Here's some of the introduction:
1901 -
The First Year of the Boston Red Sox
It all had to start someplace. The team was known as the Boston
Americans at first, to differentiate them from Boston’s venerable National
League team. But even just a few months
before their first game, it was uncertain there truly would be a team - and on
top of that, they didn’t have a park in which to play. They didn’t become the
Red Sox until December 1907.
The team’s first owner – at least on paper – was Charles Somers,
but pretty much everyone knew who truly owned the team (and, for that matter,
the American League.) That was Ban
Johnson.
It all happened very quickly, almost unbelievably quickly. Just a
few months before 1901 Opening Day there was no American League team designated
for Boston. For that matter, the American League itself was more a draft plan
than a true rival league. The speed with which league architect Ban Johnson
built on the framework he had is breathtaking to recount. Somers was key. As
Fred Schuld notes in his biography of Somers, the man was known as the “good
angel of the American League” for his financial backing of Johnson and his
crucial support in launching at least four of the eight teams in the league:
Cleveland, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston. The placement of a team in Boston
to go up against the National League’s Boston Beaneaters came relatively late
in the process of founding the new league. Initially, as Johnson’s vision began
to take shape, there had been no plan to field a team in Boston. A franchise
was planned for Buffalo but with only months to go before the season would
open, Johnson decided to go head-to-head in Boston instead, and once he did, he
acted fast.
Boston was the eighth and
final city selected as home for a club in the new American League. And once
they decided to take on the National League in Boston, they had to find a place
where they could play. Only by finding an appropriate site for a baseball field
would the American League truly decide to place a team in Boston. Had Johnson
and his associates not found a good location, the league would have placed its
eighth club in either Buffalo or Indianapolis.
As he relied on Somers to
help, Ban Johnson also enlisted Connie Mack’s help in creating the American
League - and Mack was initially involved in one way or another with not only
his own Philadelphia Athletics, but also with the Boston team. In turn, Connie
Mack looked to John S. Dooley and Hugh Duffy for assistance.
The story, as Dooley set it
down, went thus: In the fall of 1900, Johnson came to Boston to see if it were
feasible to situate a charter American League franchise in a city already known
for its passionate interest in baseball. He set up shop in the Old South
building on Washington Street and sought out veteran baseball man Hugh Duffy,
holding a number of meetings with him. Dooley was an enthusiast of the game and
active in business in Boston. He sat in on a few of the meetings. Lining up the
players would be easier than finding a suitable location for the ballpark.
Duffy had previously considered a position as a principal with a group which
could have frustrated any A.L. effort – a proposed American Association team to
be placed across the river from Boston in Cambridge in an attempt to fend off
an American League incursion. SABR researcher Doug Pappas found that the
National League’s Arthur Irwin had leased the Cambridge property in a
pre-emptive move to try and keep out the upstart league, but the lease was
structured such that it would expire if the property were sold. Duffy declined
to join the effort to head off the A.L., arguing, “The grounds are too far out.
They are in Cambridge and will not draw from Boston. Harvard students might
patronize the club, but that is about all.”[i]
“I recall Peter Kelley, an
old newspaper man, calling on me at my office,” Dooley wrote in a brief account
he typed up. Kelley was calling on behalf of Cleveland’s Charles Somers,
designated as the first president of the Boston American League club. Kelley
himself “had an option on the old bicycle track across the Charles River in
Cambridge, on a lease calling for a yearly rental of $5,000.”[ii]
Mack and Clark Griffith had recommended the Cambridge location, but neither
Johnson nor Duffy found it attractive. Johnson didn’t want a Boston team
playing anywhere but in Boston. He kept that sentiment to himself, sharing it
only with the small circle of men trying to help situate the team.
A location deemed more
suitable, however, was a site on Huntington Avenue controlled by the Boston
Elevated Railway Company. Duffy showed the site to Peter Kelley and they both
recommended it to Johnson. Dooley recalled Durand Associates as the actual
owners of the land, but they had leased it to the railway, which had envisioned
building a terminal there. The car barn was no longer the cards, but the
railway was holding out for a $10,000 a year rental.
Dooley was at the time
working for the firm of J. R. Prendergast, brokers in cotton goods and yarn
with offices at 87 Milk Street. Prendergast’s brother Daniel was in charge of
the real estate department of the Boston Elevated. Dooley learned that the
terminal plan was off – it turned out there was an ordinance that prevented the
construction of car barns on the land which, even though it had served as a
dump, was still across the street from the opera house. He urged Duffy and
Kelley to approach Dan Prendergast, offer $5,000 a year “and mention my name.
Under no conditions, I said, were they to go higher than $5,000.”
The offer was, Dooley said,
“violently refused” and Daniel Prendergast called Dooley to complain about the
“measly rental” the men had offered. “If you want my advice,” Dooley says he
told Prendergast, “I’d grab that $5,000 offer because they can get that
wonderful site in Cambridge for that figure. You’d better grab them right now
before they close with Cambridge.”
Prendergast took the bit and
a deal was struck. Dooley later told the Boston
Post’s Gerry Hern, “I suppose I should be a little sorry for what I did to
get the American League in here, but when I sit in Fenway Park these days, I
figure maybe the good Lord will forgive me. It was in a good cause.”
In 1956, Gerry Hern of the Boston Post wrote, “More than anyone,
Jack Dooley is responsible for the American League obtaining the Huntington
ave. grounds as their playing field.”[iii]
Had Dooley not helped out, there might never have been a Boston Red Sox. The
February 2, 1901 issue of The Sporting
News records the formal awarding of a Boston franchise to Somers. Three
weeks later, the February 23 Sporting
Life reported that Somers had said the American League would never have
invaded Boston if the National League had acceded to its original request for
recognition as a major league.
Boston it was, and just a little more than three months after the
Boston franchise was announced, the Boston Americans were playing baseball at
their first home: the Huntington Avenue Grounds.
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