Fred Merkle’s Bonehead Play Forced Giant-Cub Playoff in 1908

The Cubs and Giants in the playoffs. It’s happened before. In New York, 1908, a time when the motto was “it’s great to be young and a Giant.” Fred Merkle was both.

Nineteen years old, he was only a minor player on a team led by Manager John McGraw and pitcher Christy Mathewson, a backup first baseman who batted just 41 times that season.

But a lack of concentration, a failure to touch base, so to speak, ensured that this lifetime .273 hitter would be remembered as long as any future Hall of Famer of that time.

“Merkle’s Boner” it’s called, a mindless blunder that ended 1 hour and 30 minutes of timeless baseball. A baserunning mistake which cost the Giants a pennant and set off a chain of events that reduce modern-day incidents like George Brett’s pinetar bat and Jay Howell’s scuffed baseballs to playground disputes.

The Cubs and Giants. The most powerful teams of the 1900s. Mathewson. McGraw. Three Finger Brown. Tinker to Evers to Chance. Stars of the deadball era’s greatest rivalry.

“Friendly competition” would have been unimaginable. No diplomacy was necessary then; those teams hated each other, cursing and fighting right on the field. Mathewson, a Bucknell graduate and accomplished chess player, was the exception. McGraw and the Cubs’ Johnny Evers were more like it: fierce, dirty competitors who ruthlessly seized on any opportunity for victory.

The Cubs, defending World Champions and winners of 223 games over the two previous seasons, were heavily favored to repeat in 1908. Pittsburgh, led by the great Honus Wagner at short, player-manager Fred Clarke and a deep pitching staff, seemed a good bet for second.

But the Giants had McGraw, widely acknowledged as the shrewdest manager of his time, and Mathewson, the graceful artist of the “fadeaway,” an early version of the screwball that made him a perennial 30-game winner.

Helped along by hard-hitting outfielder “Turkey” Mike Donlin, slick shortstop Al Bridwell and first baseman Larry Doyle, the Giants overcame numerous injuries, moving into first Aug. 24 by sweeping a doubleheader from Pittsburgh.

In late September, with the Cubs coming to town, the Giants led Chicago by three and 16 of their remaining 19 games were scheduled for the Polo Grounds, which now had about 6,000 additional seats to accomodate New York’s devoted fans.

But a doubleheader sweep by Chicago on Sept. 22 reduced the lead to one and set the stage for the most astonishing tie in baseball history.

The pitchers were Mathewson and Jack Pfiester, whose efficiency in beating New York gave him the nickname, “Jack the Giant Killer.” With first baseman Fred Tenney bothered by sore legs, Merkle filled in.

The first eight innings were like hundreds of other deadball games, a 1-1 deadlock with Mathewson tagged for an inside-the-park homer by nemesis Joe Tinker in the fifth and Donlin singling home a run the following inning.

Mathewson, winner of 37 games that year, settled down after Tinker’s hit and breezed past the Cubs in the ninth, even fanning the hated Evers.

In the bottom half of the inning, after Pfiester retired Cy Seymour on a grounder to Evers, Art Devlin lined a single to center. Moose McCormick forced Devlin with another grounder to second, but Merkle singled to right and the Giants had runners on first and third with two out.

The next batter, Bridwell, later described what followed:

“Well, the first pitch came in to me -- a fastball, waist high, right over the center of the plate -- and I promptly drilled a line drive past Johnny Evers and out into right center field. Bob Emslie was the umpire that day and he fell on his can to avoid being hit by the ball . . .

“Naturally, I ran to first base and McCormick raced home . . . But Merkle didn’t go all the way to second base. Instead, he went halfway down and then cut off and started running for the clubhouse, which was out in right center . . . “

Just imagine seeing this on national television: Thousand of delirious fans have poured onto the field; Evers is screaming for center fielder Solly Hofman to give him the ball so he can tag second for the force; Joe McGinnity, once a 30-game winner, but now a coach for the Giants, grabs the ball and throws it into the left-field bleachers amidst thousands of fans.

Somehow, Evers retrieves the ball, perhaps not THE ball, yet still, a regulation, major league baseball. He pushes through the crowd, steps on second and awaits the call. But from whom? The umpires, Emslie and Hank O’Day, hadn’t seen the play.

It should have ended then. Evers had actually tried the same manuever 19 days earlier against Pittsburgh, and the same umpire, O’Day, ruled against him. But with the Cubs demanding action, O’Day, from his hotel room, decided that since Merkle had not touched the base and McGinnity had interfered, the run was nullified and the game would be recorded a 1-1 tie due to darkness.

That wasn’t good enough for the Cubs, however. The way Chicago president Charles Murphy saw it, since the Giants failed to clear the fans off the field, his team should be awarded the game by forfeit.

Player-manager Frank Chance had his own ideas. The following afternoon he had the Cubs on the field at 1:30, 2 1/2 hours before gametime, and said that because the Giants failed to show up for the completion of yesterday’s contest, Chicago should be awarded the victory.

It didn’t work, of course, neither did McGraw’s appeals to the National League president and the National Commission for an overruling. When the Giants beat Chicago 5-4 in the series’ finale, with an exhausted Mathewson coming on in the seventh to preserve the win, they led by two with little over a week remaining.

Merkle would enjoy a fine career, even starring for the pennant-winning Cubs 10 years later, but this almost finished him. Denounced by The New York Times for “censurable stupidity” and The Sporting News for “thorough ignorance,” Merkle was miserable, unable to eat or sleep, wishing “that a large, roomy and comfortable hole would open up and swallow me”

His teammates could have bailed him out by holding onto to the lead, but Harry Coveleski, a 22-year-old left-hander for Philadelphia, became the second pitcher to earn the nickname “Giant Killer” by beating New York three times in the next five days.

The Giants and Cubs finished the season with identical 98-55 records and the National League board of directors scheduled a one-game playoff for Oct. 8 at the Polo Grounds.

It almost never came off. A furious McGraw, still insisting New York had already won, told his players they didn’t even have to show up and left it to a vote. With several Giants favoring a boycott, Mathewson and four others met with team president John T. Brush, who assured the players that a $10,000 bonus would be distributed whether they won or lost.

When the Cubs arrived at the ballpark for the deciding game, they were met, to their horror, by thousands of fans and had to be escorted by police to get inside.

“I never heard anybody or any set of men called as many foul names as the Giants fans called us that day from the time we showed up till it was over,” Brown remembered.

The Giants tried everything. McGinnity, hoping to pick a fight with Chance and get him ejected, interrupted the Cubs’ fielding practice after 15 minutes by ringing a bell from the bench and ordering them to get off.

Chance didn’t throw any punches, but faced off with the coach at home plate while Evers and McGraw swore at each other from a distance. Then, Dr. Joseph M. Creamer, McGraw’s handpicked team physician, approached the umpires, showed them an envelope containing $5,000, and said, according to crew chief Bill Klem, “You know who is behind me and you needn’t add anything.” (Creamer was banned from major league parks the following year).

But McGraw was out of luck and Mathewson out of steam. With New York leading 1-0 and Tinker leading off the third, the pitcher motioned his outfielders to move back. Donlin in right obeyed, so did left fielder McCormick, but Seymour stayed where he was and Tinker tripled over the center fielder’s head.

Catcher Johnny Kling followed with an RBI single, Evers walked two outs later and doubles by Frank “Wildfire” Schulte and Chance made it 4-1. Winning, a 4-2 final, was the easy part. Getting off the field was harder. In fact, it was downright dangerous.

“A lunatic asylum” was Brown’s memory. Outraged fans assaulted the Cubs, one breaking a cartilage in Chance’s neck, another pulling a knife on Pfiester. When Brown approached the walkway to catch the “L” train at 155th street, he told the police to get away because they might attract attention, and strolled untouched onto the subway car.

McGraw never forgave the league officials for taking away a pennant, but fiercely defended Merkle, taunted for years with shouts of “bonehead,” and even gave the first baseman a $300 raise for his 1909 contract.

And was Merkle the only “bonehead” on the 1908 Giants? In the first inning of the playoff game, Tenney was hit by Pfiester and Buck Herzog walked.

When Roger Breshnahan struck out, the ball fell out of Kling’s glove and landed right by the catcher’s feet. Responding to shouts of “Go on!” “Go on!”, Herzog broke for second, realized his mistake and was easily thrown out to kill the rally.

The runner should have listened more carefully, he would have recognized the voice of Evers urging him to advance.