One hundred years ago the Boston Red Sox scored only nine runs in a six game World Series, and won, four games to two over the even more hitless Chicago Cubs. Babe Ruth started and won two of those games, pitching a shutout in Game One. In Game Four he batted sixth in the lineup, in the century that has followed no other starting pitcher in a Series has hit that high in the batting order. Comiskey Park, home to the American League Chicago White Sox, played host to the Series games in the Windy City, principally due to Comiskey having a seating capacity thousands greater than the Cubs' Weeghman Park. Not until the mid 1920s would Weeghman be renamed Wrigley Field.
The switch in Chicago parks was nothing new. The Red Sox had played their 1915 and 1916 Series home games at the larger Braves Field.
As the seventh inning stretch commenced in Game One of the 1918 World Series, the U.S. Navy band struck up the “Star-Spangled Banner.” Boston third baseman Fred Thomas, on furlough from that same branch of the service, spun around to face and salute the American flag. Many other players followed suit, with hands over hearts. A goodly number in the stretching and standing crowd sang along with the band. Though the song was thirteen years short of officially being labeled the national anthem, the 1918 Series marked the beginning of its regular playing at sporting events.
The Boston World Series crowd's positive reaction to the “Star Spangled Banner” had less to do with the particular rendition of the Navy band and more to do with the fact that the United States of America remained at war, fighting in the trenches of France in what would be optimistically called “the war to end all wars” or, in a more historical perspective, the First World War. In response to that conflict, the baseball season had been truncated by more than twenty games. The six game Series ended on September 11th.
During the summer of 1918, Mendocino County began to understand what war was about. First, innocuous letters like that of John Mendosa, announcing to his father in Mendocino that he had arrived safely in France. On the heels of that, Addie and Emmett McGimsey of Boonville received a telegram from Washington reporting their twenty-two-year-old son, Phocian, missing in action. Three weeks later, Frank Mendosa received word from a hospital in France that his son, John, had been gassed at the front lines. Almost immediately on top of that came news that 28-year-old William Wright died in the fighting in Belleau Wood during the first week of August; “the first one of this section to have given up his life on the allied battle field.”
Reading about 1918, twenty-first century students of history will find what might seem a more modern term. In reporting about young men who had failed to appear for their physical examinations after being drafted, a local paper stated, “They should not be termed as slackers until it is definitely known that they are such.”
Elsewhere in the press a hundred years ago, the word “Slacker” appears in a headline above this brief report: “A. Ornbaum and Henry Crispin brought a man to Ukiah last week, who gave the name of Wm. King, and who had entered the Crispin home and stole a quantity of clothing, a revolver and various other articles. He also had a rifle which had probably been stolen somewhere else. It is believed King is a slacker.”
For those who weren't slackers, but hard workers in the local mills and woods, 1918 witnessed a significant shift. Early in the year an I.W.W. (Industrial Workers of the World) member, named Bertini, was arrested for passing union literature in a logging camp outside Greenwood. By March, the lumber companies of northern California adopted an eight hour day for their mill workers. Mendocino County mills hedged a bit, continuing with ten hour shifts, but designating the extra two hours as overtime with extra compensation. The overall rise in pay created by the shift adjustments amounted to a ten percent improvement for workers at the Mendocino Lumber Company mill. The Caspar Mill Company pay raise equaled, if not slightly exceeded, a ten percent raise. However, Caspar commenced charging a dollar a day for “board” to employees who had previously used company cabins rent free.
1918 rolled on, and in November the combatants signed an armistice to end all wars. Phocian Mcgimsey turned up alive. He came back to Anderson Valley, living a full life. John Mendosa returned to Mendocino. Though the effects of front line combat (what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder) and being gassed plagued him at times, he, too, lived a long life. John was a frequent companion of my father on autumnal hunting trips to Modoc County. I remember him best as an early morning mentor in the art of rock fishing with bamboo poles, typically from the slippery stones north of Mendocino during low tide.
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