June 20, 1908 - Cubs lose, umpire gets bullied by the crowd

Cubs get shut out 4-0 by the Giants, umpire screws them again.

You know, I get the feeling there weren't many Cubs fans in 1908 that liked umpire Bill Klem. Here's the second game this week that his poor umpiring is being blamed for a Cubs loss. Now in Klem's defense, I'm not sure his lousy calls even mattered because the Cubs had to face the legendary Christy Mathewson, who only gave up three hits and struck six for the complete game shutout.

Here's Mathewson's numbers in 1908 ... 37-11. Yup ... THIRTY SEVEN wins!!

He also had an ERA of 1.43, 34 complete games, 11 shutouts, and 390 innings pitched (that is not a typo). Oh ... and he also managed to pick up 5 saves in other games that he didn't start. Suck on THAT Clayton Kershaw! Now sabermetric gurus would totally pick apart his K/9 ration since he "only" struck out 259 batters in his almost 400 innings of work, but I'm pretty sure he'd be pretty expensive on DraftKings nonetheless.

400 innings. WOW! It would take Mr. Injury Clay Buchholz 9 seasons to finally hit 400 innings, and Big Six did it in one season ...

But yeah ... Umpire Klem did kinda drop the ball in the 7th when both teams were still scoreless. The Giants loaded the bases and manager John McGraw instructed second baseman Larry Doyle to do whatever it took to get hit by a pitch.

Doyle, according to the Tribune, "turned his back and deliberately stuck his hip into the ball," which they also claimed was a strike down the middle of the plate. Now in most cases the umpire would not award the batter first base if the pitch was in fact a strike. However, Klem was dealing with the fact that the Polo Grounds was full on this day with over 20,000 Giants fans, who were crowded right up to field in all directions, and were being held back by NOBODY.

That's right ... there were NO POLICE at this game. Police were actually banned from the Polo Grounds because of some incident that happened in 1906. So it was just a handful of Pinkerton private security and that was it. So yeah ... I don't blame Klem for being a tad bit afraid of a big call going against the home team.

Oh and how about this for some added anarchy ... beer vendors were selling drinks to the highest bidder! Since the crowd was so big, vendors basically started offering drinks at a starting bid of 25 cents, and then let the crowd bid up the price until there was a winner. And you think prices are bad today for a beer ... at least they don't go up as the game goes on!

Speaking of getting screwed over ... you gotta feel for these Cubs players back then. They just finished their 14th consecutive road game of a 15 game trip, and they're supposed to have the day off the next day.

So what do they get to do on that "day off" before the 15th road game? Why ... take a midnight boat ride to Troy, NY to play an exhibition game against a team there of course. What a ripoff!

I'll let you in on a little secret for the upcoming post on the 22nd ... the Cubs are gonna lose that game. What a shocker considering the've been on the road for 3 weeks and now have to take a long ass boat ride in the middle of the night to and from Troy just to play in a stupid exhibition game.

So yeah ... the Cubs lost 4-0 to fall to 32-19 on the year. Pittsburgh split a doubleheader with Brooklyn, so the Cubs lead is now just a game and a half. A bullpucky "off day" tomorrow, followed by one more game against the Giants before finally returning home from the road trip from hell.

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