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170: 1917 All-Star Game/Tim Murnane - MLB · Sports History Network

• 0:47
  This podcast is part of the Sports History Network, your headquarters for the yesteryear.
• 0:51
  Of your favorite sport.
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  You can learn more@sportshistorynetwork.com In 1933, baseball.
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  Held its first ever All Star Game.
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  Or did it.
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  Long before the Midsummer Classic played at Comiskey park as part of the Chicago's World's Fair, it wasn't unusual to see a gathering of baseball's best play an exhibition game.
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  In 1917, the Red Sox hosted an All Star Game.
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  Unlike any before it, this one had special meaning.
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  And next on Sports Forgotten Heroes, we'll take a look back at the game to honor a baseball giant, Tim Mernad.
• 1:35
  This is Sports Forgotten Heroes, a tribute to the stars who shaped the games we love to watch and the games we love to play.
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  Stars who provided us with many thrills, but when their time was up, they faded away.
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  We'll take a look back at their spectacular careers, their moments of fame, even if it was just for one season or just one game.
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  And now, here's your host, Warren Rogan.
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  Hello and welcome to Sports forgotten heroes, episode 170, the 1917 All Star Game, to honor Tim so who was Tim Mernane and what made this game so special?
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  Joining me on today's episode of Sports Forgotten Heroes will be Scott Reusch, whose book One Day in September was just released.
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  Scott has written about a very special game that took place at Fenway park in 1917 to honor the memory of a former player, manager, umpire, executive and respected baseball journalist whose word when it came to baseball was considered
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  gospel, Tim Murnane.
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  And we'll get into more about Murnane throughout today's episode and what made him so special.
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  So special, in fact, that the Red Sox hosted this game to honor Murnane and to help raise money for his family after his sudden passing.
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  What made the game even more unique is the fact that it took place in September during the pennant race.
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  And players such as Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Walter Johnson, and so many other stars of the day actually left their teams to play in this game, something you would never see happen today.
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  The Red Sox, led by Babe Ruth, were the hosts.
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  And the stars came out, too.
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  The the famous boxer, John Sullivan, Will Rogers, Fanny Brice.
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  They were all there because this game meant so much to so many.
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  And Scott captures it all in his wonderful book.
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  Before we get there, a few notes, Please follow Sports Forgotten Heroes on X@SportsFheroes.
• 3:52
  Look for the Sports Forgotten Heroes page on Facebook and wherever it is you are listening or watching.
• 3:59
  Please give Sports Forgotten Heroes a like a follow and hit that subscribe button.
• 4:04
  As always, I thank you for your support.
• 4:08
  Also, please remember to pick up a copy of my first book, College All Stars versus NFL Champions.
• 4:15
  You can order it on Amazon or straight from the publisher, McFarlandBooks.com that's McFarlandBooks.com and McFarland B O O K S.com and you can always reach out to me directly@SportsFH.infomail.com that's SportsFH.infomail.com okay, let's get into today's show with my
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  guest, Scott Roche.
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  Now joining me on Sports Forgotten Hero is Scott Reich, who has a new book out one day in September, Baseball Brotherhood and the Birth of the All Star Game.
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  And Scott, I gotta tell you, I find this really interesting because I just released my first book, the College All Stars versus the NFL Championship.
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  And it takes a look back at the history of the college football All Stars who played the first exhibition game every year of the summer against the defending NFL champions.
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  And the game started in 1934 and finished in 1976 for a myriad of reasons.
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  But what I find interesting is part of the reason for the game, the College Football All Star Game was because of the Chicago World's Fair, where a year earlier in 1933, was the first ever baseball All Star Game
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  played at Comiskey Park.
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  However,.
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  In discovering your book, I might be wrong.
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  It might not have been the first ever all star game in 1933.
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  Perhaps the game that you talk about in your book that took place in 1917 is the true first ever Major League Baseball All Star Game.
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  So why don't you tell us a tiny bit about that game and, and, and then we're going to get into this, this discussion about who Tim Mernane was and why all of this came about.
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  Well, first, Warren, thanks for having me on the show.
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  I appreciate it and congrats to you on your book.
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  Thank you.
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  I'm familiar with the 1933 MLB All Star Game because obviously that was part of the research that I pursued while I was researching this book.
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  And what's fascinating to me is that even if you look only at the 1933 game, which as you know, was also born out of the Chicago World's Fair, which was also commemorating the centennial of the city of Chicago,
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  the reason that that game started in the first place was really for commercial reasons because the city of Chicago wanted to make money.
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  And we had the stock market had crashed and there was A concern about how do we get people to feel engaged and, gee, why don't we take some of our best athletes and make a show of it?
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  There was never an idea that they were going to make this an annual tradition.
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  In fact, the owners of the of that day objected initially, some of them, to having an All Star Game for the very reason that they feared that it would become an annual tradition.
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  So.
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  And why do I say feared?
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  Risk of injuries, concerned that their cities might not get the All Star Game, and a host of other reasons that primarily came down to business.
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  And there was a gentleman named Arch Ward who wrote for the Chicago Tribune, and he had been sort of put in charge of making this thing happen.
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  And the way they wound up getting unanimity among the MLB owners was to promise that there would be a rotating game, should there even be another one.
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  And by the way, there's another thing here that we should account for, which is the pure luck that the weather was good.
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  Because one of the things that the teams were concerned about was, well, what happens if the weather's bad?
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  We've shipped all of our players over to Chicago.
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  How are they going to get back?
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  And how will all the money that's been laid out to create this game actually come back?
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  And the Chicago Tribune actually ended up saying, we will guarantee all the costs if there's bad weather.
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  We will make everybody whole.
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  And it was after this game was a great success and Babe Ruth hits a home run in the game, it's a great story.
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  They decide, gee, why don't we do this again?
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  So to answer your question around this 1917 game, I think that the way I look at it is that there is no quote, origin, pure origin for anything in sport.
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  These things evolve over time.
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  The sport of baseball itself was not miraculously created on some farm field in Cooperstown by Abner Doubleday.
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  This was something that we adopted from various English games that changed.
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  There were competing American games.
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  There was the New York game.
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  There was the Massachusetts game with wildly different rules, and there were other benefit games.
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  The thing I think is fascinating about the early sports world is that when tragedy struck in different circumstances, there was an impulse for people to say, let's get together, let's do something a little bit special.
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  And one of these games, the one that I think synthesized all of these ideas and had the broadest array of talent in the backdrop of World War I.
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  So this pretty dramatic time in history, they played a game at Fenway park, and nobody really knows this story.
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  It was played September 1917, the US had entered the war in April of 1917.
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  And this gentleman, Tim Renane, who was the 30 year sports editor of the Boston Globe, had died of a heart attack earlier in the year and left behind a wife and young children.
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  And there was this great impulse to say, well, in the context of the war, it would be great to bring people together, but we really need to pay it forward and honor what Tim had done for the game
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  and we need to help his family.
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  And so the two time defending World Series champion Red Sox hosted the game.
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  And Babe Ruth, in his pre Yankee days was the starting pitcher on the mound for the Sox.
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  And they played against this constellation of All Stars from all around baseball.
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  And what's remarkable, Warren, is that these players left their teams and their regularly scheduled games during a pennant race on their own dimensions for no compensation, overnight trains to come to Boston and pay their respects to this guy
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  who had done so much for the game, which I know we'll talk more about.
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  And before the game they had a Home Run Derby.
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  They had a fastest race around the bases, they had most accurate throw.
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  They had incredible entertainers of the era that we can talk about.
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  And then this game turned out to be an unbelievable game that was really contested and competitive.
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  And you had players like Ty Cobb, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Walter Johnson pitched for the All Stars.
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  Tris speaker, the former Red Sox perennial All Star, the second greatest batting average of all time, who was playing for the Cleveland Indians at that time.
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  Connie Mack is the manager.
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  It's just this unbelievable collection of talent all on one field and not for money, not for a championship or anything in the standings, but because they felt they owed something to the game and this man who had helped
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  advance it in its early years.
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  Wow.
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  It's so interesting because here so many of us thought really the first All Star Game, and technically the first All Star Game was the game played in 1933 at Comiskey Park.
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  And it's funny to hear you talk about how the owners were, had, were so reluctant and yet it wound up being a game that was played twice a year before it was rolled back to once a year.
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  But your game that you talk about in 1917, I mean, a Home Run Derby, you know, all these other events, all these other competitions, and here we think, you know, we had this All Star Game going on and
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  oh my gosh, we're going to invent this new thing, a Home Run Derby.
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  And they did it before.
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  They actually had a TV show for a while too called Home Run Derby.
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  So, you know, really, really interesting.
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  But before we get into all that, I think we do need to explore a little bit more about Tim Mername.
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  Who was Tim Mername and why was he such an important figure in baseball's early years?
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  It's a big question, Warren, and it's one that I address in my book one day in September, because we have to explore why was this person so special that warranted this incredible display of camaraderie and charity?
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  Because the money raised was significant from this game.
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  And the answer to that question is a really nice story.
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  So this person, Tim Renane, was an immigrant as a young boy from Ireland, and his family settled initially in Connecticut and he wound up in Boston.
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  And he was somebody who, when he first got exposed to baseball, he fell in love right away.
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  And as many people who were immigrants of that era and for another generation thereafter, baseball became this, this place, this leveling field, literally and figuratively, where people could escape their background a little bit.
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  Because it was based on merit, it was based on performance.
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  And if you could play on the field, you were welcome to compete, whether or not you even spoke English or which country your family came from.
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  And Murnane is an average player.
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  He's not known as being a great player, but he was there at the inception of the National League as an Original player in 1876.
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  And he had played in other professional leagues before that.
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  He was the first baseman, he played some in the outfield, and along the way he became this well respected person.
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  Now, okay, at this point in the story, nothing really special yet.
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  There's a lot of well respected people who participate in sports.
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  But what happens in the ensuing years after he retires?
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  He decides, I'm going to start a family.
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  But he can't, he can't let go of baseball.
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  He just can't let go.
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  And so he opens up a bar with a billiards room, try to make ends meet, and he finds himself going to the games.
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  He's talking to players, he's talking to owners, and he becomes this sort of godfather type figure, like a, not just a consultant, but almost a consigliere, to continue the analogy there, where he's whispering into the ears of people
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  and he's a scout, he's an umpire, he is a commissioner of a league.
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  He does all these remarkable things that basically endear him to many people around baseball at all different levels.
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  And in fact, what we now know today as the minor league system was something that he basically ran over 50 leagues.
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  And along the way, he picks up a pen and he starts writing.
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  He at one point had his own newspaper called the Boston Referee, but he quickly got scooped up by the Globe and became their sports editor with a focus on baseball, where he spent the bulk of his.
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  Of his professional life.
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  And along the way, he wrote books that were literally called how to Play Baseball and with new additions each year, because he felt that there was a need to evangelize the game.
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  And that included not only sharing with people stories and statistics, but literally teaching people, how do you form a league, how do you get a team developed, what kind of equipment is needed, and, you know, smart marketing.
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  He would partner with companies like Spalding and places that sold the equipment.
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  So these books would literally be essentially advertisements at the same time that they were teaching people about the game.
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  And people could order from the catalogs and so forth.
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  And through this, Tim becomes this trusted voice around America in regards to baseball.
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  He's known as a man of exceptional character.
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  He's somebody who essentially becomes the conscience of the game, and somebody who's looked to as not only a bridge between the game's earliest years and all the years that he was around to navigate and help lead and write
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  about, but as somebody who was a fatherly figure to so many.
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  And because of this, he had relationships around the league, and he was a known writer around the country, syndicated.
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  And when he died, there was not only the sudden shock that came with it, because it was unexpected, but also a great impulse, as I referenced before, for people to say, we should gather, we should do something to
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  help this guy.
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  He's done so much for the game, and now his family doesn't have the resources.
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  He had six kids.
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  What are we going to do to help this guy?
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  And they came together and had this game.
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  Yeah, he was such a good writer.
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  Right.
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  He won the J.G.
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  Taylor Spink Award for great, you know, for excellence in baseball journalism, I guess we'll call it.
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  I mean, the guy was, you know, he wore a lot of hats in baseball.
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  I mean, he was a player, he was a manager, he was an executive, like you said, he was a sports editor.
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  Had his own publication then, the Boston Globe.
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  From what you just said, I would ascertain that perhaps his greatest contribution to the game, his greatest impact on the game, must have come from his writing.
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  No question about it.
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  It was his words that found their way into people's homes in newspapers, obviously.
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  But also, he was a recognizable figure.
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  He had this thick Irish brogue in terms of his accent, and he had a warm handshake and hugs for Just about everybody that he saw.
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  And even.
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  Even in.
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  After he passed, the Boston Globe talked about how he would sing merry tunes while he was cranking out his columns.
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  And in fact, he cranked out his last column literally a few minutes before he died.
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  And this is somebody who was so trusted a voice that people, when they read his words, they had the confidence and understanding to know that he knew what he was talking about because he'd been around the game since
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  the beginning, but they also appreciated his directness.
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  And he would be just as fast to call out an umpire for a bad call as he would be to praise an umpire for making a tough call.
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  He would talk about players on their hitting streaks and who was struggling and why they were doing so, and essentially just telling it like it was.
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  He was not a homer in the sense that he was not a hometown favorite guy.
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  He just literally wrote about whatever happened.
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  And what also made him magical, I think, and is a departure somewhat from where we are today because of the access that was available to him in that era, was that in the off season, he would travel to
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  the homes of players and simply get to know them better.
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  And he wouldn't even talk baseball necessarily.
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  He wouldn't even write about it from a baseball perspective.
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  He would learn about their.
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  Their lifestyles, learn about what food they ate and what they like to do for their hobbies and where they lived in the offseason.
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  And these became stories later on where he essentially was able to introduce fans to players in a totally different way.
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  And I think that was another way that people felt connected to him.
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  So let me set a picture for everybody watching or listening.
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  He was there, as you said, really before the National League, before there was a National League.
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  He started playing in 1872 with the Middletown Mansfields, and.
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  And that's Middletown, Connecticut.
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  And he played for Athletic of Philadelphia, the Philadelphia White Stockings, the Boston Red Caps, the Providence Grays and the Boston Reds.
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  And he actually became a player manager, I think, with the Boston Reds as well.
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  He ran the.
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  A couple of the different minor leagues, and then he became this.
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  A great writer.
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  So to ask the question, how respected was he among players, among executives, among the fans, his peers, is sort of a wasted question, but I have to ask it.
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  How respected was he?
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  Well, I think that the turnout at the game is evidence that he was incredibly widely respected.
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  And having had the opportunity to read through all these newspapers of the era, not only in Boston, but from around the country in the wake of his tragic passing, you have essentially every major sports writer and A lot
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  of non sports writers were just eulogizing this guy left and right.
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  I mean, the people that came to his funeral, his Paul Bear, Babe Ruth was one of his pallbearers.
• 21:31
  Right.
• 21:31
  You know, I mean, these are people that are the giants of the game who felt not only this kinship with him, but the respect that they should stop what they're doing and participate in a game to memorialize him
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  and to honor his legacy.
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  So the answer is about as respected as anybody could possibly be.
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  And you had 17,000 people showed up for this game.
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  That didn't count.
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  But just to see these special players and to commemorate what Tim had done for the game and to give you an idea, the very next day, I think Boston was so exhausted as a city that they actually had
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  one of the lowest attendances in franchise history to modern dates.
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  They had 356 people come the following day.
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  That's how intuit everybody was the day before.
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  And all the anticipation for this.
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  But there were newspaper articles about this guy around the country talking about his death, because that was national news.
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  And for years after, especially in Boston and in the Globe, readers would write in literally saying, I wish Tim Renane was still around.
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  I mean, these were literally letters to the editor and people saying, you know, tell us about that game again.
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  And this went on for years after he died.
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  So I would say that on a scale of, you know, zero to maximum respect, he's definitely the latter.
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  I think you.
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  You.
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  You sort of answered my next question.
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  I don't know where I saw it.
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  As we are recording this, your book hasn't hit hit the stores yet.
• 23:05
  It's not out yet.
• 23:06
  We're recording this on July 1st.
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  It's my understanding your book comes out in another week or two.
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  July 7th.
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  July 7th.
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  So this podcast will be up as shortly after your book is out there.
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  And I encourage everybody to get it because it's such a wonderful topic.
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  But I think I saw someplace where it was said what Tim Mernane doesn't know about baseball isn't worth knowing.
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  And so the question is, is that an exaggeration or was he truly viewed as baseball's foremost authority?
• 23:51
  I don't think it's an exaggeration.
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  When you look at the major figures of that era, there were certainly others, of course, but there was a gravitas that came with who this person was.
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  And the level of respect that he commanded was truly in every room.
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  He was universally beloved, and even if people disagreed with him, they knew that he was simply being truthful, being honest about how he felt about something.
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  And he always wanted to focus on protecting the integrity of the game.
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  One of the things that I think led to so much of this appeal was that Monet didn't see baseball simply as a game or a sport.
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  He saw it as a training ground for people to build character, to hold people up as models for society around how professionals and adults should carry themselves.
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  And so for him, this idea of not just sportsmanship but character was so interwoven with what his expectations were of players.
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  And in fact, what he talked about in his books, what he wrote about, was really all about the virtues that he wanted ballplayers to have.
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  And you could really substitute the word citizens for ballplayers.
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  He wanted everybody to have this.
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  This is a romantic period in American history when you have the rise of the Progressive Era and obviously major waves of immigrants coming.
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  And there's.
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  This is Teddy Roosevelt's country, and he's talking about the obligations of citizens.
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  And Renane is one of the major voices of the era that's talking about how people ought to carry themselves.
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  One of my favorite pieces of one of his books that he wrote called how to Play Baseball, he has a list, literally, titled Murnane's Don'ts.
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  And there are things that he doesn't want people to do.
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  And in short, they say things like, don't show up late.
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  Don't blame somebody else for your failure.
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  Play by the rules, accept the outcome.
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  And other things that seem charming and perhaps quaint today, but nonetheless really are the underpinnings of the old golden rule and what you expect to teach people in kindergarten.
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  Right?
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  And that we seem to be, in some senses, from our public discourse, lacking today.
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  And here's this guy in the context of baseball, talking about what he expects and what the game demands of its players.
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  And I think that that's pretty special and worth remembering today.
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  You would think that there were other big baseball personalities who passed away, you know, during the same era.
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  But why did his death create such an emotional response throughout the baseball community, as opposed to the death of others who, again, might have had a huge personality when it came to baseball?
• 26:40
  As I said earlier, Warren, there were other benefit games, and typically they were played in the context of somebody having passed away unexpectedly.
• 26:49
  There was a player, Doc Powers, who died in the very first game at Shiba park in Philadelphia, literally crashed into a wall.
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  And hours later at the hospital, he was.
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  He was gone.
• 27:00
  There's Adi Joss, who was one of the great pitchers of all time, one of the top Few eras, lifetime as a pitcher who died unexpectedly at age 31.
• 27:08
  And I mean, this is a guy in terms of wins above replacement was on such a pedestal statistically that, you know, had he been able to play for several more years, he would be a name that everybody knows
• 27:18
  today.
• 27:19
  Each of these guys had memorial games played for them, but they were not as big.
• 27:23
  And part of it, I think was just the timing in which these games happened.
• 27:26
  So the latter game I mentioned occurred in 1911.
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  And, you know, the access to transportation, the trains, and also just the growth of the leagues themselves lent themselves to something, to a bigger occasion in 1917.
• 27:41
  In these benefit games I'm referencing, one of them was a six inning game that was just more for fun and they rotated positions every single inning.
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  Another one had representation from only four teams.
• 27:51
  I think that there was a convergence of a few things.
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  One was that this was not the first benefit game.
• 27:56
  So there was this idea that when tragedy strikes, we should gather, we should come together and we should do something as a big community of baseball and among players, fans, owners and so forth.
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  That's one piece of it.
• 28:07
  Another piece is that Tim Renane was this truly beloved figure who had touched so many lives.
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  I mean, this was somebody that would just as easily be in a bar being toasted by people and then stand up to give a talk.
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  And then, you know, he'd go back and write his column for the next day, and the next day he'd be on the field presenting something to a hometown player who'd come up the liners and made it to the
• 28:30
  bigs.
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  This guy was ubiquitous.
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  He was truly everywhere.
• 28:33
  And I think we can't forget also the fact that World War I did something that I think most wars do, which is it creates a different level of camaraderie and patriotism in people in terms of how it's displayed
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  and the desire to come together.
• 28:47
  And when people are reading in headlines on a day to day basis about the grim facts going on in the war in Europe and the scores of entire communities that are forever impacted, I mean, we're talking about battles
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  where a million people would die.
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  A million, right.
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  I mean, it's in single battles over stretches of time.
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  I mean, that is unfathomable.
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  And then our troops start going overseas.
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  Woodrow Wilson, who had campaigned in 1916 for reelection under the slogan he kept us out of war gets to a point and there are facts that led to this.
• 29:23
  The bombing of the Lusitania that led to the deaths of many Americans and other factors.
• 29:28
  There was The Zimmerman Telegram that where there was, Germany was trying to facilitate a secret alliance with Mexico, which would, of course, impact and threaten our southern border.
• 29:38
  And all these circumstances lead Wilson in April of 1917, to say, we have to keep the world safe for democracy.
• 29:44
  And, you know, I know I kept us out of war, but now's the time that we have to go.
• 29:47
  We have no choice.
• 29:48
  And so the convergence of.
• 29:50
  Of all of these factors creates this.
• 29:53
  This confluence of.
• 29:55
  Of, you know, energy and ideas, and it leads to this incredibly remarkable day.
• 30:02
  So I gotta ask you, how did you discover this?
• 30:06
  What were you just, like, reading through old newspapers, look at some old books?
• 30:12
  How did you stumble upon this?
• 30:17
  I was actually researching a different book that I was writing, and I was looking at some stories from the Civil War, and I came across a story about baseball having been played on the White House lawn during Lincoln's
• 30:29
  administration.
• 30:30
  And I was like, oh, that's funny.
• 30:32
  And I sort of started getting into, like, when did baseball actually start?
• 30:37
  Because I was just sort of curious, and one link led to another.
• 30:41
  I'm not sure quite of the exact path of how I got there.
• 30:44
  But then I came across this character, you know, Tim Renane.
• 30:46
  And I had never heard of him, and I had never heard of this game that was played to honor his memory and raise money for his family.
• 30:53
  And I was like, how is that possible?
• 30:55
  Because when I looked at the names of people who were playing, and, you know, it was the defending World Series champ, Red Sox, in their new ballpark, Fenway park, which had only been, you know, opened in 1912, which
• 31:05
  itself was a magical season where they won the World Series in dramatic fashion.
• 31:09
  This was a unique era.
• 31:11
  And when I learned about the game, I just sort of started saying to myself, man, this is an unbelievable story.
• 31:18
  I can't believe I don't know it.
• 31:19
  And so what I did, actually, was I started going through some old digital archives of the Boston Globe to see, like, is this real?
• 31:26
  You know, like, I saw a couple.
• 31:28
  I saw something on Wikipedia, and I'm like, I don't know if I can.
• 31:30
  You know, I got to really understand what happened here and see some real primary sources.
• 31:35
  And sure enough, this game happened.
• 31:37
  And it took some time, frankly, to actually dig up a lot of the details, but this was a widely promoted and celebrated game.
• 31:45
  And when I learned that it was real, I said, holy cow.
• 31:48
  I got to be the one that.
• 31:49
  That brings this to.
• 31:50
  To light.
• 31:51
  The other.
• 31:51
  The other factor that I think inspired me and motivated me to keep going warm.
• 31:55
  Once I saw the, the, the pieces of this story coming together is that I have a personal situation that has led me to appreciate and understand how valuable it can be when a community comes together for somebody in
• 32:10
  need.
• 32:11
  My middle son, Eli is seven years old and he suffers from a very rare brain condition called FOXG1 syndrome.
• 32:17
  And he's not able to walk or talk.
• 32:19
  He suffers seizures, he can't feed himself.
• 32:22
  It's a very complicated, tragic and overwhelming experience and journey for our family.
• 32:28
  And in the wake of his diagnosis in 2019, I actually started a non profit that has become a global nonprofit called Believe in a Cure.
• 32:36
  And we fund research around the world trying to develop a treatment for this condition.
• 32:41
  And we also support the broader rare disease community.
• 32:43
  We established a first of its kind free mental health platform for rare disease caregivers.
• 32:48
  We have a grant program for the families of, of children with rare disease to help with equipment like wheelchairs and specialized beds and outfitting homes and of that nature.
• 32:59
  And I've been very blessed to be embraced by a wide community of people, both in my community on Long island and frankly, globally and certainly around the country.
• 33:12
  And the opportunity to recognize in a totally different way, but how tragedy led to this incredible outpouring of support and coming together of people to say we owe something to each other.
• 33:29
  There's something special about that.
• 33:30
  It really resonated with me and the convergence of who this guy was and the fact that he had been forgotten, basically, and the fact that there were some aspects of his story that I felt mirrored some things that
• 33:43
  I've experienced firsthand.
• 33:46
  I said, I got to tell this story and I've got to be the one to do this.
• 33:51
  Wow, very sorry to hear.
• 33:53
  And we'll talk about that at the end, end of the podcast as well.
• 33:59
  Who organized this game?
• 34:02
  I mean, what the players just say, hey, let's go play a game in honor of Tim.
• 34:06
  How does something like this get organized?
• 34:10
  It's.
• 34:10
  It starts with an idea.
• 34:11
  Somebody says, let's do something for this guy.
• 34:14
  And it started with the Red Sox because, you know, Tim had lived in Boston and been the writer for the Globe.
• 34:20
  He wrote sometimes about the Boston Braves.
• 34:22
  Also sometimes in modern days, we forget that Boston had two great franchises of that era.
• 34:27
  And it was sort of like the Mets and Yankees of today.
• 34:31
  And what happened essentially was that the Taylor family had previously owned the Red Sox.
• 34:39
  And John I.
• 34:40
  Taylor, who was known as John I, was one of the instrumental people, even though he had recently sold the team a couple of years prior to say, let's get a committee together.
• 34:50
  And he served on it and recruited the commissioners of the National League and the American League, and he recruited a lot of the who's who of Boston societal leadership.
• 35:01
  So you had multiple Congress members of Congress on the committee, and there were some of Mernain's friends from the baseball world.
• 35:09
  And once that happened, it was really just a question of, can we find a date?
• 35:13
  And the Red Sox had an open date.
• 35:15
  They were not scheduled to play September 27, 1917, but the rest of the league was in action.
• 35:20
  So they said, all right, we can host it at Fenway without canceling all the other games, but we're going to invite these players to come from around the league.
• 35:28
  And, you know, there's Rabbit Marinville from the Boston Braves from the.
• 35:33
  From the National League, who felt so connected to Mernane that even though his team was far out of town, he took an overnight train to come back and be there.
• 35:41
  And his father came in from Springfield, Massachusetts, where he was living, to watch this game and pay his respects.
• 35:47
  This was not an uncommon thing.
• 35:48
  And frankly, they.
• 35:49
  They actually.
• 35:50
  It really became an entertainment event, not just a baseball game.
• 35:54
  And.
• 35:54
  And not only because of the pregame festivities, but also there were real celebrities who were invited to participate and perform.
• 36:00
  Will Rogers, for example, the great entertainer, winds up riding a horse and using a rope to lasso players on the field for fun, just purely as a joke.
• 36:09
  And the crowd's yelling, you know, rope.
• 36:11
  The police officers, the security guards.
• 36:14
  So he's running around, and Tris speaker takes the reins and he goes on the horse.
• 36:17
  So, I mean, these are.
• 36:18
  I mean, think about that.
• 36:19
  Would a team even allow a horse on a field today to be running around loose, right, and tearing up the field?
• 36:25
  Of course not.
• 36:26
  You had Fanny Bryce, who was famously of the Ziegfeld Follies and was portrayed later in a film by Barbra Streisand.
• 36:33
  She's there selling programs along with some of her friends and colleagues in the Follies.
• 36:37
  And conveniently, they are not.
• 36:40
  They're forgetting to give change to people who buy programs because they want to juice the.
• 36:44
  You know, the revenue for the.
• 36:45
  For the fund that's being created.
• 36:47
  You had John L.
• 36:48
  Sullivan, the original heavyweight boxing champ, who was known as the Boston Strong Boy, and he winds up coaching first base for a little bit, which is sort of a cameo that perhaps only that era could offer.
• 37:01
  And he gets in pugilistic poses with everybody pretending he's going to knock him out, and he winds up dying himself a few months later.
• 37:08
  This Might even be his last public opinion appearance.
• 37:10
  So you have this incredible time when it's easy from a nostalgic perspective to say, oh, America was so innocent, but there was an innocence about it, and it was just a different era.
• 37:21
  And I think one of the takeaways here, Warren, as I think about the historical legacy of a day like this, is how normal it actually felt to them.
• 37:30
  It was normal that in the wake of tragedy, in the wake of somebody's sudden passing, that people would come together, that they would make personal sacrifices, professional sacrifices.
• 37:41
  They would.
• 37:42
  Fans would bring their children to say, this is what we do.
• 37:45
  We're going to buy tickets, we're going to buy a program, and you're going to get entertained.
• 37:48
  Sure.
• 37:49
  But there was something special about that.
• 37:51
  And, you know, the next morning you could read the newspapers.
• 37:54
  The Boston Globe wrote a million columns about it, and a lot of these got syndicated.
• 37:59
  A lot of other newspapers around the country covered the story, too, about, you know, sharing what happened in the game with a box score and detailed, you know, stuff around what had happened.
• 38:07
  And it is a very dramatic game that comes right down to the wire.
• 38:10
  So for anybody who's curious, don't Google it.
• 38:13
  Read one day in September because it's.
• 38:15
  It's a fast read and you're going to get there and it's.
• 38:17
  It's worth the read.
• 38:19
  But.
• 38:19
  But the other thing that's special is that the next day, life just sort of went back to normal.
• 38:24
  Now, I know that sounds sort of the.
• 38:27
  The opposite of what I'm saying, like, well, they just went back to normal.
• 38:29
  It's like, yes, because this was normal and this would not happen today.
• 38:34
  And part of why I wanted to write this book also was to ask the question, why not?
• 38:42
  Why wouldn't this happen today?
• 38:43
  And we know the obvious reasons, and nobody is to blame for these.
• 38:46
  The world has changed dramatically, and we have all forms of media and technology, and the dollars are so big, obviously, and the risk of injury is quantified differently today.
• 38:59
  But you factor all these things in and it makes you wonder, what have we lost as a society over this century?
• 39:07
  Plus, where it was normal to do benefit games like this and to create a big spectacle and bring people together, raise money for a great cause.
• 39:16
  And it's not to say we're not generous as a country, as a people, and that there aren't great causes that we support.
• 39:21
  Absolutely.
• 39:22
  That's certainly true.
• 39:23
  I'm simply saying, why did something like this feel so normal back then and not transactional?
• 39:29
  It was.
• 39:29
  It was just a part of, yeah, we owe it to this guy and we're going to do something.
• 39:33
  And I feel we've drifted from that.
• 39:35
  And it would be great if we could figure out ways to return to that mindset.
• 39:41
  Well, it sounds like, you know, when you include all the different celebrities and public figures that were there for this game, Mernane was sort of a national treasure.
• 39:52
  And my gosh, the.
• 39:57
  All these guys that wound up in the hall of Fame who played in this game, it's like a Hall of Fame honor roll, right?
• 40:05
  Babe Ruth, like you said.
• 40:07
  Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Tris Speaker, Shoeless Joe.
• 40:11
  I mean, the list goes on.
• 40:15
  I'm not sure there was ever another charity game that, that attracted a roster like this.
• 40:26
  Now, again, this was the Boston Red Sox versus a team of all Stars.
• 40:32
  Oh, and I have to go back to something you said earlier.
• 40:34
  I just want to make sure I understand something.
• 40:38
  This was in the season.
• 40:40
  Teams were independent races.
• 40:46
  Did they, did they stop the season for this game or they left their team and went back to their team after the game?
• 40:54
  Just clear that one fact.
• 40:56
  The latter.
• 40:57
  The stars left their teams, their teams played without their best players, and the season went on as if, you know, as if that game was for scheduling purposes, was not going on.
• 41:08
  In other words, you know, if Ty Cobb wasn't there, the Tigers played without him.
• 41:12
  And what, what's fascinating also is that because the schedule returned to normalcy, meaning they kept going the next day and all these players left Boston after the game.
• 41:21
  You had some of these guys on the same field as each other the following day, you know, playing against one another, you know, All Stars that were.
• 41:27
  So it was, it was a pretty remarkable thing.
• 41:30
  But yes, the games went on.
• 41:32
  So they didn't stop or disrupt the season.
• 41:34
  They simply said, for this special day, we're going to ask our players to leave their teams.
• 41:40
  You know, a handpicked group of.
• 41:42
  So they were granted permission.
• 41:43
  They were granted perm commission to do this.
• 41:44
  They just.
• 41:45
  Absolutely, because they're under.
• 41:46
  They're under contract with the owners.
• 41:48
  And so the owners got behind.
• 41:50
  And that's part of.
• 41:51
  Going back to your question, Warren, about the organization behind this.
• 41:54
  There was a committee and they needed the buy in.
• 41:56
  In fact, the first purchasers of tickets were literally the commissioners of the National American Leagues buying boxes to show that they were supportive of this and that it was a good thing for the game, something that other owners,
• 42:08
  that the owners could get behind.
• 42:11
  Was there any player who appeared in this game, participated in this game that surprised you most during your research.
• 42:21
  Well, let me answer it in a slightly different way.
• 42:25
  What strikes me also historically, and you know this as a baseball fan, and many of our listeners and viewers are going to as well, what comes after 1917 in the baseball world?
• 42:34
  Well, the next big thing is the.
• 42:37
  The Black Sox.
• 42:38
  The Black Sox of 1919.
• 42:40
  And, you know, gambling.
• 42:43
  This is something that surprised me about my research.
• 42:45
  I really did not know and appreciate how rampant gambling was at this time in baseball.
• 42:53
  It had been there from the very beginning.
• 42:54
  Leagues would fold and reemerge partly because of what had happened with gamblers.
• 42:59
  I mean, guys were on the take on all these different teams and would throw games.
• 43:02
  And, you know, it was difficult to investigate.
• 43:05
  And it was.
• 43:06
  It was a complicated thing.
• 43:07
  In fact, during the season of 1917, in June, just a few months before this Mernane Day, there was a game that the Red Sox were playing against the White Sox at Fenway.
• 43:17
  And the.
• 43:18
  There was a section in the outfield that was known to be the place not just where the gambler sat, but where you could physically just make bets.
• 43:25
  It was if it was as if you could just go up to a window the way you're betting on a horse or, you know, in a casino somewhere.
• 43:32
  And these were the guys that were where money was changing hands.
• 43:35
  And the Red Sox had been on a little bit of a losing streak.
• 43:37
  And it started to drizzle during the game, and it started to get a little heavier in the fifth inning.
• 43:42
  And with the Red Sox behind and Ruth on the mound, the hometown gamblers were fearful that they were going to lose money again because they had bet on the Red Sox.
• 43:51
  A lot of these guys, that was where the house money was.
• 43:53
  And they literally ran onto the field to try to prevent the game from becoming a complete game.
• 43:59
  In other words, they were waiting for the storm to continually.
• 44:02
  To continue to worsen so that the umpires would call it off.
• 44:05
  The umpires wound up, you know, and they were looking for the police officers, security, who were all not to be found for whatever reason.
• 44:12
  And ultimately, it took a couple hours to work this out.
• 44:14
  But the way it got.
• 44:16
  They got these people off the field was they said, listen, if you don't get off the field, we're just.
• 44:19
  The umpires said the Red Sox are simply going to forfeit the game.
• 44:22
  So why do I say left the field and so on.
• 44:25
  The reason I share this story and this tidbit about gambling is that the game gets completely transformed in the wake of the Black Sox scandal.
• 44:33
  Because what has been Known privately and even publicly by a lot of people, comes out into the open and on the grandest stage, right, The World Series.
• 44:43
  And you have guys that are intentionally making errors and throwing games for money.
• 44:48
  And what happens is fascinating because Dan Johnson is the commissioner.
• 44:54
  Excuse me, is the.
• 44:55
  Yes, is the president of the American League.
• 44:58
  And as you well know, you know, Kennesaw Mountain Landis, the judge, gets appointed to be lifetime commissioner of baseball.
• 45:05
  And he comes out with this very heavy ban where he says, you know, it's a lifetime ban for the eight guys on the Black Sox.
• 45:13
  What I didn't know until I researched this was that that was not the end of gambling actually, in baseball.
• 45:20
  And part of what baseball was doing throughout the 1920s was trying to restore trust.
• 45:25
  This is a go go era, where you have the country, the stock market's booming.
• 45:29
  This is before the 1929 crash.
• 45:31
  You have Babe Ruth hitting home runs and people saying, wow, baseball, right.
• 45:35
  And they knew that if one bad thing would happen in the wake of the Black Sox scandal, which had threatened all of this, that it could really, probably permanently kill the game.
• 45:44
  And something happened.
• 45:45
  In fact, two of the stars that came and played on remain day were involved in it, and it was Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker.
• 45:51
  They were accused by a former Red Sox, as it would be Dutch Leonard, who said these guys thr games and produced some letters to this effect that made these.
• 46:03
  These accusations.
• 46:04
  And they actually led to the accelerated retirement of speaker and cop in just within weeks of each other, which stunned baseball.
• 46:13
  They were still hitting, you know, 330, 340, like in their prime, even after such a long career, still in there.
• 46:19
  Still in their prime, I should say.
• 46:20
  And they both just suddenly retire to protect the game, not because they were.
• 46:25
  Had such strong character about it, but the game.
• 46:27
  The leaders of the game said, you guys are going to have to retire and we're not going to blow this story up.
• 46:32
  And Ban Johnson, whom I mentioned, was actually hiding this story and wanted to make it go away.
• 46:37
  And the news ended up breaking and becoming public.
• 46:41
  And there was this huge public fallout.
• 46:43
  And people in towns across America were defending these stars, saying they would never do this.
• 46:49
  How could you?
• 46:49
  How could you besmirch their.
• 46:51
  Their legacies?
• 46:52
  And they ended up getting cleared, although evidence suggests that they probably were involved in something.
• 46:58
  And they ended up coming back for a year or two each and finishing their careers before permanently retiring.
• 47:04
  So when you say what surprised me, I took it a slightly different direction.
• 47:07
  But here are some of the biggest names of all time.
• 47:10
  Hall of Famers.
• 47:11
  I mean, Trish speakers.
• 47:12
  345 career hitter Ty Cobb, notorious for being a jerk, but also an unbelievable talent and competitor.
• 47:20
  And here they are, and they did perhaps something not dissimilar to what the Black Sox had done, and they got off because the game would have ended otherwise.
• 47:32
  And of course, this was before Babe Ruth was Babe Ruth.
• 47:38
  Well, it was sort of in parallel.
• 47:40
  Ruth had strong numbers.
• 47:41
  He was not yet known as the prolific hitter he became when he was pitching for the Sox.
• 47:45
  But as soon as he went over to the Yankees, he would already establish himself as a strong hitter, hitting more home runs than some teams combined.
• 47:52
  I mean, he was.
• 47:53
  But.
• 47:53
  But yes, it corresponds to the rise of Ruth.
• 47:56
  Right, so just tell us a little bit about the game itself.
• 48:00
  I don't want to spoil everything that's in the book because, you know, I.
• 48:04
  Hey, I mean, Scott, I could go on forever about this game.
• 48:11
  I mean, I'm sitting here thinking, do you think that Arch Ward, when he came up with the idea for the 1933 All Star Game, he knew about this game and said, you know, maybe if we do something like
• 48:24
  they did back then, you know, oh, my gosh, you know, later on, how do we spruce up the All Star Game?
• 48:32
  I know they did this thing back in 1917 called a home run derby, and they did these other things and.
• 48:39
  And, you know, maybe we could spruce up the All Star Game.
• 48:44
  And you would almost think, you know, you look at the NBA All Star Game with all their different events around it, you know, this game in 1917 was a precursor to all of that.
• 48:56
  And you talk about all this in your book, but what I want to know is, can you tell me a little bit about the game?
• 49:05
  Yes, I certainly can.
• 49:06
  And I think it's a question for history that I was not able to pin down an answer as to whether Arch Ward, I don't have anything documented suggesting that he knew about it, but I have to imagine that
• 49:18
  he was familiar with it because the concept of an All Star Game was also not even new in 1917.
• 49:25
  Two years earlier, for example, a writer named F.C.
• 49:27
  Lane, who wrote for Baseball Magazine, literally proposed an All Star Game.
• 49:31
  In fact, he proposed an annual All Star Series, a nine game series where they would pick the best of each league and, you know, have a best of nine and see who could win five games first.
• 49:42
  And so this was an idea that was floating around.
• 49:45
  There's no question that Ward inquired about what kinds of things had been done before.
• 49:50
  And they didn't do a home run Derby in 33, in 17.
• 49:53
  They didn't even call it a home run derby.
• 49:55
  They were just having a hitting contest essentially where they would fungo the balls to themselves, themselves.
• 50:00
  And you know, one of the balls that Ruth hit, I think one of the writers, I recall writing something like he had never seen a ball hit that high.
• 50:07
  And you know, I don't want to spoil what happens because you've got a few big time hitters in there and you've got, you know, most accurate throw from the outfield and some guys that have different arcs and you
• 50:18
  see the strategy, that's that Shoeless Joe had versus, you know, different players.
• 50:22
  And it's pretty remarkable to see.
• 50:24
  As for the game itself, it.
• 50:26
  I'm not going to spoil it, but it did come down to the wire and basically you had, it was a really strongly contested game.
• 50:35
  This was not a throwaway.
• 50:36
  These guys were playing for pride.
• 50:39
  And basically, you know, you can imagine the lineup right when you, when you have Rabbit Marinville leading off, who's a real spark plug for a lineup, you've got a 3, 4, 5 that includes shoeless Joe, Ty Cobb and
• 50:54
  Tris Speaker.
• 50:55
  I mean, are you kidding me?
• 50:56
  It's unbelievable.
• 50:57
  And the Red Sox team, you know, we haven't talked about them, we talked about Ruth, but had some phenomenal players on their team.
• 51:03
  And they, they had Duffy Lewis and Harry Hooper in the outfield who along with Tris speaker, when he had been a Red Sox, were collectively known as the Golden Outfield and may have been truly to this day, the,
• 51:12
  the greatest defensive outfield in the history of baseball.
• 51:15
  I mean, guys that were doubling up on every throw and had unbelievable numbers of assists and put outs and, you know, people don't appreciate that.
• 51:23
  You know, Fenway park has changed a bit as a stadium.
• 51:26
  It has always had this taller wall than usual.
• 51:29
  It wasn't the Green Monster originally, but it was a 25 foot wall.
• 51:33
  What's remarkable about the outfield is that from the left field foul pole all the way to center field where you would expect to see a warning track, they had an upward incline, a hill in the ballpark.
• 51:43
  And so Duffy Lewis, who played left field, had to get really familiar with understanding all the caroms and the possibilities coming off the boards.
• 51:50
  It would be almost like, you know, a hockey player studying where the shots go and where they deflect and carry them off the boards.
• 51:57
  So this was a remarkable era and some real great special talents there.
• 52:02
  And so the game is very competitive.
• 52:04
  You have some very close plays also that are detailed in an illustration that I show that appeared in the Boston Globe the following day from an artist named Wallace Goldsmith.
• 52:15
  What was common at that era is that part of the way newspapers would tell readers what happened was not only through the words of articles, but also having these very involved and detailed cartoons that might take up half
• 52:28
  a page or even a full page, where they would draw, literally draw in cartoon form, the plays that had occurred.
• 52:35
  And there were some photos, too, but there would be literally just these drawings.
• 52:38
  And you can see after reading the book, you can appreciate the illustrations and how cool they were because essentially these illustrators were journalists and storytellers themselves, bringing things to life.
• 52:49
  And, you know, it was.
• 52:51
  It was special because you have all these big names playing in it.
• 52:55
  And I'm being mindful that I don't want to give away the games here.
• 52:59
  So, Warren, obviously I encourage people to read the book one day in September, but the way I will make one comment about the book, and it's a fast read, it's not terribly long.
• 53:09
  It's intended to be something that is easily digestible for both the baseball nut and the casual sports fan.
• 53:15
  But what I try to do in the book is to.
• 53:18
  Is to be somewhat artistic in the sense that there are nine chapters for nine innings.
• 53:24
  And in between the chapters, there are these little vignettes.
• 53:28
  And so I'm essentially telling two stories in parallel.
• 53:32
  One is the broader arc of this narrative around the early part of baseball that led to Tim Renane and why Tim Renane became this guy who was so important to be memorialized, followed by the Black Sox bringing it
• 53:44
  to the 1933 All Star Game and so forth.
• 53:46
  And in between the chapters, I have these little flashbacks, if you will, to moments from the day.
• 53:53
  So essentially, one story is the big macro story of how this came to be the All Star Game.
• 53:57
  And the other is.
• 53:58
  Here are nine stories of September 27, 1917, that bring us from the pregame to the post game.
• 54:05
  And it's intended to let the reader visualize this almost cinematically and ponder, wow.
• 54:11
  Like, think about what's going on in the era and what's going on among these personalities.
• 54:15
  And, you know, we think back, Warren, to this era when everybody got along and all this other stuff that couldn't be further from the truth.
• 54:22
  I mean, these were guys that hated each other on the field.
• 54:25
  They were out there, and it was war.
• 54:27
  I mean, not just spikes up, but, you know, really looking to hurt each other in different games and, you know, going after umpires physically and throwing bats into the stands.
• 54:37
  I mean, this was an era where almost anything went.
• 54:40
  And, and yet they were debating, should we play baseball games on Sunday?
• 54:44
  Because, you know, of, of the, of the Christian Sabbath.
• 54:47
  Right.
• 54:47
  You know, just, is it, is it sacred?
• 54:49
  Is it not sacred?
• 54:50
  So there are all these paradoxes and complexities that come along with the game and the era, and it's pretty special to just look back.
• 54:58
  In fact, the Red Sox themselves, they had a major rivalry between Catholics and Protestants hated each other.
• 55:03
  And the golden outfield that I mentioned before, you have Trish speaker, who I think didn't speak to Duffy Lewis for an entire season.
• 55:11
  An entire season.
• 55:12
  And they were center fielder and left fielder in the same outfield because of this big rivalry.
• 55:16
  And they, they fought each other.
• 55:18
  It was just a tremendous time because, you know, we, we, we nostalgically look back at this innocent era and there was an innocence around how the country carried itself compared to where we are today.
• 55:29
  But on a personal level, you know, this was rivalry and this was, this was people giving their all.
• 55:35
  Yeah, I love it that you found something to write about that really has never been written about before.
• 55:39
  Sort of like what I did with, with my book, the College All Stars versus NFL Champions.
• 55:45
  I, I just finished a second book that'll be coming out next year about a hockey player.
• 55:51
  I'm currently writing a third book, and all three are really books about things that have never been written about before.
• 56:01
  And, and you did the same.
• 56:02
  Kudos to you.
• 56:04
  Before we wrap up today's show, real quickly, just, just real quick, curious, was all the money raised for this for, for Mernane, or did any of the proceeds go towards any war relief efforts?
• 56:21
  No, that was the case in 1933, that the, that funds were raised to support troops overseas.
• 56:28
  In 1917, they had established the Marine Memorial Fund, and about $15,000 was raised, which, to give you an idea of the scale, the average home in Boston of that era sold for about 5,000.
• 56:39
  So this is, you know, quite a bit of, of charity.
• 56:43
  Sure.
• 56:43
  More than 17,000 fans showed up.
• 56:47
  I think one newspaper called it the greatest baseball show on earth.
• 56:54
  You know, it was truly something special.
• 56:57
  They pulled it off and.
• 57:00
  Yeah, and, and, and you pull it off.
• 57:02
  I encourage everybody to go out and get your book one day in September.
• 57:06
  Baseball brotherhood and the birth of the All Star Game.
• 57:11
  Scott Reich, tell us how people can get a copy of the book wherever books are sold.
• 57:16
  So your independent bookstore, Amazon, Barnes and Noble Bookshop, any place.
• 57:21
  And lastly, tell us again about the organization you set up for your son.
• 57:26
  If anybody wants to make a donation or anything like that.
• 57:29
  How do they do that?
• 57:30
  That's very kind.
• 57:31
  They can come to our website.
• 57:32
  We believe in a cure.org and it's called Believe in a Cure.
• 57:36
  So again, the website is webeliveinacure.org and you can learn more about what we do and be in touch.
• 57:42
  Awesome.
• 57:43
  Scott, thank you so much for joining me on Sports Forgotten Heroes.
• 57:47
  I wish you nothing but luck with your book.
• 57:50
  Very exciting.
• 57:51
  I can't wait to get a copy and read it.
• 57:54
  Appreciate it.
• 57:55
  Thanks for having me on, Warren.
• 57:56
  Anytime.
• 57:59
  This game must have been great to see in person.
• 58:02
  All those stars getting together in one place to honor someone like Tim Mernane was something very unique and I'm not sure anything like that could ever happen again, at least not during the season and allowing players to leave
• 58:17
  their teams during the season to play in such a game.
• 58:23
  Thanks to Scott for sharing so much about the game with us.
• 58:27
  And if you feel compelled to do so and want to donate to Scott's cause, Believe in a Cure in honor of his son, that website address is we believeinacure.org that's webelieveinacure.org thanks again to Scott for joining and thanks
• 58:52
  to all of you for tuning in.
• 58:54
  And I'll see you next time on Sports Forgotten Heroes.