Phillies History Nugget
The Phillies began the 2023 season on the road. They did so as well 110 years ago on a nippy day in Brooklyn.
By Bob Warrington
The Brooklyn Superbas (aka Dodgers) baseball club opened the regular season at their new ballpark — named Ebbets Field after team owner Charles Ebbets — in 1913. To commemorate this memorable occasion, Brooklyn was allowed to start its season a day before every other club in the American and National Leagues. The inaugural home opener was a contest between the Superbas and the Philadelphia Phillies. Played on April 9, 1913, it was a special one-game affair. At its conclusion, both teams hopped trains to Philadelphia to begin a three-game series scheduled to run from April 10–12.
Unfortunately, the inaugural Opening Day at Ebbets Field turned out to be a very cold one. The thermometer in Brooklyn’s dugout read 37 degrees at game time. The extreme cold kept attendance well below a capacity crowd. Only 10,000 hardy souls showed up to witness history in the making.
Because it was a single game, Phillies’ manager Charlie Dooin decided to bring a reduced squad with him to play. The regular position players were all present, but only some of the pitchers made the journey, including Tom Seaton, Ad Brennan, and Erskine Mayer. The rest of the pitching staff remained behind in Philadelphia. Presumably, this was done to spare those pitchers needlessly making a trip for one game in which they would not be used. But it should also be noted, leaving them behind also saved the club hotel and meal expenses and roundtrip train tickets between Philadelphia and Brooklyn.
Tom Seaton was given the ball to pitch for the Phillies, matching up against Nap Rucker. In the top of the first, Phillies’ second baseman Otto Knabe rapped a double to right field. With two out and Knabe still on second, Sherry Magee stepped up and swatted an easy fly ball to rightfielder Benny Meyer; however, Meyer muffed the play. Knabe scored and Magee advanced to second base on the error. That was the only run scored in the game. Seaton hurled a masterful shutout, pitching the Phillies to a 1–0 win in the first regular season game ever held at Ebbets Field. The contest took one hour and thirty minutes to play.
The Phillies’ team photo that accompanies this narrative was taken on April 9 just before the game. All those shown have on their thick wool Phillies’ sweaters, and fans behind them also are heavily garbed to keep out the cold. Tom Seaton is third from the right in the first row. Standing to the right of the crouching Erskine Mayer is a hunchbacked boy who was the team’s mascot and batboy. Dooin, mindful of the success Connie Mack’s Athletics had enjoyed since 1910 when hunchback Louis van Zelst was adopted as the team’s good luck mascot and batboy, decided the Phillies needed one as well. The mascot did not normally accompany the team during road trips, but Dooin decided he should be present at this special game. That is why the mascot is in a Phillies’ home uniform while the rest of the team wears road attire. His name is still to be discovered.
(Bob Warrington, a Philadelphia native and SABR member, is a baseball historian and author).
