"He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something)." Erik Keilholtz
Under the patronage of St. Tammany
Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
Friday, July 25, 2003 The year the Sox beat the Yanks
Opening Day, Boston, 1904, from American League: The Early Years
As the Yankees and Red Sox renew their rivalry this weekend at Fenway Park, a New England fan might look beyond years of Pinstriped heartbreak to the very first time Boston (AL) and New York (AL) fought for first – and Boston won.
On Oct. 10, 1904, last day of the season, the then-Boston Pilgrims entered a doubleheader against the then-New York Highlanders needing a split for the pennant, and got it when New York gave them the first game on a ninth-inning wild pitch.
(That was as far as the Bostons went that year: No World Series was held because the NL champion NY Giants refused to play.)
The Red Sox didn't fare so well 45 years later when they entered Yankee Stadium needing one win in the final two games of the season for the pennant, a tragic tale artfully told by David Halberstam in The Summer of '49.
Meantime, see web sites devoted to the spitballer with one of the best names in baseball history, and to perhaps the most unsavory Yankee of them all.
![[SMMMHDH]](http://www.mgilleland.com/music/smmmhdh.png){kind=small}
