William Henry Moody
Baseball
Moody the Baseball Player
William Moody began playing baseball by the time he was a young teen. He was captain of the informal local Danvers baseball team, which played in a cow pasture, called the Crow Field, at Burley Farm, where Moody lived.
After graduating from Holten High School in Danvers, Massachusetts, Moody went on to Phillips Academy in Andover in 1869. Baseball had been played at Andover for four or five years when Moody arrived. He was on the school’s team, playing multiple positions and serving as captain in 1871 and 1872. Moody later told someone that being appointed secretary of the Navy was not his greatest moment, rather being named captain of the Andover baseball team was.
Moody played baseball his freshman year at Harvard, but was forced to quit after that due to injury. He had had a rheumatic condition since childhood, and at about age 20, while playing baseball at Harvard, Moody was hit in the knee by a ball. The doctor at the time was concerned about amputation, and Moody spent several weeks in bed. He did recover but had to wear and elastic stocking for several years.
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New England League
The New England League began in 1885 as a regional baseball league. Meeting on March 21, 1885, at the Essex Hotel in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the Eastern New England League organized with William Moody as the first president. Moody, then a local Haverhill lawyer, served as president for two years.
The first year included six teams from textile and shoe manufacturing cities: Lawrence, Brockton, and Haverhill from Massachusetts, and Portland and Biddeford from Maine. Brockton had quickly replaced Gloucester, and Newburyport initially dropped out, later in the season replacing Biddeford.
The league was intended as respectable entertainment for local business owners. For 25 cents, spectators got bleacher seats, while 35 cents got seats in the grandstand. Working-class spectators were also able to attend on holidays. In 1886, Haverhill shoe factories began closing at noon on summer Saturdays, allowing workers more time to attend baseball games. Sunday baseball games were then prohibited throughout most of New England.
After the first games of the 1885 season were rained out, the first game of the new league was played in Haverhill on May 4, 1885, with Haverhill beating Biddeford 3-1. Previous Haverhill baseball teams had placed in Kenoza Park, but the 1885 team played at Riverside for two years before building Recreation Park on Main Street.
As league president, Moody was involved in resolving several disputes. After arguments over the 1885 pennant between the Lawrence and Brockton teams involving the eligibility of a Lawrence player, the league awarded the pennant to Lawrence at the league’s meeting at the Eagle Hotel in Haverhill on October 28, 1885.
In the second season, after poor play, several Lawrence team players were fined by the club’s president, and they then went on strike. The club’s president then took their uniforms and said they would be blacklisted. A meeting of New England League owners was called for July 17, 1886, at the Parker House in Boston to resolve the matter. Each player’s actions were discussed and punishments decided. Some players were blacklisted while others were fined.
A second pennant dispute ended the 1887 season, with Lowell and Portland tied for first place. The league called a meeting at the Parker House in Boston on September 27, 1887. No longer league president, Moody represented the Lowell team at the meeting. Moody suggested two solutions: either discuss the protests and decide on the champion, or play a series of games. The club owners decided to discuss, with one concern being two Portland games that were only six innings long. Portland offer to give Lowell the pennant, but the team declined. At an impasse, the league decided the two teams should play a five-game series. Lowell won the pennant in three games.
Moody continued his involvement with Haverhill baseball over the years, and the Haverhill baseball team went on to play in the New England League for 22 years, once winning the championship, in 1904. Through various formations, the league lasted until 1949.
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First World Series
"Fans on the field at the Huntington Avenue Grounds, 1903 World Series." Photograph. 1903. Digital Commonwealth, http://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/sf268762j (accessed August 18, 2017).
Moody was a lifelong baseball crank, the term then for a fan. On October 1, 1903, at 3 pm in Boston, Moody attended the first World Series game. This game marked the start of the first postseason tournament between the National League and the American League. The Pittsburgh Pirates played the Boston Americans (later the Red Sox) at the Huntington Avenue Grounds in Boston. Cy Young pitched game one for Boston, and Deacon Phillippe pitched for the Pirates. Honus Wagner was a member of the Pirates. The game took less than two hours, and the Pirates won 7-3.
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Baseball was the American national sport by the early 1900s, and city leaders joined local residents as spectators at the World Series games. Spectators at game one in Boston included the boxers James J. Corbett and John L. Sullivan, former Massachusetts governor Winthrop Murray Crane, and future owner of the Red Sox John I. Taylor, along with William Moody.
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Boston won the first World Series over Pittsburgh in eight games, with the last game played in Boston on October 13, 1903.
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World Series by Telephone
"Justice Moody Will Get Score of Game"
"It is doubtful if anyone is more interested in the World’s Series between the Red Sox and Brooklyn than William H. Moody of this city [Haverhill], a former Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
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Mr Moody, who was a player when a college student, has always been a close follower of the game, and for many years was president of the New England League. His interest in the game this year has been keener owing to the fact that he was one of those who discovered Wilbert Robinson, the Brooklyn manager.
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It is seven years since Mr Moody was stricken ill and during that time he has been unable to move his legs and arms. His mind is as active as ever and while a nurse has to read to him, he is cheerful and evinces interest in public questions. During the past season he insisted upon hearing the story of the games in which Boston teams played read to him.
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Pres Tener of the National League played in 1885 on the Haverhill team with Robinson. Mr Tener was signed as a first baseman and developed into a pitcher.
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The Globe correspondent today arranged for bulletin service so that the story of the game will be telephoned to Mr Moody’s home on Saltonstall road, inning by inning.”
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Excerpt from the Boston Daily Globe, October 7, 1916
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