“Owners [Charles] Weeghman and [William] Walker of the north side club and President [James] Gilmore of the new league were so overjoyed with the spectacle that they almost wept,” Weller wrote, “and there is little doubt that it was an epochal day in the history of the national game.”3 Weeghman realized early on that his venue wouldn’t be big enough to accommodate the massive crowd, but longtime business manager Charles Williams, who spent 25 years in the Cubs front office, had everything working beautifully, “just as if the whole thing had been rehearsed.”4

All were met by a cold wind blowing in off Lake Michigan, but that didn’t temper the enthusiasm or pomp that followed. More than a thousand members of the North Side Boosters’ Club held a parade; the Bravo El Toro Club attempted to stage a bullfight on the field, but the bull refused to cooperate; members of the Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic marched around the field with an American flag led by a band while players from both teams followed behind.5

Chi-Feds manager Joe Tinker, who served as the Cubs’ shortstop from 1902 to 1913 and would again briefly in 1916; his wife; and Weeghman were all presented flowers, and the latter was also given a silver loving cup. Corporation Counsel William H. Sexton threw out the first pitch in Mayor Carter H. Harrison’s absence and the game began.6

Taking the mound for the visitors was George Howard “Chief” Johnson, a Native American born on the Winnebago Reservation in Nebraska who attended the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania with Jim Thorpe, arguably the world’s greatest athlete at the time and a future major leaguer himself. Johnson began his career in the Class-A Western League in 1909 and pitched there until 1912, mostly with the St. Joseph Drummers, for whom he went 56-39 from 1910 to 1912.

Johnson’s 23-10 showing in 1912 caught the attention of the Chicago White Sox, who purchased his contract only to release him before Opening Day 1913, allegedly because White Sox skipper Nixey Callahan learned that Johnson was a Winnebago and members of that tribe were blacklisted because of their supposed affinity for alcohol.7

The Cincinnati Reds cared nothing for that rumor and signed Johnson. He made his major-league debut on April 16, 1913, against the St. Louis Cardinals and tossed seven shutout innings to earn his first win. Johnson went on to pace the Reds in almost every pitching category, including wins with 14. The New York Times described him as “fat” and “wooden,” but one who could “deal out ciphers with as much success as the more illustrious [Walter] Johnson of Washington.”8

The following season, 1914, Johnson made a start for Cincinnati on April 18 and lasted only four innings in an 8-5 loss to Pittsburgh. Then he jumped to the Kansas City Packers of the Federal League for a reported $3,000 bonus and $5,000 salary.9 When Johnson took the mound against the Chi-Feds on April 23, 1914, he did so despite an injunction issued by Judge Charles M. Foell that barred him from pitching for Kansas City.10

The Packers would have been better off had they obeyed the injunction as Johnson proved ineffective through two innings of work before he was served with papers and removed from the game. After setting Chicago down in the first, Johnson ran into trouble in the second. Center fielder Dutch Zwilling hit a double into the crowd, right fielder Al Wickland advanced Zwilling to third on a bounder in front of the plate, and second baseman Jack Farrell plated the first run of the game with a single to left. Catcher Art Wilson knocked in two more runs with a home run over the left-field wall and Chicago was out to a 3-0 lead.

In two innings of work Johnson allowed three runs on five hits and a walk while fanning one.11 Fellow Nebraska native Dwight Stone took the hill for the Packers in the third and issued a walk to Tinker and a single to first baseman Fred Beck. Zwilling poled another double to score the fourth run of the game and send Beck to third, but Stone escaped without further damage when Beck and Zwilling were both thrown out at the plate on subsequent plays.

The Chi-Feds struck again in the fourth when Wilson belted his second homer of the game, this one clearing the scoreboard in left and landing on Waveland Avenue. Max Flack slapped a one-out double into the crowd and Tinker followed a free pass to Rollie Zeider with a base hit that plated Flack to push the score to 6-0.

Then they added two more tallies in the sixth when Wilson drew a one-out walk, moved to second on pitcher Claude Hendrix’s single, and advanced to third on second baseman Duke Kenworthy’s error on a Flack grounder that filled the bases. Zeider drove in Wilson and Hendrix with a single to increase Chicago’s lead to 8-0, but Flack was caught in a rundown and Tinker grounded out to end the inning.

Meanwhile Hendrix, a 6-foot-tall spitball artist from Kansas, who made his major-league debut with the Pirates in 1911, then won 24 games for them in his sophomore season, was mowing down Kansas City batters with relative ease. Weller wrote that Hendrix “simply breezed through the combat without being in danger at any time.”12 Indeed, Hendrix surrendered only two hits through seven innings before allowing his only run in the eighth.

With an eight-run lead in the eighth Hendrix either got careless or started grooving pitches to try to put a quick end to the game. Catcher Ted Easterly led off the frame with a home run to left, and pinch-hitter Grover Gilmore and right fielder John Potts both singled. But a double play erased the threat and Hendrix was off the hook with only one run on his ledger.

Not to be outdone, the Chi-Feds added one more run to their total in the bottom of the eighth on a potentially dangerous play. Farrell singled, advanced to second on an out, and went to third on a passed ball. With Hendrix, a solid hitter, at the plate, Farrell broke for home in an attempted steal. Hendrix didn’t know it was coming and swung at the pitch. “Johnny tried to steal home, but just when he was about to hit the dirt Hendrix singled to center, so Johnny came in straight up,” wrote Weller.13

Hendrix was forced at second and Zeider tapped back to pitcher George Hogan to end the inning, then Hendrix shut the Packers down in the ninth to seal an easy 9-1 victory.

Postscript

Because of numerous injunctions in 1914, Chief Johnson didn’t start pitching regularly for Kansas City until late July. He went 9-10 with a 3.26 ERA and followed that up with a 17-17 showing in 1915 and a 2.75 ERA. He spent another three years in the Pacific Coast League before calling it a career. Concerns about alcoholism proved to be founded as he had several run-ins with the law and abandoned his wife. On June 12, a “drunk and belligerent” Johnson was shot to death in Des Moines, Iowa, over a gambling dispute.14 He was 36.

This article appears in “Wrigley Field: The Friendly Confines at Clark and Addison” (SABR, 2019), edited by Gregory H. Wolf. To read more stories from this book online, click here.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also accessed Retrosheet.org, Baseball-Reference.com, and SABR.org.

Notes

1 Sam Weller, “Chicago Welcomes Feds, Who Triumph Over Packers, 9-1,” Chicago Tribune, April 24, 1914: 15.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

7 Thom Karmik, “ ‘Chief’ Johnson and the ‘Winnebago Ban,’” baseballhistorydaily.com/2012/08/23/chief-johnson-and-the-winnebago-ban/, accessed June 11, 2017.

8 “Giants Picked Off Bases in Fast Plays,” New York Times, May 9, 1913: 9.

9 Thom Karmik, “More ‘Chief’ Johnson,” baseballhistorydaily.com/tag/george-johnson/, accessed June 11, 2017.

10 “Packers Lose Johnson,” Ottawa (Kansas) Daily Republic, April 24, 1914: 6.

11 Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org have Johnson allowing four runs, but based on newspaper reports, that’s impossible. Every report found had him being served papers and removed from the game before the third inning, at which time the Chi-Feds had three runs. They scored their fourth run in the third, but Sam Weller of the Chicago Tribune has Dwight Stone starting the third inning and allowing the fourth run, not Johnson. His account includes a play-by-play of every run scored and I have every reason to believe it’s accurate.

12 Weller, “Chicago Welcomes Feds, Who Triumph Over Packers, 9-1,” Chicago Tribune, April 24, 1914: 16.

13 Ibid.

14 “Grand Jury to Probe Death of Chief Johnson,” Des Moines Register, June 16, 1922: 3.

A Rebel without a glove of glue allowed the Chicago Whales to eke out the second and final title in the truncated two-year history of the Federal League. By rebuffing the Pittsburgh Rebels 3-0 in the second game of a doubleheader halted by darkness after 6½ innings on the last day of the season, the Whales won the crown by one one-thousandth of a percentage point.

With the triumph, Joe Tinker became the last of the “trio of bear cubs … fleeter than birds” to lead his team to a title. Frank Chance had managed the Cubs to NL pennants in 1906, 1907, 1908, and 1910. Johnny Evers had captained the Braves to a 1914 World Series win. Going into the 1915 season, Tinker had a record of five games under .500 as a manager after heading the Reds in 1913 (64-89) and the Chi-Feds (the first nickname of the Chicago Federal League entry) in 1914 (87-67).

The Whales and the Rebels closed the 1915 season by playing six games against each other in two cities in five days. The first four games would take place in Pittsburgh. When the series began, three teams remained in contention:

Chicago beat Pittsburgh 6-3 on September 29 to slip into second place. The Rebels rebounded to tip the Whales 8-4 and send Chicago back to third place on September 30. As a result of rain on October 1, the season would come down to a pair of doubleheaders, the first in Pittsburgh on October 2 and the second in Chicago on October 3.

With a sweep in Pittsburgh, the Whales went from third to first with one day to go. The events in Pittsburgh generated considerable excitement in Chicago: “Even before the report of the Whales’ double victory ticked over the wires … [Chicago] President Charles H. Weeghman sent out letters to … friends inviting them to be present at Whales park today to see Tinker’s boys win the pennant. Secretary Williams … was making preparations to handle the largest crowd in the history of the north side park.”1

The preparations proved necessary. In a “spectacular battle”2 in front of a sold-out crowd that filled the elevated trains, the streets, and even parts of the playing field, Chicago took the title thanks to a two-hitter by Bill Bailey, a Whale-come-lately, acquired from the Baltimore Terrapins on September 14. Having staggered to a 3-18 record for the 1910 St. Louis Browns, Bailey did little better for Baltimore five years later with a 6-19 record. But wearing the duds of the Whales, he surged to a 3-1 mark, with all three wins coming by shutout. A “fortunate addition to the Whale forces,”3 Bailey had three whitewashings in five games started for Chicago; over the rest of his career, he had just five shutouts in 112 games started.

Elmer Knetzer had received credit for the victory in the opener of the doubleheader thanks to three innings of one-hit relief. Knetzer improved to 18-14 as the Rebels rallied to sink the Whales 5-4 in 11 innings. Center fielder-manager Rebel Oakes, from whom Pittsburgh took its name, tapped the right-handed Knetzer to start the nightcap although a newspaper brief from the prior day had indicated that the southpaw Frank Allen would start instead.4 Going into the final game, Allen had a 2-2 record against Chicago in 1915, while Knetzer was 1-3 following his relief effort earlier in the day.

Through five innings, the teams combined to place just one man in scoring position. In the third, Chicago shortstop Mickey Doolin, also picked up by the Whales from the Terps in September, singled and stole second base but did not advance beyond that bag.

Doolin started the triumphant rally in the sixth with a second single. Eschewing a steal attempt this time, Doolin went to second on Bailey’s sacrifice. Leadoff man Rollie Zeider grounded out, pushing Doolin to third.

At this point in the contest, Knetzer had held Chicago scoreless for 8⅔ innings, yielding just four hits in the process. To end the inning, he had a big obstacle to overcome in Max Flack, the right fielder for the Whales who would finish the 1915 season with a .314 batting average, tied for the third-highest mark in the Federal League.

“Knetzer worked the count to two and two … then Max caught one on the nose and drove a terrific loft to right center,” the Chicago Tribune reported. “Oakes and [Cy] Rheam dashed madly after the ball and the Rebel did manage to get his hands on it, but the sphere hopped out and into the crowd for two bases, driving in … the one run necessary.”5

Dutch Zwilling followed Flack’s 20th double of the season with a two-bagger of his own. The hit drove in Flack and gave Zwilling his 94th RBI of the campaign, which would allow him to edge out Ed Konetchy of the Rebels (93) for the Federal League’s final RBI crown.

Art Wilson’s bloop scored Zwilling to push the Chicago lead to 3-0. Charlie Pechous followed with a single, meaning that the Whales had four consecutive hits off Knetzer after getting only four off him over his prior 8⅔ innings. Baseball is indeed a funny game.

Too late, Oakes opted to replace Knetzer with Allen, who retired Les Mann on a popout to Konetchy.

Bailey set down Pittsburgh in the seventh before play ceased. “Before the second game started, Umpire Bill Brennan asked the press box the exact minute of sundown” according to the Tribune. “It was 5:24, and apparently Brennan warned both clubs he would call the game at that precise moment, for all the athletes understood the battle was over after Pittsburgh’s seventh. The watches showed 5:25 when the last putout was made.”6

Had Oakes held on to the ball, the game likely could have ended in a scoreless tie. In that case, Pittsburgh would have won the crown with the final standings looking like this:

The Flack swat in the nick of time saved the Chicago nine as the Whales won the 1915 FL title7 by the slimmest of margins:

This article appears in “Wrigley Field: The Friendly Confines at Clark and Addison” (SABR, 2019), edited by Gregory H. Wolf. To read more stories from this book online, click here.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also accessed Retrosheet.org, Baseball-Reference.com, and SABR.org.

Notes

1 This quotation comes from an article in a box with neither author nor headline on the front page of the sports section of the Chicago Sunday Tribune, October 3, 1915. Tinker “enjoyed great success as player-manager of the Chicago Whales. Playing in their brand-new ballpark, Weeghman Field, the Whales finished a close second in 1914 and won the Federal League pennant the following year, outdrawing the Cubs in both seasons.” Lenny Jacobsen, “Joe Tinker,” sabr.org/bioproj/person/bc0df648 (emphasis added).

2 J.J. Alcock, “Whales Win Pennant as 34,000 Fans Cheer,” Chicago Tribune, October 4, 1915: 13.

3 Ibid.

4 “Notes of the Whales,” Chicago Sunday Tribune, October 3, 1915.

5 Alcock. Presumably the reference to the crowd was to spectators on the field rather than on the other side of the fence, which would have given Flack a homer rather than a ground-rule double. Perhaps the proximity of the large crowd affected Oakes’s ability to catch the ball. “Oakes took after the drive, tracking the ball in the dusk, and headed towards the roped-in standing crowd along the perimeter of the outfield. For a costly moment, just short of the standees, he took his eye off the ball’s flight, and it ‘struck his glove and bounded out.’” Phil Williams, “Rebel Oakes,” sabr.org/bioproj/person/37539897.

6 “Notes of the Whales,” Chicago Tribune, October 4, 1915: 13.

7 For a closer look at the 1915 Chicago Whales, see Mark S. Sternman, “The Last Best Day: When Chicago Had Three First-Place Teams,” available at sabr.org/research/last-best-day-when-chicago-had-three-first-place-teams.

Crusinberry described the “newness and a curiosity of things” that characterized the day. “It was the first time many of the players and doubtless many of the fans had ever seen the north side ball park.” Weeghman Park had been around since 1914, when it was home to the Chicago Federals, later named the Whales, of the short-lived Federal League. When the Federal League disbanded, owner Charles Weeghman coaxed the National League Cubs to his steel and concrete park at 1060 West Addison Street. “They seemed to have no trouble finding it,” Crusinberry wrote,3 and fans have found their way ever since. The estimated 20,000 spectators started flooding in from noon until game time at 3 P.M. A “gang of carpenters”4 had constructed a row of seats on the field in front of the grandstand, and “a double row of benches circled the outfield.”5

A mile-long parade stretched from downtown to the ballpark with every car bearing a banner. More than 200 Cincinnati fans made the journey north, with Reds President Garry Herrmann part of the caravan, and they participated in the parade as well.6 A half-dozen bands performed, some playing even when Judge Scully was giving opening remarks (which few could hear). Explosions were heard in center field when the American flag was raised. A black bear was led to home plate by “expert” Cy De Vry of the Lincoln Park Zoo and performed tricks for the crowd.7 Fans were, as they would for decades to come, watching the game from the rooftops across the street.8

The world was at war, and the United States teetered on the brink of joining it. President Woodrow Wilson had just given an ultimatum to Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II to stop its submarine warfare or suffer “a severance of diplomatic relations,” wrote the Tribune, its headline reading “Final Word to Kaiser. Nation Awaits Berlin’s Reply.”9 But the world was on hold for at least a day in Chicago. “Whatever the Kaiser has to say to Woodrow Wilson today,” wrote Crusinberry on the eve of Opening Day, “doesn’t go on the north side in Chicago, because this is the day when the new Cubs have their grand opening at Weeghman Park.”10

Claude Hendrix, a six-year veteran, was taking the hill for Chicago. Hendrix had dropped a 4-3 decision in Cincinnati on Opening Day, six days earlier. Hendrix was 87-56 lifetime. He was opposed by Pete Schneider in a return matchup from Opening Day. Schneider, in his third season, had lasted only three innings on Opening Day and took a no-decision. Hank O’Day and Mal Eason were the umpires.

The Reds wasted no time as Red Killefer laced a single to left on the first pitch of the game. Buck Herzog sacrificed him to second. After a fly out by Hal Chase, Hendrix walked and back-to-back Texas Leaguers over second scored the two runners. Cincinnati led 2-0.

Chicago tied the score in its half of the first. Cy Williams singled to right, sending Max Flack to third with Williams taking second on the throw. Schneider caught the relay to third and in his haste to nab Williams, threw the ball into right field. Flack scored and Williams went to third. Vic Saier’s infield single scored Williams.

Chicago took the lead in the fourth when William Fischer doubled with two out and scored on Steve Yerkes’s single. The Reds rallied to take the lead back in the fifth when Cubs shortstop Eddie Mulligan booted a couple of grounders and two runners scored on Herzog’s single. Cincinnati led 4-3. They extended the lead to 5-3 in the sixth on a home run by Johnny Beall “over the right wall and clear across Sheffield Avenue on the front porch of a flat building.”11 Fischer of the Cubs was robbed of a hit in the bottom of the sixth when Tommy Griffith “raced to the foul line and stabbed a line drive with one hand just before the ball hit the earth.”12

Hendrix lasted until he got into a bases-loaded jam in the seventh. Manager Joe Tinker removed him for Tom Seaton, who struck out Baldy Louden to end the threat. In the top of the eighth, Jimmy Lavender allowed a walk and singles by Killefer, Herzog, and Chase to add an insurance run for the Reds, who now led 6-3.

Chicago fans often learned over the next 100 years that the Cubs were never out of a game, so it is appropriate that they would play come-from-behind baseball in their inaugural game at their new home. In the eighth, Saier doubled, and a single by Mickey Doolan (who had replaced Mulligan at shortstop) drove Schneider from the game. Fred Toney came in from the bullpen and yielded run-scoring singles to Fischer and pinch-hitter Jimmy Archer as the Cubs cut the lead to 6-5.

Limb McKenry came in to pitch for the Reds in the ninth. Flack led off with a double. Williams sacrificed him to third and Heinie Zimmerman tied the game with a double. In the Cincinnati Enquirer version by Jack Ryder, Reds outfielders would have caught these doubles “if the seats had been out of the way.”13 The ground rules, “which allowed only two bases on a hit into the slim crowd that surrounded the outfield,” were to blame, Ryder wrote. “Two or three of the Cub doubles would have been caught on an open field, while a couple of Red long boys would have gone for three bases under normal conditions.”14 Left-hander Al Schulz was summoned from the bullpen to prevent further damage. The game remained tied through the 10th.

With one out in the Cubs’ 11th, Williams “poled one into the right field crowd”15 for a double, and Zimmerman was walked intentionally. Williams scored the winning run on Saier’s line-drive single over second base just after 6 P.M.

The Cubs had a memorable win on Opening Day, their first in the history of Weeghman Park/ Wrigley Field. It was probably accurate reporting by Crusinberry that it was the “biggest and noisiest” Opening Day in Cubs history to that point.16 Gene Packard picked up the victory with three scoreless innings in relief, while Schulz took the loss.

The extra seats were not actually needed but “a straggling hundred or two of rooters were allowed to file out there and sit down, though there was plenty of room in the stands,” the Cincinnati Enquirer griped. “But for these obstructions, which were quite unnecessary, the Reds would have won the game handily.”17

The memorable first game was also witnessed by a man who would see thousands of others over the next 59 years. Pat Pieper became the Cubs’ public-address announcer, a position he held until his death in 1974. Before the days of a microphone, Pieper called out the starting lineups with a megaphone. “Carrying that megaphone (it weighed 14 pounds) and walking up and down in front of the stands could really take something out of you,” Pieper said decades later. “A lot of times I lost five or six pounds during a game.”18

On that day he welcomed Cubs fans to their new home on the north side, and was part of a tradition that continues to this day.

This article appears in “Wrigley Field: The Friendly Confines at Clark and Addison” (SABR, 2019), edited by Gregory H. Wolf. To read more stories from this book online, click here.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also accessed Retrosheet.org, Baseball-Reference.com, SABR.org, and The Sporting News archive via Paper of Record.

Notes

1 George F. Will, A Nice Little Place on the North Side: Wrigley Field at One Hundred (New York: Crown Archetype, 2014).

2 James Crusinberry, “Cubs Beat Reds, 7-6, in 11th, Before 20,000 Fans,” Chicago Tribune, April 21, 1916: 19.

3 Ibid.

4 Crusinberry, “Army of Fans Awaits Call to Greet Cubs,” Chicago Tribune, April 20, 1916: 15.

5 Crusinberry, “Cubs Beat Reds.”

6 “Cincinnati Fans at Opener Today,” Chicago Tribune, April 20, 1916: 15; “Notes of Cubs’ Opener,” Chicago Tribune, April 21, 1916: 19.

7 “Notes of Cubs’ Opener.”

8 Thomas F. Scully (1870-1919) was a Cook County (Illinois) judge. See “Two Chicago Judges Taken by Death,” Chicago Tribune, September 12, 1919: 1. The Chicago Tribune reported that “several hundred snipers saw the game from the roofs and windows of the flat buildings across the street. See Cruisenberry, “Cubs Beat Reds.”

9 Page One of the Chicago Tribune, April 20, 1916.

10 Crusinberry, “Army of Fans.”

11 Crusinberry, “Cubs Beat Reds.”

12 “Notes of Cubs’ Opener.”

13 “Notes of the Game,” Cincinnati Enquirer, April 21, 1916: 6.

14 Jack Ryder, “Sad Day,” Cincinnati Enquirer, April 21, 1916: 6.

15 “Cubs Beat Reds.”

16 Ibid.

17 “Notes of the Game.,” Cincinnati Enquirer.

18 “Frank (Pat) Pieper,” The Sporting News, November 9, 1974: 54.

On the mound for the Reds was Fred Toney, a big, powerful right-hander known for his strength and arsenal of pitches.1 The Tennessee native began his pro career with Winchester of the Blue Grass League in 1908 and quickly established himself as a top hurler, winning 45 games in 1909-1910, including a 17-inning no-hitter against Lexington on May 10, 1909, in which he fanned 19 batters.

Toney made his major-league debut with the Cubs on April 15, 1911, but it wasn’t until he was claimed off waivers by the Reds in 1915 that he finally blossomed, going 17-6 with a 1.58 ERA that was second best in the NL. Only Grover Cleveland Alexander had a better ERA than Toney’s 1.98 in 1915-1916, and he was one of the circuit’s best pitchers again in 1917, going 4-1 with a 2.30 ERA prior to the May 2 tilt.

His mound opponent was Jim “Hippo” Vaughn, a 6-foot-4 left-handed behemoth known for his hard fastball and competitiveness.2 Vaughn’s pro career began a year before Toney’s, in 1907 with Corsicana of the North Texas League, and he made his major-league debut with the New York Yankees on June 19, 1908.

But, like Toney, it took a change of scenery before Vaughn became a consistent winner; from 1913, his first season with the Cubs, until 1920, his last winning season, Vaughn won 148 games and posted a 2.14 ERA, second in the NL to Alexander over that period. On May 2 Vaughn was 3-1 with a 2.25 ERA and had just beaten the Reds on April 25, striking out a season-high 11 batters in a 4-2 complete-game victory.

Conditions were less than favorable for a ballgame. It was cold and blustery as a stiff breeze blew off Lake Michigan, and the field was “soggy and slow” from recent rains.3 Jack Ryder of the Cincinnati Enquirer reported that only 2,500 brave souls were there to witness baseball history, over 2,000 less than average for Weeghman Park that year.4

Third baseman Heinie Groh led off the game for the Reds and fanned, then shortstop Larry Kopf grounded out. Greasy Neale, Cincinnati’s regular left fielder who was in center to fill in for an injured Edd Roush, belted a long drive to center field, but Cy Williams corralled it for the third out of the inning. It would be the only Cincinnati ball to leave the infield for the next nine innings. Toney retired Rolly Zeider, Harry Wolter, and Larry Doyle in order to send the game to the second.

Toney said later that he didn’t like the conditions and didn’t have his usual stuff, but he continued to baffle Cubs batters with his assortment of pitches.5 Vaughn set down Hal Chase, Jim Thorpe, and second baseman Dave Shean in order in the second. Toney ran into a spot of trouble in his half, but worked out of a jam. Fred Merkle led off with a hot liner that was speared by Groh, Williams walked with one out and advanced to second on a grounder to third, but Art Wilson, the Cubs backstop, popped out to Kopf to end the threat. It would be the only time a Cub reached second.

Both pitchers easily retired the side in the third, then Vaughn had to escape a jam of his own when he walked Groh to lead off the fourth. Kopf bounded into a double play to clear the bases, but Zeider muffed Neale’s grounder to give the Reds a runner on first with two outs. Neale attempted to steal second, but was gunned down by Wilson to end the frame.

Toney had no issues in the bottom of the fourth, and Vaughn narrowly escaped with his no-hitter intact when Thorpe clubbed a long liner down the left-field line that landed just foul. But the big southpaw set the Reds down again without allowing a hit. Williams drew another free pass in the bottom of the fifth, Les Mann lined out to left fielder Manuel Cueto, then Wilson hit a pop fly to Shean, who purposely dropped the ball in hopes of turning a double play. He retired Williams at second but Wilson was safe at first. Cubs third sacker Charlie Deal smacked a long fly to center, but Neale made a nifty running catch to retire the side.

Through six innings neither team had sniffed a hit or gotten past second base. The fans sensed what was happening and began rooting for both pitchers.6

Vaughn took the hill for the seventh and ran the count on Groh to 1-and-2 before Groh snapped and gave home-plate umpire Al Orth his unsolicited opinion about Orth’s strike zone. Groh was ejected and replaced by Gus Getz, who walked in Groh’s stead. But Kopf grounded into his second double play of the game, and Vaughn easily retired Neale. Toney dispatched the Cubs again in the bottom of the seventh, and Vaughn did the same to the Reds in the top of the eighth.

It was during the bottom of the eighth that Vaughn realized he was throwing a no-hitter.7 The Cubs lefty was so focused on keeping the game “well in hand” that he hadn’t realized he was only one inning away from tossing his first no-hitter. Toney was of the same mindset, just trying to keep the Cubs off the scoreboard until his boys finally broke through against Vaughn.8

Vaughn dispatched the Reds in the ninth, then Toney set down the Cubs in order and the game went into extra frames with both sides still without a hit. Getz led off the top of the 10th and skied a foul pop to Wilson for the first out. That brought up Larry Kopf, who had grounded out three times, including twice into rally-killing double plays. By his own admission Vaughn “grew careless” and took one chance too many.9

Kopf shot a drive between Doyle and Merkle, the latter making a diving effort to no avail. It was a clean hit and the double no-hitter was over. Though the hometown throng was disappointed, the fans gave Kopf a nice ovation for ending Vaughn’s masterpiece. Neale poked a fly ball to Williams for out number two and it looked as if Vaughn would escape with his shutout intact, but Williams misplayed Chase’s line drive and suddenly there were Reds at first and third with two outs.10 Chase stole second while Wilson wisely held the ball rather than risk Kopf scoring on a throw.

With two on and two out, Jim Thorpe topped a short grounder in front of the plate that rolled up the third-base line. Vaughn went after it, figuring Deal wouldn’t be able to race in from third in time to record the out. He also knew he wouldn’t get Thorpe, a former Olympic gold medalist, at first base, so he tried to scoop the ball to Art Wilson in an effort to nab Kopf at the plate.

Kopf slid safely past Wilson, who then dropped the ball. Chase attempted to score as well, but Wilson recovered in time to tag him out and end the inning.11 The Reds went up 1-0 and Toney needed only three outs to complete his no-hitter. He began the bottom of the 10th by fanning Larry Doyle. Up stepped Fred Merkle, the Cubs’ cleanup hitter, and he delivered a blow to left that looked as though it would not only end Toney’s no-hit bid, but also tie the score. “It looked like a home run into the left bleachers,” wrote the Commercial Tribune, “but little Mr. Cueto of Cuba dashed back until he hit the wall and then speared the ball over his head.”12

With two outs and a near miss it was up to Cy Williams to keep the Cubs alive. Williams wasn’t the hitter he’d been in 1916 when he led the National League in home runs, but he was still dangerous. In fact, he showed how dangerous he was when he fouled off two two-strike pitches, including a long line drive down the right-field line that landed a foot foul. Toney threw another ball to run the count full and some speculated he was going to walk Williams again to face the less threatening Leslie Mann, but he came back with a side-arm curve and Williams swung and missed to complete Toney’s historic no-hitter.

Never before or since have two pitchers thrown nine no-hit innings in the same contest.

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 https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/2012/02/04/. “He threw a variety of stuff,” wrote John Thorn, Major League Baseball’s official historian, “spitballs, fastballs, curves, and an overhand sinker that faded away from left-handed batters just as [Christy Mathewson’s] ‘fadeaway,’ or screwball, once had.”

2 Bill James and Rob Neyer, The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers: An Historical Compendium of Pitching, Pitchers, and Pitches (New York: Fireside, 2004), 411-412. “Big Jim Vaughn used to pitch the particular kind of ball a batter liked best just to show him that he couldn’t hit it,” Pete Alexander told Baseball Magazine in 1925, as reported by Neyer/James.

3 “The weather was bitterly cold,” wrote Jack Ryder of the Cincinnati Enquirer, “and it was a wonder that even so many fans turned out to shiver in the arctic breezes off the lake,” May 3, 1917.

4 Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org list that day’s attendance at 3,500; the Cubs averaged 4,678 fans per game at Weeghman Park in 1917.

5 “It was rather a cold day and I was not feeling in my best form when the game started,” Toney said. “I didn’t have so much stuff as I sometimes do for the first six innings.” Vaughn concurred. “The boys said [Toney] didn’t seem to have as much on the ball as usual,” Baseball Magazine, July 1917.

6 “Toney and Vaughn were both in magnificent form,” wrote Ryder, “working with the precision of a machine. As round after round went by without either side getting the suspicion of a safety the crowd became wildly excited, urging on both the great pitchers to continue their wonderful work,” Jack Ryder, Cincinnati Enquirer, May 3, 1917.

7 “I was sitting on the bench and happened to make a remark that we weren’t hitting Toney very much,” Vaughn told Baseball Magazine. “One of the fellows assented to this and then added that [the Reds] weren’t hitting me very much either. Then I recalled that they hadn’t made a safe hit off my delivery,” Baseball Magazine, July 1917.

8 “I didn’t fully realize it was a no-hit game until the ninth inning,” Toney explained later. “Then I took time to get my breath and my bearings and made up my mind to put all I had on whatever other balls I pitched.” Ibid.

9 “I had been putting a fastball over the plate for my first strike right along and put over one too many,” Vaughn explained. Ibid.

10 Rich Coberly, The No-Hit Hall of Fame: No-Hitters of the 20th Century (Newport Beach, California: Triple Play Publications, 1985), 48. “Cy scarcely had to move,” reported the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, per Coberly’s book, “but if he had advanced two steps he could have taken it in front of his belt buckle. Instead, he had to catch it at his ankles, and he muffed the ball.”

11 Cincinnati Enquirer, May 3, 1917. The Commercial Tribune reported that Vaughn’s toss hit Wilson in the shoulder and that Kopf crashed into the catcher before he scored. Kopf himself told John Thorn that (in Thorn’s words) he “stopped dead in his tracks” when he saw Vaughn shovel the ball to Wilson and it was only after he realized that Wilson was frozen with confusion that he continued home to score. “Kopf, seeing Wilson standing there like a zombie as the ball rolled a few steps away, dashed home with the run,” wrote Thorn. See Coberly, 48, and https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/2012/02/04/.

12 Coberly.

In the midst of an 18-game homestand, the Cubs (55-25) were cruising to their first pennant since 1910. Leading the New York Giants by six games, the Cubs had won five straight before manager Pat Moran’s Phillies swept them in a doubleheader a day earlier. Three years removed from their last pennant, the fourth-place Phillies (37-40) were struggling and looking forward to ending their season-long 25-game road swing and returning the City of Brotherly Love.

The weather in Chicago evoked late spring more than midsummer, resulting in a small crowd on the North Side.1 Temperatures hovered in the low 60s and the Philadelphia Inquirer noted that the “wind [was] blowing straight off the lake,” portending a pitchers’ duel in the four-year-old park located less than a mile west of Lake Michigan.2

After Tyler set down the Phillies 1-2-3 in the first, the Cubs took their swings at 28-year-old right-handed swingman Milt “Mule” Watson, whom Philadelphia had acquired during spring training from the St. Louis Cardinals. His 4-2 record thus far in 1918 improved his slate to 18-21 in parts of three campaigns. Max Flack led off with a walk, and then scampered to third on Charlie Hollocher’s grounder just beyond the reach of first baseman Fred Luderus. Les Mann’s grounder plated Flack for the game’s first run. It would be the equivalent of more than two complete regulation games before the Cubs scored again.

Mowing down the Phils, Tyler allowed his first hit, in the third, when Bert Adams singled with one out, and then encountered trouble the next frame. Cy Williams reached safely when shortstop Hollocher fumbled his grounder and moved up a station on Luderus’s one-out single. The Phils caught a break when catcher Bill Killefer dropped a third “foul-strike” with Gavvy Cravath at the plate.3 Given another chance, the NL’s most fearsome home-run hitter, en route to pacing the circuit in round-trippers for the fifth time in the last six seasons, lined a two-out single, driving in Williams while Luderus reached third. After Cravath stole second, Tyler fanned Ed Hemingway to end the threat.

The Cubs threatened in the fifth when Killefer led off with a bunt and moved to third on Flack’s one-out single, but was left stranded when “hard fate” intervened, wrote the Inquirer, and the next two batters were retired.4

The contest was unraveled as a classic Dead Ball Era pitchers’ duel. Watson held the Cubs hitless from the seventh inning to the 12th;5 Tyler yielded only five hits through the first 13 frames.6 As the game wore on, both hurlers faced pressured-packed situations with runners in scoring position. In the 12th, Cravath reached on a two-out walk, Tyler’s only free pass of the game, and stole second. Hemingway’s hard grounder looked as though it would get by second baseman Zeider, but “Bunions” made what Chicago and Philadelphia papers described as a game-saving barehanded catch and throw to first to end the frame.

The Phillies “played an uphill game all the way,” opined the Philadelphia Public Ledger, as the Cubs relentlessly attacked Watson.7 In the 13th, Fred Merkle and Dode Paskert led off with singles, putting Watson on the ropes. Merkle committed a costly boner when he was picked off second by catcher Adams after Charlie Deal missed a bunt. Deal eventually singled, but the Cubs had failed to advance a runner to third with one out. Zeider grounded into the game’s only double play to end the frame.

“Tyler’s hardest innings,” noted sportswriter I.E. Sanborn of the Chicago Tribune, were the 15th and 16th when great defense saved the game.8 Left-fielder Les Mann made a running catch of Cravath’s deep fly, robbing the slugger of extra bases, for the first out of the 15th. After Hemingway singled and moved to third on Adams’s single, Tyler retired the next two batters. In the 16th, Irish Meusel’s two-out smash with Milt Stock on second “threatened to hit the wall in deep right,” wrote Sanborn, but Flack made a running stab with his shoulder against wall.9

Sandwiched between those scoring chances was the Cubs’ best opportunity to end the game. Mann and Merkle reached with one-out singles in the 15th and moved up a station on Watson’s balk. Watson intentionally passed Paskert to load the bases. With the infield drawn in, Deal hit a grounder and Adams tagged out Mann at the plate. Watson retired Zeider for the third out.

In the 16th, umpires alerted both teams that the game would be called at 7 P.M. so that the Phillies could catch their 8 P.M. train to Pittsburgh.10 Neither Watson nor Tyler paid attention to that pronouncement and seemed to catch a second wind. Chicago squandered a chance to end the game in the 19th when Luderus snared Mann’s two-out hot liner with Flack and Hollocher on base via singles.

The game was in rarefied territory as the 21st inning got underway with Tyler and Watson still battling. In only one other game in NL history had both starters logged at least 20 innings. That occurred precisely four years earlier when the Giants’ Rube Marquard outlasted the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Babe Adams in 21 innings, 3-1, at Forbes Field. It had happened once in the AL when Philadelphia rookie Jack Coombs and Boston’s Joe Harris each went the distance in the Athletics’ 4-1 victory in 24 innings over the Americans on September 1, 1906.11

Future Hall of Famer Dave Bancroft led off the 21st with a single, after which the Phils caught a break. According to the Tribune, Williams hit a high chopper toward Merkle, who “knocked it down”; however, Tyler failed to cover first, wasting a double-play opportunity.12 Stock’s deep fly to right field enabled Bancroft to reach third, where he was stranded.

As the 7 P.M. deadline rapidly approached, the Cubs were the recipients of Dame Fortune’s blessings. Mitchell called on Turner Barber, mired in an 8-for-52 season-long slump, to pinch-hit for Zeider, hitless in eight at-bats in the game. Barber reached on a swinging bunt, when according to the Public Ledger, Watson slipped and fell and was unable to reach the ball.13 The Cubs’ luck, however, was just starting. Killefer attempted to bunt, but was struck on his trousers by a ball. Pinch-hitting for Tyler, rookie Bill McCabe, who had hit safely in only four of 27 at-bats, attempted to sacrifice. The unintentional result was a perfect bunt to the third-base side to load the bases. The ball “started foul, hit a lump of dirt, and rolled back into the diamond,” wrote Sanborn.14 Flack’s fifth hit drove in Barber for the game-winner, ending the contest in approximately four hours.15

Chicago and Philadelphia newspapers were quick to praise both teams’ excellent fielding, especially that of shortstops Bancroft and Zeider, who handled flawlessly 19 and 12 chances respectively, and keystone sacker Hemingway (15 chances). “Time and time again they chipped in with startling bits of fielding,” gushed the Inquirer.16

The story of the game, however, was the pitchers. “Tyler’s exhibition was remarkable,” opined the Public Ledger. “He pitched beautifully all day and time and time again pitched himself out of the hole by sheer nerve.”17 He faced 77 batters, yielding 13 hits and walking one while fanning eight. His only run was unearned. Tyler’s heroic effort also marked the last of 16 times that he hurled at least 10 innings in a game. Watson, who was “in more dangerous positions” throughout the afternoon, continued the Ledger, was the hard-luck loser. He gave up 19 hits, walked four (two intentionally), whiffed five, and faced 82 batters. Only two of the game’s 32 hits went for extra bases; Hemingway and Hollocher doubled for their respective clubs. The Cubs-Phillies 21-inning game was one shy of the then NL record, set on August 22, 1917, when the Brooklyn Robins beat the Pirates, 6-5;18 the aforementioned Boston-Philadelphia game was, at the time, the longest game in big-league history.

This article appears in “Wrigley Field: The Friendly Confines at Clark and Addison” (SABR, 2019), edited by Gregory H. Wolf. To read more stories from this book online, click here.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also accessed Retrosheet.org, Baseball-Reference.com, SABR.org, and The Sporting News archive via Paper of Record.

Notes

1 No attendance figure for the game is available. The “size of the crowd was down, but it was an enthusiastic one,” was noted in “Cubs Defeat Phils in 21 Inning Game,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 18, 1918: 12. The Cubs average of 4,558 spectators per game in 1919 led the NL.

2 “Cubs Defeat Phils in 21 Inning Game.”

3 “Phillies Open at Pittsburg[h],” Evening Public Ledger, July 18, 1918: 13.

4 “Cubs Defeat Phils in 21 Inning Game.”

5 “Phillies Open at Pittsburg[h].”

6 I.E. Sanborn, “Cubs Emerge Winners After Battle of 21 Innings, 2-1,” Chicago Tribune, July 18, 1918: 9.

7 “Phillies Open at Pittsburg[h].”

8 Sanborn.

9 Ibid.

10 “Cubs Defeat Phils in 21 Inning Game.”

11 “Athletics Win 24-Inning Game From Bostonians,” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 2, 1906: 1, 15.

12 Sanborn.

13 “Phillies Open at Pittsburg[h].”

14 Sanborn.

15 Box scores did not provide the length of the game. The Public Ledger noted that the game was “[O]ne of the fastest. Twenty-One full innings were squeezed into four hours. …”

16 “Cubs Defeat Phils in 21 Inning Game.”

17 “Phillies Open at Pittsburg[h].”

18 The Dodgers victory is noteworthy. It was their fourth consecutive extra-inning game (in five days). The others lasted 14, 10, and 13 innings for a total of 59 innings. Brooklyn went 1-2-1 in those contests.

On April 4, 1917, the US Senate voted in favor of President Woodrow Wilson’s request for a declaration of war against Germany. The House agreed two days later and the nation was effectively an entrant into World War I, triggered on June 28, 1914, with the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Two major factors finally helped Wilson convince Americans it was time to aid the Allies against the Central Powers. Germany reneged on an agreement to stop targeting US ships with their submarines, and its foreign minister sent a telegram asking Mexico to join it in the war in return for help regaining territory it lost to the United States in the Mexican-American War.1

Thanks to the Selective Service Act, which required men from 21 to 30 to register for military service, and 2 million volunteers, approximately 4.8 million soldiers were sent to Europe to fight the Central Powers. But General Enoch H. Crowder, the judge advocate general of the United States Army, wanted to ensure that every able-bodied man assisted in the war effort, so he issued a “work or fight” order on May 23, 1918, declaring that baseball was a “non-essential occupation,” and that baseball players had until July 1 to enlist in the military or get a job in a shipyard or defense plant. If they declined to do either, they would be inducted into the service.2

At the time of the announcement, the 1918 season was still young. The Giants had played 30 games, won 23 of them and held a four-game lead over the Cubs; the American League’s Boston Red Sox had played 31, won 19 and boasted a two-game edge over the New York Yankees and Cleveland Indians.

In July, Secretary of War Newton D. Baker officially enacted the work-or-fight order and baseball had a problem on its hands. Washington Senators catcher Eddie Ainsmith lost an appeal of his draft eligibility on July 19 and was expected to join the military. Two days later AL President Ban Johnson ordered the league to cease its operations.3 But two coalitions that included Red Sox owner Harry Frazee, Washington Senators owner Clark Griffith, and all eight National League magnates persuaded Crowder and Baker to allow the season to continue until September 1 with the World Series to be completed by September 15.4

By the end of July, the Cubs had taken over first place in the NL, holding a 3½-half-game lead over the Giants, who had the only chance of catching them. The next closest team, the Pittsburgh Pirates, was already 11½ games off the pace and the rest were at least 16½ games back.

By mid-August the Cubs had stretched their lead to six games over the Giants and they extended it to eight with a doubleheader sweep over the Phillies on August 17 and a Giants loss to the Cincinnati Reds. Time was running out on John McGraw’s men and the hole was even deeper at the end of play on August 23, when the Giants sat 10½ games off the pace with a little more than a week left in the season.

All the Cubs needed to do to clinch the pennant was take both games of a doubleheader against Brooklyn at Chicago’s Weeghman Park on August 24. The first step was easier than it should have been against pitcher Burleigh Grimes, who had won 10 consecutive decisions, including nine starts. But Chicago rolled to a convincing 8-3 win in the first tilt behind a 15-hit attack led by Charlie Picks’ three safeties, and a nifty outing by Claude Hendrix, who earned his 19th win against only six losses. The second affair pitted Cubs rookie hurler Speed Martin against veteran right-hander Larry Cheney.

Martin had made his season debut on August 3 and was making only his third start of the season and fifth of his young career. In his first six appearances, three as a reliever, the six-foot righty was brilliant, going 3-1 with a 0.68 ERA, and had just tossed a three-hit shutout against the Boston Braves five days earlier. He also helped secure a 3-2 win over the Giants with an inning of scoreless relief just a day before.

Cheney, on the other hand, was in his seventh full big-league season. Having debuted on September 9, 1911, the spitball artist threw 10 scoreless innings for the Cubs in a cup of coffee before taking the NL by storm in 1912 with a league-leading 26 wins. He won at least 20 games in his first three seasons, going 67-42 from 1912 to 1914, but his days of dominance were all but over by 1918, and he was 11-11 with a slightly-worse-than-league-average 2.83 ERA going into the August 24 contest.

Just as it had in game one, Brooklyn struck first, this time with a run in the top of the third. Catcher Otto Miller doubled, Cheney moved him to third with a sacrifice bunt, and Miller came home on a wild pitch. It could have been worse had Pick not made a “spectacular stab” of Jimmy Johnston’s line drive that saved Martin from another base hit.5 Johnston had also been robbed of a hit in the first game when center fielder Dode Paskert made a nice running grab on a shot destined for extra bases.

Losing a second hit in as many games was too much for Johnston and he lost his composure. “This peeved Jimmy so much,” wrote the Chicago Tribune’s I.E. Sanborn, “that he threw the ice water pail out of the Robins’ dugout and made them all go dry the rest of the day.”6 Unfortunately Brooklyn’s bats also went dry and they didn’t score the rest of the day, either. Meanwhile, the 32-year-old Cheney was channeling his younger self and had a shutout going until the bottom of the seventh, when the Cubs plated two to take the lead.

Fred Merkle, the former Giant who helped the Cubs win the 1908 NL pennant with a baserunning blunder that earned him the nickname “Bonehead,” followed a Paskert out with a free pass, then tied the score at 1-1 on a Pick two-bagger to left. Pick scampered to third on a wild pitch and, after Cheney retired Charlie Deal for the second out, Brooklyn manager Wilbert Robinson ordered an intentional walk to catcher Bill Killefer.

Killefer was a weak-hitting catcher with a .229 career average going into the 1918 season, who was hitting .220 on August 18 before he left the team for a fishing trip near his boyhood home in Paw, Michigan. But he was an outstanding defensive catcher, prompting Sanborn to quip, “If [Killefer] is as good at catching fish as baseballs there are some vacant ‘homes’ in the depths of Paw Lake.”7

The Cubs backstop was 1-for-2 with a strikeout against Cheney in his two previous at-bats and the even more anemic Martin was on deck, making Robinson’s decision easy. But Killefer spoiled the strategy when he offered at ball four and “pickled” it for a single over second, “driving in the run that would have been enough to win.”8

Chicago added a run in the bottom of the eighth for good measure and the 3-1 victory earned the Cubs their first pennant since 1910. “As nearly as can be doped out of the tangle produced by the curtailed schedule,” waxed Sanborn, “the Cubs drove the ultimate spike into the 1918 National league pennant yesterday. … The McGrawites cannot play enough games to catch up even if the Cubs lose the rest of their own battles.”9

Indeed. The Cubs went 84-45 in the abbreviated season and finished 10½ games ahead of the Giants before losing the World Series in six games to the Boston Red Sox.

This article appears in “Wrigley Field: The Friendly Confines at Clark and Addison” (SABR, 2019), edited by Gregory H. Wolf. To read more stories from this book online, click here.
  

Sources

In addition to the sources listed below, the author also consulted Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, and The Sporting News.

Notes

1 US State Department’s “Office of the Historian” web page (history.state.gov/milestones/1914-1920/wwi); The 1914 Allies, Russia, France, and Great Britain, were joined by Italy in 1915, Romania in 1916, and the United States in 1917. The Central Powers were originally Germany and Austria-Hungary before they were joined by the Ottoman Empire in 1914 and Bulgaria in 1915.

2 Eugene C. Murdock, Ban Johnson: Czar of Baseball (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982), 124; “Baseball May Stop if New Order Stands,” New York Times, May 24, 1918.

3 J.V. Fitz Gerald, “Baseball’s Fate Up to Majors’ Meetings,” Washington Post, July 21, 1918.

4 Michael Lynch, Harry Frazee, Ban Johnson and the Feud That Nearly Destroyed the American League, (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2008), 51. If the sporting world thought it was immune to the war it was served a heaping dose of reality in mid-July when Lieutenant John W. Overton, a former Yale track star who held the world record in the indoor mile at 4:16, was killed in action in France during the Second Battle of the Marne.

5 I.E. Sanborn, “It’s All Over! Flag for Cubs; Land 2 Games,” Chicago Tribune, August 25, 1918.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid. Recording a hit during an intentional walk was much more common in the Deadball Era than it is today, especially now that pitches aren’t even thrown per 2017 rules. But if you’re wondering how the fourth ball was close enough to hit, consider that Cheney led the National League in wild pitches six times in nine seasons and walked over 100 men in a season three times, including a league-leading 140 in 1914.

9 Ibid.

When players arrived at Weeghman Park for a Sunday afternoon game to conclude a three-game series, there was little incentive to play other than pride (and the offseason contract) as the season wound down. Skipper Fred Mitchell’s Cubs (72-60), in third place, 19½ games behind the front-running Cincinnati Reds, were making their season finale in the six-year-old steel and concrete ballpark, originally built for the Whales of the Federal League, to finish a 14-game homestand. The sixth-place Braves (54-78), whom manager George Stallings had guided to an unlikely World Series title five years earlier, had reached the end of a grueling 18-game road swing, and were playing on an opponent’s diamond for the 25th time in their last 28 contests. The Braves could be forgiven for looking forward to their Pullman sleeper coaches on their evening train ride back to the Hub, while the Cubs undoubtedly regretted leaving their homes and the friendly confines to travel to St. Louis and kick off a season-ending road trip.

The Cubs had been widely predicted to capture their second consecutive pennant in 1919, but their season had not unfolded as anticipated. One of the reasons for the disappointments was starting pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander. Once considered the best hurler in the NL, “Old Pete” had won 190 games in seven campaigns with the Philadelphia Phillies (1911-1917), but had made only three appearances for the Cubs in 1918 before he was called to duty and served on the front lines in the World War. His harrowing experiences in a field artillery unit had left him shellshocked, deaf in one ear from a shrapnel injury, and with a damaged right arm from firing howitzers. He also developed alcoholism and epilepsy. Not in baseball shape as the season started, Alexander struggled and missed four weeks with arm pain. Since his return on July 15, he had looked like hurler who had won 30 or more in three straight seasons and was victorious in 10 of his last 16 decisions with a 1.49 ERA to improve his slate to 14-11 (1.87). Toeing the rubber for the Beantown nine was right-hander Red Causey (13-6, 3.87 ERA), acquired along with three others on August 1 in a blockbuster trade with the New York Giants for southpaw Art Nehf.

A crowd of 5,000 braved the threatening, dark skies to take in the last Cubs game of the decade. The game emerged as a typical pitchers’ duel of the Deadball Era. The Braves squandered a scoring chance in the first when Charlie Pick reached on first baseman Fred Merkle’s error with one out and moved to third on Ray Powell’s single before Alexander retired the next two batters. The Cubs also threatened in the first when Charlie Hollocher belted a doubled against the wall in right with one out, followed by Buck Herzog’s walk, but could not push a run across.

Both the Tribune and Boston Herald noted that the players went about their business with alacrity, hurrying to and from their positions between innings, almost as if they were attempting to complete the game in record time.2 They also declared that it was Alexander’s goal to complete in a game in less than an hour. Cubs backstop Bill Killefer, opined Crusinberry, “gave the sign unusually fast and Alex tossed the ball up almost before the sign were given.”3

While Alexander escaped a triple by Walter Holke in the fourth, Causey had yielded only one hit until Old Pete came within “four feet” of blasting a home run, in the fifth.4 Powell fielded the carom off the wall in right field and held Alexander to a long single.

After the Braves squandered Tony Boeckel’s leadoff single in the sixth, the Cubs got on the board when Merkle reached on a surprise bunt and advanced to third on Turner Barber’s double. Up stepped Charlie Deal, whose two-run home run in the first game of the doubleheader the day before accounted for all of the runs in the Cubs’ victory. He lined a double to left-center field, driving in both runners.

Employing a bit of “trickery,” according to Crusinberry, the Cubs tacked on another run in the eighth.5 Facing Al Demaree, who had replaced Causey to start the frame, the Cubs loaded the bases on a walk by Hollocher and singles by Herzog and Merkle with no outs. After Barber fanned, Deal hit a short popup to the grass behind second base. Hollocher bluffed a dash home; when keystone sacker Charlie Pick took the bait and hesitated, Hollocher sprinted home, sliding across the plate as Pick’s throw sailed high.

Alexander continued heaving the ball over the plate in the ninth, daring the Braves to hit the orb. Powell led off with a double, but was stranded at third when Alexander retired Dixie Carroll to complete the shutout in 58 minutes.

The contest was remarkably swift even in an era when games averaged approximately 1 hour and 58 minutes to complete.6 Alexander finished with a six-hitter, fanned four and walked none while facing 33 batters. The Cubs collected nine hits. All told, 67 batters came to the plate; stated differently, a player stepped into the batter’s box every 52 seconds. On this same day, Sherry Smith of the Brooklyn Robins defeated the Cincinnati Reds, 3-1, in the Queen City in 55 minutes. One week later, on September 28, the New York Giants’ Jesse Barnes tossed a complete game against the Philadelphia Phillies in the Polo Grounds in just 51 minutes, in the fastest nine-inning game in major-league history, a record that will presumably never be broken. Remarkably, 70 batters came to the plate in that game; or once every 43.1 seconds, which is about the time between pitches in the contemporary game.

A week later, the 32-year-old Pete Alexander tossed his second consecutive shutout, 2-0, against the Reds to conclude his first full season with the Cubs since his blockbuster trade with a disappointing 16-11 record. However, he led the NL in ERA (1.72) for the fourth time and shutouts (9) for the sixth time. Alexander rebounded in 1920 to win an NL-best 27 games and once again paced the circuit in ERA (1.91), but struggled the rest of his career with alcoholism and the psychological effects of the war. He retired after the 1930 season with a career record of 373-208, including 90 shutouts.

This article appears in “Wrigley Field: The Friendly Confines at Clark and Addison” (SABR, 2019), edited by Gregory H. Wolf. To read more stories from this book online, click here.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also accessed Retrosheet.org, Baseball-Reference.com, and SABR.org.

Notes

1 James Crusinberry, “Cubs Close the Season with Victory Over Braves, Chicago Tribune, September 22, 1919: 15.

2 “Alexander Wastes No Time by Trimming Tribe,” Boston Herald, September 22, 1919: 10.

3 Crusinberry.

4 “Alexander Wastes No Time by Trimming Tribe.”

5 Crusinberry.

6 Data about length of games for the 1919 season is not complete. The average for 1917 was 1:51; for 1920 1:51; between 1910 and 1933, the average length of games fluctuated between 1:51 and 1:59. See baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/misc.shtml.

More than 6,600 fans assembled at Cubs Park for a contest between the top high-school teams of Chicago and New York and a championship aura prevailed. New York’s High School of Commerce had advanced to the New York City championship by defeating Flushing (Queens) High School 7-2 in the semifinals and Commercial (Brooklyn) High School in the finals, 6-5. Lane High School had taken the Chicago championship by defeating rival Englewood High School.

Prior to departing for Chicago from New York’s Grand Central Station, the 16 New York players had practiced under the watchful eye of Coach Harry Kane at Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field. The entourage going to Chicago included Kane, the players, and the school’s director of athletics, A.K. Aldinger.

When they arrived in Chicago, the host team, led by the school band, accompanied them on a parade through the city to their hotel. While in Chicago the boys from Commerce stayed at the Hotel Sherman. Sponsors of the event included the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News and William Veeck Sr., president of the Chicago Cubs.

At Wrigley, the Lane team was led on to the field by their school’s marching band and throughout the game music was provided by Jack Bramhall’s jazz band. The partisan locals were urged on in the cheering by three of Lane’s top cheerleaders, and taking the field to perform was the famous vaudevillian jazz dancer Joe Frisco, known for, among other things, telling his audiences, “Don’t applaud, folks, just throw money.”

Commerce scored three first-inning runs off Tom Walsh to take the early lead but Lane tied things up in the third inning. Commerce regained the lead with a run in the fourth inning, and a pair of fifth-inning runs made the score 6-3. But Lane pulled to within one run with a pair of fifth-inning runs. Walsh, Lane’s star pitcher, left the game with a sore arm after five innings, and the Windy City boys were somewhat hampered as his replacement, Norris Ryrholm, generally toiled at shortstop or behind the plate. On this day, he had caught the first five innings.

Most of the game’s players were not heard of again, including New York’s battery of Jacobs and McLaughlin. Jacobs scattered 12 hits, and catcher McLaughlin, who was hurt in a collision in the sixth inning, momentarily left for a courtesy runner but returned to catch the final four innings. And then there was the Chicago shortstop with the melodic name of Salvatore Pasquinelli. Long-term baseball fame would elude him as well.

The star of the game was “Gherig”2, that 17-year-old who played first base for the Easterners. He had contributed extra-base hits in each of his squad’s final two games in New York and was highly heralded. As the ninth inning began, Commerce led 8-6, although the Midwesterners were outhitting them. “Gherig,” hitless to that point with two walks in four plate appearances, drove the ball over the fence atop the right-field wall with the bases full. The ball landed on Sheffield Avenue and came to rest on a porch across the street. The grand slam ended the scoring. The article in the New York Times indicated “Gherig” had been “touted as the Babe Ruth of the high schools in New York.”3

After the game, the players from both teams were escorted to the Olympic Theater, where they saw the play Poker Ranch.

Twelve years later, the player whose grand slam broke the game open returned to Chicago for the World Series. By that point Lou Gehrig was in his ninth season with the New York Yankees and was batting behind Babe Ruth. On October 1, 1932, Gehrig hit two homers at Wrigley Field, as did Ruth as the Yankees won 7-5 to take a commanding 3-0 lead in the World Series. They completed the sweep the next day. It was the last time that Ruth and Gehrig would be together on a championship team.

(Click image to enlarge)

This article appears in “Wrigley Field: The Friendly Confines at Clark and Addison” (SABR, 2019), edited by Gregory H. Wolf. To read more stories from this book online, click here.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also consulted:

Crusinberry, James. “New York Preps Down Lane Tech in Hitfest, 12-6, Gherig Swats Homer with the Bases Loaded,” Chicago Tribune, June 27, 1920: 2-1.

Crusinberry. “Lane Plans Noisy Welcome for New York Prep Champs,” Chicago Tribune, June 24, 1920: 15.

Box score: Chicago Tribune via Newspapers.com

Notes

1 James Crusinberry. “Englewood and Lane Meet Tuesday for Championship,” Chicago Tribune, June 19, 1920: 13.

2 Gehrig’s name was often misspelled in newspaper articles during his high school years. The proper spelling was always Gehrig.

3 “Commerce Team Wins,” New York Times, June 27, 1920: Sports 2.

Given the gravity of the sandal encompassing baseball, it’s no surprise that a late-season contest between two second-division clubs received scant copy, even in local newspapers. The fifth-place Cubs (74-77), whom manager Fred Mitchell had guided to a pennant two years earlier, were 16½ games behind the Brooklyn Robins, and had lost five of their last seven games. Skipper Branch Rickey’s Redbirds (73-78), one game behind the Cubs in sixth place, were playing their 23rd consecutive game on the road.

The pitching matchup was a classic case of youth versus experience. Toeing the rubber for the North Siders was 33-year-old Pete Alexander, whose 26-14 slate thus far in ’20 had pushed his career record to 234-114. Suffering from a sore right arm and loss of hearing, the results of his service in a field artillery unit in World War I, Old Pete was battling alcoholism and epilepsy as he laid claim to be the league’s best pitcher, who had once won 30 or more games in three consecutive seasons as a Philadelphia Phillie (1915-1917). His opponent was hard-throwing Jesse Haines, a 26-year-old rookie, who had developed into a dependable workhorse despite a lackluster 13-19 record. (Haines was not yet the knuckleballer for which he is best known as being.)

On a cool, autumnal day with temperatures in the 50s, a paltry crowd about 600 was on hand for a Friday afternoon of baseball at the intersection of Clark and Addison, where spectators were treated to one of the best-pitched games of the season.2 “[The] players on each side hustled and battled as if they grand jury was watching them,” remarked sportswriter James Crusinberry in the Chicago Tribune, invoking the legal turmoil encompassing baseball.3

Defensive miscues resulted in each team’s initial run.4 Rogers Hornsby, en route to leading the circuit in batting (.370) for the first of six consecutive seasons and seven times in his storied career, laced a two-out single that center fielder Dode Paskert bobbled, enabling Milt Stock to race home from second in the opening frame. In the second, the Cubs’ Fred Merkle led off by getting hit by a pitch, stole second with two outs, and then scored on Stock’s errant throw to first from the hot corner on Charlie Deal’s grounder.

Alexander, a capable hitter, helped his own cause in the fifth. After William Marriott lined a two-out double down the left-field foul line, Old Pete slapped a single over second base to drive in his career-best 14th run and give the Redbirds the lead. In the next inning, the Cubs wasted a leadoff single by Zeb Terry, who was caught stealing following Turner Barber’s foul out on a bunt. Merkle followed with a double in the left-center gap, but was left stranded.

The Cardinals tied the game, 2-2, in the eighth on Stock’s one-out single driving in Hal Janvrin, who had reached on a fielder’s choice and stole second. On the play Stock advanced to second on the throw home, but Hornsby and Germany Schultz came up empty against Old Pete.

Haines, who had yielded six hits through six innings, commenced one of the best stretches of his eventual 19-year Hall of Fame career. He held the Cubs hitless for 9⅔ innings (and walked three) until Marriott singled with one out in the 16th. The only problem for the Cardinals was Alexander, who bent, but did not break.

The Cardinals squandered excellent chances to take the lead in the ninth, 10th, 12th, and 16th innings, but could not find a clutch hit. Doc Lavan led off the ninth with a laser that bounced off Alexander’s chest, reported the St. Louis Star and Times.5 Old Pete recovered to field the ball but his throw was late to first. Lavan moved up a station on a sacrifice bunt, but was left stranded. Heinie Mueller walked to lead off the next inning and then advanced to second on Stock’s single, bringing Hornsby to the plate. After Alexander punched out Hornsby, he walked Schultz to load the bases, but retired Lavan to end the threat. The 12th inning might have been the most exciting. The Redbird loaded the bases on singles by Mueller and Stock sandwiched around Alexander’s throwing error on Janvrin’s sacrifice bunt. Alexander dispatched the next three hitters on routine popups, including Hornsby’s fly to shallow right with no outs. After squandering Hornsby’s leadoff single in the 15th, Haines and Mueller lined consecutive one-out singles in the 16th, only to come up empty yet again. Thankfully Rickey was a well-known religious man; other skippers would have probably let loose profanity-laced invective by this point.

After Alexander worked around a two-out single by Lavan in the 17th, Babe Twombly singled to center, the first Cubs leadoff hitter to reach base since the eighth inning. Haines, who had pitched into extra innings three other times this season, including tossing 13 innings in a heartbreaking 3-0 loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates in his second start of the season, could be forgiven for tiring. After he fanned Terry, Barber rapped a single to push Twombly to third. Haines intentionally walked Merkle to load the bases and set up a play at any base. To the plate stepped Paskert, hitless in his previous six trips to the plate. With the outfield playing in, Paskert singled to left to drive in the winning run, ending the game in 2 hours and 45 minutes.

Paskert’s hit secured Alexander’s league-leading 27th victory. The 17-inning outing was the longest in Old Pete’s career, though he was far from at his best. He yielded 16 hits and walked three while facing 69 batters, yet surrendered only one earned run. In the last dominant season in his Hall of Fame career, Alexander also paced the senior circuit in ERA (1.91), innings (363⅓), complete games (33), and strikeouts (173). Haines’s career-longest 16⅓-inning outing ended in a bitter loss, his 20th, in a game he probably should have won had his teammates connected off Alexander when it most counted. He faced 59 batters, fanned eight, walked four, and surrendered 10 hits; two of the three runs off him were earned. Haines, who ultimately played for the Cardinals for 18 seasons, leading them to five pennants and three World Series titles, concluded the season with an NL-most 47 appearances and a career-best 301⅔ innings. Given the moniker “Old Jess” in his later years, Haines retired as the franchise leader in wins (210), complete games (209), appearances as a pitcher (554), and innings pitched (3203⅔).

The pitching adversaries in this game teamed up in one of the most famous games in Cardinals and World Series history on October 10, 1926. Facing the New York Yankees in Game Seven at Yankee Stadium, Haines departed with a 3-2 lead, with the bases loaded and two outs in the seventh, the knuckles on his right hand bleeding from his mesmerizing hard floater. Alexander, whom the Cardinals had acquired on June 22 that season, entered in what is regarded as one of the best relief appearances in the history of the Fall Classic. He fanned Tony Lazzeri to end the threat, then set down six of the next seven batters, issuing only a walk to Babe Ruth in the ninth to secure the Cardinals’ first world championship.

This article appears in “Wrigley Field: The Friendly Confines at Clark and Addison” (SABR, 2019), edited by Gregory H. Wolf. To read more stories from this book online, click here.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also accessed Retrosheet.org, Baseball-Reference.com, and SABR.org.

Notes

1 “High Baseball Court Favored by St. Louis Men,” St. Louis Star and Times, October 2, 1920: 4.

2 James Crusinberry, “Cubs Go 17 Innings to Beat Cards, 3-3; Aleck Mound Hero,” Chicago Tribune, October 2, 1920: 15.

3 Ibid.

4 Neither BaseballReference.com or Retrosheet.org has the play-by-play for this game; however, a detailed play-by-play is available at “Haines Battles With Alexander in Chicago Park,” St. Louis Star and Times, October 1, 1920: 20.

5 Ibid.

Philadelphia batters had 26 hits, while the Cubs hitters mustered 25. (The 51 hits in the game also smashed the existing record, set on June 9, 1901, when the New York Giants and Cincinnati Reds collected 49 hits as the New Yorkers beat the Reds, 25-13.4) The Phillies and Cubs pitchers faced a total of 125 batters and walked 21 of them. Jimmy Ring started the game for the Phillies, and Tony Kaufmann took the mound for Chicago.

The game began normally enough. With one out in the top of the first, Philadelphia’s Frank Parkinson singled and was forced at second on a Cy Williams grounder to first. Williams was then caught stealing. Three up, three down. Chicago’s Cliff Heathcote led off the bottom of the first with a single to center. He moved up two bases on two groundballs and scored on Ray Grimes’s single to center. Philadelphia sent nine batters to the plate in the top of the second, and with four singles, two Cubs errors, and a walk, the Phillies scored three unearned runs.

Chicago then erupted for 10 runs in the bottom of the second. With two outs and men on first and second, Phillies third baseman Russ Wrightstone dropped a pop fly in foul territory off the bat of Heathcote. The floodgates opened, as Heathcote walked to load the bases and the next eight batters also reached. Hack Miller and Bob O’Farrell both homered, and the Cubs got six hits and three walks. The Phillies made two errors, and all 10 runs were unearned. After two innings of play, Chicago led, 11-3. Philadelphia responded with two runs in the third and another in the fourth. The score was now 11-6.

A few other records were tied in this hitfest. Chicago right fielder Marty Callaghan tied a record for most times facing a pitcher in one inning. In the top of the fourth, he led off with a single to right. The Cubs sent 19 batters to the plate, and the second time up, Callaghan stroked a second single to center, driving in two runs. He made the last out of the inning, striking out. As if this weren’t enough, the Cubs pushed 14 runs across the plate (12 earned) in the fourth inning. This tied a record set on July 6, 1920, when the New York Yankees scored 14 runs in the fifth inning of a 17-0 shutout against the Washington Senators. Kaiser Wilhelm, the Philadelphia manager, finally pulled Ring when Heathcote singled with the bases loaded and only one out, driving in the second and third runs of the inning. Lefty Weinert came in and proceeded to pitch batting practice to the Cubs, who collected two singles, four doubles, a walk, a hit batsman, and a home run (Miller’s second of the game) off him in the inning. Suddenly it was 25-6 and the game was not even official yet. Weinert was battered but stayed in to pitch 4⅔ innings and finish the game for Philadelphia.

Chicago added another run in the sixth on a double by Heathcote and an RBI single by Charlie Hollocher. In the eighth and ninth the Phillies made the game appear closer than it was. They scored eight runs in the eighth and six in the ninth, almost making an impossible comeback.

Chicago used five pitchers. Starter Kaufmann pitched only four innings but was credited with the win. George Stueland pitched three innings, allowing three runs. Uel Eubanks started the eighth but lasted only two-thirds of an inning. Ed Morris relieved him with two outs, the bases loaded, and five Philadelphia runs already in. Frank Withrow greeted Morris with a base-clearing double. If the save was an official statistic in those days (it was not), Tiny Osborne would have earned one after relieving the ineffective Morris in the ninth inning. Osborne allowed two earned runs on three hits and two walks, but struck out the side, including Bevo LeBourveau to end the game.

Philadelphia left 16 runners on base. (Chicago left 9.) The Cubs had eight doubles and three home runs. Philadelphia had an amazing 20 singles as part of its 26-hit attack. Wrightstone led the Phillies with a 4-for-7 afternoon, scoring three runs and driving in four. For Chicago, Heathcote was perfect, 5-for-5 plus two walks. He scored five of the Cubs’ runs and collected four RBIs. Hollocher, who followed Heathcote in the batting order, knocked in six runs with his 3-for-5 performance. Hack Miller added two singles to his two home runs; he scored three times and drove in six runs.

Despite allowing 16 runs in 3⅓ innings, Ring’s ERA rose only slightly, from 4.22 to 4.44. He had faced 28 Chicago batters and allowed 12 hits and 5 walks, but the Philadelphia errors meant that 10 of the 16 runs off him were unearned. He and Weinert had “endured a terrific mauling.”5 In all, 21 of the 49 runs were unearned, as Philadelphia committed four errors and Chicago had five.

The game lasted 3 hours and 1 minute. Frank Schreiber of the Chicago Tribune wrote that “cries from various parts of the park were imploring for a ‘touchdown,’ while others besought the players to ‘shoot another basket.’”6 The previous record for runs in a game was 44, set on July 12, 1890, when the Brooklyn Ward’s Wonders beat the Buffalo Bisons, 28-16.

This article appears in “Wrigley Field: The Friendly Confines at Clark and Addison” (SABR, 2019), edited by Gregory H. Wolf. To read more stories from this book online, click here.

Sources

In addition to the sources mentioned in the Notes, the author consulted baseball-reference.com, mlb.com, and retrosheet.org.

Notes