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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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