July 3, 1911: Frank Baker, ‘Philadelphia’s batting Hercules,’ hits for the cycle

On July 3, 1911, the Philadelphia Athletics swept a pair of games from the New York Highlanders. A crowd of about 14,000 filled the stands at New York’s Hilltop Park, and “the assemblage was coatless to a man,”1 reported the New York Sun, as the players battled in the hot, glaring sun for more than four hours. The game temperature reached 98 degrees Fahrenheit.2

The defending World Series champion Athletics entered with a record of 43-22, which put them 1½ games behind the American League’s leaders, the Detroit Tigers. The third-place Highlanders, at 36-28, were eight games behind the Tigers, who had been in first place since the second game of the season.

The doubleheader opened a five-game series that also included an Independence Day twin bill and a single game on July 5. When the Athletics visited New York earlier in the season, their May 1 game was rained out, resulting in the July 3 doubleheader.

The Athletics were on a 30-game road trip, which pitted them against every other team in the AL. Philadelphia had won six of its first 10 games, winning series against both the Boston Red Sox and Washington Nationals.3 Meanwhile, the Highlanders had played all but three games in the month of June at Hilltop Park, winning 16 of 21. After the series with the Athletics, it was New York’s turn to hit the road.

Philadelphia won the opening contest of the doubleheader, which the New York Sun called “a bitter scrap of twelve innings.”4 A pair of right-handers, Philadelphia’s Cy Morgan and New York’s Ray Fisher, started the game, but neither finished the fifth inning. The Athletics scored six runs early and then faced late rallies by the Highlanders, who tied the game in the eighth. It took four more frames for Connie Mack’s side to prevail, scoring twice in the top of the 12th. Hal Chase’s Highlanders rallied again but could push only one runner across the plate and lost, 8-7. Each side used four pitchers. There were 24 total base hits and 10 bases on balls, plus six stolen bases, as well as five total errors.

The second game “was easily won by the solar system champions.”5 Most newspapers did not give the game much space in their columns, as it was not nearly as exciting as the extra-inning affair in Game One. The New York Sun commented that the hard-fought opener “took the heart out of the Highlanders,”6 who managed only five hits in the second contest. The Athletics banged out 12 hits, and third baseman Frank “Home Run” Baker was, per the New York Times, Philadelphia’s “batting Hercules of this game with a collection of a single, a double, a triple, and a home run.”7

Baker was red-hot at this point of the season, having put together an eight-game hitting streak as the A’s came to New York. More impressively, Baker had gone hitless in only one of the 25 games he played in June, raising his batting average from .299 to .337. He added a 3-for-5 performance (a triple shy of hitting for the cycle) in the final game of the Washington series on July 1, raising his OPS to .931.8

Jack Warhop started for New York. The 26-year-old right-hander had won five decisions in a row. Opposing him was another righty, Harry Krause, who turned 23 years old a week after this game. Krause had earned wins in his last four decisions. With the combination of heat and a long first game, both managers were hoping for a pitchers’ duel. And it started that way, with each club being retired without scoring in the first.

Baker led off the second inning with a double to center. Warhop retired the next two batters before Claud Derrick lined a two-bagger to the fence, and Baker scored the Athletics’ first run of the game.

Philadelphia’s Ira Thomas took ball four in the dirt, and the pitch scooted past New York’s catcher, Bob Williams. Derrick broke for third, and Thomas raced to first, rounded the bag, and kept running to second, in an effort to draw a throw. Williams obliged, grabbing the ball and firing to shortstop John Knight. By then, Derrick was racing toward the plate, and Knight’s return throw to Williams was too late to catch Derrick from scoring.

The score remained 2-0 until the top of the fourth. Jack Barry doubled and took third on a sacrifice by Derrick. On Thomas’s groundball, Barry was run down between third and home; Thomas took second on the play. That brought Krause to the plate, and he “spanked a double”9 over Bert Daniels’ head in center, driving Thomas home.

Krause had a shutout until Roy Hartzell singled in the sixth inning and scored on Knight’s RBI triple. This was the only time the Highlanders managed a threat in the game. Krause held New York to just three other hits, all singles, for the rest of the game.

Philadelphia added two more tallies in the top of the ninth. Topsy Hartsel singled to right, bringing up Baker, who had singled and tripled since his second-inning double. As the New York Sun observed, Baker smacked “a tremendous slam into the center field rendezvous,”10 more commonly known as the bleachers. It was Baker’s fourth hit of the game and seventh home run of the season. The New York American reported that “[j]ust once before had a drive been lined into that stand, although many have gone in on the bounce.”11

In any event, the result was that Baker had gone 4-for-5, collecting a single, double, triple, and home run in the game and a total of six hits in 11 at-bats for the day. He also scored twice and had two runs batted in, giving him 46 for the season, and his OPS shot up to .959.

Krause’s pitching was exceptional, while Philadelphia’s batters hit Warhop harder than any other opponent had for some time. Warhop had been tagged for 12 hits and five earned runs. In addition to Baker’s quartet of hits, Hartsel added three, including a double. Warhop’s record fell to 7-5. Krause limited the New Yorkers to a single run on just five hits as he earned his seventh victory. The Philadelphia Inquirer told its readers that in sweeping the Highlanders, “the White Elephants put on an extra hundred pounds of steam in the closing clash.”12

Baker became the eighth batter in Athletics franchise history to hit for the cycle, accomplishing his rare feat less than a year after teammate Danny Murphy had done so on August 25, 1910, against the St. Louis Browns.13 Baker was the only major leaguer to hit for the cycle in 1911, and he ended the season with an AL-best 11 home runs. He led the AL in round-trippers for the next three seasons, too, swatting 42 homers in the four-season span, which is impressive, as it was in the midst of the Deadball Era. Baker also garnered 67 extra-base hits for the year, including 42 doubles (third-most in the majors).

The Philadelphia team continued its torrid batting the next day, sweeping their Independence Day doubleheader by scores of 7-4 and 11-9, in 11 innings. The Highlanders won the fifth game of the series, though, scoring three runs in the bottom of the ninth to win, 9-8.

The A’s went 56-26 in July, August, and September, grabbing first place for good on August 4. They won 15 of 21 games against New York, including the final two games of the season,14 enabling them to finish the season with 101 victories (one less than they won in 1910). The Mackmen went on to defeat the NL champion New York Giants in the World Series, capturing their second consecutive World Series crown. It was in that World Series that Frank Baker hit two crucial home runs and earned the sobriquet Home Run Baker.15

Author’s Note

Unfortunately, there are not many details about the second game’s play-by-play. While every newspaper account’s box score gave Baker credit for the four different hits, none of them gave any indication of when Baker clubbed his single or triple, or when he made an out.16 What is clear is that neither the single nor the triple was involved in any of the Athletics’ runs.

There are also inconsistent accounts of Baker’s second-inning double. The New York Sun reported that he singled to center and advanced to second on a fielding error by center fielder Daniels. Both the Philadelphia Inquirer and New York Times called it a double, and baseball databases like Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org credit him with all four hits of the cycle.17

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Ray Danner and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

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

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYA/NYA191107032.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1911/B07032NYA1911.htm

Photo credit: Frank Baker, Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 “Drop Two to the Athletics,” New York Sun, July 3, 1911: 6.

2 “14 Lives Added to Heat’s Toll,” New York Tribune, July 4, 1911: 1. According to the Tribune, the temperature reached 98 degrees on July 3, making this “July’s hottest since 1899.” Thousands reportedly left New York City, but the heat claimed 14 victims in the New York City area. In addition, many New England records were broken. See Kurt Blumenau, “July 4, 1911: Red Sox stagger to walk-off win over Washington on Boston’s hottest day,” SABR Games Project, https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/july-4-1911-red-sox-stagger-to-walk-off-win-over-washington-on-bostons-hottest-day/. Accessed October 2024.

3 Washington had been one of the eight teams when the American League was formed and began major-league play in 1901. From 1901 through 1904, the team was named the Senators. Then, from 1905 through 1956, they were called the Nationals. They took the Senators name again in 1957 and kept it for four seasons, until the franchise moved to Minnesota.

4 New York Sun.

5 New York Sun.

6 New York Sun.

7 “Athletics Win Two Games from Yanks,” New York Times, July 3, 1911: 7.

8 The OPS figure is retrospective; the statistic did not exist in 1911.

9 New York Sun.

10 New York Sun.

11 Damon Runyon, “Athletics Hand Double Knockout to Yankees in Twenty-One Innings of Sweltering Baseball,” New York American, July 3, 1911: 6.

12 Philadelphia Inquirer.

13 Before Murphy and Baker, the first six cycles in Athletics franchise history were accomplished by Lon Knight (July 30, 1883), Henry Larkin (a reverse natural cycle on June 16, 1885), Chippy McGarr (September 23, 1886), Harry Stovey (May 15, 1888), Harry Davis (July 10, 1901), and Nap Lajoie (July 30, 1901).

14 The two losses in October to the Athletics dropped the Highlanders from fourth to sixth place in the final AL standings.

15 In his SABR biography of Frank “Home Run” Baker, author David Jones writes that in the World Series against the Giants, Baker led the Athletics with “nine hits, five runs batted in, and a .375 average. His inspired play forever dispelled the notion that he could be intimidated on the diamond, but more importantly, Baker’s two dramatic home runs on consecutive days off two future Hall of Fame pitchers propelled him into the upper echelon of baseball legends. Henceforth, for the rest of his life and beyond, he would be known as ‘Home Run’ Baker.” Further, according to Jones, “in the context of Baker’s time, when it was only the rare slugger who could hit as many as 10 home runs in a season, the name connoted mythic power and strength.” See David Jones, “Home Run Baker,” SABR Biography Project. Accessed September 2024.

16 In 1911 newspaper box scores often reported how many total bases a batter accumulated in a game, but the play-by-play was not very detailed for every game. The phrase “hitting for the cycle” and the attainment of four different hits in the same game by the same batter did not become popular until the 1930s. See Michael Huber and Allison Davidson, “The Origin of ‘Hitting for the Cycle’ and an Approach to How Cycles Occur,” SABR Baseball Research Journal, Volume 47, Number 1, Spring 2018, pages 112-119. Further, Baker’s sequence of the four hits remains unknown, one of only 19 cycles in the major leagues (American League, National League, American Association, Federal League, and Negro Leagues) where we do not know the order of the hits.

17 “Macks Grab Two, Gain on Tigers,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 3, 1911: 8.