Mike Vaccaro on The First Fall Classic
Q: Let’s start with the most obvious question: What was it about the 1912 World Series that made you think it would be a worthwhile book project?
A: Well, for starters, it was a tremendous series on the field. The World Series had been invented in 1903, and by 1912 it had become an important part of the American sports calendar, but it was still a very local event. Part of that is because the times were more parochial, but partly because there simply hadn’t been a very good series to captu
re the national imagination. This one did. It matched two teams generally acknowledged as the greatest ever assembled to that point, there were four future Hall of Fame players, two future Hall of Fame umpires and John J. McGraw, another future immortal who as manager of the Giants was the most polarizing sports figure of the day. Then, these two teams lived up to the advance billing: they played eight extraordinary games and weren’t done until extra innings of the last one. That’s a hell of a series. I wish I’d covered it.
Q: So this is a book that appeals mainly to fans of old-time baseball?
A: I think that’s one segment of readers who will certainly appreciate it. But what I found most fascinating in my research was trying to humanize the people in this story. And it wasn’t hard to do, really. Almost every player of note contributed a ghostwritten newspaper column every day during the Series, and they weren’t shy: they would rip teammates, opponents, themselves. And they spoke very often about money, about gambling, about odds and wagers and so forth. So all it took was a little bit more digging to see that while we tend to glorify the purity of our athletic ancestors, that wasn’t always the case.
Q: How so?
A: Well, without giving too much away, let’s just say that the gambling scandals that nearly destroyed the sport seven years later – when eight Chicago White Sox players conspired to throw the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds – didn’t emerge from a vacuum. In the early part of the 20th century, gamblers and bookmakers were highly visible at baseball games. If you wanted to place a wager on that afternoon’s game, everyone knew where you could find someone to take your money. And players were out in the open about it, often talking about how much they’d wagered on their own teams in their own newspaper columns. Heck, even John McGraw – hard-nosed and tough, but elevated as a kind of savant when it came to winning baseball games – made no pretense of the fact that he enjoyed a racetrack almost as much as he did a ballpark, and he was also partners with Arnold Rothstein in a series of New York pool halls; Rothstein would go on to mastermind the 1919 Black Sox fix.
Q: So were the 1912 games fixed?
A: It was more complicated than that. Relationships between players and owners were as bad in 1912 as they were in 1972 or 1981 or 1994. Owners only allowed players to share in the receipts of the first four games of any World Series, because they didn’t trust their own players not to artificially extend the series so as to make the pot richer; as we will learn in 1912, sometimes it was the owners who would have no problem dabbling in such nefarious behavior. That’s what makes the story so rich, and so fascinating to me: as you’ll see as you get to know the characters better. Almost all of the characters had warring issues in their souls: wanting to win, and wanting to make a lot of money. In 2009, those things go together. In 1912, it wasn’t always the case.
Q: Much like your last book, 1941: The Greatest Year in Sports, your narrative occasionally leaves the ballpark and takes issue with the real world. Why did you think that would be a better way to tell this story?
A: Well, in “’41,” I thought it was an essential part of the storytelling process because everything that took place on the field in that marvelous sporting year was made even bigger given the context of the time, everyday life in every home being measured against the gathering storm of war. In many ways, I found a kindred sense in this book, because even though the baseball itself was fascinating, it had to battle for space in the 14 New York newspapers, in the five papers that covered Boston and in the national press.
New York was in the throes of a classic newspaper war, Pulitzer’s World and Hearst’s American battling for readers every day along with everyone else. Baseball certainly sold its share of papers. But so did the tale of Charles Becker, a rogue NYPD cop whose trial was held simultaneous to the World Series and was, in many ways, a Trial of the Century that would surpass in interest any to follow until O.J. Simpson tried squeezing into the famed pair of leather gloves on the stand in 1995. In addition, there was a heated four-way presidential race ongoing, involving four of the most colorful figures of the day: ex-president Theodore Roosevelt, President William Howard Taft, Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson and Socialist Eugene V. Debs. And Roosevelt, always larger-than-life, would find himself unwittingly dominating Page 1 after a fateful encounter with a madman in Milwaukee.
As much as I think baseball's own history is itself as vivid and compelling as any history can be, I believe that when you allow a broader context and a deeper understanding of the times in which these athletes played, it allows a far greater picture and tells a far richer story.