The Giants And White Sox Circle the Globe: A Brief Overview

by James E. Elfers  

James has recently written a book on the 1913 World Tour featuring the White Sox and Giants. For more information see The Tour to End All Tours.

After thirty-five games in thirty-one different American cities, the New York Giants and the Chicago White Sox shoved off from Seattle, Washington at 5:00 in the Afternoon of November 19, 1914 for Vancouver, British Columbia, and then on to distant, romantic shores. The two baseball teams; led by the fiery John McGraw, the portly Charles A. Comiskey, and the dashing White Sox Manager, Jimmy Callahan, were taking major league baseball where it had never gone before. In both the American athletes and the sports fans of many of the nations to which they sailed, curiosity reigned. The foreign press and inhabitants would have much to say about the American pastime as played by the likes of Jim Thorpe, "Turkey" Mike Donlin, "Germany" Schaefer, "Buck" Weaver, and Fred Merkle. This article is a very brief account of the international phase of their tour. Included are some press accounts and foreign views demonstrating how this odd expeditionary force was viewed by the nations they "invaded." Seeing American baseball through the eyes of others, is to see ourselves and our national game in a different way.

ASIA

After barely weathering the worst typhoon to hit the Northern Pacific in two decades, the tourists limped into Tokyo, Japan on December 6, 1913 three days behind schedule. The Giants and White Sox would play three games in this Asian nation. Unlike every other country the tourists visited, the Empire of Japan was as baseball mad as the United States. Japan had been playing baseball since the 1870's and by 1913 it was the national game of Japan. Only Sumo wrestling was more popular than baseball. Here the players encountered a press corps as knowledgeable about the game as any American reporter. To the American Reporters who accompanied the Sox and Giants on their around the world jaunt, Gus Axelson of the Chicago Record Herald , and H. P. Burchell of the New York Times, Japan's fourth estate was simply too much.

"Every newspaper in Tokyo had from one to five staff at the game, and as for photographers, our National League would have to sit up nights passing rules against them. At every game in Keio there were at least twenty, and, what's more, they knew their business. They spotted the highlights in the game from the start. Speaker, Crawford, Scott, Weaver, Doolan, and Doyle "Spoiled" dozens of films during the matinees. As for McGraw, Comiskey, and Callahan, they were photographed in every pose except on their heads."

On the day of their arrival, a Tokyo paper, the Chuo Shinbum printed the following greeting in English to the teams, "We extend our hearty welcome to the two famous teams from America. The only regret is that your stay in the capital is not long enough so that we could give you a warm reception and exchange our friendship."

The wall- to- wall press coverage in Tokyo included not only the newspapers of Tokyo, but also a contingent of reporters from Kobe, and Osaka. Much to the regret of the citizens of theses two great metropolises, in order to make up time lost in the hellacious crossing of the Pacific, games scheduled for both cities would have to be cancelled.

Despite the media's hovering about the American baseball teams, Japan's reporters were nothing like their obnoxious American counterparts, politeness and generosity ruled. "Superlatives were not missing in the advance notices. It was always the "most famous player" who figured in the write-ups, and they were all famous. The curves of the pitchers were described as something uncanny; the hitting belonged to that of giant born, and so on through the list."

It would almost be easy to mistake the tourists next destination, Shanghai, China, for a European port. While the city was certainly in China, strict racial apartheid ensured most Westerners never mixed with any Chinese who were not manual laborers, cooks, or maids. The American dominated Shanghai Base Ball Association, made a pointed effort to exclude ethnic Chinese from its contests. Nonetheless, the game was slowly making in roads in China. Missionary schools and Colleges had turned some Chinese into avid baseball players, but the golden age of baseball in China still lay two decades ahead.

The Giants and White Sox successfully plied their craft in Hong Kong, their next stop, but the local media could not have cared less. The world circling baseball players visit caused scarcely a ripple in the British possession The tourists stopped in Hong Kong just long enough to play the very first baseball game in the history of the colony. Their only audience, apart from a smattering of expatriated Americans, was a crowd of rowdy British sailors who had never seen a baseball game before and were as perplexed as could be.

The Philippines, an American colony at the time, and next on the tourist's itinerary, was in many ways a homecoming. Baseball had an ardent following in the recently pacified American outpost. 482 clubs were littered throughout the nation's islands. Baseball was seen as a great civilizing force on the island, a view the occupying American government encouraged. Indeed, there was already an intense sporting rivalry between the Philippines and Japan. Just a few month s before the tourist's arrived in Manila Harbor, the Japan Times for May 24, 1913 recorded the following, "The Filipinos played the Waseda University team this afternoon at the Kashiwagi Grounds. Jorporillo, the sensational southpaw artist, pitched for the for the Filipinos, while Kato was the choice of Captain Masuda for the mound. Kakeyama started the game by driving the sphere down into the left garden for two zabuton [cushions]."

Aside from the names and some of the slang, the paragraph could have appeared in any contemporary U.S. daily. With baseball the most popular sport in The Philippines, every paper in Manila covered the tourist's arrival and provided in depth coverage of the games. Manilans flocked to the ballpark, where they were rewarded with ticket prices twice what their American cousins had paid to see the same teams a month before. Nearly the entire U.S. Pacific fleet of sailors, on the other hand, was admitted to the games for free. After displaying baseball in weather both benign and harsh, the tourists bid Asia a temporary farewell and sailed to the land Down Under.

AUSTRALIA

Baseball had followed American gold miners to Australia around 1870. Surprisingly, the game in Australia was kept alive not by Americans in exile, but rather by that most English of sporting traditions, local cricket clubs. Australia's cricketers had, for completely unknown reasons, adopted baseball as their clubs' off-season athletic activity. Australia stood alone as the one nation where cricket and baseball were played side by side, year in and year out, by the same athletes.

The immediate results of this arraignment created an appreciation for baseball amongst Aussies while simultaneously raising the level of Australia's cricket to the best in the world. Baseball simply made Australians better cricketers.

The Tourists would play games in Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne, each city possessed some level of baseball within its confines. In spite of this, the game was still a vast unknown to many Down Under. The Melbourne Argus published a diagram of a baseball diamond with every position labeled, (including the "proper" spelling of the number eight position as the "centre fielder") to educate its readers.

To some Australian eyes, the American game was fast, lean, and powerful. Certainly the American athletes were bigger and stronger than anything they had ever previously seen on the cricket pitch. Much of the Australian press found much to admire in America's pastime. the anonymous sportswriter for the Argus discovered that even Herman "Germany" Schaefer's humor had an international appeal.

"Schaefer was the recognized funny man of the party, and his principal duty is to stand on the coaching lines and talk to the players on the other side and to make them annoyed or good humored ­ whichever is better designed to make them careless. He was off his game yesterday, and was unable to talk up to his usual form, but now and then he urged his friends to "Lean on the ball, and smack it hard," "To hit it on the nose," and "To keep that old head cool." He was particularly merciful to opponents, and, beyond mentioning that Hearn, the Giants pitcher, "couldn't pitch out a blind girl with her arms tied behind her back," he said very little. The game was played at terrific speed, and the closeness of the decisions at the bases at times left a great deal to the discretion of the umpire. Time after time the ball beat the runner to first base only by inches, and this feature was a splendid evidence of the scientific perfection to which the game has been reduced. In no phase of the sport has the fieldman any pronounced advantage over the runner, or the reverse. It is usual for the pitcher to be in a position to puzzle the batsman considerably with his in-shoots, and out curves, spit-balls, and "fadeaways;" but, taking yesterday's hitting as an example, it would not seem that even the pitcher's advantage is by any means pronounced. Never before has such solid hitting been seen in the on the Melbourne Cricket-ground as was witnessed yesterday, it was like a team of Cotters punishing the bowling of a public schoolboy."

By far the favorite nation of any the tourists had visited, the ballplayers had a blast in Australia. The Australians, for their part, adored the Americans. As has, apparently, always been the case, the citizens of both nations had an instant affinity for each other. It was with a heavy heart that the tourists left Oz for Ceylon on January 13, 1914.

THE INDIAN SUB-CONTINENT

Ceylon in 1914 was associated with one name above all, Sir Thomas Lipton. The British dependency was basically Lipton's personal fiefdom. From this island, Sir Thomas Lipton built a fortune. The millionaire's face peered ubiquitously from all manner of products, especially tea. Almost without question the richest man in the world, Sir Thomas Lipton adored athletes of all stripes. He welcomed the Giants and White Sox to his personal playground, treating them to luxury and laughs.

Thoroughly British, cricket held sway over the island's inhabitants. If not for Sir Lipton talking up the event, attendance at the one game the tourists played at a Colombo racetrack might have been rather scarce indeed. Lipton's sojourns through America as a youth had converted him into a baseball fan. Alone amongst the inhabitants of Ceylon, Thomas Lipton had previously seen the Giants play, and in their native habitat no less. Lipton had attended a game of the 1913 World Series at the Polo Grounds. He enjoyed that game so much, he saved the ticket stub for posterity.

The dapper, pith-helmeted, millionaire immediately struck up a friendship with the eccentric Germany Schaefer. Although the two would appear to have nothing in common, both men tended to enjoy a hearty laugh, tall tales, and humorous pranks.

The tourists adored their time in Ceylon. The beautiful weather, the exotic locale, and the shopping bargains, lodged the island nation firmly and fondly in the players memories. The crowd at their baseball game was a memorable one as well. Sikh guards, imported by the ruling British authorities, patrolled the foul lines, and folks from every level of Ceylon society attended the game.

AFRICA

If visiting the world's richest man is a heady experience, imagine what it is like to meet actual royalty? That is exactly what happened next. Sailing to Cairo, Egypt, the tourists played two games in the desert sun and met the last Khedive of Egypt. Though educated in England, Abbas II, chafed under British Rule. During the opening months of the First World War, the British, unsure of the Khedive's loyalty, had him deposed.

All of the players found the Khedive to be an absolute delight. A vigorous sportsman, he sat with Comiskey and some of the players wives' in his opulent box above the action. On a bone-jarringly hard field, the Giants and White Sox played some of the best games of the entire tour. Jim Thorpe and Buck Weaver vied for the title of MVP of the Desert Sands League. For the bachelor players on the tour, like Buck Weaver, Fred Merkle, and Steve Evans, Cairo was heaven. The Egyptian city boasted many dance halls and an exotic nightlife like no where else. It was with more than a little regret that the teams Sailed across the Mediterranean Sea to visit their fifth continent in three months, Europe.

EUROPE

In Italy, the tourists would have many adventures, most of them unpleasant. Winter weather, a serious medical malady on the part of Comiskey, a close call with death on an Italian mountain railroad, and discovering the unsanitary conditions under which pasta was manufactured in 1913, left many of the tourists longing for America.

Still there was much to delight in the Italian capital, Rome. The wives shopped for bargains galore in the Eternal City, but secular pleasures took a backseat to those celestial. The tour's spiritual highlight came when the party had a private audience with Pope Pius X. For a poor kid like McGraw, reaching this sanctum was truly humbling.

Nineteen baseball clubs called France home in 1914. Kept afloat mostly by American money, the teams waged a generally losing battle with French apathy. Most of the teams were scattered in and around Paris. There was no baseball in the tourists' next destination, Nice, France.

Nice had plenty of diversions. Not far away, the sleepy Principality of Monaco, and its legendary gambling halls beckoned. Germany Schaefer, who had let out for Capri with some comrades in Italy, passed himself off as a German Prince at Monte Carlo. His ruse did not convince for long. After a night of decadent living and a parade through confetti strewn streets, the tourists played a game on a rocky soccer field before an audience of vacationing American millionaires.

The nest stop, Paris was rain-swept, cold, and lousy for baseball. It was however still one of the greatest cities anyone could ever visit. Several of the randy bachelor baseball players bent the ears of the hotel concierge and sought out places that the tour books just don't mention. Some wives accompanied their husbands to the theater, only to discover to their horror, that shows in Paris were quite different from those at home.

London, the last city the tourists would visit, provided some of the most memorable events of the entire tour, including an exciting, extra inning game attended by King George V and more than 10,000 of his subjects, free passes to all the London shows and curiosity abounding about Jim Thorpe. The British were surprised to find that Jim Thorpe looked nothing like the Indians who traveled with "Wild West" shows throughout the Empire. They expected war paint, feathers, a stone hatchet, and scalps lashed to his belt. They received a quiet, almost shy man, only slightly distinguishable from his teammates.

An how did the English view the game devised by their one time colonists? The answer to that question was neatly cited in the Manchester Mirror of February 27, 1914,

"As to the merits of the game, and to the possibilities of its catching on here in England, opinions were very much divided. That it contains all the elements of a grand field game none can surely deny. Every phase of it is marked by dashing skill, encouraging the closest association of hand, foot, and eye. But it is not an English pastime."