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There was one out, and a man on second.

Yerkes’ Boston Red Sox trailed the New York Giants, 2-1. The Giants had scored the go-ahead run in the top half of the inning, according to Baseball Reference.

The crowd of 17,000 was likely roaring, fueled by the passion of New England sports but fueled too by the inexplicable injustice of it all: that they, as a city, should have come so far, battled so hard, to see a single run scored in the top of the 10th inning snuff out all their glory, the way a leather glove snatches a hard-hit line drive.

Fenway Park, just three years old, likely would have seemed to throb at its foundations in the throes of unfolding history.

Yerkes stepped into the box and dug his cleats into clay spattered with ten innings’ worth of pocks and dents. He might have looked up the jagged painted line running toward first base, into the outfield, into the stands, past fans peeking through the fences, and into the streets of Boston beyond, where, improbably, life went on.

Yerkes, just 24, faced the mound. On the mound was future Hall of Famer – he probably knew it even then, 12 years into his career – Christy Mathewson.

Mathewson was from Pennsylvania, too. He was born in Factoryville, two hours north.

Whether some brief flash or flicker of passing kinship was felt between these two Keystone men as they turned toward each other, is not known.

***

Hundreds of miles south of Boston, the Yerkes family was in Hatboro praying, according to a biography by Tony Bunting.

Yerkes’ wife, Mary Menz, told their 2-year-old son Steve Jr. to kneel on the ground and pray for a Red Sox victory, Bunting wrote.

The world’s eyes were on his dad.

“What the pressure on Yerkes must have been,” Frank P. Sibley wrote in the Boston Globe in the aftermath of the game, “With $1300 (the difference between the shares of the winners–$4,024.69—and losers—$2,566.47) for himself and for each of his team mates hanging on the end of his bat, is hard to imagine.”

In Boston, in Fenway, standing in the batter’s box at the center of the universe, the borough of Hatboro must have seemed a far away place indeed.

***

Yerkes was an infielder on teams in Jenkintown and Hatboro throughout his youth, and in 1905 he enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania, where he played shortstop, per his biography.

After two years he left Penn to pursue what Bunting termed the “vagabond” existence of professional baseball, playing for teams out of Millville, New Jersey (home of modern day All Star Mike Trout), Stroudsburg, Chester, and Altoona.

The Red Sox purchased the skills of Yerkes for an initial bonus of $1000 in 1909.

***

On that October night in 1912, Yerkes was not just facing any legendary pitcher.

Matthewson was widely regarded as the greatest of his era.

He was famously known as “The Gentleman Hurler” and perhaps most importantly, a control artist.

He was the inventor of a pitch he called the fadeaway, later renamed the screwball. He threw with deadly precision and almost never surrendered a walk.

His face, in photographs, appears congenial. But it must have held all the guile of one of his breaking pitches, appearing to veer off the plate to the left before “fading” back to the right for a strike.

Matthewson had already thrown a complete game that October night, a full nine innings.

He was two outs away from a world championship. To look up at the greatest pitcher of the time lurking there on the mound like a cornered rattlesnake, ten innings’ sweat and dirt and derision screwball written on his brow, the Hatboro man easily could have been quaking in his spikes, anxious, restless, ready to swing at the first pitch that came his way.

The first pitch came in and Yerkes did not swing.

Three more pitches came in, and Yerkes let them all go. One was a strike. The count was three balls and one strike.

Where the patience, the fortitude to do nothing came from is impossible to cull. Perhaps Yerkes was long-practiced at the art. His statistics would suggest that he was. Fangraphs would rate his walk percentage for the 1912 season – he walked in about 13% of his plate appearances – somewhere between the “great” and “excellent.”

But those statistics count all of his battles against the rest of the world of pitchers, not Christy Matthewson, an all-time great hurler who knew how to paint corners, to make a ball seem like it was well off the plate before having it fade back across like a curving bullet.

On the fifth pitch, Yerkes was given the green light to swing, according to Bunting.

Matthewson was undoubtedly growing tired. Perhaps he was even growing frustrated. But he was still a living legend, and it must have seemed that unlikely another batter would ever have him at a similar disadvantage.

No one would have blamed Yerkes if he swung and grounded out to third. He could go home and tell his children he battled the great Christy Matthewson in the deciding moments of the World Series. And that would be the story of him.

But he disobeyed the order. Somehow, he let yet another pitch go by him.

“How he managed to wait it out nobody can guess,” Sibley wrote in his account of the game. “But he did.”

The umpire called ball four. Yerkes trotted fatefully down the first base line.

***

That put men on first and second. The next batter, hall of famer Tris Speaker, hit a single, scoring the runner on second to tie the game at 2-2.

Yerkes advanced to third.

The next batter was walked intentionally to load the bases. That’s when Larry Gardner came up and stroked a fly ball to deep right field.

The ball was caught, but it was hit plenty deep enough. Yerkes tore off third toward home and scored.

It was over. The Red Sox had won the 1912 World Series.

***

Yerkes died at age 82 in 1971 in Lansdale.

He’s buried at the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Cheltenham beside his wife Mary and his son Stephen Jr., who prayed for him on that fateful October night.

After the 1912 World Series, Yerkes had a respectable career. He played several more years in the major leagues before moving on to other professional leagues, where he established himself as a strong-hitting middle-infielder.

With time the legend of Game 8 has waned, along with Yerkes’ role. 101 more World Series championships have been played, with 101 more heroes returning on their laurels to their respective Hatboros around the country, around the globe.

Historians remember. Boston fans may remember. Avid fans are reminded by an anniversary article every five or ten or 25 years.

Yet the tale of the Hatboro native is distinct among distinctions, for it is not the tale of David vs. Goliath. It is not a collision of titans. It is not Joe Carter in 1994, or Madison Bumgarner in 2014, or Bryce Harper in 2022. Yerkes did not stand before the world and wield his baseball power in all its glory.

Yerkes’ story is different because it is the story of a man whose life passion and achievement culminated in a few minute’s patience, a man who, against all temptations of glory and even the edict of his coach, etched his name into history by leaving his bat on his shoulder.

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