Peak Concern

After reeling off 22 straight victories, the Indians would seem to be the team to beat in October. History tells us that’s hardly the case.

- Mark Bechtel

THE 1916 NEW YORK Giants would have given their manager, John McGraw, the red ass even if the roster hadn’t contained two Reds (Dooin and Killefer) and a pair of Heinies (Stafford and Zimmerman). The volatile skipper known as Little Napoleon was driven to fits of rage by his team’s inconsistency. After a 2–13 start the Giants won 17 in a row (all on the road). Then, following a ho-hum summer they ran off 26 victories without a loss in September, all at home. (They had one tie between wins 12 and 13.) Alas, New York still finished in fourth place, seven games back of the Brooklyn Robins. “They remind me,” opined The New York Evening Journal, “of a fighter who has just been knocked out going down the aisle licking everybody in the house.”

Getting hot at just the right time is a tough needle to thread, but McGraw’s charges somehow found a way to peak too early and too late. The idea that their team might be squandering its best run of baseball had some Indians fans both savoring the Tribe’s 22game winning streak—the longest without a tie in major league history—while secretly hoping it would just end already (which it did last Friday, with a 4–3 loss to the Royals).