Scott Fennessy had a great idea for a simple replay. Here’s his recap:
I have been reading about other managers taking time for little side projects. Since I am currently ahead of schedule on my 1906 replay I decided to do something I have always wanted to try, but just never got around to. Several years ago when I did my 1905 replay I submitted a John McGraw card for Monster Monday.
Tom noted at that time that this was the same year that Archibald “Moonlight” Graham had his one chance to play. APBA didn’t offer XC cards for the set when I purchased it, and I don’t want to spend a ton of money for just one card, so I began the research for my project.
It turns out that Hollywood played a bit with the actual happenings that day. I won’t go into detail other than to mention that he played two innings, and to further tease fate Graham was in the on deck circle when the final out of the inning happened and with the Giants comfortably on top he never got that one at bat.
So I after completing my research I had enough information to make my Archibald Graham card, courtesy of Steve’s APBA Card Site. Sources were Baseball Reference and SABR, which didn’t have stats so much as a pretty detailed story of his career and his post baseball life.
What I did was take his minor league stats, which were very vague other than at bats and hits. I took that with the descriptions of his defensive and speed abilities and made a pretty standard APBA XC card for a zero at bat player, who did have numbers in the minors to go off. His card was basically an 11-7, 66-7 and a 15-11 as the highlights with a (F) OF-3 rating.
I had spent so much time researching this I kind of got impatient at the very end. I did know that the day he played they were playing the Dodgers, and I probably could have found the scorecard and saw who pitched, but I just decided I would take the Dodgers #1 starter Bill Scanlan and have him face Christy Mathewson. Graham was placed in the 8th spot in the lineup and into his traditional right field.
While Scanlan was supposed to be a sacrificial lamb he was a B starter, but I remember him not getting a lot of support during the replay. That didn’t happen this time as Brooklyn took advantage of a rare bout of wildness by Mathewson in the first inning with a Lew Ritter 2 run RBI double sandwiched between a couple of hit batters and the Giants were playing catch up the rest of the afternoon.
Scanlan had the Giants held in check as the Dodgers expanded the lead to 4-0 in the bottom of the fourth inning. It was here when history took another detour. Mike Bowerman led off with a single and stole second base. Sammy Strang hit a grounder that second baseman Charley Babb had to make an off balanced throw, and it resulted in a two base error and a run scoring. Then the feel good moment I was hoping for came. Graham rolls a 66! Good for a run scoring single.
Unfortunately for Graham the Giants never could quite catch the Dodgers, who win by a 6-5 final.
Box score below:
