Inquirer Anniversary: An ill-timed boot spells Phils' doom

By Jim Nasium

To mark the 180th anniversary of its founding, The Inquirer is reprinting an article from its archives every Monday for 18 weeks. Today’s offering, the 10th in our series, was published on July 8, 1911, and describes a baseball game between the Phillies and the St. Louis Cardinals.

Say! for the love of Mike, who slipped our goat to Roger Bresnahan this season? For aeons and aeons have we been accustomed to viewing the St. Louis baseball team as a nice bunch of juicy ensilage on which to fatten our percentage in the official averages. But verily, Clarice, the times have changed since mother was a girl. So far this season, the Phils have come in immediate juxtaposition with Bresnahan's outfit just nine times and seven times have they got a nice jarring jolt square on the Adam's Apple.

The seventh jolt occurred at Broad and Huntingdon streets yesterday p.m., when with the score a tie in the ninth inning and the bases full of dancing Cardinals an untimely and extremely unfortunate boot by the usually reliable Mique Doolan allowed the Bresnahans to subsequently put six runs over the plate and beat us out by a 9 to 4 score. There's nothing to it. Mique's boot did the trick. Eliminating this bobble of Mike's we'd have nosed them out in the ninth inning by score of 4 to 3. But who has a better right to boot one now and then than Mike, even if it does cost us a game? Holy smoke! Hasn't Mike saved enough games for us with his wonderful fielding to make us forget a little thing like his slip-up of yestere'en. Take it from me, if we all made as few mistakes in our business as Mike does in his, we'd be shoving the boss off the Brussels carpet and running the ranch ourselves.

Here's the way we just missed crawling back into that first position again yesterday by the narrow margin on one booted fielding chance: It was 3 to 3 at the opening of the ninth, and Chalmers had been pitching great ball, having retired ten of the enemy on the whiff route. Huggins, first up in the ninth, bunted along the first base line and beat Luderus' chuck to the bag. Hauser followed with a single to right, and then Ellis beat out another bunt, filling the bases. With the Philly infield drawn in on the green sward to cut off the run at the plate, Konetchy slammed a fast bounder straight at Doolan, and with anything like precision in handling the chance Mike would have pulled off an easy double play, as he could have gotten Huggins at the plate and Dooin would have had ample time to relay to first and double up "Koney." But something went wrong with the precision stuff. Mike fumbled the ball and didn't get either man, Huggins scoring. Evans then slapped another shot at Knabe, who was also in on the grass, and Otto threw to the plate too late to get Hauser, and not only did Otto throw too late, but he threw too all-fired low for Dooin to clutch the pill and then the thing went to the grandstand and Ellis also scored.

The point of this: If Mike had got away with his double play the infield would have been playing out and Otto would have made his play to first and retired Evans for the third out without a run being scored. Following Otto's bum chuck, Mowrey slapped a base knock to left and Konetch scored. Oakes then pasted a single past Doolan, still lingering on the green sward, scoring Evans, and when Bresnahan poked one to Knabe that forced Oakes and purposefully allowed himself to be doubled up. Mowrey scored with the sixth run of the inning. Harmon then fanned for the fifth time and ended the inning.

The best we could do in our half of the night was to shove over one lone tally, which we did when Dooin singled with one down and scored later on Knabe's single to right. But that run would have won the game if Mike had not - oh well, what's the use of blaming Mike? We'll likely be yelling our heads off for him today.

Anyway, we've got to hand it to Bresnahan's bunch. The preponderance of evidence goes to show that they have something more than a good brand of beer down in St. Louis. There's a couple of things that we like about Roger's outfit, if they would only be a little more conservative in pulling the stuff while they are in our midst. In addition to whaling the pill at psychological moments, they certainly do skin around those bases when they get on once and give the luck every opportunity to break their way. They're lucky because they make their own luck, and when it comes right down to brass tacks that kind of a guy is always lucky, whether he be ball player or banker.

The stuff that occurred prior to the ninth inning events already narrated ran something like this: With a glorious chance to do something for the cause in the second we failed because Mr. Harmon was there with the pinch stuff. Luderus busted the inning open by slamming one on the snoot, and pasting it up against the right field fence for two bases, went to third on Thomas' sacrifice and then Doolan walked and swiped second. Looked like something dooing, but Dooin skied one to Evans and Chalmers fanned.

Chalmers had his one bad inning, barring that closing chapter in the fourth when they slammed him for a triple and two singles, which, however, counted for but one run. Konetchy tripled to right with one down and scored on Evans' one base belt to centre. Mowrey then slapped a single to left, but was forced at second by Oakes, who stole second, and then Bresnahan was purposely walked, filling the bases. This proved to be fine billiards, as Harmon fanned, retiring the side with the bases soused.

They got a cheap one in the fifth on a walk, a force out, a stolen base and a wild heave by Dooin, and a wild pitch, and then we had our one big inning and went one in the lead in the sixth. With one down, Paskert bounced a single over Harmon's dome and scored on Lobert's double to left. After Magee had fouled out, Luderus doubled, scoring Lobert, then Thomas doubled, scoring "Ludey" with the run that gave us the lead temporarily.

They tied it up in the eighth on a scratch infield single by Konetchy and Oakes's single after "Koney" had gone to second on an out at first. Then came the big blow in the night and the stuff was off for the day.

Jim Nasium was the pseudonym of Edgar F. Wolfe, a sportswriter and cartoonist at the Inquirer for nearly 20 years. As is the case here, his drawings often accompanied his stories.

Although the Phillies were battling the Cardinals for first place in the National League at mid-season, the year would not end well. The Phillies finished fourth, 21/2 games ahead of the Cards.

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