Bill Wambganss, wearing the special uniform
that the Cleveland Indians wore in 1921
October 10, 1920, 100 years ago: Perhaps the most eventful game in World Series history unfolds at League Park in Cleveland, and we barely even have photographs of it. No film. Radio broadcasting was in the process of being invented. Television was still just an idea. The Internet wasn't yet an idea.
The American League Champions, the Cleveland Indians, were hosting the National League Champions, the Brooklyn Robins. The name "Dodgers" had already been used, but, since 1914, their manager had been Wilbert Robinson, a former star catcher, and so they were the "Robins," just as the Indians had been the "Naps" from 1903 to 1914, in honor of 2nd baseman and manager Napoleon "Nap" Lajoie.
In the 1950s, it would be a joke that the Dodgers had everything but a left fielder, but in their Robins days, their best hitter was their left fielder. Zack Wheat would finish his career with a .317 batting average and 2,884 hits, 2,804 of them with Brooklyn. After 100 years, this remains a Dodger franchise record. To put this Hall-of-Famer into perspective: According to Baseball-Reference.com, a website which is your friend whether you know it or not, his 2 most statistically similar players are Tony Gwynn and Roberto Clemente.
Burleigh Grimes
Cadore, who had also pitched for the Robins on their 1916 Pennant winners, was held out of his next start, and pitched less than 5 innings in his next one. But he pitched a complete-game shutout in his next, and ended the season at 15-14 with a 2.26 ERA. Oeschger, who had pitched for the Philadelphia Phillies' Pennant winners of 1915, was held out of his next 2 starts, and lost his next 2, but was fine, going 15-13 for a 62-90 team, with a 3.46 ERA.
The Indians were managed by Tris Speaker, still their center fielder, and one of the greatest players in the history of the game. A .345 career hitter, he would collect 3,514 hits, 792 of them doubles, which is still an all-time record. And, until Joe DiMaggio came along, he was regarded as the greatest defensive outfielder ever. He had already helped the Boston Red Sox win the World Series in 1912 and 1915.
Speaker at an old-timers game in 1947
They also had a Hall of Fame pitcher, Stan Coveleski. Like Grimes, he threw a spitball. A son of Polish immigrants, he had escaped the Pennsylvania coal mines, and, when interviewed by Lawrence Ritter for his book The Glory of Their Times in the 1960s, he would say, "Lord, baseball is a worrying thing."
On August 16, the Indians went to the Polo Grounds in New York to play the Yankees, who were in their 1st season with Babe Ruth. Yankee pitcher Carl Mays hit Indian shortstop Ray Chapman in the head with a pitch. The impact was so hard that the ball came right back to Mays, and he threw it to 1st base, because he thought Chapman had hit it.
Chapman got up, and told catcher Wally Schang, "I'm all right. Tell Mays not to worry." He started toward 1st, and collapsed. He was taken to a hospital, and died the next day. He remains baseball's only player to die as the result of an in-game injury. Mays lived until 1971, insisting that he hadn't hit Chapman intentionally. Others backed that up, including Chapman's teammates, who admitted that he crowded the plate at times.
The Indians wore black armbands on their sleeves for the rest of the season, and would dedicate a monument to Chapman, which now stands in the Heritage Park section behind center field at Progressive Field.
Baseball would respond to Chapman's death by supplying umpires with far more balls, and ordering them to throw balls out if they looked too dirty, and thus insufficiently visible. They also outlawed the various altered -- or "doctored" -- pitches that fell under the umbrella category of "spitball." But they allowed 17 pitchers, including Cleveland's Coveleski and Brooklyn's Grimes, to continue throwing the spitball because it was their "bread-and-butter," or what we would call today their "out pitch."
Chapman's replacement was rookie Joe Sewell, and he ended up being a big reason why the Indians edged the Yankees and the Chicago White Sox for the Pennant. The suspension of 7 White Sox players for throwing the previous year's World Series -- an 8th, Chick Gandil, had already retired -- helped the Indians.
Joe Sewell
It was the 1st Pennant ever won by a Cleveland team. The Robins/Dodgers had won their 1st Pennant in 20 years.
*
This is what the world was like in the Autumn of 1920, as the World Series began:
There were 16 teams in what we would now call Major League Baseball. The American League had teams in Philadelphia, Washington and St. Louis. The National League had a team in Boston. No team played further south than Washington, Cincinnati and St. Louis, and no team played further west than St. Louis. No team played in a stadium with lights, or with artificial turf, or with a roof, or with more than 40,000 seats.
The only stadiums in use now that were in use then were Fenway Park in Boston and Wrigley Field on the North Side of Chicago. And the idea that either of those stadiums would later be beloved classics was not even considered.
There were no Black players in the majors. There were all-black professional teams, but the 1st Negro League had just been founded. There had been Hispanic players, but they were white Cubans.
George Wright of the 1st professional team, the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings (no connection to the current Reds franchise), was still alive. Dizzy Dean was 10 years old, Hank Greenberg was 9, Joe DiMaggio was about to turn 6, Ted Williams was 2, Bob Feller was about to turn 2, Jackie Robinson was a year and a half; and Stan Musial, Warren Spahn, Ralph Kiner, Yogi Berra, Duke Snider, Ernie Banks, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente, and Frank and Brooks Robinson hadn't been born yet.
The previous year's World Series was won by the Cincinnati Reds. The Stanley Cup was won by the Ottawa Senators. The National Football League had been founded on September 17. There was no National Basketball Association.
Aside from the Olympic Games, there was no tournament that could be called a world championship for soccer. The Olympics had yet to debut their Winter format. The Games have since been held in America 7 times; in France 4 times; 3 times each in Germany, Japan, Italy and Canada; twice each in Switzerland, Austria, Norway, Australia, Britain, Russia and Korea; and once each in the Netherlands, Finland, Mexico, Bosnia, Spain, Greece, China and Brazil.
There were 48 States, 3 of whom -- Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona -- had only gained Statehood within the preceding 14 years. There were 19 Amendments to the Constitution, the newest giving women the right to vote.
There was no banking insurance, no Securities & Exchange Commission, no Medicare, no Medicaid, no Environmental Protection Agency, no OSHA, no Title IX. There had not been a Civil Rights Act since 1875. The ideas that abortion and same-sex marriage would ever be legalized weren't even being considered.
The President of the United States was Woodrow Wilson, and he was the holder of the Nobel Peace Prize. But the stroke he suffered during the previous year's the World Series left him half-paralyzed physically, and almost completely paralyzed politically, ruining his hope that America would enter the League of Nations, founded to keep the pieace after World War I. William Howard Taft was still alive.
The candidates running to replace Wilson were both newspaper publishers from Ohio: The Governor, Democrat James M. Cox; and a Senator, Republican Warren Harding. People were tired of Wilson's high-sounding rhetoric, and wanted what Harding called "a return to normalcy." Harding won in a landslide, and became one of the worst Presidents ever.
Harding's Vice President was Calvin Coolidge, then Governor of Massachusetts. Herbert Hoover, no longer doing so as an official of the federal government, was privately raising money for food relief in war-torn Europe. Franklin Roosevelt had recently resigned as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, so that he could be Cox's running mate.
Harry Truman had recently been discharged and married, and he had bought an interest in a lead and zinc mine in Commerce, Oklahoma, which would employ members of the Mantle family. Major Dwight D. Eisenhower was commanding a tank battalion at Fort Meade, Maryland. Lyndon Johnson was 12 years old, Ronald Reagan was 9, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford were 7, John F. Kennedy was 3. Jimmy Carter, both George Bushes, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden had not been born yet.
The Governor of New York was Alfred E. Smith; of New Jersey, William N. Runyon; and of Ohio, home of the Indians, as I said, James M. Cox. The Mayor of New York City was John F. Hylan; of Chicago, the massively corrupt "Big" Bill Thompson; and of Cleveland, William S. FitzGerald.
There were still living veterans of the Mexican-American War, the European Revolutions of 1848, and the Crimean War. Telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell was still alive. So was phonograph and light bulb inventor Thomas Edison. So were Wild West figures Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson and Annie Oakley.
The Pope was Benedict XV. The Prime Minister of Canada was Arthur Meighen, and of Britain David Lloyd George. The Monarch of both nations was King George V. There have since been 18 Presidents of the United States, 4 British monarchs, and 9 Popes. The FA Cup was won by Birmingham team Aston Villa, and the Football League was won by Birmingham-area team West Bromwich Albion.
Major novels of 1920 included This Side of Paradise, the debut of F. Scott Fitzgerald; The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in which Agatha Christie introduces her private detective Hercule Poirot; Main Street by Sinclair Lewis, Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence, and The Story of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting.
Sigmund Freud published Beyond the Pleasure Principle; H.L. Mencken Prejudices: Second Series, which Richard Wright would later cite as inspiring his own desire to write; and Frederick Jackson Turner The Frontier in American History. New plays included Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones; Karel Čapek's R.U.R., which introduced the word "robot"; and The Bat by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood.
Superheroes and comic books as we would come to know them did not yet exist. Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Batman creators Bob Kane and Bill Finger, Flash creator Gardner Fox and James Bond creator Ian Fleming were children. Wonder Woman creator William Marston was a young psychologist. But 1920 saw the film The Mark of Zorro, starring Douglas Fairbanks Sr. Like The Bat, it would be an influence on Kane and Finger.
J.R.R. Tolkien was about to be discharged from the British Army. C.S. Lewis had recently been discharged, and had resumed his studies at Oxford University. Like so many others, they had survived World War I only to be emotionally compromised for life. Lewis had published 1 book of poetry, Tolkien 16 of them; but, as yet, neither of them had published a novel, fantasy or otherwise. Gene Roddenberry was born 10 months later, Stan Lee a year after that, Rod Serling 2 years after that.
There was no television. Radio broadcasting was about to begin. Films were still black & white and silent. D.W. Griffith directed Way Down East. Mary Pickford starred in a version of Pollyanna. She and Fairbanks were married. The 3 of them, and Charlie Chaplin, had founded United Artists a year earlier. Fred Niblo directed Sex, which was racy for the time, and had a theme that adultery was bad. Actress Olive Thomas died at age 25, from drinking her husband's syphilis medication, thinking it was a sleeping aid.
Rudolph Valentino had recently debuted in films. James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart had recently debuted on Broadway. Clark Gable was working for his father in the oil fields outside Tulsa, Oklahoma. Henry Fonda and Greta Garbo were 15 years old. Jimmy Stewart was 12. Lorne Greene was 5. Jack Webb was 6 months old.
Popular songs of 1920 included "I'll Be With You In Apple Blossom Time" and "Crazy Blues." Jazz was a new phenomenon. So was country music. George M. Cohan, Florenz Ziegfeld and Irving Berlin still ruled Broadway. Edward "Duke" Ellington had recently formed his 1st music group. Louis Armstrong was playing on ferryboats on the Mississippi River. Richard Rodgers, Harry "Bing" Crosby and Roy Acuff were in high school. So was William "Count" Basie, who had begun playing gigs on Jersey Shore boardwalks. McKinley Morganfield, a.k.a. Muddy Waters, was 7 years old. Frank Sinatra was 4. Ella Fitzgerald was 3. Hank Williams wasn't born yet.
Inflation was such that what $1.00 bought then, $12.94 would buy now. A U.S. postage stamp cost 2 cents, and a New York Subway ride a nickel. The average price of a gallon of gas was 25 cents, a cup of coffee 15 cents, a movie ticket 15 cents, a new car $860, and a new house $6,296. The hamburger had been invented, but wasn't yet as widely known as the hot dog, which usually cost a nickel. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed the preceding Friday at 84.42.
The tallest building in the world was the Woolworth Building in Lower Manhattan. Most Americans didn't have telephones or air conditioning in their homes. There were no photocopiers, credit cards or automatic teller machines. Computers were still just a concept. Alan Turing was 8 years old. In spite of the fiction of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, no one had yet launched a rocket toward space.
Artificial organs were not yet possible. Transplantation of organs was not possible. The distribution of antibiotics was not possible: If you got any kind of infection, you could easily die. There was no polio vaccine. There was no birth control pill, but there was no Viagra, either.
In the Autumn of 1920, Poland and Finland both defeated the Soviet Union in wars, forcing the Bolsheviks to concentrate on the civil war within the borders of the former Russian Empire. The Irish War of Independence was ongoing, and 14 people, including a player, would be killed at a Gaelic football match at Croke Park in Dublin.
Mohandas Gandhi launched the Non-Cooperation Movement in India. An earthquake killed 171 people in Tuscany, Italy. President Álvaro Obregón was settling Mexico down after a 10-year revolution and civil war. Dr. Frederick Banting recorded his insight on how to isolate insulin for the treatment of diabetes. And Adolf Hitler made his first political speech, in Vienna, Austria.
In America, a bomb killed 38 people on Wall Street. Westinghouse sold the first domestic radio sets. In San Francisco, Edison Mouton completed the 1st successful coast-to-coast airmail delivery, taking 3 days. Professional boxing was legalized in New York State, making the rise of Madison Square Garden as "the Mecca of Boxing" possible. And the Black Sox Scandal broke, tarnishing baseball, while the home runs of Babe Ruth helped people to act as though it didn't matter.
Carl Fabergé, and John Reed, and King Alexander of Greece died. Mickey Rooney, and Roger Angell, and Bob Lemon were born.
That's what the world was like in the Autumn of 1920, as the World Series began.
*
Game 1 was played on October 5 at Ebbets Field. In a game that lasted just 1 hour and 41 minutes, Stan Coveleski outpitched Rube Marquard, and a pair of RBI doubles by Steve O'Neill gave the Indians a 3-1 win. Burleigh Grimes pitched a shutout in Game 2, and the Robins won 3-1. The Dodgers took the lead in the Series in Game 3, when Sherry Smith outpitched Ray Caldwell, and Brooklyn won 2-1.
The Robins/Dodgers would not take a games lead in a World Series again for 33 years. The series moved to Cleveland, and the Indians knocked Leon Cadore out in the 1st inning. In spite of that, their win turned out to be just 5-1, but the Series was tied. Game 5 would be the one for the ages.
League Park, built 1910, torn down 1951.
A previous ballpark had stood there from 1891 to 1909.
In the bottom of the 1st inning, Grimes gives up hits to Charlie Jamieson, Bill Wambsganss, and center fielder/manager/legend Tris Speaker. Tribe outfielder Elmer Smith then hits the 1st grand slam in Series history.
In the 3rd‚ Jim Bagby comes up with 2 on, and crashes another Grimes delivery for a 3-run blast‚ the 1st home run ever by a pitcher in Series play.
Elmer Smith
Jim Bagby
An unassisted triple play. And, 100 years later, this remains the only triple play of any kind in World Series history.
The only known photo of the play
The Indians win the game, 8-1, and their 1st appearance in the World Series will soon be a successful one. Duster Mails outpitched Sherry Smith for a 1-0 Cleveland win in Game 6. in Game 1. The Series went back to Brooklyn for Game 7 and a potential Games 8 and 9, but on October 12, 1920, Game 7 was won 3-0, as Coveleski pitched a shutout to beat Grimes, whose error allowed the deciding run.
Wambsganss, suddenly nationally famous, later lamented that he had a pretty good career (and a case can be made that he was right), but that, for most people, he might as well have been born the day before this game and died the day after.
As it turned out, Wamby died on December 8, 1985, in a suburb of Cleveland, where he'd lived all his life, making him 89 years old.
The last living player from this game was Joe Sewell, the man who had been called up after Ray Chapman had been killed. Sewell went on to a Hall of Fame career, including helping the Yankees win the 1932 World Series, and lived until 1990.
The Indians began to split their home games in 1932, with their bigger-attendance games, and eventually their night games, at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. They last played at League Park in 1946, and it was demolished in 1951. The only surviving part is the ticket booth, outside the right field corner.
Today, a baseball field is on the site, and the City of Cleveland has named the facility "League Park."
Cleveland was World Champions. Brooklyn would have to wait.
On the other hand, in the 100 years since, the Indians have won just 1 more World Series, while the Dodgers have 6, with a chance this year for a 7th.
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