As a result, John McGraw, the Giants’ manager, minority owner, and noted hater of the American League, could no longer abide the Yankees. It was not enough for him that he had led the Giants to consecutive World Series triumphs over his despised rivals in 1921 and 1922, including holding the vaunted Sultan of Swat to a .188 batting average with no home runs in a four-game sweep in the latter Series. He wanted the Yankees gone and persuaded majority owner Horace Stoneham to banish them in the hope that the team would falter and fold. When McGraw found out that the Yankees’ new stadium would be built in the Bronx, right across the Harlem River from the Polo Grounds, he gleefully crowed, “They are going up to Goatville. And before long they will be lost sight of. A New York team should be based on Manhattan Island.”1

Although McGraw was an innovator who had a long, successful career in baseball, his assessment of the Yankees’ new home and the team’s future could not have been more in error. The $2.5 million structure was situated on a 10-acre plot, and it took 500 workmen 11 months to complete “the first ballpark to be referred to as a stadium” just in time for opening day of the 1923 season.2 In light of its size and price tag, the New York Times rhapsodized:

Down on the Potomac, close by the National Capitol, they are thinking about erecting an impressive monument to the national game of baseball. But in the busy borough of the Bronx … the real monument to baseball will be unveiled this afternoon — the new Yankee Stadium … comprising in its broad reaches of concrete and steel the last word in baseball arenas.3

Everyone who was someone, along with a host of anyones — more than 25,000 of whom were unable to gain admission to the sold-out stadium — wanted to be part of the grand opening on April 18, 1923. The Yankees gave the official attendance that day as 74,200, but later amended that number to 62,200.4 The list of dignitaries present included Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, New York Governor Al Smith, and New York City Mayor John Hylan.

John Philip Sousa directed the Seventh Regiment Band as it marched to the center-field flagpole, where New York manager Miller Huggins and Boston skipper Frank Chance raised the American flag and the Yankees’ 1922 pennant as the band played “The Star-Spangled Banner.” After Governor Smith threw the ceremonial first ball to Yankees catcher Wally Schang, it was time to play ball. New York hurler Bob Shawkey threw the first pitch in Yankee Stadium history, a ball high and inside, to Schang with Chick Fewster at bat for Boston.

Another notable moment took place in the top of the second inning, when Red Sox first baseman George Burns got the first hit in stadium history. Burns then attempted to garner the first stolen base of the day, but he was gunned down at second base by Schang. Second baseman Aaron Ward made the first base hit for the home team when he singled in the third. After the game Burns received a box of cigars and Ward received 50 “ropes” [cigars] for their landmark hits.5

Ruth, whose popularity had made this new stadium both possible and necessary, naturally provided the day’s biggest thrill as the Yankees scored all four of their runs in the third inning. Shawkey and Whitey Witt had reached base on consecutive singles, and Joe Dugan followed with a base hit of his own to drive in the first run. The next batter to step to the plate, with runners at first and third, was The Bambino.

Ruth was seeking redemption after a miserable 1922 season in which he had batted .315 with 35 homers after hitting .378 and clouting 59 round-trippers in 1921; there was also the cloud of that .188 World Series performance hanging over his head. Ruth knew “[t]he talk was that he was boozing it up a lot and couldn’t be managed, and maybe he was through.”6 He had spent the offseason walking the straight and narrow and working his way back into playing shape. In spite of his efforts, he had not performed well in spring-training exhibition games, and he told his teammates, as they left the clubhouse on Opening Day, “I’d give a year off my life to hit one today.”7

Ruth now had his second opportunity of the day to deliver the desired blow. He fouled off Red Sox pitcher Howard Ehmke’s first pitch, took a ball, hit another pitch foul, and watched ball two go by. Then Ehmke left a letter-high curveball over the plate that Ruth ripped several rows up into the bleachers for a three-run blast that gave the Yankees a 4-0 lead. As he crossed home plate, Ruth “lifted his Kelley and smiled from ear to ear as he faced the multitude and made those graceful bows rehearsed so many times in his great season of 1921.”8

Ever the showman, and often a bit of a huckster, Ruth afterward asserted that his blast had been forecast earlier in the week. He claimed that Hendrik Willem van Loon, author of The Story of Mankind, had given him a silver dollar for good luck and had promised him, “You’ll get a homer in the third inning with two on base.”9 The fact that the certainty expressed in this story did not exactly jibe with Ruth’s willingness to sacrifice a year of his life for an Opening Day homer did not faze The Big Bam.

Ruth’s clout was the climax of the game, though the Yankees did threaten to score again in the fourth inning. Bob Meusel led off the frame with a double, but Ehmke fielded Schang’s bunt and nailed Meusel at third base. After Ward struck out, Everett Scott, playing in his 987th consecutive game, delivered a double of his own.10 Schang tried to score from first base but was gunned down at home on a nice play from right fielder Shano Collins to first baseman Burns, who fired the relay throw to catcher Al DeVormer.

The Red Sox scored their lone run in the top of the seventh inning when Shawkey walked Burns and Norm McMillan drove him in with a triple. It was the only hiccup of the afternoon for Shawkey, who pitched a complete-game three-hitter to earn the first win in Yankee Stadium history.

The final noteworthy event occurred in the ninth inning, with Burns batting for Boston, when fans from the bleachers scaled the outfield wall and surrounded Ruth in right field. Home-plate umpire Tom Connolly stopped the game but soon realized “the futility of trying to clear the outskirts. Accordingly, Ruth had plenty of comrades in right when the game closed.”11

The Yankees emerged victorious in their 1923 debut, and everyone seemed certain that Ruth was back on track. However, the New York Times summarized the importance of the day by stating, “But the game, after all, was only an incident of a busy afternoon. The stadium was the thing. For the Yankee owners it was the realization of a dream long cherished. For the fans it was something which they had never seen before in baseball.”12 Perhaps to the chagrin of McGraw and Stoneham, the Times added, “The Yankees’ new home, besides being beautiful and majestic, is practical. It was emptied yesterday of its 74,000 in quicker time than the Polo Grounds ever was.”13

After slugging his Opening Day home run, Ruth had referred to his offseason training regimen and abstinence from his vices, saying, “I guess there must be something in that old gag about virtue being its own reward.”14 By the end of the 1923 season, the tenants of the new “beautiful, majestic, and practical” baseball cathedral called Yankee Stadium would be World Series champions for the first time after defeating the denizens of their previous home, McGraw’s Giants, in six games. Ruth batted .393 and led the league with 41 homers in the regular season. He redeemed himself in the World Series as well by battering Giants pitching for a .368 average and three home runs. It was indeed quite a reward.

Notes

1 Harvey Frommer, “Remembering the First Game at Yankee Stadium April 18, 1923,” travel-watch.com/remembering1stgameatyankeestad1.htm, accessed May 18, 2018.

2 Ibid.

3 “Yanks’ New Stadium to Be Opened Today: Record Crowd Expected to Witness Dedication of $2,500,000 Baseball Arena,” New York Times, April 18, 1923: 17.

4 Robert Weintraub, The House That Ruth Built: A New Stadium, the First Yankees Championship, and the Redemption of 1923 (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2011), 17-18. According to Weintraub, a boxing match was held at Yankee Stadium in May for which 10,000 extra seats were placed on the field. The total number of tickets printed for the match was 70,000, which indicated that the current capacity for baseball games was approximately 60,000. Yankees business manager Ed Barrow then admitted that he had added standing-room fans to his original estimate and amended his Opening Day figure to 62,200. Weintraub writes that even this figure is “probably still exaggerated, but [it was] nevertheless by far the largest crowd in the sport’s history,”

5 Ed Cunningham, “Echoes from That Babe Ruth Swat,” Boston Herald, April 19, 1923: 14.

6 John Durant, “April 1923: First Day at Yankee Stadium,” si.com/vault/1963/04/22/602983/april-1923-first-day-at-yankee-stadium, accessed May 18, 2018.

7 Weintraub, 27.

8 “The Paying Colonels Draw Dividend When King George Whacks,” Boston Herald, April 19, 1923: 14.

9 “Ruth Says Van Loon Predicted Home Run,” Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican, April 19, 1923: 6.

10 Everett Scott played in a major-league record 1,307 consecutive games between June 20, 1916, and May 5, 1925. His record would eventually be broken by another Yankees player, a rookie who had debuted in 1923 but had played in only 13 games and had been left off the team’s playoff roster. Lou Gehrig would eventually shatter Scott’s record by playing in 2,130 consecutive games.

11 Cunningham, “Echoes from That Babe Ruth Swat.”

12 “74,200 See Yankees Open New Stadium; Ruth Hits Home Run,” New York Times, April 19, 1923: 1.

13 “74,200 See Yankees Open New Stadium: 15.

14 “Ruth Says Van Loon Predicted Home Run.”

Fans line up for bleacher seats during the 1923 World Series. (Library of Congress)

In the early afternoon of Sunday, October 14, 1923, two old friends, Alice Wray Bush and Marie Aubrey Schang, found their way to their box seats in the six-month-old Yankee Stadium.1 The women had known each other for a decade as their husbands played together, first in Philadelphia, then in Boston, and most recently in New York. It was a big day. It was both women’s wedding anniversary: the Bushes’ ninth, the Schangs’ eighth. And they were there to watch their husbands, the starting battery for the New York Yankees in the pivotal Game Five of the World Series.2 The Yankees had lost the 1921 and 1922 Series to the New York Giants, but this year things might be different.

The Series was knotted at two games each, with the visiting team having won each of the first four contests. In the Yankees’ clubhouse, a player asked the starting pitcher, Bullet Joe Bush, what he wanted for his anniversary. “Give me 10 runs, boys, and I don’t want anything else,” Bush answered.3

The day had dawned cold and misty, but undeterred, 3,000 fans had already lined up near Yankee Stadium by dawn. A reporter counted license plates from 10 states among the fans waiting in their cars, and there were hundreds of bonfires. The ticket booths opened at 10:00 A.M. The bleachers were sold out by 11:30, and general-admission seats were all gone 90 minutes later.4 Scalpers were doing a brisk business, with $3.30 bleacher seats going for $10. By game time, the going rate had risen to $15.5 In the end, Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert estimated that 50,000 fans were turned away.6

Giants manager John McGraw was showing the strain. He had settled on Mule Watson as his Game Five starter, but Watson became ill in the hours before the game, so McGraw had to go with Jack Bentley.7 McGraw never missed a chance to try to throw Yankees slugger Babe Ruth off his game, so just before the game began, he picked a fight with the umpires, arguing that Ruth was stepping out of the box after each pitch and should be called out. When the umpires declined to act, McGraw did the next best thing and retired to the clubhouse to bellow at his ballplayers.8

Giants shortstop Dave Bancroft led off the game a few minutes after 2:00. He was out on a two-strike roller to second baseman Aaron Ward. After Heinie Groh flied out to Babe Ruth, second baseman Frankie Frisch was out on a groundball to Aaron Ward.9 In the bottom of the first, Yankees third baseman Joe Dugan – whose parents and uncle had unexpectedly arrived from their home in New Haven before the game without tickets and were ushered into box seats by Yankees general manager Ed Barrow – got the team started with a sharp single to right.10 After Babe Ruth drew a full-count walk, Bob Meusel slammed a triple to left, scoring Dugan and Ruth.11 The next day, a New York Times reporter wrote, “Bullets may travel faster than that ball, but it is doubtful.”12 Ross Youngs made a great one-handed catch on the right-field terrace on Wally Pipp’s fly, but Meusel trotted in after the catch, scoring the Yankees’ third run.13

The Giants broke through in the top of the second. With one out, Yankees outfielder Bob Meusel’s older brother Emil “Irish” Meusel pounded a long triple to left. Giants center fielder Casey Stengel hit a roller to first baseman Pipp. Pipp tried to make a quick flip to first for the out, but Bush was a bit slow covering the bag. Although the Yankees got the out at first, Meusel scored on Bush’s mental mistake.14

The Yankees blew the game open in the bottom of the second. After one out, Bush got things started by lining a single to center. After center fielder Whitey Witt drew a walk, Dugan crushed a liner to right-center. Stengel tried for a diving catch, but the ball bounced over his glove, and with Ross Youngs trying for the catch too, the ball rolled to the wall. By the time the Giants got the ball back to the infield, Dugan had a stand-up three-run inside-the-park homer.15 

After first baseman George Kelly misplayed Babe Ruth’s bouncing ball for an error, Giants manager McGraw removed Bentley in favor of pitcher Jack Scott. As McGraw trudged slowly to the mound, a Yankees fan shouted, “Start them two at a time – that way we won’t have to wait for the change later!”16

Bob Meusel greeted Scott with a line-drive single to right, as Ruth came around to third. Pipp sent a bouncing grounder to Frankie Frisch, and when Frisch tried to cut off the run, Ruth executed a magnificent hook slide to evade the tag and score the Yankees’ seventh run.17 “No toe dancer could have come in with such grace,” Grantland Rice wrote.18

The Yankees added an eighth run in the bottom of the fourth when Dugan led off with his third hit of the day, and after Ruth singled him to right, Bob Meusel drove in the run on his third hit. After Pipp drew a four-pitch walk, McGraw yanked Scott, bringing in Virgil Barnes.19 But “by that time, the Yanks were so far ahead they were planning on their fishing and hunting trips when the series would be all over,” according to the New York Daily News.20 A half-inning later, the Yankees mounted another minor threat when Dugan bagged his fourth hit of the day, with a single to right that sent Whitey Witt to second.21

The Giants threatened for only the second time in the top of the seventh. With one out, Irish Meusel sliced a liner past Yankees second baseman Ward for his third base hit of the day. The Yankees got Stengel on a fly ball, but then George Kelly drew a four-pitch walk. Bush managed to ring up Giants catcher Hank Gowdy on a groundball, which Ward tossed to shortstop Everett Scott for the force out.22

After the Giants went out in order in the top of the eighth, with Bush striking out two, the crowd began to file out. Leading off, Ruth got the closest thing he had all day to a homer, crushing a long fly ball to center that Stengel caught at the fence. After the Giants finally got Bob Meusel out, on a bouncer to their latest pitcher, Claude Jonnard, Pipp ended the eighth by striking out.23 

Given that Bush held a commanding lead and had thrown only 101 pitches through the first eight innings, Yankees manager Miller Huggins sent him back to the mound in the ninth to wrap things up. He did so easily, getting Frisch on a bouncer to Dugan and Youngs on a fly ball to Witt. The final hitter was Irish Meusel, the only Giant to get a hit off Bush that day. Bush finally coaxed Meusel into hitting a bouncing ball to Ward to end the game.24 Grantland Rice summarized Bush’s dominating performance: “Against this display of stuff any belated hope of a Giant rally went glimmering where the woodbine twineth and the Wangdoodle mourns its requiem.”25

The day was not just a masterful performance but redemption for Yankee pitcher Bush, who had lost the deciding game of the 1922 World Series and the first game of the 1923 Series. In addition to Irish Meusel’s three hits, Bush struck out three and walked only two. For the day he threw only 107 pitches – 24 called strikes, 10 fouls, 14 infield outs, and 10 outfield outs against 46 balls.26 “His work was away above the expert stuff,” one reporter wrote the next day. “It was the kind that is gained only by years and years of experience and study and effect.”27

The Yankees were “happy as kids” in the clubhouse after the game. Outside, the “two happiest people in all New York” waited, “nervous, modest and almost speechless with joy” after a day “rooting and praying together in the grandstand” – Mrs. Bush and Mrs. Schang.28 The next morning, Babe Ruth predicted that the Yankees would end the Series with a win in Game Six.29 But Giants manager McGraw was putting a brave face on things: “I have just as much confidence as when we started. We feel able to do it. … You can bet there will be a seventh game. Arthur Nehf will see to that.”30 In the end, Ruth was right: Back at the Polo Grounds for Game Six, the Yankees wrapped up the Series, 6-4, their first Series championship. 

Sources

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

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYA/NYA192310140.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1923/B10140NYA1923.htm

Notes

1 Babe Ruth, “Wives Boost for Joe and Wally,” Tacoma (Washington) Daily Ledger, October 15, 1923: 13.

2 Ruth, “Wives Boost for Joe and Wally”; James Crusinberry, “Battery’s Wedding Day Celebrated in Style,” New York Daily News, October 15, 1923: 2.

3 “Yankees Rout Giants; Win Fifth Game, 8-1; 50,000 Fail to Get In,” New York Times, October 15, 1923: 12; “Joe Bush Is Hero of Yankee Players,” New York Times, October 15, 1923: 11.

4 “Fans Gather Early at Stadium’s Gates,” New York Times, October 15, 1923: 11; Robert Weintraub, The House That Ruth Built (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 2011), 342.

5 “Fans Gather Early at Stadium’s Gates.”

6 “Yankees Rout Giants; Win Fifth Game, 8-1,” 1.

7 Weintraub, 344.

8 Weintraub, 344.

9 “Terrific Attack Again Carries Yanks to Victory,” Hutchinson (Kansas) News, October 15, 1923: 11.

10 “Pa, Ma and Uncle Make It Dugan Day,” New York Times, October 15, 1923: 11; Grantland Rice, “Brains at Discount Before Yanks’ Drive,” Boston Globe, October 15, 1923: 9; “Yanks Have Giants Backed to the Wall,” New York Times, October 15, 1923: 11.

11 “Yankees Rout Giants; Win Fifth Game, 8-1.”

12 “Yankees Rout Giants; Win Fifth Game, 8-1.”

13 Rice, “Brains at Discount”; “Yankees Rout Giants; Win Fifth Game, 8-1”; “Yanks Have Giants Backed to the Wall.”

14 “Play by Play Story of Yankees’ Easy Victory,” Boston Globe, October 15, 1923: 9; James Crusinberry, “Dugan and R. Meusel Lead Heavy Attack,” New York Daily News, October 15, 1923: 22.

15 Rice, “Brains at Discount.” Rice also wrote, ”The baffled Casey decided to respond with a shoestring catch, but his judgment of the distance cracked under the strain. He couldn’t quite reach the ball, which bounded on beyond and then began rolling like a half-topped mashie shot pointed in the general direction of a flock of bunkers. … Casey whirled and began to chase it with the alacrity of a stocky poodle pursuing a meat wagon, but he never could catch up.” Grantland Rice, “Irish Meusel Only Player to Hit Yankee Sharpshooter,” Bridgeport (Connecticut) Telegram, October 15, 1923: 14; “Yankees Rout Giants; Win Fifth Game, 8-1.”

16 Rice, “Brains at Discount”; “Yankees Rout Giants; Win Fifth Game, 8-1”; Weintraub, 345.

17 Rice, “Brains at Discount”; “Yankees Rout Giants; Win Fifth Game, 8-1.”

18 Rice, “Brains at Discount”; Rice, “Irish Meusel Only Player to Hit Yankee Sharpshooter.”

19 Rice, “Brains at Discount.”

20 Crusinberry, “Dugan and R. Meusel Lead Heavy Attack.”

21 Rice, “Brains at Discount”; “Terrific Attack Again Carries Yanks to Victory.”

22 “Terrific Attack Again Carries Yanks to Victory.”

23 Rice, “Brains at Discount”; “Yankees Rout Giants; Win Fifth Game, 8-1.”

24 “Terrific Attack Again Carries Yanks to Victory”; “Bush Pitched 107 Balls,” New York Times, October 15, 1923: 11.

25 “Rice, “Brains at Discount.”

26 “Bush Pitched 107 Balls.”

27 James Crusinberry, “Bush’s Pitching Places Hugmen One Game From World Title,” New York Daily News, October 15, 1923: 2.

28 “Wives Boost for Joe and Wally.”

29 Babe Ruth, “Yankees Are Happy as Kids – Ruth,” Tacoma Daily Ledger, October 15, 1923: 13. It’s unclear whether the ghostwriter for this article was Westbrook Pegler, Ford Frick, or another ghostwriter employed by Ruth’s agent, Christy Walsh.

30 John McGraw, “Better Baseball Beat Us,” Tacoma Daily Ledger, October 15, 1923: 13; Weintraub, 346.  McGraw’s column was likely written by either Christy Walsh or one of his assistants.

For the first of its eventual 110 wins, the 1927 Yankees team braved overflowing crowds, raised its 1926 pennant, and saw the Bambino whiff twice before being removed for a pinch-hitter in an 8-3 Opening Day victory against the favored Philadelphia Athletics.

“The weather was lovely, the peanuts and hot dogs were unusually tasty,” wrote James Harrison of the New York Times.1

The headlines heralded the attendance – around a quarter-million fans swarmed the seven American and National League parks hosting Opening Day 1927.2 Baseball was as popular as ever in the Roaring Twenties, as the reported 230,000-plus rivaled a similar mark in 1925, when eight games were played.3

And the biggest draw of all was at Yankee Stadium, still shiny and new at just four years old, where 72,000 faithful packed through the gates to get a glimpse of the reigning American League champions. Word had it that another 25,000 were turned away.

The New York Times broke that down: 62,000 paid customers, 9,000 invited guests, and 1,000 “other deadheads.”4 Joe Vila in The Sporting News was more skeptical about the Yankees’ reports, estimating 65,000. “Some of the newspapers went crazy and announced that the total count was 72,000, or 9,000 more than the capacity crowds that saw two of the World’s Series games in the Stadium last Fall. It was ridiculous bunk, of course, but it served to convince the skeptics who had been knocking the game all Winter, that the grand old pastime still is very much alive.”5

Vila also highlighted that the crowds may have turned out to see the Athletics’ most recent acquisitions, a pair of 40-year-olds who would be early inductees into the then-hypothetical Baseball Hall of Fame: batting king Ty Cobb and fan favorite Eddie Collins, back for a second stint. Dodgers star Zack Wheat, nearly 39, was another Athletics pickup that winter, in what would be his final season.

Having Babe Ruth play for the home team didn’t exactly drive people away, either.

Despite the Yankees being the AL champions, most sportswriters had picked the Athletics to win it all in 1927.6 Beyond Cobb, Collins, and Wheat, Philadelphia was cultivating young stars like catcher Mickey Cochrane, outfielder Al Simmons, and the starting pitcher of the day, Robert “Lefty” Grove.7

Grove, 27, had led the league in earned-run average (2.51) and strikeouts (194) in 1926, his second season in the majors.8 Opposing him was Brooklyn native Waite Hoyt, a mere five months older but with nearly a decade of big-league experience. The 1927 season proved to be Hoyt’s breakout year, as he led the league with 22 wins. Although he had pitched consistently in six prior seasons with the Yankees, he was often overshadowed by more famous teammates, including stars Herb Pennock and Urban Shocker.

The Yankees lineup had proven power in veterans Ruth and Bob Meusel, not to mention emerging second- and third-year starters Tony Lazzeri, Lou Gehrig, and Earle Combs. But some writers thought their pitching would be their Achilles’ heel.9

Although the Yankees did not usually broadcast their home games (believing it would hurt in-person attendance), that particular day they arranged for famed radio voice Graham McNamee to call play-by-play on WEAF and WJZ. The microphones went live on the only 1927 regular-season game to grace the airwaves at Yankee Stadium at 2:45 P.M.10

The traffic, however, had started before noon. Subways, taxicabs, and buses packed with people all made their way to the Bronx. Police lined River Avenue and the entrances as gatekeepers to those without tickets ($1.10 for the grandstand, 50¢ for bleachers).11

“No question it was the greatest crowd that ever saw a baseball game,” said general manager Ed Barrow, who estimated the crowd at 70,000. “We had to be careful about overloading the runways to comply with fire and police rules or we could have sold more tickets.”12

Shortly before game time (3:30), the Yankees “Mite Manager” Miller Huggins shook hands with the Athletics skipper, the “Tall Tactician” Connie Mack, as the Seventh Regiment Band blared. Pete Vischer of the New York World describe the photo-op between the 5-foot-6 Huggins and the 6-foot-1 Mack as “Mutt and Jeff.”13 Ruth and Cobb were also photographed together.

The festivities began. The marching band led the two teams onto the field, trailed by a “mysterious left-handed gentleman in a brown coat and hat” pushing a four-foot baseball.14 As the notes of the “Star-Spangled Banner” played on, the home team raised the American flag, and then their 1926 American League pennant, twice the size. Around 3:25, Mayor Jimmy Walker threw the ceremonial first pitch from owner Jacob Ruppert’s box.15

As the umpires, led by Billy Evans, conferred at the pitchers’ mound, a man with a megaphone announced the game’s batteries – Hoyt and catcher Johnny Grabowski, and Grove and Cochrane. Play ball.

Although Grove and Hoyt allowed just three hits between them by the middle of the fifth, the game itself turned out less exciting. All of the Yankees’ scoring came on a pair of four-spots in the fifth and sixth innings – the first demonstration of the “five o’clock lightning” that would come to define that season.16

In the bottom of the fifth, Earle Combs hit a bases-loaded double to score two. Lou Gehrig drove in the other two (the first of his record 173 RBIs that year)17 on a double to right. (Both of those runs – scored by Hoyt, who had reached on a sacrifice and an error by first baseman Dud Branom, and Combs – were unearned.)

The Athletics came back with two in the top of the sixth. The speedy Cobb, who’d reached on a bunt single and slid safely under third baseman Joe Dugan’s glove on a short base hit by Sammy Hale, scored on Branom’s groundout. Cochrane followed with a single to score Hale.

The Yankees tacked on insurance in the bottom of the inning, on Grabowski’s RBI single. Combs reached on an error by shortstop Joe Boley (his second) to score Grabowski (unearned), then Mark Koenig tripled to score Combs (also unearned).

Ruth was scheduled to be the next batter. Grove had sent him down swinging twice with a weak popup to second sandwiched in between. In all three at-bats there was a runner on third (or in the case of the second strikeout, second base, too). Now, with Koenig 90 feet away, he was nowhere to be found. Ruth said he felt dizzy.18 Huggins claimed the Babe had a “bilious attack” – perhaps something he ate. But Fred Lieb in the New York Post suspected Ruth may have just been frustrated by “Grove’s left-handed speed ball.”19

Instead, up came Ben Paschal, who made history as one of only a handful of men to pinch-hit for The Babe. The Yankees’ fourth outfielder, whose chances to do more of distinction were blocked by his inability to crack the Ruth-Combs-Meusel juggernaut, he swatted a single to drive in Koenig (unearned). Paschal finished the game in right.

The Athletics added a run in the eighth on a double by Al Simmons and Hale’s RBI single – Hale was thrown out trying to stretch it into a double.

Hoyt went the distance, allowing three earned runs on nine hits (eight singles, one double), fanning three, and walking three.

Grove, burned by five Athletics errors, was tagged with all eight runs – only three were earned – in six innings, striking out six. Jack Quinn relieved him for the final two scoreless frames.

Dugan went 3-for-4 (all singles) and Gehrig and Combs each had two RBIs. Al Simmons had the Athletics’ lone extra-base hit, the eighth-inning double.

Beyond making headlines for leaving the game, Ruth also made news during his first at-bat when a fan, not wearing the fashionable hat most men wore at the time, ran onto the field with a silver punchbowl, trailed by a chorus of boos. As The Babe stared confusedly, Mayor Walker jumped over the rail, took off his hat, and shook Ruth’s hand, as though handing him the trophy. The hatless man disappeared.20 Ruth then proceeded with the first of his three disappointing at-bats.

“But we call your attention to one thing,” wrote Walter Trumbull in the New York Evening Post the next day. “There will be a lot of other games this season and the fact that the Babe didn’t sock one yesterday is not the slightest indication that he will not wallop one today.”21

The 1927 Yankees, known to history as Murderers’ Row, won six of their first seven games to start the season (with the outlier a tie halted by darkness22) and set the American League record in wins, at 110-44.23 They finished 19 games ahead of second-place Philadelphia and swept the Pittsburgh Pirates for their second World Series championship.

Ruth, who returned the next game, led the league with 89 strikeouts. He also hit 60 home runs.

Photo credit

SABR-Rucker Archive.

Notes

1 James R. Harrison, “72,000 Pack Park, Set Crowd Record, as Yanks Triumph,” New York Times, April 13, 1927: 20.

2 Although there were 16 major-league teams at the time, the scheduled game that day at Sportsman’s Park, where the St. Louis Browns were due to host the Detroit Tigers, was rained out.

3 The Associated Press on April 13 reported attendance at just above 230,000. The Buffalo Evening News on the same date stated 234,000. The New York Times said 241,000. Standing-room and “comp” tickets could vary attendance numbers, so figures then were estimates that fluctuated from source to source. Some sources say the Yankees hosted as few as 60,000 fans, and some said it was more than 73,000. Baseball-reference puts the overall major-league total at more than 254,000: Yankee Stadium (New York) 72,000; Wrigley Field (Chicago) 45,000; Redland Field (Cincinnati) 37,758; Baker Bowl (Philadelphia) 30,000; Griffith Stadium (Washington) 30,000; Dunn Field (Cleveland) 25,000; Braves Field (Boston) 15,000.

4 Harrison.

5 Joe Vila, “Huggins’ Fast-Breaking Yankees Show Old Traits in Early Games,” The Sporting News, April 21, 1927: 1.

6 Gary Sarnoff, The First Yankees Dynasty (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2014), 130. Fred Lieb of the New York Post said the Yankees’ pitching strength was “doubtful” as excerpted in G.H. Fleming, Murderers’ Row: The 1927 New York Yankees (New York: William Morrow & Company, Inc., 1985), 80. The New York Telegram said they’d be “astonished” if the Athletics “don’t breeze in” and gave the Athletics 9-to-5 odds, the Yankees 3-to-1; excerpted in Fleming, 84, 86. Walter Trumbull of the New York Post, Joe Vila of the New York Sun, Grantland Rice of the New York Herald-Tribune, and Monitor of the New York World all picked the Athletics to finish first, all excerpted in Fleming, 87-88.

7 Also on the bench that day was 19-year-old Jimmie Foxx, whose major-league career at that point consisted of just 36 games. He made his season debut on April 15.

8 Grove also led in strikeouts during his rookie campaign, the first of six straight seasons he captured that title, through 1931. As for ERA, just one other AL pitcher, Cleveland’s George Uhle (2.83), had finished with an ERA below 3.00 in 1926.

9 In addition to Lieb’s doubts (quoted in Fleming, 84), Bill Corum of the New York Evening Journal said that Pennock was the Yankees’ only “reliable” pitcher: “‘Dutch’ Reuther is an uncertain quantity. Waite Hoyt pitches in streaks. Bob Shawkey is old. Walter Beall is wild.” Fleming, 83.

10 Among those tuning in was Johnny Sylvester, the sick boy for whom Babe Ruth hit three home runs in the 1926 World Series. Young Johnny had been invited to the game, but his parents nixed it, worried he would not be strong enough to go. “Johnny Sylvester Wont [sic] See Yankees Play; Babe Ruth’s 11-Year-Old Friend Not So Well,” New York Times, April 12, 1927: 1; “Babe Ruth’s Protege Fails to See Game; School Wins Over Baseball, but Radio and Phone Call From His Idol Help Johnny Sylvester,” New York Times, April 13, 1927: 27.

11 Joe Vila in The Sporting News reported that the opening four-game series with the Athletics netted $120,000, of which Philadelphia took $30,000.

12 Pete Vischer, New York World, April 13, 1927, excerpted in Fleming, 90.

13 Vischer in Fleming, 91.

14 Vischer in Fleming, 91.

15 James Harrison of the New York Times said that the pitch was thrown to Yankees backup catcher Johnny Grabowski. Peter Vischer of the New York World said that Yankees mascot Eddie Bennett caught it, noting that Walker “did it like a veteran, repeating the performance twice to make sure that every photographer had a record of the event.” Fleming, 91.

16 The game time was 2 hours, 5 minutes. As it started at 3:30 – as most weekday games did those days – the sixth inning would likely have come right around 5 o’clock.

17 Gehrig’s 173 RBIs stood as a major-league record for three years, when the Cubs’ Hack Wilson drove in 191 in 1930. Gehrig raised the American League record to 185 in 1931.

18 Harrison.

19 Fred Lieb, New York Post, quoted in Fleming, 94. His colleague Walter Trumbull felt similarly. See “Babe Didn’t Hit, Time Taking Toll, Lefty Grove’s Support,” New York Evening Post, April 13, 1927. Paul Gallico of the Daily News thought perhaps Ruth was out of shape as “something seemed to quiver and shake as the Babe jogged in from the outfield.” Fleming, 94.

20 Vischer in Fleming, 92. The Associated Press said the presentation “jinxed” Ruth. See Associated Press, “Yankees Capture First Game of Season Over Athletics,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, April 13, 1927. Both the AP and James Harrison of the New York Times claimed Walker made the presentation himself, with no mention of the suspicious man. The odd timing of the event – in the middle of play – would be the strongest evidence that Vischer’s account was more accurate about it being an impromptu decision on the part of Walker.

21 Walter Trumbull, “Babe Didn’t Hit, Time Taking Toll, Lefty Grove’s Support.”

22 The third of the opening four-game series against the Athletics ended in a 9-9 tie after 10 innings due to darkness. The Yankees took games two and four, 10-4 and 6-3 respectively.

23 That record has since been surpassed by the 1954 Cleveland Indians (111-43), the 1998 Yankees (114-48), and the 2001 Seattle Mariners (116-46). However, the 1927 Yankees still have the highest winning percentage of any AL team that won the World Series (.714)

It began with a clap of thunder and a sudden deluge of rain, and ended with Babe Ruth cradling a dying teenager in his arms. In between were 4⅔ innings of baseball rendered meaningless by what is still the worst tragedy in the history of Yankee Stadium.

It was May 19, 1929. The Yankees, after three straight American League pennants and back-to-back World Series sweeps had started the season just as strong, winning 13 of their first 17 games. But a four-game losing streak had dropped them a game and a half behind the hard-charging Philadelphia Athletics.

During this third weekend in May, the Yankees were looking to make hay as they had a five-game home series against the lowly Boston Red Sox, who had finished last or next to last every year since 1922. They did so again in 1929 (and in 1930).

The first game, played Friday, May 17, was a heartbreaker as the Yankees lost 5-3 in 12 innings despite three-hit days from Earle Combs and Tony Lazzeri. The Yankees bounced back on Saturday, sweeping both ends of a doubleheader behind Herb Pennock and George Pipgras, setting the stage for Sunday’s scheduled doubleheader.

About 50,000 fans were there as the first game began in sunshine, with about 9,000 having paid their 50 cents to sit in the uncovered right-field bleachers – known as “Ruthville” because of its proximity to Ruth’s usual right-field position at Yankee Stadium, as well as where many of his home runs landed.1

On the mound for the Yankees was Fred “Lefty” Heimach, a 28-year-old World War I veteran, who after pitching seven years with the A’s and Red Sox had been acquired by the Yankees from the St. Paul Saints the previous August. The New Jersey-born twirler was 2-1 with a 2.32 ERA in two starts and three relief appearances when he took the mound that afternoon.

The Red Sox countered with 23-year-old Jack Russell, who despite his youth was in his fourth major-league season. Entering the game, he was 2-3 with a 4.08 ERA in six starts.

Heimach set down the Red Sox in order in the top of the first. In the bottom of the frame, Russell walked Earle Combs, who advanced on Mark Koenig’s groundout to second. An excited chatter filled the Stadium as Babe Ruth strode to the plate. The buzz grew louder when Russell whirled and threw to second, only to have shortstop Hal Rhyne mishandle the pickoff attempt, allowing Combs to reach third.

Ruth then grounded out to second baseman Bill Regan, and Combs scampered home for the first run of the game.

Boston’s miscues continued: Lou Gehrig reached on an error by first baseman Phil Todt, and Bob Meusel on an error by third baseman Bobby Reeves. Tony Lazzeri then walked to load the bases, but Lyn Lary hit a fly ball to center that Jack Rothrock got under and, to Russell’s relief, caught.

Another perfect inning for Heimach in the top of the second, and Russell allowed just a walk in a scoreless bottom half.

In the third, the Red Sox had their first baserunner of the day when Regan beat out a grounder to Lary at shortstop, but catcher Bill Dickey threw him out as he attempted to steal. Heimach got the next two outs to end the inning.

In the home half of the inning, The Babe gave the fans in Ruthville what they’d came to see: He crushed a home run to deep right field. Lou Gehrig followed that up with an inside-the-park home run to make the score 3-0. Russell then retired Meusel, Lazzeri, and Lary to escape further trouble.

In the fourth, Heimach again had a perfect inning, and Russell had one of his own. But it was during the inning that the first signs of trouble appeared. What had been sunny skies when the game began had become overcast, and a drizzle began to fall after the bottom of the inning.

Some spectators in Ruthville began to make for the exit,2 but many stayed behind and braved the rain because Ruth was due up second in the bottom of the fifth. Others left the bleachers but stood near the exit, lingering so they could see the action.3

Koenig was retired, then Ruth grounded out. As Gehrig came up to the plate, there was a rumble of thunder, and then the deluge began.

The following day’s New York Herald-Tribune4 reported that 5,000 fans were still crowded into the bleachers when the skies opened; the Associated Press estimated 6,000,5 and other newspapers estimated that there were even more. But all sources agreed that the thunder and heavy downpour incited a stampede toward the exits. (The Brooklyn Daily Times added that in the confusion, some fans believed the bleachers in the six-year-old stadium would collapse.6)

Witnesses told reporters that two of the three exits initially were closed, forcing everyone toward the same exit – one that required descending 14 wooden stairs into a narrow corridor that took fans through a gate and into the street.7

The first to leave were still descending those 14 steps when those caught in the rain surged ahead. The people on the stairs tumbled forward into the corridor below and were trampled by the surging crowd.

The New York Times reported, “In an instant, the area at the foot of the stairs, a space about ten feet wide, was a screaming struggling mass of people. Men, women, and children – a preponderance of children – were jammed together in a pile so tightly that they could not breathe, let alone work their way out without assistance. The weight of those on top bore down on those beneath, crushing them before anything could be done, while others continued to fall over them and trample them under foot.”8

Meanwhile, the game had been halted due to the rain, and fans in the grandstand were leaving their seats in an orderly fashion.9 The Yankees, watching the rain from the dugout, were unaware of what was happening under the bleachers until Elias Gottlieb, a probationary police officer, ran onto the field carrying a 14-year-old boy who had been trampled.10

“Babe Ruth ran from the Yankees’ dugout and asked what the trouble was,” the New York Herald Tribune reported. “He then shouted for a physician. Dr. Edward S. Cowles, the well known neurologist and psychiatrist, of 591 Park Avenue, ran from the stands and took the boy into the club’s dressing room. Then Ruth called for other physicians, and a half dozen of them made their way to the scene of the catastrophe.”11

Dozens were injured and taken to the clubhouse, where the summoned physicians attempted to treat them, but the clubhouse did not have enough medical supplies to treat the number of wounded nor the severity of the injuries. The Herald Tribune reported that nearly 100 were injured – so many that, when ambulances proved insufficient, two buses were called in to take them to hospitals – and 18 remained hospitalized overnight.12 Ruth and his wife, Claire, visited 16 boys still at Lincoln Hospital when rain canceled a doubleheader scheduled for Tuesday.13

Two did not recover from their injuries and died at the ballpark: 60-year-old Joseph Carter, a truck driver, and Eleanor Price, a 17-year-old Hunter College student. It is believed they were the first two game-related deaths since the Stadium opened in 1923.14

“Miss Price, who had taken her young brother to the game as a Sunday afternoon treat, died in the arms of ‘Babe’ Ruth, the idol of the fans, who responded coolly to the first cries for help and remained at emergency work until the end,” the Brooklyn Daily Times reported.15

As for the game, it was rained out – with the top of the fifth played and New York in the lead, it was an official game, and a 3-0 win for the Yankees. The second game of the doubleheader was canceled. The Yankees lost seven of their next 11 games; by June 1 they were eight games out, and the A’s cruised to an easy pennant.

Fans sued the Yankees, saying the game should have been called when rain began to fall in the fourth inning, before thunder panicked the crowd. Others blamed two exits they said remained closed, forcing the crowd into one. A lawsuit was finally settled in 1932 for $45,000 – nearly $1 million in 2020s-era dollars – with the money to be divided among the victims based upon the severity of their injuries.16  

Sources

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

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYA/NYA192905190.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1929/B05190NYA1929.htm

Notes

1 Testimony of Joseph Syrop. Supreme Court – Appellate Division – First Department, 1932: 33.  https://www.google.com/books/edition/Supreme_Court_Appellate_Division_First_D/ijbzfyrHmToC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA97

2 “Rain followed the spectacular play of the two long-distance hitters, and the fans started huddling and trying to protect their thousands of new straw hats from the drizzle,” Boston Globe, May 20, 1929: 8. New straw hats getting ruined by rain was a concern at the time. A police officer who was at the Stadium that day was asked about new straw hats in the court case cited in note 1. “Q: Did you notice anything on that day with regard to whether the people in the bleachers were wearing straw hats at the time? A: I believe it was the first straw hat Sunday, that is, that day, when everybody started to wear straw hats. Q: Were there a number that had new straw hats on? A. It must have been, because we had 50 or 60 in the station house that night that we picked up underneath the bleachers.”

3 Robert M. Gorman and David Weeks, Death at the Ballpark (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2015), 205.

4 Dean A. Sullivan, Middle Innings (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 135-137, quoting the New York Herald Tribune of May 20, 1929.

5 Associated Press, “Two Killed At Yankee Stadium in Fans’ Rush to Escape Rain; Victims Pile Up in Passageway,” Cincinnati Enquirer, May 20, 1929: 1.

6 “Stadium Victims Blame Officials for 2 Fatalities,” Brooklyn Daily Times, May 20, 1929: 1-2. The newspaper reported that the panic began with “the scream of a woman accompanied by the thunder clap and the downpour that made many believe the bleacher stands were about to crumble.”

7 Gorman and Weeks, Death at the Ballpark, 205.

8 “Two Killed, 62 Hurt in Yankee Stadium as Rain Stampedes Baseball Crowd; Victims are Crushed at Bleacher Exit,” New York Times, May 20, 1929: 1.

9 Boston Globe, May 20, 1929: 8.

10 Brooklyn Daily Times, May 20, 1929: 1-2.

11 Sullivan, 136.

12 Sullivan, 135.

13 Associated Press, “‘The Babe’ Visits 16 Injured Fans,” Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, May 21, 1929: 1. The AP reported that Claire Ruth fainted when she saw the bruised and battered face of one of the victims, and had to be revived with smelling salts.

14 Email interview with Robert M. Gorman, October 17, 2022. 

15 Brooklyn Daily Times, May 20, 1929: 1.

16 “A multi-party $960,000 negligence lawsuit involving the families of the deceased and 32 of the injured was instituted against the Yankees. A jury verdict in February 1932 found the club ‘guilty of negligence, but the plaintiffs guilty of ‘contributory negligence.’ An appellate court set aside the ‘contributory negligence’ finding, stating that ‘under the law the plaintiffs could not be held partly responsible, because in a heavy rainstorm it was their natural instinct to seek shelter and they could not be held for the resultant stampede.’ Later that summer a new trial was ordered to address this issue. At the beginning of this second trial on December 15, 1932, the Yankees settled the claims for $45,000, the money to be divided according to ‘the severity of the injuries and the sums spent for medical treatment.’” Death at the Ballpark, 205.

Black major-league teams first played at Yankee Stadium in 1930. After two years of no action in the depths of the Depression, Negro League ball returned in 1934, courtesy of William A. “Gus” Greenlee, owner of the Negro National League’s Pittsburgh Crawfords and president of the Negro National League. A natural entrepreneur, Greenlee took responsibility for obtaining the Stadium for Black games when the New York Yankees were on the road.

The four-team doubleheader set up for Sunday, September 9, 1934, was a fundraiser for Harlem’s Colonel Charles Young American Legion Post. The Chicago American Giants beat the New York Black Yankees, 4-3, in the first game. Greenlee’s Crawfords, for whom Paige pitched, and the Philadelphia Stars, Jones’s team, would match up in the second game.

The most-quoted attendance estimate in the newspapers covering the doubleheader was 30,000 fans. This was far better than the numbers that same afternoon for the National League’s Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field (12,000) and New York Giants across the East River at the Polo Grounds (20,000). Such was the drawing power of the already-famous Paige.

His opponent, Slim Jones, a left-hander who at 6-feet-6 and 185 pounds lived up to his nickname, was at age 21 only in his third professional season. But he, like the 28-year-old Paige, already was a star.

Paige, reliably stellar (when not suffering from arm trouble), had a great season in 1934, with a 13-3 won-lost record and a 1.54 ERA. Jones, however, surpassed him – and everyone else. He logged a 20-4 record (in only 22 starts and eight relief appearances), with a 1.24 ERA. Jones’s Society for American Baseball Research biographer, Frederick C. Bush, declared that “his 1934 campaign still stands as one of the greatest seasons by any pitcher in any league and era.”1

The Crawfords and Stars were among the class of the Negro National League in 1934. Philadelphia, with a .684 won-lost percentage, won the league championship. The Crawfords had a .635 winning percentage, the second best in the league. The lineups at Yankee Stadium listed seven future members of the Hall of Fame – Paige, center fielder James “Cool Papa” Bell, first baseman (and manager) Oscar Charleston, catcher Josh Gibson, and third baseman Judy Johnson for Pittsburgh and first baseman Jud Wilson and catcher Raleigh “Biz” Mackey for Philadelphia.

But, even with all those feared bats in the lineups, this was a pitchers’ game. Slim dominated the first two-thirds of the contest before fading just a little toward the end. Satchel was in and out of jams until the late innings, but it was noted that he “always seemed to have something in reserve for the pinches.”2 Satch, in fact, got into hot water in the bottom of the first when he walked the Stars’ leadoff hitter, shortstop Jake Stephens, who immediately went to third on a hit-and-run single by third baseman Dewey Creacy, and scored one out later on Wilson’s groundout.

Meanwhile, for 6⅔ innings Jones was untouchable, with a perfect game until Charleston singled in the seventh. In the third and fourth innings, he struck out four Crawfords in a row, including Bell, Charleston, and Gibson.

Pittsburgh finally reached Jones for its sole run in the top of the eighth, aided by Jones’s mental miscue. Judy Johnson opened the inning with a double, which sportswriters implied could have been held to a single if right fielder Jake Dunn had pounced on it a little more quickly.3

The New York Daily News’s Edgar T. Rouzeau wrote that Slim then “grew nervous,” and when second baseman Chester Williams laid down an easy-to-field bunt, he automatically chose to throw him out at first, ignoring a chance to hold Johnson at second or catch him going to third. Jones then walked pinch-hitter Clarence “Spoony” Palm and gave up a single to shortstop Leroy Morney to let in Pittsburgh’s run.4

The game was tied after 8½ innings, but it was getting dark. The announced starting time for the first game was 1:30 P.M., and there had been four hours of actual baseball played, plus time between the two games. Sunset that day was at 7:17 P.M., and Black sportscaster Jocko Maxwell, who was there, reported that “the shades of night were falling fast.”5

But the game wasn’t over, and the Stars nearly won it, except for Paige again rising to the occasion. With one out in the bottom of the ninth, Jud Wilson hit a sharp grounder back to the box that bounded off Satchel’s leg and toward Williams at second. Williams’s desperation throw to first was too late to nip Wilson, and it was wild and carried to the grandstand. The 38-year-old Wilson was no speedster, but he was extremely competitive, and he made it to third.

Biz Mackey was the next hitter, and Paige walked him after going to a full count. Philadelphia manager Webster McDonald then ran out a trio of left-handed pinch-hitters, including himself, to try to get the platoon advantage in the gathering dusk that must have favored a pitcher like Paige. Satchel intentionally walked the first one, Mickey Casey, to set up a force at any base. The move worked. McDonald went down on called strikes, and Ameal Brooks swung heartily at Paige’s offerings but didn’t hit any of them. Then the umpires called the game for darkness.

Brooks’s strikeout was Paige’s 12th. He walked three batters and gave up six hits. Jones struck out nine, gave up three hits, and walked one. Maxwell, in a year-end article for the Age, picked the game as his biggest sports thrill of the year. Veteran sportswriter W. Rollo Wilson of the Pittsburgh Courier wrote in 1943 that the game was his biggest thrill, period.6

Right after the game, popular music lyricist Andy Razaf, a devout baseball fan, penned a poem “To Judge Landis,” arguing that the doubleheader showed what White baseball was missing. The final stanza read:

“It’s time you and your crowd woke up
In this new and enlightened age
Oh, by the way, your ‘Schoolboy Rowe’
Should see these pitchers, Jones and Page [sic].”7

Paige and Jones had a rematch at Yankee Stadium on September 30. Again, both pitchers starred, although this time the Crawfords won, 3-1. The two hurlers had opposed each other twice in May, games that the Stars had won. They had appeared as teammates on August 26 for the East All Stars at the annual Negro Leagues East-West Game. Jones pitched three shutout innings as the East starter, and Paige got the win with four shutout frames at the end of the contest when the East scored the game’s only run in the eighth. So as the 1934 season came to an end, the chances of many more exciting Paige-Jones matchups in future seasons seemed bright.

But while Satchel pitched for decades longer and became more and more famous, 1934 was Slim Jones’s last good season. He started off well in 1935, but developed trouble with his left shoulder, as well as with Stars owner Edward Bolden, who became concerned that Jones was abusing alcohol to deal with the arm pain.8 When the season was over, Slim had compiled a subpar 4-5 won-lost record and a worse 5.88 ERA. After that his days as a Negro League starter were basically over. He hung with the Stars through 1938, but McDonald and his successor as manager, Jud Wilson, were mostly inclined to use him in relief, or as an occasional first baseman and outfielder.

In the fall of 1938, back in his hometown of Baltimore, Slim became gravely ill. He died in Bay View Hospital on November 19, at only 25 years of age. Bush, his biographer, cut through a lot of incorrect information about Jones’s death, and concluded from his research that Slim’s kidneys had failed. Jones was gone, but not forgotten by his opponent of that 1934 faceoff at Yankee Stadium. Paige told an interviewer 42 years later that Slim was one of the three best pitchers he had ever seen, along with Bob Feller and Dizzy Dean.9

Sources

Negro League player statistics were not always reliably and completely compiled at the time the games were actually played. But efforts have been made in recent years to use box scores and game stories to retroactively compile annual stats. The team won-lost records and pitching statistics cited here are from the Seamheads.com Negro Leagues Database, as of December 2021. The database is considered the most complete of the efforts to re-create Negro League statistics, but it is an ongoing project, and the numbers cited here may change in the future.

The author also relied on information from Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org.

Notes

1 Frederick C. Bush, “Slim Jones,” SABR Baseball Biography Project, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/slim-jones/.

2 Bessye J. Bearden, “Giants, Trent Win All-Star Ball Game,” Chicago Defender, September 15, 1934: A5.

3 Edgar T. Rouzeau, “Chi Giants Top Black Yanks, 4-3; Crawfords, Stars Tie, 1-1,” New York Daily News, September 10, 1934: 171; Bearden, “Giants, Trent Win All-Star Ball Game.”

4 Rouzeau, “Chi Giants Top Black Yanks, 4-3; Crawfords, Stars Tie 1-1.”

5 Display advertisement for “The Stars of Colored Baseball in a Four (4) Team Double Header,” New York Amsterdam News, September 1, 1934: 10; “Daily Almanac,” New York Daily News, September 9, 1934: 2; Jocko Maxwell, “Sports Biggest Thrill in 1934,” New York Age, December 29, 1934: 7.

6 Maxwell, “Sports Biggest Thrill in 1934”; W. Rollo Wilson, “My Greatest Thrill!: Sportswriter Gets Biggest Thrill from 1-1 Game,” Pittsburgh Courier, July 3, 1943: 19.

7 Andy Razaf, “To Judge Landis,” New York Amsterdam News, September 15, 1934: 10.

8 Courtney Michelle Smith, Ed Bolden and Black Baseball in Philadelphia, (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2017), 107.

9 Bush, “Slim Jones.”

Chapman played center field in 138 games in 1935 and began play as the Yankees’ center fielder in 1936 before being traded to the Washington Senators for Jake Powell on June 14. He had caught a cold earlier and never was right after that.2

DiMaggio started his first game in left field with Chapman in center field. After also spending time in both right field and center field in 1936, DiMaggio became the Yankees’ center fielder in 1937.

Joe DiMaggio was born Giuseppe Paolo DiMaggio on November 25, 1914, in Martinez, California, to Giuseppe and Rosalia (Mercurio) DiMaggio. The elder DiMaggio was a fisherman and young Joe was the eighth of nine children, one of five sons. Joe and brothers Vince and Dominic played major-league baseball; the other two brothers became fishermen like their father.

Vince DiMaggio persuaded the San Francisco Seals to give his younger brother a chance, and in 1932 the Seals signed Joe to a contract as a shortstop, a position he played in the final three games of the 1932 season. Joe played for the Seals from 1933 to 1935. In 1934 he batted .341 but a knee injury made most major-league teams a bit leery of signing him. The Yankees ended up buying his contract with the proviso that he play with the Seals in 1935 to prove that he was healthy.3 “The $75,000 rookie had been on the bench with a burned foot since the season began. He made his first start in left field4 for the Yankees.”5

DiMaggio had burned his foot in a diathermy machine during spring training.6 He was such a shy individual that he did not ask anyone why his foot was getting so hot, and when he finally took his foot out of the machine, it was red, blistered, and too sore for him to play. It took two weeks for his foot to heal.7

Despite his misadventure with the diathermy machine, DiMaggio proved himself to his coaches and teammates during spring training. Dan Daniel, the baseball writer for the New York World Telegram & Sun, wrote, “Here is the replacement for Babe Ruth” after the 21-year-old smashed line drives over the fences of the Florida ballparks.8

DiMaggio’s major-league debut came on May 3, 1936, in a game at Yankee Stadium against the St. Louis Browns. New York had last made the World Series in 1932. Babe Ruth and Earle Combs had retired, but it was still a potent Yankees lineup that contained future Hall of Famers Lou Gehrig, Bill Dickey, Tony Lazzeri, and Lefty Gomez as well as manager Joe McCarthy.

The Browns had not finished in the first division since 1929, when they were in fourth place, 26 games behind the Philadelphia Athletics. Their starting pitcher on May 3 was Jack Knott. Gomez started for the Yankees.

The Browns got to Gomez for three runs in the first inning on an error by third baseman Red Rolfe, singles by Jim Bottomley and Beau Bell, and a double by Harland Clift. DiMaggio’s first at-bat in the major leagues came in the first inning and his fielder’s choice scored Frankie Crosetti, who had tripled. DiMaggio and Red Rolfe came around to score on a double by Ben Chapman, and Lazzeri’s fly ball scored Gehrig with a run that gave the Yankees a 4-3 lead.

DiMaggio’s next at-bat came in the second inning and he got his first major-league hit, off Earl Caldwell, who had replaced Knott in the first inning. After Rolfe singled, DiMaggio’s single sent him to second base. A single by Gehrig, a fly ball by Dickey, and a triple by Chapman added three runs to the Yankees total and gave them a lead of 7-3.

Gomez gave up a leadoff home run to Ray Pepper in the third inning to make the score 7-4. Neither the Yankees in the third nor the Browns in the fourth scored. DiMaggio came to bat in the fourth inning and struck out.9 Later in the inning, a single by Gehrig and a walk to Dickey was followed by Chapman’s triple, which added two more runs to the Yankees’ total, giving them a 9-4 lead.

Leadoff doubles by Lyn Lary and the pesky Pepper made the score 9-5 in the top of the fifth inning. DiMaggio’s next at-bat came in the bottom of the sixth, and his second major-league hit was a triple. It scored Rolfe, who had led off with a double. Gehrig followed with a single to score DiMaggio and after an out by Dickey, Chapman’s single sent Gehrig to second base. George Selkirk singled to score Gehrig with Myril Hoag (who ran for Chapman) advancing to third base. A fly out by Lazzeri scored Hoag and the Yankees’ lead was now 13-5.

DiMaggio led off the seventh inning with a popup to second base. Then Gehrig singled, Dickey worked a walk, and Hoag was hit by a pitch to load the bases. Browns pitcher Elon Hogsett uncorked a wild pitch that allowed Gehrig to score. The Browns got out of the jam on a groundout and fly out and trailed 14-5.

St. Louis did not score in its half of the eighth. With two outs in the bottom of the inning, DiMaggio came up for the sixth time in the game. He responded with a single, but the Yankees did not score. Neither did the Browns in their half of the ninth inning and the Yankees came away with the 14-5 win.

Gehrig led the Yankees’ offense with four hits in five at-bats, two RBIs, and five runs scored. Ben Chapman was 4-for-4 with two triples, a double, and five RBIs. DiMaggio was 3-for-6, two singles and a triple. He scored three runs and drove in one.

The Yankees finished the year with a record of 102 wins, 51 losses, and 2 ties, giving them the American League pennant by 19½ games over the Detroit Tigers. New York then defeated the New York Giants in six games in the World Series, the first of four consecutive Series championships. DiMaggio played in 138 games in 1936, hitting for a .323 average; his 15 triples tied for the league lead with teammate Rolfe and Cleveland’s Earl Averill. He also made the first of his 13 appearances in an All-Star Game.

Sources

In addition to the game story and box-score sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted the Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org websites.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYA/NYA193605030.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1936/B05030NYA1936.html

Notes

1 DiMaggio was absent from 1943 through 1945, when he was in the US Army. (Johnny Lindell got most of the starts in center field in those seasons.) Mantle played right field in 1951 and took over for DiMaggio in center field in 1952. In his last two seasons (1967-68), he played first base.

2 Bill Nowlin, “Ben Chapman,” SABR Biography Project, sabr.org, accessed October 13, 2022.

3 Lawrence Baldassaro, “Joe DiMaggio,” SABR Biography Project, sabr.org, accessed July 25, 2022.

4 DiMaggio played 64 games in left field, 54 in center field, and 20 in right field in 1936 before taking over as the full-time center fielder in 1937. https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/d/dimagjo01.shtml, https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/D/Pdimaj101.htm.

5 Don Hallman, “3 Hits for ‘DiMag’ as Yanks Win, 14-5,” New York Daily News, May 4, 1936: 42.

6 Diathermy is the use of electrical current to cut or coagulate tissue during surgery. https://teachmesurgery.com/skills/surgical-equipment/diathermy/. Accessed October 13, 2022.

7 Bart Barnes, “Joltin’ Joe Has Gone Away,” Washington Post, March 8, 1999: A1.

8 Barnes.

9 DiMaggio struck out 39 times in 1936, the highest season total of his career, during which he struck out only 369 times in 6,821 at-bats.

Although the Yankees had their share of Hall of Famers on the mound, Yankee Stadium was known as a hitters’ park, with pinstriped sluggers taking the home-run crown in 12 of the park’s first 15 years of existence.1 So it seemed almost on-brand that the first no-hitter in the House That Ruth Built took a decade and a half to happen.2

And it came as the exclamation point on a particularly auspicious stretch of play for both the Yankees and the pitcher who threw it, Monte Pearson.

The 1938 Yankees, despite a 12-game lead en route to their third straight championship season, were exhausted. When Pearson took the mound for the second game of a Saturday twin bill, the team was playing its 10th game in five days – the string of doubleheaders resulting from four days of rain the third week of July.3

After an erratic first two months (3-5, 4.66 ERA), Pearson had won nine straight decisions since June 26 – but he still was walking more (89) than he was striking out (73), and the doubleheaders forced him to pitch on short rest. He threw a complete game on August 24.

That Saturday, August 27, he was facing his former mates, the team that had brought him to the majors, the Cleveland Indians, who were a distant third place in the American League. As a rookie in 1933,4 Pearson had led the AL with a 2.33 ERA. In 1934, he’d won 18 games. The Yankees had traded for him after an underwhelming 1935 season – and he flourished, going 19-7 in 1936, and 9-3 in an injury-plagued 1937. Now, a week from his 30th birthday, the Fresno, California, right-hander stood 12-5 with a 3.99 ERA.

The Yankees had won an 8-7 thriller in the opener on Joe DiMaggio’s walk-off two-run triple, his record-tying third three-bagger of the game. The Indians had scored four in the top of the ninth to lead by two, but the Yankees had plated three in the bottom off Johnny Allen, who had been traded for Pearson three years earlier.5

Pearson’s opponent in the nightcap, decidedly mediocre rookie Johnny Humphries, would lead the league in appearances that year, with 45, but was making just his fifth major-league start.

He didn’t take long to get into trouble, no thanks to two groundball errors by shortstop Lyn Lary (another Yankees castoff). After Pearson retired the side on three straight groundouts, the Yankees sent eight men to the plate and scored five runs, only two which were earned, but all of which were off the long ball. Tommy Henrich’s homer to deep right drove in Frank Crosetti (reached on a walk) and Red Rolfe (E-6), and Joe Gordon went deep to left to drive in DiMaggio (E-6).

Another two Yankees runs came in the third, on George Selkirk’s RBI single and Joe Glenn’s fly ball. Pearson had a 7-0 lead before he allowed a baserunner.

Back-to-back walks to lead off the fourth were all that stood between Pearson and perfection. But with Lary on second and Bruce Campbell on first, Pearson caught Jeff Heath looking. He then induced Earl Averill to ground out to the right side of the infield (advancing the runners), and struck out Hal Trosky.

Humphries was done after allowing another three runs in the fourth inning (Selkirk’s RBI single, Gordon’s two-run triple). The devastation: 10 runs (seven earned), nine hits, three walks, three strikeouts.

The Yankees tacked on three more off reliever Denny Galehouse when Gordon and Henrich each homered a second time – Gordon’s a two-run shot to left in the sixth, Henrich’s a solo shot to right in the seventh.

Pearson was perfect for the next five innings.

“Monte pitched with the flawless precision of an intricate piece of mechanism,” wrote John Drebinger in the New York Times. And, “with the Indians going down like reeds before a high gale,” the crowd of 40,959 “began to sit up and take notice.”6

“Control did it,” Pearson said after the game. “I could put the ball wherever I wanted it. I lost La[r]y and Campbell to the fifth [sic] because I was too confident. Until the seventh my mind wasn’t set on shooting for a no-hitter but when I got that far I began to think about it.”7

Pearson had come close before.8 With Cleveland on August 29, 1933, he lost a no-hitter against Washington in the ninth, allowing two runs on two hits. On May 10, 1937, with the Yankees, he allowed a single in the first inning, then held Chicago hitless for the next eight.9

So, after six innings, “I said to myself, ‘Gosh, will I be lucky enough to pull it off?’”10

Pearson’s superstitious teammates, on the other hand, including manager Joe McCarthy,11 gave him the cold shoulder.

“I’d sit in my seat all by myself,” Pearson said. “The rest of the fellows wouldn’t look at me. They talked about everything else, everything under the sun except a no-hitter. Then when we had to take the field, Joe McCarthy would say to me: ‘Go get ’em, boy.’

“And I went out to get ’em. Believe me, beginning with the seventh I really began to powder that ball through. I was more excited than any other time since I’ve been in baseball.”12

After a groundout to start the seventh, Indians manager Ossie Vitt tried a pinch-hitter. He subbed Roy Weatherly for Averill; pop fly to second. Trosky then fouled out to catcher Glenn. The eighth inning rolled along similarly – grounder, fly ball, pop to short.

“For every fast ball I threw I retaliated with a curve,” Pearson said. “I was faster Saturday than at any time during the past three years. I felt as though I could have pitched another nine innings. And between you and me the roar of the crowd the last two innings inspired me to that no-hitter. I felt as though I was in a world series game.”13

With Galehouse leading off the ninth, Vitt sent up another pinch-hitter, Julius “Moose” Solters. Pearson got him on three pitches. Then, a second pinch-hitter, for Lary, in Frankie Pytlak, who had caught Pearson in Cleveland.

“He’s a dangerous little hitter – Frankie,” Pearson said. “And I thought to myself: ‘Is this guy going to be cute and lay down a bunt?’ When I pitched to him I determined to make a dash over to the third base side to field any possible bunt. But he hit to Gordon. Joe made a dandy play.”14 Gordon scooped up a slow roller and fired to first baseman Lou Gehrig, just beating Pytlak to the bag.

With the Indians’ final hope in Campbell approaching the plate, DiMaggio kept fans in suspense by running in for a better pair of sunglasses. “He was the only player now on the field playing with the glaring light right in his eyes,” noted Drebinger.15

“Only one more to go,” Pearson narrated. “I thought to myself is this going to be like that Washington game. Campbell hit to left and I went: ‘Oh-oh, will Selkirk catch the ball?’ Selkirk did and I was in. All of a sudden I went limp and the crowd was all over me.”16

Indeed, after Selkirk caught the line drive, Drebinger wrote, “[T]he fans cut loose with an ear-splitting roar. They almost mobbed Monte before he had a chance to struggle to the dugout.”17

Pearson had pitched to two batters over the minimum, striking out seven. Of the 20 balls put into play, 15 never left the infield.

Henrich and Gordon were the hitting stars, driving in 10 of the Yankees’ 13 runs. Each had a pair of homers within their three hits; Gordon also had a triple and six RBIs, and Henrich drove in four.

Every Yankees position player drove in or scored at least one run. Gehrig (three runs scored), Selkirk (two RBIs, one run), and Rolfe (two runs) each had two hits. The only player who did not contribute to the Yankees’ offense was Pearson, who went 0-for-3.

Pearson’s no-hitter was the last of 10 straight “W” decisions for Pearson that year,18 and his only shutout. He finished 16-7 with a 3.97 ERA and 17 complete games. Two weeks later, his wife would give birth to their second child.

“Pearson’s no-hitter against the Indians was typical of the way the Yanks have of coming up with something downright shattering and applying it to the subject at the psychologically correct moment,” wrote Bob Considine of the International News Service. “Assuming that the Indians had a measure of fight left in them when they came to the stadium last Thursday, it was utterly gone when they left Saturday evening.19

The Yankees won five in the six-game series and sent Cleveland away 16 games back. They clinched the pennant on September 18.

The next no-hitter at Yankee Stadium came in 1946 from a visiting opponent – Bob Feller of the Cleveland Indians.

Sources

In addition to the Sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYA/NYA193808272.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1938/B08272NYA1938.htm

Notes

1 The only years a Yankee did not hold the AL home-run title between 1923 and 1937 were in 1932 and 1933, when it went to the A’s Jimmie Foxx, and in 1935, when Foxx tied with the Tigers’ Hank Greenberg. Babe Ruth finished second in ’32 and ’33, and Lou Gehrig was the runner-up in ’35.

2 The Yankees had two previous no-hitters, but they were both on the road: George Mogridge on April 24, 1917, at Fenway Park, and Sad Sam Jones on September 4, 1923 at Shibe Park.

3 The Yankees played 23 games – including 10 doubleheaders—between August 12 and August 27.

4 Pearson actually was brought up in 1932, but pitched a total of eight innings in eight appearances out of the Indians’ bullpen. Meaning in 1933 he was still technically a rookie.

5 The Yankees also got Steve Sundra in the Allen-for-Pearson trade.

6 John Drebinger, “No-hit, No-run Game Hurled by Pearson as Yanks Win Two,” New York Times, August 28, 1938: S1. The AL had not seen a no-hitter in more than a year, the most recent being the White Sox’ Bill Dietrich on June 1, 1937. The National League had seen two no-hitters in 1938 – Johnny Vander Meer’s pair earlier in the season.

7 Bill McCullough, “Classy Triumvirate: Work of Pearson, DiMaggio, and Henrich Featured Yankee Conquests During Past Week,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 29, 1938: 12.

8 Dick Walsh noted that Pearson had pitched “some no-hitters” in his semipro days in Oakland, California, but never professionally. “Dick Walsh’s Comment: It Must Have Been Case of ‘Try Again’ When Pearson Hurled No-Hitter,” Albany Times-Union, September 6, 1938: 13.

9 Pearson helped himself at the plate that day, as well, with three hits and two RBIs.

10 Max Case (International News Service), “Pearson Felt No-Hitter in 6th,” Washington Times, August 29, 1938: 17.

11 “I tried to make conversation with McCarthy but he didn’t give me a tumble. It’s a bad omen when you tell a pitcher he hasn’t allowed a hit,” Pearson said. McCullough.

12 Case.

13 McCullough. Pearson dominated in October, with a 4-0 record and a 1.01 ERA in 35⅔ innings. The comment foreshadowed his fourth and final World Series appearance in Game Two of the 1939 fall classic, when he pitched 7⅓ no-hit innings against Cincinnati, also at Yankee Stadium.

14 Case.

15 Drebinger.

16 Case.

17 Drebinger.

18 In his next start, on September 1, 1938, Pearson allowed six runs on 10 hits in a 6-3 loss to Detroit.

19 Bob Considine, “On the Line,” Albany Times-Union, August 29, 1938.

Yankee Stadium was the natural choice to hold the All-Star Game in 1939. The game originated in Chicago in 1933, as an activity adjacent to the city’s Century of Progress World’s Fair. Six years later, New York was home to another World’s Fair, touting “The World of Tomorrow.” Companies like Westinghouse and National Cash Register showed off their newest, state-of-the-art products, and industrial engineer Norman Bel Geddes touted his Futurama, a city from the far-off future in 1960, a world where elevated highways and transcontinental flights were not just possible but part of everyday life.1 Even baseball got into the act, with an Academy of Sport at the fair. In anticipation of the fair, Uniforms for New York City’s three teams, the Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Giants, and New York Yankees, included a minimalist patch with the Fair’s logo of the Trylon and Perisphere buildings in 1938.2

Because of the opportunity to showcase the city, Yankee Stadium was picked to host the 1939 midseason classic, just five years after the Polo Grounds hosted the second All-Star Game, in 1934.3 It was the second newest venue in baseball (only the Indians’ part-time home, Cleveland Stadium, had been built more recently, opening in 1931), but it was the culmination of an early ballpark-building boom, as steel and concrete edifices supplanted rickety wood structures.

As the most ostentatious new ballpark in America’s biggest city, Yankee Stadium almost immediately became the center of the sports universe. It hosted prizefights. It hosted football games. And because its opening came not long after the debut of Babe Ruth as a Yankee – and the same year another Yankee legend, Lou Gehrig, made his major-league debut – it became home to a lot of championship teams. The Yankees won their first World Series in 1923, the year the stadium opened, and six more before the 1939 season, including the previous three.

By then, the tradition was in place that the managers of the previous year’s World Series teams would manage the All-Star squads. The Cubs’ Gabby Hartnett led the National League squad, but because it was the “centennial” year for baseball,4 Athletics manager Connie Mack, an inductee into the National Baseball Hall of Fame that had opened earlier that summer in Cooperstown, New York, was chosen as the American League manager.5 Ultimately, Mack begged off due to health issues, and the job fell back to Joe McCarthy, who’d managed each of the previous three All-Star squads.6

Ticket prices were the same for the All-Star Game as for any other Yankees game,7 which seemed appropriate; in many ways, it was a Yankees home game. McCarthy managed, and his coaching staff included Art Fletcher, who served as assistant to McCarthy as well as his predecessor, Miller Huggins. And no fewer than nine Yankees were named to the American League team, which made sense, given that the team was out to so far a lead that New York oddsmaker Jack Doyle had considered it a foregone conclusion that they’d win the pennant, offering odds only on who would finish second.8

Gehrig was one of the Yankees named to the American League team (he’d been named to the previous six as well), but he would not be playing. In fact, his retirement was announced the month before, and just a week before the All-Star Game, he was honored between games of an Independence Day doubleheader at the Stadium, telling fans, “Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”

Gehrig delivered the American League lineup card to the umpires and received the loudest cheers of the day. It was one of his final appearances in a Yankees uniform, and his ailment was noticeable. “Gehrig walks with a distinct limp,” said Cleveland Plain Dealer sports editor Gordon Cobbledick. “It is not the limp of an injured athlete. It is the halting, jerky limp of a cripple.”9

The only non-Yankees in the starting lineup were the Tigers’ Hank Greenberg, replacing Gehrig at first base, and Red Sox shortstop Joe Cronin and right fielder Doc Cramer. Red Rolfe started at third base, Joe DiMaggio was in center field, George Selkirk was in left field, Joe Gordon was at second, and Red Ruffing was pitching to Bill Dickey.10

Scoring started in the top of the third. Pirates shortstop Arky Vaughan led off the inning and singled for the National Leaguers. Paul Derringer hit two foul balls in an effort to sacrifice and advance Vaughan, but struck out swinging. Stan Hack hit a bloop that fell in in shallow left field to advance Vaughan to second. Lonny Frey then hammered a double over first base into right field, scoring Vaughan. Ival Goodman was intentionally walked to load the bases. Frank McCormick struck out on three pitches, and Ernie Lombardi flied out to end the threat.

In the bottom of the fourth, Derringer had been relieved by Cubs pitcher Bill Lee.11 With two on and two out, Selkirk hit a ball to right field. Goodman laid out but couldn’t make the catch, and Dickey scored to even up the game. The next batter, Gordon, hit a line drive to Vaughan, which he muffed, allowing Greenberg to score. Tommy Bridges struck out looking to end the inning. In the bottom of the fifth, the American League added an insurance run when DiMaggio hit a towering home run to left field with two outs.

The American Leaguers found themselves in a bind in the sixth inning. McCormick led off the frame with a groundout to Gordon. Lombardi singled to left-center on the very next pitch. Joe Medwick hit a roller to Cronin, who was too eager to turn a double play on the slow-footed Lombardi. Cronin booted the ball, leaving Medwick and Lombardi on first and second. Mel Ott hit a single that was batted down just past the infield dirt by Gordon, keeping a run from scoring.

In the Yankee Stadium bullpen, Bob Feller was warming up. He was planning to relieve Bridges in the seventh, but McCarthy called him in earlier. Not yet 21, the Indians pitcher had already shown himself to be one of the supreme hurlers of the day. Indeed, this was already his second All-Star Game appearance. And he was going to bring the heat.

“The best thing I could do was come overhand and throw him a fastball, which I did,” Feller recalled in a 2008 interview.12 And Vaughan hit it right to Gordon, who shoveled it to Cronin for the force at second. Cronin then fired to Greenberg for the double play to get out of the jam.

Feller dominated the rest of the way, earning the save. The first batter of the seventh inning, Babe Phelps, who pinch-hit for Lee, took a pitch – and demanded to see the ball, believing it was doctored!13 Vaughan had one more chance at Feller, in the ninth inning with Ott on first, but he popped out to DiMaggio.

“It is no trick whatever to pick out the All-Star goat,” Tommy Holmes wrote in the next day’s Brooklyn Eagle. It was Arky Vaughan. “This was the first time the Pittsburgh shortstop ever saw the Yankee Stadium. He’ll see it in a hundred nightmares from now on.”14

Feller struck out pinch-hitter Johnny Mize with a curveball that “looked like an aspirin tablet that rolled off a table,”15 and with a full count, struck out Hack looking to end the game.16

“Nice work all around, fellers,” McCarthy said after the game. “It was a good ball game. We got our share of the breaks and capitalized on them.”17

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for pertinent information, including box scores.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/allstar/1939-allstar-game.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1939/B07110ALS1939.htm

Photo credit: SABR-Rucker Archive.

Notes

1 Bel Geddes later designed a state-of-the-art domed ballpark in Brooklyn for the Dodgers. Obviously, it was never built.

2 “Baseball Clubs to Advertise Fair,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 4, 1938: 14.

3 Frederick G. Lieb, “Victory Gives American League Five-to-Two Edge Over National in ‘Dream Game’ Competition,” The Sporting News, July 13, 1939: 5.

4 The 1939 season was celebrated as baseball’s centennial year, with all players wearing a patch on their uniform commemorating it. It was based on the finding – later disproven – that Abner Doubleday invented the game on the fields of Cooperstown a century earlier. Further reading: John Thorn, “Baseball in 25 Objects: The 1939 Sleeve Patch,” https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/the-1939-centennial-sleeve-patch-e3d8ca0f4e65.

5 “Mack Made Manager for All-Star Game,” New York Times, June 2, 1939: 37.

6 McCarthy and the Yankees had won the previous three World Series, and McCarthy filled in as manager in place of the Tigers’ Mickey Cochrane in 1936. “McCarthy to Lead All-Star Team; Mack, Ill, Gives Up Job,” New York Times, July 2, 1939: S1.

7 $2.20 for box seats; $1.65, reserved grandstand; $1.10, unreserved grandstand; and bleacher seats were 55 cents.

8 “American All-Stars Favored at 9 to 20,” New York Times, July 7, 1939: 21.

9 Gordon Cobbledick, “Plain Dealing,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 12, 1939: 15. Cobbledick described Gehrig’s ailment as “a form of chronic infantile paralysis.”

10 By comparison, the Reds, leading the National League race at the time, started five players, pitcher Paul Derringer, second baseman Lonny Frey, first baseman Frank McCormick, catcher Ernie Lombardi, and right fielder Ival Goodman. John Drebinger, “Six Yanks to Start for Favored American Leaguers Today,” New York Times, July 11, 1939: 12.

11 Rules of the day limited pitchers to three innings in the All-Star Game; similarly, in the top of the inning, the Tigers’ Tommy Bridges had come on to pitch. “Mack Made Manager for All-Star Game.”

12 Jack Curry, “Going Back, Back, Back to ’39 All-Star Game at the Stadium,” New York Times, June 23, 2008: D1. At the time, Feller and Frey were the only players still living from the game.

13 Tommy Holmes, “NL Beaten but Not Disgraced as Arky Vaughan Sprouts Horns,” Brooklyn Eagle, July 12, 1939: 14.

14 “NL Beaten but Not Disgraced as Arky Vaughan Sprouts Horns.”

15 “NL Beaten but Not Disgraced as Arky Vaughan Sprouts Horns.”

16 Technically, Feller had violated the rules by pitching more than three innings, but accountability on this issue varies. In his autobiography, Feller notes that National Leaguers “cried foul” and in the 2008 Times story, said Hartnett protested but was told to return to the dugout. But the Times game story from the next day says no protest was lodged, noting that “[t]he National Leaguers always had insisted they could pin Feller’s ears back any time they met.”

17 Associated Press, “Harridge Helps in Pummeling of Hero Bob Feller,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 12, 1939: 15.

On June 17 DiMaggio set a Yankees record by hitting in his 30th game in a row.1 The 41-game hit streak set by George Sisler in 1922 was generally considered the modern-day standard.

The Yankees outfielder cast the illusion of indifference until acknowledging in an interview after the June 26, 1941 game against the St. Louis Browns when he extended the streak to 38 games, “As long as I’ve gone this far, I might as well try to keep it rolling. At the start I didn’t think much about it … but naturally I’d like to get the record since I’m this close.”2

From sea to shining sea; from Toots Shor’s Restaurant in Manhattan to DiMaggio’s Grotto Restaurant at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, and all the way in between, the pursuit of the hitting streak became a national phenomenon and was a common conversation starter on the streets. People avidly tuned on their radios, looking for updates as regularly scheduled broadcasts were interrupted on game days when news of another Joe DiMaggio hit came through.

Through June 28 he had hit in 40 games in a row, with a doubleheader on tap in Washington the next day. A double in the first game one broke Ty Cobb’s mark of 40 games. A single in the nightcap broke Sisler’s 41-game mark.3

While such things were not tracked with modern-day scrutiny at the time, it had come to light that Willie Keeler hit in 44 consecutive games in the 1890s.4

Having set a new modern record with 42, DiMaggio said, “I’m glad the strain is over. Now I’m going after that forty-four-game mark and I’ll keep on swinging and hitting as long as I can.”5

In a July 1 doubleheader against the Boston Red Sox at Yankee Stadium, he got two hits in the first game and, even though the second game was called after five innings, he had another hit, tying Keeler’s record. 

On Wednesday, July 2, braving 98-degree temperatures, Boston and New York played again.6

The heat was so intense that the scheduled Red Sox starter, the 41-year-old Lefty Grove, was a scratch, passing the baton to 31-year-old rookie right-handed knuckleballer Dick Newsome, who was given the task of facing the streaking DiMaggio.7 

Lefty Gomez, DiMaggio’s best friend on the team and his roommate on the road, was the Yankees’ starting pitcher when the home team took the field. Joe’s younger brother, Dominic DiMaggio, led off the game with a fly ball to left field. Gomez struck out Lou Finney for the second out. Ted Williams singled to right field, and Joe Cronin drew a walk, but Stan Spence flied out to DiMaggio in center field to end the inning.  

DiMaggio was the cleanup hitter in the Yankees lineup and was afforded a first-inning at-bat when the number-two hitter, Red Rolfe, drew a walk. DiMaggio ended the inning as he lined out to right fielder Spence.

After Gomez set the Red Sox down without a run in the top of the second inning, Charlie Keller led off the bottom of the second inning with a home run to right field to give the Yankees a 1-0 lead. Newsome gave up a two-out double to Phil Rizzuto but got three groundouts to escape the inning without further damage.

The Red Sox failed to score again in the top half of the third inning. In the home half, back-to-back singles by Rolfe and Tommy Henrich with one out put runners on the corners and brought DiMaggio to the plate for his second swing at history. John Drebinger of the New York Times described what happened next: “A snappy pick-up and throw by third-baseman Jim Tabor on a difficult bounding ball checked DiMaggio again. …”8 The stroke, though, was enough to drive in Rolfe from third base to give DiMaggio an RBI and the Yankees a 2-0 lead.

Nine consecutive outs followed, six by groundouts signaling perhaps that the heat was beginning to fatigue both teams. (Gomez had changed his sweat-soaked flannel jersey after the third inning.9)

In the Yankees fifth, first baseman Johnny Sturm, in his only major-league season, led off with a walk and stole second base. Rolfe doubled to right to drive in Sturm. Henrich lined out to Finney at first base, and that brought DiMaggio to the plate for his third at-bat.                                           

Newsome, the visiting pitcher, could do no right. The fans booed at ball one and ball two, which were wide of the plate. Then, according to Associated Press writer Judson Bailey, DiMaggio “clouted a high foul into the third tier of Yankee Stadium and finally blasted a mighty fly into the lower stands in left field.”10 Red Sox left fielder Williams simply turned and looked as the blast went over his head.11

The blow sent Newsome to the showers, relieved by right-hander Jack Wilson to put out the fire. He didn’t, and the Red Sox defense didn’t help much either, as the first batter he faced, Keller, reached first base on an error by Red Sox player-manager Joe Cronin. Bill Dickey walked, and Joe Gordon reached on a fielder’s choice to load the bases. After Phil Rizzuto popped out to the catcher, Gomez helped his own cause with a single up the middle, scoring Keller and Dickey and moving Gordon to third base. Gordon then scored the sixth run of the inning on a passed ball by catcher Frankie Pytlak. Wilson struck out Sturm, and the inning ended with the Yankees ahead 8-0.

The Red Sox grabbed three runs back in the top of the sixth, and Gomez, perhaps fatigued by the heat and maybe even the energy expended running the bases with his RBI single, left the contest when four of the first five batters reached base in the inning. Yankees manager Joe McCarthy summoned Johnny Murphy, the team’s 1941 bullpen ace, to secure the victory. He did, with a 3⅔-inning, one-hit relief job. The Yankees won 8-4.

Many fans filtered out of the Stadium early to escape the heat before the victory was confirmed, having seen what they came for, DiMaggio’s record-setting hit. Several stayed the distance and swarmed the field to celebrate when the game ended.12

Press photos from the time document DiMaggio on the field after the game amid a montage of baseball bats arranged to portray the number 45. Another showed DiMaggio celebrating with teammates in the locker room. Yet another portrayed his starlet wife, Dorothy, standing and cheering vigorously in the stands amid a throng of spectators after his home run in the fifth inning.  

DiMaggio went on to hit in 11 more games through July 16 to make the number 56 an icon in baseball annals.13 The Yankees went on to win the American League pennant with 101 victories and beat their rival Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series, four games to one.

Photo credit

National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

Sources

For game play-by-play details and box score information, the author referenced:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYA/NYA194107020.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1941/B07020NYA1941.htm

The author revisited the following books that covered the streak and in particular this game:

Auker, Elden, with Tom Keegan. Sleeper Cars and Flannel Uniforms: A Lifetime of Memories from Striking Out the Babe to Teeing It Up with the President (Chicago: Triumph Books 2001).

Kennedy, Kostya. 56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports (New York: Sports Illustrated Books Time Home Entertainment, 2011).

Vaccaro, Mike. 1941 – The Greatest Year In Sports: Two Baseball Legends, Two Boxing Champs, and the Unstoppable Thoroughbred Who Made History in the Shadow of War (New York: Doubleday 2007).

These videos provided further background on the 56-game hitting streak and contained footage of this game:

MLB Network. 56: The Streak  (2016).

HBO Sports. Where Have You Gone Joe DiMaggio? (1998).

PBS Special. Joe DiMaggio – The Hero’s Life (2000).

Notes

1 Roger Peckinpaugh had hit in 29 consecutive games in 1919, and Earle Combs tied that in 1931.

2 Associated Press, “DiMaggio Taking Interest in Hit Streak. Finally Decides He’d Like to Break Sisler’s Streak,” Meriden Record (Meriden, Connecticut), June 27, 1941: 12.

3 Dan Daniel, “19-Year-Old Record of Sisler Falls Before Relentless Drive of Yankees’ Great Outfielder,” The Sporting News, July 3, 1941: 18. Someone even pilfered DiMaggio’s bat between games, but that didn’t hinder his setting the record.

4 Keeler’s streak was described by sportswriter Bob Considine as “an ancient and slightly questionable mark set in 1897.” “Italian Star Runs Streak to 44 games: New York Defeats Bosox, 7-2,” Washington Post, July 2, 1941: 2.

5 James Dawson, “Yankees Conquer Senators, 9-4, 7-5: DiMaggio Getting Hit in Each Game,” New York Times, June 30, 1941: 20. The strain was not over for Dan Daniel, the official scorer for the game, who wrote, “This streak is of his is wearing me down. It’s tougher on me than it is on DiMaggio.” Dan Daniel. “Trials of an Official Scorer,” The Sporting News, July 17, 1941: 4.

6 The Yankees as a team were on fire, too, in the middle of a 14-game winning streak and having just set a team home-run streak of 25 straight games that was ended in the June 29 doubleheader in Washington.

7 He won 19 games in 1941, seven more wins than anyone else on the second-place Red Sox. He was the league’s best rookie pitcher.” Bill Nowlin, “Dick Newsome,” SABR BioProject.

8 John Drebinger, “DiMaggio Sets Hitting Record as Yankees Win; Dodgers Triumph/Home Run in Fifth Tops Keeler Mark,” New York Times, July 3, 1941: 22.

9 “Joe DiMaggio’s Streak, Game 45: DiMaggio Stands Alone in Baseball history,” joedimaggio.com;  https://bleacherreport.com/articles/757234-joe-dimaggios-streak-game-45-dimaggio-stands-alone-in-baseball-history, BleacherReport.com, July 4, 2011. 

10 Judson Bailey (Associated Press), “DiMaggio’s Home Run Tops Keeler. Yankee Outfielder Continues Sensational Hitting Streak,” Ottawa Evening Citizen, July 3, 1941: 14.

11 The celebration at home plate was chronicled by an Associated Press photo and included DiMaggio; Rolfe, the runner he drove in; Frankie Pytlak, the Red Sox catcher; and the Yankees batboy. Tim Sullivan, “DiMaggio Hits in 45th Straight Game; Sets Record,” Chicago Tribune, July 3, 1941: 19.      

12 Drebinger. One bold fan even clipped the Yankee Clipper’s cap as he ran in from center field but was thwarted in his escape by “the Stadium’s vigilant secondary defense of special guards.”

13 During the streak DiMaggio batted .408, hit 15 home runs, and drove in 55 runs. “Perhaps even more unbelievably, he struck out a mere five times over that stretch.” MLB.com, https://www.mlb.com/news/joe-dimaggio-56-game-hitting-streak.

Much was expected of Feller when the 1946 season opened, the first since 1941 with the United States at peace. He did not disappoint. On Opening Day he defeated Chicago, 1-0, at Comiskey Park. He allowed three hits, three more than he allowed the White Sox in the same park on Opening Day 1940.1 He lost his next two starts, to Detroit and Chicago, in games in which the Indians scored just two runs in each. Feller had demonstrated that he had not lost his fastball by striking out 28 batters in the three games. Manager Lou Boudreau, scoffing at rumors that his ace had lost his prewar brilliance, declared: “All I can say to that is just come out and watch him pitch. In the three games he’s worked we’ve given him exactly five runs. The only time he won he had to pitch a shutout.”2

Nevertheless, Feller was under scrutiny when he faced the Yankees at Yankee Stadium on April 30. He had won a game against New York the previous September, defeating Spud Chandler. But that was the wartime Yankees. The 1946 Yankees had started 9-4, and they had Joe DiMaggio in center field, not Russ Derry, along with fellow future Hall of Famers shortstop Phil Rizzuto, second baseman Joe Gordon, and catcher Bill Dickey. The Indians also had three future Hall of Famers in their lineup: Feller, shortstop Boudreau, and center fielder Bob Lemon.3 The game drew a crowd of 38,112 on a mild, partly cloudy afternoon.

The 27-year-old Feller started wildly, walking a batter in each of the first four innings and another to start the sixth. But overall, he and his opponent, 29-year-old Bill Bevens, 13-9 in 1945, staged a magnificent pitching duel. Through eight innings neither pitcher had allowed a run; but more riveting was the crowd’s awareness of the Yankees’ failure to get a hit. “Why I’ve never seen a no-hit game and I don’t expect to see one today,” said Red Patterson, the Yankees’ director of public relations.4 The Yankees had not been no-hit since Ray Caldwell, also of Cleveland, threw one against them in the first game of a doubleheader at the Polo Grounds on September 10, 1919.

Feller retired the side in order in the seventh, and got the first two batters in the eighth, including a strikeout of Bevens, his 11th and final strikeout of the game. In retrospect it seems odd that Yankees manager Joe McCarthy did not pinch-hit for pitcher Bevens in this situation. Next up was Rizzuto, who hit a high pop foul near third base. It was a routine play, but the usually sure-handed Indians third baseman Ken Keltner dropped it. Rizzuto had another chance, but Feller retired him on a groundball to Boudreau to end the inning.

The Indians broke the scoreless deadlock when with one out in the ninth, Feller’s batterymate, Frankie Hayes, homered into the left-field seats. The Cleveland right-hander was three outs away from his second no-hitter, but they would not be easy. He would have to get by George Stirnweiss, the defending AL batting champion, clutch-hitting Tommy Henrich, and the great DiMaggio.

Stirnweiss led off the home ninth by pushing a bunt up the first-base line, that Les Fleming had trouble coming up with, allowing Stirnweiss to reach base. With Henrich at bat, it was announced over the loudspeaker that Fleming had been charged with an error on Stirnweiss’s bunt. A loud roar went up from the crowd, indicating that the fans were rooting for Feller to get his no-hitter. This was the first time such an announcement of a scorer’s ruling had been made at Yankee Stadium.

Henrich sacrificed Stirnweiss to second, and the confrontation between Feller and DiMaggio began. The two all-time greats, who came into the league 10 years earlier, had not faced each other in a league game since 1941.

“I threw DiMaggio my best fast ball on a 3-and-2 count, and he hit a grounder to Boudreau’s left,” Feller told author Bill Gilbert in a memoir. “Lou threw him out at first as Stirnweiss moved to third.”5

One out to go, but the batter was the always dangerous Charlie Keller. “You’re a long way from a no-hitter even when you have two men out in the ninth,” Feller said after the game. “But when I got through the seventh, I began to hope – and I could see that the other fellows were hoping with me.”6

On a 1-and-2 pitch, Feller’s 133rd of the game, Keller hit a groundball to second baseman Ray Mack. Mack fumbled the ball momentarily as the crowd held its breath, but he recovered in time to throw Keller out.7 Feller had his no-hitter. The crowd stood and cheered, and hundreds of fans surrounded him as he struggled to get to the dugout.

“I had more stuff today than when I pitched that other no-hitter against the White Sox on Opening Day in 1940,” he said later in the dressing room.8

Feller also credited the defensive plays turned in by Boudreau and Mack. “You made it possible, Lou,” he said. “They were great plays out there and I’m sure grateful.”9

“It was a Frank Merriwell game,” remarked Joe McCarthy. “I never saw anything like it.”10

“Anybody who had the stuff Feller had today,” chimed in DiMaggio, “deserved a no-hitter. We didn’t hit the ball solid all day.”11

Feller led the league with 26 wins in 1946, the fourth of his six 20-win seasons. He also led in games, games started, complete games, shutouts, innings pitched, walks, and strikeouts. Five years later, on July 1, 1951, he would throw a third no-hitter, defeating Detroit, 2–1.

Sources

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

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYA/NYA194604300.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1946/B04300NYA1946.htm

Notes

1 Feller no-hit the White Sox on April 16, 1940.

2 “Feller Faces Yanks Today in Big Test,” Akron Beacon Journal, April 30, 1946: 26.

3 During the season the Indians would convert Lemon from an outfielder to a pitcher, where he would compile a Hall of Fame career.

4 Ted Meier, “Feller’s No-Hit Story Has Punch, No Wallop,” Dayton (Ohio) Daily News, May 1, 1946: 18.

5 Bob Feller with Bill Gilbert, Now Pitching Bob Feller (New York: HarperPerennial, 1990), 131.

6 J.G. Taylor Spink, “Looping the Loops,” The Sporting News, May 9, 1946: 2.

7 Mack had also made the last play in Feller’s 1940 no-hitter, throwing out another left-handed-hitting outfielder, Taft Wright.

8 Meier.

9 Joe Trimble, “Feller’s Second No-Hitter Blanks Yanks, 1-0,” New York Daily News, May 1, 1946: 59.

10 Meier.

11 Meier.