May 31, 1988: Yankees’ Neil Allen throws a shutout — in relief

“No pitcher shall be credited with pitching a shutout unless he pitches the complete game, or unless he enters the game with none out before the opposing team has scored in the first inning, puts out the side without a run scoring and pitches the rest of the game without allowing a run.” — Rule 9.18, Official Baseball Rules (2025 edition)1

The most famous instance of a shutout being awarded to a pitcher who didn’t throw a complete game was on June 23, 1917, when Babe Ruth of the Boston Red Sox was ejected after walking the first Washington Nationals batter. Ernie Shore replaced Ruth, the runner was thrown out stealing, and Shore then retired the next 26 men in a row for what was, until 1991, considered a perfect game. It is now recorded as a no-hitter… and a shutout, but not a complete game, for Shore.2

As of the 2025 season, the most recent application of the rule was on May 31, 1988. In a matchup between division-leading foes, the 32-16 New York Yankees were facing the 35-14 Oakland Athletics at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, the middle game of a three-game series. The Tuesday night game drew 28,147 fans to see 27-year-old Oakland righty Steve Ontiveros face 22-year-old New York lefty Al Leiter.

Leiter, a September call-up in 1987, had opened the ’88 season by winning his first three outings, then went winless with a 5.52 ERA in his next four starts. He was coming off a seven-inning, one-run, one-hit, six-walk, eight-strikeout win over the California Angels on May 24.

The 14-inning series opener on May 30—won by the A’s, 3-2—and injuries to several New York pitchers3 meant Leiter was expected to go deep into the game. Neil Allen, the former New York Mets closer who had been turned into a starter by the Chicago White Sox and back into a reliever by the Yankees,4 was told to be prepared to pitch multiple innings of relief against an Oakland lineup with the majors’ leading hitter in Carney Lansford, AL MVP-bound José Canseco, reigning home run king Mark McGwire, and resurgent Dave Henderson.

Allen, who had opened the season on the disabled list,5 had been activated three weeks earlier and had made just four appearances; he allowed four runs on nine hits (including two home runs) and four walks with six strikeouts in those 14⅔ innings. One of those outings had come 11 days earlier against these same Oakland A’s, but at Yankee Stadium; in four innings of relief work, he gave up two runs on four hits and three walks, as well as allowed an inherited runner to score.

“I told (Leiter), ‘Kid, it’s just you and me tonight, you’d better go nine because I can screw things up in a hurry,’” Allen said after the game.6

The 13th start of Leiter’s career proved to be an unlucky one as—after Ontiveros retired the Yankees in order in the top of the first—his first pitch in the bottom of the inning was promptly returned from whence it came, a rocket line drive up the middle off the bat of .399-hitting Lansford.

“If Leiter’s pitch traveled 85 mph, Lansford’s return was at 185 mph,” columnist John Shea wrote with some hyperbole.7

The ball hit Leiter on the left forearm,8 then bounced away and rolled down the left side of the mound. Leiter recovered the ball but threw wildly to first; it skipped past first baseman Gary Ward and rolled into the on-field bullpen. (The Yankees’ Gold Glove-winning regular first baseman, Don Mattingly, had been placed on the disabled list four days earlier with a strained muscle in his right rib cage.9) Heading for second, Lansford realized he had missed first; he immediately returned to it, then took second as Ward retrieved the ball and threw it back in.

It was scored a single and an error; Frank Blackman of the San Francisco Examiner said the play “could just as well have been ruled a two-base error.”10 By calling it a hit, Lansford’s hit streak reached 17 games.11

Leiter immediately was removed from the game. “I thought he broke my frigging arm,” he later told reporters. “First pitch of the game.” (X-rays revealed it was just a bruise,12 and Leiter was back on the mound two weeks later.)

Allen replaced him, with Lansford on second and no one out. Lansford was stranded as Allen retired Stan Javier, Canseco, and McGwire in order.

Ontiveros had shut out the Baltimore Orioles for seven innings in his previous start, but Mike Pagliarulo hit a solo home run to give the Yankees the lead in the second. The New York third baseman added an RBI single in the top of the sixth, followed by Dave Winfield’s two-run double. Winfield knocked in another run—his major-league leading 48th RBI of the season13—with a two-out single in the eighth off Todd Burns, who was making his major league debut.14

Allen, meanwhile, didn’t allow another baserunner—retiring 19 in a row—until Canseco’s high hopper up the middle bounced between shortstop Rafael Santana and second baseman Bob Meacham with one out in the top of the seventh inning.

“At the time, I didn’t think nothing of the hit. I gave up a bunch of ‘em in my career,” Allen said.15

Canseco didn’t advance any farther, as Allen struck out McGwire and Henderson.

Allen allowed two more singles, a two-out bloop to left-center by former Yankee Ron Hassey in the eighth inning and a two-out liner to left by Canseco in the ninth. Neither batter advanced beyond first base. McGwire flied out to former Athletic Claudell Washington in center field to complete the shutout.

Allen had faced 30 batters and thrown 111 pitches. “They told me I was the long relief man,” he said after the game. “They didn’t tell me I’d have to start the game, too.”16

Leiter, after his one-pitch performance: “The evening wasn’t a total loss: me and Neil had a combined shutout.”17

Leiter wouldn’t get credited with a shutout until 1993, but this was the sixth, and final, shutout of Allen’s career. The first had come with the Mets in 1983, followed by two (in back-to-back starts) with the Cardinals that same season. He again had shutouts in successive starts while with the White Sox in 1986.

After the game, Allen was asked about Shore and said he’d never heard of him. A reporter told him the story about Ruth getting tossed after arguing with an umpire, and Allen jokingly wished Canseco—who argued vehemently in the fourth inning with home plate umpire Dale Scott after being called out on strikes for the second time—had been ejected from this one before singling in his final two at-bats.18

The loss proved to be just a blip for the A’s, who cruised to a 104-58 record and their first American League pennant since winning three in a row from 1972-1974.

The Yankees, however, lost 12 out of their next 20 games to fall out of first place. Billy Martin’s fifth and final stint as Yankees manager ended on June 23, when he was fired after three consecutive walk-off losses in Detroit to the Tigers. The Yankees went 45-48 the rest of the way under manager Lou Piniella to finish fifth in the AL East Division at 85-76.

Ontiveros made just two more starts before going on the disabled list with elbow tendinitis; he returned for one 3⅓-inning start on August 2, then was shut down for the rest of the season.

Allen’s herculean effort earned him a spot in the rotation, but after two starts—two losses, with seven runs allowed (six earned) on 16 hits and four walks in 10⅓ innings—he returned to the bullpen. Over the rest of the year, he went 3-1 with a 4.32 ERA in 83⅓ innings.

After the season, the Yankees released Allen and he signed a minor-league contract with the Cleveland Indians. He spent most of the season in Triple A, with three appearances in the majors—and a month-long stay for alcohol rehabilitation. Released at the end of the season, he signed a minor-league contract with the Cincinnati Reds and pitched in 12 games with the Nashville Sounds before retiring as a player. He later was a minor league pitching coach for several organizations, as well as serving as a bullpen coach for the Yankees in 2005 and as a pitching coach for the Minnesota Twins from 2015-2017.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Mike Eisenbath.

Photo credit: Neil Allen, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for pertinent information, including the box score and play-by-play.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/OAK/OAK198805310.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1988/B05310OAK1988.htm

Notes

1 Official Baseball Rules, 2025 edition, as retrieved November 3, 2025, from https://mktg.mlbstatic.com/mlb/official-information/2025-official-baseball-rules.pdf. Newspaper accounts at the time, including an Associated Press story published June 2, 1988, on page 36 in the Corpus Christi (Texas) Caller-Times (“Shutout, But No CG”), cited the rule as 10.19 (f): “No pitcher shall be credited with pitching a shutout unless he pitches the complete game, or unless he enters the game with none out before the opposing team has scored in the first inning, puts out the side without a run scoring and pitches all the rest of the game.” Under the 2025 edition, it is rule 9.18, “Shutouts.”

2 “Maris Has Home Run Record to Himself, but 50 Pitchers Lose Their No-Hitters,” Los Angeles Times, September 5, 1991: C4.

3 Bill Madden, “Leiter Hurt but Allen 3-Hits A’s,” New York Daily News, June 1, 1988: 97. “The Yankees, already strapped for relief pitching after the [sic] Monday night’s 14-inning marathon used up Cecilio Guante, Dave Righetti and Steve Shields, were forced to bring on Allen as their new starter.” Several Yankees pitchers were dealing with injuries at the time, with Candelaria and Righetti reporting elbow pain, Tim Stoddard a sore knee, and Rick Rhoden a bad back; Ron Guidry, who had been on the disabled list since the start of the season after offseason shoulder surgery, had been activated from the disabled list a week prior, but returned to it the day after this game without making an appearance. 

4 Allen—traded by the Mets to the Cardinals with Rick Ownbey for Keith Hernandez on June 15, 1983—had been released by the White Sox on August 29, 1987, and signed as a free agent with the Yankees on September 4, 1987. “Yankees pitcher Neil Allen, who opened the season on the disabled list, suffered the largest [pay] cut of any 1987 major league player. His salary last year was $1.26 million. This year, it’s $250,000.” Murray Chass, “Millionaires Club Expands to 72,” The Sporting News, April 25, 1988: 13. Allen had last started on September 18, 1987, going five innings in a 6-3 loss to the Blue Jays at Yankee Stadium.

5 “Comeback Over Fast,” Associated Press story as published in the Toronto Globe and Mail, May 11, 1988: 19. Allen went on the 21-day disabled list on March 31 with a rib cage injury and was activated May 10 after two rehab starts in Triple A. Chris Chambliss, attempting a comeback at age 39 after sitting out the 1987 season, was released after just one plate appearance to make room for Allen.

6 “Notebook: A.L. East: Yankees,” The Sporting News, June 13, 1988: 19.

7 John Shea, “Allen Relief Job Turns Complete,” Gannett News Service, Bridgewater (New Jersey) Courier-News, June 1, 1988: 27.

8 Bill Pennington, “Allen Gives Yanks A Gem,” Hackensack (New Jersey) Record, June 1, 1988: 37. “The liner glanced off Leiter’s left arm and into his left thigh… Lansford ended up at second base. Leiter ended up in Oakland’s Merritt Hospital for precautionary X-rays.” The X-rays determined a bone bruise but not a break.

9 Michael Martinez, “Mattingly Sidelined At Least 2 Weeks,” New York Times, May 29, 1988: 3.

10 Frank Blackman, “Yank’s 9-Inning Relief: Allen’s A’s-taming Close to Perfection,” San Francisco Examiner, June 1, 1988: 31. “After some cogitation, the official scorer decided Lansford had reached safely on a hit, then moved to second on an error.”

11 Lansford’s hitting streak ended the following day as he went 0-for-2 with two walks. An ugly second half (37-for-200, .185) left him at .279 for the season. It was, to date, the third-longest hitting streak of Lansford’s career, following a 24-game streak in 1984 and a 19-game streak in 1983. A year after his 17-game streak, he had another 19-game streak between August 3 and August 23.

12 Mike Lupica, “A Rare Yankee, One with a Future,” New York Daily News, July 7, 1988: 70.

13 Winfield ended the day hitting .365/.444/.635 with 48 RBIs but faded over the second half to fall to .322/.398/.530 with 107 RBIs. He finished fourth in the AL MVP voting behind Canseco, Mike Greenwell, and Kirby Puckett.

14 Frank Blackman, “Notebook,” San Francisco Examiner, June 1, 1988: 34. Having thrown 106 pitches, Ontiveros was removed with one out in the eighth inning after developing tightness in his pitching arm.

15 Shea.

16 Ben Walker, “Allen Earns New Start with Yankees,” Associated Press, Coshocton (Ohio) Tribune, June 1, 1988: 8. Several game stories, including Blackman in his “Notebook,” credited Allen with “a complete-game shutout.” The “obscure” rule that gave him a shutout but not a complete game was explained the following day in the Associated Press story cited above, “Shutout, But No CG.”

17 Lupica.

18 Blackman, “Yank’s 9-Inning Relief: Allen’s A’s-taming Close to Perfection.” Allen told reporters: “I tell you, I wish they would have thrown Jose Canseco out, because they made him mad and he got two singles off me. I don’t want to be around when he gets mad again. That guy can hit. I want to keep him happy.” After the fourth inning punchout, Canseco had to be pulled away by A’s manager Tony La Russa, but not before throwing his helmet and gesturing at the batter’s box with his bat to illustrate where he thought the pitches had been. Crew chief Richie Garcia fined Canseco $100 for his outburst.