October 7, 1927: Herb Pennock’s pitching shines, Yankees bats batter Pittsburgh in Game 3

The 8-1 final score of Game Three of the 1927 World Series shows how dominant the New York Yankees offense could be during the pinnacle of their “Murderers’ Row” era. Yet the run production was only one facet of the Yankees’ near destruction of the Pittsburgh Pirates’ championship hopes. The major focus for most of the next day’s sports headlines was on the sparkling pitching performance of New York southpaw Herb Pennock.

Following a regular season where they steamrolled through the American League schedule with 110 wins, the Yankees won the first two games of the Fall Classic at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field. They held on for a close victory in Game One, then they wore down pitcher Vic Aldridge in Game Two.

For Game Three on October 7, Pirates manager Donie Bush, who guided his team through a nail-biter of a pennant race, chose righty Lee Meadows as his starting pitcher. The bespectacled hurler was Pittsburgh’s workhorse in 1927, compiling a 19-10 record while leading the team with 25 complete games and 299⅓ innings pitched.

Yankees skipper Miller Huggins countered with the 15-year veteran Pennock. He was one of baseball’s most dominant left-handed pitchers,1 and had an excellent postseason résumé to boot. He had compiled a 4-0 record, including three complete games, in the team’s World Series appearances in 1923 and 1926. Initially, a knee injury sustained during batting practice prior to Game One caused some doubt that Pennock would be able to pitch at all during the Series.2 As Game Three wore on, he proved more than capable.

A sun-kissed Yankee Stadium greeted the teams for the third game.3 Following the pregame festivities, the Pirates went to bat first. A groundout and a couple of flyball outs were all they could muster against Pennock in the opening frame.

The Yankees offense produced immediately. A pair of groundball singles by Earle Combs and Mark Koenig set the table for New York’s most dangerous weapons, Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Compared to his gaudy 60-home-run campaign during the regular season, Ruth’s World Series had been relatively quiet. While he managed three singles in Game One, the only time he reached base in Game Two was via a walk.

This time up, with runners on base, he popped out to shallow left field. Gehrig followed and smacked a ball deep into the left-field gap toward Clyde Barnhart. Barnhart handled the outfield duties previously held by Kiki Cuyler, who had been mysteriously benched for much of the latter part of the 1927 season. While Barnhart handled the position admirably as a substitute, he was not nearly as quick as Cuyler, and Gehrig’s drive went past him.4 Both baserunners scored. Gehrig hustled around third close behind,5 intent on scoring an inside-the-park home run, but was thrown out at the plate.

Entering the second inning with a 2-0 lead, Pennock continued to frustrate the Pirates. He collected only a single strikeout throughout the game, but most of the contact Pittsburgh batters managed went quickly into a Yankees glove. Over the next three innings, the closest the Pirates bats came to making a mark against Pennock’s pitching was a sharp lineout by Paul Waner that third baseman Joe Dugan expertly handled.6

Likewise, after the rocky first inning, Pittsburgh’s Meadows settled in. A spotless second and third innings kept the score close. With one out in the fourth inning, a walk to Gehrig followed by third baseman Pie Traynor’s throwing error on a Bob Meusel grounder placed two runners in scoring position. This brought the Yankees tantalizingly close to adding to their lead, but Tony Lazzeri struck out and Dugan grounded out.

Pennock maintained perfection. In the fifth inning, Glenn Wright, Traynor, and Barnhart were set down in order. The Yankees offense managed no better against Meadows, with an infield popout, a strikeout, and a failed bunt attempt outlining their half of the inning.

In the sixth, Pittsburgh slugger Joe Harris grounded out to Pennock. Flyouts by Johnny Gooch and Meadows followed. In the bottom of the sixth, Meadows surrendered a double to Gehrig, but the Yankees couldn’t add to their lead. In the seventh, Pennock coaxed three groundouts, including another fielding gem by Dugan, this time on a bunt attempt by Hal Rhyne.7 It remained a mere 2-0 lead when the home team came to bat in the seventh.

This was the moment that the Yankees broke the game wide open, due in large part to Pirates fielding mistakes and Babe Ruth’s bat.

First up, Lazzeri cracked a base hit to short center field. Dugan attempted to sacrifice, but Meadows’ throw to nab Lazzeri at second was slow,8 and both runners reached safely. Cedric Durst batted for Johnny Grabowski, and his groundout advanced the runners into scoring position.

The next batter, Pennock, swatted a ball toward second baseman Rhyne, whose throw to nab the lead runner at home reached catcher Gooch on the wrong side of the plate,9 and Lazzeri slid in safely. Combs fought to a full count and batted a single past second, which scored Dugan and advanced Pennock to third.

Koenig doubled down the right-field line, scoring Pennock and moving Combs to third. The Yankees were up, 5-0, and Bush decided it was time to remove his besieged starter.10

Mike Cvengros came in to relieve Meadows, and the first task was a doozy; get Babe Ruth out. With two runners in scoring position, Cvengros threw a couple of outside pitches that were called balls. His next two pitches slid into the strike zone past Ruth. Emboldened by the opportunity for a strikeout, Cvengros threw, per the New York Times, a “low curve almost through the heart of the plate.”11 It was the exact pitch that the “Sultan of Swat” was waiting for. Ruth’s bat made contact with the ball, sending it quickly to a destination in the right-field bleachers. A “joyous howl”12 marked the celebration in the stands, and the Yankees were ahead, 8-0.

Cvengros closed out the Pirates’ disastrous seventh inning when he set down Gehrig and Meusel with strikeouts.

Heading into the eighth, Pennock was given a new batterymate when Benny Bengough was sent in as the catching replacement for the pinch-hitting Durst. The Pirates’ first batter, shortstop Wright, worked the count to 3-and-1, then hit a grounder to deep short. Koenig made a sliding stop and sent the ball to first base in time for the out.13 Pennock had faced 22 batters and set all of them down.

With the second batter in the eighth, the Pirates finally notched the elusive base hit. Traynor slid a single to left field between Koenig and Dugan. Immediately after the breakup of Pennock’s perfect game attempt, Barnhart ripped a double to right center,14 which scored Traynor and broke up the shutout. That was the extent of the damage for the inning, as Pennock coaxed groundouts from Harris and pinch-hitter Roy Spencer.

Up by the score of 8-1, the Yankees managed only a groundball single up the middle and three groundouts in the eighth inning. With one out in the top of the ninth, Pennock surrendered a Lloyd Waner single, but after Combs handled Rhyne’s flyball to center field,  Paul Waner hit a pop fly to Lazzeri, and the game was over.

The biggest names in the Murderers’ Row Yankees offense produced in Game Three, with Gehrig’s two-run triple and Ruth’s three-run home run. But the story of the day was Pennock, who made much of the offense unnecessary. “I had good control,” Pennock said, “the ball just went where I wanted it. I had good luck, too.”15 He gave a lot of credit to the New York defense that supported him.16

Some notable spectators were more effusive of Pennock’s efforts. Wilbert Robinson claimed it the “greatest piece of hurling (Robinson) ever saw in a World’s Series.”17 Sportswriter Grantland Rice said it was “as fine an exhibition of pitching as the human eye would care to see.”18 Pittsburgh reporter Edward Balinger described it as a “momentous performance,” pitched in an “absolutely perfect style.”19

Most importantly, the showcase that Pennock and the Yankees put on in Game Three placed them a single victory away from another World Series championship.

Acknowledgements

This article was fact-checked by Joseph Wancho and copy-edited by Keith Thursby.

Special thanks to the reviews of SABR members John Fredland and Kurt Blumenau.

Photo credit: Herb Pennock, 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/NYA/NYA192710070.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1927/B10070NYA1927.htm

Notes

1 Billy Evans, “Herb Pennock, Frailest Pitcher in American League, Proves to Be Its Most Effective Southpaw,” Salisbury (Maryland) Evening Post, December 16, 1925: 3.

2 Frank Getty, “Herb Pennock Hurt in Batting Practice; May Be Out of Series,” Brooklyn Daily Times, October 4, 1927: 1.

3 Brian Bell, “Yankees Out Two Hours For Extra Batting Practice,” Butte (Montana) Daily Post, October 7, 1927: 1.

4 Thomas Holmes, “Ruth and Mates Fairly Overpowered Pirates as Pennock Holds ‘Em Safe,” Brooklyn Eagle, October 8, 1927: 4.

5 A Bell system telephotograph sent to newspapers around the country showed that Gehrig rounded third while Koenig was about halfway down the basepath to home. For reference, please see image on the first page of the San Francisco Examiner sports section, October 8, 1927.

6 Grantland Rice, “Yanks Rose to Supreme Brilliancy,” Pittsburgh Press, October 8, 1927: 9.

7 John B. Foster, “Herb Pennock Pitched Best Game in World Series History in Some Respects, Says Foster,” Dayton Daily News, October 8, 1927: O-10.

8 Yanks Rout Pirates, 8

9 James R. Harrison, “Yanks Rout Pirates, Ruth Hitting Homer; Pennock Invincible,” New York Times, October 8, 1927, 8

10 Richard Vidmer, “Pennock, The Master, Has Pirates Helpless,” New York Times, October 8, 1927, 8

11 Harrison, “Yanks Rout Pirates.”

12 Harrison, “Yanks Rout Pirates.”

13 “Story of the Game Told Play by Play,” New York Times, October 8, 1927, 8.

14 Edward F. Balinger, “Yankee Southpaw Complete Master All During Battle,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 8, 1927, 14.

15 Edward J. Neil, “Meadows Marvelous but Unlucky, Declares Bush,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 8, 1927, 14.

16 Herb Pennock, “Pennock Pleased with Performance,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 8, 1927, 15.

17 Wilbert Robinson, “Yanks Are Superb, Declares Robinson,” New York Times, October 8, 1927, 9.

18 Rice, “Yanks Rose to Supreme Brilliancy.”

19 Balinger, “Yankee Southpaw Complete Master All During Battle.”