The First Fall Classic
The Red Sox, the Giants and the Cast of Players, Pugs and Politicos Who Re-Invented the World Series in 1912
Chapter One
Spring, Summer, Fall, 1912: A Prelude
New York--The advance fanfare is over. The English language has been plucked of its final consonants, and the last of all figures extant has been twisted out of shape in the maelstrom of a million arguments. And now, at the end of it, there is nothing left. Nothing left but the charge of the Night Brigade against the gates at dawn tomorrow--and after that the first boding hush as Harry Hooper flies out from the Red Sox coop and stands face to face with Mathewson, the veteran, or Tesreau, the debutante . . .
--Grantland Rice, NEW YORK EVENING MAIL,
October 7, 1912
The poor bastards, they never had a chance, they never even saw the damned thing coming. It was a beautiful Friday night, September 27, 1912, a perfect evening to take the sparkling new toy for a spin, and so twenty-nine-year-old Frank O'Neil and twenty-year-old William Popp, neighbors from Manhattan's Upper West Side, had decided to take their freshly souped-up motorcycle for a breezy ...
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