June 6, 1941: Controversial scoring decision denies Johnny Vander Meer his third career no-hitter

“It was the best game he ever pitched,” Cincinnati Reds catcher Ernie Lombardi said.1

Not the no-hitter against the Boston Braves on June 11, 1938, nor the no-hitter four days later against the Brooklyn Dodgers. The best game Johnny Vander Meer ever pitched, Lombardi believed, came in Philadelphia on June 6, 1941.2

Three years after his famed back-to-back no-hitters, the Dutch Master blanked the Phillies at Shibe Park while allowing just two baserunners: on a first-inning walk and an apparent second-inning error by shortstop Eddie Joost. After the game, a 7-0 Reds win, the Philadelphia fans rushed the field to congratulate the Cincinnati southpaw because they thought they had witnessed his third career no-hitter to tie the National and American League record.3

But because Shibe Park’s scoreboard did not display hit-or-error information, the fans – and players – didn’t know Danny Litwhiler’s “sharp grounder”4 to Joost had been ruled a hit. Vander Meer and the other Reds found out in the clubhouse.

In 1938 Vander Meer was The Sporting News’ Major League Player of the Year after his back-to-back no-hitters highlighted his 15-10, 3.12 ERA, 225⅓-inning season.

But the next two seasons were a struggle. Illnesses, injuries, ineffectiveness, and a demotion to the minors limited him to an 8-10 record and a 4.42 ERA in 177 major-league innings in 1939 and 1940 combined.

He returned with a strong September in 1940 – 3-1 with a 2.97 ERA in 39⅓ innings – and in the World Series threw three scoreless innings in the fifth game of the seven-game loss to the Detroit Tigers.

The 26-year-old lefty continued to look more like his former self through his first nine starts and one relief appearance of the 1941 season. He carried a 4-4 record, with a 3.22 ERA in 67 innings, as he prepared to face the Phillies. The game, originally scheduled for June 4, was played on June 6 following back-to-back rainouts postponing the Phillies’ third night game of the season.5

It was the second time that season that Vander Meer pitched at Shibe Park; exactly one month earlier, on May 6, he took a complete-game loss to the Phillies after giving up four runs on six hits and five walks in eight innings.

Opposing him on June 6 was 34-year-old Si Johnson, a Red from 1928 to 1936. Johnson, in five starts and five relief appearances, was 1-1 with a 4.20 ERA in 45 innings; his previous start, on May 31, had been his best of the year, a six-hit shutout of the Boston Braves for a 1-0 win.

Though it was just a week after Memorial Day,6 the Phillies were already well out of contention. They started the day with a 14-29 record, 17 games behind the eventual pennant-winning Brooklyn Dodgers and on their way to a fourth-straight last-place finish.7 The Reds, two-time defending National League champions, had won four out of their last six as they looked to reverse their fortunes after a 17-23 start to the season. At 11½ games out, they were closer to the Phillies in last place than the Dodgers in first.

Besides being last in the standings, the Phillies were also last in attendance. But a buzz came over the reported crowd of 7,044 that Friday night. With many believing Litwhiler’s groundball had been scored an error, the drama only intensified as Vander Meer retired the next 23 men in a row.

“Late in the game the crowd started to root for Vander Meer,” said Gabe Paul, then a secretary with the Reds. “Fans were positive he was on his way to a third no-hitter. So did the players on both sides.”8

Chuck Aleno, filling in for an injured and slumping Billy Werber,9 started the scoring by leading off the second inning with a home run. In the third, Vander Meer sparked a rally with a leadoff single. He then scored on a two-run base hit from Frank McCormick, and Lombardi tacked on a two-run double. Lombardi had another double in the fifth to drive in Aleno, and in the sixth inning Joost crossed the plate as the final run on an Ernie Koy single.

The game ended when Vander Meer struck out Stan Benjamin – Philadelphia’s only other baserunner in the game, on a leadoff walk in the first inning – and fans rushed onto the field to congratulate him on what they assumed was the third no-hitter of his career.

Vander Meer was in the clubhouse celebrating with his teammates when told the official scorer, pitcher-turned-sportswriter Stan Baumgartner,10 had “called it a hit at the time of the play and correctly declined to change his ruling later, in order to make it a no-hitter for Vander Meer,” The Sporting News reported.11

In an interview 28 years later, Vander Meer said Reds manager Bill McKechnie threw Baumgartner out of the clubhouse.12

Baumgartner, who wrote the game story for the Philadelphia Inquirer, described the play as “a sharp grounder between Aleno and Joost that the latter got his hands on at the last moment, but could not hold. The ball rolled two feet away, and when the shortstop retrieved it he made no attempt to throw out Litwhiler at first base.”13

Tom Swope in the Cincinnati Post called it “one of those hits which can be called either way and which, under any other circumstances, would have been scored as a safety.”14

Litwhiler, in his autobiography, described it this way: “I hit a ball sharply to the right of the shortstop, Eddie Joost. Eddie was an excellent fielder. He moved over to backhand the ball, and it went off his glove. I got a single.”15

Vander Meer’s was the third one-hitter at Shibe Park in 1941, and another soon followed.

“If baseball fans at Philadelphia don’t get a no-hit game there this season they are going to be disappointed,” the Associated Press reported16 after a fourth one-hitter was thrown just four days later: St. Louis Cardinals rookie Hank Gornicki over the Phillies on May 3, the Phils’ Tommy Hughes against the Chicago Cubs on June 3, Vander Meer’s against the Phillies on June 6, and then St. Louis’s Lon Warneke over the Phillies on June 10.17

The 12-strikeout, one-hit performance was the highlight of a resurgent season for Vander Meer; he went 16-13 with a 2.82 ERA, and his 202 strikeouts were his first of three straight seasons leading the league.

The Phillies bounced back from the near no-no by taking two of the next three games from the Pirates, but then cratered, losing 12 out of their next 13 games. They ended the season with a 43-111 record.

As for the Reds, they followed Vander Meer’s performance by winning seven of their next eight to climb above .500 for the first time since April 28; including their win on June 6, the Reds went 67-41 over the rest of the season to finish in third place, 12 games behind the 100-win Brooklyn Dodgers.

As the years went on, Vander Meer became increasingly bitter about the ruling. He told interviewers, including Associated Press columnist Jack Hand, about the no-hitter “they took away from me.”18

He also claimed several times that major-league teams began putting up hit-and-error information on scoreboards as a direct result of the confusion following his near no-hitter, though the scoreboard at Shibe Park did not begin displaying such information until 1943.19 

After Vander Meer died on October 6, 1997, his Associated Press obituary included a reference to the no-hitter that wasn’t: “Mr. Vander Meer claimed that an official scoring decision deprived him of a third no-hitter sometime later in Philadelphia. Hits and errors were not immediately announced in those days, and it was while he accepted congratulations for an apparent third no-hitter that he learned a bobbled ball in the fifth [sic] inning had been ruled a hit.”20

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Harrison Golden and copy-edited by Mike Eisenbath.

Photo credit: Johnny Vander Meer, 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/PHI/PHI194106060.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1941/B06060PHI1941.htm

Notes

1 James W. Johnson, “Johnny Vander Meer,” SABR Bio Project. Accessed December 2025. Johnson cited an International News Service article from April 30, 1941.

2 Lombardi caught all three games. By Bill James’s game score (96), this was the best nine-inning game of Vander Meer’s career. Indeed, Vander Meer’s back-to-back no-hitters on June 11, 1938, and June 15, 1938, rank tied for eighth (88 game score) and tied for 12th (86 game score). His highest game score was 115, on September 11, 1946; Vander Meer pitched the first 15 scoreless innings in a 0-0 19-inning tie. (That game was caught by Ray Mueller.) 

3 Vander Meer would have been the first pitcher to throw three no-hitters in the 20th century, and would have tied the major league record for most no-hitters then held by Cy Young and Larry Corcoran. Instead, those accolades went to Bob Feller, who had thrown his first no-hitter on April 16, 1940; his second would come on April 30, 1946, and his third on July 1, 1951. Sandy Koufax then broke the record with four no-hitters. As of the end of 2025, Nolan Ryan held the record with seven no-hitters.

4 Associated Press, “Vander Meer Trips Phils With One Hit,” the New York Times, June 7, 1941: 7.

5 “Too Wet for Local Sports,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 6, 1941: 30.

6 Initially known as Decoration Day, newspapers at the time referred to the holiday as Memorial Day, though the name was not officially changed until 1971. It was observed on May 30 until 1968, when the observance was changed to the last Monday in May. 

7 The Phillies also finished last in 1942; they were last or second-to-last every year between 1933 and 1945.

8 Harry Grayson, “Grayson’s Scoreboard,” Waterbury (Connecticut) Democrat, July 15, 1941: 15.

9 Joe Trimble, “Hot-Corner Hitters Burn Terrymen,” New York Daily News, June 8, 1941: 32. “At the beginning of the season, the Red infield looked intact, what with Billy Werber figuring to be the same old hustling pot of pepper at third. So Chuck was optioned to Indianapolis of the AA. But, when Werber wobbled at bat and then physically with a case of water on the knee, Aleno was recalled.” Aleno started 22 games in a row at third base between May 15 and June 8 before Werber, who was hitting .202/.276/.258 when he was benched, returned to the lineup on June 15. Werber reclaimed his duties as the primary third baseman and hit .249/.341/.310 in 379 plate appearances the rest of the way.

10 Until the 1980s, it was customary for a hometown sportswriter to serve as the official scorer.

11 “Reds Getting Heads Out Of Deep Water,” The Sporting News, June 12, 1941: 5. Reversing a scoring decision to award a no-hitter had come up 18 years earlier, on September 11, 1923; sportswriter Fred Lieb scored a first-inning infield chopper that went off the third baseman’s chest a hit, and it would be the only hit of the game allowed by Howard Ehmke. Players and fans urged Lieb to change his decision, but he refused; American League President Ban Johnson refused to overrule him. The incident was especially notable because, in his previous start, Ehmke had thrown a no-hitter. Had Lieb’s scoring decision been changed, it would have been Ehmke, not Vander Meer, to throw the first back-to-back no-hitters. But it wasn’t unprecedented for a post-game scoring change to result in a no-hitter: it happened in 1901, 1912, and 1917.

12 Stan Isaacs, “Double No-Hit Vandy Seaver’s Moon Man,” (New York) Newsday, July 25, 1969: 45.

13 Stan Baumgartner, “Feller, Vander Meer Blank A’s And Phillies,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 7, 1941: 19.

14 Tom Swope, “Walk And Scratch Hit Keep Vandy From Perfect Game,” Cincinnati Post, June 7, 1941: 10.

15 Litwhiler, Danny and Jim Sargent. Danny Litwhiler: Living the Baseball Dream. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006, 48-49. In an earlier passage, Litwhiler incorrectly recalled: “I came to bat in the first inning with two men out.” It was with one out in the second inning. Vander Meer, in several interviews in the 1960s, remembered it as happening in the fifth inning, an error that was repeated in his Associated Press obituary in 1997.

16 Judson Bailey (Associated Press), “Warneke Holds Phils To One Hit For 3-0 Win,” Mount Clemens (Michigan) Daily Monitor, June 11, 1941: 9. Baseball fans in Philadelphia were indeed disappointed, as the four one-hitters were as close as they would get to witnessing a no-hitter in 1941. The next no-hitter at Shibe Park came on September 9, 1945 (game two), when Dick Fowler of the Philadelphia Athletics beat the Browns, 1-0. Phillies fans had a longer wait to see one, and it was as the victim: Koufax threw the third of his four no-hitters there on June 4, 1964, after the park had been renamed Connie Mack Stadium. No Phillies pitcher ever threw a no-hitter at Shibe Park/Connie Mack Stadium. 

17 The three one-hitters against the Phillies in 1941 were par for the course as their offense ranked last in the National League in hits, as well as runs, doubles, walks, batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage.

18 Jack Hand (Associated Press), “Vander Meer Memories Vivid,” St. Cloud (Minnesota) Daily Times, June 14, 1963: 10.

19 Stan Baumgartner, “Cardinals Jolt Phillies, 6-3,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 16, 1943: 46. “From now on wherever there is a question as to whether a batted ball is a hit or an error at Phillies’ home games, the official ruling will be flashed on the scoreboard.” Hit-and-error scoreboard notifications were controversial at the time, with league officials, team owners, ball players, and sportswriters divided on the issue. Those opposed argued it encouraged gambling and demoralized players. A proposal to recommend scoring decisions be announced was voted on by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America on October 7, 1939, and failed “by a heavy margin,” according to Cleveland sportswriter Ed McAuley. (The Sporting News, October 19, 1939: 4.) A similar incident happened at Yankee Stadium in the second game of a doubleheader on September 2, 1942, with the only hit a first-inning grounder to second base that fans assumed had been scored an error. By the end of the 1940s, they had become the norm in all major league and many minor league ballparks.

20 The Associated Press, “Ex-Reds Pitcher Dead At 82,” Wilmington (Delaware) News-Journal, October 7, 1997: 22.