given a wide berth. His friendship with Wood may well have been responsible for keeping the pitcher in Boston after the 1910 season. The two men were roommates, and there was no need to rile the team's best player.
Not that the KCs were, on the whole, any more endearing. Catcher Bill Carrigan earned his nickname "Rough" by being one of the toughest players in the league. Base runners slid into home plate at their own peril, for Carrigan never gave way, on or off the field. In one celebrated incident Detroit outfielder George Moriarty announced his intention to come home and then did, prompting Carrigan, despite being outweighed by thirty pounds, not only to stop him cold but to spit in his eye afterward for daring to test him.
Apart from their time on the field, the two groups rarely mingled. They were just different and came from different cultures. The KCs were more working class, went to Mass together, and found Hibernian Boston familiar, while the Masons were more independent-minded and stuck with each other. Still, a few players defied convention. Duffy Lewis, although a Californian, was also Catholic and a rambunctious member of the KCs. Larry Gardner, despite his New England heritage, was aligned with the Masons, and Harry Hooper, a Catholic, had friends in both factions. American League rules at the time disallowed dressing at the ballpark so that the sight of players traveling to the game in uniform would help attract a crowd. Red Sox players generally gathered up Huntington Avenue at the Putnam Hotel—"Put's," a hotel and rooming house where twenty Red Sox players boarded during the regular season—to prepare for the game. They left together but traveled to the ballpark in separate groups, some walking the short distance and others going by carriage, usually divided between the Masons and the KCs. Even the long train rides that marked every road trip failed to bring the players together—compared to the hard-drinking, hard-partying KCs, the Masons were near-teetotalers. The two groups would not even mingle to play cards. The more pious in both groups imagined that only practitioners of their religion could enter heaven and suspected members of the other faction of all manner of diabolical behavior. Virtually every move the team made was seen through this lens by at least a few players in each group, from selecting a team captain to deciding who would pitch or even pinch-hit. They were a team in name only.
The situation became so dire between the two groups that the tension may well have played a part in first baseman and Mason Jake Stahl's retirement from the game following the 1910 season, a year in which, at age thirty, he had led the Red Sox in home runs, triples, and RBIs. Although he took a lucrative executive position at a Chicago bank for his father-in-law, the circumstances of his return in 1912 and his dismissal in 1913 suggest that the religious friction on the club may well have played at least some part in his initial decision to leave baseball for banking. At the same time John I. Taylor made several circumspect statements concerning the makeup of his team and his determination to rid the squad of troublemakers, a threat that underscored the level of dissension on the club.
Yet even in the midst of such disarray, there was some hope. The Red Sox were by far the youngest team in the major leagues. Only one regular, infielder Charlie Wagner, was thirty years of age or older, and entering the 1911 season, only two regulars in the lineup—Carrigan and first baseman Clyde Engle—were over twenty-five. During the 1911 season both Harry Hooper and Duffy Lewis hit .300 for the first time and showed signs of becoming as good offensively as they were defensively, while twenty-one-year-old Joe Wood, although still pitching .500 baseball, stayed relatively healthy all year, twirled a no-hitter, and struck out nearly a batter an inning. If the club could just come together on the field, they seemed destined
Not that the KCs were, on the whole, any more endearing. Catcher Bill Carrigan earned his nickname "Rough" by being one of the toughest players in the league. Base runners slid into home plate at their own peril, for Carrigan never gave way, on or off the field. In one celebrated incident Detroit outfielder George Moriarty announced his intention to come home and then did, prompting Carrigan, despite being outweighed by thirty pounds, not only to stop him cold but to spit in his eye afterward for daring to test him.
Apart from their time on the field, the two groups rarely mingled. They were just different and came from different cultures. The KCs were more working class, went to Mass together, and found Hibernian Boston familiar, while the Masons were more independent-minded and stuck with each other. Still, a few players defied convention. Duffy Lewis, although a Californian, was also Catholic and a rambunctious member of the KCs. Larry Gardner, despite his New England heritage, was aligned with the Masons, and Harry Hooper, a Catholic, had friends in both factions. American League rules at the time disallowed dressing at the ballpark so that the sight of players traveling to the game in uniform would help attract a crowd. Red Sox players generally gathered up Huntington Avenue at the Putnam Hotel—"Put's," a hotel and rooming house where twenty Red Sox players boarded during the regular season—to prepare for the game. They left together but traveled to the ballpark in separate groups, some walking the short distance and others going by carriage, usually divided between the Masons and the KCs. Even the long train rides that marked every road trip failed to bring the players together—compared to the hard-drinking, hard-partying KCs, the Masons were near-teetotalers. The two groups would not even mingle to play cards. The more pious in both groups imagined that only practitioners of their religion could enter heaven and suspected members of the other faction of all manner of diabolical behavior. Virtually every move the team made was seen through this lens by at least a few players in each group, from selecting a team captain to deciding who would pitch or even pinch-hit. They were a team in name only.
The situation became so dire between the two groups that the tension may well have played a part in first baseman and Mason Jake Stahl's retirement from the game following the 1910 season, a year in which, at age thirty, he had led the Red Sox in home runs, triples, and RBIs. Although he took a lucrative executive position at a Chicago bank for his father-in-law, the circumstances of his return in 1912 and his dismissal in 1913 suggest that the religious friction on the club may well have played at least some part in his initial decision to leave baseball for banking. At the same time John I. Taylor made several circumspect statements concerning the makeup of his team and his determination to rid the squad of troublemakers, a threat that underscored the level of dissension on the club.
Yet even in the midst of such disarray, there was some hope. The Red Sox were by far the youngest team in the major leagues. Only one regular, infielder Charlie Wagner, was thirty years of age or older, and entering the 1911 season, only two regulars in the lineup—Carrigan and first baseman Clyde Engle—were over twenty-five. During the 1911 season both Harry Hooper and Duffy Lewis hit .300 for the first time and showed signs of becoming as good offensively as they were defensively, while twenty-one-year-old Joe Wood, although still pitching .500 baseball, stayed relatively healthy all year, twirled a no-hitter, and struck out nearly a batter an inning. If the club could just come together on the field, they seemed destined
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