!”
The series opened in Chicago’s Comiskey Park as it had a larger seating capacity than Weeghman Park which was later renamed Wrigley Field and expanded. Boston had two pitchers warm up for the first game but the young Babe Ruth got the start and he shut the Cubs out the first game 1-0. The Cubs came back to win game two by the score of (3-1) and Boston won the third game (3-1).
The extra seats at Comiskey Park were not needed as the first three games only averaged 22,000 fans well below previous years. The 1918 World Series was the first year that MLB instituted a bit of revenue sharing. The players from the Red Sox and Cubs were to split 60 per cent of the revenue from the first four games with expectations of $2,000 shares for the winners and $1200 per man for the losers. The rest of the money would be split among the teams that finished second, third and fourth in the two leagues. The poor attendance for the first three games in Chicago and the lower revenue from reduced ticket prices plus 10 per cent of the gate receipts were donated to the war effort was going to drastically affect both teams anticipated money.
The Cubs and Red Sox boarded the train for the long ride to Boston together and both teams were understandably concerned. The war was raging and the players were not sure if this was to be their last paycheck from baseball. Uncle Sam was paying soldiers $30 per month.
Chicago and Boston were both big gambling towns and the money that the Chicago White Sox allegedly took in 1919 was said to originate in Boston. There was hard evidence that games were fixed during the 1918 season. The author John Thorn, the official historian for major league baseball said, “It seems more likely that there would have been a fix than there would not have been. It would be surprising if it didn’t come up. At that time, the connection between baseball players and gamblers was that strong.” The Seattle Times, May 18, 2011 Bill Pennington.
Baseball and gambling had always been closely connected as bookies many times openly conducted business in the stands during the early 20th century. The players and the gamblers stayed at the same hotels ate at the same restaurants and rode the same trains and frequently talked in the early 20th century. In a 1920 court deposition Eddie Cicotte, one of the first 1919 Chicago“Black Sox” to confess to the 1919 FIX, talked about how several of the Cubs were offered $10,000 to fix the 1918 World Series. Gambling in baseball spiked in 1918 as racetracks were closed with wartime restrictions on travel and the gambling money had to go somewhere.
Sean Deveny has written a fascinating book called The Original Curse that pieces together a puzzle behind what could have been two of the greatest curses of all time as the Red Sox and Cubs both may have been guilty of sports greatest sin: Not playing to win for the team because of individual greed. This had to anger the baseball gods who sometimes control the uncontrollable things that sometimes control the outcome of a baseball game.
The Red Sox and Cubs shared the same train for the Chicago to Boston trip and money was on their minds. The players felt that they were promised $2,000 for the winners and $1400 for the losing team and that before any money is distributed to other clubs the Cubs and Red Sox should get their fair share for playing the Series. The players chose representatives from each club to present their proposals to the baseball commission. The players were told that Barr Johnson’s train would not reach Boston until shortly before game 4 so if the players wanted to meet they would have to wait until after the 4th game. The players were also told that to change the rules they would have to get the consent from all 16 team owners because some owners could sue on behalf of their players.
The players were upset and in ill spirits as they got off the train in Boston. Babe Ruth got into a fist fight the night before his scheduled start for game four as he was “the Babe.” Many of his teammates thought he was too injured to pitch but “The Babe” insisted he could beat the Cubs. The Babe’s left hand was swollen and stained with iodine but he still took the mound for game four with the Red Sox surprisingly leading the Series 2 games to 1. The Babe was wild as his finger was sore and he walked six batters but he still shut the Cubs out for the first seven innings and hit a two run triple in the fourth inning to propel the Red Sox to a 3-2 victory. Babe set a World Series record for scoreless innings against the Cubs that stood for 4 decades. The Red Sox were now up in the Series three games to one.
The players wanted to meet with the baseball commission before game 5 but the commission said they could not make a decision until after game 5 was played. Both teams gathered in the Red Sox locker room beneath the Fenway Park stands. They were not going to play until the commission would guarantee their money. Finally, the commissioners arrived at Fenway at 2:35 and agreed to meet with the player’s representatives in the umpires rooms as the players went to their separate locker rooms. The meeting was cramped as writers and some fans trying to see what was happening and all jammed in the room. The commissioners stood firm and finally the players agreed to play as long as they were not punished for the strike.
John Fitzgerald (JFK’s garnadfather)the ex mayor of Boston, who had witnessed the negotiations had grabbed a microphone and had announced to the 25,000 restless fans that the strike had been settled and the players would go forward with Game 5, “for the good of the game and the public.” Boston Globe, September 11, 1918. The teams took the field at 3:30, one hour after the scheduled start of the game. The Cubs won easily 3-0.
There were only 15,238 fans showed for game 6, this was one of the smallest World Series crowds of all time. The Red Sox posed for their championship picture a half hour BEFORE the game started as everyone just seemed to want to get the series over. The Red Sox won the game 2-0. The Red Sox received $1,108.45 for their share and the Cubs received $574.62 per player.
Neither the Cubs nor the Red Sox won another World Series during the 20th Century. The Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1920. The Babe hit one of the most talked about home runs in baseball history in 1932 when he “called his shot” against the Cubs at Wrigley Field after some heated exchanges with the Cubs players on the bench. The Red Sox did return to the Series in 1946, 1967, 1975 and 1986 and finally won a World Series in 2004 after an 86 year drought. The Cubs have some extra penance as they have to make right with Goats….