1876 St. Louis Brown Stockings. 1 – Joe Blong, 2 – George Bradley, 3 – Herman Dehlman, 4 – Joe Battin, 5 – John Clapp, 6 – Tim McGinley, 7 – Lipman Pike, 8 – Mike McGeary, 9 – Dickey Pearce, 10 – Denny Mack, 11 – Ned Cuthbert. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)

Since 1876 marked the US Centennial, it was only fitting that a man given the name of George Washington should play a starring role in that summer’s events.

This George Washington—his surname was Bradley—wasn’t a politician but a baseball pitcher. On July 15, 1876, less than two weeks after the Centennial observance took place in Philadelphia and less than three weeks after George Armstrong Custer met his doom at Little Bighorn, Bradley became the first pitcher in National League history to throw a no-hit game.

Granted, it was a young National League history at that point. Only the previous February, Chicago businessman William A. Hulbert had gathered together a group to form what would become the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs.

Bradley pitched for the St. Louis Brown Stockings, and he accomplished his pitching feat against the Hartford Dark Blues at Grand Avenue Park in St. Louis. In two previous meetings that week— one of them coming on his 24th birthday—Bradley had already shut out the Hartfords, both times besting the man who was his pitching opponent again on the 15th, Tommy Bond. Described as a perpetually happy fellow, Bradley was rarely called George or George Washington by those who knew him, but more commonly “Grin.” By whatever name, Bradley entered the game in the midst of an amazing streak that would extend to 37 consecutive shutout innings.

His teammates gave Bradley the only run he would need in the top of the first inning. With one out, catcher John Clapp drove a clean single to center, reached third on a wild throw by Bond, and scored on Mike McGeary’s fly ball.

Bradley’s duties were made more challenging by his teammates’ lack of fielding support. The Brown Stockings committed eight errors that day, the first coming in the opening inning when shortstop Dickey Pearce threw badly to first on a groundball by Jack Burdock. A passed ball sent Burdock to second, but he died at third base.

The Browns added another run in the second. Right fielder Joe Blong’s one-out single got things going, and he took second on left fielder Tom York’s slow fielding. Bradley hit a grounder that should have been played by first baseman Everett Mills, but Mills let the ball slip between his legs, allowing Blong to trot home.

Over the next 7½ innings, Bradley and Bond matched each other goose egg for goose egg, Bradley overcoming sloppy fielding to hold his two-run edge. St. Louis threatened twice. In the third John Clapp doubled to left with one out. He died at second as Mike McGeary popped up to Jack Burdock at second and Lip Pike sent a liner to York in left for the third out. In the sixth Pike beat out a grounder to Burdock at second. He stole second, but got no farther as Joe Battin went down on strikes for the third out.

Going into the eighth inning, the Browns still led 2–0 and Bradley’s consecutive scoreless innings streak had reached 25. Despite the no-hitter being intact, a lapse of control presented Hartford with a golden opportunity to score in its half of the eighth. The frame started out with Tom York reaching first on a base on balls. He was sacrificed to second, and made it to third on a wild pitch. There he remained as catcher Bill Harbridge grounded to McGeary at short, who threw it to Dutch Dehlman at first. Inning over. Threat over. Golden opportunity wasted for the Hartfords.

The St. Louises went quietly in their half of the ninth, leaving Hartford one final opportunity. Jack Remsen grounded to Dickey Pearce at short for the first out, but Battin muffed Burdock’s groundball for the Brown Stockings’ eighth error of the game. Dick Higham was the next man up for the Hartfords and he hit a shot to Battin at third, who caught it and doubled Burdock off first to end the game. Grin Bradley now had his no-hitter and his place in baseball history.

For a while, it looked as though Bradley was going to secure yet another place in baseball history in his next start, three days later against Cincinnati, also at Grand Avenue Park. He was perfect through seven innings and took another no-hitter into the ninth.1 Center fielder   Charley “Baby” Jones broke up that opportunity with a double. Jones scored on a hit by catcher Amos Booth, and although the Brown Stockings won 5–1, Bradley’s scoreless innings streak ended at 37. That mark stood until Christy Mathewson tossed 39 straight scoreless innings for the New York Giants in 1901.2

Pitching virtually every game, as was the custom of the time, Bradley won 45 games that season for the Brown Stockings, who finished second in the new league, six games behind the champions from Chicago. His 1.23 earned-run average was the lowest in the league, although the profusion of fielding errors made behind him (and behind all pitchers in those days) gave that statistic less importance than it has today.

Bradley never approached the same performance levels after 1876. Signing with Chicago in 1877, he started 44 games, but won just 18 and saw his ERA climb to 3.31, the highest among pitchers with at least 20 starts. He remained in the big leagues for six more seasons, but usually as a sort of a spare part, winning 75 games but losing 83. After one season with Philadelphia in the American Association, he closed his big-league career pitching for Cincinnati in the 1884 Union Association and worked in the minors until 1890. He became a Philadelphia police officer after his baseball career ended and was retired on a pension when he died in Philadelphia on October 2, 1931.

But if his career as a whole was undistinguished, Bradley certainly distinguished himself by heading a list that is now well into the 200s – the roster of major-league pitchers who have thrown a no-hitter. It was exactly the sort of accomplishment the game might have expected from somebody named George Washington in the summer of ’76.

This essay was originally published in “Inventing Baseball: The 100 Greatest Games of the 19th Century” (2013), edited by Bill Felber. It also appeared in SABR’s “No-Hitters” (2017), edited by Bill Nowlin.

Notes

The National League game was played on Saturday, June 12, 1880, at the Worcester (Massachusetts) Agricultural Fairgrounds, also known as Driving Park, and was the second game of a three-game series. The Ohio team came to town in third place, just a half-game behind the upstart Worcesters. Both teams were far behind runaway leader Chicago. In the first game of the series, on Thursday the 10th, Richmond and Worcester had shut out Cleveland, 5–0, the clubs swapping positions in the standings.

A 23-year-old left-hander in his first full season, Lee Richmond was a busy man both on and off the field that week. In fact, his activities prior to his perfect game made the outcome all the more unlikely. Besides being the Worcesters’ front-line pitcher, he was wrapping up his college studies and was scheduled to graduate from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, 40 miles down the road from Worcester, on June 16. Richmond skipped Worcester’s Friday exhibition game with Yale University, returning instead to Providence for Brown’s graduation festivities. His classmate, Walter Angell, recorded Richmond’s activities while in Providence in a scrapbook:

I met them (Thursday night) at the depot … and rode out to the Messer St. ball grounds in a carriage. …We returned at midnight. Next day was Class Day. Richmond went to the Class Supper at Music Hall. He was up all night. He took part in the usual ball game about 4:50 Saturday morning; went to bed about 6:30; took the train for Worcester at 11:30. …4

On Saturday Richmond and Cleveland’s Jim McCormick were matched in what became a classic duel. McCormick was outstanding, giving up three hits and one unearned run while striking out seven and walking one. Richmond, batting second in the order, got the first hit, in the fourth but was erased on a double play. Shortstop Art Irwin led off the fifth with a single. Catcher Charlie Bennett followed with a walk. Then Art Whitney hit a comebacker to McCormick, who threw to second only to see second baseman Fred Dunlap drop the ball. Alertly, Irwin rounded third and kept right on running. Dunlap recovered but threw home wildly for his second error on the play, allowing Irwin to score. McCormick allowed only one more baserunner. Dunlap was an unlikely source for decisive defensive miscues; he was considered a fine fielder. “I used to think Dunlap was the greatest defensive second baseman in the world,” Richmond later said of him.5

As good as McCormick was, Richmond was even better. Of the 27 batters Richmond faced, only two hit fair balls beyond the infield and one of these resulted in a gem-saving play. Leading off the fifth inning, Cleveland first baseman Bill Phillips slapped a Richmond left-handed delivery into right field for an apparent base hit. Lon Knight, the Worcester right fielder and team captain, fielded the sharply hit ball and fired to first in time to retire Phillips.

The game was delayed by rain for about five minutes with one out in the bottom of the eighth inning. Richmond then finished the game with the aid of sawdust that he used to dry the ball before every pitch.6 Richmond struck out five in the one-hour, 26-minute game.

The 700 people in attendance also witnessed what might have been the first instance of platooning. Richmond, the game’s first regular left-hander, had been in the league for only about six weeks. Cleveland had not yet seen him, but already the Clevelands knew that right-handed batters might have an edge against the left-handed heaver.7 Because of this, the Cleveland team changed its batting order against Richmond. Immediately before and after the Worcester series, Cleveland’s left-handed hitters, Orator Shafer, Pete Hotaling, and Ned Hanlon, were second, third and fourth in the lineup. For the June 10 game against Worcester, Shaffer was dropped to fourth, Hanlon to seventh, and Hotaling to ninth. For the games of June 12 and 14 Shafer dropped to the number five slot, Hanlon moved to the ninth position, and Hotaling was removed from the lineup.

In addition, switch-hitting in order to face the pitcher from the opposite side was employed as a strategy in this game. The Cleveland Leader reported in its June 10 edition, “Hotaling in today’s game will bat righthanded. …”8 Game accounts do not reveal whether Hotaling did turn around against Richmond. Nonetheless, the seed was planted for using the strategies of switch-hitting and platooning that are integral in today’s game.

Cleveland won the series’ final game, 7–1, on Monday, McCormick defeating Richmond. By season’s end, the 23-year-old rookie had won 32 games and lost an equal number as his team finished in fifth place. But the notoriety of pitching professional baseball’s first perfect game went with Richmond throughout his life. He remarked of it, “I can remember almost nothing except that my jump ball and my half stride ball were working splendidly and that Bennett and the boys behind me gave me perfect support.”9

• Related link: June 2, 1879: Lee Richmond’s no-hit debut, by John R. Husman

The pictured score sheet documents the details of professional baseball’s first perfect game on June 12, 1880. It was retained by Lee Richmond until his death in 1929.

Notes

1 Sunday Herald (unidentified clip in J. Lee Richmond file, National Baseball Library, Cooperstown, New York); Cleveland Leader, June 13, 1880.

2 Dickson, Paul. The Dickson Baseball Dictionary (New York: W.W. Norton Company, Inc., 2009,), p. 630.

3 Worcester Daily Spy, June 14, 1880.

4 Letter from Walter Angell to the Editor of the Boston Post, August 18, 1925, p. 2.

5 Mayer, Ronald A. Perfect! (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1991), p. 17.

6 Worcester Daily Spy, June 14, 1880.

7 “Richmond’s Debut In Professional Baseball,” Brown Alumni Monthly, 1910-1911; from the New York Tribune.

8 Cleveland Leader, June 10, 1880.

9 Spink, Alfred H. The National Game (St. Louis: National Game Publishing Co., 1910), p. 155.

The Chicago Tribune gave a little more detail, writing that the 2,000 fans present “saw something that never before occurred on the Chicago grounds — that is, a game in which the defeated team obtained neither a tally nor a base-hit.”3 The Cincinnati Commercial Tribune spent two of its six sentences of coverage in a lackluster comment that “Rain also caused a cessation of play. All this prolonged the game to nearly three hours.”4

While a pitcher throwing a no-hitter today is a top story on sports stations, the Tribune simply concluded, “the game of yesterday merits little in the way of description.”5 The Chicago Inter-Ocean said, “The Boston nine were treated to a fine, though unwelcome, basketful of goose-eggs.”6 They surely didn’t make much ado about nothing … nothing in the hit column, that is. In his short career, Corcoran still became the first pitcher to throw three no-hit gems, a feat matched only by Cy Young and Bob Feller, and surpassed by Sandy Koufax and Nolan Ryan.

Corcoran had actually thrown a one-hitter nine days earlier against Providence, “but it remained for the Bostons to suffer the extreme effect of his great skills as a pitcher,” the Tribune wrote.7 His rookie season of 1880 saw him throwing (unfathomable by today’s standards) 536⅓ innings, on his way to a 43-14 record and a 1.95 ERA with 268 strikeouts. He completed 57 of 60 starts. Keeping up this torrid pace for five years, Corcoran was essentially finished because of a dead arm at the age of 25.

The White Stockings at 47-11 and 12½ games ahead of second-place Providence had all but won the National League pennant already. They had taken sole possession of first place on May 13 and hadn’t looked back since. They had a 21-game winning streak from June 2 to July 8, and finished the season an amazing 50 games over .500 (67-17). It was a Chicago year, as were the next two seasons, as the White Stockings won three pennants in a row.

The Red Caps had struggled the entire season, and were entering the game 26-32 and in the sixth-place position they would finish the year in. Boston pitching allowed the most earned runs and had the second highest ERA in the league, 3.08 (Buffalo had 3.09). That looks excellent to the modern fan, but in 1880 three clubs had ERAs below 2.00. The Red Caps’s starting pitcher this day, Tommy Bond, had also been a workhorse the past three years, throwing over 500 innings and winning over 40 games each year.

Chicago scored a run in the first inning “through a base-hit and [Abner] Dalrymple’s good running,”8 along with a muffed throw by John Morrill at first base. In the third inning Joe Quest singled and stole second, and Dalrymple walked. Hits by George Gore and Ed Williamson brought in two runs, only one being earned. “A fine running catch by [Charley] Jones was much applauded.”9 Chicago took a 3-0 lead. The rain delay in the third inning made the ball “mushy and shapeless for the greater part of the play,” the Tribune commented, “but that did not prevent the White Stockings from making eleven hits and thirteen totals off Bond and [Curry] Foley.”10 It is not known when right fielder Foley and Bond swapped places. Chicago, wrote the Inter Ocean, “batted Bond freely and would have similarly treated Foley, but for the soggy condition of the ball in the last two innings.”11

In the fourth inning Boston shortstop John Richmond, who had sprained a knee in Cincinnati the week before, reinjured himself and had to leave the game. Jim O’Rourke moved to center field and his brother John took over at shortstop.

Chicago scored three more runs in the sixth inning. Tom Burns singled, stole second, and scored on Corcoran’s hit. Corcoran wound up at third on Morrill’s muff of a throw from Tommy Bond. Corcoran scored on Quest’s single. Dalrymple reached on Jim O’Rourke’s error. Gore “sent the mushy ball over to [the] right-field fence for two bases,”12 and Quest scored. Gore went 4-for-4 in the game with two doubles.

The Red Caps were retired in order in seven of their nine innings. They had their first real chance in the ninth, courtesy of two errors.

With one out in the ninth, John O’ Rourke grounded to Quest, who bobbled the ball and threw wildly to first. O’Rourke made second. Jim O’Rourke followed with a grounder of his own to Quest “and he muffed this one too,” wrote the Tribune, placing the brothers at first and third. Sometime during the inning, Chicago catcher Silver Flint had “his right thumb put out of joint in the ninth inning, and in trying to pull it back to place the flesh was badly lacerated. It will probably disable Flint altogether for a fortnight at least.”13 Jim O’Rourke raced to second on an attempted hit-and-run, but Jack Burdock “batted Quest a fly, and Joe had the satisfaction of closing the inning and atoning for his bungling by a clever double play.”14 Jim O’Rourke was doubled up, the game was over, and Corcoran had his no-hitter on the wet Chicago grounds.

Others injured besides Flint were Boston’s second baseman Burdock, catcher Sam Trott, and Corcoran himself. Burdock “was hit in the ribs by one of Corcoran’s twisters. Trott had his finger banged by a foul tip … and Corcoran injured his ankle in running the bases — quite enough accidents for one day,” wrote the Inter Ocean. 15

The Inter Ocean noted that Chicago’s King Kelly “had neither run, base-hit, fielding play, nor error,” but Cap Anson “retired twenty-one of the twenty-seven Boston men without an error, equaling the best first-base record ever made. Add to these unusual features the fact that four men were seriously injured during its progress, and it might truly be said that it was a remarkable game.”16

The time of game was 2 hours and 30 minutes. “The umpiring was unexceptional,” the Inter Ocean commented.17

This article was published in SABR’s “No-Hitters” (2017), edited by Bill Nowlin. To read more Games Project stories from this book, click here.

Notes

1 “What Is the Score? The Bostons Chicagoed and the Providences Winners,” Boston Globe, August 20, 1880.

2 “Thoroughly Trounced,” Cincinnati Enquirer, August 20, 1880: 8.

3 “A Game of Ball in Which Boston Scored Neither a Run Nor a Base-Hit,” Chicago Tribune, August 20, 1880: 8.

4 “Harry Wright Again Disgusted,” Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, August 20, 1880: 6.

5 “A Game of Ball.”

6 “Boston’s Goose Eggs, Which the Hub Nine Received Yesterday at the Hands of the Chicago Club,” Inter-Ocean (Chicago), August 20, 1880.

7 “A Game of Ball.”

8 “Boston’s Goose Eggs.”

9 “A Game of Ball.”

10 Ibid.

11 “Boston’s Goose Eggs.”

12 “A Game of Ball.”

13 Ibid.

14 Ibid.

15 “Boston’s Goose Eggs.”

16 Ibid.

17 Ibid.

After a five-game pitching debut with the Detroit Wolverines of the National League in 1881, during which his won-loss record was 1-4, Mullane appeared to be a long shot to succeed in professional baseball. But despite his less-than-impressive first season, the Louisville Eclipse of the American Association sought his services as a change pitcher and first baseman, and signed him for the 1882 season, the Association’s inaugural season. The circuit adopted the same dimensions for the pitcher’s box (6 feet by 4 feet) and the distance from the front of the pitcher’s box to the center of home plate (50 feet) as the rival National League.1 Mullane, having pitched in the National League in 1881, had already adjusted to the distance to home, and compiled a 30-24 won-lost record with a 1.88 ERA in 1882.

Mullane was involved in two particularly noteworthy games during the 1882 season. First, on July 18 he used both hands to throw to batters, (throwing left-handed to left-handed batters and right-handed to right-handed batters), becoming professional baseball’s first ambidextrous pitcher, in a 9-8 loss to the Baltimore Orioles.2 On September 11 he pitched a no-hit game against the Cincinnati Red Stockings, the Association’s first.

In the no-hit game, Mullane’s pitching opponent was Will White of the Red Stockings, an accomplished hurler in his own right, who would win 229 games over a 10-season career with a lifetime 2.28 ERA; in 1882, he would go 40-12 with a 1.54 ERA. The game was played at Bank Street Grounds in Cincinnati before 1,922 fans with the temperature in the high 60s on a day when Cincinnati was beginning to close in on the first American Association pennant.3 Cincinnati, the home team, opted under the rules of the day to bat first.

Cincinnati’s leadoff batter, Joe Sommer, drew a base on balls. But he was doubled up on an outfield fly, his mistake compounded when the next batter, Hick Carpenter, reached base on a two-base error and went to third on a passed ball; no damage was done, as Carpenter was left stranded at third. After the visiting Eclipse went out in order in the first, the Red Stockings failed to capitalize on a muffed fly by John Reccius in center field in the second inning; in the bottom of the inning, the Eclipse wasted a single by Mullane when he was thrown out by catcher Pop Snyder trying to advance on a passed ball.

The third and fourth innings were uneventful for both teams, and the Red Stockings were retired in order in the fifth and sixth. The Eclipse, however, in the sixth inning, provided some excitement when Samuel Maskrey, known by his middle name, Leech, reached on an error by Red Stockings third baseman Carpenter. Reccius hit to right field, and he and Maskrey both advanced a base on Harry Wheeler’s throw to home. With no outs and runners at second and third, a big inning appeared imminent, but pitcher White of the Red Stockings bore down and retired Pete Browning, Guy Hecker, and Dan Sullivan to end the threat.

After a scoreless seventh frame, the Eclipse scored two runs in the eighth. Leadoff batter Bill Schenck reached on an error by shortstop Chick Fulmer. Maskrey flied out but Reccius swatted a three-base hit to right center, scoring Schenck, and scored himself when right fielder Wheeler threw wild attempting to get Reccius at home. The next batter, Pete Browning, made history of his own when he became the first American Association player to reach base safely but getcalled out for being an illegal baserunner.4 Browning, who had a pulled leg muscle, had requested that someone run for him when he was hitting, his teammate Hecker. With Hecker standing behind him ready to run to first when the ball was hit, Browning stroked a hit to right field. But in his excitement at getting a hit, Browning began to run to first. Hecker, confused at seeing Browning begin to run, stopped and ran off the field, while Browning continued to first, and eventually was declared out for being an illegal baserunner. Browning batted .378 and won the Association’s batting title by a whopping 36 points in 1882. The lost hit affected his career batting average by one point (.341), preventing him from tying Dan Brouthers (.342) for the highest career batting average among players active primarily before 1893, when the pitching distance was lengthened.5

Sommer struck out to lead off the Cincinnati ninth, but got to first when catcher Sullivan missed the third strike. Wheeler flied out and Carpenter forced Sommer at second. With two out, Reccius muffed a fly ball by Snyder, and Carpenter went to third and Snyder to first. However, Dan Stearns forced Snyder at second, ending the game. Both White and Mullane pitched well, and umpire Mike Walsh was praised for his fairness in calling balls and strikes. the game was completed in 1 hour and 40 minutes. No matter what people thought of the antics of Mullane over the years, it cannot be denied that pitching a no-hit game in your first full year of professional baseball is a great way to start your career.

This article was published in SABR’s “No-Hitters” (2017), edited by Bill Nowlin. To read more Games Project stories from this book, click here.

Notes

1  Eric Miklich, “The Pitcher’s Area,” 19cbaseball.com/rules.html

2 Jerry Grillo, “Mullane Goes Both Ways,” Bill Felber, ed., Inventing Baseball: The 100 Greatest Games of the 19th Century (Phoenix: Society for American Baseball Research, 2013).

3 “Mullane’s Mash,” Cincinnati Tribune, September 12, 1882.

4 David Nemec, The Great Encyclopedia of 19th Century Major League Baseball (New York: Penguin Books, 1997), 175.

5 Ibid.

• It was the first time the losing team scored a run in a no-hitter.
• It was the first time a team recorded a second no-hitter for the franchise.
• It was the first time a team recorded two no-hitters in a single season.

Eight days earlier, Hecker’s Louisville teammate Tony Mullane had pitched Louisville’s first no-hitter, against Cincinnati. Mullane’s game was the first American Association no-hitter and matched the previous five no-hitters tossed by National League pitchers. It was also the first no-hitter thrown from the new 50-foot pitching distance. Mullane and Hecker had a long-running association. After playing one season for a professional team in Springfield, Ohio, Hecker returned home to Oil City, Pennsylvania, to get married and join the local labor force. He continued to play with local semipro teams and in 1879 Tony Mullane joined his Oil City team. When Mullane signed with Louisville for the 1882 season he recommended Hecker to the management for the position of change pitcher. Hecker was signed and primarily played first base, pitching in 13 games in 1882.

Hecker’s sixth start of the season was at Pittsburgh’s Exposition Park on September 19, 1882. Neither team was more than a middle-of-the-pack squad at this point of the season. The Alleghenys entered the game in fourth place with a 37-36 record. Louisville was slightly better at 37-32 in second place. But it was mostly academic as Cincinnati had clinched the pennant the day before. The Allegheny team was a solid hitting team with Ed Swartwood being the most productive batter. Swartwood led the American Association that season in total bases (161); runs scored (87), and doubles (18). He was third in batting average (.331), second in slugging average (.498), tied for second in hits (109), and third in home runs (4). The Association’s premier batter that season was on the other side. Pete Browning won the batting (.378) and slugging (.510) titles and finished second in home runs (5) while tieing Swartwood for second in hits (109). Hecker’s mound opponent was Denny Driscoll. Driscoll was signed by the Alleghenys in June and developed into the second starter behind Harry Salisbury. Driscoll posted a 13-9 record with a league-leading 1.21 ERA.

Both pitchers were effective and the game was scoreless through the fifth. Driscoll retired Leech Maskrey to open the sixth inning and then walked John Reccius. At this point in the reporting on the game one runs into a chronic problem with recording events in 19th-century baseball. Each reporter of a game kept his own scorecard. The assignment of hits, errors, and other scoring decisions can and does vary from one paper to another. With Reccius on second and one out, Browning came to the plate and either singled home Reccius after Reccius stole second with Browning advancing to second on an error by Mike Mansell, or Reccius scored on Browning’s double. The consensus of the Pittsburgh writers (the Louisville paper’s stories were dispatches by Pittsburgh writers) was that Browning doubled Reccius home with the first run of the game. Hecker followed Browning with an RBI single and Louisville was up 2-0 entering the bottom of the sixth.

The scoring confusion continued in the bottom of the sixth. With two outs Swartwood lifted a fly ball to left-center. Reccius misplayed the fly and then threw wildly to second, with the ball skipping past all the fielders and allowing Swartwood to score. Or after Reccius muffed the fly, center fielder Maskrey threw wildly to the infield or Maskrey’s throw was misplayed by second baseman Denny Mack, allowing Swartwood to score. The reporting consensus was that Reccius committed a pair of errors on the play.

The scoring differences of opinion popped up again in the top of the seventh. Mack singled to open the inning and was forced at second by Mullane. Then either Mullane stole second and scored from second on a routine groundout to shortstop or … when Mack was forced at second, George Strief tried to complete the double play and threw wildly to first, putting Mullane on third, from where he scored on Schenck’s groundout to short. As it seems improbable that Mullane scored from second on a routine groundball, it is more likely that Strief’s error put him on third. From this point, each team was retired in order through the end of the game.

The final scoring discrepancy questions the number of hits Hecker surrendered. According to the Pittsburgh Telegraph, Pittsburgh Commercial-Gazette, Pittsburgh Times and the Louisville Commercial, it was a no-hitter. But Louisville’s Courier-Journal records one hit for Pittsburgh. As with all the other variances, only the Courier-Journal deviates from the consensus of all the other papers. The Courier-Journal credits Pittsburgh shortstop John Peters with a single. There are two possibilities where this might have happened. In the fifth and seventh innings, Peters reached base on what were reported as Browning errors at shortstop. But the Courier-Journal box score records a pair of errors charged to Browning and the Commercial-Gazette and Pittsburgh Times game stories give no other situation where Browning might have picked up an error. Since the Courier-Journal is the sole source for all the scoring questions, it is likely that the correspondent who sent the paper the Pittsburgh game story was either unfamiliar with scoring a game or had a different set of standards to judge scoring decisions. In any case, treating the Courier-Journal as an outlier among the five papers consulted, Hecker gets his no-hitter.

Although Hecker’s feat was acknowledged as worthy of note in the game stories, it was still just a single game with no future reference to it later in the week or later in the season. The Reach and Spalding Guides that cover the 1882 season make no reference to any no-hitter recorded in 1882. The Pittsburgh Times noted that no hits were made off Hecker in a sub-headline, but no other papers made any reference to it until late in their game story. In the last sentence of the story, the Times wrote, “The home nine failed to get a base hit off Hecker during the entire game. …”

The Louisville Commercial said, “Not one base hit was scored by them [Pittsburgh]. …”

The term no-hitter appears in no story about the game.

Skip McAfee, editor of the Dickson Baseball Dictionary, notes that the earliest reference he knows for the use of the term “no-hitter” is in a story appearing in the Lincoln (Nebraska) Evening News on August 31, 1911. No-hitters in the 19th century were viewed neither by fans nor sportswriters as the sort of significant events they became in later years. By and large, they were just another ballgame.

The various difficulties in dealing with the reporting and scoring of this game underscore the challenges faced by 19th-century researchers to assemble accurate statistics for the period. Even with multiple contemporary newspaper sources, we cannot determine with much confidence the details of many games played. We only have the comfort that scoring decisions do not change the outcome of the games.

Four years later, Hecker also achieved note when he homered three times in one game, and set single-game records for runs scored (7), total bases (15), and home runs (3), in the August 15, 1886, game for Louisville.1

This article was published in SABR’s “No-Hitters” (2017), edited by Bill Nowlin. To read more Games Project stories from this book, click here.

Sources

Courier-Journal (Louisville), Louisville Commercial, New York Clipper, Pittsburgh Commercial-Gazette, Pittsburgh Times, and Pittsburgh Telegraph, all dated September 20, 1882.

Bevis, Charlie. “Denny Driscoll,” SABR Baseball Biography Project, sabr.org/bioproj/person/c7e1352a.

Bailey, Bob. “Guy Hecker,” SABR Baseball Biography Project, sabr.org/bioproj/person/4b471b76

Thanks to Bruce Allardice, Craig Britcher, Gary Collard, Bob LeMoine, Tom Mueller, Ron Selter, Andrew Terrick, and Bob Tholkes for their assistance to gather Pittsburgh newspaper stories on the game. Thanks to Skip McAfee for his help on the use of the term “no-hitter.”

Notes

1 Bob Bailey, “August 15, 1886: Guy Hecker: hitting pitcher,” SABR Games Project, https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/august-15-1886-guy-hecker-hitting-pitcher.

• The first no-hitter by a pitcher representing one of major-league baseball’s longest standing and most storied franchises.  
• The first major-league no-hitter that went extra innings.
• The first major-league no-hitter in which the pitcher who was the victim of it had previously thrown a no-hitter himself.
• The only major-league no-hitter to date in which the pitcher who was the victim of it did not suffer a loss even though his team was shut out.  
• The only pitcher to date to hurl a complete-game major-league no-hitter of nine or more innings and not be credited with a decision. 
• The only scoreless no-hit major-league game to date that lasted nine or more innings.
• The first major-league no-hitter that occurred in the month of October.
• The first no-hitter in major-league history by a rookie pitcher who had passed his 30th birthday. 
• The only major-league no-hitter to date that highlighted a pitcher and an umpire who were once major-league teammates and later were business partners. 

Any one of these distinctions would have been sufficient in the present day to draw momentous attention, some of course substantially more than others. That there are no less than nine on the list of unique and meritorious feats in this superlative game is in itself perhaps the most remarkable distinction of all.

Yet, with all that, there is another first that may prove a shock to most readers. To our knowledge this is both the first account of that game in the 131 years since its occurrence and the first ever to tabulate its many extraordinary features.

The 31-year-old rookie author of this one-of-a-kind game was a 5-foot-10½, 165-pound right-hander named Samuel Jackson Kimber, who had joined the minor-league Brooklyn Greys of the International Association midway through the 1883 season and accompanied the City of Churches club when it boldly cast its lot with the major-league American Association the following year. By the conclusion of spring practice sessions in 1884, Kimber in manager George Taylor’s estimation was the Greys’ best pitcher, thereupon earning the honor of starting the present Los Angeles Dodgers franchise’s first official game as a major-league entity, on May 1, 1884, at Brooklyn and losing in a most embarrassing manner to Washington rookie John Hamill in a 12-0 blowout. Hamill would win only one more game in the process of sculpting a horrendous 2-17 ledger in his lone big-league season, but Kimber quickly put the egregious Opening Day pasting behind him and logged a team-best 18 wins for an otherwise lackluster second-division team.

Far and away Kimber’s most significant pitching performance in 1884 was not a win, however, but a tie. It came on October 4, 1884, at Brooklyn, when he was caught by fellow rookie Jack Corcoran and held the Toledo Blue Stockings hitless for 10 innings before the game was called by darkness with the score still 0-0 as his Brooklyn mates managed just four hits off Toledo’s kingpin, Tony Mullane. Two of the hits came off the bat of the offensive star of the game, Greys first baseman Charlie Householder, including the contest’s lone extra-base hit, a double. Kimber fanned six and gave up three walks, one of which was issued to his box opponent, Mullane, who was the only Toledo baserunner to reach second base, after a Kimber wild pitch. In its account of the game in its October 15, 1884, issue, Sporting Life marveled that in a battle between two second-division teams not only had the pitching been exceptional but “not a single fielding error was charged to either nine, all the errors committed — and they were few — being batting errors, bases on called balls and wild pitches.”1 The paper added: “Darkness stopped play just as the eleventh inning was about to be commenced. The contest abounded in good plays. There were good catches, clever stops and beautiful throws to the bases, all of which tended to make the game a most interesting one.” 

According to the New York Times of October 5, 1884, a crowd of 1,200 attended the Saturday-afternoon game. The Times recounted: “During the past nine years the feat of retiring a club for nine innings without a safe hit has been accomplished 35 times, but there is no record of a man’s pitching 10 innings in one game without having a safe hit charged against him.”2 Among the 35 previously recorded no-hitters3 was one by Mullane on September 11, 1882, that was a famous first in its own right. Mullane, with Louisville at the time, registered the first no-hitter in American Association history when he blanked the eventual inaugural AA pennant winner, the Cincinnati Reds, 2-0 at Cincinnati. 

The October 5 issue of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle echoed in its headline: “An Unprecedented Base Ball Contest at Washington Park.”4   

The umpire in the Kimber no-hitter was Louisville native John Dyler, a one-game outfielder with the fledgling Louisville American Association entry in 1882.5 The Louisville team also numbered Mullane, then in the first full season of a checkered career that nonetheless would almost certainly have brought him a plaque in the Baseball Hall of Fame long before now had he not been suspended for one full season and lost half of another when he jumped his team in a contract dispute, thereby sacrificing a probable 30 to 40 victories that would have put him well over the magic figure of 300, a number that has assured Hall of Fame entry thus far for every pitcher who has reached it. Dyler would join with Mullane in 1886 to open a combination saloon and poolroom on Vine Street in Cincinnati that was dubbed The Base-Ball Headquarters. The “bar fixtures” were “of cherry wood and the beveled-edged, plate-glass mirror behind the bar” was “cut in the shape of a baseball diamond.”6 

Historians will quickly observe after examining the box score of the Kimber game that missing from the Toledo lineup that day was the Blue Stockings’ largest contribution to baseball lore, their African-American catcher Moses Fleetwood Walker. Walker’s last appearance with Toledo (and final major-league appearance) had come exactly a month earlier in a home game against Pittsburgh when he caught Mullane in a 4-2 win over Jack Neagle of the Allegheny club.

Through 2015, Kimber remained the only hurler to fashion a major-league complete-game no-hitter of nine or more innings without being credited with a decision, a distinction one could say with almost utter assurance will be his forever.

This article was published in SABR’s “No-Hitters” (2017), edited by Bill Nowlin. To read more Games Project stories from this book, click here.

Notes

1 Sporting Life, October 15, 1884: 6.

2 New York Times, October 5, 1884: 2.

3 The Times’s proclamation that Kimber had hurled the 35th no-hitter to that point is provided without any substantiation.  Nor did the Times offer its criteria for what constituted a no-hitter in its estimation — i.e., nothing about the level of competition, the number of innings pitched, etc. Starting with Joe Borden’s no-hitter in 1875, the first recorded at any level of competition, Kimber’s no-hitter was the 19th full-length no-hitter in major-league history, including two perfect games. There were also three no-hitters previous to Kimber’s in 1884 that were curtailed to less than nine innings either by rain or darkness; these were the first abbreviated no-hitters in the major leagues. The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball, 3rd Edition, lists only two no-hitters in the minors prior to October 4, 1884, bringing the number of full-length professional no-hit games to 21 at the time of Kimber’s achievement.

4 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 5, 1884: 1.

5 Sporting Life, the Brooklyn Eagle, and the New York Times, the author’s three primary research sources, all credit Dyler with umpiring the Kimber no-hit game in Brooklyn on October 4, 1884, along with Brooklyn’s last previous game, on October 1 versus Louisville. However, Sporting Life also credits Dyler with a physical impossibility: umpiring an American Association game in Richmond that day, as does Retrosheet.org, which credits the Kimber game to John Valentine even though Valentine umpired no other Brooklyn home games in September or October 1884. For the moment we trust most the Brooklyn Eagle and the New York Times since both papers provided daily coverage of the Brooklyn team throughout the 1884 season.

6 Sporting Life, February 24, 1886: 4.

When Al Atkinson toiled, the rules of the game were very different than in the game we know today. The 1886 season was the last in which a batter could ask for a high or low pitch. A low pitch was between the knees and belt, high was from the belt to the shoulders. In Atkinson’s first no-hitter, in 1884, he was restricted to having his pitching hand below his shoulder. That restriction was lifted by 1886. “By 1886 finger gloves were in fairly widespread use” and the chest protector was two years old.3 Pitchers were helped by a six-ball/three-strike rule for walks and strikeouts, but even so Atkinson issued 101 walks for the season.

The New York Metropolitans took the field on May 1 at Philadelphia’s Jefferson Street Grounds, in last place with a 2-8 record. Powerful Dave Orr was their star; he would hit 31 triples, bat .338 and finish second in the league in OPS. The Mets sent Ed Cushman to the box. In 1884 while pitching in the Union Association, Cushman had tossed a no-hitter. He started 1885 with Philadelphia but was released after 10 games and joined the Mets. Cushman would record a 17-21 mark with a team-leading 3.12 ERA in 1886. The Athletics entered the game in second place with a 7-4 record. Bobby Mathews was coming off three consecutive 30-win seasons and was the featured pitcher early in the season. Atkinson came into the game with a 2-0 mark after wins over Brooklyn and Baltimore. The Athletics boasted the veteran slugging duo of Harry Stovey and Henry Larkin, both of whom would be in the top 10 in OPS. The rest of the lineup on May 1 was far from the norm. Utilityman Jack O’Brien caught and catcher Jocko Milligan made a rare start at third. Two veterans, Orator Shafer and George Bradley, played center field and shortstop respectively. Both were dropped soon after. Bradley had been a star pitcher in 1876 at the birth of the National League and is credited with pitching the first no-hitter in the league. Umpiring the game was Billy Carlin, a Philadelphia native working one of his 35 games in 1886.

The Mets scored in the first inning; with one out, outfielder Chief Roseman walked, went to second on a passed ball, and scored when Athletics right fielder John Coleman muffed a fly ball hit by Orr. Atkinson tied the game in the third inning when he drew a walk, went to third on a hit by Stovey, and scored on a wild throw by second baseman Elmer Foster. Foster’s throw was so wild that the speedy Stovey also came around to score. In the sixth Stovey and Coleman ripped doubles to account for the Athletics’ third run. Meanwhile, Atkinson had calmed down and allowed two more walks. He struck out seven (well above his 3.5 per-game average). In the ninth the Mets staged a rally of sorts when Orr reached on a two-base error by Bradley, advanced on a grounder and scored on a long fly. Atkinson disposed of the last batter to win the game, 3-2, and chalk up his second no-hitter in front of 2,700 fans. The Philadelphia Inquirer said “a contest of this kind is always dull for the onlookers” but that two “phenomenal plays” by Bradley caused great excitement.4

The Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote, “The game was a most interesting one, and while there were no particularly brilliant plays the clean and sharp work of both teams in the field drew forth frequent bursts of applause.”5

By season’s end the Athletics had slipped to sixth place. They finished 10 games ahead of the seventh-place Mets. Atkinson lost 3-1 to Brooklyn in his next outing. He became the staff ace and posted a 25-17 record. He pitched sparingly in 1887 and then disappeared from the major-league scene.

This article was published in SABR’s “No-Hitters” (2017), edited by Bill Nowlin. To read more Games Project stories from this book, click here.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the notes, the author also consulted the Louisville Courier-Journal, Pittsburg Post-Gazette, The Times (Philadelphia), and Sporting Life.

Notes

1 The first no-hitter is credited to Joe Borden in the National Association in 1875. There were also six no-hitters prior to 1900 that did not go nine innings.

2 New York Times, May 2, 1886: 2.

3 travel-watch.com/oldtimebaseballequipment.

4 Philadelphia Inquirer, May 3, 1886: 2.

5 Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 2, 1886: 3.

Friday, July 31, was a “perfect day” for baseball, according to the New York Tribune, which estimated that 2,580 spectators filed into the Polo Grounds, which had just opened in April 1890, to see a clash between Gotham City rivals the Giants and Bridegrooms.3 Brooklyn, the reigning NL pennant-winner, had struggled this far in ’91 under first-year player-manager John Montgomery Ward, and were in sixth place (36-42) in the eight-team league. Coincidentally, Ward, a former hurler who had transitioned to shortstop and second base, had himself been the youngest pitcher (20 years, 3 months) to spin a big-league no-hitter when the future Hall of Famer held the Buffalo Bisons hitless as a member of the NL Providence Grays on June 17, 1880. After a disappointing sixth-place finish the previous season, veteran skipper Jim Mutrie’s New York club was in second place (47-32), just 3½ games behind the Chicago Colts.

The Giants’ hopes to capture their third pennant in the last four seasons seemed dashed on July 24 when Rusie hurt the index finger of his right hand attempting to field a grounder in the second inning of an eventual victory over Philadelphia.4 The New York Times reported that the club feared “he would not be able to play for some time to come.”5 The loss of Rusie, often considered the hardest thrower in the game, would indeed have been a disaster. “[Rusie’s] pitching alone has saved the club,” suggested the Times. “[I]f he has to retire for any length of time the team will do a little tobogganing.”6 The Indiana-born hurler, known as the Hoosier Thunderbolt, had debuted as a 17-year-old in 1889, and made headlines the following season by posting a 29-34 record, completing 56 of 62 starts while striking out 341 and walking 289, both league bests. The competitive Rusie was not the type to rest, and, according to the Times, “he urged Capt. Ewing to allow him to play” against the Bridegrooms.7 Long John Ewing, the team’s captain and secondary starter, was happy to oblige. About five weeks earlier, on June 22, Ewing was on the mound when Brooklyn’s Tom Lovett held the Giants hitless at Eastern Park in Brooklyn.8

Since its inception in 1876, the National League had showcased pitchers who racked up strikeouts, like Old Hoss Radbourn, John Clarkson, Jim Whitney, and Tim Keefe, but hitters had never seen anything like the speed and wildness of Rusie’s pitches. In fact, Rusie’s pitching was considered among the reasons why major-league baseball decided to replace the pitcher’s 5½-by-4-foot box with a 12-by-4-inch pitching rubber in 1893, thereby increasing the distance of the plate from about 55 feet to 60 feet 6 inches.9 Pitchers threw from a flat surface in Rusie’s era. The pitcher’s mound was introduced around 1903; Monte Ward is often given credit for the idea.

Under the rules of time, the home team had the option of batting or taking the field to start the game. The Giants defied common convention by sending Brooklyn to the plate first (a fact noted by the local newspapers).10 Rusie set the tone of the game by striking out leadoff batter Ward. “Brooklyn’s batsmen were at Rusie’s mercy during the rest of the game,” opined the Tribune.

New York wasted no time pressuring slumping Brooklyn hurler Adonis Terry, who had entered the season with a 120-123 record in seven seasons. Leadoff hitter George Gore drew a walk, but was forced at second on Silent Mike Tiernan’s grounder. After Charley Bassett walked, 40-year-old Orator Jim O’Rourke bunted to load the bases. Roger Connor’s “puny effort,” according to the Tribune, led to a double play, but still Tiernan scored the game’s first run.11 The Times described it as a sacrifice bunt by Connor; with Bassett subsequently getting “caught off third.”12

The Giants maintained a precarious 1-0 lead until the bottom of the sixth, when they “began to find Terry’s curves.”13 O’Rourke led off with another bunt and then scored when Connor smashed one of “his favorite extra hits,” a triple in the left-center field gap.14 The career leader in triples with 157 entering the ’91 season, Connor had led the NL in three-baggers twice and finished second four times in the previous nine campaigns. Dick Buckley connected for a two-out double to plate Connor for a 3-0 Giants lead.

Described by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle as “fearfully intimidating,” the stout, 6-foot-1, 200-pound Rusie continued to mow down Brooklyn’s hitters.15 In the bottom of the seventh, Rusie’s teammates doubled his lead, effectively sealing the Bridegrooms’ fate and leaving them at the altar. Gore, who began the season as the NL career leader in walks (576), took a free pass, moved to third on consecutive sacrifice bunts by Tiernan and Bassett, and then scored on O’Rourke’s hit described variously as a liner to left field by the Times and Tribune, or a sacrifice bunt by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. O’Rourke stole second, “aided by a passed ball” by catcher Con Daily.16 After Connor drew a walk, the Giants attempted a double steal. Daily’s bad throw sailed into left field, enabling O’Rourke to score. Seemingly indifferent to the errant orb rolling in his direction, left fielder Darby O’Brien was, according to the Times, “slow in retrieving the ball”; this allowed Connor to scamper home for the Giants’ sixth and final run.17

Rusie, lauded as a “gallant young pitcher” by the Tribune, held Brooklyn hitless in the ninth to fashion the maiden no-hitter in Giants history in one hour and 45 minutes. The Times gushed about the most popular player on the team, if not metropolitan New York, in its account of the game. “[Rusie] sent balls to the plate with rare speed, and he curved the sphere in a manner to behold,” winning with “apparent ease.”18 Though Rusie fanned only four and issued seven bases on balls, he overpowered Brooklyn’s hitters, who pounded his curveball into the dirt throughout the game. The Bridegrooms hit only one ball out of the infield; O’Brien popped up to shallow center where Gore easily snared the ball. [Neither the Times, Tribune, nor Eagle reported in which inning that putout occurred]. There was “no question of a base hit being made,” pronounced the Times.19

Local newspapers gave credit to the Giants’ exceptional fielding for the no-hitter as much as they did Rusie’s hurling. The Tribune described the game as a “scientific contest” with New York’s “unusually brilliant” fielding.20 In an era when teams averaged more than three fielding errors per game (excluding passed balls by catchers), New York committed just one, by second baseman Danny Richardson. [New York finished the ’91 season with 384 errors and a .933 fielding percentage; both marks were second best to the Boston Beaneaters’ 358 and .938.] The Brooklyn Daily Eagle gushed that “never before have [the Giants] given such a fine exhibition of fielding”; the Times claimed that the Giants “fielded the ball with unaccustomed skill.”21 New York retired 16 of 27 batters on what the Times considered “grounders of a very weak character.”22 Though baseball gloves and mitts had become commonplace about a decade earlier, padding had been used only since the late mid- to late 1880s; fielding was still a dangerous and awe-inspiring art at a time when the game was defined by bunting and infield hits. The Tribune, for example, singled out New York’s second baseman Charley Bassett whose “throwing across the infield [was] especially fine.”23

Rusie’s no-hitter cemented his reputation as one of baseball’s best hurlers and a genuine celebrity. The future Hall of Famer finished the season with 33 victories, tied with the Beaneaters’ John Clarkson for second most behind Chicago’s Bill Hutchinson’s 44. It was also the first of four consecutive seasons in which Rusie notched at least 30 wins, including a league-best and career-high 36 in 1894. Over a dominating six-year stretch from 1890 to 1895, the Hoosier Thunderbolt paced the circuit in strikeouts and walks five times each and shutouts four times for Giants teams that finished in the top half of the standing only twice.

This article was published in SABR’s “No-Hitters” (2017), edited by Bill Nowlin. To read more Games Project stories from this book, click here.

Notes

1 “Rusie’s Wonderful Feat,” New York Times, August 1, 1891: 13.

2 “Giants Win,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 1, 1891: 2.

3 “Rusie Himself Again,” New York Tribune, August 1, 1891: 3.

4 “Pitcher Rusie Disabled,” New York Times, July 25, 1891: 3.

5 “Rusie’s Wonderful Feat.”

6 “Pitcher Rusie Disabled.”

7 “Rusie’s Wonderful Feat.”

8 “The Giants Worst Defeat,” New York Tribune, June 23, 1891: 3.

9 For more on the history of the pitcher’s mound, see Eric Miklich, The Pitcher’s Area, 19th Century Baseball. 19cbaseball.com/field-8.html. See Tim Wendel’s essay on Amos Rusie at the National Pastime for more on Rusie’s role in the changes of 1893, thenationalpastimemuseum.com/article/amos-rusie.

10 Rusie Himself Again.”

11 Ibid.

12 “Rusie’s Wonderful Feat.”

13 Ibid.

14 “Giants Win.”

15 Ibid.

16 “Rusie’s Wonderful Feat.”

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid.

20 Rusie Himself Again.”

21 “Giants Win”; “Rusie’s Wonderful Feat.”

22 “Rusie’s Wonderful Feat.”

23 Rusie Himself Again.”

For the Louisville Colonels, it had been a tough year. After winning the 1890 American Association pennant, the team had fallen to eighth place in 1891. Manager Jack Chapman selected Jouett Meekin, a promising 24-year-old right-hander, to face the Browns in the first game of the doubleheader. The previous Sunday, in the second game of a doubleheader, Meekin fired a six-inning, two-hit shutout of the Browns in Louisville.2 Chapman hoped Meekin would repeat this effort in St. Louis.

It was a cold and blustery day in the Mound City, yet close to 5,000 fans came to Sportsman’s Park for the doubleheader.3 Before the first game, Comiskey advised Breitenstein to let the Colonels hit the ball and to trust “Heaven and the outfield.”4 Browns right fielder Tommy McCarthy said: “Bear down on the first man, kid. Get him away each inning and you won’t have to worry.”5

Breitenstein did bear down; he focused on each batter with great concentration. He was a left-hander with a whirling motion, and the Louisville hitters were baffled by his delivery. Breitenstein retired the Colonels inning after inning: Monk Cline, Farmer Weaver, and Captain Harry Taylor at the top of the order; the impressive rookie Hughie Jennings and veterans Chicken Wolf and Bill Kuehne in the heart of the order; and Tim Shinnick, Tom Cahill, and pitcher Meekin at the bottom of the order. To the surprise of everyone, Breitenstein delivered a nine-inning no-hitter! Except for a base on balls given to Taylor, it was a perfect game. Breitenstein faced 28 batters, one over the minimum, in his first major-league start. He struck out Taylor, Shinnick, and Meekin, and fanned Wolf twice. Only three balls were hit to the outfielders. The Browns backed him with flawless defense and scored eight runs off Meekin.6

Breitenstein did not realize he had a no-hitter going. He said:

“[Browns third baseman] Jack Boyle … and McCarthy gave me a big hand every inning. But they never mentioned the no-hit angle, and nobody on the bench said anything. Afraid I’d get excited. I was too busy worrying about the next batter to care what had happened before, so I never knew what was going on. It wasn’t until after the game that Boyle … started pounding me on the back. ‘Attaboy, kid, that’s showin’ ’em how,’ he says. I says, ‘Well, I was pretty lucky, I guess.’ ‘Lucky, hell,’ he says, ‘you shut ’em out without a hit.’ And while I was trying to figure it out they carried me into the clubhouse on their shoulders.”7

The next day a headline in the Louisville Courier-Journal read, “An Amateur Pitcher Shuts the Colonels Out Without a Single Hit.”8 That “amateur” Breitenstein would have a successful professional career, winning more than 300 games over the next 20 seasons.

This article was published in SABR’s “No-Hitters” (2017), edited by Bill Nowlin. To read more Games Project stories from this book, click here.

Notes

1 The Sporting News, April 5, 1934.

2 Louisville Courier-Journal, September 28, 1891.

3 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 5, 1891.

4 The Sporting News, February 21, 1929.

5 Ibid.

6 Louisville Courier-Journal and St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 5, 1891. In a 1934 mention, The Sporting News said it had been just 27 batters, that one had walked but was then erased trying to steal. Contemporary reports and box scores reflect 28 batters.

7 The Sporting News, February 21, 1929.

8 Louisville Courier-Journal, October 5, 1891.

In 1893, the National League replaced the pitcher’s box with a rubber slab 12 inches by four inches that was set in the ground 60 feet, six inches from the back of home plate. Batting averages had been on the decline for years and the extra distance was meant to handicap the pitcher, thus making the game more exciting. The added distance had its desired effect; more than 30 batters hit .300 or better in 1893, after nine reached the mark the previous year.

On Wednesday, August 16, 1893, Bill Hawke of the Baltimore Orioles became the first pitcher to toss a no-hitter from the new distance, defeating the Washington Senators 5–0. Based on his lackluster major-league pitching record up to that point, the 23-year-old right-hander was an unlikely candidate to achieve this milestone. The Delaware native started out his amateur career as a catcher and third baseman. In 1890, Hawke began pitching on a fulltime basis for a team from Elkton, Maryland. Bill signed his first professional contract with Reading of the Pennsylvania State League in the spring of 1892 and in late July signed with the St. Louis Browns. Hawke finished out the season with the Browns, going 5–5 with a 3.70 earned-run average. St. Louis released him the next season after he was hit hard in his first start. Hawke signed with Baltimore in June and his work with the club had been creditable but not spectacular during the weeks leading up to his no-hit game.

It was a clear, humid summer day in Washington with temperatures ranging in the high 80s when the Baltimore Orioles took the field against the Washington Senators. Neither team had been setting the league on fire. Baltimore was struggling, 12 games below .500, and the Washington club, which was floundering in last place, had 33 wins and 59 losses. The game was played at Boundary Park, which was on the future site of Griffith Stadium. The umpire was Bob Emslie, who had been an outstanding pitcher, winning 32 games for Baltimore in 1884, and now in his fourth year as an umpire.

The starting pitchers were Hawke for Baltimore and Ben Stephens, who was making his debut with the Senators. Stephens had been a rising star in the Midwestern leagues before signing a major-league contract with Baltimore in July 1892. He had won 18 and lost seven for the Western League champion Columbus team before joining the Orioles. Washington’s left fielder, Charles Abbey, also made his major-league debut in this game.

Washington batted first and lead-off hitter William “Dummy” Hoy drew a base on balls off Hawke. Hoy attempted to steal second base, but Orioles catcher Wilbert Robinson threw him out. Washington’s only other baserunner was catcher Duke Farrell, who walked in the fourth inning but was left stranded at second.

Hawke was backed by a number of fine defensive plays. Orioles third baseman Billy Shindle and shortstop John McGraw made a number of outstanding stops and throws that cut down batters. Hawke himself hustled over and covered first base on a sharply hit ball to first baseman Harry Taylor. Baltimore outfielders Joe Kelley and George Treadway also made clutch grabs that helped preserve Hawke’s no-hit bid.

The Orioles scored two runs in the second inning. George Treadway singled and advanced to second on a passed ball by Farrell. Jim Long sacrificed Treadway to third and he scored on a single by second baseman Heinie Reitz. The next hitter, Wilbert Robinson, drilled a groundball that caromed off Washington shortstop Joe Sullivan and ended up in center field. Reitz advanced to third. Hawke hit a sacrifice fly to center that sent Reitz home.

Stephens settled down after that and the Orioles didn’t score again until the eighth inning. Shindle reached on an error by Washington second baseman Cub Stricker and Taylor walked. Both runners scored when Jim Long smashed a double to left field, and Reitz followed with a double to right that plated Long.

Stephens deserved a kinder fate, working all nine innings, allowing seven hits and just two earned runs. The 25-year-old struck out two (the first two batters he faced), walked two, and uncorked a wild pitch. Stephens also went winless in his next five starts, and was released after appearing in three games for the Senators in 1894. He returned to the minors and pitched for the Milwaukee Brewers of the Western League for two seasons before dying of tuberculosis at the age of 28 on August 5, 1896.

Hawke’s sinkerball kept the Senators off-balance for the entire game. He struck out six and walked two. Hawke finished the 1893 campaign with an 11–17 record (including one loss with St. Louis). He hit his stride the next season, going 16–9 for the National League champion Orioles. Sporting Life said of him on October 6,1894, “He is what is called a ‘phenom’ and pitches a very swift, puzzling ball, difficult to fathom.” Unfortunately for Hawke, he suffered a broken wrist before the start of the 1895 season and never won another major-league game. He made a short-lived comeback in the minors in 1899 but was never the same pitcher. Like his pitching opponent on August 16, 1893, Hawke died young, a victim of cancer at the age of 32 on December 11, 1902.

This essay was originally published in “Inventing Baseball: The 100 Greatest Games of the 19th Century” (2013), edited by Bill Felber. Download the SABR e-book by clicking here. It also appeared in SABR’s “No-Hitters” (2017), edited by Bill Nowlin. To read more articles from this book, click here.