The 1918 baseball season was played against the backdrop of the final year of the Great War, with many major-leaguers absent from the game due to military service (former infielder Eddie Grant would become the first big-leaguer to perish in action in October) and the season was scheduled for an early close due to the expiration of the game's "work or fight" waiver. During the shortened regular season, Tris Speaker turned two unassisted double plays in the span of eleven days, the Pirates and Braves battled for twenty scoreless innings, and Walter Johnson completed fifteen extra inning games. In the Fall Classic, the American League Boston Red Sox (75-51) face off (again) against the National League Champion Chicago Cubs (84-45) . . .
The Red Sox scored twice in each of the 4th and 5th innings to break open the game, and Babe Ruth scattered eight hits in a complete-game effort at Comiskey Park. Boston scored first when Charlie Deal's error extended the 2nd inning long enough for Amos Strunk to push Ruth across on a ground out. In the 4th, they opened the inning with three straight singles off of Vaughn, the third of these chasing in a run off the bat of Fred Thomas, and in the 5th Stuffy McInnis tripled home one run and Thomas singled home another (all after two men were out) to put the American Leaguers ahead by 5-1. Ruth was rarely troubled on the slab, setting the Cubs down in order four times and escaping his worst trouble of the day by retiring Fred Merkle and Charlie Pick with two men on base in the 6th. The 23-year-old left-hander constricted the Cubs on a single hit over the last three innings to put the cap on a fine day that also saw him score two runs and steal a base. Boston (A) 7-12-0, Chicago (N) 2-8-2. [scoresheet]
Boston plated their leadoff batter of Game Two, and then Bullet Joe Bush held down the fort with an eight-hit shutout that puts the Cubs behind the eight ball in the World's Series after only its second day. Harry Hooper led off the game with a base hit, moved to second on a hit-and-run grounder, and scored when Strunk singled to center. Chicago got two men aboard with only one away in the bottom half, but failed to score, and the game turned into an exercise in frustration for the batters. The visitors had a run thrown out at the plate by Les Mann in the 3rd, and then left runners in scoring position for sox consecutive innings, while the Cubs failed to make anything of leadoff hits in the 6th and 7th, Bush fanning the next hitter each time before squirming free. With the score still hanging on that solitary run as the Nationals came up in the bottom of the 9th, Bush retired pinch-hitters for the final two outs of the game to complete another virtuoso performance by the young Sox mound corps. Boston (A) 1-12-0, Chicago (N) 0-8-3. [scoresheet]
With the two clubs playing in Chicago for the third straight day due to wartime travel regulations, the Cubs looked to Vaughn to bounce back (on only two days' rest) from his sub-par Game One performance. He didn't get off to the greatest of starts when Everett Scott singled and stole second with two outs in the 4th and scored on Thomas' base hit, and Hooper led off the next inning with a triple that turned into a run after Dave Shean singled him homeward. But Chicago got two singles in the home half of the 5th and Vaughn's ground ball got a run across - the Cubs' first in sixteen innings - to close the game to 2-1 and it looked like a tense finish was in store. But, in the 7th, George Whiteman led off with a single and stole second before Merkle threw a McInnis bunt wildly to Vaughn covering first allowing Whiteman to score, and then Scott doubled to make it 4-1. Mays pulled a Houdini act in the bottom of the 7th when he got a double play ball from Flack with the bases loaded and one out, but he loaded the bases again with no outs in the bottom of the 9th and Ed Barrow yanked his starter and brought in Sam Jones with the tying runs on base and all three outs to get. A foul fly by Flack was a key first out and, after Charlie Hollocher walked to force in a run, Jones traded a run for the penultimate out when he got Mann to fly to medium center field. That left it all up to Dode Paskert, who had struck out twice and walked twice on the day, and he went down swinging for a third time to dash Chicago's hopes and move Boston to the edge of a championship. Boston (A) 4-12-1, Chicago (N) 3-10-3. [scoresheet]
It was, once again, too much of Babe Ruth for Chicago to handle - two hits, two steals and nine innings of seven-hit pitching made fairly straightforward work of the Cubs after the Sox had exploded for three runs in the 7th inning to take control of the game. A Hooper triple and Strunk double had given Boston the lead in the 3rd, but Ruth and Tyler locked things up from there and the game went into the 7th still hanging on that single run. Thomas reached to start the Boston inning when Deal kicked his grounder and, for the second time in two days, Merkle mishandled a sacrifice attempt and the home side had runners at second and third with no one out. It didn't take long for Hooper to cash in, ripping a triple that scored both men, and then trotting home himself on Shean's base knock, to give the Sox a four-run lead with only six Cub outs remaining in the Series. Ruth set them down in order in the 8th, but ran into trouble in the 9th. A leadoff walk to Flack, an single by Hollocher, and another free pass to Mann loaded the bases with no one out but this time Barrow elected to stick with his man and Ruth got Paskert to smack into a 543 twin killing that scored a run but essentially ended the rally. When Merkle grounded routinely to Shean at second base, it put an end to what was a forgettable performance by the Cubs, but a ruthless one by the new World's Champions. Boston (A) 5-10-0, Chicago (N) 1-7-4. [scoresheet]
The Cubs neither hit (.598 team OPS), pitched (46 hits allowed in 35 innings) nor fielded (twelve errors in four games) and that's how Series sweeps are made. The Sox, on the other hand, made all of the plays (Scott was brilliant at shortstop) and got enough big hits while preventing Chicago from doing so. [Series stats]
With four of the eighteen extra-base hits made in the entire Series, and a Series-leading nine times reaching base, Red Sox RF Harry Hooper led the Boston offense from the leadoff spot. He scored the only run of Game Two and drove in the runs that sealed Game Four and the Series. A tip of the cap as well to Babe Ruth, with two pitching wins and a 3-for-7 batting line that included a Series-leading three stolen bases.
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