April 14, 1927: A’s stop Yankees’ winning streak at start of season with 9-9 tie

A season after losing the World Series by a single run in Game Seven, the New York Yankees opened their 1927 campaign against the Philadelphia Athletics, a team that had added punch to its roster—three future Hall of Famers—hoping to dethrone their Bronx nemesis as the American League pennant winner.

But the newcomers—40-year-old Ty Cobb, 39-year-old Eddie Collins, and 38-year-old Zack Wheat—could not lead the White Elephants to victory in the opening two games of their four-game series at Yankee Stadium. The threesome managed just four hits—three by Cobb—scored only two runs, and failed to drive in any. The Yankees won 8-3 on Opening Day and 10-4 a day later.

After the second game, a newspaper column with Babe Ruth’s byline stated this about the three: “I’m afraid they are getting a bit too old to be in there every day and give their best.”1

Game Three began at 3:30 pm on April 14, with 9,000 fans in the stands, on a day when the late afternoon temperature felt more like March than May. The Athletics and Yankees battled as the game neared its end to find who could see better in the dark amidst “a descending freezing spell.”2

On the mound for the Yankees was Bob Shawkey, a 36-year-old right-hander in his 15th major-league season. It turned out to be the second-shortest start in Shawkey’s career.

Shawkey’s 1926 numbers suggest he was past his prime. In 1922, at age 31, he threw 299 2/3 innings and struck out 130 batters. By 1926, at age 35, his workload had dropped to 104 1/3 innings and 63 strikeouts.3 His steady decline suggests the effects of age and physical wear, leading to reduced stamina and effectiveness. Yet the Yankees gave him the third-game start, following Opening Day starter Waite Hoyt and second-game hurler Dutch Ruether.4

The game started with Shawkey walking Collins. After Shawkey turned Bill Lamar’s grounder into a force at second, Cobb’s single to right scored Lamar on a ball that, as the Philadelphia Inquirer reported, “Ruth let roll through his piano legs.”5 Cobb advanced to third on the error. A single from Al Simmons, who had reached base seven consecutive times,6 plated Cobb. Simmons scored on Sammy Hale’s triple.

It was a 3-0 game, and Yankees manager Miller Huggins replaced Shawkey with Wilcy (Cy) Moore.

Known for his wicked sinker that he threw sidearm and “excellent control,” Moore was making his major-league debut a month before his 30th birthday on May 20. He had jumped to the majors from the Class B Sally League where, in the 1926 season, he excelled after having suffered an injury the year before.

In the 1925 season, he was hit by a pitch, breaking his throwing arm. He had to switch from throwing overhand to sidearm.7 With the new motion, he went 30-4 in 1926, with 305 innings pitched.

Jim Poole, whose own major-league career also did not start until age 29, led off against Moore.8 Poole bounced the ball back to the mound. After some hesitation, Moore threw to third, but not fast enough. Sliding back into the bag ahead of the ball, Hale barged into Joe Dugan. “In the collision, the Yank third sacker was badly shaken up,” observed the Philadelphia Inquirer.9 He limped off the field and was replaced by. Mike Gazella. Mickey Cochrane “lashed a liner”10 to short, Mark Koenig grabbing it, his throw to third beating Hale’s slide to the base and ending the inning.

Starting for the Athletics was Eddie Rommel, a 29-year-old right-hander in his eighth season. Entering the 1927 season, Rommel had pitched 46 times against the Yankees—31 starts and 281 1/3 innings pitched—with an 18-14 record and a 3.42 ERA. He reached the majors thanks to his spitter, only to see the pitch banned in 1920, the year he debuted.11 Still, his knuckleball made him a 20-game winner twice, with a 27–13 record in 1922—the most wins in the majors— and a 21–10 mark in 1925.

But today, ahead by three runs, he could not hold the lead.

The Yankees sent seven batters to the plate in their half of the first, with Earle Combs12 opening with a single. Koenig forced Combs, then reached second on Cochrane’s passed ball. Ruth walked. Lou Gehrig hit a sacrifice fly, Koenig racing to third. Bob Meusel singled, advancing both baserunners. Tony Lazzeri tripled, clearing the basesand tying the game.

The first inning set the tone for the rest of the game.

The scoring resumed in the third inning. Lamar led off with an infield single. Simmons hit into a force out, ending his hitting streak. With two outs, Hale singled to left, his second hit of the game. Simmons scored the go-ahead run on Johnny Grabowski’s throwing error to third during Hale and Simmons’ double steal, the A’s regaining the lead at 4-3.

In the Yankees’ turn at bat, Gehrig singled and Meusel walked. Then, per the Philadelphia Inquirer, rookie shortstop Joe Boley’s “diving stop of Lazzeri’s grounder . . . stopped a river of runs from flowing home.”13

The fourth was the only inning in which no batter got on base.

In the fifth, the Athletics increased their lead to 7-3. Two Athletics reached base against Moore before Hale tripled again; Bill Lamar and Cobb scored.14 Cochrane’s single plated Hale.

In the bottom of the fifth, the Yankees struck back, knocking Rommel out of the game and deadlocking the score. Two walks with a single in between loaded the bases. Meusel tripled, the first of nine three-baggers he hit in ’27. Rube Walberg replaced Rommel on the mound. Lazzeri hit a grounder to first, and Meusel scored on Poole’s errant throw home.

The sixth opened with the game tied at seven, but the Athletics jumped ahead again. Walberg led off. Moore walked him, his third walk of the game. Huggins brought in Urban Shocker, one of the 17 pitchers allowed in 1920 to continue throwing the spitter after the ban. But the cold weather exerted its own ban. According to the New York Daily News, Shocker “discover[ed] that his saliva congealed on the ball as soon as it was applied.”15 Cobb’s sacrifice fly and Hale’s RBI single—and fourth RBI in the game16—put the Athletics up, 9-7.

In the Yankees’ eighth, they re-tied the game. Gazella singled. Grabowski hit a potential double-play ball to short that Boley failed to handle; it was scored a single.17 Ben Paschal’s pinch-hit single scored Gazella to make it 9-8.

Joe Pate replaced Walberg. Combs’ sacrifice fly plated Ray Morehart, who was running for Grabowski. To end the inning, Gehrig ripped a line drive at third baseman Hale “that would have broken up the game and probably Sammy’s head if he had missed it,” according to The Jersey Journal.18 Athletics 9, Yankees 9.

Hoyt, who had pitched a complete game two days earlier, replaced Shocker for the ninth. Cochrane singled, the only baserunner Hoyt allowed.

In the bottom of the ninth, Pate also allowed only one batter to reach base, with Gazella singling.

Wheat opened the 10th with a pinch single, his second of the series. Walt French ran for him. French advanced to second on Collins’ sacrifice, but neither Lamar nor Cobb could score him.

Then darkness descended on the stadium.

Lefty Grove–the losing pitcher on Opening Day–took the mound for the bottom of the 10th. He got both Julie Wera, pinch-hitting for Hoyt, and Koenig out on infield grounders. In between, he struck out Combs.

Grove’s “smoke ball in the dark was something no Yankee could see,” reported the Philadelphia Inquirer.19 “Each team had nine runs to its credit when the players and spectators alike became blind from the shadows that settled over the immense steel baseball plant.”20

Home plate umpire Bill McGowan halted play, a decision that fellow umpire George Albert Hildebrand said should have been made earlier. According to the Daily News, Hildebrand, “shivering on third, muttered disdainfully: “Humph! The lad McGowan is only an amateur. I have stopped World Series game [sic] when it was much lighter than this and much warmer.”21

The Philadelphia Inquirer aptly summed up the Athletics and Yankees’ performance: “For two hours and fifty minutes the two teams swapped punches and scored runs with cyclic regularity only to achieve the empty result of a drawn battle.”22

John B. Foster, a journalist for the Jersey Journal, wrote that speed, not “punch,” was a difference maker in the first three games. What the Athletics “needed most of all” —speed— they did not get: in that area, the Yankees “are several yards ahead of the Philadelphia Athletics.”23

The Yankees’ April 14 matchup with the Athletics was the fifth and last tie game they played in the 1920s. In it, the nine runs they scored were as many as in the previous four ties combined.

The Bronx Bombers finished the 1927 season with 110 wins, 19 more than the A’s and 19 more than they had won in 1926. The Yankees went on to sweep the Pirates in the 1927 World Series.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Gary Belleville and copy-edited by Mike Eisenbath.

Photo credit: Sammy Hale, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, Stathead.com, screwball.ai, FanGraphs.com, and Retrosheet.org for player, team, and season data. Research help was also received from Dan Birken, Bryan Walko, and Tom Thress.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYA/NYA192704140.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1927/B04140NYA1927.htm

Notes

1 Babe Ruth, “Babe Ruth Glad Yanks Didn’t All Slump at Same Time,” Pittsburgh Press, April 13, 1927: 34.

2 Marshall Hunt, “Yanks and A’s Quit in Deadlock,” New York Daily News, April 15, 1927: 46. The Yankees did not play their first home game under the lights until May 28, 1946. They were the 13th AL/NL team to do it.

3 Still, Shawkey recorded a career-high 5.4 strikeouts per nine innings.

4 Bob Shawkey might have been given the third game start against the Athletics because of his familiarity with their them. Through 1926, he made 46 starts against them. It also might have been a gesture of respect from manager Miller Huggins, honoring Shawkey’s long-standing contributions to the club.

5 James C. Isaminger, “Athletics Tied with New York in Tenth Innings as Darkness Ends Tilt,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 15, 1927: 25.

6 Simmons batted a career-high .392 in 1927—and finished second behind Harry Heilmann (.398) in the AL batting race.

7 Matt Ferenchick, “The Next-Most Surprising Seasons in Yankees History: 1927 Wilcy Moore,” Pinstripe Alley, February 27, 2023, https://www.pinstripealley.com/2023/2/27/23615301/yankees-history-1927-yankees-wilcy-moore-world-series-babe-ruth-lou-gehrig.

8 Like Cy Moore, Jim Poole celebrated his 30th birthday in his debut season.

9 Isaminger, “Athletics Tied with New York in Tenth Innings as Darkness Ends Tilt.”

10 Isaminger, “Athletics Tied with New York in Tenth Innings as Darkness Ends Tilt.”

11 Craig Muder, “Dreyfuss Led Spitballer Ban,” National Baseball Hall of Fame, https://baseballhall.org/discover/inside-pitch/dreyfuss-led-charge-to-ban-spitballers. Accessed December 2025.

12 The April 14, 1927, matchup between the Yankees and Athletics included eight future Hall of Famers in the starting lineups—Earle Combs, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Tony Lazzeri for the Yankees, and Eddie Collins, Ty Cobb, Al Simmons, and Mickey Cochrane for the Athletics. Zack Wheat, another Hall of Famer, appeared as a pinch hitter, bringing the total to nine Hall of Famers who played in the game.

13 Isaminger, “Athletics Tied with New York in Tenth Innings as Darkness Ends Tilt.”

14 It was the first time Hale hit two triples in a game. He repeated that feat once — in 1928. He hit 54 in his major-league career.

15 Marshall Hunt, “Yanks and A’s Quit in Deadlock.”

16 Bob Meusel also had four RBIs in the game.

17 Isaminger, “Athletics Tied with New York in Tenth Innings as Darkness Ends Tilt.”

18 “Yankees, Senators, and Pirates Lead Procession,” The Jersey Journal, April 15, 1927: 18.

19 Isaminger, “Athletics Tied with New York in Tenth Innings as Darkness Ends Tilt.”

20 Isaminger, “Athletics Tied with New York in Tenth Innings as Darkness Ends Tilt.”

21 Hunt, “Yanks and A’s Quit in Deadlock.” The World Series game that was stopped was on Game Two on October 5, 1922, at the Polo Grounds.

22 Isaminger, “Athletics Tied with New York in Tenth Innings as Darkness Ends Tilt.”

23 John B. Foster, “Athletics Considerably Annoyed by Defeats at Hands of New Yorkers,” The Jersey Journal, April 15, 1927: 18.