Having

Probably like most grandparents, Carol and I have a tendency to remind Sophie (9) and Henry (6) of all the things they take for granted that we didn't have.  Not too long ago we knew we were overdoing it when Sophie, throwing up her hands in exasperation, asked plaintively - "What did you have?"  Fortunately, something else intervened, relieving us of having to answer the question.  For some reason, however, the question led me to reflect on what it was like to follow major league baseball when I was Sophie's age, back in 1956, the first year I followed the Brooklyn Dodgers on a daily basis.  Fortunately for me, the season was one of those great, now gone forever, winner take all pennant races that came down to the very last day.  When I got up on Sunday, September 30, 1956, the Dodgers had a one game lead on the Milwaukee Braves and a win that afternoon would give them (and me) the National League pennant. Without a second thought, I took for granted that I could watch the game on our black and white Dumont television.  There was no way to follow the Braves game, but the Dodger announcers gave inning by inning recaps of that game.  In the end, however, the other game didn't matter since the Dodgers defeated the Pirates to win their last National League pennant in Brooklyn.

Built in 1852, the Boston Music Hall was converted to a vaudeville theatre in 1900 and renamed the Orpheum Theater it still exists today

Although the primary interest in the Braves was in Milwaukee, there still had to be some Braves fans left in Boston, especially since the team had only been gone for four seasons.  Let's imagine one such fan was a 76 year old Boston man who had been a Braves fan since he was a child.  The end of the 1956 National League might have triggered his memories of the 1889 pennant race when he was just nine years old - a time when he didn't have television or radio to follow his team.   Then called the Beaneaters, Boston had been in a season long battle with the New York Giants for the National League pennant.  Prior to 1889, only one National League race (1886) had come down to the season's final day.  But with just one day left in the 1889 season, only two percentage points separated the two teams. Unfortunately for Boston and the young fan, however, the two point advantage belonged to the Giants.  Still as he woke up on Saturday, October 5th, the young Boston fan knew his team still had a chance and that's all any baseball fan really asks for.  Unlike another nine year old in 1956, however,  following the day's action wasn't going to be quite so simple.

 

Records of the Giants and Beaneaters as play began on the season's last day.  At the time, teams didn't have to play the same number of games so winning percentage was the deciding factor in the pennant race - Boston Globe, October 5, 1889

If Boston had been playing at home and, if our nine year old fan had 25 cents, he might have wended his way to the South End Grounds to cheer on his team in person.  Such was not the case, however, the Beaneaters were in Pittsburgh while the Giants tried to wrap up the pennant in Cleveland, then a National League city.  And there was, of course, no television, radio or Internet to help him out - imagine his frustration if he could have seen into the future and known what he was missing.  Other than wait around for special editions of the  Boston newspapers - what could this diehard Beaneater fan do?  Fortunately all was not lost because if enough people are willing to pay for something, some enterprising soul will figure out a way to provide it.   A year earlier in 1888, New York Giant fans, as well as anyone just passing by, could follow the New York team's games more or less in real time on a large baseball bulletin board outside the offices of the New York World.  The board had been invented and patented by Edward Sims Van Zile, one of the papers writers, who, coincidentally, was married to the niece of Morgan Bulkeley, first president of the National League. 

Boston Globe - October 5, 1889

Zile had been encouraged to patent his invention by Edwin Grozier, an editor at the World, who then purchased the rights with plans to offer the service elsewhere, but at a price.  During the 1888-89 offseason, the Beaneater owners significantly upgraded their roster, insuring Boston would be a contender.  So great was the anticipation for the 1889 season that Grozier found no shortage of demand for a service that enabled fans, including our nine-year old, to follow the Beaneaters when they were away from home. Unlike New York, however, where the service was free, Bostonians would pay for the privilege of viewing Grozier's (and Zile's) baseball bulletin at the Boston Music Hall. After offering free access for one game in June, there was a 10 cent admission charge where fans could follow the action while enjoying cigars and sipping, unfortunately, "temperance drinks." Anticipating twentieth century owners who feared broadcasting home games on radio and then television would hurt attendance, the Music Hall option was only available when Boston was on the road.  So our diehard young fan left his Boston home and headed, not towards South End Grounds, but rather to the Boston Music Hall on Walnut Street.  

Boston Globe - June 2, 1889

It is to be hoped he arrived early since about an hour before game time, the line to the ticket window was so long, it took a half-hour to go 100 feet.  As the first pitch approached, all the seats were taken including the galleries while the aisles were "well crowded" with standees.  All of them, including the nine year old, were looking at a white board, 15 feet square which contained an 8 by 11 foot playing field.  Originally the field had been green, but white had proved to be a better background.  As can be seen in the above image, to the left and right of the field were the two teams' batting orders. Above the batting orders were totals for runs, outs and the inning by inning score with Boston's results in red and Pittsburgh's in blue.  Although Boston was the visiting team, in 1889 batting first or second was determined by a coin toss and the Beaneaters began the game in the field.  At each fielding position was a white disc with a number representing the player's position in the batting order.  Since uniform numbers were still decades away, there was something to the promotional claim that following the game on the board made for easier identification of players than at the ballpark.

Hall of Fame pitcher John Clarkson

As Boston's John Clarkson threw his final warm up pitches, an "expert reporter" in the grandstand in far off Pittsburgh took his place next to a "direct [telegraph] wire" to the Music Hall.  Our young fan was doubtless disappointed when the first thing he saw was white disc number one being moved to first base signaling that Clarkson had walked the leadoff batter.  Things got worse quickly when a little flag was placed in short right field indicating Jack Rowe's "short fly" had landed in between three Boston players and then bounced off of one of them, allowing the runners to advance another base.  Now there were discs (runners) on second and third and none out.  Clarkson got the next batter to ground out to short, but a run scored and a single by Pittsburgh's "Doggie Miller" drove in a second run. Still it was only the first inning and Boston had plenty of offensive fire power.  The Beaneaters were not out of the woods, however, as discs were moved to first and third thanks to an error by Boston shortstop "Pop" Smith.  Although Clarkson got the next out, Pittsburgh's Ned Hanlon grounded to Smith who compounded his earlier error  with a bad throw allowing the third Pittsburgh run of the inning to score. 

Edwin Grozier

Although Boston managed to get out of the inning with no further scoring, a Globe reporter noted that the air in the music hall, usually filled with the rarified sounds of Beethoven or Handel, was now reverberating with "groans and hisses."  Most of the negative noise likely stopped when Boston came to the bat, but after Hardy Richardson and Mike "King" Kelly could muster nothing more than a foul fly and a ground ball back to the pitcher, it was clearly not Boston's day.  While Billy Nash's single may have briefly revived some hopes, Dan Brouthers went out on a fly ball and Pittsburgh was on their way to a 6-1 win.  In the end, the Boston game didn't matter, since the Giants won their game and the pennant.  As our nine year old fan made his way home, knowing sadly that his team had come up short, it was probably of small consolation that he was able to follow the action almost as it happened instead of enduring two or more hours of stress filled waiting.  

Boston Globe - October 6, 1889

Our young Beaneater fan might, however, have been somewhat lest despondent if he had known his favorite team would go on to win five pennants in the 1890s.  After that, however, it was a long drought, broken only in 1914 when his team, now called the Braves, swept the powerful Athletics in the World Series.  By the time the Braves appeared in the 1948 Fall Classic, he was in his late 60s and very possibly a grandfather.  All of the World Series games were on radio and if he listened with his grandchildren, he might have thought back to that day almost 60 years ago at the Music Hall.  He could even have told them that he didn't have baseball radio broadcasts to listen to when he was boy, which might have prompted the question "What did you have?"  If so, he very likely told them how he took full advantage of what was then state of the art technology, but it was nothing compared to what they had in 1948.  All of that would have been true, but there is a deeper and more important truth here. Despite all the technological differences, there was one thing all these fans, real and imagined did have, regardless of whether it was 1889, 1948, 1956 or even today. They all had baseball - the greatest game of all.  And perhaps all of us, including grandparents, need to think as much about what we do or did have compared to what we didn't.