July 9, 1958: Relief pitcher carries the load in Eastern League no-hitter

The official list of no-hitters thrown in the Eastern League says simply that Evans Killeen and Don Williams1 combined to hurl a seven-inning no-no for the Albany (New York) Senators against the Allentown (Pennsylvania) Red Sox on July 9, 1958.2

That breakdown doesn’t do justice to the balance of labor between the pitchers, though. Starting pitcher Killeen faced only the first two hitters, walking both. Reliever Williams replaced him and pitched seven hitless innings, carrying the load to complete the no-hitter.

The Killeen-Williams “collaboration” was a minor-league version3 of the well-known Boston Red Sox-Washington Senators game of June 23, 1917. In that game, Boston starter Babe Ruth was ejected after walking the leadoff hitter and punching the home-plate umpire. Reliever Ernie Shore set down the Senators the rest of the way without allowing another baserunner.

The game also represented either a triumphant goodbye or a poorly timed peak for the 22-year-old Williams. It was his last mound appearance before he reported for a stint in the military that cost him the rest of the 1958 season and all of 1959.4

As of July 9, 1958, the Eastern League was two days into the second half of its season. In the first half, Albany brought up the rear of the league’s Northern Division with a 26-40 record, 16 games behind Binghamton.5 The Senators’ name reflected the Kansas City Athletics affiliate’s home in New York’s capital city – not a farm relationship with Washington’s major-league club.6

Meanwhile, the Allentown Red Sox – true to their name, a Boston affiliate – finished the first half in last place in the Southern Division with a 24-49 record, 18 games behind first-place York. The Red Sox had lost six games in a row before being rained out against Albany the previous night.7 The teams met at the Senators’ home park, Hawkins Stadium, in the Albany suburb of Menands.8

The Albany team, managed by former big-league catcher Al Evans, employed 12 players at various points in the season who reached the major leagues. Three of them started the first game on July 9.9 Center fielder Bill Kern, who hit a robust .282 that season, made the parent A’s for eight games in 1962. Third baseman Gordon MacKenzie, who hit a less impressive .226, enjoyed a similarly brief 11-game stint in Kansas City in 1961.

And then there was Killeen, a 22-year-old Brooklyn native signed as an undrafted free agent by the A’s in 1955. At Albany, he posted a 5-5 record and 4.15 ERA in 23 games, including 13 starts. Control was his nemesis: In his first three minor-league seasons, he walked 125, 138, and 144 batters. In 1958 he walked 85 batters in 91 innings, leading Eastern League pitchers with 8.4 walks per nine innings. Of the 20 pitchers in the loop who issued the most free passes, Killeen was the only one to work fewer than 100 innings.

Nine Allentown players reached the big leagues, and manager Eddie Popowski started four of them – left fielder Don Gile, center fielder Jerry Mallett, shortstop Al Moran, and catcher Jim Pagliaroni.10 Popowski gave the ball to 24-year-old lefty swingman John Isaac, who went 10-9 with a 4.01 ERA in 32 games, including 16 starts. Isaac was in his sixth professional season and had briefly reached Triple A two seasons earlier. He never returned to that level in a career that lasted 10 seasons, through 1962.

Popowski, known as “Pop,” never reached the major leagues as an infielder, but spent nine seasons as a coach with the parent Boston Red Sox between 1967 and 1976 after managing 22 seasons in the team’s minor-league system. Popowski also served as Boston’s interim manager for nine games in 1969 and one game in 1973 after managers Dick Williams and Eddie Kasko were fired.

The game started with great promise for the Red Sox. Right fielder Jerry Siegert led off against Killeen and drew a walk. First baseman Matthew “Babe” Daskalakis hit second, and also drew a base on balls. Manager Evans exercised a quick hook at this point, removing Killeen in favor of Williams.

News accounts of the game do not specify whether Killeen was injured, or whether Evans simply grew tired of his wildness. News reports from earlier that month indicate Killeen was removed from a July 1 start against Albany after pulling a muscle.11 Also, a Newspapers.com search for Killeen’s name in 1958 turns up no matches between July 11 and August 20. It seems possible, then, that Killeen’s short start might have ended with a trip to the disabled list.12

Williams had given thought to leaving for his Los Angeles home two days earlier to prepare for his Army duty. But he stayed in Albany for a few extra days after learning that Hank Peters, Kansas City’s minor-league director, was coming to town. “I just wanted to talk with him,” Williams said later.13

Williams made a dramatic entrance. He struck out second baseman Ed Lavene and Gile, then walked third baseman Douglass Hubacek to load the bases. Mallett, a Baylor University alumnus, ended the inning by tapping a groundball in front of home plate.14

From that unusual start, the game turned into a pitchers’ duel. Williams allowed only four additional baserunners, on three walks and an error by second baseman Ken Hilyer. Only one runner reached second base against him.15 Isaac yielded only three hits and a walk in the first five innings. Entering the bottom of the sixth, neither team had scored. Albany turned a pair of double plays behind Williams, while Allentown posted an unusual twin killing – perhaps against a double-steal attempt – that went from catcher Pagliaroni to shortstop Moran and back to Pagliaroni.

Albany finally rewarded Williams’s epic relief performance with some runs in the sixth. Leadoff hitter Kern reached second base when Hubacek threw away his groundball. Shortstop Chico Valentin singled past first base to drive in Kern. Isaac walked the next batter to put runners on first and second, then racked up two outs on strikeouts. Hilyer, who had three of Albany’s six hits, popped a catchable fly behind first base that fell for a hit, scoring the second run. First baseman Whitey Schmidt capped the rally by grounding a hit deep to the shortstop hole to drive in Albany’s third and final run.16

Game accounts do not detail Williams’s final three outs, which suggests that Allentown’s final turn at bat in the top of the seventh was free of suspense. The game wrapped up in 1 hour and 30 minutes. Albany took the second game of the doubleheader as well, 2-1, on a 10th-inning single by outfielder Jay Hankins.17

Killeen and Williams’s combined effort was only the second multipitcher no-hitter in Eastern League history, following a no-no by Binghamton’s Dave Latter and Tom Gorman on August 1, 1948, against Elmira.18 Thirty-four additional combined no-hitters were posted in the EL between 1958 and the end of the 2022 season.19

Killeen reached the majors with Kansas City for four relief appearances in September 1959, his only big-league experience. Beyond that, his career is best remembered for his unsuccessful bid to make the roster of the first-year 1962 New York Mets, which was cut short when he sliced open his right thumb on a razor blade during spring training.20 He spent that season with two Mets farm teams; it was his last of eight seasons in professional baseball.

Williams returned from the Army in 1960 and resumed his progress through the minor-league systems of the A’s, the Chicago White Sox, and the Minnesota Twins. A strong season for Triple-A Dallas-Fort Worth in 1963 (53 games, 8-5 record, 2.65 ERA) earned him a call-up to the Twins in August 1963. He compiled no record and a 10.38 ERA in his only three big-league appearances. His first game, and the only appearance in which he did not yield a run, came against his former parent club, the A’s. Williams spent his final two seasons in the Washington Senators organization and retired after the 1966 campaign.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Gary Belleville and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources and photo credit

In addition to the specific sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for general player, team, and season data.

Neither Baseball-Reference nor Retrosheet provides box scores of minor-league games, but the July 10, 1958, edition of the Allentown Morning Call published a box score.

Image of 1983 Fritsch One Year Winners card #104 downloaded from the Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 Two right-handed pitchers named Don Williams played professional baseball in the late 1950s and early 1960s, each getting brief trials in the majors. The Don Williams in this story, Donald Reid Williams, was a California native born in 1935 who played three games with the 1963 Minnesota Twins. The other Don Williams, Don Fred Williams, was a Virginia native born in 1931 who appeared in 11 games with the Pirates and A’s between 1958 and 1962. The two Williamses both pitched for the 1963 Dallas-Fort Worth team in the Triple-A Pacific Coast League under future big-league manager and general manager Jack McKeon.

2 While writing this story in the fall of 2021, the author consulted a list of Eastern League no-hitters posted on MiLB.com, the official site of Minor League Baseball. During this story’s review process, the list was taken down. The combined Killeen/Williams no-no is included on SABR member Chuck McGill’s list of minor-league no-hitters, as well as Baseball-Reference’s decade-by-decade list of minor-league no-nos, both accessed March 1, 2023.

3 In 1958 the Eastern League was a Class A loop, which placed it three levels below the majors.

4 Associated Press, “2 Albany Hurlers No-Hit A-Sox,” Allentown (Pennsylvania) Morning Call, July 10, 1958: 39.

5 Final first-half standings as printed in the Morning Call, July 7, 1958: 11.

6 1959 was the final season an Albany team used the Senators name. After that, minor-league baseball disappeared from the city until 1983. Since then, affiliated and independent teams in Albany have used names including A’s, Yankees, Diamond Dogs, and Dutchmen. Baseball-Reference lists only two seasons – 1935 and 1936 – when the Albany Senators were affiliated with the Washington Senators.

7 “Rain Relieves A-Sox Slump,” Allentown Morning Call, July 9, 1958: 22.

8 Numerous news reports from the Albany area specify the stadium’s location in Menands, including “Auction of Ball Park Under Way,” Troy (New York) Times Record, June 15, 1960: 18. Menands borders the city of Albany to the north.

9 The other Senators who also reached the majors were Carl Duser, Jay Hankins, Troy Herriage, Dave Hill, Dan Pfister, Hal Raether, Howie Reed, and Al Silvera. Not all of them would have been on the roster on July 9.

10 The other Red Sox players that season who also reached the majors were Joe Albanese, Al Cihocki, Jim Kirby, Bill Pleis, and Jay Ritchie. Not all of them would have been on the roster on July 9.

11 Joe McCarron, “Albany Halts A-Sox in 11th, 7-5,” Allentown Morning Call, July 2, 1958: 31. Killeen was removed from the game after five innings with a 3-1 lead.

12 The Newspapers.com search was conducted on September 1, 2021, using both “Evans Killeen” and the typographical error “Evan Killeen.” Killeen pitched in 34 games apiece in 1956 and 1957 but made only 23 appearances in 1958, which also supports the possibility that he might have missed time with an injury.

13 Charley Young, “Army-Bound Albany Righty Says Goodbye with No-Hitter,” The Sporting News, July 16, 1958: 37.

14 Associated Press, “Albany Stops Allentown Twice; Don Williams Tosses No-Hitter,” Troy (New York) Times-Record, July 10, 1958: 35. This Associated Press story is similar to the one cited in Note 4, but the Allentown and Troy papers either used different versions of the story or edited it to include different supporting details. The Troy version, for instance, includes significantly more detail on gameplay.

15 Young.

16 “Albany Stops Allentown Twice; Don Williams Tosses No-Hitter.”

17 “2 Albany Hurlers No-Hit A-Sox.”

18 Latter and Gorman lost their seven-inning no-hitter, 4-3.

19 SABR member Chuck McGill’s list of minor-league no-hitters, accessed March 1, 2023. This total includes four combined no-hitters thrown in 2021, when the Eastern League name was temporarily retired along with the established names of other minor leagues. Pitchers who took part in combined EL no-hitters before going on to big-league fame included Ricky Bottalico, Brad Penny, and Josh Beckett.

20 The anecdote about Killeen’s shaving injury has been oft repeated in stories about the 1962 Mets. A contemporary citation can be found in United Press International, “Mets Tie Bucs, 1-1 in Rain,” Miami Herald, March 16, 1962: 1C.