Baseball's Greatest Season, 1924

6. From Independence Day to Labor Day

   ‫ﱛﱠﱛ‬ From Independence Day to Labor Day The Giants’ Juggernaut Stalls T HE PHASE of the baseball season that stretched from Independence Day to Labor Day—the great backstretch of summer —was the game’s annual test of physical endurance. In any major league city, daytime temperatures might rise into the 90s, and thermometers sometimes broke the 100-degree mark in St. Louis, Chicago, and Washington. In such weather, the daily grind of playing out in the sun, with no weekends off, gnawed at the resilience of even the strongest of men. Against the ravages of summertime heat and humidity , a ball club’s only good protections were bench strength and pitching depth. Of all the National League clubs, the New York Giants seemed the best endowed with these advantages, and as if to demonstrate the point, they cruised easily through the opening days of the backstretch, enduring their first shutout of the year on July 6 but in general looking comfortable and impressive. The Giants made a major statement when they swept through Chicago in mid-July, shattering whatever hopes the Cubs might still have nourished in 4 devastating games. They took the first contest, 14–3; George Kelly hit 2 home runs, while Irish Meusel, Frank Snyder, and Hack Wilson added round-trippers of their own. The next day, propelled by more home runs from Kelly and Wilson, the Giants pounded the Cubs 9–6. In the third game Kelly and Snyder hit round-trippers, and Virgil Barnes, who had emerged as McGraw’s fourth starter after Rosy Ryan continued to disappoint, allowed only • 63 • one Chicago runner to get as far as second base. The Giants won 7–0. In the final game, another Giant victory (9–4), Kelly hit his fifth home run of the series. Irving Vaughan reflected the spirit of the moment in Chicago when he wrote, “The undertaker backed his cart up to the front door of the Cubs’ residence last week and took away the remains of little Pennant Hope.”1 Before Kelly’s one-man blitz was over he had stroked out 7 home runs in six days. Meanwhile, on July 16, by defeating the Pirates , the Giants extended their lead to 101 ⁄2 games over the second-place Cubs, 111 ⁄2 over the third-place Dodgers, and 12 over the Pirates. They had won 55 of their first 81 games, playing at an impressive .679 pace. “The all conquering Giants,” Joe Vila wrote, “have turned the National League race into a top heavy farce.”2 But then the mighty Giants fell to earth. They split back-to-back 4-game series against the Pirates and the Reds and took only 3 out of 5 from the seventh-place Cardinals. These teams, it is true, were improving , especially on the mound. Wilbur Cooper of the Pirates, for example, belatedly hitting his stride, marched up to third place in victories among league pitchers during July, and the two outstanding Pirate rookies, Ray Kremer and Emil Yde, were the talk of the league. For the Reds, the advent of summer had brought with it Eppa Rixey’s traditional hot-season form, allowing the tall left-hander to spin off 31 consecutive scoreless innings in early July. Meanwhile, his teammate Carl Mays launched a winning streak of 9 games. As for the Cardinals, their ordinarily unimpressive pitching garnered headlines on two occasions in the third week in July. First, on July 17, Jesse Haines baffled the Boston Braves with the first no-hitter in Cardinal history and the only 9-inning no-hitter in the majors in 1924. Then, two days later, Herman Bell pitched and won both contests on a twin bill, dropping the Braves into the cellar; his feat marks the last time in National League history that a pitcher threw 2 completegame victories in a doubleheader. But even when all of these achievements by their opponents are allowed, there is no denying that the Giants , although still leading the Cubs by 7 games after play on July 29, were off their customary stride in the second half of the month. In retrospect , we note that Ross Youngs was out of the lineup during this period in order to receive medical attention for symptoms that were the first manifestation of the intractable infection that would kill him three years later at the age of thirty. C S • 64 • The...