Unwinding 100-year-old yarn

The seeds of the revolution were sown here. The American Revolution, of course. The American League revolution, too.

Just as Boston was the hub for the establishment of a nation in the 18th century, so was it the flashpoint for the birth of a baseball league in 1901.

Tomorrow, the Red Sox officially salute their longevity by celebrating their centennial with a pregame ceremony featuring 50 former players, managers, and coaches. But if they want to be true to their origins, there would be no trace of the words ''Red Sox'' and the game would be shifted from Fenway Park to Huntington Avenue - though that might make playing baseball a bit problematic since the original field is now the site of Northeastern's indoor athletic facility.

Fact is, the team didn't adopt the nickname that has become synonymous with passion and heartache throughout New England until Dec. 18, 1907, when their owners, the Taylor family - which also owned the Globe - dubbed them ''Red Sox'' and incorporated red stockings into the uniforms. And they didn't take up residence at the hallowed real estate in the Fens until April 9, 1912.

One hundred years ago, at the dawn of a century and the advent of an upstart to challenge the hegemony of the 25-year-old National League, the Boston AL club played its games at the hastily constructed but relatively opulent Huntington Avenue Grounds. And the team's nickname was ... nothing. In keeping with baseball policy of the times, it was known generically as ''the Bostons,'' same as the city's National League club, and names that have become popularly associated with each local team of that generation - such as ''Pilgrims'' for the AL, ''Beaneaters'' for the NL (they became the Braves in 1912) - were mere concoctions by bored headline writers and never caught on.

But the AL and the so-called Boston Americans did, thanks largely to the vision and opportunism of one man, Ban Johnson.

A major step

A former Cincinnati sportswriter and an astute observer of the game, Johnson was installed as president of a struggling minor league, the Western, in 1894. From the start, he had grand ideas, shifting franchises to larger markets and getting a foothold in the East.

Soon the Western League became the strongest of the minors, but Johnson wanted more. In 1900, he shed the regional affiliation and renamed the Western the American League. While it remained a minor league, Johnson's aspirations were clearly major. And a year later, that's what he declared - the American would be henceforth a major league, equal with the National.

The owners of the entrenched league laughed him off. They considered the would-be usurper a pipe dreamer doomed by a feeble venture.

But Johnson meant business, and he exploited the NL's monopolistic complacency. The older league had set a ceiling on salaries of $2,400 (still far above the average national annual wage of some $700) and had established a reserve clause that bound a player to a team for his entire career - at the team's discretion, of course. Amid this hodgepodge existed several instances of multiple ownerships, and in what became known as syndicate baseball - a form of socialism rooted in greed - owners were free to transfer their assets from one club to another. Since they had the field to themselves, they seldom signed a player for more than one year at a time.

Johnson announced that any player not under contract was fair game for the AL, and he and his bankroll - in the person of Great Lakes oil, shipping, and lumber tycoon Charles Somers - began raiding the senior league with impunity, offering salaries of $4,000-$5,000 for top players.

In Johnson's version of syndicate baseball, Somers helped fund the Cleveland, Chicago, and Philadelphia franchises. Undaunted by the National claims of superiority, Johnson established teams in NL cities Philadelphia and Chicago to go head to head with their elders. But in a slight show of deference, he initially opted to place a team in Buffalo and stay out of Boston, the ultimate National stronghold as the winner of 12 pennants.

Then the NL really riled Johnson. To head off the AL, the older league created a sham known as the American Association, declared it a major league - and targeted land at Charles River Park for a Boston franchise.

Johnson reacted quickly. The legendary Connie Mack, who already owned a piece of the Philadelphia franchise with which his name would become inextricably linked, came to Massachusetts ostensibly to visit his East Brookfield hometown but actually to scout out land for a Boston AL franchise. He was assisted in this venture by the Boston Nationals' former ''Heavenly Twins'' outfield nonpareils, Hugh Duffy and Tommy McCarthy, who had switched allegiance to the AL.

They found the ideal spot on land owned by the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad, leased by the Boston Elevated Railway, and located across from the Boston Nationals' South End Grounds park.

Somers, who eventually would divest himself of all other club interests except Boston, was recruited to lease the land when Mack returned to Philadelphia, unable to find an investor. At the league meeting on Jan. 28, 1901, Johnson decreed that Buffalo was out, Boston in. This created an eight-team league with branches in Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington.

Switching sides

It was the real opening salvo in the war on the NL. Practicing syndicate baseball for survival's sake, Johnson wanted to ensure strong AL teams in the NL cities. So in the player quest, he gave Boston the rights to pursue most of its cross-track rivals - and the Americans plundered the Nationals.

The foremost acquisition, as player-manager, was 31-year-old Jimmy Collins, whose play at third base had revolutionized the game. Before Collins, once a mediocre shortstop/outfielder, switched to the position, the bunt had been an integral part of teams' offenses and was just about a guaranteed hit because third basemen played in back by the bag. Collins inched up onto the grass and essentially nullified the weapon.

He was given a $4,000 contract, and his transfer signaled a mass exodus from the Nationals' to the Americans' side of the tracks. Slugging first baseman Buck Freeman and superb center fielder Chick Stahl - who would commit suicide in 1907 - joined Collins in jumping. Also bolting the Nationals were pitchers George Cuppy and Ted ''Parson'' Lewis, the latter of whom would become baseball coach at Harvard and president of Massachusetts State College and the University of New Hampshire.

The real pitching coup came not from Boston but from the Midwest.

Denton True ''Cy'' Young, an Ohio farmboy, had emerged as the most durable and prolific pitcher in the National League from 1890-98 with Cleveland; the Cy Young Award isn't arbitrarily named. But in an example of syndicate baseball, the Cleveland owner transferred Young to his other club in St. Louis, where the pitcher hated the broiling summers. At age 34, looking for a more temperate climate and lured by the offer of $3,500, he joined the Boston Americans and went on to become the winningest pitcher (511 victories) baseball will ever see. He brought with him his personal catcher, Lou Criger, who split the duties behind the plate for Boston with Ossee Schreckengost.

Collins filled the rest of his starting lineup with minor leaguers Freddy Parent (shortstop), Hobe Ferris (second base), and Charlie Hemphill (right field), plus left fielder ''Buttermilk Tommy'' Dowd of Holyoke, who had sat out the 1900 season after an eight-year NL career.

Collins took his team to the University of Virginia for spring training. Before that, there were two seminal developments in Boston. On March 9, ground was broken for the park on Huntington Avenue, and the ceremony featured quite visibly the Royal Rooters, once the most ardent of NL followers. They drank at the Third Base saloon of Michael ''Nuf Ced'' McGreevey - so named because when he slammed his fist on the bar and announced, '''Nough said,'' that ended any argument - and they would gamble on anything from the outcome of games to the length of a player's shoelaces. Their support was critical for the success of a local team, and they had tired of the Boston Nationals' arrogance, which was manifested in the introduction of 50-cent tickets, twice the going rate.

This was the Americans' other key move: They offered two-bit tickets at a more comfortable park.

First game, first loss

On the field, the 1901 Bostons were the blueprints for most of their descendants: potent at the plate (an astounding .293 team average), short on reliable pitching (save for the magnificent Young), proficient enough to offer a summer of thrills that ultimately ended in torment.

They played their first 10 games on the road while the three-month construction of the Huntington Grounds was being completed. The season began disastrously on April 26 against Baltimore, managed by the bellicose John McGraw and featuring pitcher ''Iron Man'' Joe McGinnity. A crowd of 10,000 watched McGinnity post a 10-6 victory against ironically named rookie Win Kellum, who started because Young had contracted tonsillitis.

Boston trailed, 4-0, in the fourth before Collins got the first hit in franchise history, a double down the left-field line, and Freeman followed with the first RBI, on a single. One footnote: In the ninth inning, Boston rookie Larry McLean of Cambridge got the first pinch hit in AL history.

Not until its fourth game did Boston get its first win, an 8-6 decision pitched by Young in which Freeman tied it with a two-run homer in the ninth and Hemphill's RBI single and Stahl's sacrifice fly won it in the 10th.

The Americans were 5-5 on May 8 when they christened the 9,000-seat Huntington park (which accommodated thousands more behind ropes in the outfield and foul territory) against Philadelphia. Before a crowd of 11,000, Young tossed a 12-4 victory in which he had one of five Boston triples and Freeman - who had hit an unprecedented 25 homers with Washington in 1899 - contributed an inside-the-park job.

But after two straight wins, Boston dropped five in a row and was in fifth place at the start of a long road trip in late May. Despairing of his pitching aside from Young, Collins signed a rookie from Gettysburg College who had hurled for a YMCA team against Boston in spring training. George Winter made his debut in Detroit and wound up winning 16 games.

The Americans scored a major victory at the box office on June 17, Bunker Hill Day, the first date both Bostons played in Boston. The Americans swept a split-admission doubleheader from Chicago, drawing 5,000 and then 10,000 fans, while the Nationals beat 1900 NL champ Brooklyn before 1,500. The next day, the Nationals cut prices to 25 cents, but it would prove a futile gesture.

Also futile, though far more exciting - stop us if you've heard this - was the Americans' bid for the pennant. As if Ban Johnson had scripted the race, Boston and star pitcher/manager Clark Griffith's Chicago club were neck and neck for the summer, with the local entry providing just enough of a tease to whet the Royal Rooters' thirst. The Bostons roared into first by winning 15 of 16, capped by Winter's 8-1 defeat of Cleveland June 21, but immediately fell back by dropping four in a row.

Boston was a dynamo at Huntington, winning 23 of 26 in one stretch, but road kill away from home. In August, five wins in a row brought the Bostons within a half-game of Chicago. But a 4-2 loss to Cleveland Aug. 25 triggered a September fade, and Boston wound up with a second-place 79-57 record, four games behind the first AL champion, Chicago.

There were some notable individual achievements. Freeman hit 12 homers and drove in 114 runs. He, Parent, Collins, Stahl, and Schreckengrost all batted over .300. And the redoubtable Young led the league in wins (33-10), ERA (1.62), shutouts (5), and strikeouts (158).

Meanwhile, the Nationals finished 69-69 in fifth place, 201/2 games behind front-running Pittsburgh. There was no World Series during this baseball cold war, but the Americans scored a decisive triumph at the Boston gate, outdrawing the Nationals by nearly a 2-1 margin, 289,448-146,502.

Prosperity would be followed by greatness before the long drought set in. The Boston Americans won the first World Series in 1903 and, as the Red Sox, added four more world championships through 1918. Since then - here's a tidbit you were probably unaware of - they haven't won another.

Still, through better and worse, the Red Sox, nee Bostons, have emerged as a beloved New England staple, and they'll share the hosannahs with their worshipful fans tomorrow.

Oh yes. The Braves are a big success, too. The Atlanta Braves.

This story ran on page G1 of the Boston Globe on 5/26/2001.

Material from the books ''Red Sox Century'' by Dick Johnson and Glenn Stout; ''The Boston Red Sox'' by Frederick G. Lieb; ''The Boston Red Sox: An Illustrated History'' by Donald Honig; and ''The Boston Red Sox: The Complete History'' by Howard Liss was used in this report.

Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.