Origins of Yankees-Red Sox Rivalry
Boston Baseball Dominates New York in the Early 20th Century
Oct 28, 2007 James Lincoln Ray
This Origins of the Yankees and the Red Sox
Both franchises were members of the American League when it kicked off play in 1901. At the time, the Red Sox were known as the Boston Americans. There is also some debate amongst baseball geeks as to whether the team was ever known as the Pilgrims, and even at one point, the Beaneaters, albeit in an unoffical capacity.
The team that would become the Yankees was actually the old Baltimore Orioles from the National League. When the NL contracted from 12 teams to 8 before the 1900 season, manager John McGraw found that his boys had no place to play the fiery brand of ball that had led Baltimore to three NL titles in the 1890s.
American League president Ban Johnson quickly signed the Orioles to play in the Junior Circuit. But soon the National League's New York Giants were raiding the Orioles top players, and eventually they stole McGraw to manage their club.
Frustrated with the inter-league pilfering, Baltimore's owners reached a no tampering agreement with the National League. Then they moved their team to New York City with hopes of drawing bigger crowds, making more money, and exacting some revenge from the unscrupulous Giants. They found a new home for the team on Hilltop Park, a wide expanse of land on a plateau that overlooked Manhattan and the Bronx.
The park's locale led fans to call its inhabitants the Hilltoppers, and then the Highlanders. By 1913, the franchise officially and permanently changed its name to the Yankees.
But the team wasn't very successful during its first two decades. From 1901-1919, the Yankees never won an American League Pennant. Even worse, they finished in the second division (fifth place or lower) in twelve different seasons.
The Boston Red Sox Were the Best Team of the Dead Ball Era
Meanwhile, Boston was the dominant force in the American League. In 1903, led by pitchers Cy Young and Bill Dinneen, and slugging outfielder Buck Freeman (13 HR, 104 RBI), the team ran away with the American League pennant by 14 games. Then they upset the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first Modern World Series, 5 games to 3.
That's right, Yankee fans. Boston won the first World Series.
The Royal Rooters
Boston had the better fans, too. At least back then they did. While the team was playing ball in Huntington Grounds, a small group of fans headed by Michael "Nuff Ced" McGreevey, dubbed themselves the Royal Rooters, and were a mainstay at Boston games. Whenever the Americans were in a rut, or were in need of a rally, the Rooters -- who had often come straight from McGreevey's "3rd Base Tavern" to the Huntington Grounds -- did whatever they could to throw off the visiting team's game. They hurled epithets, curses, and sometimes even foreign objects.
Think of it as Red Sox Nation, only with some real guts. As a rallying cry, the Royal Rooters often sang their own version of the 1902 Broadway hit Tessie. The Rooters's cover of the popular hit was a raunchy, bawdy tale about baseball and lust and rambunctious drunkenness. Legend has it that it shocked the parents, frightened the children, and threw the other team off its game.
Today's Red Sox Nation, of course, sings Sweet Caroline, which is elevator music about about a sweet girl named Caroline.
Fenway Park and The Dynasty of the Teens
Perhaps the least known but most accomplished dynasty in baseball history was the Boston Red Sox of the 1910s. After settling in to Fenway Park in 1912, the Red Sox won four World Series in seven years. The 1912 and 1915 teams were led by a trio of Hall of Fame outfielders: Tris Speaker, Harry Hooper and Duffy Lewis.
On the mound, those teams featured the late, great Smokey Joe Wood. In 1912, Wood had one of the most remarkable seasons in the modern era. He won 34 games, lost only five, struck out 258 batters and posted a league best ERA of 1.91. But he threw out his arm that year by hurling 340 innings, many of them on just one or two days rest. Although Wood remained a stalwart in the Sox rotation for the next three seasons, even posting a 15-5 record in the next championship year in 1915, the man was forced to retire by age 25.
By 1916, however, the Sox had a new ace at the head of their rotation. He was a tall, wide, 21-year old kid named George Herman Ruth. Hailing from a Baltimore orphanage, Ruth still had the pudgy mug of a young street tough, and quickly acquired the nickname Babe.
The Babe could pitch: From 1915 through 1919, Ruth compiled a record of 87-45 with an ERA of 2.13. He was even more dominating in the World Series. In three October appearances, Ruth was 3-0 with a 0.87 ERA. He once pitched 29 2/3 consecutive shutout innings in the Fall Classic. That record stood for forty year, until it was broken by future Yankee Hall of Famer, Whitey Ford.
Behind Ruth, and other starters Carl Mays, Dutch Leonard and Joe Bush, the Red Sox won the 1916 Fall Classic over the Brooklyn Robbins, and also beat the Chicago Cubs in six games in 1918 to take home the club's fifth World Series crown -- the most in the brief history of the October Classic.
The sky seemed to be the limit for Boston Baseball and its fans.
No, No Nannettte!
But then everything changed. After the 1918 season, Nuf Ced McGreevey officially disbanded the Royal Rooters. In 1919, Ruth decided that he liked to hit more than he wanted to pitch. When challenged by management that daily play in the field could endanger his valuable pitching arm, Ruth went into a fit, squabbling with management in a way that would make the most spoiled millionaire jocks of today proud.
After finishing in second place to the team that looked like the new monsters of the American League, the 1919 Chicago White Sox, Boston owner Harry Frazee had a choice to make: keep his petulant pitcher-cum-slugger at a drastically increased salary, or sell him to another team to finance his real business, that of producing Broadway plays.
He chose the latter. On January 3, 1920, the biggest transaction in sports history occurred. The Boston Red Sox sold the rights to Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees for $100,000. While walking out the door, it is rumored that Ruth cast a curse upon the franchise for shipping him away from his beloved team, stadium and fan base.
What happens next is too good to miss.
This article continues with The House that Ruth Built
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