57 Years Later, Paper Reveals How It Lost Gamble on Series

About 57 years after a dark day when 10,000 copies of the Daily News went into the trash instead of onto the street, the Springfield newspaper has revealed that it reported the wrong team won the World Series.

“Assuming that confession is good for the soul or at least good for the readers, we admit that we did have the Chicago Cubs win that fifth game of the 1929 World’s Series, whereas the Athletics won it,” Daily News Editor Richard C. Garvey said in his column in today’s editions.

“And yes, we never admitted it. Why bother the reader with details like that? And anyway, we got it right the second time.

Upside-Down ‘V’ for A’s

“Well, almost right,” Garvey wrote. In the paper’s scramble to remake the front page, the compositor used an upside-down “V” instead of an “A” for the Athletics, then the pride of Philadelphia.

Garvey maintained it was all the Athletics’ fault.

“They had played lackluster ball all that day at Shibe Park, and had taken a long time to do it. As the game dragged on to the last inning, and the Cubs had been holding their 2-run edge for five innings, The Daily News decided to take a chance that the A’s would never wake up. So, a pressman punched in a “0” for the A’s in the last of the ninth, and the presses rolled.

“The newspapers were bundled and put into the trucks which were held in the Cypress Street alley by Charles Meyrick, circulation manager. As soon as he was given word that the Athletics had remained true to form in the last of the ninth, he would step aside and let the trucks roll. The Daily News would beat the Evening Union to the newsstands with news of the Cubs’ victory.”

What Really Happened

But as every student of baseball knows, Moose Haas blasted a two-run homer to tie the game, Al Simmons knocked a double off the fence and Bing Miller hit another double, sending Simmons homeward.

“As soon as he touched home plate, the game was over, the series was over, and The Daily News was overwrought,” Garvey wrote in the column, which concluded: “We’re sorry about the error. We won’t let it happen again.”

“I just wanted to clear the record,” Garvey said of the newspaper’s decision to admit all 57 years later. “And we figured why should we laugh about it and not share it with our readers.”

“I’d love to have one of those Cub victory editions,” Garvey said, but Meyrick, who told Garvey the tale 35 years ago, supervised the immediate destruction of the papers, refusing to allow handlers to even unwrap the bundles, he said.