NEW YORK - FRIDAY, AUGUST 1, 1924
The American League pennant race is providing great entertainment for sports fans here in 1924, and The Sports Time Traveler™ is following it all virtually day-by-day, precisely 100 years back in time.
It’s particularly exciting because 3 of the game’s all-time greatest players, Babe Ruth of the Yankees, Walter Johnson of the Senators and Ty Cobb of the Tigers, are each having sensational seasons and have their team’s all battling for first place on this date, August 1st, the traditional start of the pennant races.
BABE RUTH and the YANKEES - 1st place 57 - 43
The Yanks are the defending 1923 World Champions and have won 3 straight pennants. They had led most of the season till mid-June when the Senators stunned them by taking 4 straight games at Yankee Stadium to vault the Senators into first.
But now, thanks in large part to the Bambino, Babe Ruth, the Yanks have re-taken first place by one-half game.
Just over a week ago, on July 23rd, Ruth hit a home run leading off the 11th inning to beat the Tigers in Yankee Stadium.
Marshall Hunt, writing in the New York Daily News, captured the moment for posterity with this fine piece of writing:
3 days later, last Saturday afternoon, Ruth did it again. The Sultan of Swat slugged a home run leading off the 14th inning to deliver a victory for the Bronx Bombers in the southside of Chicago.
The headline in the Chicago Tribune article by Irving Vaughan said it all:
This past Monday, Ruth hit a run-scoring double AND a 3 run homer all in the 1st inning of a game. It was part of a record 10 run barrage, something no sportswriter here in Gotham believes has ever been done before to start a big league game. It turned out the Yanks needed all those runs as they narrowly nicked the White Sox 12 - 10.
On Tuesday, Ruth hit another 3 run homer in the 5th inning against the White Sox that provided the winning margin yet again.
And yesterday afternoon in St. Louis he smashed his 14th home run of the month. That broke his own all-time single month record.
Ruth now has a major league leading with 33 home runs and tops all American League batters at .389.
The Yonkers Herald-Statesman celebrated Ruth’s record with this article in which they predict that he might be on his way to a new season record of 60.
WALTER JOHNSON and the SENATORS - 2nd place 56 - 43
Walter Johnson, “The Big Train,” has had a resurgence this season, his 18th year pitching for Washington. The Senators are 13 - 8 in games he’s started and he’s already thrown 4 shutouts.
When the Senators moved into first place in late June, it marked the first time in franchise history, and in the entire career of Walter Johnson, that the Senators had held first place during the summer.
They were knocked out of first by the Tigers in mid-July, but while they’ve pulled back in front of Detroit, they still trail the Yankees by a half-game.
Johnson’s impact on his team has been bigger than his numbers indicate.
The team is rallying around their grand old man in hopes that he just might get to pitch in a World Series for once in his career.
And no better a sportsman than Babe Ruth himself recently declared, “Johnson is still King,” in a syndicated article that has been running in newspapers across the country this week. Here’s the article as it appeared today in The Journal in Meriden, CT:
TY COBB and the Tigers - 3rd place 55 - 43
Ty Cobb specializes not in sportsmanship but gamesmanship. He looks for any way he can to pulverize an opponent.
Only one player in baseball has been in the major leagues longer than Walter Johnson’s 18 seasons, and that’s Ty Cobb, now in his 20th year with Detroit.
Cobb didn’t look like a 20th year player back in April when he hit .434 in 13 games to start the season. Since then he’s cooled off, but he’s still hitting .336.
He’s not just the leader of the Tigers team on the field. He has been doing double duty as the Detroit manager since 1921.
After a fast start, helped by Cobb’s hitting, the Tigers were in first place at the close of April. Then they slid to 4th and were just at .500 in mid-May at 15 - 15.
But in mid-July they went on a rampage winning 10 of 11. Like the Senators did in June, the Tigers leveraged a victory at Yankee Stadium on July 22nd to claw their way back into first.
However, 4 losses in their last 5 games, including 2 yesterday to the Senators, have left the Tigers a game out of first.
AMERICAN LEAGUE STANDINGS
Here are the complete American League standings as of this morning, August 1st.
The top 3 teams are all tied in the loss column with 43. It’s looking like an exciting final 2 months of the season ahead of us. The Sports Time Traveler™ will be following it in the newspapers every day and reporting back to you when there is something so exciting I just have to share it.
Thanks for reading.
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