Chance’s Men Cinch Banner at Boston, Then Go to New York and Beat Giants in Contest Which Gives Them Honor of Gaining the Highest Number of Games Won in a Season—Real Celebration of the Event to Be Held on Return.
[BY SY.] Chicago’s new champions celebrated two events last week and by the irony of fate they were a thousand miles or more from home when both events happened, with none but strangers near to applaud them. The first of these was winning beyond any possible miraculous mishap the National league pennant and the second feat was the breaking of the previous world’s record for games won in a season.
The ceremony of sewing the last button on the bunting which is to float from the pennant pole on the west side grounds next season was performed on Wednesday in Boston, when Chance’s men defeated Tenney’s and that victory, coupled with New York’s simultaneous defeat by the Pirates, snuffed out McGraw’s last faint hope of a third pennant. For days, weeks, almost months, the Spuds had been practically sure of their flag, but there never was a cinch in baseball until it was cinched. Consequently neither Spuds nor fans could sleep the sleep of certain achievement until there was no way to take the honors away.
Real Celebration for Chicago.
But the real celebration of that victory did not occur in Boston, where Chance’s victors were given a warm but perfunctory greeting as champions on the day after they acquired absolute right to their title. Not until the Spuds return from their wanderings to the city they have honored will they be made to feel all that it means to be heroes. Plans, as yet somewhat indefinite, are being made for a monster greeting and benefit which will show the rooters’ appreciation of their first National league pennant winners in twenty years, and these plans are being delayed in some respects to ascertain whether or not to include in them the White Sox, too, making one big demonstration do for both.
This pennant is the seventh National league banner Chicago has won since the organization of baseball, thirty-one seasons ago. Boston is the only city which can show a better record, the Hub being able to claim eight teams of champions in the old league. No other town has approached Chicago or Boston in the matter of championships. In fact, no other towns have been in baseball as many years. They are the only two which have been represented in the National league without a break since its first season, 1876.
New York has four championships to its credit. Brooklyn, Baltimore, and Pittsburg have won three pennants a piece, Providence has tow old ones stored away somewhere, almost forgotten except by the first settlers, and Detroit still boasts of its dearly bough supremacy in 1887.
Chance’s Name Added to List of Idols.
Frank L. Chance is a name to be added now to the list which contains such well known idols of the diamond, past and present, as A. G. Spalding, Harry Wright, A. C. Anson, Frank G. Selee, Ned Hanlon, and Fred Clarke, not to mention the Giant leader, who has just been displaced from his throne by a player so much more popular the country over than is McGraw. The following table shows the National league’s championship history for thirty-one years, since the organization of that body, the managers of the winning teams, and the number of clubs in the league each year:
[Editors note: Rather than transcribe what was in the 1906 Tribune, we will send you to Baseball-Reference.com for its National League history.]
Spuds Glory in New Record.
Added glory comes to Chicago this year in the form of a new record for victories in a season. Even with a slow start in the spring, due to breaking in new timber of seasoned quality, but unfamiliar with the club’s system of play, the Spuds have traveled such a gait since they got down to business that they have wiped out all previous marks in winning games. Nor is the end reached yet, for they are expected to put that record where it is not likely to be touched for years, if ever. They have the opportunity to do it and are working earnestly to that end.
Chicago has thirteen more games to play and nine of them are against second division clubs. The mark set for them in these columns recently, 115 games won, is not beyond probability, therefore. That would beat by nine games the record of the New York Giants in 1904, and, provided Chance’s men should play all their games, their percentage, with 115 victories and thirty-nine defeats, would be .747. There have been higher percentages than that recorded by champion teams in the distant past, but never in a season which compared in length with the present siege of 154 games each year.
The highest percentage in the National League’s history was hung up by the Chicago team of 1880. it was .798, but that team played only eighty-four champions, winning sixty-seven of them. The next highest percentage was by the original Chicago team in 1876, under A. G. Spalding, the figures being .788. In that year only sixty-six games were played by the club for the pennant, fifty-two of them being won and fourteen lost.
Only Eight Teams Beat .700 Mark.
Only eight times in thirty-one years has a pennant team finished with a percentage better than .700, and the Giants when they hung up their 106 mark were seven points shy of that percentage. In recent years, since the season’s schedule has been extended to or near its present length, there have been only two clubs which finished the season with percentages better than .700, until this year. Frank Selee’s Boston champions registered .705 in 1897, and Fred Clarke’s Pirates hung up .741 in 1892. Chance’s men have the opportunity to beat even the last named figures, which were made, however, on a 140 game schedule, which counts in Pittsburg’s favor.
Only six times before this in the National league’s existence has any club won 100 or more games in a season. The first club to pass the century mark was the Boston team of 1892, which won 102 games and lost 48 games. Again in 1898 the Boston team won 102 games, losing 47 that year. Hanlon’s Superbas of 1899 just squeezed over the 100 mark with 101 victories and 47 defeats. Pittsburg raised the world’s record to 103 in 1902 and New York set the mark at 106 two years ago. They fell below it by one game only last year, but still clung to the honors until Friday of last week, when Chicago lowered McGraw’s last vestige of supremacy in the baseball world by registering their 107th victory.
Of course, it was unintentional cruelty, but it was exceedingly appropriate that Chance’s men should wait until they were face to face with McGraw’s tribe before they broke the record and then do it by defeating the actual holders of the record on their own grounds.
New York and Chicago Tied.
The White Sox and Highlanders are deadlocked again in the American league race, but must break the tie today unless their final meeting of the year results in a draw. The double defeat of Friday put a big crimp in the hopes of the rooters, because they had looked for nothing less than three out of four from the Highlanders, but yesterday’s game revived the fainthearted. Because of its bearing on the championship today’s game will be fiercely contested. The winner will have a margin of only one game, to be sure, but that is considerable with so short distance to the wire.
After today both teams have a possible fourteen games to play, the Sox being scheduled at home for ten of them while the Highlanders are on the road all the way to the end. Griffith’s men will leave here tonight for Detroit, where they have three games yet to play. While they are tackling the Tigers, the Sox will have Boston for an opponent for three days beginning tomorrow. On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday New York will be in Cleveland, and Washington will be the opposition at the White Sox fort. The Senators have three games to play here and New York has four in Cleveland, including a postponement from its last trip west.
May Transfer a Game.
In addition, it is possible for Griffith and Lajoie to transfer a game postponed in New York and include it in their coming series, if the consent of the league is secured. It is doubtful, however, if either manager will care to attempt five games in three days.
For the final week of the season, beginning a week from tomorrow, the White Sox have four games to play at St. Louis, on Oct. 1, 2, and 3. On those dates, and including the 4th, New York has four games to play in Philadelphia. Then the Sox will come home to play three games with Cleveland and one with Detroit, ending the season on Oct. 7. Griffith’s men will finish their season with two games against Boston, on Oct. 5 and 6.
During the coming week the advantage is all with the Sox in the matter of opponents, but for the final week New York will have weaker teams to play.
