Welcome to the Baseball History Podcast: Featuring This Week in Baseball History, baseball dictionary and a tour of baseball cities. I’m your game announcer Bob Wright.
This is game 44 of the 2008 baseball season
In the first inning let’s take a look at This Week in Baseball History for the 4 week of October.
October 25
1911 In Game 5 of the World Series at the Polo Grounds, Larry Doyle scores on a sacrifice fly to give the Giants a 4-3 victory over the A’s. According to home plate umpire Bill Klem, commenting after the game, the Giants second baseman, in his jubilation about scoring the winning run, really never touches home , but the A’s, however, fail to notice the gaffe and do not appeal.
Lawrence Joseph Doyle was born July 31, 1886 in Caseyville, Illinois.
The National League’s outstanding second baseman during the 1910s, he was awarded the 1912 Chalmers Award as the league’s best player, and won the 1915 batting title with a .320 average.
The team captain and top everyday star on three consecutive pennant winners, his .408 career slugging average was the top mark by an National League second baseman when he retired, as were his career totals in hits, doubles, triples, total bases and extra base hits.
Doyle was a third baseman in the minor leagues before his contract was purchased by the Giants for a then-record $4,500.
Doyle was a nervous youngster on July 22, 1907 when he took the wrong ferry across the Hudson River and arrived late for his first Major League game. Giants manager John McGraw started the scrappy prospect at second base, a position unfamiliar to Doyle. The game was close, coming down to a crucial ninth-inning grounder which Doyle booted. Certain McGraw would send him down, Doyle sheepishly confronted him, only to receive words of encouragement and, the following season, the Giants’ captaincy. He became a five-time .300 hitter.
Doyle followed up with a 1909 season in which he led the National League in hits, with 172, and was among the league’s top four players in batting, slugging, home runs and total bases.
1910 saw a slight dropoff, though he was still third in the National League in home runs with 8 and fourth in runs scored with 97.
He then entered the strongest part of his career; in 1911 he finished third in the voting for the initial Chalmers Award after hitting .310.
Doyle’s hitting and solid defense helped New York to three straight pennants, starting with that 1911 season
Doyle also led the league with 25 triples, the most by an National League player since 1899; it remains the highest total by a Giant since 1900. He stole 30 bases for the third consecutive year, and finished fourth in the league in home runs with 13.
He scored the famous “phantom” run that forestalled the Philadelphia Athletics’ victory in the 1911 World Series. In the dusk of Game Five’s 10th inning, Doyle came home on an outfield fly but did not touch the plate, umpire Bill Klem later admitted, saying he would have called Doyle out had the A’s tried to tag him. He went 4 for 5 in that game and then doubled and scored for a 1-0 lead in the first inning of Game 6, but the Giants lost the game 13-2, and with it the Series.
Doyle then had a 1912 season which was perhaps even better, when he won the Chalmers Award after hitting a career-high .330 as the Giants repeated as National League champions.
In the 1912 World Series against the Boston Red Sox he only hit .242, though he scored the first run in a Game 6 victory and was 3 for 4 with a home run in an 11-4 rout in Game 7. But he was 0 for 5 in Game 8 as the Red Sox won 3-2 in ten innings, after New York took a 2-1 lead in the top of the 10th, to capture the title.
In 1913 the Giants won their third straight pennant; although he batted only .280, he stole 30 bases for the fifth year in a row to go along with 73 runs batted in. That year, he became the first player to hit a home run out of the Polo Grounds.
He had an even more dismal 1913 World Series, hitting only .150 against the Athletics as the Giants lost in five games, though he did drive in the first run of the Series. In 1914 he slipped to a .260 average, but was fourth in the league in runs. On July 17, he hit a home run in the top of the 21st inning to defeat the Pittsburgh Pirates 3-1.
He enjoyed renewed success in 1915, however, winning the batting crown with a .320 average; it was the first title won by a National League second baseman since 1876. He also led the league in hits with 189 for the second time, and in doubles with 40 – a Giants franchise record until George Kelly hit 42 in 1921.
Doyle began 1916 with a .278 average before being traded to the Chicago Cubs in late August, a painful move for the fiercely loyal player who had famously said in 1911 that it was “great to be young and a Giant.”
After hitting .395 for the Cubs in nine games that year, he batted .254 for the team in 1917, finishing fourth in the league with 6 home runs, before a pair of January 1918 trades brought him back to New York.
He hit .261 in his return to the Giants before having his last outstanding season in 1919; that year he again was league runnerup in slugging with a .433 average, and was fifth in home runs with 7.
He batted .285 in his final season in 1920, and was granted his release so he could manage the Toronto Maple Leafs of the International League. At the time, he was within five games of Johnny Evers’ league record for career games at second base.
Doyle ended his career with a .290 batting average, putting him behind only Nap Lajoie (.338), Eddie Collins (then at .329) and Cupid Childs (.306) among players with 1000 games at second base.
He also had 960 runs and 793 Runs Batted In in 1766 games, as well as 300 stolen bases including 17 steals of home plate.
Doyle contracted tuberculosis in 1942, and retired to Saranac Lake, New York.
He died there on March 1, 1974 at age 87.
In this inning we’ll open up the Baseball Dictionary
Under the letter: B
Banner year
A highly successful season enjoyed by a player or team.
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