The Best Day of the Year

No, not Valentine's Day you sappy old sentimentalists.  Cincinnati Reds' Opening Day!

 

I scored my Opening Day tickets this morning.  Thank you Bob Castellini!  Look for me and Big Brother Lou in the 7th row of the Sun Deck power alley.  I will be the guy wearing Reds gear. 

 

This year's Opening Day will be of dubious historic merit.  Due to the persistent misguided helmsmanship of Commissioner of Major League Baseball A. Bartlett "Bug" [sic] Selig, the scourge that is Interleague Baseball will now infect every single day of the MLB schedule.  Somewhere, everyday, all season long, there will be an Interleague game.  It all begins with the first-ever Interleague game on Opening Day in the long and storied history of our National Pastime.  If it must happen anywhere then Cincinnati, the city of firsts in baseball - the first all-professional team, the first night game, the first Civil Rights Game - is the logical choice.

 

 

Long-range Reconnaissance

 

As all baseball purists know, Interleague play should be strictly limited to All-Star and World Series games.  This week we train our looking glass on Game 2 of the 1910 World Series (below).

 

 

The scene above was Shibe Park in Philadelphia, October 18, 1910.  Connie Mack's Philadelphia A's were hosting the Chicago Cubs of Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance fame.  This Fall Classic was the first-ever in which both National and American League clubs won 100+ games during the regular season (Jude's toothless Cubbie Bears won 104 games that year, the Athletics won 102).  The Cubs Dynasty of the Aughts was crashing to an end but Connie Mack's A's were ascendant.  The A's would win this 1910 World Series 4 games to 1 and then went on to beat John McGraw's New York Giants in both the 1911 World Series and the 1913 Series.

 

This era in Philadelphia A's baseball is noted by its legendary "$100,000 Infield" of Harry Davis (first base), Eddie Collins (second base), Jack Berry (shortstop) and Frank "Home Run" Baker (third base).  Home Run is quite possibly the best nickname a ballplayer could ever hope to have.  The panoramic photo above gives you a front-row perspective of Frank Baker manning his position just prior to the start of Game 2.

 

"Home Run" Baker led the American League in, what else, home runs for four consecutive seasons, 1911-1914.  His totals in those seasons were; 11, 10, 12, 9.  Altogether now, Dead Ball Era.  Looking more deeply, he was a great all-around hitter.  Here are a few of his individual season slash lines:

 

1911:  .334/.379/.508 in 659 at-bats

1912:  .347/.404/.541 in 644 at-bats

1913:  .337/.413/.493 in 644 at-bats (again).

 

In those three seasons he drove in 115, 130, 117 RBI.  Only once in his career did he strike out more than 39 times.  In 1919, when playing with the New York Yankees, "Home Run" Baker had 623 plate appearances but struck out just 18 times!  As an aside, "Home Run" Baker and the greatest home run hitter ever, Babe Ruth (no slight against Henry Aaron's total; Ruth hit 'em at an unsurpassed ratio to other teams), were Yankee teammates in 1921 and 1922.  Blasting a harsh spotlight on the convergence of the Dead Ball Era and the Lively Ball Era as embodied by their most famous representatives, in those two seasons (1921 &1922) Frank Baker hit 9 and 7 home runs whereas the Bambino crushed 59 and 35 bombs.

 

For his 13-year career, "Home Run" Baker averaged 615 at-bats per season!  That's Pete Rose-level durability!

 

Frank Baker's unparalleled nickname arose in 1911, not from leading the A.L. in homers that season but rather from his performance in the 1911 World Series.  In Game 2 of the 1911 Fall Classic Frank Baker hit a go-ahead home run off future Hall of Famer Rube Marquard and then in Game 3 he slugged a game-tying Ninth Inning homer off future Hall of Famer Christy Mathewson.  Forever after, Frank Baker was known as "Home Run."

 

In an era long before the Designated Hitter, "Home Run" Baker heroically played every inning of his Hall of Fame American League career at third base.

 

But all that was in Frank Baker's future (kinda cool thinking about that, looking at the photo above and knowing how high his baseball-playing career trajectory would soon soar..... all of which was necessarily unknown to him as he took the field in the 1910).  The A's won Game 2 of the 1910 World Series, 9-3, before a crowd of 24,597 Philadelphians who were witness to the Cubs setting a then-record by stranding 14 runners on base.