Old Muggsy always did have a talent for getting straight to the point.
“Gentlemen, no matter who wins, the champion of the world for this year will be the city of New York,” John J. McGraw said, early in the afternoon of Oct. 5, 1921, as a thirsty nation closed in on the second anniversary of the Volstead Act that ushered in Prohibition, and a starving city prepared to close the book on 16 straight years without a baseball champion.
McGraw’s Giants were the champions of the National League for a sixth time since 1901 and Miller Huggins’ Yankees had won the American League for the very first time, and that meant the capital of baseball wasn’t just New York but the small corner of New York known as Coogan’s Bluff, bounded by 155th Street, Frederick Douglass Boulevard and the Harlem River Drive.