This year there was to be no runaway race for the pennant. All the Western teams were up on their toes to bring the flag to their own section. Since Joe had come to the Giants that team had won the championship for several years in succession, and from the Western point of view that would never do. Each team, of course, wanted it for themselves, but at any rate if they could not win it they wanted it to go to some other Western team. So the slogan was: “Anything to beat the Giants.”
Their best pitchers were carefully groomed and kept in reserve for the games with the conquering New Yorkers, while the other pitchers did the bulk of the twirling in the less important games. In each series of four games the various managers maneuvered so that their king-pin pitcher worked in the first and fourth games, so that they could hurl their pitching star twice at least against the invaders. This was perfectly legitimate from the standpoint of shrewd management, but it can easily be seen that it made the Giants’ task a good deal harder than that of any other club.
But the Giants were a fighting club, made up for the most part of veterans of many a hard-fought campaign, and the stiffer the opposition the more their battling spirit rose to meet it. The very bitterness of the opposition was a compliment in itself, and with Joe and Jim pitching the game of their lives they faced the foe with confidence.
That confidence, to be sure, would have been still greater had it not been for the indifferent playing of Hupft and McCarney that was now becoming a matter of comment among all the players. McRae had his lines out for likely material to supplant those two, but he had not yet been able to land what seemed like major league material and so was forced to keep them on a little longer.
But the demon pitching done by Joe and Jim had thus far made up for the deficiencies at third and center, and the Giants started their swing around the Western circle at the head of the league and two games to the good. That, of course, was only a slender margin, and might be wiped out in a few days of hard luck, but it at least gave them an “edge” on their rivals. McRae was figuring on taking at least ten of the sixteen games to be played on the present trip, and if he could do that there was every prospect that the Giants would return home in the lead. Then, with a long series on their home grounds in prospect, there was a good chance that the Giants could get so far out in the lead that they would never be headed.
Their first series was with Cincinnati, and here they struck a snag in Hughson’s rejuvenated team. The Reds were playing championship ball and ran away with three games out of four. This was a setback, but the Giants evened the score when they made a similar killing with the Pittsburghs as the victims. At St. Louis the team met with rain on one of the days scheduled, and were able to play only three games. But as they annexed two of these, McRae, to use his own phrase, “had no kick coming.”
It was at Chicago that the real test came. The Windy City boys had their fighting togs on and neither gave nor asked for quarter. The games were for blood from the tap of the bell. Joe won the first by a shut out—won in a double sense by hitting a homer for the only run scored by his side. Jim was next and pitched superbly in a game that went for thirteen innings, and was only won by Chicago in the last by an error of McCarney. The Cubs repeated the dose on the following day, when a perfect deluge of hits came from their bats that drove Markwith to the showers and gave Chicago the game by a score of 11 to 5.
Chicago players, fans and newspapers were jubilant and implored the Cubs to put on the finishing touch by winning the last game of the series.
The Giants had now won seven and lost seven of their Western trip and the result of the final game would decide whether they should go back to New York with the tally on the right or wrong side of the ledger.
“Those fellows are calling themselves Giant-killers, Joe,” said McRae, as the teams were warming up in practice before a tremendous crowd that packed every inch of the stands and bleachers on the day of the final game. “I want you to go out and show them that you’re some little Cub-killer yourself.”