September 27, 1905: Boston’s Big Bill Dinneen no-hits the White Sox

When the August 15 game between the Boston Americans and Chicago White Sox was rained out, it was rescheduled as the first game of a doubleheader to be played on Wednesday, September 27, at Boston’s Huntington Avenue Grounds.

Having won American League pennants in both 1903 and 1904, Boston was the reigning league champion, but that reign was coming to an end. Come September 27, with a week and a half to go in the 1905 season, the first-place Philadelphia Athletics led the White Sox by half a game. Boston was in fifth place, 17 games back.

Winner of 16 of 22 games against the Americans in 1905 (there was also one tie), Chicago had swept doubleheaders from Boston on both September 25 and 26. In fact, the White Sox had swept five straight doubleheaders from the Americans, including three in Chicago in late August. Big Ed Walsh had won both games on September 26, working 17 innings in all.1 With the four games in two days, the White Sox had completed 12 games of a season-ending 25-game road trip.

The matchup for the first game on September 27 was Big Bill Dinneen (10-14) for Boston against Chicago’s Frank Owen (19-12).2 Because of a sore arm, the 29-year-old Dinneen had not pitched since August 31. He had earned a degree of reverence in Boston for having won three games in the 1903 World Series – including the first two shutouts in World Series play, the second of which was the clinching game. He’d been 23-14 in 1904 but had struggled in 1905.

The 25-year-old Owen had also had a very strong season in 1904 (21-15, 1.94). He came into this game having won his last three decisions, averaging just two runs allowed per game.3

Neither team scored in the first three innings. Dinneen walked two batters in the first inning and hit one in the second. Leading off the first was Chicago center fielder (and manager) Fielder Jones and he drew the first base on balls. Frank Isbell sacrificed Jones to second. Hall of Fame-bound shortstop George Davis walked, but Dinneen got out of the inning without further difficulty. Left fielder Jimmy “Nixey” Callahan hit a high foul ball behind first base, caught by Boston second baseman Hobe Ferris. First baseman Jiggs Donahue then grounded to Dinneen, who threw to first for the third out.

With one out in the second inning, Dinneen hit third baseman George Rohe in the ribs. Rohe remained there as the next two outs were recorded.

From that point on, every single White Sox batter made an out. The Chicago Daily News summed up the game: “Only three of [owner Charles Comiskey’s] men ever reached first base and all got there through the generosity of Boston’s twirler.”4

As the Chicago Tribune correspondent wrote, “The first game of today’s battle was nothing but Dinneen. He was the whole show and then some.”5

There were six strikeouts. Most of the outs were recorded on fly balls. “Only four ground balls were hit while [Dinneen] was in the box,” noted the Boston Journal.6 The Boston Herald reported that four of the fly balls were foul-ball outs.7

Owen allowed only six hits. The first was a second-inning two-out triple to the left-field bleachers by right fielder Kip Selbach. Owen then struck out Ferris.

In the fourth inning, Americans center fielder Chick Stahl got two bases by dropping in a “little fly back of second,” a ball that apparently fell in between the first baseman, second baseman, and right fielder, a ball that might well have been caught if they had each not yielded to the others.8 Left fielder Jesse Burkett – at age 36 playing in the final season of his 16-year Hall of Fame career – singled through a drawn-in infield and Stahl scored for a 1-0 Boston lead.

The other Boston run came in the bottom of the seventh. Burkett beat out the throw on a slow-bounding infield single to shortstop Davis, his teammate on the National League’s defunct Cleveland Spiders in 1891 and 1892. Buck Freeman sacrificed Burkett to second. He advanced to third on a fly ball by Selbach and then scored easily when Ferris tripled to deep left, a drive that saw Callahan “dropping the ball after a most desperate effort.”9

The final out in the ninth came when Davis fouled out to Boston’s Bob Unglaub at third base.10 Having set down his 23rd batter in a row, Dinneen “walked off the field to the music of as hearty a cheer as ever emanated from a bunch of baseball enthusiasts.”11

In what might be called a nearly unparalleled understatement, the Boston Globe’s Tim Murnane wrote, “Dinneen’s work yesterday was very satisfactory to manager Jimmy Collins.”12 It was the seventh no-hitter in the AL’s five-season history and third for Boston’s franchise; Cy Young had pitched a perfect game against the Athletics in May 1904, and Jesse Tannehill no-hit the White Sox in August 1904. The first no-hitter in league history had been thrown in 1902 by Nixey Callahan, the left fielder in this game.

Three other American or National League pitchers threw no-hitters in 1905: Christy Mathewson of the New York Giants against the St. Louis Cardinals in June, Weldon Henley of the Athletics against the St. Louis Browns in July, and Frank Smith of the White Sox against the Tigers earlier in September.

Chicago won the second game, which was called after six innings due to darkness in what the Boston Journal called “a most lurid example of ‘from the sublime to the ridiculous.’”13 Chicago’s batters took out their frustrations from the first game by driving Boston starter Young out of the game after getting just one out while the White Sox were scoring four runs.14 Reliever Ed Barry got the other two outs in that first inning, but not before he had given up five more runs. The White Sox held a 9-0 lead before Boston even got up to bat.

Ed Hughes pitched the rest of the game and surrendered an additional six runs. Behind starting pitcher Nick Altrock, the White Sox won 15-1 despite making only nine base hits. There were four walks and five Boston errors, one each by five different players. It’s possible Chicago could have scored more runs than they did, but they had to make sure they completed the requisite five innings or the game would not have counted. For Altrock, it was his second win in the series and his team-best 22nd of the season, having booked a 3-1 victory in the first game of the September 25 doubleheader.

By season’s end, even though Boston won its last eight games, the team still finished fourth, 16 games behind the Athletics. Chicago finished two games behind Philadelphia.

Dinneen pitched in 391 games for four major-league teams in a 12-season playing career that ended in 1909. He nearly threw another no-hitter for Boston, against St. Louis on July 27, 1906, allowing just an infield single to the Browns’ Pete O’Brien. Dinneen then served as an AL umpire through 1937.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Kurt Blumenau and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS190509271.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1905/B09271BOS1905.htm

Photo: Bill Dineen, Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 It had been quite a rainy year and after the postponement on August 15, Boston had experienced 23 rainouts,11 at home and 12 on the road, which also included two rained out in Chicago. See T.H.M., “This Means 17 Doubleheaders,” Boston Globe, August 16, 1905: 5. Walsh had taken over from Doc White in the first game, before even one Boston batter had been retired, due to White’s sore arm, and he pitched the full second game. Walsh came in cold. Boston scored five runs in the first inning before Walsh could get himself loose. He then settled down and allowed not one more run while his teammates scored 10. Walsh won the second game, 3-1, the tiebreaking runs scoring in the top of the eighth. The game was called after eight innings because of darkness.

2 Frank Owen, the pitcher, is not be confused with Frank Owens, the catcher, who played one September game in 1905 for the Boston Americans and then returned to the majors with the White Sox eight years later. 

3 Owen did win his final two games of the year, finishing with 21 wins for the second year in succession.

4 “Sox Lose, Then Big Rally,” Chicago Daily News, September 27, 1905: 1.

5 “White Sox Gain an Even Break,” Chicago Tribune, September 28, 1905: 6. For years newspapers consistently spelled the Boston pitcher’s name as Dineen, but existing images of his autograph are consistent with the name as rendered in census and other public documents.    

6 W.S. Barnes, “Bill Dinneen Pitched a No-Hit, No-Run Game,” Boston Journal, September 28, 1905: 8.

7 “The Champs Way Up – Then, Smash,” Boston Herald, September 28, 1905: 9.

8 “White Sox Gain an Even Break.”

9 Barnes.

10 Barnes.

11 T.H.M., “Without a Safe Hit,” Boston Globe, September 28, 1905: 3. The sportswriter T.H.M. was former major-league ballplayer Tim Murnane.

12 T.H.M., “Baseball Notes,” Boston Globe, September 28, 1905: 3.

13 Barnes.

14 The loss gave Young a record of 17-18 for the season. He finished the year 18-19 and was 13-21 in 1906 before rebounding with back-to-back 21-win seasons in 1907 and 1908.