By 1930 the World Series had become an annual radio event, but both the fifa 15 coins National Broadcasting Company and the newer Columbia Broadcasting System could still carry the games free of charge. Over NBC’s national hookup Graham McNamee, a veteran of Series play-by-play, and sports- writer Ford Frick would do every game, while CBS, which had Ted Husing to cover the action, opted to devote Sunday, October 5, to previously sched- uled programming. Despite radio’s growing presence, many people would still follow the play-by-play on message boards outside newspaper offices and elsewhere. New Yorkers, for example, could gather in Madison Square Garden to watch the progress of games on an electric board projected on a 40-foot screen.
On Wednesday, October 1, President Hoover and five members of his Cabinet were among the chilled 33,000 who packed Shibe Park for the Series opener. Several thousand more paid the occupants of row houses to watch from roofs and top-floor windows across narrow Twentieth Street, which ran behind the right-field fence. Before the game, the ballpark’s loudspeaker system played recorded martial music, and the comedy duo of Al Schacht and Nick Altrock, who doubled as Washington’s coaches during the season, regaled the gathering with their pantomimes. J. Roy Stock- ton of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, discounting Wrigley Field, called Shibe Park, with its superior playing field and accommodations for customers, “the best equipped and cleanest baseball plant in the big leagues.”
Following the season’s hitting onslaught, the World Series featured some of the best pitching in the history of postseason play. The Athletics, solid favorites with gamblers, won the first game 5–2, Al Simmons and Mickey Cochrane homering and Lefty Grove scattering nine hits. Thirty- seven-year-old Burleigh Grimes, one of only three remaining hurlers ex- empted from the ban on spitball pitching adopted ten years earlier, was the loser. The next day, the Athletics won even more easily, driving out Flint Rhem in the fourth inning and cruising behind George Earnshaw,6 –1. Cochrane homered again, as did St. Louis’s George Watkins; and Frank Frisch’s forty-second hit in World Series play, a first-inning double, set a new record.
After the long train ride west, the Series resumed on Saturday in St. Louis, a city whose economy was already in a bad way. A local reporter estimated that of the thousands waiting through the night to get in line when the bleachers ticket window opened at 7:30 a.m., one in ten intended to sell his place for the $1 ticket price. Some of the waiting men, lacking anything to eat or drink, joked that they were “living on prosperity”; one, who gave his name as Paul Blay, said he’d been working only one day a week.19 When Blay failed to sell his place and found himself at the ticket window, he had to step aside in favor of somebody who could pay the tariff. (Meanwhile, in Cleveland’s Public Hall, President Hoover spoke to the annual convention of the American Bankers Association; outside, motorcycle police used tear gas to disperse a crowd of Communists and sympathizers.)
On Saturday, October 4, Hallahan threw a seven-hit shutout, besting Rube Walberg 5–0. Every seat in Sportsman’s Park was occupied, including temporary field boxes that extended from the regular first- and third-base stands and obliged players and managers to sit outside their dugouts on benches. Then, on Sunday, the Cardinals tied the Series when Jess Haines pitched a four-hit, 3–1 gem, holding the Athletics hitless after the fourth inning. Although Grove gave up only five hits himself, a fourth-inning throwing error by third baseman Jimmy Dykes led to two Cardinals runs, which proved enough. On Monday the pitching was even better. Earnshaw allowed three hits and no runs; Grimes gave up only five hits, but in the top of the ninth inning he walked Cochrane and then hung a curve ball to Foxx, who sent it far back into the left-field bleachers.