September 23, 1950: A’s score 12 runs in sixth inning to give Connie Mack one of his last wins

In the waning days of 87-year-old Connie Mack’s managerial tenure, his woebegone Philadelphia Athletics unleashed a powerful offensive outburst that briefly evoked the dynastic teams Mack had once built.

The Athletics exploded for a 12-run sixth inning against the Washington Nationals1 on September 23, 1950, en route to a 16-5 win. This torrent of offense included a temporary ticket to immortality for catcher Joe Astroth: His six RBIs in the inning tied what was at that time the post-1900 American and National League record.

Bucky Harris’s Nationals entered the nippy Saturday-night game2 in fifth place with a 63-80 record,3 27½ games behind the eventual World Series-champion New York Yankees. The Nationals were struggling in September with a 7-12 record, but had perked up of late, coming in with a modest three-game winning streak against the Chicago White Sox and St. Louis Browns.4

The Athletics occupied the AL cellar at 49-98, 43½ games behind. For them, Washington was the last stop in a long road trip that had begun in New York on September 4. Thus far, the Athletics had gone 4-13, including a seven-game losing streak at one point. The road trip included losses to the Nationals in two of three games on September 6-8. For the full season, though, Philadelphia went 13-9 against Washington—the only team against whom the Athletics mustered a winning record.5

On the mound for the Nationals was 29-year-old right-hander Julio Moreno. Nicknamed “the Cuban Bob Feller,” Moreno had a long and distinguished career as a player and manager in Cuba, Mexico, and Nicaragua.6 The start on September 23 was only his third big-league appearance. In his debut on September 8, he’d worked a complete game to beat the Athletics 10-4, nursing a shutout through seven innings before five Philadelphia hits and three Washington errors allowed the Athletics onto the scoreboard in the eighth and ninth.

The Athletics’ starter was 32-year-old righty Hank Wyse, who’d won 22 games with the 1945 National League-champion Chicago Cubs. Arm and back injuries had pushed him back to the minors in 1948 and 1949, and his comeback with the 1950 A’s had been uneven at best.7 He’d walked 86 hitters while striking out just 31 in 161⅔ innings. Wyse entered the day with an 8-14 record and a 5.85 ERA.8 Three of his wins had come against the Nationals, most recently on September 7, when he’d pitched 8⅔ innings before needing last-out relief help in a 4-2 win.

Both hurlers were pitching to backup catchers. Washington’s backstop was Hal Keller, playing his ninth big-league game of the season and the 12th of his career. The brother of the Yankees’ Charlie Keller appeared in just 25 games over three seasons with the Nationals. Philadelphia’s Astroth was in his fourth big-league season; his 38 games caught placed him third on the Athletics’ depth chart behind Mike Guerra (78 games) and Joe Tipton (59). He entered with a .299 average.

The Athletics wasted a two-out double by Ferris Fain in the top of the first, but the Nationals took better advantage of opportunities in the bottom half. Leadoff hitter Eddie Yost, who led the AL with 141 walks, drew a free pass. One out later, rookie Irv Noren hit his team-leading 13th home run of the season to center field. After another out, Bud Stewart’s double to left field and Cass Michaels’ single to right pushed the Nationals’ lead to 3-0.

The second through fourth innings were uneventful, as neither team moved a runner past first base. Perhaps the most notable event happened in the fourth, when Nats shortstop Sam Dente made a highlight play behind second base to throw out Fain on a grounder.9 The play ended up denying Fain a six-hit game, which would have tied an Athletics franchise record achieved six times before 1950 and, as of the end of the 2026 season, twice since then.10

In the top of the fifth, a walk to Eddie Joost and an infield single by Astroth, coupled with an error by Dente,11 put Philadelphia runners on second and third with none out. But they held on Wyse’s grounder back to Moreno, and the Nationals played Paul Lehner’s batted ball into an out at home as Joost tried to score.12 Elmer Valo’s groundout ended the inning. In the bottom half, the Nationals turned a hit batsman and a Noren single into a first-and-third situation with two outs before Mickey Vernon grounded out to second base.

Through five innings, Moreno had surrendered just three hits and two walks, giving no hint of what was to come in the sixth. Fain singled and Sam Chapman and Billy Hitchcock drew back-to-back walks, loading the bases. After Pete Suder’s pop out, Joost drew a run-scoring walk. Astroth followed with a grand slam into a section of temporary football seating in left field, giving Philadelphia a 5-3 lead.13 It was his first big-league homer, his only career slam and one of just 13 homers across his 10 seasons in the majors.

Wyse’s single chased Moreno in favor of Mickey Harris, a frequent worker out of the Nationals bullpen: His 53 appearances in 1950 led the AL.14 Lehner continued the onslaught with a two-run, first-pitch homer, his ninth of the season.15 Singles by Valo and Fain and another walk to Chapman reloaded the bases. Hitchcock grounded to Yost, who threw too late to get Chapman at second; everyone was safe, and a run scored.16 Another run-scoring walk to Suder made it 9-3, at which point manager Harris beckoned lefty Gene Bearden from the bullpen.17 Harris wound up being charged with six earned runs without getting an out, inflating his ERA from 4.19 to 4.78.

Bearden began by handing Joost the third bases-loaded walk of the inning. Astroth singled to left, scoring Suder and Hitchcock for Philadelphia’s 11th and 12th runs of the frame.18 The catcher’s six RBIs in an inning tied a post-1900 AL/NL record previously set by Fred Merkle of the New York Giants in 1911, Bob Johnson of the Athletics in 1937, and Tom McBride of the Boston Red Sox in 1945.19

Bearden finally closed out the Athletics by getting Wyse, the inning’s 16th batter, to ground into a 6-4-3 double play. If you didn’t look too closely, the rally was reminiscent of Game Four of the 1929 World Series, when Mack’s powerful A’s had stormed back from an eight-run deficit against the Cubs with a game-winning 10-run rally in the seventh inning.20

Philadelphia reloaded the bases in the seventh on two walks and a single but did not score. The Nationals put two more runs on the board in the bottom half on a single by Yost and, one out later, Noren’s 14th homer, again into the center-field bullpen.21

With righty Elmer Singleton mopping up for the Nationals, the Athletics enjoyed a last burst of offense in the ninth. Inning-opening singles by Lehner, Valo, and Fain produced a first run. Two outs later, Suder hit his seventh homer of the season, a three-run shot to left-center that brought the score to 16-5. Wyse allowed only a two-out single to Yost in the bottom half, wrapping up a complete-game win in 2 hours and 21 minutes in front of 4,636 fans. “Philadelphia had a lot of fun if nothing else,” one Washington sportswriter summarized.22

Astroth’s record, later tied by others, stood until April 23, 1999, when Fernando Tatís of the St. Louis Cardinals hit two grand slams in the third inning of a 12-5 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers.23 This remained the big-league record for RBIs in one inning as of the end of the 2026 season. An AL player has also topped Astroth: On October 4, 2009, Alex Rodríguez of the Yankees drove in seven runs in the sixth inning of a 10-2 win over the Tampa Bay Rays.24

Mack managed the season’s remaining six games. He won two, including his finale on October 1.25 His retirement as manager was announced on October 18; he remained team president until his family sold the Athletics in 1954 and the team moved to Kansas City.26 The Athletics’ fate was already visible in September 1950. While the A’s trudged to a last-place finish and drew just 309,805 fans, their co-tenants at Shibe Park, the Phillies, were streaking to a hard-fought National League championship and drawing more than 1.2 million.

One overshadowed participant in the Athletics-Nationals game later provided a connection that tied eras together. From 1971 to 1975, the Oakland Athletics won five straight AL West Division titles and three straight World Series, finally rediscovering the dominance they’d enjoyed under Mack’s leadership in Philadelphia. Their third-base coach for the first 3½ of those seasons was Irv Noren, who—if not for Astroth and the Athletics’ big inning—might have been the hero on September 23, 1950.27

Acknowledgments

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

Sources and photo credit

In addition to the sources credited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball Reference and Retrosheet for basic information about players, teams, and seasons:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/WS1/WS1195009230.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1950/B09230WS11950.htm

Image of Joe Astroth’s 1953 Bowman card #82 downloaded from the Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 The American League team that left Washington, D.C., for Minnesota after the 1960 season is often referred to as the Senators, but its formal name from 1905 to 1956 was the Nationals.

2 One Washington sportswriter quipped, “The football score of the A’s was entirely appropriate for the chilly weather.” Bob Addie, “Macks Score 12 in 6th to Route Nats, 16-5,” Washington Times Herald, September 24, 1950: Section 4:1.

3 And one tie.

4 The 1950 Nationals’ longest winning streak was five games, achieved in early May.

5 The 1950 Athletics posted a .500 record (11-11) against the Chicago White Sox and losing records against all other AL teams.

6 Rory Costello, “Julio Moreno,” SABR Biography Project, accessed September 2026, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/julio-moreno/.

7 Gregory H. Wolf, “Hank Wyse,” SABR Biography Project, accessed September 2026, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/hank-wyse/.

8 Wyse’s season-ending total of nine wins placed him second on the Athletics’ staff, trailing only Bob Hooper’s 15 wins. His total of 111 earned runs allowed was fifth-most in the AL.

9 Hank Littlehales, “A’s 12 in 6th Beats Nats, 16-5,” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 24, 1950: Sports:1.

10 Retrosheet, “Top Individual Performances of the Oakland Athletics,” accessed September 2026, https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/O/XF_OAK.htm. Of the eight six-hit games collected by Athletics batters as of the end of the 2026 season, four came in extra-inning games.

11 Available game accounts from Philadelphia and Washington newspapers do not specify whether Dente’s error was throwing or fielding, nor did Baseball Reference and Retrosheet’s game accounts as of September 2026. Dente led all AL fielders, across all positions, with 34 errors in 1950. (Interestingly, he did not lead AL shortstops: Johnny Lipon of Detroit made 33 errors at short, while Dente made 32. The two errors that pushed Dente into overall leadership were made at second base.)

12 Available game accounts do not specify whether the ball hit by Lehner was a bunt attempt or a chopped grounder. The play on it went from catcher to first base to catcher, so it seems likely that Lehner put down a bunt and Nationals first baseman Mickey Vernon came off the bag to throw the ball back home when he saw Joost breaking for the plate.

13 Griffith Stadium in 1950 was also the home of the Washington Redskins of the National Football League, as well as the football squads of Georgetown University and George Washington University. Addie, “Macks Score 12 in 6th to Route Nats, 16-5”; “1950 Football Schedules for Washington and Nearby Teams,” Washington Sunday Star, September 3, 1950: B3.

14 Harris also led the league with 43 games finished and 15 retroactively credited saves. Saves did not become an official major-league statistic until 1969, and the era of the star closer had not yet arrived in 1950.

15 Addie, “Macks Score 12 in 6th to Route Nats, 16-5.” Lehner’s nine homers in 1950 marked a personal best. He played parts of two more seasons and hit only one more homer.

16 “A’s 12-Run Inning,” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 24, 1950: Sports:4.

17 Like Wyse, Harris and Bearden had fairly recently starred on pennant-winning teams but had seen their effectiveness diminish. Harris went 17-9 for the 1946 Boston Red Sox team that won the AL pennant but lost the World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals. As a 27-year-old rookie, Bearden went 20-7 with an AL-best 2.43 ERA for the Indians team that won the 1948 Series.

18 The 12-run inning was not a franchise record, as the Athletics had previously scored 13 runs in the eighth inning of a game against the Cleveland Indians on June 15, 1925. Philadelphia won that game 17-15.

19 Ed Cartwright of the 1890 St. Louis Browns of the American Association had driven in seven runs in an inning. Littlehales, “A’s 12 in 6th Beats Nats, 16-5”; Burton Hawkins, “Athletics Score 12 Runs in 6th, Beat Nats, 16-5,” Washington Sunday Star, September 24, 1950: B1.

20 Three starters from the 1929 team—Jimmy Dykes, Mickey Cochrane, and Bing Miller—were members of the 1950 Athletics’ coaching staff and presumably were present for the September 23 game.

21 Hawkins, “Athletics Score 12 Runs in 6th, Beat Nats, 16-5.”

22 Addie, “Macks Score 12 in 6th to Route Nats, 16-5.”

23 Rick Hummel, “Tatis Hits Two Grand Slams in Third,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 24, 1999: 14OT.

24 Mark Feinsand, “A-Rod A-Stounds,” New York Daily News, October 5, 2009: 53.

25 Numerous sources, including Mack’s SABR Biography Project article, have reported that Mack had diminished mental capacities in his last years, and his coaches often made managerial decisions on his behalf.

26 Art Morrow, “Mack Quits as Manager, Names Dykes to Post,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 19, 1950: 1; Doug Skipper, “Connie Mack,” SABR Biography Project, accessed September 2026, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/connie-mack/.

27 Noren, who coached under manager Dick Williams in Oakland from 1971-73, was one of two holdover Athletics coaches fired by Williams’ replacement, Al Dark, on July 9, 1974. Bullpen coach Vern Hoscheit was the other. Ron Bergman, “New A’s Fireworks as Coaches Ousted,” Oakland Tribune, July 10, 1974: 35.