Pre-season predictions in Base Ball do not carry much weight individually, but when many minds, looking at the game from different angles, agree on the main points there usually is good reason behind such near unanimity. Outside of Boston it is doubtful if any experienced critic of Base Ball in the country expected the Red Sox to be converted from a second division team into pennant winners in one short season. If such expectancy existed in Boston it was partially a case of the wish fathering the thought. The majority of men believed the machine with which Connie Mack had achieved two league and two world's championships was good for at least one more American League pennant. That expectation was based on the comparative youth of the important cogs in the Athletic machine. Yet this dope went all wrong. The Athletics were beaten out by two teams which were in the second division in 1911, one of them as low as seventh place.

The reason for these form reversals were several. The Boston and Washington teams improved magically in new hands, while the Athletics went back a bit, partly because of too much prosperity and partly because of adversity. Having come from behind in 1911 and made a winning from a wretched start, the Mackmen apparently thought they could do it again and delayed starting their fight until it was too late. The loss of the services of Dan Murphy for more than half of the season also was a prime factor.

The White Sox were the season's sensations both ways and for a time kept everybody guessing by their whirlwind start under new management. They walked over every opponent they tackled for the first few weeks, then began to slip and it required herculean efforts to keep them in the first division at the finish. The Chicago team always was a puzzle to all parties to the race, including itself.

From the outset there was almost no hope for the other four teams in the league. Cleveland and Detroit occasionally broke into the upper circles for a day or two in the early weeks of the season, but not far enough to rouse any false anticipations among their supporters. St. Louis and New York quickly gravitated to the lower strata and remained there, the Yankees finally losing out in their battle with the Browns to keep out of last place.

Five American League teams started the season under new managers. One of the three which began the race under leaders retained from the previous year changed horses in mid-stream. Jake Stahl, Harry Wolverton, Clark Griffith, Harry Davis and James Callahan were the new faces in the managerial gallery. Some of them were not exactly new to the job but were in new jobs. Of these Stahl, Griffith and Callahan proved successful leaders and the first named became the hero of a world's championship team when the last ball of the series was caught. Davis resigned during the season and was succeeded by Joe Birmingham, who almost duplicated the feat of George Stovall in 1911, putting new life into the Cleveland team and starting a spurt which made the race for position interesting. Wolverton stuck the season out in spite of handicaps that would have discouraged anybody, then handed in his resignation. Wallace, who started the year at the helm again in St. Louis, cheerfully handed over the management to Stovall, who had been transplanted into the Mound City in the hope of making Davis' task easier in Cleveland. Stovall made the Browns a hard team to beat and had the mild satisfaction of hoisting them out of the cellar which they had occupied for the better part of three seasons.

An unpleasant feature of the season, but one which had beneficial results, was the strike of the Detroit players, entailing the staging of a farcical game in Philadelphia between the Athletics and a team of semi-professionals. This incident grew out of an attack on a New York spectator by Ty Cobb while in uniform and the immediate suspension of the player for an indefinite period.

The prompt and unyielding stand taken by President Johnson against the action of the Detroit players and the diplomatic efforts of President Navin of that club averted serious or extended trouble and undoubtedly furnished a warning against any similar act in the near future. Another, excellent result was the effort made by club owners to prevent the abuse of the right of free speech by that small element of the game's patronage which finds its greatest joy in abusing the players, secure in the knowledge that it is practically protected from personal injury in retaliation.

In the development of new players of note the league enjoyed an average season, and a considerable amount of new blood was injected into the game in the persons of players who made good without attracting freakish attention. The rise of the Washington team from seventh to second place brought its youngsters into the limelight prominently, and of these Foster and Moeller were commended highly. Gandil, who had his second tryout in fast company, plugged the hole at first base which had worried Washington managers for some time. Shanks also made a reputation for himself as a fielder. These men were helped somewhat by the showing of their team, but the case of Gandil would have been notable In any company. His first advent into the majors with the White Sox showed him to be an exceedingly promising player, but for some reason his work fell off until he was discarded into the International League. There he quickly recovered his stride and, when he did come back shortly after the season opened last spring, he demonstrated that he had the ability to hit consistently and proved a tower of strength to Griffith's team.

Baumgardner of the St. Louis Browns was an example of a youngster making good in spite of comparatively poor company. His pitching record with a team which finished in seventh place stamps him as one of the best, if not the best, of the slab finds of the year. Jean Dubuc of Detroit was another find of rare value and still another was Buck O'Brien of Boston, but these had the advantage over Baumgardner of getting better support both in the field and at bat. O'Brien in particular was fortunate to break in with a championship team.

The White Sox introduced three youngsters who made good and promise to keep on doing so. Two of them, George Weaver and Morris Rath, started the season with Chicago and the third, Baker Borton, joined the team late in the summer. Still later Kay Schalk started in to make what looks like a name for himself as a catcher.

No better illustration of the slight difference between a pennant winning machine and a losing team in the American League has occurred recently than the Boston Red Sox furnished last year. It did not differ materially from the team of 1910 which compelled the use of the nickname "Speed Boys." Jake Stahl was a member of that team, and except for the absence of Stahl in 1911, the champions of 1912 were composed of practically the same men who finished in the second division only the year before. But for the showing of 1910 the whole credit for last season's transformation might be attributed to Manager Stahl. Much of it unquestionably is his by right, and there is no intent here to deprive him of any of the high honors he achieved.

To Stahl's arrangement of his infield probably is due much of the improvement in the team. The outfield trio of wonderful performers did not perform any more wonders last year than in the previous season, but what had been holes on the infield were plugged tightly. Many looked askance when Larry Gardner, supposedly a second baseman, was assigned to third, but the results more than justified the move, and it made room at second for Yerkes, a player who had proved only mediocre on the other side of the diamond. This switch and the return of Stahl, who is a grand mark to throw at on first base, gave the infield the same dash and confidence as the outfield possessed, and the addition of some pitching strength in Bedient and O'Brien did the rest. It is the ability to discover just the right combination that differentiates the real manager from the semi-failure.

The Red Sox were in the race from the start, but they were eclipsed for a time by the White Sox. In spite of that the Bostonians never faltered but kept up a mighty consistent gait all the way and wore down all competitors before the finish. Stahl's men never were lower than second place in the race with the exception of three days early in May. when Washington poked its nose in front of the Red Sox and started after the White Sox, only to be driven back into third place by the men of Callahan themselves. For more than a week in April Boston was in the lead. Then Chicago went out and established a lead so long that it lasted until near the middle of June. Boston attended strictly to its knitting, however. Without stopping in their steady stride, the Red Sox hung on, waiting for the Callahans to slump. When their chance came in June the Bostonians jumped into the lead—June 10 was the exact date—and never thereafter did they take any team's dust.

By the Fourth of July Boston had a lead of seven games over the Athletics. The Red Sox kept right along at their even gait and a month later were leading by the same margin over Washington, which had displaced the former champions. On September 1 Boston's lead was thirteen games, but it was not until September 18 that the American League pennant was actually cinched beyond the possibility of losing it.

All season Stahl's men were known as a lucky ball team. Delving into the files for the dope, revealed the fact that the newspaper reports of about every third game they played on the average contained some reference to "Boston's luck." This does not detract anything from their glory. No team ever won a major league pennant unless it was lucky. No team ever had as steady a run of luck as Boston enjoyed in 1912, unless that team made a lot of its own luck by persistently hammering away when luck was against it and keeping ever on the alert to take advantage of an opening.

That is the explanation of the unusual consistency that marked the work of the Red Sox all season and the fact they did not experience a serious slump. In the first month of the season they won twelve games and lost eight. The second month of the race was their poorest one—the nearest they came to a slump. In that month they won eight and lost ten games. In the third month Boston won twenty-three and lost seven games. The fourth month saw them win twenty games and lose eight and in the fifth month their record was twenty victories and five defeats. In the final stages of the race the Red Sox were not under as strong pressure from behind and naturally did not travel as fast after sighting the wire, but the figures produced explain why Boston won the pennant. It started well and kept going faster until there was no longer need for speed. The annexation of the world's championship in a record breaking world's series with the New York Giants was a fitting climax to their season's achievement.

When Clark Griffith stalked through the west on his first invasion of the season with a team of youngsters, some of them practically unknown, and declared he was going after the pennant, everybody laughed or wanted to. A few weeks later everybody who had laughed was sorry, and those who only wanted to laugh were glad they didn't. For Griffith kept his men keyed up to the fighting pitch during the greater part of the season, and when they did start slumping in September, he made a slight switch on his infield, applied the brakes and started them going up again. The result was that Washington finished second for the first time in its major league history, winning that position in the closing days of the race after a bitter tussle with the passing world's champions.

The acquisition of Gandil from Montreal plugged a hole at first base which had defied the efforts of several predecessors to stop and it helped make a brilliant infield, for it gave the youngsters something they were not afraid to throw at. In giving credit for the work of Griffith's infield, the inclination is to overestimate the worth of the new stars. But there was a tower of strength at short in George McBride, who has been playing steadily and consistently at that position for several seasons without being given one-tenth the credit his work has merited.

The Washington team at one time or another occupied every position in the race except the first and last. The Senators were in seventh place for a few days in the opening weeks of the season, but not anywhere nearly as long as they were in second place later on. They climbed out of the second division by rapid stages and after May 1 they were driven back into it only once during the rest of the year. That was for three days in the beginning of June. In the meantime they had knocked Boston out of second place for a short while in May and, most of the way, had enjoyed a close fight with Philadelphia for third and fourth spots. Near the middle of June, after the Red Sox had ousted their White namesakes from first place, the Senators also passed Chicago and started after Boston. But the youngsters were not yet hardened to the strain and soon fell back to third and fourth. On July 5 Washington went into second place and held onto it, with the exception of three days, for a period of two months. September brought a slump and Griffith's men surrendered the runner-up position to the Athletics for about two weeks, then came back and took it away from the Mackmen at the end.

What happened to the world's champion Athletics the public did not really know until after the middle of the season. Then the suspensions of Chief Bender and Rube Oldring blazoned the fact that Manager Mack's splendid system of handling a Base Ball team by moral suasion had fallen down in the face of overconfidence and too much prosperity. Few people saw any reason for changing their belief in the prowess of the Athletics during the first half of the season, because they were in as good position most of the time as they had been the year previous at the same stage of the race. They were expected to make the same strong finish that swept everything before it in 1911. Not until the second half of the season was well under way did the adherents of the Mackmen give up the battle.

Philadelphia's sterling young infield seemed to stand up all right all the year, but the outfield and the slab staff gave Connie Mack sleepless nights. When Dan Murphy was injured in Chicago in June it was discovered what he had meant to the team. Dan was what the final punch is to a boxing star. His timely batting was missed in knocking out opponents, and the injury kept him out all the rest of the season. The strain which Jack Coombs gave his side in the world's series of 1911 proved more serious and lasting than was expected, and if Eddie Plank had not come back into grand form it would have been a tougher season than it was for the Athletics.

The Mackmen made a bad beginning for champions, and on May 1 were in the second division. During all of May and part of June they climbed into the first division and fell out of it with great regularity. Not until near the middle of June did the Athletics gain a strangle hold on the upper half of the league standing, from that time on they kept above the .500 mark, and toward the end of June they met the White Sox coming back. There was a short scuffle during the early part of July among the Athletics, Senators and White Sox for the possession of the position next to Boston. Then Chicago was pushed back, leaving Philadelphia and Washington to fight it out the rest of the way. Trimming the Phillies four out of five games in their city series did not lessen the gloom of the Athletics.

The White Sox by their meteoric career demonstrated the value of good condition at the start. Although the Chicagoans experienced tough weather in Texas last spring they fared better than any of the other teams in their league, and that fact, combined with the readiness with which youth gets into playing trim, enabled the White Sox to walk through the early weeks of their schedule with an ease that astonished everybody. Even prophets who were friendly to them had expected no such showing. So fast did the Callahans travel that on May 3 they had lost only four games, having won thirteen in that time. But Boston was hanging on persistently. Chicago's margin over the Red Sox varied from four to five and a half games; during May, on the fourteenth of that month the White Sox had won twenty-one games and lost only five, giving them the percentage of .808. During part of this time they were on their first invasion of the east. May 18 saw the Chicago men five and a half games in the lead and their constituents were dreaming of another world's pennant almost every night.

Even the doubters were beginning to believe Manager Callahan had found the right combination. Just then came the awakening. The luck which had been coming their way began breaking against them with remarkable persistency. Plays that had won game after game went wrong and youth was not resourceful enough to offset the breaks. The White Sox began to fall away fast in percentage, but managed to cling to the lead until June 10. Boston passed them right there and the Chicagoans kept on going.

By mid-season Manager Callahan was fighting to keep his men in the first division and their slump did not end until they landed in fifth place for a couple of days in August. Then in desperation Callahan began switching his line-up and by herculean effort—and the help of Ed Walsh—climbed back into the upper quartet and stuck there to the finish. It was a desperate remedy to take Harry Lord off third base, where he had played during most of his professional career, and try to convert him into an outfielder, a position in which he had had no experience at all. But Lord was too good an offensive player to take out of the game, in spite of his slump at third base, and he was willing to try the outfield. Results justified the move. Lord learned outfielding rapidly, and Zeider proved that third base was his natural position. The acquisition of Borton for first base enabled Callahan to put Collins in the outfield, and the White Sox in reality were a stronger team when they finished than when they started their runaway race in April. With one more reliable pitcher to take his turn regularly on the slab all season the White Sox would have kept in the race. Callahan's men made up for some of the disappointment they produced by beating the Cubs in a nine-game post-season series, after the Cubs had won three victories. Two of the nine games were drawn and one other went into extra innings, making a more extended combat than the world's series.

Cleveland's 1912 experience was almost identical with that of 1911, even to swapping managers in mid-season. Harry Davis, for years first lieutenant to Connie Mack, took the management or the Naps under a severe handicap. He succeeded a temporary manager, George Stovall, who had made good in the latter half of the previous season, but who could not be retained without abrogating a previous agreement with Davis. The public did not take kindly to the situation when the Naps failed to get into the fight, and the new management had a pitching staff of youngsters with out much of a catching staff to help them out when in trouble.

The Cleveland team never was prominent in the race after the first fortnight, although it retained a respectable position at the top of the second division, with an occasional journey into the first division during the first month or six weeks. In the middle of June the Naps dropped back into sixth place, below Detroit, for a while, then took a brace and reclaimed the leadership of the second squad for part of July. Midway in August found Cleveland apparently anchored in sixth spot and, with the consent of the Cleveland club owners, Manager Davis resigned his position.

The management was given to Joe Birmingham, who took hold of it with enthusiasm but without experience, just as Stovall did the previous year. He infused new life into the team, shook it up a bit, and improved its playing so much that Cleveland passed Detroit before the end of the race, and was threatening to knock Chicago out of fourth place at one time. This would have happened but for the brace of the White Sox. Profiting by previous experience the club owners did not look around for a permanent manager until they saw what Birmingham could do, and in consequence were in position to offer him the leadership of the Naps for the season of 1913.

What was left to Manager Jennings from the great Detroit team that had won three straight pennants was slowing up, with the exception of Tyrus Cobb, who has yet to reach the meridian of his career, and the Georgian got into trouble fairly early in the season, with the result that he was suspended for a considerable period. That and the strike of the Tigers in Philadelphia threw a monkey-wrench into the machinery, resulting in a tangle which Jennings was unable to straighten out all the season. There was a problem at first base which he had a hard time solving. The break in Del Gainor's wrist the season before had not mended as it should have done, and he was unable to play the position regularly. Moriarty was pressed into service there and did good work in an unfamiliar position; then the infield was shifted several times without marked benefit. Donovan, who had always been of great help on the slab in hot weather, was not equal to the task of another year and was made manager of the Providence team. Jean Dubuc was the only one of the young pitchers who proved a star, but his work kept the Tigers from being a lot more disappointing proposition than they were.

St. Louis and New York were outclassed from the start. Two weeks after the season opened it was apparent they were doomed to fight it out for the last round on the ladder. That the Browns finally escaped the cellar in the closing days of the race was due largely to the efforts of Stovall, who was made manager to succeed Wallace near the middle of the season.

As early as the first of May it was seen the Browns and Yankees were destined to trail. The New York team quickly gravitated to the bottom. It started without the services of Catcher Eddie Sweeney, who held out for a larger salary, and it had a manager at the helm who was inexperienced in major league leadership. Not until April 24 did New York win a game and in that time it had lost seven straight, postponements accounting for the rest of the time.

St. Louis got a little better start and for a while was inclined to dispute sixth place with Detroit, but on May 1 the Browns found only New York between them and the basement. In the middle of May the Yankees passed St. Louis and ran seventh in the race until July. 4. But accident and injury, and the loss of Cree, shot the Yankees to pieces. For nearly six weeks, however, it was a battle royal between New York and St. Louis to escape the last hole, but in the middle of August the Yankees again established their superiority, retaining seventh place until after the middle of September. In the homestretch the new blood given Stovall enabled him to pull his men out of the last notch just before the schedule ran out. This feat was soon forgotten in the defeat of the Browns by the Cardinals in their post-prandial series for the championship of the Mound City.

The year was not prolific of freak or record-breaking performances in the American League. Walter Johnson of Washington, and Joe Wood of Boston were credited with sixteen straight victories, which raised the American League record in that respect from fourteen straight, formerly held by Jack Chesbro of the Yankees. Mullin of Detroit and Hamilton of St. Louis added their names to the list of hurlers who have held opponents without a safe hit in nine innings. Mullin performed his hitless feat against St. Louis and Hamilton retaliated by holding Detroit without a safety. The number of games in which pitchers escaped with less than four hits against them was smaller than usual, however. There were only seventy-eight shut-out games recorded last season by comparison with the American League's record of 145.

The longest game of the younger league's season lasted nineteen innings, Washington defeating Philadelphia in that combat 5 to 4, and it was played late in September when the two teams were scrapping for second place. The American League record for overtime is twenty-four innings, held by Philadelphia and Boston. There were a lot of slugging games in 1912, but not as many as during the season of 1911. Philadelphia piled up the highest total, 25, in eight innings, but it was made against the semi-professional team which wore Detroit uniforms on the day the Tigers struck. The highest genuine total of hits was twenty-three, made by the Athletics against New York pitchers. The Athletics also run up the highest score of the league's season when they compounded twenty-four runs against Detroit In May.

The semi-monthly standing of the race by percentages follows:

The Chicago-Pittsburgh game at Chicago, October 2, was protested by the Pittsburgh club and thrown out of the records, taking a victory from the Chicago club and a defeat from the Pittsburgh club.

CHAMPIONSHIP WINNERS IN PREVIOUS YEARS.

INDIVIDUAL BATTING.

Following are the Official Batting Averages of National League players who participated in any manner in at least fifteen championship games during the season of 1912: