After a devastating loss, teams typically want to get back on the field as soon as possible to seek redemption. Few losses in baseball history were more devastating than the Chicago Cubs defeat in the fourth game of the 1929 World Series. Unfortunately, thanks to Pennsylvania "blue" laws forbidding baseball on the Sabbath, the Cubs had to wait an extra day for that chance. An additional day spent dwelling on the fourth game disaster would have made it even more understandable if the Cubs offered little resistance to an Athletics team that seemed destined to win the series.
Instead, the Cubs apparently used the day off to find extra motivation to bring the Fall Classic back to Chicago. Perhaps no one on the Cubs had more need to redeem himself than Pat Malone, the team’s winningest pitcher. Not only had the right-hander given up the decisive hit to Jimmy Dykes in the fourth game, but he had also been knocked out in the fourth inning of the second contest. Malone was, however, not about to give up. Over 8 innings, he shut out the powerful Philadelphia offense, allowing only two harmless singles.
Enjoying Malone’s performance while exercising a “benevolent neutrality” was President Herbert Hoover, a dedicated baseball fan in his own right. Literally at the height of his popularity as president, Hoover had been greeted by a large crowd at the railroad station and cheering throngs that lined the route of his motorcade. Praised as “the great humanist” by the Philadelphia Inquirer, Hoover had only about two weeks before the stock market crash sent the country hurtling into the Great Depression.
Connie Mack again trusted his team’s fate to Howard Ehmke, but this time, the Cubs managed to score twice off the aging veteran, knocking him out of the game. Stepping into the breech was Rube Walberg who threw 5 1/3 scoreless innings, so that the Athletics trailed only 2-0 as the game headed to the bottom of the ninth. But when Malone struck out pinch hitter Walter French to start the inning, the outlook was bleak for Philadelphia.
The account that follows is that of Edwin “Bing” Miller, the Athletics’ final hero of the series. Miller at 34 was a Philadelphia veteran who showed no signs of slowing down. A lifetime .311 hitter, Miller batted .331 in 1929, the eighth time, the Athletics right fielder hit over .300. He had performed equally well in the Fall Classic, batting .368, but no at bat was more important than his last one. To my knowledge, his account of the fifth and final game of the 1929 World Series has not been published since it first appeared in the Chicago Daily News in January of 1945.
Bing Miller
There never was a World Series like the one in 1929 for fierce, violent jockeying. Before it was over and the Philadelphia Athletics had beaten Joe McCarthy’s Chicago Cubs the big fellow himself – Judge Landis – had to step in to stop the riding and razzing and violent flow of abuse that passed between the two dugouts.
The Cubs opened up the barrage. We’d hardly stepped out of the visitor’s dugout at Wrigley Field that Tuesday afternoon of October 8 before the Cub torrent smacked us. It was pretty fierce. That little pitcher, Mike Cvengros, hollered the loudest the longest and the meanest. But he had plenty of help.
They heaped it on us until we started to fire back as good as we got. I suppose they thought we’d be upset by these tactics. They figured all wrong because the players Connie Mack had that year, fellows like Foxx and Dykes and Al Simmons, Joe Boley, Mule Haas and Cochrane, were too poised and mature to let that jingle-jangle affect their game. They just played a little harder.
And if they were anything like me the background of that jockeying only accentuated the thrill of beating the Cubs. The fact that my hit in the ninth inning of the final game not only answered the Cubs jockeys but gave the Athletics the World Series provided me with “My Biggest Baseball Day.”
As far as I was concerned it was a great series all the way. That day we opened in Chicago with Howard Ehmke throwing a flutter ball that fanned 13 of the Cubs. I stepped into one of Guy Bush’s curve balls for one of the most satisfying hits I ever made.
Bush had been one of the chief jockeys when we took the field that afternoon. Not as loud, maybe, as Cvengros, but again and again you’d hear blazing, slashing remarks in his high-pitched Mississippi drawl. For seven innings he was doing his jockeying from the bench. After that he had to save his breath for pitching. When Gabby Hartnett batted for Charley Root in the seventh, Bush was sent in to pitch.
We kept hollering “Showboat” at Bush because of his flashy windup, his long, spectacular stride as he threw the ball and his actions out on the mound. Through the eighth, however, neither our “Showboat” howls nor our bats bothered him.
In the ninth, though, Cochrane led off with a single and then Woody English muffed successive chances hit by Simmons and Foxx the bases were full. And I was the batter. Bush tried to get a curve ball past me and I fired that pitch for a single that brought Cochrane and Simmons in with the runs that let us win 3 to 1.
That loss must have disturbed the Cubs but it didn’t slow down their tongues. They kept up their bombardment and by the end of the fourth game, when we were leading the series, three games to one, Judge Landis called a conference of the managers.
That was Saturday evening in Philadelphia. There was to be a day’s layoff, because of the Sunday Blue Law in Pennsylvania, and Landis laid down the rule that must be observed when the series renewed Monday afternoon.
“If there is any more abusive language,” the Judge warned Mr. Mack and Joe McCarthy, “I’ll fine the offender his share of the World Series receipts. Remember that and see to it that this game Monday isn’t marked by any strong language."
For that Monday game, President Herbert Hoover came down from Washington on a special train. His box was over near our Philadelphia dugout and as he took his seat a noisy chant went that started in the bleachers began to sweep Shibe Park. “We want beer! We want beer!” the fans began to chorus – it was prohibition time then, you know – and a few of us in the dugout might have joined in if Mr. Mack hadn’t stood up, looked down the line and said: “We’ll have none of that.”
Somehow Mr. Hoover and his party were seated even though he had decided to come at the last minute and there’d been a scramble to make room for the visitors in the midst of a sellout crowd. The Philadelphia mayor: Mr. Mackey, was with the President and as he squeezed into his seat he was elbow-to-elbow with Mike Cantwell, who trained the one-time heavyweight champion Jim Braddock. Cantwell, so Mackey told me, said:
“I know that one fellow is Hoover, but I don’t know you mister. But we might as well get it straight right now . . . if you’re going to cheer for the Cubs we’re both in for a helluva unpleasant afternoon.”
Mike shouldn’t have been worried. Mackey was such a violent Athletic booster that he jumped over the railing when I won the game in the ninth and rushed out to shake my hand. When somebody reprimanded him by saying: “It isn’t proper when you’re with the President to leave his side.” Mackey sputtered: “That may be the rule, but it doesn’t hold for a World Series.”
And the way that game of October 14 in 1929 ended I guess even Mr. Hoover was tolerant enough to overlook what the mayor did.
You see, that was the game we needed to cinch the championship, and after the Cubs had chased Ehmke in the fourth inning to lead 2 to 0 it looked like we were doomed to lose. Big Walberg came in to keep the Cubs in check after Ehmke failed to duplicate his great success in the opener, but Pat Malone was turning us back. Through eight innings we had fashioned just two hits off Pat.
We went into the ninth trailing 2 to 0 and we started poorly. French, up as a pinch hitter for Walberg, fanned. Bishop followed with a single, and then Haas, getting his first hit of the day, slammed a home run over the fence to tie the score.
Cochrane was up next and was retired by Rog Hornsby. That brought up Simmons and he nailed one of Malone’s pitches for a line-drive double that hit the top of the scoreboard and just missed being a homer by a matter of feet. Cochrane represented the winning run with Foxx at the plate.
Here’s where McCarthy wig-wagged Malone to hand out an intentional pass so that I’d be brought up to swing in the pinch.
I saw McCarthy’s signal even before Zach Taylor moved away from the plate to take the four wide pitches Malone tossed up.
In the batting circle where I was awaiting my turn I was swinging three bats. One of them was the bat that had been ruled illegal during a game we’d played back in June in Chicago. I’d pounded some nails into the hitting surface of this bat, ostensibly to keep the wood from chipping, but actually to give me a harder, more punishing hitting surface.
It achieved its purpose. I’d hit safely with it in 21 straight games when we came to Chicago. And I might have hit in 21 more had not the Sox catcher, Buck Crouse, managed to pick up the bat. He was helping out our bat boy at the time, picking up the bat to toss it to him, when he slid his fingers over a row of the nails.
Crouse had a good look at the bat and raised an awful howl to the umpire. Naturally, the bat was outlawed and I’d brought it back to Philadelphia and put it in my locker. Never from the time Crouse had complained until that afternoon of the final World Series game had I used that bat. But for some reason I’d put it in the bat rack that afternoon and as I waited there in the circle for Malone to pass Foxx I threw aside the other two bats and went up to the plate with Ol’ Nails in my hand.
Before becoming a full-time cartoonist Al Demaree had an 8-year major league pitching career - Chicago Daily Tribune - 10/15/1929
Malone took a lot of time on me. He studied the signal Taylor gave him, then took a look at where his outfield was playing. As he pitched to me carefully the count went to two and two. And in that spot Malone tried to fastball me. He tried to throw one past me and I swung Mr. Nails with everything I had. The ball I hit streaked for the scoreboard. It was good for two bases and on it Simmons came striding home with the runs that gave us a 3 to 2 victory and the 1929 World Series
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