On this day in 1918

Sunday, Sept. 15, 1918. The 1918 Major League Baseball season ended early when the Boston Red Sox won the World Series on September 11, but amateur baseball is still going strong in Troy this weekend. The Red Sox defeated the Chicago Cubs, 3 games to 2, in a series marred by a players’ strike that delayed the start of Game 5 for a few hours on September 10. Representatives of both teams demanded a larger cut of gate receipts at the expense of the second, third and fourth place teams in both the American and National leagues. Players and league officials alike were widely criticized for the tie-up. The Fall Classic was played before fall began because the federal government has deemed baseball a non-essential activity during wartime. Big league players will now be compelled to find work useful to the U.S. war effort or join the military. Amateur players in the Record reading area only play on weekends, and the games presumably don’t interfere with any useful labor the men perform during the week. The top amateur clubs draw approximately as well as Troy’s old New York State League team, which left town in 1916. The Record reports that today’s attendance of approximately 3,000 fans at Center Island Park for a game between the All-Troys of Lansingburgh and the Cohoes Insulars is “the best turnout of the year.”

Manager Jack Willetts’s controversial All-Troys, who’ve been accused of cheating on the field and enticing players away from rival clubs, are coming off a convincing 4-0 victory over their Collar City rivals, the Laureate Boat Club, on the Laureates’ Glen Avenue diamond. The Insulars, who accused the All-Troys of cheating during an August 18 contest, are unintimidated.

“Insulars picked the right man to go against the AllTroys,” our sportswriter reports, “for Lefty Stone had the North Troy lads, figuratively speaking, eating out of his hands.”

Stone’s opposite number, the All-Troys’ Mike Hogan, lasts only four innings, giving up four runs. It’s not his pitching but his baserunning, however, that knocks Hogan out of the game. He suffers a “badly bruised knee” while running to first in the bottom of the fourth and has to be replaced by RPI mound star Lefty Keuhnert.

Keuhnert pitched a complete game against the Laureates yesterday but is up to the long relief task. He holds the Insulars to one hit over the next five innings, but the damage has already been done. Stone scatters four hits and strikes out six in his completegame victory. The series for local bragging rights continues one week from today.

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