The contest itself wasn’t noteworthy, as reflected in the Brooklyn Eagle’s confession that its report was “very brief,” squeezed by other news.[fn]“Base Ball,” Brooklyn Eagle, October 15, 1862, 2.[/fn] The legend is that during the game Creighton swung so mightily while hitting a home run that the swing caused a serious abdominal rupture. However accurate that is, he suffered for a few days at home after that game and died on the 18th. He was only 21.

The Eagle wrote about Creighton’s death at length, and the New York Times, which said he was “extensively known as an expert base ball player,” echoed the Eagle’s statement that Creighton died as “the result of internal injuries sustained while playing a match on Tuesday last.”[fn]“Brooklyn News,” New York Times, October 20, 1862 (see subheading “Death of a Base Ball Player”).[/fn] Creighton’s death was also announced in such papers as the Boston Daily Advertiser, the Public Ledger in Philadelphia, the Sun in Baltimore, Virginia’s Alexandria Gazette, and the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel. The Advertiser’s account called Creighton a “well known base-ball player” and specified that he “burst a blood-vessel in striking at a ball,” though without specifying the result.[fn]Boston Daily Advertiser, October 22, 1862, 2.[/fn]

Creighton was buried at Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. A few years later, the Eagle wrote that visitors to his grave would “see a very neat and pretty marble shaft, bearing all the emblems of the Base Ball field, and the name James Creighton. It was erected in conjunction by the Excelsior and Union Clubs.” The paper also provided this account of Creighton’s fateful at-bat: “Hannegan was pitching for the Union, and Creighton was at bat. Hannegan was joking with Jim, and told him he would strike out. Creighton had struck twice, and in making a third attempt at a ball struck with such great force and immediately fell down. After a while he felt no more uneasiness, and played the balance of the game.”[fn]“Our National Game,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 16, 1865, 2. The Eagle’s first use of “struck” was merely to mean “swung,” implying that Bernie Hannegan had in fact attained a strikeout. [/fn]

James P. Creighton, Jr. was born in Manhattan to James and Jane Creighton on April 15, 1841. His mother died when he was 8 years old. A decade later Creighton was playing for the Niagaras of Brooklyn when he had his first chance to pitch. Soon thereafter he switched to the opposing team, the Star Club, and in 1860 he joined the Excelsiors. He impressed during the team’s ground-breaking tour that season, which included a leg through Philadelphia and Baltimore to Washington.

One account of Creighton’s final game appeared in Sporting Life on April 13, 1887, when it reprinted a letter from an unnamed “Old Timer” to St. Louis’s Republican: “Creighton’s death occurred from the rupture of his bladder, which occurred while he was pitching for the Excelsiors against the Unions of Morrisania. I was a kid at the time, and was a spectator of the match. Creighton played out the game, although I think he changed positions and went out into the field to play during the last two or three innings. Some of my companions averred that they heard his bladder burst, but if they did they did not say anything about it at the time, and it was not generally known until the next day that the celebrated pitcher was injured.”[fn]“Creighton’s Death,” Sporting Life, April 13, 1887, 7.[/fn]

Henry Chadwick wrote a rebuttal in his regular column the next issue: “I saw Creighton play in a cricket match at Bedford, on the outskirts of Brooklyn, as a member of the St. George Club, in a game with the Willow Club eleven in 1862, and in that match, in making a very hard effort to hit a leg ball, Creighton unknowingly ruptured himself. Not being aware of the serious injury he sustained on the occasion, he very unprudently engaged in a base ball match with the Excelsiors, of Brooklyn, against the Unions, of Morrisania, and he had not pitched long in the game before he had to retire from his position from pain. On that occasion Creighton said that he had strained himself playing cricket. He went home early that day from the ball match, and the next thing I heard of him was that he had died from the neglected injury he had received in the cricket match; in other words, from a severe rupture.”[fn]“Chadwick’s Chat,” Sporting Life, April 20, 1887, 5. Creighton did star in a cricket match for New York’s St. George Club against Brooklyn’s Willow Club on October 9, 1862, just five days prior to the Excelsiors’ game against the Morrisania nine.[/fn]

In recent years some baseball historians have speculated that shortly after Creighton’s death influential baseball figures, led by the Excelsior club’s president, Dr. Joseph B. Jones, attempted to shift blame to cricket, its rival then for “national pastime,” so that baseball wouldn’t be viewed as dangerous. If there was such a plot, it didn’t blossom. By 1887, when Chadwick weighed in, there was no need for excuses.

A contrary accusation is that Creighton’s death from hitting a home run was quickly fabricated to enhance baseball’s popularity. “Dying while hitting a long home run is a great story, it’s just not true,” said Tom Shieber, senior curator of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, a few years ago.[fn]Wayne Coffey, “Daily News Sports Hall of Fame Candidates,” New York Daily News, June 18, 2006.[/fn] Shieber’s search of original sources found no homer by Creighton in that fateful game. Still, the home-run myth was probably popularized, if not started, almost half a century later by Creighton’s teammate, John Chapman. In Alfred Spink’s 1910 book The National Game, Chapman was quoted as saying, “I was present at the game between the Excelsiors and the Unions of Morrisiana [sic] at which Jim Creighton injured himself. He did it in hitting out a home run. When he had crossed the rubber he turned to George Flanley and said, ‘I must have snapped my belt,’ and George said, ‘I guess not.’”[fn]Alfred H. Spink, The National Game (St. Louis: The National Game Publishing Co., 1910), 128. [/fn] Despite many authors questioning this legend, it still shows up in print to this day presented uncritically.

Overlooked in this saga is the remainder of James Creighton’s father’s very sad life. In little more than a decade after 1862, Jim Creighton, Sr. also buried a daughter, Mary, a grandchild, and another son, John. They are all buried near James Senior’s wife and namesake.

This essay was originally published in “Inventing Baseball: The 100 Greatest Games of the 19th Century” (2013), edited by Bill Felber. Download the SABR e-book by clicking here.

The Chicago Tribune described the Chicago White Stockings as “disaffected, demoralized and crippled” as the club prepared to clash with the Boston Red Stockings in a match of pennant contenders on September 29, 1871.1 With third baseman Ed Pinkham sick in bed and the club suffering from a host of other injuries, Chicago had not only lost its last two games to fall to 17-7, it had been drubbed 17-2 three days earlier by an amateur team, the Rockford Forest Citys.2  That loss heightened growing suspicions, arising from the recent announcement of the team’s roster for the 1872 season, that players who would not be returning to the club would have little incentive to help Chicago capture the championship. 

Overcoming early-season injuries, Boston (18-9) was on a roll, having won 11 of its last 13 games, including the last six. The Tribune praised the team as “all that is hightoned and aristocratic in the professional fraternity.” In perfect health and without a “sore finger or lame leg” of the squad, the Red Stockings exuded confidence.  “The red-legged gentry frisked and cavorted about the field before the game,” expecting to defeat Chicago as they had had on September 5, and to tie the season series at two games each.

A warm, sunny Midwestern day attracted at least 7,000 spectators to Chicago’s Lake Front Park (also called colloquially White Stockings Park) to take in an afternoon of baseball. “The White Stockings,” opined the Tribune, “undoubtedly occupied a larger share of the public attention than any other private citizens in the city.” After Chicago’s player-manager Jimmy Wood lost the customary coin toss to determine which team would bat first, umpire Harry McLean of the Washington Olympics called the game to order at 3:05.

Batting first, the Whites took a 1-0 lead in the first inning when striker Fred Treacey reached first on third baseman’s Harry Schafer’s error, stole second, and scored on another error by Schafer. In the second inning Charlie Hodes scored on Schafer’s third error to give Chicago a 2-0 lead. The Reds’ Al Spalding led off the second by walking, stealing second “by proxy in the person of the fleet-footed [Ross] Barnes,” and tallying the visitors’ first run. In the fourth inning Schafer redeemed himself by knocking in Cal McVey, who had led off with a walk, to tie the game.

Schafer, who was Boston’s starting third sacker for all five years in the National Association (1871-1875), was having a bad day, and was charged with seven of the team’s 11 errors.3 In those days of playing without a glove, Schafer muffed two more grounders in the fifth inning. Those miscues, coupled with Spalding’s wild pitch and McVey’s wild throw, led to two more Chicago runs. But Boston, whose average of 12.9 runs per game and .310 team batting average trailed only the eventual champion Philadelphia Athletics, stormed back. George Wright (whom the Tribune described as Boston’s “mainstay and chief reliance”), Ross Barnes, and McVey tallied safe hits leading to two runs, the first of which was the team’s only earned run of the game, and tied the game, 4-4.

Catching for Chicago was Marshall King, who had not played in a game for the White Stockings since August 16 while recovering from a broken finger. He “swore to stop every ball that [George] Zettlein pitched – if not with his hands, then with his head,” wrote the Tribune excitedly. However, in the fifth inning King suffered a “peculiarly painful and enervating injury” that forced him to change positions with Hodes (the regular catcher) in the middle of the following inning. One can only imagine what kind what injury befell the 21-year-old.

The sixth inning was the “turning point of the game,” opined the Tribune.  Tom Foley, a much-maligned outfielder, led off with a single and scored on Hodes’ RBI single to left. The bases were loaded after Zettlein reached on Barnes’s muff and Bub McAtee, once described as a “player of coolness and judgment good under the most trying and exciting circumstances,” singled.4 Wood (whose .378 batting average paced the club in ’71) “dashed at a hip high ball,” belting it to left field and clearing the bases for an 8-4 Chicago lead. A “storm of cheers,” wrote the Tribune, “lasted for nearly five minutes.”

Boston, which the Tribune reported was often disdainfully termed the “plug bat nine” by some pitchers in the league, cut the deficit to two by scoring two unearned runs in the sixth. Noteworthy was the first of two Chicago double plays. After Harry Wright singled, his brother George hit a grounder to second baseman Jimmy Wood. Inexplicably, Harry raced back to first. Wood threw to first sacker McAtee to nab George; McAtee then fired back to Wood, who erased Harry, caught between the bases. The Whites turned their second double play of the game (they had 16 the entire season) the following inning when left fielder Treacey made a “brilliant” running catch of Dave Birdsall’s smash “just off the ground” and then doubled McVey (running for George Wright) off first.

Described as a “state of things too critical to be comfortable,” Chicago tacked on an insurance run in the seventh when Foley scored after two more errors by Schafer and a hit by Zettlein. In the ninth inning Treacey smashed a “beauty over [the fence] into Michigan Avenue”; however, according to Captain Jimmy Wood’s rules regarding balls over the fence, he was granted only first base. Treacey subsequently scored on a passed ball to give the Whites what appeared to be an insurmountable 10-6 lead.

According to the Tribune, the Red Stockings mounted a “savage and determined” comeback in the bottom of the ninth. Charlie Gould doubled to drive in Spalding and subsequently scored on a wild throw to second on a double steal to make the game 10-8. With Schafer on third and George Wright on first with two outs, Ross Barnes (who batted .401 and led the NA with 66 runs in just 31 games) was in position to tie the game with a double. However, he hit a high fly that Wood caught on the run “between the in and out fields” to secure Chicago’s exciting victory.

Chicago’s “nine ball players never worked harder, or more harmoniously, to win a doubtful and difficult contest,” wrote the Tribune, suggesting that all of the pregame concerns about the players and team were for naught. “They demonstrated that they are men of pride and principle.” 

The Tribune noted many inconsistent calls by the umpire. For example, Treacey struck out in the sixth on a ball that was “positively over” the batter’s head; at other times, the paper reported incredulously of consecutive balls and strikes. In defense of the umpire, who admitted that he got “all mixed up,” the daily castigated spectators whose “jeers and howls at decisions adverse to the White Stockings were a disgrace to Chicago.” Seeking to preserve both the gentlemanly aspect of the sport and the behavior of the spectators, the Tribune suggested that more police are needed at games to suppress such “ruffianly demonstrations.” In a dig at spectators in the City of Brotherly Love, the paper suggested that “Chicago cannot afford to acquire a Philadelphia reputation with reference to baseball crowds.”

With the victory, Chicago took the season series from Boston, appeared to be the front-runner to win the National Association championship, and set up an anticipated matchup with Philadelphia. However, the White Stockings had to wait for more than two years and seven months before they played another professional game in Chicago.

Disaster struck Chicago on Sunday night, October 8, when a massive fire erupted that destroyed about 3.3 square miles of the city, including much of the central business district (the Loop) and Lake Front Park, at the intersection of Michigan Avenue and Randolph Street (now Grant Park). The two-day fire killed an estimated 300 people and destroyed 17,000 structures. 

The fire decimated the White Stockings. Though no players were injured, the team lost all of its equipment and uniforms. Most of the players were left homeless and in financial ruin. Undoubtedly more concerned about their friends and family and rebuilding their lives, they agreed to play the remaining games with borrowed gear on the road, splitting two games with the Troy Haymakers on October 21 and 23. Chicago concluded the season in an anticlimactic game on October 30 by playing Philadelphia at the Union Grounds in Brooklyn to determine the championship.  On a neutral field, far from the fans of either city, the game drew only 500 fans who witnessed Athletics triumph, 4-1.

When Chicago defeated Philadelphia 4-0 at the newly rebuilt 23rd Street Grounds on May 13 to open the 1874 season and re-inaugurate professional baseball in the Windy City, only two players remained from the 1871 team: pitcher George Zettlein and outfielder Fred Treacey.

Notes

1 The play-by-play information for this game summary relies heavily on the very detailed game report from the Chicago Tribune. All of the quotations in this game summary are from the following edition unless otherwise noted: “Games and Pastimes. Fourth and Deciding Game Between the Whites and Red Stockings,” Chicago Tribune, September 30, 1871: 4.

2 “Games and Pastimes. The White Stockings at Rockford – How They Scored 2 to the Forest City’s 17,” Chicago Tribune, September 27, 1871: 4.

3 The Chicago Tribune reported that Schafer made two errors in the first, one in the second, two in the fifth, and two in the seventh.

4 “Games and Pastimes. Composition of Next Year’s White Stocking Nine,” Chicago Tribune, September 22, 1871: 1.

The winners of three straight National Association championships, the Red Stockings had been so dominant in 1875 that the pennant race was effectively over in June. That made the final game the last of a string of meaningless games that had lasted three months. A championship team closing out its season at home might still have been cause for a communitywide celebration, but this was a bitter championship for Red Stockings fans. Back in July, long before such matters were usually resolved, word came out that four of Boston’s stars — Deacon White, Cal McVey, Ross Barnes, and pitcher Albert Spalding — had signed their 1876 contracts not with Boston, but to play in Chicago. Continually seeing or reading about the exploits of their soon-to-be-former players could only serve as a reminder to fans of what they were about to lose. So the combination of bad weather, another unimportant game, and a final painful reminder of a far less bright future was more than enough to keep most Red Stockings fans at home or work.3 

The game had equally little meaning to the players who at the end of another long season were playing back-to-back games in two cities. Once the October 29 game was called for darkness in the top of the eighth, the two clubs made for the train station and the uncomfortable overnight trip to Boston. With its come-from-behind win, the Hartford club had capped off a good season. After an unsuccessful inaugural campaign in 1874, Hartford still had enough of its startup funding left to acquire veteran players like Jack Burdock and Jack Remsen of the New York Mutuals and Bob Ferguson and Tommy Bond of the Atlantics. Regardless of the outcome of the final act, the Hartford players and their fans had enjoyed 54 victories and a second-place finish. Whether it was because of the much smaller rosters of the day or the desire to give the Boston fans one last chance to see their heroes, Harry Wright and his club opted to play their regular lineup. Although doubtless well intentioned, little came of the move as the game was dismissed by the Boston papers as “devoid of interest.”4 

Based on the surviving box scores, the game was no classic, with both teams reaching double figures in errors. One run that was definitely earned was a home run by Boston’s Ross Barnes, which cleared the left-field fence. Boston got off to an early 5-1 lead, added two more in the sixth, and held on for a 7-4 victory in a game called after eight innings. Hartford’s last three runs came in their last at-bat, but the Globe, apparently unwilling to allow the visitors even a modicum of respect, dismissed the three tallies as scored “in the dark.”5 The Hartford Courant, on the other hand, proudly noted that the local club had outhit the champions, 14-10, and attributed the loss to “poor base running” and “errors.”6 Baserunning blunders may have indeed been significant as Hartford reportedly had two runners thrown out at the plate.7 Eight innings were apparently enough for a game that marked Boston’s 71st win, 54 of which were credited to the strong right arm of Albert Spalding. Hartford ended the season with only one win in 10 tries against Boston, due in large measure to the Dark Blues’ anemic .205 team batting average in those 10 games.8 

Hartford was not alone, however, in faring poorly against the Red Stockings. Boston’s record against the six teams immediately below them in the standings was a resounding 48-7. None of this was surprising, given Spalding’s 54-5 record with a 1.59 ERA, not to mention a batting order with six hitters over .300 and a team batting average of .321.

It’s no wonder Boston finished the season with a 71-8-3 record, 18½ games ahead of a Hartford club that had a solid .659 winning percentage of its own. Also not surprisingly, a league so dominated by one team was not a healthy one, to the point that only five teams finished the season. A perceptive observer attending the final game or even reading about it in the newspaper might have wondered if the National Association would survive. Any such ponderings would prove prophetic when William Hulbert of the Association’s Chicago club took not only Boston’s four stars, but the five surviving Association franchises into the new National League. Throughout almost all of the National Association’s brief existence, the Boston Red Stockings had been the league’s most dominant team and while their last game was no classic, it was fitting that Boston won the Association’s not so grand finale.

This article was originally published in “Boston’s First Nine: The 1871-75 Boston Red Stockings” (SABR, 2016), edited by Bob LeMoine and Bill Nowlin. To read more articles from this book at the SABR Games Project, click here.

Notes

1 Boston Evening Journal, November 1, 1875: 4.

2 Boston Globe, October 30, 1875: 5.

3 William J. Ryczek, Blackguards and Red Stockings: A History of Baseball’s National Association, 1871-1875 (Wallingford, Connecticut: Colebrook Press, 1992), 216.

4 Ryczek, 182; Boston Globe, November 1, 1875: 3.

5 Boston Globe, November 1, 1875: 3.

6 Hartford Courant, November 2, 1875: 2.

7 Ibid.

8 Hartford Courant, November 16, 1875: 2.

The Altoona Mountain Citys were a short-lived major-league team that played in the short-lived Union Association. The club’s lone season lasted 25 games and ended with a 5-3 loss to the Baltimore Monumentals on May 31, 1884.

The Central Pennsylvania railroad city of Altoona was not originally in the Union Association’s plans. League President Henry Lucas spent months lining up clubs in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Washington. For travel convenience, Lucas desperately wanted to add a franchise in Pittsburgh, midway between the Eastern and the Western teams.

Lucas’s Pittsburgh pursuit fell through, but a minor-league club 100 miles away in Altoona was seeking a new league and offered similar geographic benefits. Altoona heard about Lucas’s interest, applied for admission into the Union Association on February 11, 1884, and received a telegram nine days later confirming its acceptance.

The exact 1884 population of Altoona is unclear, but it was undoubtedly much smaller than other major-league cities at the time. The 1880 US Census listed Altoona’s population as 19,710, while all of the other original Union Association cities had populations of more than 175,000 on that same census. A city like Altoona hosting clubs from major markets makes it easy to understand why one historian called the Altoona Mountain Citys “the most unlikely major league team in baseball history.”1

Like many nineteenth-century clubs, Altoona’s Union Association entry had several names. Altoona is set at the base of the Allegheny Mountains and is nicknamed the Mountain City, and Altoona Mountain Citys remains the most common name associated with the 1884 club. Other articles called them the Altoona Unions, since they played in the Union Association.

Posters advertising the 1884 season promoted the team as the Famous Altoonas, so that name occasionally appeared in print. Similarly, other publications hyped the team as the Pride of Altoona. After losing 19 of its first 25 games, newspapers described the team as the Altoona Unfortunates. The sixth and final reported moniker was the Altoona Ottawas, with that name emerging because the “Ottawa Indians inhabited Pennsylvania in the 17th and 18th centuries.”2

A bumpy road trip began the Altoona Mountain Citys’ on-field existence. The club started the season with a three-game series in Cincinnati and lost all three games. From there, it was four losses in four tries at St. Louis. The Mountain Citys arrived in Altoona for their home opener at Columbia Park with an 0-7 record.

Columbia Park was built in 1884 and was surrounded by streets. It had a narrow grandstand and its home clubhouse was behind the center-field wall. It was also known as Fourth Avenue Grounds or Waverly Field.3

Altoona’s first home game, on April 30, drew a strong crowd of more than 2,000 people, who saw the Mountain Citys get pounded by St. Louis, 15-2. St. Louis took the next three games in Altoona too, dropping the Mountain Citys’ record to 0-11. Altoona beat talented Boston hurler Tommy Bond on May 10 to earn the first win in team history and move its record to 1-11.

The Mountain Citys lost more games than they won in the succeeding weeks but had even bigger concerns to deal with: Financial problems were mounting. “Attendance dwindled to less than 1,000 a game, and sometimes as low as 200 — not even enough to pay the players’ salaries. By the end of May of the team’s inaugural professional season, a number of the players had jumped to other teams.”4

On May 27 Altoona began what turned out to be its final series with a 3-2 win over Baltimore in 13 innings, the longest game in Union Association history and “the finest ever played in the county.”5 The dramatic victory in front of 300 spectators sparked a boost of optimism regarding the team’s future. The Altoona Times’s game summary opened with “(a) change for the better has taken place in the fortunes of the Altoona base ball club.”6 The optimism didn’t last long.

On the same day the Altoona Times published that hopeful game story, the Kansas City Times reported rumblings that its city was trying to wiggle into the Union Association. “An effort is being made by a prominent sporting man of this city to organize a professional base ball club, provided admission can be obtained to the Union association [sic].”7

On May 29 league President Lucas arrived in Altoona. At first, the press wasn’t skeptical about why he was in town, writing that Lucas “witnessed yesterday’s game from the grand stand. If he had opinions about the playing he kept them to himself like the polite gentleman he is.”8

Lucas was still in Altoona on May 30 and coverage turned gloomy in the next day’s Altoona Times: “President Lucas, of St. Louis, and President of the Union Association, still remains in the city. It is rumored he wants to locate the Altoona club in Kansas City.”9

When the Mountain Citys reported for their home game against Baltimore on May 31, nothing had been officially announced regarding the club’s future. About 1,000 fans came out to Columbia Park that day, not realizing they would witness the final game in Altoona Mountain Citys history.

Henry Oberbeck, normally a position player, was the starting pitcher for Baltimore, making his first major-league start as a hurler. Jim Brown and his 1-8 record got the start for Altoona. The game began under sunny skies with temperatures in the 60s.10

After a scoreless first inning, Baltimore scored three runs in the top of the second on “good hitting aided by errors.”11 Altoona brought in a run in the fifth and two more in the sixth to tie the game, 3-3. Baltimore was batting in the eighth with two outs, a runner on base, and the score still tied when Altoona left fielder George Daisy dropped an easy fly ball. A two-run hit by Baltimore immediately after Daisy’s error put the Monumentals ahead, 5-3.

The fact that Daisy was even on the field shows how dysfunctional the Mountain Citys had become. Daisy was a local dance instructor who played minor-league ball in Altoona the year before.12 He was summoned to fill in that day when three Mountain Citys refused to play because they hadn’t been paid.13 Daisy arrived immediately before the game, went 0-for-4, and made that crucial error. It was the only major-league game of his career.

Neither side scored in the ninth and Baltimore won, 5-3. The game took two hours. The Mountain Citys officially disbanded after the game. “Lucas, knowing that the Altoona association could not possibly get through the season on such poor business as they have been playing to, came on to advise its withdrawal,” the Altoona Times commented.14

As for the Union Association’s plans to replace Altoona on the schedule, the Kansas City rumors proved true. “Lucas had been in contact with a grain dealer named Americus V. McKim, who had bankrolled the first professional club in Kansas City.”15 The Kansas City Cowboys were born and played their first Union Association game on June 7.

Kansas City wasn’t an upgrade from Altoona on the field — the Cowboys went 16-63 — but they were an upgrade at the gate. Big crowds filled Kansas City’s Athletic Park throughout the summer of 1884 and Kansas City joined St. Louis and Washington as the only three Union Association teams to turn a profit.16

Charlie Berry, Joe Connors, Clarence Cross, and Taylor Shafer were the only Altoona players transferred to Kansas City’s roster. The Mountain Citys’ best player, 25-year-old Germany Smith, joined the National League’s Cleveland Blues and went on to play in the majors until 1898 and rack up 1,597 career hits.

“The truth is Altoona hasn’t got the population to support such an organization,” the Altoona Times eulogized a few days after the Mountain Citys’ collapse. “(T)he Altoona team was, from the start, a disjointed combination, lacking confidence in themselves and in the management.”17

The Union Association itself folded after the 1884 season. Altoona hosted minor-league teams off and on from 1886 to 1912. The Pittsburgh Pirates’ Double-A affiliate, the Altoona Curve, has called the Mountain City home since 1999. Some Curve fans may not realize that their city was the home of a fleeting major-league team that faded away on May 31, 1884.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author used Retrosheet.org.

Photo credit: Public domain photo of Columbia Park in Altoona, date unknown. Provided by Paul Healey of SABR’s Pictorial History Committee.

Notes

1 Justin McKinney, “Altoona, 1884,” SABR’s Baseball Cards Research Committee, https://sabrbaseballcards.blog/2017/11/15/altoona-1884/.

2 Richard Worth, Baseball Team Names: A Worldwide Dictionary, 1869-2011 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2013), 20.

3 “Columbia Park (Altoona),” Baseball-Reference Bullpen, baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Columbia_Park_(Altoona).

4 Dennis Purdy, Kiss ’Em Goodbye: An ESPN Treasury of Failed, Forgotten, and Departed Teams (Bristol, Connecticut: ESPN, 2010), 5.

5 “A Brilliant Contest,” Altoona Times, May 28, 1884.

6 “A Brilliant Contest.”

7 “Local Miscellany,” Kansas City Times, May 28, 1884.

8 “A Bum Game,” Altoona Times, May 30, 1884.

9 “Beaten Again,” Altoona Times, May 31, 1884.

10 AccuWeather, email correspondence with senior meteorologist Tom Kines, October 21, 2020.

11 “The Last Game,” Altoona Times, June 2, 1884.

12 David Nemec, The Rank and File of 19th Century Major League Baseball: Biographies of 1,084 Players, Owners, Managers, and Umpires (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2012), 228.

13 “The Last Game.”

14 “The Last Game.”

15 Jon Springer, Once Upon a Team: The Epic Rise and Historic Fall of Baseball’s Wilmington Quicksteps (New York: Sports Publishing, 2018), unidentified page number.

16 “The Union Association,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 23, 1884.

17 “The Last Game.”

A 4-0 win for the Cleveland Naps over Delahanty’s Washington Senators at League Park was noteworthy primarily for Delahanty’s final appearance and last hit – though of course no one was aware of it at the time.

Washington, a distant eighth in the eight-team American League, had arrived in Cleveland for the third stop on a Western road trip. The Senators had gone 0-3 against the St. Louis Browns and 0-2 against the Chicago White Sox. They had four games scheduled against the Naps before concluding the road trip with four more games in Detroit. Delahanty had appeared in all five of the games against the Browns and White Sox, playing right field and collecting six hits – five singles and a double – in 19 at-bats.

The Senators could be partially excused for their poor performance, given the distractions surrounding the team and its star player. In late 1902 Delahanty had agreed to play for the New York Giants in 1903.1 But a peace agreement between the National League and the new American League nullified any contract-jumping and forced Delahanty to remain in Washington, where it was no secret that he was unhappy.2

“It seemed like every dysfunctional part of his life was striking him at one time. His poor physical condition, his desperate finances, a distraught and ailing wife, and his thwarted ambitions were breaking him down,” observed biographer Jerrold Casway. “Undoubtedly, [Giants manager John] McGraw and [Giants owner John] Brush were applying pressure on the bewildered ballplayer. The only solace for his anxiety and stress was drinking.”3

Opening the series in Cleveland against the fourth-place Naps, the Senators had the misfortune of facing right-handed pitcher Earl Moore. He was known as “Crossfire” for his side-arm delivery motion from the end of the rubber.4 Moore went on to win 20 games in 1903 and led the AL with a 1.74 ERA. Another right-hander, John “Happy” Townsend, got the call to start for the Senators. Townsend had only one win against eight losses going into the contest.

Senators manager Tom Loftus placed Delahanty third in the batting order and, for the first time all season, started him at first base.5 Moore retired the Senators quickly in the top of the first inning, including a swinging strikeout of Delahanty.

Cleveland racked up all the runs it needed by scoring three times in the home half of the first. Leadoff hitter Harry Bay walked and the speedy center fielder stole second. Star second baseman Nap Lajoie drove in Bay with a double off the left-field wall.

Cleveland first baseman Charlie “Piano Legs” Hickman reached second base when the Senators fielded his grounder and trapped Lajoie in a rundown between second and third. Left fielder Jack McCarthy’s single brought Hickman home. McCarthy then stole second and went to third on an infield hit by shortstop Billy Clingman. Townsend’s wild pitch allowed McCarthy to score and complete the Naps’ first-inning outburst.

The Naps made it 4-0 in the third inning when McCarthy doubled and scored as catcher Fred Abbott hit a Texas Leaguer behind shortstop. Townsend settled down after a rough start and did not allow another hit after the fourth inning.

In the top of the fourth, Delahanty got what proved to be the final hit of his career as he “beat out an infield single and stole second.”6 According to one account, Big Ed may have known what pitch was coming. With his arms raised and his bat held high over his head, “Del glanced down to see catcher Fred Abbott flashing his finger signs to the pitcher, and he laughed. Ed was a master at picking up signals, often enabling him to know exactly what pitch was coming.”7

Shortstop Charles Moran had drawn a walk ahead of Delahanty, gone to second on a passed ball, and moved to third on Delahanty’s hit. The game’s best scoring opportunity for the Senators ended when the next two batters could not drive the runners home from second and third.

Delahanty made his final plate appearance in the top of the eighth inning with a chance to end the shutout, but Moore was up to the challenge. “It looked good for a tally in the eighth, when with two out, Moran was given his second pass, going to third on [Kip] Selbach’s single, but Delahanty sent an easy grounder to Moore, and the chance was gone,” reported the Cleveland Leader.8

Moore closed out the first of his three shutouts of 1903. The Senators were blanked 20 times that season, on their way to scoring a majors-lowest total of 437 runs. News accounts acknowledged the routine nature of the day’s action and labeled it “one of the most uninteresting games” played at League Park that season. Washington appeared to be just going through the motions, and the “game dragged through 105 minutes.”9

The fourth-inning single was the 2597th hit of Delahanty’s career. His lifetime batting average of .346 was the highest in the game’s history at that time.10 With 52 hits in 1903, Delahanty’s batting average was .333 in his shortened season.

Delahanty’s accumulating seven hits in 23 at-bats over his final six games, a .304 pace, might be surprising given the turmoil going on in his personal and professional life. Biographer Casway noted that his main motivation was to prove his worth to the Giants, who were still seeking his services. “From June 1 to his final game on June 25, Delahanty was 28 for 72 for a .390 average. Riding the crest of a sixteen-game hitting streak, Del’s .340 average put him fourth in the league.”11

The loss extended the Senators’ losing streak to six games. On June 26 the same papers that carried the account of Delahanty’s final game also reported that the peace agreement between the leagues to prevent contract-jumping had ended when George Davis, a regular for the White Sox in 1902, was permitted to play for the Giants.12

Delahanty undoubtedly read about the news and concluded that his days as a Senator were over. Likely thinking his future was with the Giants, Del did not play for Washington on June 26. It was reported he was ill. When Delahanty did not show for the Saturday doubleheader, his teammates were not surprised. “Once again, his absence was reported as due to illness, but the ballplayers knew better. Del was loose on a drinking spree.”13

After dropping three of four games in Cleveland, the Washington club boarded a Saturday evening ferry to cross Lake Erie for a four-game set in Detroit, the final stop on their road trip.14

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Ray Danner and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Ed Delahanty, Trading Card Database.

Sources

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

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CLE/CLE190306250.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1903/B06250CLE1903.htm

Notes

1 See generally Mike Sowell, July 2, 1903, (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1992) and Jerrold Casway, Ed Delahanty in the Emerald Age of Baseball, (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004).

2 As outlined by Casway, 244: “Both leagues were uneasy about the 1903 season. The National League was in disarray, and the American League was stretched to its limits. … After much posturing and compromise, four men from each league convened in Cincinnati on Friday, January 9, 1903. … The key figure was Garry Herrmann, the newly named president of the Cincinnati ball club. He was a lifelong friend of Ban Johnson and a confidant of John Brush. … The magnates agreed to cooperate in scheduling games and adopted the National League rules, such as foul-strike regulation. The old league even accepted Johnson’s entry into New York after he dropped plans to move into Pittsburgh. Both organizations also recognized the reserved rights of every team, and a new contract was perfected. In anticipation of future cooperation, plans were made for an executive commission to govern major league baseball.”

3 Casway, 257.

4 David Jones, ed., Deadball Stars of the American League (Washington: Potomac Books, Inc., 2006), 644.

5 Delahanty’s unusual start at first base can be attributed to injuries and a need to shuffle the starting lineup. Outfielder Jimmy Ryan was “nursing a mashed hand,” and utilityman Lew Drill had “a sore head, the result of Pitcher [Frank] Owen’s wildness in Chicago.” Additionally, infielder George “Scoops” Carey was dealing with an unspecified injury. “Sports of All Sorts: Senators Failed to Score Against Cleveland,” Washington Evening Star, June 26, 1903: 16.

6 The Cleveland Leader reported Delahanty’s final hit as an infield single. “Moore Uses the Brush,” Cleveland Leader: June 26, 1903: 6. Game accounts in the Washington Evening Star, Washington Post, and Cleveland Plain Dealer described the hit as a single to right, with Elmer Flick’s throw holding Charles Moran at third. “Sports of All Sorts”; “Not a Senator Scored,” Washington Post, June 26, 1903: 9; “Another Row of Goose Eggs,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 26, 1903: 5.

7 Sowell, 242.

8 “Moore Uses the Brush.”

9 “Moore Uses the Brush.”

10 Charles Alexander, John McGraw (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988), 104.

11 Casway, 257.

12 “Baseball War Again Imminent,” Chicago Tribune, June 26, 1903: 8; “Pulliam’s New Ruling,” Cleveland Leader, June 26, 1903: 6.

13 Sowell, 250.

14 Delahanty never returned to the United States alive. The events and circumstances surrounding his tragic death have been widely reported and well-researched. See Sowell, Casway, and John Saccoman, “Ed Delahanty,” SABR Baseball Biography Project, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/ed-delahanty/. Accessed December 2024. Saccoman’s biography provides a succinct summary of Delahanty’s final days and hours: “Del accompanied the Senators to their next stop in Detroit, where his mother and two brothers were summoned to help straighten him out. He continued to drink heavily, however, and again abandoned the team on July 2. By this time he knew he would be unable to jump to the Giants, as a court order issued the previous day prohibited Davis from playing for New York. Delahanty nonetheless boarded a train to New York that afternoon but, perhaps tellingly, left his belongings in his Detroit hotel room. Del misbehaved on the train, smoking when he was not supposed to, drinking to excess, and accidentally breaking the glass in front of the emergency tool cabinet. Finally, he fell asleep. When the train made a scheduled stop in Bridgeburg, (now Fort Erie), Ontario, Del became disoriented and tried to enter an already occupied berth. The commotion seemed to confuse him more, and he had to be subdued by three men. The conductor, John Cole, had understandably had enough of him for the evening and ordered Del off the train. The train crossed the International Railway Bridge over the Niagara River into Buffalo. In the darkness Big Ed walked out onto the 3,600-foot-long bridge and was standing still at its edge, staring down into the water, when he was accosted by night watchman Sam Kingston, on the lookout for smugglers. A scuffle ensued, with Kingston dragging Delahanty back to the middle of the wide bridge, but Kingston then fell down and Delahanty got away. Moments later, according to Kingston – who claimed it was too dark to see what happened – Del either jumped or drunkenly stumbled off the edge of the bridge, falling 25 feet into the 40-foot-deep Niagara River. His naked body (except for tie, shoes and socks) was found 20 miles downstream at the base of Horseshoe Falls – the Canadian portion of Niagara Falls – seven days later. Dead at the age of 35, he was buried in Calvary Cemetery in Cleveland.”

Hope was high for Pirates fans. That morning’s Pittsburgh Press included a feature item on the sports page entitled “Pirates and Tigers Likely to Clash for The World’s Pennant.”1 Pirates fans knew that in order to make that prediction a reality, their team would have to go through the defending world champion Chicago Cubs. The Cubs and Pirates were to play the first game of this important five-game set at Exposition Park on Tuesday before moving across town to inaugurate the brand-new Forbes Field on Wednesday. The local papers were full of notes that morning both about the importance of the game to the season standings, but also the closing of Exposition Park and the anticipation of opening Forbes Field the next day. A few highlights:

• Last game at Exposition Park.
• Dedication ceremonies at Forbes Field tomorrow start at 2:30, and the Cubs-Pirates contest at 3:30.
• The Pittsburg baseball club now has two big canvas coverings for its infield. Both will be spread over Forbes Field tonight.
• President Dreyfuss [president of the Pittsburgh Pirates] yesterday received a letter from [United States] President W.H. Taft, expressing regret over his inability to attend the opening of Forbes Field.
• The Cubs won the only game they have played in Pittsburg this season. It was that memorable 11-inning battle of May 29, played in the presence of President William H. Taft.
• It is fitting that Chicago should be the attraction in the last game at Exposition Park. A Chicago team was the first to play the locals in that historic game, the game occurring on April 22, 1891. The Pirates were defeated in 10 innings, 7-6.2

The Sporting News previewed the series by talking about the important race between the front-runners but also the historic closing of an old home and opening of a new home for the Pirates. “Five games are to be played, starting on Tuesday, which marks the final appearance of any ball team at Exposition Park, which has been the home of the bold Buccaneers for many years. Base ball history has been made there, but the field has grown too small to accommodate the large crowds that want to attend the games.”3

Exposition Park (actually the third incarnation of a park with that name, so sometimes referred to as Expo III) was built in 1890 by the Pittsburgh Burghers of the Players League on the north side of the Allegheny River near where PNC Park stands today. It had a capacity of 10,000 in two-tiered covered wooden grandstands and giant deadball dimensions: 400 feet to each line and 450 feet to center. When the Players League folded after just one season, the Pittsburgh Alleghenies of the National League (just renamed the Pirates) moved in for the 1891 season. The high point of Exposition Park history came in 1903 when the Pirates, led by Honus Wagner, faced off against Cy Young’s Boston Americans in the first modern World Series. The first Series game to be played in a National League Park was at Exposition Park on October 6, 1903, which the Pirates won, 5-4, in front of 7,600 fans before eventually losing the best-of-nine Series, five games to three. Continual problems with flooding and sewage backup in the field due to its location near the river, as well as a small capacity, led the Pirates ownership to build Forbes Field, which held 25,000, in Bellefield, in Pittsburgh’s East End, far from any rivers.4

Perhaps saving their excitement for the new park, only 5,545 fans paid for a ticket that Tuesday to say goodbye to Exposition Park.5 At the same time, hundreds of baseball fans watched the game for free from their picnic seats on the bluffs surrounding Exposition Park.6 They were all treated to an offensive showing by the home team as the Pirates, behind Albert “Lefty” Leifield, beat Mordecai “Three-Finger” Brown and the Cubs, 8-1. The scoring started in the first inning as the Pirates scored four runs on three hits off the right-handed Brown, including a two-run triple by rookie second baseman Jack “Dots” Miller, earning him two of his 87 RBIs for the year; he trailed only his famous teammate, shortstop Honus Wagner, for the team lead. (Wagner led the team as season’s end with 100 RBIS.) Pittsburgh added another run in the bottom of the third, also driven in by Miller.

After six innings, Heinie Zimmerman pinch-hit for Brown in the top of the seventh. Left-hander Jack Pfiester took over mound duties for Chicago; he finished the 1909 season with a 17-6 mark and a 2.43 ERA, the final one of four very good seasons pitching for the Cubs. Brown had given up five runs on nine hits and a base on balls; Pfiester gave up three runs on five hits, without walking a batter. All three runs off Pfiester scored in the seventh, with Dots Miller collecting his fourth RBI of the afternoon.

Meanwhile Leifield held the Cubs to seven hits, struck out four, and finished the game on his own. The Cubs scored their lone run in the eighth inning.

Leifield struck out Cubs catcher Jimmy Archer for the final out, and baseball at Exposition Park was no more. The time of game had been 1 hour and 40 minutes, with future Hall of Fame umpire Hank O’Day working the plate and veteran Bob Emslie, in the midst of his 35 years as a National League umpire, working at first base. The Pittsburgh Press commented, “The Pirates proved stronger than their opponents in every department, in spite of the fact that Chicago had the services of Frank Chance for the first time in six weeks. The Cubs saw plainly that they were up against it, and tried to cover up some of their shortcomings by arguing with the umpires, but this ruse failed to work.”7 Two errors were committed during the game, both by Chicago.

Even before the end of the game, while the Cubs were still at bat in the ninth inning, the farewell ceremonies began. The Pittsburgh Daily Post described the scene in serious tones:

When the champions went to bat in the ninth, the notes of a bugle broke the silence. Commodore Charles Zieg, the well-known local musician, had quietly taken a position on the circus seats back of middlefield, and as soon as it was certain that Chicago had been hopelessly crushed, he sounded “taps” through his cornet. At the same time Groundskeeper Jim O’Malley commenced lowering the big flag, and just as Old Glory touched the ground and the last note of the farewell bugle call ceased, [Cubs’ catcher Jimmy] Archer struck out and the historic old baseball lot had passed into history.8

Perhaps not surprisingly, the Chicago Tribune’s reporter did not share the sentimentality in reporting the same events:. “In the Cubs’ half of the ninth inning a pathetic scene was enacted,” wrote Ring Lardner, “the bugler playing taps with more or less accuracy while the American flag was let down from the top of the pennant pole, which hasn’t held a pennant for some time and never will again.”9

Whatever anyone thought of the closing of Exposition Park, the season was a great success for the Pirates. That Tuesday’s 8-1 victory was one of 110 games won during the 1909 season as the Pirates held off the Cubs to win the pennant by 6½ games. In October, they did indeed face off with Hughie Jennings’ Detroit Tigers, winning the World Series in seven games. Meanwhile, the Pirates played the next 61 years at Forbes Field before moving near the river to Three Rivers Stadium in July 1970.

This article appears in “Moments of Joy and Heartbreak: 66 Significant Episodes in the History of the Pittsburgh Pirates” (SABR, 2018), edited by Jorge Iber and Bill Nowlin. To read more stories from this book at the SABR Games Project, click here.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in notes, the author also used Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/PIT/PIT190906290.shtml

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1909/B06290PIT1909.htm

Notes

1 D.L. Reeves, “Pirates and Tigers Likely to Clash for The World’s Pennant,” Pittsburgh Press, June 29, 1909: 8.

2 Excerpted from “Baseball Notes,” Pittsburgh Press, June 29, 1909: 8. Taft had attended the May 29 game.

3 Ralph S. Davis “Test for Pirates,” The Sporting News, July 1, 1909: 4.

4 “Exposition Park: Birthplace of Pittsburgh Baseball & Site of First World Series,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 11, 2006: 8.

5 “Curtain at Exposition Park Falls After Pirate Victory,” Pittsburgh Daily Post, June 30, 1909: 8.

6 Ibid.

7 “Pirates Win Last Game at Expo Park,” Pittsburgh Press, June 30, 1909: 18.

8 Ibid.

9 R.W. Lardner, “Pirates Take First Game of Series From Cubs, 8-1,” Chicago Tribune, June 30, 1909: 12.

Young began 1911 with the American League’s Cleveland Naps, but on August 16, with just a 3-4 record, he was released.2 Three days later he signed with Boston,3 the National League’s last-place team. After seven starts for the Rustlers,4 Young was 3-2, including a five-hit, 6-0 shutout of Pittsburgh on August 30.

Boston was in Pittsburgh for a three-game series. It was the Rustlers’ second stop on a season-ending 24-game road trip. The third-place Pirates won the opener 3-2 — Boston’s 100th loss of the year — and won again the following afternoon, 4-3. The September 22 game was the final contest of the season between these teams. The rivalry had been one-sided, with Pittsburgh winning 19 of the first 21 encounters.

Though poorly attended, this game drew the biggest crowd of the series. Many in attendance came to see their beloved “Old Cy.”5 The famed pitcher had not suited up in Pittsburgh since the 1903 World Series, which was played at Exposition Park.6 This was his first — and only — appearance in Forbes Field. On this afternoon, he opposed Babe Adams, 20-game winner.

Young retired Pittsburgh on two grounders and a popup in the first inning, but three Pirates reached base in the second. Honus Wagner led off with a single, and after an out, Bill McKechnie slammed a single to center. Wagner, who had a lame ankle, rounded second, and set his sights on third, only to be thrown out by Boston outfielder Mike Donlin.

McKechnie alertly took second on Donlin’s throw, keeping pressure on Young. Alex McCarthy reached first, and McKechnie claimed third, when first baseman Jay Kirke fumbled McCarthy’s grounder near the base. Mike Simon grounded out, though, so despite two hits and Kirke’s error, Pittsburgh did not score.

Pittsburgh’s Max Carey singled with two outs in the third inning, but was caught stealing. The next two innings saw the Pirates collect baserunners, but not runs. Pittsburgh’s fourth began with an infield single, but after a fielder’s choice, and a popup, Wagner was on first with two outs. McKechnie doubled to left, but the hobbled Wagner stopped at third. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette thought Wagner might have scored if not for his bad ankle. With two runners in scoring position, McCarthy “disappointed the spectators”7 by flying out.

Two things occurred in the Pittsburgh fifth that changed the course of the game. First, Boston catcher Bill Rariden made great defensive plays to prevent the Pirates from scoring. Second, the sparse home crowd — the attendance was 1,2088 — fully turned their allegiance from the Pirates to Young.

Simon started the Pirates’ fifth with a double, but Adams struck out. With Bobby Byrne batting, Young threw a wild pitch. Rariden stopped the ball with his glove hand, allowing Simon to advance just one base rather than two. The backstop at Forbes Field was 84 feet from home plate.9 “Had the ball gone the usual length of a wild pitch at Forbes Field, [Simon] would have scored with ease and comfort,” observed a Pittsburgh sportswriter.10

Rariden again preserved the shutout when Byrne bunted the ball in front of home plate as Simon came running down the line. The squeeze didn’t work because Rariden grabbed the ball and tagged a diving Simon before he could reach the plate. With Byrne now at first and two outs, Carey singled Byrne to third, and continued to second base on the outfielder’s throw. But with two runners in scoring position, Vin Campbell, the Pirates’ number-three hitter, “tapped out”11 from Rariden to Kirke, ending the inning. Young was cheered as he walked to the bench despite having just thwarted the hometown Pirates.

If there was any doubt whom the crowd was rooting for, it became clear in the top of the sixth. Young was the first Boston hitter, and he was again cheered. He flied out, and the Rustlers did not score, but Young, apparently buoyed by the adulation, began pitching better. The Pirates went down on three groundballs in the sixth, although shortstop Al Bridwell had to make “an amazing stop with one hand”12 to throw out speedy Owen “Chief” Wilson. Young also pitched a one-two-three seventh, and had now retired seven consecutive Pirates.

While Young was keeping Pittsburgh at bay, his teammates pushed across the winning run in the top of the seventh. Kirke led off with a double “about a foot fair”13 down the left-field line, and he went to third after Carey ran back to catch Doc Miller’s long fly to center. Bridwell then hit a short fly behind second, which fell just in front of the onrushing Carey. When the ball hit Carey’s glove on the short hop, it was knocked back into the infield. Kirke, who had edged toward the plate, saw the ball bounding away from Carey, and tore across the plate with the game’s only run.

Young encountered trouble in the eighth inning. Byrne singled, went to second on Kirke’s second error, and advanced to third when Campbell reached on a force play. Campbell stole second, putting two runners in scoring position. But Young struck out Wagner swinging, causing spectators to renew their cheers for Young. When Wilson grounded into the third out, keeping Pittsburgh off the scoreboard again, Young “was heartily cheered” on his way to the bench.14

In the ninth, Young found two quick outs. First, Rustlers left fielder George Jackson caught McKechnie’s short fly “an inch or two off the ground,15 then McCarthy grounded out. The final out was more difficult. Pirates player-manager Fred Clarke pinch-hit and singled to keep Pittsburgh alive, and when left fielder Jackson bobbled the ball, Clarke took second base.

Tommy Leach pinch-hit for Adams. A cautious Young, carefully deliberating between each pitch, fanned Leach to end the game and register a 1-0 win. As he straightened his uniform, and walked off the field, Young got an extra cheer from the departing fans. He politely doffed his cap, and told them, “You’ll see me next year — maybe.”16

Young allowed nine hits — but no walks — and struck out three. He “pitched classy ball.”17 Adams was better — except on the scoreboard — fanning six, walking no one, and limiting Boston to six hits. Kirke’s run put Adams on the wrong side of “a magnificent struggle between youth and age.”18

Without knowing Young had posted his final win, the Post-Gazette’s C. B. Power nevertheless gave a tribute worthy of such an occasion:

“I first saw Young pitch in 1890. He was then a slender youth, but on that occasion, he twirled very much after the style he showed yesterday. Truly Mr. Young gives promise of never growing older as a pitcher, and we are all glad of it, for during his long and brilliant career the big fellow has always been a credit to himself, his associates, his employers and his profession. Of course, it was very unkind of Cyrus to take two games from the Pirates — one in Boston and one on Forbes Field — without allowing them once to cross the plate, but in our admiration for him as a man and a pitcher we are forced to overlook the double sting.”19

Unfortunately for Young, he was indeed growing older as a pitcher. His decline was nearly complete. He threw three more games in 1911, but lost each time. He was on Boston’s roster the following spring, but a chronically sore arm prevented him from pitching.20

Sources

baseball-reference.com/boxes/PIT/PIT191109220.shtml

retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1911/B09220PIT1911.htm

Play-by-play descriptions were taken from the following newspaper articles:

“Rustlers’ Lone Run Is a Plenty,” Boston Globe, September 23, 1911: 7.

“Bostons Shut Out the Pirates in Close Game,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 23, 1911: 9.

“Young’s Slants Still Unsolved by Buccaneers,” Pittsburgh Daily Post, September 23, 1911: 8.

Notes

1 Walter Johnson is second in pitching wins as of 2020 with 417.

2 baseball-reference.com/teams/CLE/1911-transactions.shtml.

3 baseball-reference.com/teams/BSN/1911-transactions.shtml.

4 Known in the nineteenth century as the Beaneaters, the Boston team was called the Doves from 1907 to 1910, the Rustlers in 1911, and the Braves starting in 1912. sportsteamhistory.com/boston-doves.

5 “Rustlers’ Lone Run Is a Plenty,” Boston Globe, September 23, 1911: 7.

6 Boston Globe.

7 “Bostons Shut Out the Pirates in Close Game,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 23, 1911: 9.

8 Boston Globe.

9 Lowry, Philip J., Green Cathedrals: The Ultimate Celebration of Major League and Negro League Ballparks (New York: Walker & Company, 2006).

10 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

11 Pittsburgh Daily Post, “Young’s Slants still Unsolved by Buccaneers,” September 23, 1911: 8.

12 Pittsburgh Daily Post.

13 Pittsburgh Daily Post.

14 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

15 Pittsburgh Daily Post.

16 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

17 Boston Globe.

18 Boston Globe.

19 C. B. Power, “Just by Way of Comment,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 23, 1911: 9.

20 Bill Nowlin and David Southwick, “Cy Young,” SABRBioProject, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/dae2fb8a.

In May Boston lost 14 consecutive games.4 From July 17 through August 1, they plowed even deeper, losing 16 in a row, leaving their record at 20-74.5 They pitched and played somewhat better after that, however, and finished the season with a 44-107 record.

One reason their pitching improved late in the season was the acquisition of Cy Young on August 19 after his release by the Cleveland Naps three days earlier.6 Yes, the pitcher after whom the Cy Young Award for outstanding pitching is named, and who registered more wins (511) than any other major leaguer, was available to this last-place team. Of course, Young was 44 years old in 1911, and photos from the period reveal a rotund, middle-aged man who, in mufti, would be presumed a team executive rather than a player. Nevertheless, though far past his prime, he took a regular turn in the pitching rotation, and was effective in eight of his 11 starts with Boston. He notched two shutouts and allowed just one run in two other games.

In the first game of October 6, visiting Boston had edged Brooklyn 1-0, and, for the first time all season, could boast of a three-game winning streak.7 Boston had not played a home game since September 14, and this game in Brooklyn’s Washington Park had been their 20th of 24 consecutive road games to end the season.8

In the second game of the doubleheader, Boston failed to score in the first inning against Eddy Dent, who was 21 years Young’s junior. Dent entered the game with an 0-1 record and would win only 4 times in his brief career.9 Young went to the mound in the bottom of the inning sporting a 4-4 record. He had defeated the Superbas 2-1 on this same field on September 2, giving up just six hits, all singles.10 Things began well for the legendary hurler on this day too, as Brooklyn did not score in the first inning.

Boston scored twice in the second inning, with Young driving in the second run. Their lead was short-lived, however, as Brooklyn scored three in its half of the inning. The rally began when John Hummel walked. He advanced when Bert Tooley’s fly to center field was dropped for an error.11 Monroe “Dolly” Stark singled to score Hummel, and Otto Miller’s sacrifice fly scored Tooley.12 Dent put his team ahead by singling Stark home.13

Boston tied the game 3-3 in the fourth inning when Bill Sweeney’s double scored Bill Rariden, who had walked and advanced on Young’s sacrifice.14 Neither team scored in the fifth or sixth inning.

In the seventh the Superbas broke the tie and secured the win by pushing eight runs across on eight consecutive hits.15 Young got Stark to pop out before “the Superbas started a batting fusillade.”16 Miller tripled, then Zach Wheat, batting for Dent, singled home the tiebreaking run.17 Three singles followed in succession, then a double, another single, a stolen base, and a double by Bob Coulson.18 Coulson stole third base and scored on Rariden’s bad throw, making it 11-3.19 Young tossed his glove in frustration before exiting the game.20 Brooklyn’s fans “showed their appreciation of the grand old man of baseball by applauding and cheering him as he walked to the bench.”21

As the New York Times noted, “The eighth hit was the signal for Young’s retirement, and Orlie] Weaver finished the game.”22 Weaver coaxed two groundouts to end the seventh, but yielded two more runs in the eighth inning to make the final score 13-3.23 Dent was the winning pitcher, even though in his seven innings of work “he was touched up quite freely by Boston.”24

The Times reporter proved to be prescient, since that eighth consecutive hit signaled not only Young’s retirement from this game, but his retirement from baseball. Coulson had knocked the great Cy Young out of the box forever. The Rustlers played three more games in 1911, but Young did not see any action.25 He planned to continue pitching for Boston in 1912, and remained with the team through spring training, its April schedule, and part of May, but chronic arm pain prevented him from appearing in another game.26 His remarkable career was over.

On October 6, 1911, no one, not even Young, knew he had competed for the last time. He had pitched fairly well until the disastrous seventh inning, and none of the accounts of this game suggested that Young was done as a pitcher.

When Young left the field that day, it was as though a bridge to the past had washed away. He had pitched in the National League from 1890 to 1892 at the old distance of 55 feet 6 inches.27 Perhaps some of the Brooklyn fans who saluted him realized they were witnessing a historic moment, but with the World Series between the Athletics and Giants a week away, to most fans and the press it was just another game to scratch off the schedule of a waning season. They focused on champions, not tailenders.

Sources

Box scores for this game can be found at Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BRO/BRO191110062.shtml

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1911/B10062BRO1911.htm

Notes

1 Tom Ruane, “The Deadball Era’s Worst Pitching Staff,” Baseball Research Journal, Volume 38, Number 2 (Cleveland: SABR, Fall 2009): 135. This thoroughly researched and well-written article chronicles the team’s pitching woes in detail.

2 https://retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1911/Y_1911.htm.

3 Ruane: 131.

4 https://retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1911/VBSN01911.htm.

5 Ibid.

6 https://retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1911/TM_CLE1911.htm.

7 https://retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1911/VBSN01911.htm.

8 Ibid.

9 https://retrosheet.org/boxesetc/D/Pdente101.htm.

10 https://retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1911/B09022BRO1911.htm.

11 “Donelly Does, but Cy Doesn’t,” Boston Globe, October 7, 1911: 6.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid.

14 Ibid.

15 “Tailenders Split Even,” New York Times, October 7, 1911: 14.

16 Ibid.

17 Boston Globe, October 7, 1911: 6.

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid.

20 Thomas S. Rice, “Brooklyns Took the Second when Cy Young ‘Blew Up,’” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 7, 1911: 21.

21 “‘Fans’ Show Human Side When ‘Cy’ Young Is Batted Out of the Box,” Standard Union (Brooklyn), October 7, 1911: 8.

22 New York Times, October 7, 1911: 14.

23 Rice.

24 New York Times, October 7, 1911: 14.

25 https://retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1911/VBSN01911.htm.

26 Bill Nowlin and David Southwick, “Cy Young,” SABR BioProject, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/dae2fb8a.

27 The pitching distance was increased to 60 feet 6 inches beginning with the 1893 season. Clark Griffith was the last pitcher from that era, having pitched in the American Association in 1891 and throwing one American League inning in 1914.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sources

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

Notes

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

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

3 Ibid.

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

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

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

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

A promotional poster advertising the September 4, 1916 matchup between Mordecai Brown and Christy Mathewson. This game would be the last of 24 times in which the two future Hall of Famer pitchers would face each other. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)

“Great Masters Are Through.”1

On September 4, 1916, famed pitching foes Christy Mathewson and Mordecai Brown faced one another for the last time2 in a match viewed by over 17,000 fans3 in Chicago’s Weeghman Park.

Mathewson with his dreaded screwball was one of the greatest pitchers of his era, “compiling a 2.13 ERA over 17 seasons” and setting National League records for “wins in a season (37), wins in a career (373),4 and consecutive 20-win seasons (12).”5 But Mathewson had a rival. One of the most persistent debates of that time concerned who was the better pitcher: Mathewson or Brown.

Mordecai Brown was popularly known as Three Finger Brown because he had lost most of the index finger of what would become his pitching hand in a childhood farm accident. A subsequent fall resulted in a bent middle finger and paralyzed little finger on the same hand.6 Brown’s greatest years were 1904 to 1912, when he won 186 games, including a career high 29 in 1908, and led the Chicago Cubs to two World Series victories.7 At his peak in 1906, Brown had a “microscopic 1.04 ERA.”8

Mathewson’s fans called him “Big Six” because he was like New York’s “Big Six Fire Company” — the “fastest to put out the fire.”9 Mathewson and Brown faced off against each other more than 20 times before their appearance together in this final match.10 In their glory days each served as the linchpin for a rival championship team: Between 1904 and 1907 Mathewson’s New York Giants and Brown’s Chicago Cubs each won the National League pennant twice, and during this period each team also won a single World Series title.

That period of mutual greatness had ended before this final duel. By mid-1916 Mathewson had effectively retired from pitching, having taken on a managerial role with the Cincinnati Reds, and Brown was essentially a backup pitcher.11 “Gone are the days,” the Chicago Tribune lamented, “when Matty and Brownie could give the greatest batsmen in the game a winning argument nine times out of ten.”12 No longer did Brown exercise his “deadly hook” or Mathewson his “famed fadeaway.”13

None of this mattered to their fans. A “great group of baseball rooters stood in the rain for an hour” to pay tribute to these two men with “their lion’s hearts and their master minds.”14

Except for the attraction of seeing Mathewson and Brown, this Labor Day doubleheader otherwise represented the meeting of two lackluster National League teams that would finish the season fifth (Cubs) and seventh (Reds).15 As the media reported, there “was nothing but sentiment to attract a crowd that overflowed the plant to see these past masters of the slab.”16

Same-day advertisements for tickets proclaimed: “Brown and Mathewson Battle.”17 Although the Cubs vs. Reds holiday doubleheader was scheduled to begin at 1:30 P.M., newspapers reported that it still had not been decided “in which section the old rivals would perform.”18 The weather remained in doubt as well, with predictions of probable “thundershowers.”19

Mathewson made it clear before the game that this would be his last time on the mound. “I’m through with pitching,” he told reporters; “I just want to work once more against Brown.”20 He said he was determined to pitch the full game, “even if they make a million runs off me.”21 As for Brown, the Cubs manager — the great Joe Tinker — promised he would to keep him “in the box as long as Matty sticks.”22

The mass of people that gathered to watch these two past masters play overflowed the stands. A “fringe of people was strewn around the outfield,” necessitating ground rules, “a hit into this overflow being good for two bases.”23

During the pregame festivities, Brown and Mathewson each received a large bouquet of American Beauty Roses from Cubs owner Charles Weeghman, and the “two great veterans” had their pictures taken “hand in hand.”24

Thanks to Mike Prendergast’s expert pitching,25 the Cubs took the first game 3-0. As Brown and Mathewson came out to warm up for the second game, they “both got a great reception.”26 The game began well for Brown, who “retired the Reds in the first half of the first inning without scoring” and he was “wildly cheered” as he walked off the field.27

Things unfolded less promisingly for Mathewson. “Laughing Larry” Doyle of the Cubs “singled to right” and scored on Joe Kelly’s “triple to center.”28 Kelly “followed over on a sacrifice fly” on which right fielder Tommy Griffith “made a fine catch near the fence.” That season’s home-run leader,29 Cy Williams, “singled, but was out stealing.”30

After that the Reds “began to hit it up,”31 scoring once in the second inning on singles by catcher Ivey Wingo, first baseman Emil Huhn, and Mathewson himself. One reporter observed that the Reds showed their fondness for Mathewson “by working their heads off to hold the Cubs down,” with especially impressive efforts made during the second inning by Reds left fielder Earle “Greasy” Neale who had come in “on the dead run” making “a beautiful diving catch” of Art Wilson’s “hard liner to left” and by Tommy Griffith who “went a mile” for shortstop Chuck Wortman’s long fly, nailing it “just in time to save a triple.”32

The game’s opening innings represented “a see-saw battle of bats and wits.”33 The Cubs led 2-1 by the end of the second inning. The teams were tied, 3-3, in the third, and in the fourth the inning’s lone run put the Reds into the lead for the first time. In the fifth, a walk to right fielder Max Flack was “Matty’s only pass.”34 With two more scoring runs in the sixth, the Reds’ lead continued to widen and when Mathewson came out for the ninth inning the Reds “had the enemy ten to five.”35

Mathewson was “tired, but game” and “went at his work like a master,”36 but the Cubs “rallied at the finish”37 and got two men on base. Cubs first baseman Vic Saier hit the ball “over the short fence”38 for the game’s only home run. The score was Reds 10, Cubs 8, with the Cubs managing to put “tying runs on the bases in the last half round” when first baseman Fritz Mollwitz, batting for Charlie Pechous, “flied the game over.”39

“Mathewson and Brown Battle Like in Old Days,”40 a headline proclaimed the next day. Many commenters stressed that the two pitchers had put in a fairly even showing, with the Cubs touching “Mathewson for fifteen hits, while the Reds gathered nineteen off Brown.”41 Brown scored two runs and Mathewson one, and each pitcher also “gave only one base on balls,” a fact regarded as “a treat in itself.”42

The Sporting News expressed admiration for the hurlers’ tenacity in working “steadily and grimly through the full nine innings.”43 One journalist noted that “neither would admit the weariness that overcame him as the long struggle wore on[,]”44 and was especially impressed by an exchange observed during the last half of the ninth, when Brown was on second. Cubs manager Tinker offered to “give him a runner,” but “Brownie shook his head, sticking to the paths and eventually scoring his run.”45

Despite such positive gestures, there was ultimately no disguising the number of runs batted in. As a reporter for The Sporting News wrote, “Imagine either of them, when at his best, allowing any such bombardment as that!”46 No one had really expected otherwise, though. Mathewson had already basically stopped playing and Brown would retire after the season’s end. What mattered to the “immense concourse of Chicago bugs”47 who crowded the stands and the field for this final duel wasn’t so much how these pitchers were likely to perform as the chance to pay homage to two of the sport’s great heroes.

For many Americans who had grown up during the first decades of the twentieth century, Brown and Mathewson’s pitching rivalry represented a magical part of their childhood. In 1912, when he was around 12 years old, the future Nobel Prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway sent 35 cents to The Sporting News asking to purchase some “baseball action pictures,” including ones of “Mathewson ” and “Mordecai Brown.”48 In 1920 in his first published novel, This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald included a fictionalized version of his younger self wondering if “Three-finger Brown was really a better pitcher than Christy Mathewson.”49

Although the match on September 4, 1916, represented far from their best performance,50 in important ways both Brown and Mathewson emerged victorious. In a month notable in Illinois for the early arrival of a “killing frost,”51 these two baseball greats made their immortal last stand. “In spite of the brutal manner in which the two veterans were treated by the opposing battlers,” one writer observed, it was “an inspiring sight to see them matched once more.”52 In their final showdown, Brown and Mathewson played with “the brains and courage of yore,” and a “spirit that would never acknowledge defeat.”53

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the notes, information on this game, and on the pitching careers of Brown and Mathewson, came from Baseball Reference.com and Retrosheet.org.

baseball-reference.com/boxes/CHN/CHN191609042.shtml

retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1916/B09042CHN1916.htm

baseball-reference.com/players/b/brownmo01.shtml

baseball-reference.com/players/m/mathech01.shtml

Note: Play-by-play data for this game is not available on retrosheet.org; most of the details for specific plays came from Sanborn, I.E. “Matty Beats Miner Brown,” Chicago Tribune, September 5, 1916: 15, and Ryder, Jack. “Mathewson Bests Mordecai Brown,” Cincinnati Enquirer, September 5, 1916: 8. My thanks to Janet Wall of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for assistance conducting historical weather research.

Notes

1 I.E. Sanborn, “Matty Beats Miner Brown,” Chicago Tribune, September 5, 1916: 15.

2 They had met 23 times previously with Mathewson winning 12 times and Brown 11 times.

3 The game had “over 17,000 paid admissions,” according to “Notes of the Game,” Cincinnati Enquirer, September 5, 1916: 8. Weeghman Park had a capacity of 18,000 ticketed seats but popular games could result in an overflow of fans “standing in the back of the grandstand or on the field” (See Mike Lynch, “Chicago Feds open Weeghman Park, later known as Wrigley Field,” April 23, 1914, SABR Games Project, https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/april-23-1914-chicago-feds-open-weeghman-park-later-known-wrigley-field, accessed June 14, 2020). This kind of fan overflow onto the field was reported with respect to this game.

4 This was later tied by Grover Cleveland Alexander.

5 Eddie Frierson, “Christy Mathewson,” SABR BioProject, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/f13c56ed, accessed June 14, 2020.

6 Cindy Thomson, “Mordecai Brown,” SABR BioProject, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/b0508a3c, accessed June 14, 2020.

7 Thomson.

8 Stephen V. Rice, “June 5, 1907: Three-Finger Brown’s Cubs beat Mathewson’s Giants in Duel of Aces,” SABR Games Project, https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/june-5-1907-three-finger-browns-cubs-beat-mathewsons-giants-duel-aces, accessed June 17, 2020.

9 Frierson, “Christy Mathewson.”

10 Andrew Kivette, “Longtime Rivals Christy Mathewson and Mordecai Brown Face Off One Last Time,” The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, https://baseballhall.org/discover/inside-pitch/mathewson-brown-face-off-last-time, accessed June 14, 2020.

11 Before he was traded to Cincinnati in late July 1916, “Mathewson appeared in just twelve games” and although Mordecai had contributed to rebuilding team unity that year, he “offered only occasional help on the mound”; See Cindy Thomson and Scott Brown, Three Finger: The Mordecai Brown Story (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), ebook.

12 Sanborn, “Matty Beats Miner Brown.”

13 Sanborn.

14 Sanborn.

15 “1916 NL Team Statistics,” Baseball Reference.com, https://baseball-reference.com/leagues/NL/1916.shtml, accessed August 2, 2020.

16 Sanborn, “Matty Beats Miner Brown.”

17 “Amusements” Chicago Tribune, September 4, 1916: 14.

18 “Veteran Stars to Pitch,” Washington Evening Star, September 4, 1916: 10.

19 “The Weather,” Chicago Tribune, September 4, 1916: 1.

20 “Matty and Brown in Pitching Duel,” Huntington (Indiana) Herald, September 4, 1916: 8.

21 “Matty and Brown in Pitching Duel.”

22 “Matty and Brown in Pitching Duel.”

23 “National League,” Grand Forks (North Dakota) Herald, September 5, 1916: 6.

24 “Notes of the Game,” Cincinnati Enquirer. A reproduction of this photograph appears in Thomson and Brown, Three Finger: The Mordecai Brown Story.

25 He allowed four hits and struck out two batters.

26 Jack Ryder, “Mathewson Bests Mordecai Brown,” Cincinnati Enquirer, September 5, 1916: 8.

27 Ryder.

28 Ryder.

29 “Cy Williams,” https://baseball-reference.com/players/w/willicy01.shtml, accessed August 4, 2020.

30 Ryder, “Mathewson Bests Mordecai Brown.”

31 Ryder.

32 “Notes of the Game,” Cincinnati Enquirer.

33 Sanborn, “Matty Beats Miner Brown.”

34 Ryder, “Mathewson Bests Mordecai Brown.”

35 Ryder.

36 Ryder.

37 Sanborn, “Matty Beats Miner Brown.”

38 Ryder, “Mathewson Bests Mordecai Brown.”

39 Sanborn, “Matty Beats Miner Brown.”

40 “Mathewson and Brown Battle Like in Old Days,” Elmira (New York) Star-Gazette, September 5, 1916: 9.

41 “Mathewson and Brown Battle Like in Old Days.”

42 Ryder, “Mathewson Bests Mordecai Brown.”

43 “Matty Nurses Hope of Seventh Place,” The Sporting News, September 14, 1916: 3.

44 Ryder, “Mathewson Bests Mordecai Brown.”

45 Ryder.

46 “Matty Nurses Hope of Seventh Place.”

47 “Matty Nurses Hope of Seventh Place.”

48 Ernest Hemingway letter to Charles C. Spink and Son [The Sporting News] circa 1912 in Ernest Hemingway, The Letters of Ernest Hemingway 1907-1922. Vol. 1; eds. Sandra Spanier and Robert W. Trogdon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 11.

49 F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), ed. James L.W. West III, 23.

50 Both went nine innings; Mathewson allowed 15 hits while walking one and striking out three with Brown allowing 19 hits, walking one and striking out two.

51 “Climatological Data: Illinois Section,” US Department of Agriculture, Weather Bureau. Vol. XXI No. 9 Springfield, Illinois September 1916: 67.

52 Ryder, “Mathewson Bests Mordecai Brown.”

53 Ryder.