Sure enough, Donovan struck out Howard. Tiger fans couldn’t have asked for more.
Except, maybe, for catcher Charlie Schmidt to hang on to the ball. Schmidt didn’t. And as the ball got away from the second-year major leaguer, Steinfeldt raced home with the game-tying run.
Donovan retired the side, but the real damage had been done. The teams remained in a deadlock through three more innings, then the game was called because of darkness. Tigers 3, Cubs 3, 12 innings. Detroit had let certain victory — and momentum — slip out of its grasp. And Manager Hugh Jennings’ Tigers would pay dearly.
Given a reprieve, the Cubs proceeded to make short shrift of the Tigers. Detroit, which had edged the Philadelphia Athletics in a fiercely contested American League pennant race, failed to score more than one run in any of the remaining Series games. Chicago’s Jack Pfiester handcuffed Detroit, 3-1, in Game 2 and Ed Reulbach stymied the AL champs, 5-1, the next day.
The Tigers seized a 1-0 lead in the fourth inning of Game 4 as 20-year-old Ty Cobb, having just won his first batting championship, slammed a triple and scored on Claude Rossman’s single. But Detroit did nothing else of note against Orval Overall and went down to a 6-1 defeat. Overall himself put the Cubs ahead with a two-run single in the fifth inning. In Game 5, Mordecai Brown spun a seven-hitter and the Cubs swept to a Series-clinching 2-0 triumph.
That the Cubs were primed to atone for their 1906 embarrassment at the hands of the Chicago White Sox was a given. That Frank Chance’s team would make amends in such a dominant manner was not wholly anticipated. But dominate the Cubs did.
They ran wild against the Tigers, stealing seven bases in Game 1 and finishing the Series with 18. They got outstanding offensive production from Steinfeldt and Evers, who batted .471 and .350, respectively (with Steinfeldt getting seven hits in the last three games of the Series and Evers getting seven in the first three games). And, most of all, the Cubs exhibited exquisite pitching. Pfiester, Reulbach, Overall and Brown threw 43 scoreless innings out of 48 and shut down the American League’s top hitters of 1907, Cobb and Sam Crawford. Cobb managed only a .200 average in the Series after batting .350 in the regular season; Crawford hit .238 after a .323 season.
The Cubs, of course, had the potential to crush any opponent, as evidenced by their second consecutive runaway in the National League. In 1907, the Cubs won 107 games and finished 17 games ahead of the Pittsburgh Pirates. And, given a second chance in two years to demonstrate their apparent supremacy over the rest of major-league baseball, the Cubs made the most of the opportunity this time.
This article was originally published on TSN
Game Recaps from Retrosheet
1907 World Series Stories
The 1907 Post-Season Games
World Series: Chicago Cubs (4) defeated Detroit Tigers (0)
World Series Game 1 Played on Tuesday, October 8, 1907 (D) at West Side Grounds
DET A 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 - 3 9 3 CHI N 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 - 3 10 5
BOX+PBP
World Series Game 2 Played on Wednesday, October 9, 1907 (D) at West Side Grounds
DET A 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 - 1 9 1 CHI N 0 1 0 2 0 0 0 0 x - 3 9 1
BOX+PBP WP: Pfiester (1-0) LP: Mullin (0-1)
World Series Game 3 Played on Thursday, October 10, 1907 (D) at West Side Grounds
DET A 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 - 1 6 1 CHI N 0 1 0 3 1 0 0 0 x - 5 10 1
BOX+PBP WP: Reulbach (1-0) LP: Siever (0-1)
World Series Game 4 Played on Friday, October 11, 1907 (D) at Bennett Park
CHI N 0 0 0 0 2 0 3 0 1 - 6 7 1 DET A 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 - 1 6 2
BOX+PBP WP: Overall (1-0) LP: Donovan (0-1)
World Series Game 5 Played on Saturday, October 12, 1907 (D) at Bennett Park
CHI N 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 - 2 7 1 DET A 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 - 0 7 2
BOX+PBP WP: Brown (1-0) LP: Mullin (0-2)
