RSN: Peter, to begin, can you tell us something about your background and how your love of baseball history developed?
PN: I grew up in Brooklyn. My dad was a big Brooklyn Dodger fan. As any kid would, I got interested in following the local team and collecting baseball cards. When I was twelve years old I joined SABR. I used to rank all the old players and developed a bug for researching all the old players and baseball personalities. One thing led to another, and now I am obviously a little deeper into it.
RSN: What was there about the Royal Rooters that made you decide to write a book about them?
PN: Going back fifteen years or so, I had a pretty decent knowledge of Nuf Ced McGreevy and who the Royal Rooters were. Being a Mets fan, my knowledge was pretty much limited to what I had read. You know, the irony of it is that earlier in my life I was a musician in a group called, "Third Bass." We didn't name the group after Nuf Ced's saloon -- it was a play on words, but it did relate to baseball as we were all big fans of the game. My name was always associated with the group, and as I researched Nuf Ced it seemed like a fascinating story. I became really interested in tracking the history of baseball fans in general. At the same time, I was writing a biography of baseball writer Henry Chadwick and researching some of the earliest fans of the 1850's, particularly in the New York area. So when I was first starting out, I was working on an overview of baseball fans across the whole country. As I researched further and further in the story of baseball fans, the story of the Rooters blew away every other regional fan base and pitted them as the pioneers of what they brought to the ballpark and the influence they had on games.
RSN: Did the Royal Rooters actually begin as fans of Boston's National League team?
PN: Yes, most reports say that in the pennant race of 1897 they became active. As that season went on, Nuf Ced McGreevy and John (Honey Fitz) Fitzgerald, JFK's grandfather, began to more formally organize the whole group from Roxbury. The first real Rooter excursion, with about 300 fans, traveled to Baltimore to see the last three games of the 1897 season.
RSN: What prompted them to switch their allegiance to the American League team?
PN: With the advent of the American League in 1901, Ban Johnson wanted to have a Boston franchise and he was hoping Connie Mack, a native New Englander, would become its owner/ manager. Of course that didn't work out and he went on to Philadelphia. When the new team was established, the National League team knew it had a rival but it came down to something as simple as ticket prices. That factor, together with some of their favorite players moving to the American League team, helped change their allegiance. Jimmy Collins, the great third baseman, was one of the players that switched teams. Nuf Ced actually had named his saloon after him. Third Base had Collins portraits adorning its walls, and other artifacts of his throughout the bar. That and the cheaper ticket prices were the key factors. That being said, they still supported the National League team, but their first loyalty was now with the American League team.
RSN: How did they differentiate themselves from other Boston fans?
PN: A lot of the Rooters were members of #22 Elks Club. There was the Elks Band and they also hired the Boston Letter Carriers Band to accompany them on their march to the Huntington Grounds. They always had a large band presence. They really had the first fan-orchestrated music at the ballpark. I mean, going back as far as 1888 at the South End Grounds there was a band. They even had written a march prepared for opening day. Of course you know all about the “Tessie” song. The Royal Rooters were a tight-knit group and rather rowdy. They traveled together and stayed in the same hotels. During the last game of the 1904 season, they marched up 165th Street towards the ballpark prior to the game against the Highlanders. This all was at a time when there wasn't much of a motivated fan base. They started small and grew from that time on until the end of the teens.
RSN: Besides characters like Nuf Ced McGreevy and "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, who were some of the other interesting personalities?
PN: Another great character was C.F. Madden, who was known as the Roxbury Kid. He was a pretty portly guy and was always seen with a megaphone in his hands. The Boston newspapers, including the Globe and their great cartoonist, Wallace Goldsmith, began to insert drawings of some of the Rooters in their coverage of the team. Many of them became mini-celebrities around the region. They even got their own nicknames. Another great character was Charlie Levis, a close friend of McGreevy's. In 1904, he was such a prominent supporter of the team that he wrote the Boston Journal suggesting fans send money to the paper so they could craft a silver cup so that the fans could present it to Jimmy Collins at the Huntington Grounds before they embarked on their last series against the New York Highlanders. By doing that, he started a whole groundswell of support, not only from other Rooters but also from young paperboys who were also sending in their small wages. It was a testament to how obsessed they were with the team. Charlie, according to what I have learned, wanted to be the mascot or good luck charm for the team to lead them to the pennant. They were a superstitious lot and tied themselves to certain relics and things like “Tessie.”
RSN: Most people know Isabelle Stewart Gardiner through the museum that bears her name, but wasn't she a great follower as well?
PN: She had season tickets at Fenway. After the 1912 series one of the popular songs was "Oh You Sox," and the Rooters had red silk sashes they used to wear around their straw hats. The women used them as kerchiefs. Apparently she showed up at a very ritzy opera performance with the red silk kerchief on her head. This was pretty shocking to the other members of Boston's social elite at the time. She was pretty caught up in Red Sox fever.
RSN: Did the seating controversy between the Rooters and the team during the 1912 World Series cause any permanent hard feelings (the team, for a game in the Series, had sold the traditional seats the Rooters had always had)?
PN: The Rooters were pretty much at their zenith of influence at the time this incident, in 1912, happened -- when their tickets were sold and they began a ruckus in the outfield. If anything; the Rooters actually embarassed themselves by holding out and not even attending the next game. You might even say they played the role of frontrunners, or bandwagon jumpers, during that series because sure enough, after the Series had been won they were right there at the head of the victory parade. Actually John Fitzgerald got the team owner to apologize to the Rooters and all things were patched up after that. Bygones were bygones, and the Rooters moved on without much of a pause.
RSN: What factors led to the decline of the Rooters?
PN: Well, many were established as Rooters in the 1890's. McGreevy and another of the characters of the group, Hi Hi Dixwell, a forefather of the Rooters --- the grandfather of Boston fans -- went all the way back to the 1880's. So by the time 1918 came around they were getting a lot older and less inclined to travel. In 1918, many went to Chicago for the Series, sang “Tessie” in the hotel to the players and harassed the Chicago players, but they were already on the downside. They just didn't have enough young blood in the group. This along with the decline of the teams fortunes after 1918 were the main factors. “Tessie” actually had a couple of comebacks in the 20's and in the 1940's when the Sox became competitive again.
RSN: So the Dropkick Murphys’ version wasn't the first time it was revisited?
PN: The others weren't remakes, but in 1946 a radio station actually broke out a copy of the song and played it to the end of that season, which was akin to what happened with the Dropkick Murphys’ song. One year there was a dinner for Duffy Lewis over at the Copley Plaza Hotel. Honey Fitz, Tris Speaker, Harry Hooper and the boys were all there. They are pictured in the Globe all together and singing “Tessie” at that event. There was an awareness throughout the old timers that they should bring the song back for a little good luck. If the Dropkick Murphys’ didn't perform it live this season or in the playoffs you could say that “Tessie's” streak is still alive. I don't know if Red Sox Nation wants to hear it or not, but I heard it through the grapevine that there may have been some controversy between the band and the organization.
RSN: Peter, you know that Red Sox Nation doesn't mind a little controversy!
PN: I did hear through the grapevine some things like when Charles Steinberg first had the “Tessie” idea and brought it to the others in the front office, in the form of the band playing it to the others through a boom box speaker system, people in the front office were rolling their eyes and looking at him like he was crazy. Little by little it caught on, and by the time the premiere of Fever Pitch was shown in Boston it appeared that even Larry L. had been won over. I also heard that so much of a fuss was being made over “Tessie” that even Theo's nose was out of joint over the song. I don't think everyone in the organization embraced the playing of “Tessie.”
RSN: You have built a replica of McGreevy's saloon in Cooperstown, is that correct?
PN: Yes, I have established the Baseball Fan Hall of Fame and thought it was only fitting to build a replica of McGreevy's Third Base Saloon, both its interior and exterior. The interior is totally finished. Some Boston architects and I are now working on plans for the exterior.
RSN: How accurate is it to the original Third Base Saloon?
PN: I have some pretty rare photos, one of which is in the book, which show the interior around 1906. The one that is in the book shows the interior after McGreevy moved the Saloon to Ruggles Street in 1915. It is as close a replica as you can get by molding both of these locations together. Nuf Ced did change some things around when he moved, but people who have knowledge of the original have given me pretty positive feedback on how it has been done.
RSN: What are we likely to see at the saloon?
PN: When you walk into it, it will give you the closest possible feeling of what it was like to walk into the original one. It will tell the story of the Royal Rooters from their birth and their influence they had on other fan bases around the country. It will have numerous artifacts from the period including bottles of 100-year-old whiskey. Baseball artifacts include the 1897 Championship Trophy that was presented to Hugh Duffy at Fanueil Hall and the ball that was thrown out by Mayor, and Royal Rooter, John Fitzgerald, to open Fenway Park at the beginning of the 1912 season. We also have the last-out ball from the 1897 pennant winning team.
RSN: When do you plan to have the museum open for the public?
PN: It will have its formal opening in either June, or early July, of 2006.
RSN: Have selections been made for entrants?
PN: Over the past year I have been working with some baseball writers and historians. We have formed a blue-ribbon committee for election and induction purposes. We have established a whole ballot. I wanted to bring the Hollywood Celebrity thing into it as well, beginning with the turn of the last century actor Dewolfe Harper and going up to present baseball fan celebrities such as Bill Murray and Stephen King. So we are going to have a couple of different categories to include not only the celebrities but also the true fans like, Lib Dooley, the Queen of Fenway Park and Nuf Ced McGreevy, among others.
RSN: All the best Peter, not only with your book, but also with the museum and Hall of Fame. We are looking forward to visiting it. Any last words?
PN: I'd love to have you, and all members of the Nation. Hopefully you can get the word out about it. The book is as much a pictorial history as anything. I had to edit a lot out. I had enough extra material to do another book. I wanted to show your website and the great depiction you have at the top of the page, showing from left to right the span of the field from 1903 to the present. I took pictures and scanned it, but got turned down by my publisher who said the image was not clear enough. I could only mention you guys in the book. I wish I had been able to get more representation in there for you. What you guys do in keeping the spirit of the Royal Rooters alive is great.
......
