files for the dope, revealed the fact that the newspaper reports of
about every third game they played on the average contained some
reference to "Boston's luck." This does not detract anything from their
glory. No team ever won a major league pennant unless it was lucky. No
team ever had as steady a run of luck as Boston enjoyed in 1912, unless
that team made a lot of its own luck by persistently hammering away when
luck was against it and keeping ever on the alert to take advantage of
an opening.

That is the explanation of the unusual consistency that marked the work
of the Red Sox all season and the fact they did not experience a serious
slump. In the first month of the season they won twelve games and lost
eight. The second month of the race was their poorest one--the nearest
they came to a slump. In that month they won eight and lost ten games.
In the third month Boston won twenty-three and lost seven games. The
fourth month saw them win twenty games and lose eight and in the fifth
month their record was twenty victories and five defeats. In the final
stages of the race the Red Sox were not under as strong pressure from
behind and naturally did not travel as fast after sighting the wire, but
the figures produced explain why Boston won the pennant. It started well
and kept going faster until there was no longer need for speed. The
annexation of the world's championship in a record breaking world's
series with the New York Giants was a fitting climax to their season's
achievement.

* * * * *

When Clark Griffith stalked through the west on his first invasion of
the season with a team of youngsters, some of them practically unknown,
and declared he was going after the pennant, everybody laughed or wanted
to. A few weeks later everybody who had laughed was sorry, and those who
only wanted to laugh were glad they didn't. For Griffith kept his men
keyed up to the fighting pitch during the greater part of the season,
and when they did start slumping in September, he made a slight switch
on his infield, applied the brakes and started them going up again. The
result was that Washington finished second for the first time in its
major league history, winning that position in the closing days of the
race after a bitter tussle with the passing world's champions.

The acquisition of Gandil from Montreal plugged a hole at first base
which had defied the efforts of several predecessors to stop an