In October 1912, six months after the sinking of the RMS Titanic and two years before the start of the First World War, the Boston Red Sox and the old New York Giants squared off in what would prove to be an exciting, competitive, and nail-biting World Series. The series would go to a deciding seventh game (technically, an eighth game, as a game earlier in the series had been called off on account of darkness) as the two best teams in baseball went toe-to-toe.
The deciding game took place on Wednesday, October 16, in Boston’s Fenway Park, which had just opened for business that spring. Trees were starting to turn, the air had a tang to it, and, one way or another, the 1912 baseball season was about to reach its conclusion.
The Spalding’s Official Baseball Guide that hit the newsstands the following spring wrote of the 1912 Series: “No individual, whether player, manager, owner, critic, or spectator, who went through the world’s series of 1912 ever will forget it. There never was another like it. Years may elapse before there shall be a similar series.”
For one player, though, the memories of that deciding final game would be far from pleasant.
Fred Snodgrass was a 24-year-old center fielder for the Giants, just three days shy of his 25th birthday. He was a solid player–not a superstar by any stretch, but a consistent, steady contributor. He had played in 146 games that year, batted a respectable .269, and stole 43 bases. “Snow,” as he was called, would have been as likely as anyone in the Giants lineup to play the hero.
He did just the opposite.
The big game went to extra innings, the tension swirling around Fenway Park, thick as sea fog. And when the Giants plated the go-ahead run in the top of the 10th inning, to take a 2-1 lead, it appeared that they would break the Fenway faithfuls’ hearts. But in the bottom of the 10th, the first batter up for the Red Sox lofted a lazy fly ball to center field.
Snodgrass camped under the ball, reached up with his mitt, and . . . dropped the ball. The baserunner slid into second base, safe on the error. Later, Snodgrass tried to explain what went wrong, how he could have muffed such an easy ball.
“I didn’t seem to be able to hold the ball,” he said, unable to offer an excuse. “It just dropped out of the glove, and that was all there was to it.”
Snodgrass made a brilliant play on the next batter, robbing him of an extra-base hit. But the damage had already been done. Ultimately, the Red Sox scored two runs that inning, aided by “Snow’s” miscue, and won the game, 3-2, and the Series, four games to three. Snodgrass’s error would become known as “the $30,000 muff,” alluding to the difference between the winning and losing shares for World Series participants that year.
Sadly, this was what many fans and sportswriters remembered from the 1912 Series–up until that time, perhaps the best and most compelling World Series ever played. The matchup between the Red Sox and the Giants that year included four future Hall of Famers and was the first World Series to be decided in the final inning of the final game.
But for Fred Snodgrass, he would be reminded of his untimely error for the rest of his life.
“For over half a century I’ve had to live with the fact that I dropped a ball in a World Series,” Snodgrass recounted in Lawrence S. Ritter’s delightful The Glory of Their Times, decades after his 1912 error in the Fall Classic. “‘Oh yes, you’re the guy that dropped that fly ball, aren’t you?’–and for years and years, whenever I’d be introduced to somebody, they’d start to say something and then stop, you know, afraid of hurting my feelings.”
The question was–would Snodgrass be able to move on and live his life fully, or would he remain stuck reliving an unforgiving and an unchangeable past?
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In The Singularity Wheel, the sequel to The Eye-Dancers, set to be released in November, Mitchell Brant has a different, but at the same time, similar dilemma. Five years have passed since the events in The Eye-Dancers, but Mitchell cannot seem to forget Heather, the girl he met in another world, as far away from our earth as can possibly be imagined. As the years have gone by, Mitchell misses Heather more and more, holding imaginary conversations with her, saving the gold locket she had given him as a keepsake, wishing there was some way he might be reunited with her. He’s dated other girls since, but no one can hold a candle to Heather. Being with other girls only serves to remind him of what he’s lacking, the one person he longs to be with but can’t.
From chapter 1 of The Singularity Wheel:
“He knelt down in front of his dresser, opened the bottom drawer. This was where he stored his most valuable comic books. It was off-limits to everyone else, even Mom, and a perfect place to stash his secret.
“He pulled out stacks of Fantastic Fours, Spider-Mans, Avengers, and X-Men, and set them aside, revealing the necklace with the gold-shaped locket tucked back in the far corner of the drawer. This was the gift Heather had given him. Something to remember her by, she had said. It was cumbersome having to perform this ritual every night. There were a hundred other places he might store the locket. But he wouldn’t risk it. The locket was too precious, too sacred. No one else could see it.
“He picked it up, sniffed it, wondering if some faint, long-ago fragrance from her might still linger there. It didn’t. He wrapped his fingers around it, tight, held it against his cheek. It was silly, really, what she had said—as if he would ever need anything to help him remember her. He just wished the way she had believed in him, had confidence in him, might be able to rub off on his own opinion of himself. Maybe it would have been different if he’d been able to stay with her in Colbyville, be near her, every day. As it was, it was hard, even impossible sometimes, for Mitchell Brant to believe in Mitchell Brant.”
Will Mitchell get the opportunity, against all odds, to span the void and see Heather again? And if he does, how will their meeting go? Will she still feel the same way he does, after all this time? Or will she no longer care?
Moving on is hard to do. Coming to terms with the regrets of our past, with things we cannot change, with hopes and dreams that may seem out of reach, is one of life’s great challenges.
But it’s not impossible.
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Fred Snodgrass was never allowed to forget the error he’d made on baseball’s grandest stage. But he didn’t let it ruin his life, or eat him up. Perhaps Mitchell can take solace from Snodgrass’s perspective.
Perhaps we all can.
“Well, life has been good to me since I left baseball,” Snodgrass said in The Glory of Their Times. “My lovely wife, Josephine, and I have enjoyed success and things have gone well, very well, through these many years. In contrast, my years in baseball had their ups and downs, their strife and their torment. But the years I look back at most fondly, and those I’d like most to live over, are the years when I was playing center field for the New York Giants.”
Thanks so much for reading!
–Mike
Eye-Dancers 