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After two days in Los Angeles, the White Sox and Giants reverted to their different-city-every-day schedule -- right in time for us to catch up to them. We can now say, "On this day 100 years ago..."
Nov. 10 in San Diego: Giants 4, White Sox 3
In the morning, a number of players toured Coronado with cameras in hand. Others slept in and gathered at the Grant Hotel at noon. From that point on, it was going to be a busy day for sportsmen and sports enthusiasts in the San Diego.
Prior to the 3:00 p.m. start at Athletic Park, the city planned a parade for Olin Davis, a race car driver who won a 574-mile exposition race between Los Angeles and Phoenix. It would start at 1 p.m. and lead to Athletic Park in time for the 3 p.m. start of the White Sox-Giants game.
Compared the Los Angeles, the crowd of 4,386 seems rather unimpressive. Still, it qualified as the biggest turnout in Athletic Park history at the time. Temporary bleachers couldn't contain them all, and the San Diego Union says the overflow forced some improvisation with the rulebook:
Ground rules were necessary because of the crowds that lined the outfield several deep. A hit into the crowd went for two bases. There were four such swats.
Fans who couldn't fit in the outfield were crammed along the baselines, and according to the Chicago Tribune, an unnamed player ran into four fans while trying to leg out a double.
Unlike the jaded accounts of the Los Angeles Times, the San Diego Union approved of the performance, as well as their apparel:
The players were very imposing looking in their natty uniforms when they came on the field. The Sox wore blue suits with red and white trimmings, while the Giants were garbed in white. The gallery looked them over carefully and was satisfied that everything was as it should be.
Another article called the Sox' blues the "most mposing suits -- blue shirts and pants with American flags woven on each arm. The stockings are white with a red and blue stripe."
While the fans and papers wanted to see Christy Mathewson, they were just as happy to see his batterymate, San Diego native Chief Meyers. The events of the game set the stage for him, although it took a bizarre twist to get there.
The Sox led for all of a half-inning, as Tris Speaker put them on the board with a solo shot. The Giants got that run back with a pair of into-the-crowd doubles, and two innings later, a Morrie Rath error set up a two-run inning that had the Sox playing catch-up the rest of the way.
They managed to tie it up in the ninth with a sac fly by Steve Evans with one out. When the Sox failed to tack on a run, umpire Bill Klem decided to call it on account of darkness, resulting in the second straight tie of the tour ...
... except Klem forgot that the Giants were the home team today. The call caused confusion and anger in the crowd, who started spilling over the makeshift boundaries and onto the field while a conference between umpires and managers took place. Several minutes of actual daylight passed while the umpires decided to restart play and the crowd worked its way back into its original place.
One guy who wasn't in place: Meyers, who was due to lead off for the Giants in the ninth. He left the field assuming the game was over, and he had to be called back into action. One swing later, Meyers hit a homer in the gloaming for the walk-off victory, having to fight his way through the celebratory mob to touch the bases.
After this brief detour south, the Sox and Giants piled back on the train and headed back up the coast.