Errors . . . By Politicians and Hall-of-Famers

HonusWagnerCardMassachusetts Attorney General and unsuccessful U.S. Senate candidate Martha Coakley’s error in labeling Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling a Yankee fan was reminiscent of the late Senator Ted Kennedy’s tenuous command of the world of baseball. Few can forget his famous statement in 1998: “It is a special pleasure for me to introduce our two home run kings for working families in America, Mike McGwire and Sammy Sooser of the White House. Its a pleasure to introduce them.”

It looks like the good Senator is still up to his old tricks. In his posthumously published autobiography, he writes about his grandfather Honey Fitz Fitzgerald, the one-time Boston mayor and congressman and big-time Red Sox fan at the 1903 World Series. On page 78 of “True Compass,” he observes:

“Tessie” may sound a little quaint to today’s ears, but Grandpa’s rendition of it was good enough to cause the great Pittsburgh third baseman Honus Wagner to commit three errors in one inning during a World Series game.

“Third baseman Honus Wagner”? Also, Wagner did not make three errors in one inning during the 1903 World Series. You would think that someone along the line would at least check this stuff.

Actually, there probably is a core of truth to Kennedy’s story. SS Wagner did make two errors in the sixth inning of game 5 of the World Series, which was played in Pittsburgh. A third error was made by Fred Clarke, who played LF. According to Roger Abrams’ wonderful book on the 1903 World Series, a group of 100 Red Sox fans, known as the Royal Rooters, did travel to Pittsburgh from Boston by train for the four World Series games in Pittsburgh. They also made “Tessie” their theme song and sang it repeatedly. A special version, to be sung when Wagner came to the plate, went:

Honus, why do you hit so badly?

Take a back seat and sit down.

Honus, at bat you look so sadly

Hey, why don’t you get out of town.

Then the Rooters would stomp their feet three times in unison shouting “Bang Bang Bang.”

And then one more: “Why don’t you get out of town?”

This could easily be adapted to cover bad plays in the field as well.

Honey Fitz was by all accounts a great fan of the Red Sox and even once tried to buy the team. Abrams doesnt mention him as one of the Royal Rooters, but he probably was.

Whether the singing by Fitzgerald or the Rooters more generally bothered Wagner is an open question, but he did commit a series-high six errors and batted a disappointing .222 with only one extra-base hit. He also struck out to end the series.

This Post Has 7 Comments

  1. Gordon Hylton

    I received on off-blog inquiry asking whether John Kerry wasn’t also part of the tradition of Massacusetts politicians talking about baseball and other sports when they knew nothing about the subject.

    During the 2004 presidential campaign, Kerry was often presented as a real stork when it came to sports. He clearly tried to effect the manner of a blue-collar type of fan to counter George Bush’s image as a downhome sports fan, but he often botched it.

    When asked to name his favorite Red Sox, he once said “Manny Ortez” (not even Ortiz). Asked for his favorite Red Sox player when he was young, he said Eddie Yost. Eddie Yost was a solid major-league third-baseman in the 1950’s and early 1960’s when Kerry was growing up. The problem was that he never played for the Red Sox. Yost was one of Ralph Houk’s coaches in the early 80’s when he managed the Red Sox. That was when Kerry first ran for the Senate, so he probably associated Yost with the Red Sox from that era.

    He also made a number of football gaffes which led, no joke, to the organization called “Football Fans For Truth” during the 2004 campaign.

    On a trip to Wisconsin, he identified the Packers’ home as Lambert Field. In a speech in Michigan, he described Ohio State as the team for which people in the audience rooted.

    In Kerry’s case, most of these mistakes were probably examples of misspeaking rather than ignorance. On two other Wisconsin visits, he correctly refered to Lambeau Field, and he immediately corrected his Manny Ortez gaffe himself (although he still mispronounced the name David “Ortez”). The Michigan gaffe came on his first stop in Michigan after leaving Ohio, and he may have mistakenly believed that he was still in the Buckeye state.

    Kerry was also widely misquoted as saying in Shakespearean cadences, “Who amongst us does not like NASCAR?” A tape of the event — a labor rally in Milwaukee — shows that what he actually said was, “There isn’t one of us here who doesn’t like NASCAR and who isn’t a fan.” Kerry probably wasn’t a NASCAR fan, but he at least lied in the parlance of a normal Joe.

    The only inexplicable mistake turns out to be his alleged memory of Eddie Yost as a Red Sox player in the 1950’s.

    Like many politicians, Kerry wasn’t much of a sports fan, but he wasn’t quite the effete idiot he was occasionally made out to be.
    Kerry brought much of this on himself when he claimed that he, not Bush, deserved the title of “First Fan” — when he really only cared about ice hockey, hunting, and wind surfing.

  2. Martin Tanz

    It isn’t just Democrats who make sports gaffes, though I supposed in the case of Kerry, who came across as aristocratic, it may have resonated with certain elements of the public.

    Don’t forget that moose huntin’ hockey mom Sarah Palin. While campaigning in Western PA, she tried to get a big round of applause for one of her favorite baseball teams, the Phillies. Someone should have told her that they root for the Pirates in Western PA.

  3. Gordon Hylton

    I didn’t intend to suggest that only Democrats were prone to this sort of mistake. We have had a few Republican presidents who knew a great deal about sports — Richard Nixon and George Bush, Sr. and Jr. — but I suspect that most Republican politicians are just as unversed as their Democratic counterparts when it comes to sports knowledge.

    One of the worst gaffes of all time was Bob Dole’s reference to the Brooklyn Dodgers during the 1996 presidential campaign. It was clear that Dole didn’t know that they had moved to Los Angeles in 1958, or else he had known but had forgotten. Either way, it made him seem old and out of touch, which was exactly the characterization that Dole was trying so hard to avoid.

  4. Richard M. Esenberg

    “Tessie” could hardly be “quaint” to modern ears. The song was reprised by the wonderful Celtic punk band The Drop Kick Murphys and became a staple at Fenway Park after Red Sox victories in 2004 and, as far as I know, thereafter. It’s not the same as the original but proclaims the exploits of the Rooters and their song and retains the end of the chorus (“Tessie, you’re the only, only, only.”)

  5. Martin Tanz

    RE: Dole, wow, that really is damaging, making him seem especially old since the Dodgers moved to LA back in the 50s. He probably knew the Dodgers moved to LA, but fatigue probably caused a slip of the tongue and reminded people that Dole was old enough to remember the Dodgers in Brooklyn.

    Sports gaffes are a subset of overall cultural miscues in politics, including Dukakis’ disastrous tank photo op; George “Poppy” Bush acting like he had never seen a supermarket scanner, and getting caught looking at his watch during the debates; Kerry’s ordering a cheese steak in Philly with Swiss; and Obama rolling a gutter ball during a bowling photo op.

  6. Andrew Golden

    The difference, of course, between the Kennedy/Kerry/Dole errors and the Coakley comment is that the former three honestly believed what they said. Sure, they looked stupid, but they were at least sincere. Coakley, on the other hand, made her comment both stupidly (because anyone who followed Boston sports was well aware of the Schilling legacy) and spitefully (because it was a response to Schilling’s shilling for Brown).

    Then again, it’s not a huge surprise she would pull a stunt like that, much less run the campaign she did. Put it this way: for a Democrat in Massachusetts running for Ted Kennedy’s seat to only receive 47 percent of the vote is a sign of how terrible she truly is. I mean, the only Republicans Massachusetts usually elects are its governors; the last time we had a Republican senator was 1979, and most of Kerry and Kennedy’s elections were uncontested.

  7. Gordon Hylton

    This comment is actually from Michael Lynch. It contains an interesting elaboration on the Red Sox rooters’ penchant for singing “Tessie” as a way of distracting the Bosox opponents.

    Gordon Hylton’s post about the Royal Rooters and the song “Tessie” reminded me of a few articles I found while researching the 1916 World Series. During the Series, the Rooters were up to their old tricks and trying to distract the Brooklyn Robins with “Tessie” until Brooklyn manager Wilbert Robinson finally complained to the umpires in the 11th inning of Game 2. Robinson insisted that his players couldn’t hear his instructions and asked the umpires to put a stop to the ruckus. Later on, Charles Ebbets warned the Rooters that if they didn’t knock it off, they’d be barred from Ebbets Field for subsequent games. By that time, Ebbets had had quite enough of the Red Sox. He was already livid about the lousy seats he and his family were given at Fenway Park for the first two games and swore that he would treat Sox owner Joe Lannin with the same “courtesy” when the games shifted to Brooklyn. I don’t know if “Tessie” necessarily rattled the Robins, but the Sox took the Series in five games.

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