For the sixth year in a row, the Cincinnati Red Stockings won the National Association pennant, and thus got a bye to the Centennial Cup Finals. And their opponent, for the second straight autumn, was the Tri Mountain Club of Boston. Sellout crowds at the Palace of the Fans in Cincinnati saw the Reds win the first two games by one run apiece.
Game 1 was a pitcher's duel between Bob Black of Cincinnati against Tri Mountain's Jim Devlin. Dennis Casey had two of the Reds' six hits, including an RBI single in the second -- which was all they needed in a 1-0 win. Casey also figured in Game 2, blasting a two-run homer, but the game was all even at four after nine innings. In the tenth, Jim O'Rourke led off with a triple, then Arlie Latham singled him home for a 5-4 victory and a 2-0 series lead.
Tri Mountain needed to win in Boston, and they did. In the third game, Thomas Gorman drove in four runs, including two on a double in the seventh that snapped a 7-7 tie, and Boston held on to a 10-7 win. In Game 4, Henry Galliker -- the 39-year-old veteran whose career began with the amateur Oriental club in New York way back in 1869 -- was the star, with an RBI double in the sixth and a reaching on an error by Cincy 2B William Johnson in the tenth to give Boston a 6-5 win. Series tied!
At the fifth game at Fens Way Park, "Nef Ced" McGreevey and the Royal Rooters were in full evidence as the largest crowd ever to see a ballgame in Massachusetts -- a ballpark-busting 28,359 -- saw not one but
two ageless wonders at work. First, there was Galliker, who in the last of the eighth and Boston trailing, 3-2, smashed a home run to tie things up. Then up stepped the 44-year-old Sam Woolverton, who lined one into the gap in right-center for a triple. Woolverton, whose career began way back in '66, came home on Curtis Chapman's single, giving Tri Mountain a 4-3 win and a 3-2 Cup lead.
At the celebration at the Third Base bar, McGreevey made what he later called the most painful decision of his life: he served the ballplayers...sarsaparilla. Also, there was no music, dancing, or women in the bar that night. The players howled, but McGreevey merely yelled, "Until that Cup is up on the shelf, you're all going to be
choir boys! Nuff said...!"
So, the Tri Mountain club found themselves in exactly the same spot they were in a year ago: leading the Cup Final three games to two, but needing a win in the Palace of the Fans: unfriendly territory to say the least. But from the first pitch, the Red Stockings seemed off: they would commit five errors in the contest, including two on dropped balls by the usually sure-handed Dan Brouthers at first. Again, it was the old men who led the way: Galliker led off the game with a home run, and Woolverton hit a two-run double in the third inning. Even 40-year-old George Sanderson got in on the fun, with a double of his own that would make the score 6-0, Boston. (He got
his start with Tri Mountain in 1870.) Brouthers tried to make up for his earlier miscues with a two-run blast in the sixth, but it was too little, too late, as Boston claimed their first Cup with a 7-3 triumph.
The day after Tri Mountain's return to Boston, Nef Ced McGreevey was incensed by a front-page article in the
Globe: BASEBALL CUP TO RESIDE AT KELLY'S BAR. "We want the Cup at Kelly's, because that other barkeep was so mean to us," claimed an "unidentified player". Nuf Ced stormed over to the team offices, threatening to "tear them all limb from limb", only to see the whole team waiting for him, laughing their heads off. Team captain Woolverton promptly thrust the Cup in McGreevey's hands. "Of course it's going to your place," he roared, "where else?"
If you go to Boston, you'll find the Third Base bar has long been replaced by a museum of baseball paraphernalia. And there, on a high shelf, you can see the first-ever Centennial Cup won by the Tri Mountain Baseball Club of Boston.
Enough said.