DUGOUT BASEBALL BOOK REVIEW

Baseball fans will love this book. Those who cherish the history of baseball will find this wonderful telling of the story of the 1914 Boston Braves—the “miracle Braves”—to be a truly engaging and entertaining tale! It features interesting characters, dialogues, and an incredible journey by the Boston Braves from last place in the National League on the fourth of July to World Champions in September when they bested Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics in a 4-0 sweep of the World Series. A most “improbable” ride!

Martin Bush has meticulously researched this story—with the most impressive array of sources one can imagine!—to give us a truly “inside look” at this astounding season and the “cast of characters” who made it happen.

Of central focus is the story of the Braves’ unique manager, George Tweedy Stallings (1867-1929). Bush calls him the “Big Chief” and describes him as “a master builder of championship teams, one of the most extraordinary managers in baseball history” (7). We follow the life of “George from Georgia” through his minor league ventures to leading the Braves through this spectacular season. Stallings was “a star at football, track, and baseball…a cerebral tough guy, a mixture of will, fight, and an unyielding desire to win, always charging, exhorting, ordering, a leader of men” (7).

Bush writes captivatingly and is a master of concise descriptors—often as character traits. Stallings had frequent run-in with others, especially persons of power—including Bancroft (Ban) Johnson who became President of the new American League. At one point, when Stallings was manager of Detroit, before it became a Major League Club, Johnson publicly accused Stallings of “egregious mismanagement of funds, spotty paperwork, and a stunning lack of accountability, stopping just short of using the word “embezzlement” (67). Bush describes: “Their blunt exchanges were like hand-to-hand combat: they clawed at each other like jungle beasts” (69). Stallings’ relative success in piloting the New York Highlanders (Yankees) in 1909 and popularity in the City, “grated on Ban Johnson” who waited for a time to destroy Stallings. Says Bush, “the time will come, he kept reminding himself, and when it does. . .He chuckled inwardly—like a big fat unpleasant cat, its tail twitching, ready to pounce—as he followed Stallings’s every move” (83). Johnson’s dislike ran so deep that “he demanded George Stallings’s scalp, wanted him drummed out of the American League and barred from organized baseball for life” (84). Ban Johnson, says Bush, was “the leader of his own parade” (85).

Stallings and Johnson did not speak for nine years after 1901, when Johnson had gained control over the Detroit ball club and “drove him out of the American League” (101). Bush is unsparing in his descriptors of the President. He describes Johnson as a person “whose ambition did not leave time for morals;” as “self-infatuated;” “the Lord High Everything.” (101). To him, says Bush, professional baseball was “in the business of public entertainment. Baseball was a commodity An enterprise. An industry. Commerce came first” (101). Through it all, “malice remained Johnson’s animating impulse” (108).

By contrast, we have Bush’s description of Christy Mathewson: “Impressive looking, college-educated, a gentleman among hooligans, ‘Matty’ was the man most admired and respected among members of the team. He was an icon. A national hero. In the words of sportswriter Bill McGeehan: ‘The incarnation of all those virtues with which we endow the ideal American’” (203).

Stallings was named manager of the Boston Braves after the 1912 season. Under Stallings, the Braves finished fifth in the National League in 1913. In 1914, their astonishing rise began in July. Bush describes Stallings’ musings on the train home after a 10-2 loss…to the Buffalo Bisons: “The team was breaking apart, backsliding into mediocrity. They’d lost five straight in the first four days of July (they were 15 games behind the first-place Giants) and made a nightmarish 21 errors in those five games…21 errors. What happened to pride? he wondered. Did it crash and burn? A grunt of frustration boiled out of his throat. Somehow the team had to be shaken up and put back on track” (166).

Then, Stallings stopped short when he reached his compartment door, turned brusquely, and looked fixedly down the long Pullman, his angry, swarthy face bathed in sweat. A sarcastic smile parted his lips: ‘Bah!’ he snarled, in a voice like an arctic wind. ‘You call yourselves big leaguers, huh? Why you—.’ He broke off. There was a distressful pause. ‘You goddamn bums couldn’t whip a girlie team in petticoats.’ ‘His grunt of disgust cut us to the quick,’ [Rabbit] Maranville said. ‘I don’t think we were ever hurt more’ (166).

A response then came from team captain, Johnny Evers. Evers challenged all the players: “Suddenly there was a blast of mockery from one end of the Pullman to the other. ‘Some of you guys aren’t playing at the intensity you have to play at to win,’ Evers shouted. ‘We’ve got to have commitment. No more lackadaisical play. We’ve gotta change the pattern. Change our luck’ (170). Then, Evans moved from player to player. No one escaped, regular or benchwarmer. If a man hesitated or sat poker-faced, Evers challenged him, got in his face, eyeball to eyeball, and was even more indomitable. Blunt words were exchanged. He would work himself into a frenzy and refuse to move until he extracted the response he wanted. And he made each player shout it out for everyone to hear (170).

Things did change. A new intensity among Brave players emerged; as well as what Bush describes: “The boys were beginning to believe in themselves. Their upbeat sentiment grew. They played each game as if it were part of a movie of a game they’d won the previous day, confident about the way it would turn out” (176). The team went on a 23-5 streak since July 6 and ascended to within 6½ games of the league-leading club, the New York Giants. On August 4, the Braves were 47-45, continuing their run at the Giants, and “it seemed like everyone in the Hub City was Braves crazy” (177).

A chief, motivating factor through it all was Stallings himself. Says Bush: With his legs crossed and one foot wiggling in the air at all times, Stallings’s eyes were everywhere at once. And his acid wit, never meant to hurt, dominated the dugout. He suffered through every play, hectoring, badgering, and bellowing like a lion roaring just to hear himself roar. Fans who had never before heard his yawping kept asking friends: ‘What’s wrong with the guy? Is he out of his mind or something?’

‘One minute he’d be praying,’ Charlie Deal said, ‘the next minute cursing. But he was a grand man’ (204).

Bush says, “John McGraw and Connie Mack made it a rule never to criticize a player while a game was in progress. Not George Stallings. He was the hardest taskmaster in the game. Yet he wasn’t unpopular. It was just that profanity was the lubricating oil he used in putting together a winning combination” (205).

The Braves began to capture the imagination and hearts of the nation as they climbed from last place to second. “Brave watchers” abounded. In visiting cities, it often felt as if the crowds were rooting for the Braves to beat the home team (213). They began to win routinely; and came on to take sole possession of first place after they beat the Giants (235).

By September 21, only New York and Boston were in the pennant race. But the Giants collapsed. And the Boston Braves won the pennant on September 27, 1914. Stallings exclaimed: “I have seen a half broken, wild, spirited saddle horse take the bit in his teeth and for a time nothing in the world, save dynamite, could stop him. It was just that way with the Braves” (246). They were the “Miracle Braves”! Bush tells us that “Umpire Bill Klem, when elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, was asked to name the most spirited team he’d ever seen during his 70-odd-year career in the major leagues, both on the field and as a supervisor of umpires. Without the least bit of hesitation, the Old Arbiter paid tribute to manager George Stallings’s 1914 Braves: ‘They were the most spirited team I ever saw’ (246).

Part III of this book tells the story of the Braves’ World Series play against the venerable Connie Mack and the Philadelphia Athletics, a powerhouse in the American League. Bush provides detailed accounts of the games and continues to delight us with his stories of events and personalities.

In short: the Boston Braves pulled off “the first official four-game sweep in World Series history” (Wikipedia, “1914 World Series”). The “Miracle Braves” performed yet another “miracle”!

Martin H. Bush has given us a great baseball book. His tireless accounting of the persons, events, and ethos of the 1914 season, plus the details that produced this intriguing story makes this a splendid book that holds our interest through all its pages.

At the conclusion of his book, Bush gives us three comments that help capture the greatness of this narrative:

‘It was in a period of sustained brilliance that the Braves beat the Mackmen four straight,’ Grantland Rice wrote, ‘and furnished the greatest upset in baseball history.’

‘Hereafter,’ Ty Cobb wrote, ‘George Stallings will have to be rated among the greatest managers that the game has ever produced….He won the World Series Championship by beating what was considered to be the greatest team ever put together.’

‘The Mackmen are still a great team,’ Sid Mercer wrote. ‘You can’t take that away from them. But they were defeated by a team that rose to greater heights than any team ever mounted in a World Series’ and achieved the seemingly impossible (341).